One of our favorite writers, Stephen Pelletier, tackles committees for Trusteeship magazine. This is what your boards are reading:

As governing boards have become more sophisticated and polished in their oversight of colleges and universities, they have also become more intentional in the way they organize themselves to meet their missions. Some boards have evolved entirely new structures. Even within the parameters of fairly traditional constructs, many boards have made important tweaks. But when it comes to committee structures, there is no one-size-fits-all approach: Boards organize themselves distinctly to best fit their needs and those of the institution. And that may be precisely the key to success. ...

“It’s not so much a focus on committees as it is a focus on where committees ought to be focused,” says Thomas C. Longin, [SCUP president, who is] an AGB senior fellow and a former vice president for programs and research at AGB, who also served as provost at Ithaca College. “It’s about getting a strategic orientation to committee work.”

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

So says influential marketing blogger Seth Godin, author of many book and influential thought leader whose emphasis is on “marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.”

The digital revolution has, as in so many other areas, flipped the equation here. The cost of building digital items is plummeting, but our habit is to plan anyway (because failure bothers us, and we focus on the feeling of failure, not the cost).

The goal should be to have the minimum number of meetings and scenarios and documentation necessary to maximize the value of execution. As it gets faster and easier to actually build the thing, go ahead and make sure the planning (or lack of it) keeps pace.

Words are funny things. Or maybe it’s that people are funny about some words: some words engender emotional responses far in excess of their meaning. It’s at that point that sometimes it’s worthwhile to avoid those words altogether and come up with alternatives.

One of our favorites is planning. Hard for a SCUPer to admit, but to some “planning” connotes a lack of action, the proverbial report on the shelf. On the contrary, planning is a very active enterprise. It is the act of making informed choices.  When we talk to people about making informed choices – about academic programs, institutional mission, the program for a facility – then planning makes a lot more sense, and they don’t tune out as much. The steps involved in good planning – defining the issue or problem, collecting relevant data, analyzing alternatives, setting priorities and making choices to do some things and not do others – are what go into the informed part of making informed choices. Using the phrase puts a bit more emphasis on outcome, not just process.

We’ve been thinking a bit about another hot button word – interdisciplinary. The connotations can be scary – sharing labs, sharing grants, putting tenure at stake. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinary for a very interesting discussion about the barriers to interdisciplinary activity in higher education.) But the push toward consolidation is as indisputable as the new "interdisciplines" that have formed: biomedical engineering, neuroscience, cybernetics, and so forth.

Are there alternative words or phrases that we can substitute, that might reduce the negative reaction to the notion of cross- or multi- or interdisciplinary research and learning? What about integrative research? We’re looking for more – any ideas?

One of the many good things about the society's annual conference is the opportunity to learn from recipients of SCUP's awards, either in formal professional development sessions or more informal settings.

The SCUP's 2011 Excellence Award recipients have been announced. Congratulations to you all.

We're taking this opportunity to once more bring out information about the 2010 recipients, via SCUP's 2010 Tribute to Excellence newspaper. It is a useful resource that some may overlook, as are the web pages about the recipients. 

Duke University's mission statement has not been amended for ten years. Its current strategic plan, Making a Difference: The Strategic Plan for Duke University, was produced in 2006. A series of executive summaries of departmental plans is part of the website and an appendix to the document. A link is also provided to a Duke resource on its campus planning.

Duke's plan is only one of about a thousand plans in Links From SCUP to College and University Plans, a Web-based resource for SCUP members. SCUP members can access the links in a sortable online spreadsheet that also includes useful data fields like Carnegie Class, Enrollment, FICE, Unit ID, and so forth. 

If you use it, please tell us how we can improve it: terry.calhoun@scup.org.

 Here's some motivation, some word salad to get your semester into gear with:

 “Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” - Proverb

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.” - Daniel H. Burnham

“Failing to plan is planning to fail” - Proverb

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” - Alan Lakein

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” - Thomas Alva Edison

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” - Peter F. Drucker

“When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.” - Chinese Proverb

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” - Dwight David Eisenhower

“If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.” - Philip Crosby

The Cyburbia Forums is the oldest and most active English language urban planning message board on the Internet, and one of the small number of online communities where members enjoy intelligent, troll-free discussion. Cyburbia has hundreds of active members, yet is a strong community full of creative, friendly, and occasionally offbeat planners, planning students, architects, urbanists and other like-minded people who care about and/or help shape the built environment. Cyburbia Forums members enjoy a sense of community and camaraderie that is unmatched by any planning-related web site or email list. The website also includes information on urban design conferences, job market, design related businesses, and sustainable development, blogs, announcement kiosk, and a planning wiki!

George Keller. 2007. The Emerging Third Stage in Higher Education Planning. Planning for Higher Education. 35(4): 60–64.

This article from Planning for Higher Education is the last we published by the late George Keller. It's worth a re-read in this time of recession, which is making clearer to some kinds of institutions that innovation and transformation need to continue taking place.

Not only was George Keller the “founding father” of academic planning—integrated, comprehensive planning for higher education—as we know it, but he remained a “pillar” of the planning community and an active and provocative thinker throughout his life.

In “The Emerging Third Stage ... ” George gave us two sets of fresh perspectives that continue to have great value as we think about the future of higher education planning.

First, in plain, no nonsense language he classified America’s higher education institutions in terms of their propensity for effective institutional planning, identifying state colleges and universities, colleges of technology, regional private colleges, less endowed private colleges, and two-year colleges as the most fruitful ground for new forms of planning.

Second, he looked into his crystal ball and predicted that the most productive planning would likely derive from two sources: first, innovative forms of postsecondary education occurring outside the traditional colleges and universities (i.e., research universities and selective, well-endowed private colleges), and second, “the advocacy by planners for structural and not just incremental or even strategic changes at the traditional institutions.” We would fail to ponder these seminal insights of the “old master” at great risk to the future of planning in higher education and to the academic enterprise itself.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to the AAMC's Group on Institutional Research's "Planners Toolkit" (PDF)

The "Group on Institutional Research (GIP) is a professional subgroup of planners working on member campuses of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC). It provides networking, professional development, and useful resources, many of which are relevant and useful outside of medical colleges.

This resource is a good guide to planning, of various sorts, on complex campuses of all sorts, although the language focuses on medical schools. SCUPers would do well to download this and have it available as a resource, just in case the AAMC's GIP puts it behind password protection in the future. (Please don't!)

Introduction to the Planners’ Toolkit

 

The role of the planner in academic medicine is rich and varied. Projects may encompass strategic, programmatic, space, capital, and operational planning (to name a few), and can span the clinical, research, academic, and community missions of our institutions. Depending on the size, scope, and organization of the institution, roles may be highly specialized or very broad.

 

With this in mind, the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Institutional Planning has developed this Planners’ Toolkit, which is intended to provide an overview of planning in academic medicine. Whether you are new to a planning role, a seasoned veteran with new roles and responsibilities, or an occasional participant, it is our hope that the toolkit can be used as an introduction to the field, as well as to some of the key issues and activities it encompasses. It includes a series of short introductory articles by some of our most experienced members on:

 

• Planning in Academic Medicine

• Organizational Structures and Planning

• Strategic Planning in Academic Medicine

• Master Planning

• Space Planning: Clinical, Research, Education

• Space Management/General Facilities Information

• Data and Benchmarking (forthcoming)

• Disaster Planning and Preparedness (forthcoming)

• Why We Love Working in Academic Medicine

• Appendix A – About the Group on Institutional Planning (GIP) and the AAMC

• Appendix B – Master Planning

 

We hope the toolkit will become a living document that will continue to expand as our members contribute new topics from their various areas of expertise. We welcome your comments and thoughts on how we can continue to make this a useful resource. The toolkit will be distributed to current GIP members, and to all newcomers to the Group. It will also be accessible on the GIP website.