SCUP
Learning Resources

Change Management

Planning for Higher Education Journal

‘Catching’ Substantive Changes with Integrated Planning

 Implementing changes at institutions that operate under a distributive leadership model can be challenging because academic and support units function separately. This article recommends successful ways to manage the change-making process.
Conference Recordings

A Mountain Climber’s Guide to Scrambling Through Change

 This session will discuss how to take key climbing skills—assessing a changing environment and determining which tools, resources, and expertise are needed to manage change—and apply them to higher education.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Action Research to Support the Sustainability of Strategic Planning

 Action research examines real-life events to understand and shape future organization action.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Adopting a Human-Centered Approach to Change

 The people impacted by change must be involved throughout the change lifecycle and empowered to navigate change every step of the way.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Implementing Sustainable Change in Higher Education
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: The Agile College
Tool

Campus Contingency Planner

 This tool is a template for lightweight, rapid contingency planning. It guides you through a process that identifies the impacts of change, how decisions during contingency planning will be made, and the operational components of programs and offerings that will need to be adapted in response.
Conference Presentations

Case Study of New, Inclusive Process for Leading and Orchestrating Transformation

 Higher education planners require a proven methodology for supporting their leaders as they seek to transform their institutions in the face of existential threats and challenges in the coming decade.
Conference Presentations

Challenges to Integrated Approaches for Institutional Effectiveness

 Institutions can no longer be effective when resources, data, ideas, and people are siloed.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Change Agent Leadership

 Change agent leadership must identify future trends and needs, lead change agendas, invest in what makes a difference, and remain authentic and courageous.
Conference Recordings

Closing Keynote: Lessons from the Conference and the Connected College

 In our closing keynote, student success author, speaker, and consultant Elliot Felix will help you reflect on what you’ve learned and put it into practice.

This recording is available only to SCUP members and conference registrants through December 3, 2026.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Coordinating Complexity

 The authors replaced a costly, time-intensive model with a SharePoint-based system to transform sprawling processes into responsive systems for growth.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Designing and Implementing Systemic Academic Change

 The Hiram College president offers a constructive and realistic example of systemic change designed to help liberal arts institutions not only survive but thrive in the face of 21st-century challenges.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Disrupting Poor Curricular Processes

 A large-scale change process, such as a curricular process revision, can be made easier by following a proven approach and understanding the potential hazards and challenges involved.
Conference Recordings

Don’t Get Me Started

 This session will address the university's setbacks, challenges, opportunities, and solutions in launching a shoestring integrated planning process amidst multiple crises.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Education for Sustainability in Further and Higher Education

 So, what’s happening ‘down under’ in campus sustainability? Providing an international context, our authors use Australian examples to describe planning for campus greening, learning for sustainability (curriculum), institutional learning, and competency-based training initiatives.
ebook

Essential Practices for Organizational Change in Higher Education

 Filled with guidance, recommendations, examples, and tools, this book is a practical manual for anyone seeking to lead change in a college or university.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Evaluating the Success of Strategic Change Against Kotter’s Eight Steps

 In evaluating a change process, based on Kotter’s “eight steps” for transforming organizations, undertaken at an institution based, the authors find that “key insights about the future of the organization” came from all levels and all units within the institution.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

From Institutional Advancement to Termination

 The college’s closure demonstrates that integrated planning is not limited to growth and expansion. It also offers a practical framework for aligning people, resources, and obligations when an institution must contract and ultimately close.
Webinar Recordings

From Surviving to Thriving

 Join us to learn how you can create a culture of strategy execution to prioritize tactical daily work with your institution's overall strategy, leading to greater stakeholder investment in your shared vision.
Conference Presentations

Harnessing the Disruptive Power of Collaborative Intelligence

 This session will illustrate how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) combine to create Collaborative Intelligence (CI), which will transform and disrupt every process and practice it touches. Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is building on its track record of preparing students for the future by leveraging CI and a clean sheet design approach to create a revolutionary new instructional model.
Webinar Recordings

How Do You Grow and Sustain Indispensable Planners?

 Institutional transformation requires more than a planner or a strategist—it requires a transformation architect. How can leaders grow and support transformation architects? The authors of Transforming for Turbulent Times: An Action Agenda for Higher Education Leaders, share three sets of actions needed to enable and empower transformation architects.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Instituting a New Degree Program

 Change in higher education rests on the skills of administrators and their knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of various planning approaches described in this case study.
Tool

Integrated Planning Competencies

 This toolkit details the competencies—knowledge, dispositions, and skills—an individual needs to perform integrated planning in higher education.
Conference Recordings

Keynote | Michael Sorrell

 Dr. Michael J. Sorrell is the longest-serving president in the 148-year history of Paul Quinn College. During his near 14 years of leadership, Paul Quinn has become a nationally regarded institution for its efforts to remake higher education in order to serve the needs of under-resourced students and their communities.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Leading Academic Change: Essential Roles for Department Chairs
Blog Post

Listen Up Leaders

 To gain additional insight into strategies for establishing trust between stakeholders and their leaders, we turned to Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, associate vice president for strategy and organizational effectiveness, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Conference Presentations

Making Shared Services Work
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Managing Change from the Murky Middle

 Middle managers are often blamed for change failure and portrayed as change resisters or saboteurs. However, what looks like obstructionist behavior could actually be the observable effects of role ambiguity.
Webinar Recordings

Managing Change While Moving Things Forward: An Institutional Response to Artificial Intelligence

 How do you provide a safe space for authentic and inclusive dialogue while addressing a contentious topic in higher education?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Optimizing for Growth

 Thomas Jefferson University focused on culture, communications, and collaboration during a transformational period of combining institutions.
Blog Post

Pedagogy and Purpose Over Platform
Conference Presentations

Planners to Transformation Architects: Leading Integrated AI Strategy

 This session presents a practical roadmap for integrated AI strategy, illustrated through a Binghamton University case example and dialogue with participants about their campus initiatives.
Conference Recordings

Post-Pandemic Pivots

 In this session, we’ll explore how to step back from moments of crisis and see them in perspective, as moments also brimming with opportunity to regroup, rethink our strategies and refocus our resources to lead.
Conference Presentations

Renew, Revise, or Reject: Presidential Turnover and Strategic Planning Impacts

 Since the average presidential tenure is now fewer than six years, campuses need to design and implement circumspect planning which will prove stable even in the event of leadership changes. Using examples from eight institutions across the U.S., this session explores the challenges to campus strategic planning when new leadership arrives.
Blog Post

Strategies for Engaging Faculty in Change

 In difficult times, planning and the successful implementation of that planning requires the buy-in and support of a range of stakeholders—particularly the faculty. We interviewed Sandra Patterson-Randles, chancellor emerita and professor of English at Indiana University Southeast, to discuss how to best engage faculty in planning initiatives.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Teetering on the Demographic Cliff, Part 3

 Higher education has faced major changes for some time—COVID-19 accelerated that volatility—and now we’re anticipating the demographic downslope in student enrollment. How and when should institutions mobilize for the difficult work of planning in the face of wrenching change?
Webinar Recordings

The Faculty Factor

 In this session we explore the successes and failures involved in two planning initiatives that required broad-based faculty support in order to reverse issues with programmatic quality, student success, and institutional accreditation.
Webinar Recordings

The Indispensable Planner

 Learn more about how planners can play a new, indispensable role—transformation architect—in helping their institutions transform to meet current challenges. The authors of the new book, Transforming for Turbulent Times: An Action Agenda for Higher Education Leaders, describe this transformative role, why planners are obvious candidates for the role, and the new mindset, behaviors, knowledge, and skills they will need to fulfill it.
Conference Recordings

The Paradigm Shift for Higher Education

 Join us to discuss the postsecondary education paradigm shift and its potential impact on our educational infrastructure, ecosystem, and role.
Conference Recordings

Transformation in Turbulent Times

 Come learn about our framework for leading transformation, including a checklist for success, case studies in change, and resources for smart planning and strong execution.
ebook

Transforming Higher Education in Afghanistan

 What are the major issues for higher education in a fragile state? Surely they include stability, safety for students and staff, continued access to learning, funding, retaining staff, and maintaining quality. But how can these be achieved?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Trends in Accreditation

 Dr. Lynn Priddy answers questions posed by education writer Stephen G. Pelletier related to changes in accreditation and their effect on institutions and students.
Conference Presentations

Using Integrated Planning to Respond to Disruption in Higher Education
Blog Post

What Is a Bridge Plan?

 A bridge plan allows a college or university to continue to pursue defined strategic pathways during times of uncertainty or rapid, unpredictable change. It’s also a good solution for when faculty and staff are overwhelmed due to a highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Why Strategic Plans Aren’t Working in Uncertain Times

 The author’s approach to his research-based Strategic Planning in Uncertain Times Fieldbook began with a sampling review of 50 strategic plans. What emerged was the development of an organizational learning cycle used as a template to assess the effectiveness of strategic plans on more than 250 college and university websites.