SCUP
Learning Resources

Institutional Planning

Example Plans

2022 Interim Strategic Plan

 In the face of executive leadership changes, this university was able to develop this interim strategic plan, or “bridge plan,” with broad campus engagement in less than half a year.
Conference Recordings

Actionable Data

 This session will share how Binghamton University has established an integrated data collection and tracking process and the ways in which the pandemic has affected this process and shifted institutional priorities.
Conference Presentations

Bison Blueprint: Building An Integrated Planning Culture At Gallaudet

 A successful integrated plan requires the broad engagement within an institution.
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

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.
Tool

Integrated Planning Competencies

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

Live Your Strategic Plan: A Framework for Facilitating Campus Engagement
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planner and Counsel

 Planners and attorneys might be natural colleagues. Higher education trends are making this alliance even more critical.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning and Academic Program Review
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning in Higher Education: A Multiple Scenario Forecasting Approach
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Quickly Building a Bridge

 Executive leadership changes at Northern Michigan University led the interim president, interim provost, and Board of Trustees to call for a bridge plan to clearly articulate strategic work happening throughout campus. This article describes how the university was able to develop an interim strategic plan with broad campus engagement in less than half a year.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Strategic Alignment for Degree Completion

 By coordinating cross-functional teams, employing real-time data, and strengthening communication systems, a university bolstered student retention and completion without requiring new funding or staff.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Survival of the Financially Fittest

 Leaders must look closely at financial trends that may reveal signs of trouble—in the short or immediate term—and have the courage to act to address them.
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?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

The Future of Planning is . . .

 IE professionals are both translators and integrators—and universities need these people who know how to interpret the data. Within the context of an IIE office, they assist in developing data-informed strategic plans, financial forecasts, enrollment plans, and other assessments of institutional efficacy.
Conference Recordings

The Strategic Doing Methodology at Northern Michigan University

 Many institutions face challenges in evolving traditional, and often ineffective, planning processes into fully participatory systems that use collaborative methods and techniques for improving outcomes.
Blog Post

Who Are Our Planners—and What Do They Read?

 October 2021 marked Planning for Higher Education’s 50th issue! To celebrate, we’re looking back at earlier articles in Planning to reflect on how things change (and, sometimes, how they don’t). Planning is an essential resource for all higher education administrators, planning analysts, and theorists from many disciplines. In this post, the author describes each group of planners and identifies the types of information each group can glean from the journal articles.
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.