Measuring what matters: One year into the 2025-2028 Strategic Plan
By Rebecca Lintow, CAE, Executive Director | TLT Headquarters Report September 2026
Here's a look at STLE's first year progress on outreach, connection and learning goals.
About a year ago, STLE adopted an ambitious three-year strategic plan built around three pillars: outreach, connect and learn. Each pillar is anchored by specific, measurable goals. One year in, we want to share exactly where we stand: what's ahead of pace, what needs more work and how we're tracking it all going forward.
In the "outreach" pillar, we set out to grow STLE's reach into the next generation of the field and its broader professional network. We reviewed our current university partnerships and identified 50 institutions not yet involved with STLE; we've since connected with 12 of them, 24% of that three-year goal, while developing a longer-term plan for sustained STEM engagement. Our database has grown by 1,400 contacts toward a three-year target of 6,000 (23% complete), and we've already exceeded our full three-year website traffic growth goal of 25% in year one alone. This is a strong signal that our visibility efforts are working ahead of schedule.
When it comes to "connect," our conferences and events remain the gold standard for our industry: the place where the tribology and lubrication community brings and discusses its newest ideas. We're 25% of the way toward sustaining that standard across the full plan period, and next year's calendar grows even further with the addition of the collaborative conferences. Our publications continue to be judged by their reach and rigor, and early data on readership and impact shows encouraging growth (30% complete). We're also taking a closer look at who attends our events, comparing today's mix of industry, academic, consultancy and government lab participants against historical patterns to make sure we're building the diverse, global community this plan calls for.
In the "learn" realm, we built a new dashboard to track participation and engagement across our educational offerings and have established the baseline year against which future progress will be measured (25% complete). Watch for new educational offerings or a rebrand of current products in the coming year. We're paying particular attention to local section participation, not just national program attendance, and that tracking effort is now 50% complete. We are working more collaboratively with the sections to make sure these members are staying engaged. At the same time, we continue working to sharpen the quality and relevance of our STEM and career-stage offerings so that members at every stage of their careers, and every generation entering the field, find real value in what STLE provides.
None of these figures capture the whole picture on their own, and some goals are further along than others. But that is precisely the point of measuring progress this openly: it keeps us honest about where we are, and it keeps the entire STLE community involved in shaping where we go next.
We will keep reporting back as the plan advances, and this is far from a finished story: some goals are ahead of pace, others still have ground to cover and next year's update will reflect real progress on every front. As always, I welcome your ideas on how we can continue moving forward, and I invite every member to stay engaged as we work through this plan in the years ahead. You can view the full 2025-2028 Strategic Plan at
www.stle.org/StrategicPlan.
You can reach Certified Association Executive Rebecca Lintow at rlintow@stle.org.