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The Associated Students Inc. hosted a town hall event Tuesday, Dec. 3 in the J. Paul Leonard Library in support of SF State President Leslie E. Wong’s new strategic plan.

President Wong has worked on a new strategic plan — the goal, mission, and objective for improvement for the University in the coming years — with his committee of 15 faculty, students, administrators and counselors since last year and has developed seven themes which they plan to use to execute their objectives by the summer of 2014.

The open forum was facilitated by Nicole Henderson, a member of President Wong’s Strategic Planning Committee and ASI board of directors member, and included a panel of teachers, administrators and ASI members.

The focus of the open forum was the first theme of President Wong’s seven areas of focus for the strategic plan: building SF State’s identity.  The theme examines the central values of SF State, and the University’s identity to internal and external audiences. Questions included: Where can we improve the student experience and what is the identity of SF State as a whole?

“We want this conversation to be brought back to the full committee,” Henderson said.

The Strategic Plan campaign began online with the University soliciting suggestions via Twitter using “I want (fill in the blank) at #SFState, and adding recommendations to neighborland.com, a website that helps neighbors connect.

Tuesday’s event was the second following the Strategic Planning Committee kickoff event November 18, hosted in Malcolm X Plaza where the University community was asked to add suggestions to whiteboards and poster boards.

While the kickoff event was able to attract a couple hundred students to the Quad, yesterday’s library meeting was not as well attended, even with the offer of free pizza and refreshments.

“The advertising for this forum sucked,” student activist Donna Olivera told the panel. “The majority of the people in this room are either in ASI or they’re a board member of ASI.”

The small turnout totaled about 25 students, including ASI members.

ASI tried to advertise the event through mass emails to the student organizations and tabling in Malcolm X Plaza during the last two weeks, said Adenike Hamilton, ASI president and panel member.

“A town hall is only successful when we have people,” Hamilton said. “We need to bolster the numbers for people coming out to these forums.”

Since SF State joined neighborland.com at the beginning of November, there have been almost 400 responses, about 350 of which were in by the end of the initial kickoff event.

Hamilton said more town hall meetings would be scheduled for the other seven Strategic Plan themes, but not until next semester.

“The plan is to get a town hall meeting for as many of the themes as possible,” Henderson said.