The University of Central Arkansas will be involved in strategic planning over the next ten months that will examine the university’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and chart a path for the university.
Various groups began meeting in early February to discuss the university’s mission, its goals, and distinctiveness following several presentations by Dr. David McFarland of Penson Associates Inc., a research and consultations firm serving universities, colleges, and systems of universities, governing boards and commissions in higher education.
McFarland gave a campus-wide presentation Feb. 17, where he explained the process of strategic planning and shared feedback he received from preliminary meetings with specific groups on campus.
Although the university has many wonderful attributes, “there has been no decision about what UCA wants to be,” he said.
A Strategic Planning and Resources Council has been charged with the development of the strategic plan. The council consists of representatives from the staff, faculty, students, alumni, UCA board of trustees and the community. Mike Schaefer, a professor of English, is the chairman of the Strategic Planning and Resources Council.
The goal of strategic planning is fourfold, Schaefer explained. It will:
- Identify the various forces acting on the university as a whole–including finances, public perceptions and expectations, demographics, and technology.
- Assess the resources of various types the university has at its disposal for carrying out its planning.
- Examine and articulate the mission and vision of the university–our sense of our purpose and our aspirations for the future–which will be informed by the core shared values of the university community.
- Identify particular attributes of the university that set us apart from our sister institutions and that thus constitute our distinctive strengths.
“The benefits of this process for UCA, I hope, will be a clarified and renewed sense of purpose for all of us–a sense that we’re moving forward on many fronts rather than simply drifting, and that we’re all playing a valued and well-comprehended role in that movement,” Schaefer said.
The council and four task forces – Core Values (Mission, Vision, Values), Planning Assumptions, Institutional Distinctiveness, and Driving Forces — have already begun their work, Schaefer said. The task forces plan to have preliminary documents on planning assumptions, driving forces, values, and distinctiveness prepared by the end of March.
There will be a campus-wide forum, tentatively for early April, to discuss and refine those documents. There will be another open forum in the fall to take a look at the revised documents and at the first drafts of the more specific strategic goals that will flow from those revised documents, Schaefer said.
Another forum will take place in November or December for further refinement, after which the Strategic Planning and Resources Council, in consultation with the president and his executive staff, will craft the final documents.
“So, by about a year from now, the plan should be in operation,” he said.
Updates and information about strategic planning will be posted on the UCA main web page.
The involvement of the UCA community in the development of a strategic plan is crucial, Schaefer said.
“While strategic planning is ultimately, of course, the responsibility of the university’s president, the staff, faculty, and students have deep experiential knowledge of the actual operations of the university, and they are the ones who live out the university’s values, mission, and vision on a daily basis, and the larger community is the ultimate beneficiary of the university’s work,” he said. “Thus, their knowledge and participation are necessarily at the heart of any successful strategic planning process and the real accomplishment of the goals that develop from that process.”
Schaefer shared a story where a friend, who was a technical writer for a large manufacturing company, received high praise for a training manual he’d written; the workers, he was told, found it clear and easy to follow and implement, and productivity had increased as a result. The company’s executives were highly curious as to how he’d managed to create such a strikingly successful document. Schaefer’ s friend explained that he’d gone to the workers themselves and asked them how they did their jobs now and what they thought could be done to help them improve their performance, an approach that struck the executives as highly unusual–something that had never occurred to them before.
“I’m pleased to say that President (Allen) Meadors and Provost (Lance) Grahn are already cognizant of this approach; they are emphatic that the Strategic Planning and Resources Council and its task forces will be fully representative of all the university’s constituencies–as well as the larger community–and that these people will be the ones who actually shape the results of the process, with multiple opportunities for everyone on campus to take part in that process via open forums and web-based feedback,” Schaefer said.