SACSCOC Orientation/Review UNIVERSITY OF MOBILE EXCERPTS FROM 2012 AND 2017 PRINCIPLES OF ACCREDITATION SACSCOC TEAM AND OTHER SACSCOC DOCUMENTS SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 HTTP://WWW.SACSCOC.ORG/ Seven (SACSCOC recognizes first six) regional accrediting associations for higher education 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC); New England Association of Colleges and Schools; Middle States Commission on Higher Education; Higher Learning Commission (formerly part of North Central Association); Western Association of Schools and Colleges Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities; Western Association of Schools and Colleges ; and Community and Junior Colleges for 2 year colleges (not identified in SACSCOC literature) Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) Serves 11 States: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. Also serves Latin America and other international sites approved by the Commission. SACSCOC (a regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions award associate, baccalaureate, master’s, or doctoral degrees) Mission Statement Core Values Vision Statement The mission of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges is to assure the educational quality and improve the effectiveness of its member institutions, that award associate, baccalaureate, master’s, or doctoral degrees. The Commission also accepts applications from other international institutions of higher education. Integrity Continuous Quality Improvement Peer Review/SelfRegulation Accountability Student Learning Transparency To serve as the premier model for shaping and ensuring the quality of higher education throughout the world. Accrediting Standards  To gain or maintain accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, an institution must comply with the standards contained in the Principles of Accreditation: Foundations for Quality Enhancement and with the policies and procedures of the Commission. The Commission applies the requirements of its Principles to all applicant, candidate, and member institutions, regardless of type of institution (public, private for-profit, private not-for-profit). SACSCOC Accreditation by SACS Commission on Colleges signifies that the institution (1) has a mission appropriate to higher education, (2) has resources, programs, and services sufficient to accomplish and sustain that mission, and (3) maintains clearly specified educational objectives that are consistent with its mission and appropriate to the degrees it offers, and that indicate whether it is successful in achieving its stated objectives. (2) The Principles of Accreditation: Foundations for Quality Enhancement has the standards referred to in the previous slide. SACSCOC website Assessment and Evaluation Strategic Planning Strategic Planning and Higher Education  History of strategic planning begins in the military.  Organizations kept the name and roots from the military model.  During the past twenty years, higher education have had to confront numerous changes in their external and internal environment.  Emerging challenges for higher education  Decreasing financial support  Rapid technological advances  Changing demographics  Outdated programs  Strategic planning in higher education became significant when accrediting bodies began requiring planning.  Strategic planning implementation has only been moderately successful in higher education. Why Plan?  Higher education institutions periodically engage in strategic planning.  Strategic planning provides  A sense of direction and measurable goals  For the evaluation progress  For changing approaches when moving forward  Opportunities for mission-driven planning and assessment  Data to be used in decision making  A tool for guiding day-to-day decisions  Planning is  A process to ensure components of planning are aligned with each other and mutually supportive.  Part of the fabric and culture of higher education institution  Required by accrediting agencies Components of a Strategic Plan (Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.9.) Components continued  Mission Statement is the foundation and everything in the strategic plan must be aligned with the mission.  Each of the components serve specific purposes.  Components usually develop in a linear progression but may be aligned with each other and mutually supportive.  Not all institutions include a values statement. They explain what the institution stands for and the way in which it intends to conduct its activities. UM’s core values are Christ-centered, academically focused, student devoted, and distinctively driven (University objective) stated as an objective in course syllabi. These are aligned with and mutually supportive with other components of a strategic plan.  Institution’s vision statement is based on analysis of institution’s environment.  Institutional goals provide the mechanism for evaluating progress toward the mission and values statements. Strategic Planning: Mission Statement  What is a mission statement?  Foundation of any strategic plan  Explains the existence of the institution  Delineates in concise language why the institution exists and what its operations are intended to achieve.  Limits the mission to its primary function  Provides the foundation for all planning and functions of the institution Strategic Planning: Institutional Vision Statement  Is what the institution intends to become within a certain timeframe.  Defines institutional strategic position in the future  Provides everyone the same vision of the future  Mission and Vision Statements provide the two ends of an analytic view  The strategic plan bridge the gap between the two Strategic Planning: Goals and Objectives  Goals and Objectives are often used interchangeable.  Goal connotates specific achievement or target .  Objective is more general such as improving the curriculum (by expanding its graduate programs)  Regardless of the choice of words, these form the basis of the portion of the plan most often used as a public document  These are usually used in five or ten year cycle for their plans, The timing may be driven by accreditation schedules.  The timing makes it necessary to have general overarching themes.  Goals and Objectives may have more specific shorter period of time BUT should be appropriately phased Strategic Planning: The Implementation Plan  Needs to have a responsible person with the authority to make implementation happen and who is accountable for overseeing the project.  Not usually published for public consumption.  May be revised, amended, and changed frequently to respond to environmental factors.  Identifies resources each goal and step will require.  Resources include people, time, space, technology, and funding. The Planning Committee  Reasons for appointing and maintaining a standing planning committee  Knowledge of strategic planning has to be learned  Ensure the plan is implemented  Important to have many stakeholders understand how the planning process works. Planning Committee: The Charge  The planning committee should have a written charge. Guidance is provided and ensures it is always clear why the committee exists and what is expected. Provides clarity on the scope of responsibility.  The most effective size is 10-12 people.  Senior staff should always be included  Academic staff and students may be included  President of the committee should be the President.  Governing board is responsible for approving and monitoring the plan at the policy level. The Planning Year  The planning year requires coordinating multiple calendars that drive academe.  Academe calendars include institution’s fiscal year, semester calendars, human resources calendar, as well as athletic calendars.  All these calendars have budget costs associated with them.  The most important reason for coordinating calendars is that the institution strategic plans provides the framework for making budget decisions and decisions about resources in general. Planning Consultant  Primarily reason is the institution has decided to initiate a strategic plan either because of an executive change or a mandate by an accrediting body  A consultant may know the planning process and what needs to be done, but it requires the institution’s president to have ownership of the project.  A qualified consultant is master of the process while institutional staff are masters of the content  Ownership of the project prevents the likelihood of failure through nonimplementation or process sabotage.  Consultant’s role is usually over when the implementation plan is drafted. Assessment  Institutional Assessment Involves  Academic Assessment: panning and demonstrated process improvement  Academic Assessment: program outcomes  Academic Assessment: student learning outcomes  Administrative Assessment  Institutional Effectiveness  Documentation requirement by accrediting agencies  Documentation includes measures such as graduation rates, faculty with terminal degrees, and other measures of change which may require interpretation. Assessment continued  Learning Outcomes – assessment about the process  Integrated in the strategic plan  Provides improvement data  Administrative Assessment The Self-Sustaining Planning Process  There are four time frames for conducting assessment related to the strategic plan.  Mid-year status report  End-of-year status report  End of term when expiring plan is reviewed  End of term planning process improved Planning Process continued Steps One and Two ((Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.20.) Planning Process Step 3  Second set of assessment occurs just prior to the plan’s end date.  Annual data has been collected and reviewed.  Reflect on achievement and accomplishment  Documents accomplishments not originally included in the plan.  Demonstrates the institution’s ability to be flexible  Demonstrates the institution’s ability to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities  Demonstrates ability to stay focuses on meeting goals and move toward a vision Planning Process Step 4 (Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.21.) Planning Process Step 4 continued  The steps in the previous slide are:  Planning process begins  Annual review  End of project review  Pre-planning for a new plan  Notice the cyclical nature that occurs.  The cyclical nature of curriculum models was adapted for strategic planning in higher education by Nichols in the 70s. It has been referred to as “closing the loop”.  University of Mobile used the Nichols Model in the late 1990s – 2000’s. Institutional Culture  The impact of institution culture on strategic planning cannot be overemphasized.  Institutions interpret planning differently and develop different implementation plans.  Factors influencing the strategic plan  Institution’s unique environment  The structure and competence of the administrative staff  The staff commitment to planning  Other Institutional Culture continued  The Environment: Reflects both external and internal environment  Requires an environmental scan: how it’s viewed by members; what members believe about the institution; comparison of responses.  Internal environment – partially defined by mission and historical development and changes that have occurred.  Requires review of mission at beginning of planning  Review development of changes and growth Institutional Culture continued  Administrative Structure and Staff Competence  Organizational chart – reflection of how the institution is organized  Reality of chart compared to the working organization  Relationships among the key players Developing Staff  Academic institutions have been defined as organized “anarchies”. Reasons include 1)problematic goals; 2)unclear technology; and 3) fluid participation  Once mission and goals are defined, it becomes essential for collective commitment. Without this commitment, the planning process cannot be successfully completed. Other Institutional Plans and Relationship to Strategic Plan  The budget process had the most direct relationship to the strategic plan.  Makes reallocation practical.  Provides a blueprint for phasing initiatives.  Makes the budgeting process easier to follow.  Academic Plans  Policy document defining faculty workload, faculty governance, and learning outcomes  Relationship of other areas to academic planning  Facilities and Master Plans  Provides crucial guidelines to all other areas Campus Culture  Strategic planning in universities is derived from corporate research.  Faculty culture typically rejects corporate culture.  Planners, often administrators, may have difficulty engaging faculty for various reasons which include teaching loads and research.  Priorities of faculty are high; other concerns such as safety, changing student profile, and attendant changes of the student population  The planning process should include discussions abut the pressing priorities for research allocations.  A SWOT analysis may help the committee identify the institution’s Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). Culture of Planning and Strategic Thinking  Involve campus through  Open forums and discussion groups.  Use of electronic venues such as websites and chat rooms.  Collect input and disseminate information about the process.  Use public forums such as institutional website and print materials.  Most important: ensure that everyone is using the planning process as a framework for decision-making. Operational and Tactical Planning ((Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.28.)  Using operational and tactical planning provides the tools to implement the plan. Levels of Institutional Planning  Strategic planning is overall planning.  Operational planning is at the department level of an organization.  Tactical planning involves the policies and procedures necessary for effective management, planning, budgeting, and assessing. Governing Board  Board members make policy decisions effecting the entire institution.  Members have an overview of the campus.  Members should 1) ensure planning takes place and 2) insist plans are used in decision making.  Members should hold the chief executive accountable for the planning function  Should not become involved in the implementation. Driving Implementation  Project leader should  Ensure the plan is linked to departmental plans.  Demonstrate the link with the plan and the budget.  Information also needs to flow upward.  Driving thinking up is accomplished through  Department plan  Strategic planning committee mid-year review  Goal confirmation meeting usually at the beginning of each planning year. Summary Strategic Planning….  Is an organization’s process of defining its strategy or direction and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy.  May extend to control of mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy  Became prominent in corporations in the 60s.  Usually includes analysis of (SWOT)  Strengths  Weaknesses  Opportunities  Threats  SWOT analysis helps an organization identify what they are doing well and where they can improve.  A SWOT is a summary of institutional internal Strengths and Weaknesses and External opportunities and threats.  Sometimes a Gap Analysis is used. Details SWOT Analysis Example of SWOT Matrix (Excerpt from Clearpoints Strategy (2017) Gap Analysis (Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.46.)  Using the vision statement and SWOT analysis, the planning committee may focus on gaps between current conditions and the Vision. See chart below. Sample Implementation Plan (Excerpt from Hinton, Karen E., A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education (2012) Society for College and University Planning, p.47.) Chapter 2 The Essentials of Assessment Banta and Palomba. Assessment Essentials 1e. Jossey-Bass A Wiley Brand (2015) Six strategies for effective outcomes assessment 1. Agree on goals and objectives for learning. 2. Design and implement a thoughtful approach to assessment planning. 3. Involve individuals from both on and off campus. 4. Select or design and implement data collection approaches. 5. Examine, share, and act on assessment findings. 6. Regularly reexamine the assessment process. Assessment comprises three phases • Planning phase – Stakeholders are engaged and purposes defined. – A written plan is completed with milestones established over multiple years. • Implementation phase – Leadership provided. – Coordination provided at the institution level. • Improved and sustained phase Planning phase involves • Engaging Stakeholders – Stakeholders are faculty, administrators, student affairs professionals, students, parents, trustees, community, and others. – Regional accreditors have set expectations for involvement of stakeholders. – Regional accreditors provide resources for planning. • Establishing purposes – Requires reaching agreement about goals and objectives. – Understanding where and how goals and objectives are addressed. Planning phase involves….. • Developing goals for general education – Requires campus representatives. – Describes the knowledge, skills, and values graduates have acquired. • Developing goals and objectives for a major will describe standards of the field and of general education. • Linking assessment with other educational processes such as curriculum review, planning, and budgeting. Planning phase involves….. • Designing a thoughtful approach to assessment planning. – Involves activities aimed at improvement. – Involves activities aimed at demonstrating accountability – Involves formative and summative assessment to reinforce learning expectations and standards. • Examples of summative assessment activities aimed at students: junior-level writing competence exams and comprehensive exams in the major. • Formative assessment reviews are accompanied by feedback. This is based on the view that students should learn from assessment. Planning phase involves….. • Creating a written plan – One of the major tasks for assessment planners. – Helps the institution see the big picture of assessment. • Timing Assessment – Component of strategic planning usually with a time table for program-level assessment. – Requires multiple methods. • Compiling Annual Reports Implementing Effective Assessment • Requires leadership at all levels: President, Provosts, Deans, Department Chairs, Student Affairs, and Other Administrative Offices. • Requires designing data collection approaches. • Includes both direct and indirect assessment approaches. – Direct measures requires students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills as they respond to the instrument. – Indirect measures such as questionnaires and interviews ask students to reflect on learning. Implementing Effective Assessment….. • Requires a distinction between qualitative and quantitative data. • Establishes when the information is to be collected and where the assessment will be conducted. • Provides resources through budgeting • Provides resources through advancement, promotion, etc. • Requires educating faculty and staff through an assessment office, faculty-staff workshops, and other professional development activities. Implementing Effective Assessment….. • Involves sharing findings through – Compiling findings. – Disseminated of the findings at the campus level. • Disseminating findings to various audiences and may require separate reports (examples include parents, students, trustees, and internal audiences) • Requires assessing resources and processes. • Requires assessing outcomes. Improving and Sustaining Assessment • Obtaining credible evidence – Should included a combination of indirect and direct assessment measures. – Requires selecting appropriate instruments • That are valid. • That are reliable. – Requires consideration of • The amount of time required by students to engage in the assessment. • The cost of the assessment instruments. Improving and Sustaining Assessment…. • Ensuring the Use of Assessment Findings By – Selecting instruments where the use of results is not burdensome. – Requiring administrators and staff to establish program outcomes and use that information to improve their programs. – Requiring faculty to use the results to improve their programs. – Using assessment to make budget decision. Improving and Sustaining Assessment…. • Through re-examining the assessment process. – For continuity – For flexibility A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education by Karen E. Hinton A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education by Karen E. Hinton Society for College and University Planning www.scup.org © 2012 by the Society for College and University Planning All rights reserved. Published 2012. ISBN 978-1-937724-13-9 20120702 About the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) The Society for College and University Planning is a community of higher education planning professionals that provides its members with the knowledge and resources to establish and achieve institutional planning goals within the context of best practices and emerging trends. What is Integrated Planning? Integrated planning is the linking of vision, priorities, people, and the physical institution in a flexible system of evaluation, decision-making and action. It shapes and guides the entire organization as it evolves over time and within its community. Support the Society's Work This publication is free to SCUP members, who may freely make use of it with their planning colleagues on campus. It and other SCUP publications are inexpensively priced for nonmembers. Please consider joining the society and supporting more planning resources for higher education institutions. For more information about SCUP, visit www.scup.org Contents Foreword ...............................................................................................................................................5 About This Book ....................................................................................................................................6 About the Author ...................................................................................................................................6 Section One: Overview of Strategic Planning in Higher Education ...................................................7 Section Two: Components of a Strategic Plan ....................................................................................9 Section Three: Coordinating the Planning Process .............................................................................14 Section Four: Assessment and Metrics ................................................................................................18 Section Five: The Self-Sustaining Planning Process ...........................................................................20 Section Six: The Critical Impact of Institutional Culture ...................................................................23 Section Seven: From Strategic to Operational ....................................................................................28 Section Eight: A Table of Troublesome Terms ....................................................................................34 Section Nine: The Relationship of Other Types of Institutional Plans to the Strategic Plan ............35 Section Ten: Summary of Thoughts .....................................................................................................39 Section Eleven: Tips, Techniques, and Templates ...............................................................................40 Works Cited ...........................................................................................................................................48 A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 5 Foreword Over the course of my career as a strategic planner in higher education, I have worked with a wide variety of individuals who have misconstrued the role of strategic planning in the academy. A great number of individuals are unaware of the necessary components of a strategic plan and what is required to implement and sustain such a plan. Some of the misinformed were consultants in occupations that serve the post-secondary community, and others were members of a college or university. Regardless of their relationship to the academic enterprise, those who misunderstand or are uninformed about planning practice can be a serious detriment to successful planning. The costs of engaging in a poor planning process range from disillusioned faculty, staff, and students, to poor use of vital resources, to failed accreditation reviews which, in turn, cause an institution to lose funding and prestige. The stakes are high, but the rewards are higher. A well designed and implemented strategic planning process can provide an institution with a forum for campus-wide conversations about important decisions. The process can also be organized to make assessment, resource allocation, and accreditation easier, and be a source of information about progress and achievement with very real meaning to those associated with the institution. This booklet is written to provide a practical overview of what strategic planning should be at the post-secondary level and define the elements of a successful process. The content offers a brief overview of the history of strategic planning in the academy from a practitioner’s perspective and a more detailed examination of current planning practice. In some ways the content of this monograph is an examination of the criticism that strategic planning as a process is too linear to cross organizational silos and achieve institutional transformation. I believe those who have taken the view of strategic planning as a tool of limited use need a better understanding of the process. It is my hope that those who engage in all types of planning activities on behalf of a post-secondary institution will use this information to educate themselves about what a strategic plan is and what its potential can be. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 6 About This Book “Undergoing a strategic planning process can be a monumental task, especially for higher education institutions that are attempting a more contemporary model for the first time. Dr. Hinton's guide shortens the learning curve and unites college leadership with its intuitive, step-by-step approach. It not only takes you through the planning process, but also provides guidance on how to ensure the plan's long-term success.” Kasey McKee Vice President, College Advancement St. Charles Community College (SCC) Foundation About the Author Karen E. Hinton, PhD, has more than twenty-five years of experience in planning and administration in higher education, serving at large and small public and private colleges and universities, a community college, and a university system office. She has developed, facilitated, and managed numerous strategic plans, accreditation self-studies, and process improvement initiatives in a wide range of situations. As a senior associate for Rickes Associates, Inc., Hinton currently continues to work with institutions, providing leadership and support for strategic planning, regional accreditation, and administrative studies. Hinton has taught courses in composition, literature, and research methods, and served as an academic advisor for undergraduate and graduate students. She served as SCUP’s membership liaison for New Mexico, up-state New York, and as a board member for the North Atlantic region. She is currently a member of the American Society for Quality. Hinton has made numerous presentations and written articles and reviews for such publications as Knowledge Directions (the journal of The Institute for Knowledge Management) and Planning for Higher Education. The author and the society would like to thank Planning for Higher Education Editorial Review Board member, Arnold J. Gelfman, Executive Director, Planning, Assessment & Research, Brookdale Community College, for his meaningful contributions to the development of this guide. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 7 Section One: Overview of Strategic Planning in Higher Education From the point at which George Keller published his Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education in 1983, American post-secondary institutions have struggled with the concept of and uses for strategic planning in the academy. Prior to Keller, long-range planning was practiced by most institutions, but this was often a budget-driven, incremental process intended to ensure long-range fiscal planning. Prior to Keller, strategic planning was conducted in the realm of corporate or military operations, where mission driven long-term objectives and short-term actions needed to be efficiently integrated through a type of administrative coordination most colleges and universities never aspired to emulate. Cohen and March (1974) used the term “loosely coupled organization” to describe the competing and sometimes opposing operational cultures of the academy. This phrase captures the essence of an organization which, at its core, finds institutionally comprehensive planning antithetical to many of the activities that give American higher education its unique, dynamic character. The emergence of strategic planning in higher education coincided with the difficulties experienced in all of education in the 1970s and 1980s, as enrollments began to fluctuate, student demographics started to change, and funding became inconsistent. At this point, futures research and the rise of technology-enabled data collection and analysis pointed the way to strategic planning as one solution for developing a proactive stance in the environment of changing demands and declining resources. The difficulties with initial attempts to convert corporate strategies to the culture of higher education were legion. Adapting a process designed to motivate assessment-based change within a short timeframe was frustrating at best and ineffective most often. While corporations developed their planning processes based on market data and customer-driven production, academe was limited in the data it could bring to bear on its issues and did not view itself as serving “customers”. At its beginning, the strategic plan in post-secondary education was viewed as a tool to articulate institutional mission and vision, help prioritize resources, and promote organizational focus. As a result, many of the early strategic planning efforts produced documents that described the institution, but did little to motivate a process. These “shelf documents” often sowed the seeds of discontent within the institution, since many who participated in the process spent long hours on the plan’s development and then saw relatively little implementation. At the time strategic planning was beginning to gain some acceptance in higher education, federal and state governments, and the major accrediting commissions, were responding to external demands for accountability through the development of standards for assessment and learning outcomes measures. Historically, accreditation standards were based on types of administrative data such as the fiscal stability of the institution, the number of faculty with terminal degrees, and the number of volumes in the library. However, the need to arrive at specific assessment measures for the academic enterprise was seen as the purview of academic staff who, because of their professional culture, had a difficult time determining what, if anything, could measure the learning process. To tighten the standards, the accreditation commissions began to insist institutions have a strategic plan and an assessment plan in order to meet accrediting requirements. By the 1990s, workshops provided by the various accrediting commissions outlined expectations regarding the scope of an institutional planning and assessment process. Institutions began to find themselves under serious scrutiny during their reaccreditation processes if they did not have a working strategic plan and some form of assessment plan in place. The pressure to provide documented planning and assessment did not only come from the accrediting commissions, however. At the same time, state and federal governments began tying funding and regulatory oversight to accountability measures, moving the business of the academy into the arena of political discourse. With the reduction in student populations and funding, most post-secondary institutions were competing for extremely limited resources. Identifying and developing the assessment measures necessary to support the case for institutional self-determination and continued funding created an environment that led to the rise of campus strategic planning offices. The concurrent development of technology and methodology in institutional research A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 8 supported this organizational focus through accountability measures, making the planning process more data driven. Also, at about this time, the US Department of Commerce widened the scope of its Malcolm Baldrige award to include hospitals and educational institutions. Application for the award required documented analysis of process improvement within the context of mission-driven activities. The Baldrige application process had originally been developed specifically for corporations. Adaptation of the processes in education took a number of years and was considered by most in academe to be irrelevant to the mission of the academy. However, the underlying concept of the Baldrige application requirements combined strategic planning, assessment, and process improvement in such a way that various accrediting commissions saw in it a framework that influenced their expectations. By the late 1990s, blue ribbon panels and various educationally related organizations had begun defining some standardized indicators of achievement to be used as evaluation output measures in higher education. A number of state and federal reports were developed based on these measurements, giving rise to an entire industry of consumer-focused comparative reports, such as state report cards and the college evaluation issues of a number of magazines. By the end of the century, it appeared strategic planning had become a victim of the ever-fickle cycle of management theories du jour. The frustrations of staff and faculty who had spent countless hours on strategic plans that were never implemented created an internal environment where stakeholders refused to participate. “We tried that and nothing ever happened,” was a common response to the calls for planning at the campus level. Even colleges and universities with successful planning processes began to dismantle their planning offices in favor of new initiatives focused on assessment. The literature of the time shifted from institutional strategic planning to institutional leadership, giving some indication of what might have been wrong with higher education’s initial attempts to adopt the practice. The calls for leadership, compounded with increasing demands for accountability and assessment, meant strategic planning was bypassed for shorter-term solutions of immediate issues. In essence, the academy was back to reactive, incremental problem-solving. However, the accrediting commissions kept requiring institutional strategic plans as a major part of the standards they used to assess an institution’s ability to meet its mission. This presented a problem for many colleges. Institutions needing a strategic plan to satisfy accrediting requirements began to develop what they believed were strategic plans in conjunction with some other form of planning. In some cases the institution was in the process of developing an information technology (IT) plan, an academic master plan (including the all-encompassing assessment component), or even a facilities master plan. This, they believed, would fill the requirement for an institutional strategic plan. Of course, various members of the staff might sit on the committee to ensure “realistic” initiatives were implemented incrementally so they would not strain limited resources. But the real issues remained: once an institution produced a document called a strategic plan, what did it do and how did it get implemented? What was lost during this evolution was the institutional understanding of the role of a strategic plan and what key elements were necessary for the plan to function. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 9 Section Two: Components of a Strategic Plan Contemporary strategic plans have multiple components and each component serves a specific purpose. These components are planning tools used either separately or in groups, but their development is usually, of necessity, a linear progression. One of the purposes of the planning process is to ensure these individual components are aligned with each other and mutually supportive. While not technically a part of the strategic plan, the mission statement is the foundation for it because everything contained in the strategic plan must be aligned with the mission. In addition to the mission statement, a vision statement, institutional goals, and an optional values statement comprise the supporting documents establishing the context for a strategic plan. These supporting documents provide specific points of guidance in the planning process. The vision statement is the expression of institution aspiration, and is based on analysis of the institution’s environment. Institutional goals provide the mechanism for evaluating progress toward the vision, and values statements describe the manner in which the institution will work to achieve its goals. Figure 1 Components of a Strategic Plan Institutional Mission and Values Mission The foundation of any strategic plan is the institutional mission statement. This statement delineates, in concise language, why the institution exists and what its operations are intended to achieve. For publicly controlled institutions, this statement of purpose may be dictated by the state, but for all institutions the statement serves as the explanation for the existence of the organization. Historically, mission statements were long, exhaustively detailed descriptions of the institution’s founding, curricular history, unique culture and current services. The mission statement also often included an explanation of what the institution stood for and what it intended its students to become. An interested student of strategic planning can open any archived college catalog to find, within the first few pages, a mission statement at least a full page long containing all the historic information about the institution anyone would care to know. These types of mission statements have been termed “comprehensive mission statements” because they tend to include everything anyone thought might be important to know about the institution. With the advent of contemporary planning methods, however, the comprehensive mission statement became a limiting factor in the planning process. Two major problems were created by trying to develop a strategic plan based on a comprehensive mission statement. First, it could be difficult to sift through the verbiage to isolate and A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 10 identify specifically those elements of the statement everyone agreed identified the foundation for all activities. This identification was critical because the accrediting commissions had formed an evaluation standard to examine how well all operations aligned with the mission. Comprehensive missions, as a result of their breadth, provided ample opportunity for wide interpretation; a condition called “mission creep”. Institutions found themselves having to justify community outreach or academic programs that extended the activities of the institution beyond its actual mission. From the perspective of the accrediting commission, a situation where the institution was using resources for activities beyond the scope of its mission indicated the institution might not be using its resources as effectively as possible. This definition of “institutional effectiveness” meant accrediting commissions were looking for a direct relationship between how the institution used its resources and what the mission statement outlined as the reason the institution existed. The second limitation of comprehensive mission statements was that most of them were rife with statements about institutional culture and values. While critical to revealing how the institution differed from others with similar characteristics, the effect of these statements was to virtually require the institution to evaluate and assess them as part of institutional effectiveness. With all the other aspects of assessment academe needed to oversee, developing measurements for values was perhaps not the most critical priority. As a result of these very real limitations, more recent planning practice limits the mission to its primary function. The mission statement is stripped down to a very short, basic statement of purpose. If the institution believes it also needs to provide a separate set of institutional goals, they can be appended to the shorter mission statement in a subsection or displayed in conjunction with the mission statement. The mission statement can then be a clear, concise statement, “This is what we are here to do.” Values Values have been removed from the mission to their own Values Statement component. There, they explain what the institution stands for and the way in which it intends to conduct its activities. In some cases, these values are so important the institution has programs and assessment measures to support and sustain them as key elements. But regardless of their priority, within the context of planning and evaluation, the values statement should declare, “These are the characteristics we believe are important in how we do our work.” The Institutional Vision Statement The institutional vision statement is one of the most important components of a strategic plan. The vision statement is an institution’s clear description of what it intends to become within a certain timeframe. The vision statement defines the institution’s strategic position in the future and the specific elements of that position with relationship to the mission statement. In some cases, the vision is that of one leader at the campus. Often this leader is the president, but the vision can sometimes come from an academic vice president or provost. Usually, however, the vision is reviewed and revised by members of the campus community, especially the strategic planning committee. Vision statements benefit the planning process by providing everyone in the institution with the same vision of the future. If the purpose of the planning process is to align mission, vision, goals and resources, it is critical to ensure those who will be called upon to implement the strategic plan are all “pulling in the same direction”. This is especially true if the vision statement is really a reflection of one person’s vision for the institution. In this case, it is in the best interests of the institution to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to “own” the vision, either through review and revision of the statement or some form of early input into the statement draft. The mission and vision statements provide the two ends of an analytical view of the institution from which the strategic plan is developed. The mission and vision represent the current and envisioned state of the institution. The strategic plan is used to bridge the gap between the two. It is regularly assumed by members of the campus community that a vision statement can only be produced if market research has been conducted to determine what educational needs are not being met by peer and A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 11 aspirational institutions. This perception is only partially true. In fact, market research is more effective if it is conducted after the vision statement has been written and approved. What is needed to complete a strategic plan is, more often, an environmental scan. The differences between an environmental scan and market research are explained in Section Eight, “A Table of Troublesome Terms”. One of the most curious problems with writing a vision statement comes when those writing the statement have to decide whether the verbs in the statement are present or future tense. There are so many subtle implications for either approach, and it is often the case that the strategic planning committee will write the vision statement in one tense and then change it to the other. Strategic Goals and Objectives There is much confusion about the terms used to name the parts of a strategic plan. Many people use the words “goal” and “objective” almost interchangeably, and have a distinct rationale for their particular definitions. In point of fact, as long as everyone involved in the planning process agrees to a definitional hierarchy, any combination of words can be used. However the words goal and objective carry connotations that can help guide their use in the process. The word goal connotes specific achievement; a target reached and “checked off”. The word objective is slightly more general in connotation. An objective helps set a course by giving a general direction, but an objective does not usually contain the specifics of its own completion. Given the nature of the activities required to implement a plan, and the need to assess the achievement of the plan’s implementation, it seems logical to use terms that encourage overarching directional guidance for the major themes that organize the plan, and more specific terms for the parts of the plan requiring accountability and measurement. For example, a major theme in many strategic plans is to improve academic programs. Each institution has its own perspective on what is important about academic programs, and these statements usually reflect an institutionally-specific perspective. One institution might want to ensure programs and curriculum fit the educational needs of its student population, while another institution is more interested in improving its curriculum by expanding its graduate and research programs. These are very general desires, and might best be called strategic objectives, themes, or even directions. However, the specific actions taken to improve academic programs could range from ensuring all academic programs offer an internship option for students who want “real world” experience to setting target enrollments for specific graduate programs or research dollars brought to the campus. These types of actions seem to fit more closely the definition of a goal, because they can be measured and “checked off”. Regardless of the words selected to name the parts of a strategic plan, these basic elements—goals and objectives— form the basis of the portion of the strategic plan most often used as the public document, approved by the governing board, and distributed to the campus community. There is one final caution about the goals and objectives of a strategic plan—timing. Most colleges and universities use either a five or ten year cycle for their plans. These cycles are often driven as much by the reaccreditation schedule as any internal issue. For this reason, most strategic plans have overarching themes that are very general and do not tend to change over time. In fact, in many planning processes, these overarching themes can be carried over from one planning cycle to the next with only minor modification. The goals used as the basis for the implementation plan are a different issue, however. There is a tendency to “front load” or “back load” the deadlines for the goals in a plan. Front loading usually occurs because enthusiasm is high and everyone would like to see the plan successfully completed. Another reason front loading occurs is those who are determining the deadlines are used to thinking in short one or two year timeframes. This approach misses completely the purpose of a five or ten year planning cycle, which allows more complex solutions to be spread out over a longer period of time. In either circumstance, front loaded goals take the form of assuming a goal can be completed in a very short period of time, and also assumes a minimum of effort. These assumptions encourage people responsible for the implementation to take A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 12 the fastest, least complicated path to completion. In many cases, if an issue has risen to the level of the strategic plan, it is not easily addressed nor is it a simple issue. Back loading usually occurs when members of the institutional community are not committed to the plan or are unsure about the resources needed to implement. A thoughtful strategic planning committee will use its collective wisdom to ensure each goal is appropriately phased. There are several reasons phasing is necessary. One of the most obvious is, in many cases, before one action can be taken, another has to be completed. A second reason, where resources are concerned, is any need to accrue the personnel, facilities, or funding necessary for the action. Using the strategic planning committee as a forum to question and test the reasonableness of proposed deadlines is often a challenge. In many cases, institutional personnel are not used to thinking holistically about initiatives with wide-ranging scopes or timelines. It is difficult to develop in planning committee members that sense of strategic thinking that allows them to look cross-functionally to see the implications for the entire institution. For example, if the institution has determined it will expand the number and types of student support services offered through Student Affairs, most planning committee members will assume Student Affairs will see to the implementation. However, what if that implementation requires an upgrade to technology? The IT department needs to consider what the upgrade will require and how long it will take, not only in terms of technology but also with regard to staff training. Additionally, the Facilities Department will need to know if there are to be changes to the spaces currently being used in Student Affairs, or if new space needs to be found and what length of time it may take to produce that space. While a great many of these types of issues can be discussed in committee and the deadlines revised, in some cases the projects are complicated enough to require actual process analysis techniques to determine the sequence of actions. Regardless of the method used, the result is a strategic plan populated with short-, middle-, and long-range deadlines that form the backbone of a strategic plan that is realistic in terms of what can be accomplished and in what timeframe. Taking the time to ensure the strategic plan reflects such phasing has two other significant benefits. First, it provides a learning opportunity regarding institution-level thinking for members of the planning committee. Second, phasing the major goals of the strategic plan begins the process of thinking through the implementation plan, which will build on the phased aspects of the strategic plan. What the strategic planning committee should not allow is an effort to “cost out” the entire plan as if it were all going to be implemented simultaneously. A demand for costing out is often an attempt to scale back the scope of the plan, but can also be seen as a misunderstanding of how the planning process works. Scaling back a plan as a result of tight resources will happen automatically if it needs to happen. What is incumbent on the members of the planning committee is to ensure the transformational aspects of the vision are captured in the goals and objectives and phasing is realistic for implementation. It is important to remember the ultimate purpose of a strategic plan is to drive resource allocation. If the institution has a vision requiring additional resources, it phases implementation of that vision over time, including securing the resources to make it happen. The Implementation Plan Turning goals and objectives into a working plan is the function of the Implementation Plan. This part of the strategic planning process is not usually for public consumption, and seldom is made available to the governing board. There are a variety of reasons this working document is not widely distributed, but the primary one is, more than any other part of the strategic plan, the implementation plan is revised, amended, and changed frequently to respond to environmental factors. While the strategic plan’s goals and objectives remain a source of guidance and focus, the implementation plan delves into the messy work of getting the job done. One other aspect of the implementation plan critical to the planning process—and also to the budgeting process— is identifying the resources each goal and step will require. It should be noted resources, in this instance, are defined in the broadest way possible. Resources for implementing a strategic plan include: people, time, space, A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 13 technology, and funding. Sometimes, the exact amount of a critical resource is not known at the time of the plan’s inception; however, the type of resource can be identified. It is important to know what specific resources will be needed and continue to refine the size of the need as the plan develops. The implementation plan needs to be directive, clear, and documented. The implementation of a strategic plan depends on the institution’s ability to turn strategic thoughts into operational action. For this reason it is necessary to document who is responsible for implementing an action, a date by which the action is expected to be completed, and what measures will be used to assess completion of the action. It is wise to ensure the person assigned responsibility for the action has the authority to make it happen. It is also wise to identify one and only one person to be the agent accountable for overseeing completion of the action. Obviously many people or departments may be needed to implement a specific action. However, if a group is designated as accountable, each person in the group will believe someone else in the group is taking charge. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 14 Section Three: Coordinating the Planning Process The Planning Committee Institutions without a standing planning committee should create and maintain one. Many institutions select representatives from the major stakeholder groups to serve on a planning committee with the intention that, once the plan has been created, the group is disbanded. In much the same way institutions form working groups and a steering committee for reaccreditation self-studies, they try to bring enough insight to the table to give balance and reality to the initial product. However, there are three extremely important reasons to have a standing planning committee. First, the work of the strategic planning committee has to be learned by its members. Very few people appointed to a planning committee have a working knowledge of strategic planning, or the broad institutional perspective to do it well in the beginning. It takes time and hard work to develop a functioning planning committee that can operate effectively. If the committee is only formed to create the plan, and then does not participate in its implementation and assessment, all the hard-won knowledge is lost. Second, to ensure the plan is being implemented, there has to be some sort of monitoring process to assist with decisions and keep the planning process on track and responsive. While this can be done by a single individual, it is difficult for a single individual to have a working knowledge of all aspects of such a large and complex organization. This complexity is precisely the reason stakeholders from the various functional areas are called together in the first place. Committee members know why a certain goal or step must come prior to another, or why a particular goal is no longer as relevant in year three of the plan as it was in year one. Finally, it is vital to have as many stakeholders as possible understand how the planning process works. Nonpermanent members of the planning committee, such as students and faculty who normally need to rotate off the committee, can be replaced with new members in staggered terms. Such a rotation allows new people to learn from the committee, while the replaced members take their knowledge back with them to their departments. This type of participatory learning increases the ability of the entire institution to understand how the planning process works and supports strategic thinking across the campus. These benefits accrue in the same way a reaccreditation self-study helps teach the campus community about itself. Part of the advantage with the planning process is it is continuous. The learning should never be allowed to be shelved for five or ten years. The Charge to the Committee There are no circumstances in which a planning committee should be formed without a written charge. For standing committees the written charge is absolutely essential and should contain, at a minimum: The size and composition of the planning committee: • The most effective size of a planning committee is between 10 and 12 people. • The senior administrative staff should always be included as permanent members. • Academic staff and students should be included and given limited terms to account for restrictions in longterm time commitments. Where these members can be drawn from leadership positions, such as President of the Faculty Senate or President of the Student Government Association, the appointment provides additional benefits for distribution of information and access to readily identified groups of stakeholders. • It is preferable that the president of the institution chair the committee. This stipulation can be a “deal breaker” if presidential engagement is less than complete. The presence of the president is critical because it provides integrated leadership and support as the group deliberates. Few people have a better strategic sense of the institution than its president. His or her perspective brings together not only all aspects of the institution’s operations, but also any concerns of the governing board and the system office, if it is a state A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 15 system institution. Also, if the president does not participate, the group’s decisions cannot be considered completed until the absent president is briefed and has commented. This type of situation nullifies the purpose of the group and eviscerates the group’s role in producing and implementing a plan. Finally, while the governing board is responsible for approving the strategic plan and monitoring it at the policy level, the president reports to the governing board, and therefore will be required to explain, advocate, and interpret the plan to the satisfaction of the board. It is difficult for a president to act as the official leader of the planning process if he or she has not fully participated. The length of terms: If the planning group is a standing committee, the length of terms for the non-permanent members needs to be rotated so that the committee does not face large turnovers that leave a leadership vacuum. • Obviously, most student members will only have a year or two during which they are available. • Faculty may also only have a year or two if they experience a change in teaching duties or take a sabbatical that impacts their ability to participate. In order to ensure that the original balance is maintained, the position or type of member should be designated in the Charge. For example, committee membership might include two academic deans, one librarian, the president of the faculty senate, one undergraduate student, and one graduate student. In this way, when, to further the example, the librarian’s term has expired, there is a clear record that the position should be refilled by someone from the library. It also avoids the issue of non-permanent members deciding they will stay on when their terms have expired. If the person who has been president of the faculty senate no longer holds that position, the place on the planning committee must be relinquished for the new president. The scope of responsibilities of the committee: There is a tendency for planning committees to fall into one of two traps. They either believe they have no authority at all, and therefore demur from decisions and accountability, or they believe every action taken on behalf of the strategic plan should be approved by them prior to action. Neither position bodes well for the institution, so it is necessary to literally tell the members of the committee the scope of their responsibilities. This scope can be easily described through a series of bulleted statements directing the activities of the committee to the necessary tasks and then establishing who is responsible for each. The expectation for participation for each member: It would seem obvious to many that if one is selected to a committee, one has an obligation to participate. However, we also recollect that many parts of the institution believe planning is either not possible or not important enough to take time away from primary duties. This situation is especially true if there has been a failed strategic plan previously, or if the institution’s leaders are not actively involved. For these reasons, it is important to specify that members of the strategic planning committee have certain professional responsibilities. Among these are: attending meetings, contributing at the meetings, collecting information bearing on the plan from constituents, helping to educate the campus community about the process, and disseminating the plan. For a standing committee, the guidance provided by the written charge ensures that, over years of change in membership and environment, it is always clear why the committee exists and what is expected. Deciding the Planning Year There are a number of ways in which the planning process needs to be coordinated. One of the most basic issues in coordination concerns the multiple calendars that drive academe. The most important reason for implementing an institutional strategic plan is it provides the framework for making budget decisions and decisions about resources in general. For this reason alone, it is critical that the budget cycle and the planning cycle be aligned, not A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 16 only on an annual basis, but over the long term. This is a more difficult result to achieve than might be supposed, especially since the budget cycle often follows either the state or federal fiscal calendar (July-June or OctoberSeptember) and the planning cycle tends to follow the academic calendar. Using the academic calendar not only results in different start and end dates, but also compresses the planning year because so many of the key participants are not available during the summer. So, while it is an axiom that the plan drives the budget, it is also true that the budget calendar drives the planning calendar. It requires careful analysis of the various steps in the annual budget cycle to determine when annual planning goals need to be confirmed to support decision-making in the budget. There is an additional calendar that should be mentioned in regard to the planning cycle and that is the calendar used by human resources (HR). The HR calendar is usually January through December. Depending on how fully the strategic plan is used, if personnel decisions and the resources to support them are aligned with an HR calendar, the alignment of all three cycles into one may be quite difficult. While it may seem there is little to be gained in adding the HR calendar year to the mix, it is important to remember there are two personnel issues that provide most institutions with plan-critical data: professional development plans which have attendant training costs; and, annual payroll data, which usually reflect the largest non-capital institutional expenditure. Each institution is slightly different in its ability to adjust these processes so they are mutually supportive. However, being able to show an integrated calendar and a transparent process between planning and budget is a key factor in documenting that the planning process is working as it should. Using a Planning Consultant At this point it may be beneficial to discuss the appropriate use of a planning consultant. A motivating factor in developing this document was my reflection on differences among planning consultants and the ways in which they are used by the institutions that hire them. There are a number of reasons an institution might decide to hire a planning consultant; however, some reasons are more appropriate than others. The primary reason an institution begins to consider hiring a planning consultant is that the institution has decided to initiate a strategic plan, either through its own volition or because it has been compelled to do so by an accrediting commission, governing board, or state agency. If the first circumstance is true, it is often because there has either been a turnover at an executive position (president, provost, or senior vice president) or, ironically, because an accreditation self-study is coming due and will require demonstration of institutional planning. Unfortunately, an institution can decide to start the planning process in absence of any knowledge of how to achieve an effective end product. As described in Section I, most of the administrative support for strategic planning (offices and staff for strategic planning) was eliminated during the 1990s. There are few institutions that can boast of staff with enough comprehensive experience to lead and support an institutional strategic plan without some external guidance. So, as the institution begins the process, it discovers planning is more complex and difficult than anyone suspected. It is also true that sometimes the wrong institutional personnel are assigned to lead the process, causing stumbles, misdirection, or even political problems that slow or stop the process. At that point, someone decides to call in a consultant to “advise” them and make the process workable. Examples abound of institutionally-initiated planning where the institution started with activities that should occur in midprocess, leaving out very critical early-process preparation. These institutions come to a point where they have no idea what comes next but, when the consultant arrives, they are looking for someone who can take the mess and “just tell us what the plan should be”. No consultant, or external agent, should ever tell the institution what its strategic plan should contain or how it should be implemented without the careful development of a forum for institutional consensus-building. Consultants cannot “tell” an institution what it should achieve with a strategic plan any more than an institution’s president can “tell” each of his staff specifically how they will implement his vision. Without the ownership developed through a participatory process, the likelihood of a failed plan is enormous, as are incidences of process sabotage and simple non-implementation (Robertson and Tang, 1997). A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 17 The best way to understand how the planning consultant can help is to remember: a qualified consultant is a master of the process, but institutional staff are masters of the content. This means a very good consultant can provide guidance and options for the process based on the content the campus community develops and the way campus culture shapes the issues. An outstanding consultant can even analyze the institution and challenge it with new ways of thinking or doing, but members of the institution must control the plan and its content. An additional advantage to engaging an experienced planning consultant is to engage someone who has the skill to facilitate the planning committee meetings. This extra benefit allows everyone on the planning committee to participate in the meetings without having to be concerned about meeting management. This situation is particularly helpful for senior administrators who do not often have an opportunity to act as contributing community members. Good outside facilitation is also helpful to the entire campus community because an outside facilitator can balance competing voices to ensure the plan reflects the needs and aspirations of all stakeholders, not just those who can dominate a meeting. It should be noted that not all “planning” consultants are able to support a comprehensive institutional strategic plan. Understanding contemporary strategic planning is essential to a successful planning process. Institutions that use a consultant need a basic understanding of contemporary strategic planning as preparation to hire the right consultant. There is great value in finding a consultant who has experience as a staff or faculty member at an institution, understands the relationship between strategic planning, assessment, and accreditation, and has a balanced perspective of an institution’s many functional areas. It is necessary for each institution to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of any potential consultant and, from that, determine if the “fit” is the right one for the institution at that point in time. A well-crafted, implemented strategic planning process will be self-sustaining and the consultant’s contract is usually complete once the Implementation Plan is drafted; although, sometimes the consultant is further engaged to assist with the implementation process. It is not generally assumed, however, if the strategic plan includes, for example, IT upgrades, new facilities, or new academic programs, that the consultant’s role would be expanded. For these reasons, it is important that the campus planning leaders who hire a planning consultant be able to match the culture and priorities of their institution with the skills, training, and long-term experience of the planner they select. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 18 Section Four: Assessment and Metrics Institutional Assessment According to regional accrediting commissions, planning-related assessment at the intuitional level occurs in two forms: institutional effectiveness and learning outcomes. Commission expectations for documentation of these processes have not been well defined, and descriptors are relatively vague. (For additional clarification, particularly with regard to institutional effectiveness, see Middaugh’s “Closing the Loop: Linking Planning and Assessment”). Both institutional effectiveness and learning outcomes are, in reality, calls for accountability and demonstrated process improvement. For that reason, this section will consider the concepts that support developing metrics for both processes because they are core to the planning process. In addition, this section will discuss a component of institutional assessment that is very often overlooked: administrative assessment. It should be noted, however, that specific program and learning outcomes assessment techniques are not the focus of this treatise and have not been included. Institutional Effectiveness Accrediting commissions require documented evidence that all activities using institutional resources support the institution’s mission. Using the definition of resources as funding, facilities, technology, personnel, or time, accrediting commissions ask the institution to show how its mission is being advanced through effective use of these resources. Institutions that have developed “Institutional Goals” as part of their mission statements often use these goals as the foundation of their assessment measures. Those institutions that do not choose to have a list of institutional goals sometimes parse the mission statement to develop their assessment metrics. In either circumstance, it is critical that the statements being assessed are clearly written so the interpretive assessment measures make sense. In the past, institutions have fallen back on the use of the older and more traditional assessment measures to demonstrate their effectiveness, and some of these do fit the situation. Such measures as graduation rates, retention rates, and percent of faculty with terminal degrees in appropriate disciplines do relate to the parts of the institutional mission that concern supporting education to the institution’s target student population. However some other types of institutional goals are trickier to measure. A non-specific institutional goal is a goal that requires interpretation to determine its measurement. For example, most institutions currently include institutional goals about technology, either in the learning process or as a way to reduce cost and bureaucracy, or both. The question is: based on the wording of the goal, how does an institution prove this use of technology is occurring and that it is having positive results? Just spending money on technology does not prove it; neither does showing the number of staff engaged in training in the use of technology. The answer to the question is: what did the institution specifically have in mind when it set the goal? In other words, what did the institution expect success to change? In some cases, the answer lies in data that are readily available: the number of students who apply and register on-line, allowing a reduction in the number of staff in the registrar’s office, or the number of syllabi that include competency in the use of program-specific technology as a course outcome. In other cases, the data are not available, nor is there an easy way to get them. This dearth of data is usually the result of a need for clarity and specificity in the goal. There are two questions that are extremely helpful to the planning committee as they draft goal statements: “How will we know if we reach this goal, and how will we prove it?” Learning Outcomes The most important thing to remember about learning outcomes is that the assessment is not about people, it is about process. The initial resistance to assessment by many faculty was the perception that learning outcomes assessment was a euphemism for faculty evaluation. The assessment process was not, nor was it ever intended to be, about evaluating faculty based on whether or not students passed their classes. That said, it should be A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 19 acknowledged that most institutions include the end-of-course student/faculty evaluation as one data set in the overall process. However, the important issue for accrediting is the demonstration, by an institution’s academic staff, of mastery of the learning process the curriculum is designed to achieve. This understanding of the process is the purpose behind course and program outcomes statements and the use of multiple measures to capture learning assessment in disparate programs. Because the focus of this document is on strategic planning, this section will not delve into the myriad ways in which learning outcomes can be assessed. It is sufficient to acknowledge that, in addition to institutional effectiveness, learning outcomes is a component of the institutional planning process that must be guided by and integrated into the strategic plan. These outcomes results also provide process improvement data to inform the planning process. It is critical that those involved in the institutional planning process, including any external consultants, understand the vital nature and role of these assessment activities. Administrative Assessment Perhaps administrative assessment is less often an area of concern because it is assumed institutions with strong personnel evaluation systems are monitoring achievement and goal completion and need not specify how this is accomplished. However, there are a number of issues that bear on assessment within the context of “administration”. Personnel evaluation systems aside, assessing staff retention, satisfaction, and training and development programs would seem to be an obvious area of import for any institution. While it is clear these issues would provide helpful diagnostic information for the more effective administration of an institution, it should also be clear these same issues have a direct impact on resource allocation and should be included in the strategic plan so they can be prioritized and budgeted. It should also be noted that, while most institutions automatically think of the campus executives and employees who work in administrative offices as “the administration,” it is also true there is administration on the academic and student affairs sides of the house. These staff should not be left out of a process when it helps identify and improve supervision, management, and the work environment. There are also issues associated with the development and maintenance of policies and procedures at the institutional and department level. How these policies and procedures are created, reviewed, implemented, and disseminated is an aspect of administration critical to an effectively administered institution. Examples of why policies and procedures are critical to the effective administration of an institution abound; however, there are two aspects that are less obvious and are worth discussion here. The first is the group of concerns associated with institutional continuity, demonstrated compliance with legislated regulations, and emergency and disaster preparedness. All of these issues can only be resolved through the appropriate application of policies and procedures that ensure the effective operation of the institution in extreme circumstances. The second critical facet of institutional policies and procedures usually manifests itself as a deficiency in internal communications. I have observed in every planning process a universal desire to “improve communications.” The problem with this desire is it is focused on the symptom, not the problem. In almost all cases, if root cause analysis is conducted, “lack of communication” is the result of non-existent or poorly devised procedures that do not direct appropriate follow-on action. In other words, staff do not know when they have completed a specific action they need to follow up with other departments, log the action, or initiate dissemination of the information to someone. A brief discussion in any planning group about this situation will confirm the problem could be rectified with written procedures and staff training. However, it is rarely within the authority of the planning committee to oversee this type of activity. And while planning committees regularly come to the conclusion the institution should address the problem, the initiatives are rarely delegated unless senior administrators commit to them and a timeframe and accountability are written into the Implementation Plan. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 20 Section Five: The Self-Sustaining Planning Process The key to keeping a strategic plan flexible and continuously updated is a regular schedule of assessment and revision. If this schedule is maintained, the planning process can continue for as long as the institution desires. There are four times frames for conducting assessment related to a strategic plan; the first two occur annually; the second and third are conducted at the end of the full planning cycle. Through the mid-year status report and the end-of-year assessment, the institution has two opportunities each year to keep implementation on schedule and provide occasions for the Implementation Plan to be revised. These revisions keep the plan flexible and allow the institution to adjust to changes in the environment. The third and fourth assessment points occur at the end of the multi-year planning cycle, when the expiring plan is reviewed and the planning process is improved. Annual Cycle Assessment Figure 2 shows the two points in the planning year where evaluation is critical to the success of the Implementation Plan for that year, and even longer-term in some cases. The first point is the assessment that occurs at the beginning of the planning year when the planning committee reviews the achievements of the previous year’s plan and affirms or modifies the goals and steps for the coming year. The second point is a midyear review which provides the institution with the opportunity to ensure goal completion. By meeting at a time in the planning year when mid-point corrections and assistance can have a positive impact on achievement, the planning committee can direct resources or identify problems to promote success. Figure 2 Annual Cycle Assessment Full Cycle Review Report on the Achievement of the Strategic Plan The second set of assessment points in the strategic plan occurs just prior to the plan’s end date. The annual assessment process will have produced documented achievement on a year-by-year basis, but it is important to the culture of the institution to be able to reflect on this achievement and begin to learn how much can be accomplished through proper management of the planning process. This assessment produces a final accounting of achievement for the life of the strategic plan. For this reason it is also important to document accomplishments not originally included in the plan. These extra achievements are important because they represent the institution’s ability to be flexible, take advantage of unforeseen opportunities, and still maintain focus on meeting goals that move toward a vision. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 21 Review of the Effectiveness of the Planning Process The final assessment point of an institution’s strategic plan comes as the previous plan is ending and a new plan is developed. The focus of the assessment is not on the achievement of specific items in the plan, but rather a look at how the planning process can be improved. Figure 3 shows the cyclical process and when the process should include reflection on how it worked and what changes might make it better. Figure 3 ! In some cases, an institution may identify something in the planning process needing immediate attention. However, an immediate correction does not serve the same function, or provide the same benefit as taking time to have the planning committee work with stakeholder groups across the campus to garner information about what did and did not work. The “Face” of Planning on Campus The time-consuming aspects of documenting each year’s achievements, integrating the various initiatives, and keeping deadlines relevant and visible can be easily underestimated. The continuously evaluated planning process is one facet of a self-sustaining strategic plan; however, having a person who is the “face” of planning on a campus is equally critical to successful implementation. Many institutions make the mistake of believing stewardship of the planning process can either be added to someone’s duties or picked up intermittently. I have never seen a campus where either approach worked successfully in the long-term. As Hollowell et al (2006) point out, the function of integrating data collection, document management, scheduling, and disseminating needs a face and a home. There is an additional aspect to the designation of a single person to coordinate the planning process and that is the synergy that develops when someone is able to provide context and linkages across the divisional and departmental silos so prevalent in academe. In my experiences as the staff member responsible for coordinating planning on campus, I was able to bring information about activities and initiatives to disparate parts of the institution that would not, ordinarily, have heard the information. I usually scheduled two visits per year with anyone who had been designated responsible for an item in the implementation plan. These visits were part of the annual assessment and intended to confirm progress, identify issues, and probe for additional information with an impact on planning. It was common in these situations to share what I had learned from others on campus and make connections between resources and A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 22 aspirations. Frequently, I had opportunities to put people in touch with each other to collaborate or plan together. The advantages were too numerous to count, and the additional integration of planning and operations kept the planning process visible and flexible. Understandably, most campuses are reluctant to reopen campus planning offices, but if an institution is committed to successful strategic planning, it should think carefully about who will manage the plan and how it will be managed on an operational basis. Ensuring the planning process has someone who will take responsibility for documentation and support is critical. This person can also coordinate aspects of integrating strategy into operations, which is yet another way to ensure success. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 23 Section Six: The Critical Impact of Institutional Culture The impact of institutional culture on strategic planning cannot be overestimated. In fact, if you gave the same strategic plan to ten different institutions, those institutions would each interpret the plan differently and develop ten different implementation plans. These differences are usually the result of at least three critical factors: the institution’s unique environment (including the institutional mission and history of the organization); the structure and competence of the administrative staff of the institution; and, the development of staff commitment to planning. The Environment The environmental situation of any post-secondary institution reflects not simply the external environment of competitors and economic conditions; it also reflects the internal environment. It is why the environmental scan portion of a new planning process is so important, and why focusing that scan on external environment alone leaves the process incomplete. A college’s or university’s internal environment is partially defined by the institution’s current mission and also by the institution’s historical development. And the historical development of any institution is obviously heavily influenced by any of its previous mission statements. Institutions that have experienced a change of mission, such as expanding from a two-year to a four-year college, or changing from an all-male college to co-ed, will carry vestiges of the prior mission with them as culture. Few institutions have missions identical to their original statement, which is one of the reasons mission review is necessary at the beginning of a strategic plan. As internal and external environments change, the institution must change to adapt to conditions. While the examples of change used above are at the extreme end of the scale, there are countless changes in mission statements made on a regular basis to respond to any number of factors, including simple updates to language. However, even these small changes can present a challenge to the planning process by obscuring vestiges of previous institutional belief. In addition to awareness of institutional history, planners must also be able to listen analytically to what members of the institutional community believe about the institution. It is standard analysis in several disciplines (ethnography, organizational communications, and organizational development, for example) to listen to the stories an organization or culture tells itself about its history. These stories are usually told to help explain why events in the past are still relevant to the present. They also help the outsider understand why the internal workings of an institution are defined they way they are. A related analysis can be conducted to listen for the types of comparisons the culture uses to describe how it works. In some cases, the comparison may be “this college is like one large family,” in others the college may be “a well-oiled machine”. In either case, staff members are expressing the ways in which they approach their responsibilities and the problem-solving process. The key factor in this analysis is that whatever comparison is used automatically limits the ways in which the institution will attempt to make decisions. An institution that regards itself as “one large family” will make decisions based on people, their participation, and their commitment to the organization. An institution that is “a well-oiled machine” will look at processes and the administrative hierarchy to see what can be done. What planners need to know is that solution styles for one type of school will be unacceptable to another type of school. The “large family” culture will not use “machine” methods to make decisions nor will the “machine” institution be willing to make decisions using a “family” method. By extension, strategic plans will reflect the internal view of the institution in its approach and its priorities. Planners should understand that using the internal environment as a gauge of organizational readiness for various levels of planning is critical to a successful planning process. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 24 Administrative Structure and Staff Competence Another factor influencing institutional culture is the administrative situation of the institution. We all know organization charts for an institution reflect the theoretical way work is organized. The reality is usually quite different for a wide range of reasons. Personalities, experience, and competence all play a significant part in how work is actually accomplished in any institution. At the executive level, the relationships among the key players are unique at every institution and depend on such vagaries as office proximity, individual motivation, and even long-standing working relationships. If the implementation of a strategic plan is based on leadership, responsibility, accountability, and coordination, it is easy to see how the individual members of an administrative team will have an elemental role in determining how, or even whether, the plan is successful. Developing Staff Commitment to Planning Planning is an administrative activity that depends on the “managers, administrators, and academic leaders” of a college or university (Norris and Poulton, 5). Academic institutions have been defined as “organized anarchies” which exhibit the following characteristics: 1) problematic goals (goals that are either vague or in dispute); 2) unclear technology (technology is familiar but not understood); and, 3) fluid participation (major participants wander in and out of the decision process) (Cohen and March, 1974). Obviously, all three of these characteristics present problems for planners who are engaged in defining goals, measuring progress, and working with organization members who need to be dedicated to a planning process. Once mission and goals are defined, the need for collective commitment becomes the driving force in effective planning. Organizations that do not achieve the commitment and the organizational will to use the planning process as a tool will not be able to successfully complete a plan. This need for collective commitment is the difference between a planning process that works and one that does not. Commitment is the reason it is important to ensure all stakeholders have an opportunity to participate in the process, and that their participation is recognized. This inclusion becomes as important as the process itself. In order to facilitate collective commitment, a college or university planner must be able to understand and work within the campus culture. The Various Components of Campus Culture The previous section discussed the importance of administrative culture on the success of an institutional planning process, but there are more facets in the culture of a college or university than the administrative hierarchy, and they all have a role in the process. Strategic planning is derived directly from corporate futures research. A significant problem is that simply superimposing corporate practice onto academic organizations does not take into consideration the existence of a unique faculty culture which, in the main, rejects corporate culture. Because the responsibility for planning is largely administrative, planners often have difficulty engaging faculty in the planning process. Differences in the values systems of administrative and collegial culture can produce a tension that can become a serious obstacle to planning. Compounding this cultural difference is the evolution of staff as professional administrators. In recent times, a wide range of positions at colleges and universities has become the purview of staff who have no experience as faculty members. This was not the case only a few decades ago, when faculty members had a much more active role in administration and student affairs (Schoenfeld, 1994).The specialization was probably inevitable; teaching loads, professional development demands, and higher emphasis on research have increased the number of hours faculty need to spend in their roles as educators. In addition, the administrative complexities of institutional budgeting, financial aid packaging, co-curricular student affairs programming and institutional advancement require an equal professional focus and their own specialized training. The difficulty is that the academy is now broken into various groups with little experience in the work conditions and professional expectations of the other groups. As a strategic plan begins to take shape, the priorities of the faculty are usually high on everyone’s list of issues; however, it is not always true that faculty priorities have undeniable primacy. The rise of programming in Student A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education | 25 Affairs; the ever-present concerns over campus safety, especially for urban and residential campuses; the changing profile of the student population and the attendant changes in expectations are but part of an institutional balancing act that is negotiated through the strategic plan. The planning process should provide a forum for institutional discussions about what the pressing priorities for resource allocation are and how they can be integrated to the benefit of all stakeholders. Defining Issues in Cultural Terms While all of the theoretical perspectives used to analyze organizational behavior differ in their foci, definitions, and assumptions about commitment, one common theme is the impact of informal social structures as a mechanism for fostering commitment. Robertson and Tang (1995) point out that the need for commitment is linked directly to the organizational characteristics that have their origins in planning initiatives: decentralization and the setting of missions and goals. Planning groups are necessarily engaged in activities that require commitment. For them, the three elements identified as necessary to fostering that commitment are: social process, leadership, and structural design. Understanding each institution’s culture is the key to designing and implementing a planning process designed to work for the specific institution. The designated facilitator for the planning process must be able to assist the planning committee in using these elements to correctly translate the institutional culture into the plan. Social processes are a set of cooperative norms or congruence between individual and organizational values which encourage shared commitment and stability of leadership. It is sometimes referred to as affiliation need. The manifestation of this element is that people within the organization will express their approval of the organization based on what they believe the organization is accomplishing and what it stands for. This element is also the process by which people are absorbed into the culture of the organization; a process sometimes referred to as “enculturation”. Leadership is a behavior used to enhance member motivation by facilitating congruence of individual and organizational interests, and to continuously communicate and clarify the vision which becomes the focus of the organization’s culture. It should be clear from the outset that leadership can occur at any level of the organization. The key to leadership is that the leader facilitates social processes for the rest of the organization on a continuous basis, using the organization’s vision as the focus. This element is critical to the implementation of a strategic plan, based as it is on a shared vision. Structural design is an organizational characteristic used to foster commitment while reducing the possibility commitment will develop counter to broader organizational goals through support of “bottom-up” and stakeholder participation. By allowing broad access to the process, those stakeholders who might be tempted to view the planning process as an executive mandate instead have a voice in that process. This type of...
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