A strategic plan defines an organization’s mission, vision and long-term goals, ensuring that its actions align with its purpose. STLE develops its strategic plan on a three-year cycle, allowing for continuous review and adaptation to meet the needs of our rapidly evolving industry. Having a strategic plan in place ensures that all stakeholders, including STLE community members like you, are aligned on goals, which allows us to stay accountable, use resources more efficiently and work together with our volunteers more effectively.

The STLE Board of Directors recently approved the new 2025-2028 strategic plan, which was developed collaboratively between the STLE Executive Committee, Board of Directors and staff. In recent weeks, we’ve started planning how to implement the new strategic plan, identifying our year one goals and defining measures of success to ensure we are making progress toward meeting these goals. With the start of our new fiscal year on July 1, we will begin implementing the plan and continuously assessing our progress to steer the organization.

The strategic plan includes three distinct domains: outreach, connect and learn. The outreach domain reaffirms STLE’s role in championing the science and practice of tribology and lubrication engineering by actively engaging the public, increasing visibility and awareness and creating resources that inform policy and regulatory frameworks, thereby securing the profession’s future relevance and societal impact. Our goals for this domain include increasing involvement in STEM endeavors, fostering new relationships with universities, adding new audiences to our communications and increasing website traffic.

The connect domain establishes STLE as the hub where expertise is shared, technology trends and discoveries are discussed and innovations are enabled by the global tribology and lubrication community. Success in meeting the goals for this domain includes maintaining the gold standard for events in the tribology and lubrication industry, sustaining the highest quality publications and other content and engaging a diverse, global group of attendees from industry, academia, consultancy and government labs. We want STLE to continue to be the place where the tribology and lubrication community gathers to discuss the latest trends, challenges and innovations impacting their work and our world.

The learn domain focuses on STLE’s role as a leader in lifelong learning and its reputation as the go-to resource for knowledge in lubrication and tribology. Our goals for the learn domain include developing data-informed educational offerings, increasing national and local section participation rates and stewardship to improve the quality and rationale behind our broad educational and professional development resources.

The challenges facing our industry are always evolving, and so are the opportunities for tribologists and lubrication engineers to make meaningful impact on our world. STLE is committed to keeping pace with the changes impacting our industry and our members, as reflected in our strategic plan. Watch for more information on the 2025-2028 STLE Strategic Plan at www.stle.org.

Rebecca Lintow is executive director of STLE and a Certified Association Executive. You can reach her at rlintow@stle.org.