The Faculty Factor: Creating Buy-In for Difficult Planning

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In difficult times, planning and the successful implementation of that planning require the buy-in and support of a whole range of stakeholders–but particularly the faculty, since they carry out the institution’s teaching and research missions.

Faculty can make or break successful planning.

An institution must be very circumspect in their choice of representative faculty for planning groups, how they are engaged in the planning process, and how they interact with other campus constituencies for maximum buy-in. This endeavor is particularly difficult when the new planning process follows previous attempts that have failed because of faculty resistance or lack of meaningful involvement. This session details successful planning initiatives at two regional universities, one in the Midwest and one in the southern Northeast, where earlier planning efforts failed because of “the faculty factor.”

Join us to explore the successes and failures involved in these two planning initiatives that required broad-based faculty support in order to reverse issues with programmatic quality, student success, and institutional accreditation.

Learning Outcomes

1. Create circumspect pre-planning strategies to invite faculty involvement in challenging planning, especially in spite of previous failures.
2. Develop effective guidelines and methodologies for choosing faculty representatives for critical planning committees.
3. Create a planning process where faculty participation is constructive, highly visible campus-wide, and solicitous of broad-based support.
4. Identify best practices for ensuring ongoing faculty support during implementation of the resultant plan.

Presenters

Lynn Priddy (Moderator)
Strategic Advisor to the President
Higher Education Consultant
Claremont Lincoln University

Sandra Patterson-Randles (Presenter)
Chancellor Emerita and Professor of English
Indiana University Southeast