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APPROVED STRATEGIC PLAN
The FIT Challenge:
2020: FIT at 75, Bringing the Future into Focus
INTRODUCTION
Over the course of its first sixty years, the Fashion
Institute of Technology (FIT) has changed substantially --
sometimes in fits and starts, and other times with a rush as
the College addressed the changing demographics of New York
City and the evolution of the fashion industry that in the
1990s went global. Through the last five years what has
become increasingly clear is that FIT has emerged from these
changes stronger, different, and more complex. It is no
longer possible to characterize the institution by any
single label or phrase. FIT is a community college at which
most students seek a baccalaureate degree and a small but
growing number seek graduate degrees and advanced
professional credentials. What was once an institution tied
to a set of industries rooted in New York’s garment district
has become a college serving a growing range of professions
and careers drawing a substantial proportion of its students
from beyond New York City and its environs.
As a result of these changes
both from without and within, there is a growing sense that
the years ahead represent a special opportunity for FIT to
choose its own future. The challenge before the College is
to strengthen and preserve its historic mission of providing
access to careers while at the same time developing advanced
programs and initiatives designed to extend FIT’s reach.
Recognizing this opportunity, President Joyce F. Brown
launched a strategic planning process in the summer of 2004
– a sustained effort to take account of the College’s
current strengths and prospects, to formulate a vision for
its continuing progress, and to outline a plan for reaching
its strategic goals by 2020. The planning process has
involved a broad cross-section of the FIT community,
including faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, and
students. Through the 2004-05 academic year, the work of
strategic planning has included a series of individual
interviews, focus groups, and deliberative roundtables as
well as a major analysis of college enrollment data through
the past decade. From these soundings a number of strategic
planning themes were identified and committees formed to
focus on several core areas in which the College seeks to
move forward. A college-wide steering committee has worked
to give shape and coherence to the Strategic Plan, drawing
from the work of these individual planning committees.
The FIT Challenge is the
result of this intensive year-long planning process. This
Strategic Plan describes the College’s priorities for the
coming years. It outlines core elements of FIT as it can and
should exist in 2020, and it identifies steps the College
must take in achieving this strategic vision. The plan is
ambitious, to be sure. Achieving its goals will require
transformations even greater than those that have occurred
within the College in the past several decades. Successful
attainment of this strategic vision will require a
commitment from every member of the FIT community, and a
willingness to work together toward the achievement of
shared purposes. While the plan is pervasive and
multi-faceted, its core elements can be simply stated as
five essential goals:
1. Strengthen the Academic
Core
2. Commit to a Culture of Student-centeredness
3. Strengthen FIT as a Creative Hub
4. Engage in Strategic Recruitment
5. Establish a Process for Administrative Support of the
Plan
2020: A STRATEGIC VISION
The five key goals of The FIT Challenge represent
steps toward the fulfillment of our strategic vision of the
College in 2020. Every component of this vision can be found
to some extent in the FIT of 2005. The vision for 2020 is
one that exhibits these elements in even more pronounced
degree. Our vision of FIT in 2020 is of a college that is
academically strong as well as student-centered; an
institution that builds on the excitement and creativity of
New York City while also exhibiting the global reach that
has become the hallmark of the nation’s best institutions of
higher education; in short, an FIT that is innovative,
globally connected, and purposefully diverse.
Academically strong. FIT
in 2020 will be a college that is committed to academic
renewal – to the development of high-quality curricula and
programming that meet the evolving needs of the students and
industries it serves. Just as important, FIT will be a
college that engages in the reconsideration of its programs
in light of the evolving needs of the industries it serves
and the students it enrolls. FIT in 2020 will be a college
that fosters in its students a capacity to think in
integrative ways, and to understand the relationships that
exist between their chosen major and knowledge in other
fields. The College will continue to be regarded as an
institution that provides high-quality programs culminating
in associate, baccalaureate, and graduate degrees.
Student-centered. FIT in
2020 will be a college that is known for its ability to
create an environment that helps students learn, grow, and
develop. Knowing that successful learning is a function of
having students who know that their needs are being met, the
College will have developed co-curricular programs and a
culture of service that contributes substantially to each
student’s academic achievement, personal growth, and
development.
New York centric. In
2020 FIT will be a college that continues to affirm its
mission of providing educational opportunity and enhancing
the quality of life for the citizens of the City and State
of New York. FIT will exhibit a sustained commitment to
meeting the needs of students who embody a range of ethnic,
economic, and educational backgrounds.
Innovative. Creativity
has been a hallmark of FIT from its founding – in its
faculty, students, and in the leaders from industry that it
attracts to its learning community. It is this creative
drive, drawing together innovative achievers with direct
ties to leaders of industry, that has built FIT’s national
and international reputation. The College will be nationally
and internationally acclaimed as a center of creative
innovation and drive in many fields, helping to shape new
developments in the industries with which it has formed
working partnerships.
Global and purposefully
diverse. By 2020 the concepts of both fashion and
technology will have evolved in unexpected ways. The set of
global industries FIT serves will have both shifted and
expanded. Among FIT’s students will be an expanding cohort
of learners drawn from nations beyond the U.S., their
educational goals more complex and diverse, more dependent
on a host of new digital technologies.
Finally, FIT will be known in
2020 as an institution that demonstrates by example the
positive results of its decision to choose and pursue its
own future. FIT will be a national and international
exemplar of an institution that has built upon its
foundations in ways that are consistent with its core values
and distinctive strengths. The College will have shown that
it is possible to evolve to a position of enhanced strength
by conscious design. FIT will be known as a strategic
organization – an institution that applies limited resources
to greatest effect in reaching its goals.
FIT’S FIVE STRATEGIC GOALS
Goal One: Strengthen the
Academic Core
In the course of its sixty-year history, FIT has evolved
from its origins as a vocational-technical school to its
current identity as a multidimensional academic institution.
Over the last decade FIT’s investments and hence strength
have been focused on its two principal schools: Art and
Design and Business and Technology. In the years ahead, it
is important that a substantial measure of FIT’s growth
occur in the liberal arts. Study in the liberal arts
provides a necessary component of educational breadth that
allows students to engage in confident, thoughtful, and
creative ways with issues beyond their major field of study.
The liberal arts encompass skills of communication and
presentation – including the ability to express oneself
effectively, in writing or by speaking.
Strengthen the Liberal Arts
Component of an FIT Education. The evolution of FIT as a
collegiate institution can be traced in the changing role
and importance of the liberal arts—as a source of expanding
ideas as well as enhanced understanding of the larger world
which is increasingly recasting the industries and the
geo-political and cultural settings in which they operate.
Just as FIT now needs a
strategy to more purposefully invest in its core programs,
so too does it require a more purposeful strategy for making
the liberal arts an integral part of the FIT education.
First responsibility for launching the necessary discussions
and deliberations belongs to the School of Liberal Arts.
Ultimately, however, it is a conversation that must engage
the entire college. FIT needs to conduct a college-wide
conversation on what steps are needed to ensure that
students in every field of study achieve breadth of
learning. The action plan that results from these
conversations must be consistent with the values of the
College and with current distributive requirements of the
SUNY system. A central question to be addressed in these
exchanges is: What does it mean to be a premier institution
that educates students for careers in the fashion and
related industries in the twenty-first century? It is
important that a solid and expansive foundation of education
in the liberal arts constitute part of the answer to that
question.
Conduct a thorough review
and redesign of FIT’s two-year and four-year curricula.
At the outset of the Strategic Plan’s implementation, it is
important to stress that FIT affirms its continuing
commitment to provide programs culminating in an associate
degree. The College is committed to providing a rich array
of two-year degree programs, providing graduates with skills
that can lead to immediate employment, while at the same
time building foundations for longer-term educational and
professional growth. Each school needs to review its AAS
curriculum to determine in which fields the number of such
degree programs needs to expand or contract. Among other
things, this review must consider in which areas the
baccalaureate degree has effectively displaced the associate
degree as the entry-level credential.
In its design of four-year
programs, the College needs in effect to begin with a blank
slate, formulating curricula and programs that provide
students with substantive, rigorous, and coherent pathways
to a degree. The College must avoid what might seem the
easier path of creating four-year programs simply as
extensions of existing associate degree programs. A concern
of equal importance in this curriculum overview is to
address issues of course duplication and credit overload.
Undertake a sustained effort
to increase the size of the full-time faculty. There are
two issues in particular that drive the need for more
full-time faculty. First, to build a truly collegial
community, the College needs a substantial number of core
faculty members who view FIT as their primary
responsibility. Second, there are many components of the FIT
Strategic Plan that will require major faculty leadership to
make genuine progress. There is a critical need to determine
two key elements: how many additional full-time faculty
members the College will require in the coming years; and
how the College will pay for that growth. Accompanying this
growth will be the need for additional office space and
other support.
Goal Two: Commit to a
Culture of Student-centeredness
A strong and consistent theme throughout the Strategic
Planning process has been the need for a demonstrated change
in the FIT culture yielding a more student-centered college.
In affirming student-centeredness as a major planning
initiative, FIT underscores the need for students to feel
that they are members of a college community that is
committed to their learning, personal growth, and
development and to helping students fulfill their
educational goals as effectively as possible. Integral to
the concept of student centeredness is a strong and
comprehensive array of co-curricular (outside the classroom)
programs, services and resources that assist students in
their life skill development. Therefore, it is the College’s
responsibility to create the infrastructure of services,
facilities, and personal interactions that contributes
positively to the achievement of student learning goals. In
addition, an essential component of student-centeredness is
a curriculum that is rigorous, coherent, and attuned to the
knowledge, skills, and abilities that graduates of any field
will need to possess as working professionals.
Achieving student-centeredness
will require every member of this community to conceive of
FIT from the perspective of a student – to examine the
quality of education and services that students receive, as
well as the facilities and equipment available for students
to pursue their work. The message from focus groups,
roundtables, and the work of several planning committees
suggests that a first step consists of cultural engineering
within the institution to yield behaviors that accord
students a greater measure of respect – and to expect from
students in turn a willingness to take a greater share of
responsibility for their own learning. Being
student-centered does not mean relinquishing the expectation
of rigor in course work and individual responsibility in
order to make students happy. In a basic sense, however, it
is to ask to what extent faculty, staff, and administrators
at FIT treat students in responsive ways that contribute to
their progress in learning. Finally, being student-centered
means to engage in design – of the curriculum, of the modes
of teaching and learning, of college services, programs,
procedures, and systems–with the explicit purposes of
advising and serving students well.
One kind of frustration
students often experience derives simply from their
transactional relations with the College, such as course
registration, accounts payable, financial aid, graduation,
and transcripts. Part of the constraint the College
encounters is the lack of space, or the competition for
appropriate space either for administrative purposes or for
teaching and learning during certain parts of the week. A
physical reconfiguration of certain college offices could
reduce the time and frustration students expend in going
from one administrative unit to another. Expanded staff and
more effective use of technology may offer part of the
solution to issues of these kinds. To be certain, however,
many steps required to become more student-centered have
substantial space implications.
Focus on the first-year
experience. At FIT, as at most other higher education
institutions, a student’s experience during the first year
is a major factor in the decision to persist to a degree.
FIT must direct greater attention to ensuring that students
understand their initial experience of the College as being
conducive to their learning goals. Accordingly, the College
will develop a first-year structured program to address
student development skills and issues such as stress
management, time management, career assessment, study
skills, academic advisement, and an introduction to college.
Improve communication.
Recognizing that effective communication is essential to
every student’s sense of engagement and belonging, the
College, in consultation with individual departments, will
promote an enhanced sense of connectivity among all of the
College’s diverse constituencies. The first step in this
process will be the development of a plan to improve campus
communications including the College’s signage, internal
web-site, and the types of information students receive from
offices throughout the College.
Cultivate substantially
enhanced relations with alumni. An important component
of student-centeredness consists in the relationships the
College fosters with its alumni. These former students
constitute an important resource to the College, not just as
potential donors but as working professionals whose
creativity and achievement can substantially enrich the
College’s learning environment and help extend FIT’s
connection with new developments in the industries it
serves. A major strategic initiative is to cultivate more
substantial relations with FIT’s alumni.
Alumni involvement can take
various forms. Teaching, mentoring or participating on
department advisory committees can be stimulating and
challenging. Also, some may be in a position to provide job
opportunities for our students or introductions to
prospective donors.
An effort will be made by the
Institutional Advancement office to engage alumni in FIT’s
activities. Having an updated database will enable us to
have meaningful communication with our graduates and also
help to establish close ties with them.
Goal Three: Strengthen FIT
as a Creative Hub
Given the changes that are engulfing the industries FIT
has traditionally served, the College has both the
opportunity and the obligation to become a creative hub
drawing together the best ideas and projects from across the
worlds of design, fashion, and communications as well as the
business and manufacturing practices that serve those
industries. The concept of a creative hub describes to some
extent what FIT does today: it is an institution that serves
as a creative magnet, drawing together industry leaders with
members of the faculty and students, and fostering
interdisciplinary initiatives that explore new
possibilities. The vision of the creative hub in 2020 is one
that sees FIT evolving further in this direction to become a
nucleus of creative interaction, known and regarded as a
source of innovation throughout the nation and the world. To
become that kind of creative hub FIT must first develop new
structures and identify substantially augmented resources
that can be invested in its programs of graduate study and
professional education.
An appropriately configured
school of graduate studies that promotes both advanced study
and research. One requirement of achieving FIT’s full
potential as a creative hub is to invest in the graduate
school as an academic unit with its own mission and
organizational structure. The graduate school has a central
role to play in advancing the stature of FIT as a source of
innovation capable of attracting some of the most noteworthy
and innovative researchers and industry professionals. A
graduate school developed for these purposes would be well
positioned to provide professional-level education to the
industries FIT serves. An enhanced graduate school would
also provide the underpinnings of a research facility that
will serve as a center for business leaders to explore and
develop cutting-edge business practices.
An industry-leading and
financially successful program of executive education. A
second, equally important step in solidifying FIT’s role as
a creative hub is to develop professional education programs
that extend the College’s reach among the growing number of
professionals who seek continuing and executive education.
FIT needs to develop avenues of engagement that allow more
working professionals to participate in the dynamic of
learning and creative growth that takes place within the
College. Programs of executive education exemplify the
reciprocal advantage that results from drawing these
professionals into FIT’s learning environment with full-time
faculty members as well as students. Partnerships are a key
element in the expansion of professional education programs
– with the graduate school, with leaders of industry and
trade associations, or with specific companies in the design
and delivery of instruction.
An FIT museum and library
that actively support the work of scholars, students, and
others in the fulfillment of a creative hub. As a
physical setting and a collection of learning resources,
FIT’s museum epitomizes the concept of a creative hub. The
museum is internationally recognized as a center for the
study and display of contemporary fashion; its resources and
programs engage members of the FIT community at every level,
from entering student to faculty members and visiting
scholars. Just as important to reaching FIT’s full potential
as a creative hub is an investment in the College library,
both as a repository of learning materials and as a place
that students, faculty members, and others seek out as a
resource in the pursuit of their drive to creative and
scholarly achievement. Physically and psychologically, the
library needs to be more central to FIT as a site of engaged
learning and a creative hub.
A broadly conceived digital
repository to serve both industry and the major programs of
FIT’s schools. FIT’s expanding use of the new digital
technologies represents a fourth reason the College ought to
be purposeful in establishing itself as a creative hub for
the industries the College serves. The digital environment
has become in itself a realm of substantial creative
activity, and FIT is well positioned to assume leadership in
creating the means to store, retrieve, and display images
that are created in or converted to digital format. The
College must build a state-of-the-art digital content
repository that supports academic and administrative needs
and facilitates the creation of communities within and
across disciplines and organizations. This repository will
support an FIT digital image library (which includes a
presentation tool for teaching), enable an e-publishing
endeavor to support the creation of specialized and
interdisciplinary publications, and make possible the
development of e-Portfolios as well as the electronic
processing of documents and workflow.
A design laboratory that
harnesses student and faculty work. FIT has a rich mix
of faculty and students who most often express their talents
and interests through special project work. The FIT design
laboratory, one that can also function as a design
cooperative, will provide both locale and funding for the
most innovative of these projects, particularly those that
involve both students and faculty. A design laboratory will
also provide a setting for the kind of advanced work
required by graduate studies in art and design.
Goal Four: Engage in
Strategic Recruitment
An analysis of FIT enrollment undertaken early in the
strategic planning process revealed that over the past
decade, the College has attracted an increasing number of
students whose family income, geographic distribution,
educational backgrounds, and aspirations resemble the
profile of predominantly middle-class students who seek the
baccalaureate degree. This analysis helped confirm that FIT
in the past ten years has become more competitive as its
degree programs and New York location appeal to an
increasingly national and international pool of students.
FIT needs to plan in purposeful
ways to pursue the direction of serving a student body that
is globally connected and diverse while at the same time
reaffirming its commitment to attract students of the New
York Metropolitan area to its programs.
Develop strategic enrollment
plans for students in several markets. The College will
design a comprehensive strategic enrollment plan based on
“whom FIT wants to teach,” using both academic and
demographic criteria. The plan must utilize ongoing market
research and focus some strategies specifically on New York
City enrollments. FIT will complete a written strategic
enrollment plan that specifies target enrollments per
program and per geographic region. The plan will address
specific segments of the student market, including high
school students of New York City, New York State, regions of
the U.S., international students, and non-traditional and
returning students.
Take proactive steps to
attract a greater number of students from New York City.
The College will develop recruitment programs and strategies
particularly for students from New York City and its
neighboring counties. FIT will put in place a process that
addresses the needs of all prospective and incoming students
and families from initial contact through graduation. This
process will specifically consider common needs of New York
City students and identify the disincentives that might
discourage New York City students from applying or
matriculating. A series of actions can help ensure that FIT
continues to serve this important cohort of students. They
include: a fundraising initiative to create scholarships for
residents of New York City; the exploration of a student
admissions process and timeline that encourages New York
City applicants; strategies to increase the availability of
financial aid and its use as a recruitment tool; and
strategies to increase the availability of on-campus housing
as a recruitment tool for students from New York City and
its neighboring counties.
Goal Five: Establish a
Process for Administrative Support of the Plan
From the outset the College has recognized that successful
implementation of the Strategic Plan would require strong
and consistent administrative support at every level. While
the most substantial work of carrying out a plan often
occurs in individual schools, departments, and units, this
work cannot go forward without palpable support from the
institution’s senior leadership at both the College and
school levels. To make consistent and coherent progress on
the Strategic Plan will require significant changes to some
of the College’s administrative processes.
Build an administrative
structure and develop procedures that facilitate attainment
of the Plan’s strategic goals. An early step in this
process will be to explore models for best practices. This
effort will yield a better understanding of the most
effective ways to support FIT’s strategic goals. The College
will review its administrative processes and make
appropriate changes in light of these best practices.
Many of FIT’s strategic goals
require a substantial increase in financial resources.
Securing these funds will require sustained involvement of
FIT’s board of trustees, Educational Foundation for the
Fashion Industries, and senior administration (president,
vice presidents, and deans).
Institutional Advancement
personnel recognize the value of having the College’s
volunteers, administrators, faculty and staff involved in
the development process. This can include identifying
potential prospects; obtaining introductions to individuals,
corporations and foundations; preparing introductory letters
and letters of support; and soliciting prospects.
The Office of Institutional
Advancement’s Master Plan is being developed and executed to
support FIT’s expansion and future capital campaign. The
plan is modeled on fundraising principles implemented at
various colleges and universities. The plan includes
operating policies and procedures for implementing
fundraising programs. This plan will be modified accordingly
to support the strategic plan as well.
Develop a communications
system and strategy that connects all of the College’s
constituencies with one another: faculty, students, staff,
alumni, and friends of the College. What is required is
an enhanced sense of connectivity along with the development
of specific channels of communication. A vital first step in
this latter process will be to have the Vice Presidents for
Student Affairs and Academic Affairs convene a joint
informational meeting of the respective deans, directors and
chairs on a monthly basis. More broadly, an effective
communication system will make everyone more effective and
in that special sense, more connected.
Implement a process to
ensure steady progress toward the attainment of the
Strategic Plan’s goals. Beyond the reengineering of
administrative structures, the College must put into place a
process that takes account of the progress made in reaching
strategic goals and makes possible the redeployment of
effort and resources as circumstances warrant. FIT will
initiate Continuing Process Improvement (CPI), a systematic
approach for on-going review of college policies and
procedures to ensure that they continue to optimally serve
FIT’s internal and external constituencies. The CPI process
will help ensure that the College continues to be guided by
best practice and internal control guidelines that allow it
to be both effective and efficient in advancing the work of
the Strategic Plan.
PLANS OF INDIVIDUAL SCHOOLS
The Strategic Planning process has engaged members of the
entire FIT community in the formulation of college-wide
goals. At the same time, committees have worked to identify
strategic goals of individual schools and divisions of the
College. The goals of each school and division, all have a
common format. For the most part these are statements of
actions an individual school or division can accomplish on
its own. At the same time, it is important to stress that
these more specific goals have been identified in the
context of the larger college-wide strategic planning
process. As such, the actions in these plans may be
conceived as working parts – practical, on-the-ground steps
that collectively advance the College as a whole toward the
fulfillment of the FIT Challenge.
NEXT STEPS
The core elements of the FIT Challenge are easy to
describe. In the years ahead the College will focus its
energy and resources toward the achievement of five
strategic goals: to strengthen the academic core, become
more student-centered, fulfill its potential to become a
creative hub, engage in strategic recruitment, and align its
administrative systems to support the achievement of its
strategic vision. This Strategic Plan makes clear that the
achievement of any one of these goals is a multi-faceted
process requiring both coordination of effort and a
continuing process of evaluating the impact of steps taken.
The variety of actions proposed also makes clear that no
single standard can be applied to account for progress made
in accomplishing the Plan. The measures of success will be
multiple and tailored to the specific purposes any given
step seeks to advance.
The College will need a set of
committees to oversee and power the implementation of the
Strategic Plan in the months and years ahead. The planning
committees naturally fall into two kinds: One set of
committees or task forces will design the final
implementation and accompanying metrics for the five
college-wide initiatives. A second set of committees will
complete the school and unit plans and begin the processes
of implementation and evaluation.
CODA: THE ADVANTAGE OF
PLANNING
The very act of engaging in strategic planning has opened
channels of communication throughout the College. These
exchanges are leading to a better understanding as to how
best to describe the institution to itself and to others.
What has emerged is a stronger sense of institutional
identity, a more informed sense of the qualities that
characterize the College as a whole, as well as its
individual schools and departments. In engaging a strategic
vision and formulating goals for the future, FIT is
achieving a clearer, more universal understanding of its
growth and development. In many respects this Strategic Plan
provides a blueprint for strengthening through deliberate
actions the qualities for which FIT has already earned a
reputation. The Plan is itself a first answer to the
question: What does it mean for an institution of higher
education to evolve by design?
Many of the initiatives the
Strategic Plan proposes have major resource implications.
While the Strategic Plan in its current formulation does not
address that dimension of FIT’s future, everyone who
participated in this process recognizes that substantial
efforts will be required to fund the plan. Already there are
resource deficits that present genuine obstacles to
attaining the strategic vision outlined in this plan.
Meeting the need for more full-time faculty or for expanded,
appropriately configured space and facilities will require a
substantial infusion of revenue beyond what the College
currently receives. The very work of identifying major
institutional priorities and understanding their costs will
position FIT to address the resource questions more
effectively. An important result of the Strategic Plan must
be to strengthen FIT’s ability to attract increased revenue
in support of its goals.
The planning process has made
clear that some steps are more operational than strategic in
nature; they are tasks that FIT needs to undertake, even if
it were not to pursue a strategic vision of the future. Some
of the planning initiatives do not require more money. They
are actions that require a change in culture, a willingness
to rethink ways of working together to provide a heightened
level of service to students and others across the College.
Finally, the planning exchanges
have helped to identify a series of essential metrics to
gauge FIT’s progress in achieving its strategic goals. Among
the questions to be asked between 2005 and 2020 are these:
Has this action yielded students who exemplify a breadth of
learning and a greater capacity for integrative thinking
across fields of study? Has it yielded an FIT that is
student- and learning-centered to a greater degree than at
present? Has it advanced FIT in its goal of becoming a
creative hub involving industry and the academy in shared
pursuits at the edge of innovation? Has it resulted in a
strategic recruitment process that attracts students of
promise from New York City, the nation, and the world?
Finally, has this step fostered an administrative process
that supports FIT’s ability to achieve its strategic goals,
helping the College provide students with an education of
highest quality in its associate, baccalaureate, and
graduate degree programs?
The actual evaluation of the
Strategic Plan will certainly entail more particular
versions of these questions. In the broadest sense, however,
each answer of “yes” to these five questions will constitute
an important step in meeting the FIT Challenge.
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