Youngstown State University (YSU) uses the acronym "TRAC" (Target, Resources, Alignment, and Culture) to demonstrate the structure of its strategic planning process as it goes for a comeback in an area already devastated before the Great Recession hit. In this article from Trusteeship, the magazine of the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities (AGB), YSU board of Trustees chair Scott R.Schulick and YSU president Cynthia E. Anderson, describes that school's strategic plan and planning.

Even before the economic downturn, Youngstown State was experiencing tough financial times. State support had dropped 24 percent from 2001 to 2007, and it has fallen another 14.5 percent, net of stimulus money, since 2007. Having faced those conditions, the hardships that will accompany the end of stimulus funds in FY 2012 are all too real to us.

Fortunately, the board decided a while ago that we needed to re-examine our assumptions about cost, time, resources, planning, budgeting, governance, and institutional success. We were not willing to support a “cut back and hope” approach. We began learning more about effective governance, strategic finance, and what it takes to get through hard times, and we started to make changes.

Trustees and administrators alike wanted a simple approach, recognizing that “simple” is often not “easy.” The simple version of our efforts now is: Decide where the institution needs to be in the future, endorse and support activities that will cause it to get there, align everything we do in that direction, and reorient the culture accordingly. An acronym could be TRAC: Target, Resources, Alignment, and Culture.

The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) has a bimonthly magazine, Trusteeship, which is widely read by college and university trustees—probably including yours. It's only available to members of AGB in print, but AGB publishes the entire issue, not separated out into articles, as a PDF which can be downloaded (for now) by anyone. You can find the latest here (PDF). It includes, among other items of interest, the following articles: