Report of Strategic Planning Committee: Executive Summary

SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY REPORT OF STRATEGIC PLANNING COMMITTEE 1997-98 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

History

The Spring 1994 report of the Committee for Implementation of the Strategic Plan recommended the establishment of a permanent Standing Committee for Strategic Planning (SCSP). In response to this recommendation, the SCSP was established in the fall of 1994, and charged with three primary responsibilities:

(1) to develop environmental scans;

(2) to formulate specific strategies based on those scans and to rank them according to priority; and finally

(3) to evaluate how successfully the adopted strategies were implemented

Throughout the strategic planning process, the SCSP was guided by the four overarching university goals that were established in the Sam Houston State University Strategic Plan (adopted April 1991). These goals stated that Sam Houston State University will: (1) have excellent quality academic and ancillary programs;

(2) project a clear and consistent image of its role as quality education and cultural resource;

(3) develop its human, financial, and physical resources; and

(4) have an inclusive, effective, and integrated program of planning and management.

In the fall of 1996, the SCSP was renamed the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC). The three-fold charge of the SPC remained, namely: to develop environmental scans, to formulate and prioritize strategies based on these scans, and to evaluate how successfully the adopted strategies were implemented.

In the fall and summer of 1997 the Strategic Planning Committee membership was redesigned with the intent to include key decision makers as well as faculty members on the committee. The newly redesigned committee included the Faculty Senate Chair, the Faculty Senate Chair-Elect, the Student Government Association President, a member of the previous year’s Strategic Planning Committee, the Director of Institutional Research, the Vice President for Student Services, the Vice President for Finance and Operations, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs as chair. As the year developed and the institution hired a chief development officer, he was added to the committee. It was intended that this committee would give a broader perspective to strategic planning and would integrate the process more effectively with the institutional budget committee.

This new committee was given specific charges for the year including the development of a more systematic planning process which employed broader input from all levels of the university in a recursive fashion, using extensive feedback loops from assessment of outcomes to modify new goals and objectives. It was also intended that the activities of the committee would be integrated with, and inform the budgeting process. The graphical representation of this process is contained in Appendix A.

Because the newly composed Strategic Planning Committee was designing the planning process at the same time as it was creating a strategic plan this year, the time lines proposed in attachment A could not be exactly adhered to and were somewhat delayed. In the coming year we expect those time lines to be accurate.

This year, proposed strategic priorities were discussed by the vice presidents with their advisory councils. While some input into the strategic priorities was given to members of these councils by the constituencies they represent, the process was incomplete this year because of the shortened time line resulting from designing and implementing the process in the same year. Next year more extensive input to members of the various advisory councils from their constituencies is expected.