The best plans for action fail if there is no action.
For strategic plans to be effective, they require adoption, constant care, evaluation and when milestones are met—celebration. Unless made part of an institution’s genetic makeup, they are rejected, left on the shelf, never seeing the light of day. In such instances, not only do current goals and aspirations flounder, subsequent attempts to accomplish important goals are met with ridicule, cynicism and contempt.
To avoid this outcome, the Task Force Strategic Planning Implementation committee recommends the following steps:
- Success requires support from the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the chair of the arts and sciences committee (ASC) , the membership of the student affairs committee (SAC), and arts and sciences representatives in student government. After submission, the revised strategic plan will be shared with the members of the ASC, SAC, and student government for adoption along with the Divisional Deans to map out how the plan’s principles and initiatives can help guide College policy.
- The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is charged with assigning one Divisional Dean to form a Strategic Plan Implementation Committee whose task it is to ensure that the key provisions in the plan are enacted. In keeping with the recommendations of the Revised Strategic Plan, this committee should be composed of equal numbers of students (4), faculty (4), and staff (4), representing various stakeholders in the College of Arts and Sciences, including but not limited to:
- Faculty from the three divisions (Arts and Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences), including at least one tenure-stream faculty, one instructor and one lecturer.
- Staff, who work specifically for the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as at least two staff who work within departments. Ideally, the staff representation would include a diversity of positions within the college.
- Students from the three divisions, of which two are undergraduates and two are graduate students.
- This committee should reflect the diverse nature of our college population, strive to emulate the campus efforts at promoting inclusion and equity, and be co-chaired by one faculty member and one staff member.
- Each year, this committee will tackle at least one to two implementation strategies for furthering each of the Strategic Plan’s three imperatives: Culture, Teaching & Learning and Research. This committee must establish concrete goals and metrics that will help provide an evidence-based assessment of both priorities and accomplishments toward each imperative.
- Throughout this process, the responsible Divisional Dean and the Committee must rely on stakeholder engagement to guide implementation efforts through holding town halls, surveying the College community, and meeting with a range of stakeholders. Understanding that student, staff, and faculty input can be challenging to collect, this committee will hold open forums within departments to discuss the proposed initiatives and will constantly evaluate and improve its stakeholder engagement efforts.
- The responsible Dean will provide an update on the committee’s activities and post it to the College of Arts and Sciences webpage at the end of each fiscal year.
- College resources should help incentivize departments to implement the plan. Only with all units working in concert will any of the aspirational goals articulated herein be accomplished.