On Tuesday, April 19, the Strategic Planning Committee hosted a listening session to gather input from students for Union University’s next five-year strategic plan.
The strategic plan is a list of objectives for the university to prioritize over the course of five years. The committee looks at data from outside and inside of Union to form these objectives.
“The goal of the strategic plan is to help the university focus on its future success. Think of the strategic plan as a roadmap for what the university will focus on for the next five years,” Janice Pittman, assistant professor of management and chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, said.
The committee is currently in the data collection phase of its process. They are gathering research from across the higher education sphere, hosting listening sessions and doing SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses to collect as much information as they can.
“Students can influence the strategic plan by providing feedback on their college experience here at Union. By sharing their feedback, the university will gain insights as to what we are doing well and what we need to improve on,” Pittman said. “The information shared will also help the university recruit and retain future students. Thus ensuring that Union is around for another 200 plus years.”
“This is a way to give back to the university that involves no financial commitment or anything like that. It just involves a little bit of time, commitment, and willingness to share ideas,” Matt Bowman, director for graduate admissions and recruitment for the school of education, said.
The committee’s top priority is to get as much input as possible from as many people as possible. The more data there is, the more credible the data becomes. This is part of the committee’s dedication to staying data-driven rather than agenda-driven.
The committee’s goal is to have a smaller list of well-defined objectives to allow the university the highest possibility of success in implementing them.
“We want it to be a plan that is actionable so that it’s clear. We don’t want it to be just sort of pie-in-the-sky, Christian higher ed. speak,” Bowman said. “And we want it to be as measurable as possible because if it’s a vague goal then it’s hard to really know whether you really met it or not.”
The next step is to analyze the data to find emerging themes. Those emerging themes, both positive and negative, help the committee decide what the university should be focusing on for the next five years.
“Whether that be finances, whether that be facilities, whether that be a need to recruit new faculty. There’s literally an endless list of things that could be,” Bowman said.
Those themes help the executive committee draft a list of objectives that will eventually be presented for approval to the board of trustees at the end of the year. The goal would be to implement the plan in 2023.
Each department finds a way to contribute to the plan in its own section with departmental goals that align with the university’s objectives.
“I think one of the big positives that can come from a process like this is that it can be, sort of, a unifying factor that gets everybody pointed in the right direction,” Bowman said.
Students wanting to give input on their experience at the university for the strategic plan can attend another listening session which will be held on May 2 at 10 a.m. in PAC D-3. Students unable to attend the listening session can watch their email for a survey sent out by the committee later this semester.
The next faculty listening session will be held on May 6 at 2 p.m. in Harvey Auditorium.
For any questions regarding the strategic plan or the process, contact the chair of the Strategic Planning Committee Janice Pittman at jpittman@uu.edu or Matt Bowman at mbowman@uu.edu.
