Strategic Planning Reports SPRs

The original pilot of these reports resulted in much discussion about how to improve the process and lighten the burden on departments. Most years, chairs are to update the previous year's report. Findings from a recent Program Review may necessitate a revision of the strategic plan or its assessment. Additionally, the collected SPRs should support writing the next Program Review and make that process easier to complete. SPRs are also an excellent place to address curricular changes from Biennial assessments.

What is at stake in preparing strategic plans is how divisions (college and university level) reallocate available funds to ensure that division and university missions are more completely and adequately realized. The monies available for such investments may be new funds to the university based on new legislative allocations or enrollment growth or reallocated funds from retirements or other internal cost savings. The result will be a resource allocation process based on investing in units whose goals and plans currently realize or may realize (in the future) key elements of the mission (i.e., forward-looking analysis) as opposed to their past accomplishments (backward-looking analysis).

In preparing the SPR, units should list resources requested to realize their proposed goals/plans. Contingency goals and plans should proposed in case resources are unavailable or only partially forthcoming. As part of the process, units are encouraged to explore possibilities for reallocating current resources or pursuing other internal funding sources (e.g., CE, ARCC, collaboration with other units) before requesting new proposal funding.

Academic Affairs encourages deans to orchestrate meetings for all college students writing SPRs. These college meetings should allow units to collaborate, learn from each other, and structure plans that align with the college’s vision. Of course, departments or programs contribute uniquely to the shared mission due to the nature of their discipline, curriculum, faculty, and other factors.

Units should focus on measurements of strategic outcomes and use data to assess those measurements. Relevant data are available through the Report Gallery. The Report Gallery is a university app that includes popular and well-vetted dashboards and Argos reports, including Program Review (both Baccalaureate and Graduate), the Ten Year Trends Dashboard, the Semester-to-Semester Enrollment Dashboard, Student Persistence & Success, among other data sources for departments to identify strengths and challenges. If you need other data relevant to your report, please contact the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. They will do their best to honor all data requests.

Units should align with the Weber State mission, the Academic Affairs mission, and the college mission. In addition, the Provost, in conjunction with the Deans, has agreed to three key areas of focus (retention and completion and enhanced interdisciplinary program innovation) while continuing to support our core objectives:

• Value/Quality refers to the unit’s contribution to the recognition and reputation of the institution as one that is committed to excellence reflected in the personal, professional, and academic accomplishments of students, faculty, and staff.  Traditionally, we have emphasized our low faculty/student ratio and many opportunities for faculty/student interaction as key elements in academic value/quality.
• Affordability refers to the ways a unit can keep expenditures required of students and costs to the university as low as possible, assuring the accessibility of higher education for all, recognizing that some programs are more expensive to operate than others, as well as inevitable tensions between affordability and quality.
• Access/Growth is how a unit contributes to student success by promoting student recruitment, enrollment, persistence/retention, and/or graduation. The end goals are to see an increase in new students, a decrease in students who step out or drop out, and a better-educated population.

Indeed, the three objectives emphasize divergent aspects of how a department or program functions and may very well be in tension with each other. Academic Affairs encourages unit chairs and deans to consider how best to address these objectives in the context of their strengths and challenges and the college's strategic direction. 

The SPR streamlines wherever possible, integrating reporting work and ensuring that Weber State uses strategic goals in the resource planning process (a key accreditation requirement). In subsequent years, units will report on steps taken to achieve their plans and their success in meeting proposed metrics until they propose new plans.

When it comes time for USHE-mandated Program Reviews, programs will have a strategic plan with perhaps several years’ worth of data to report. Each unit will revise and/or propose new goals after completing the regular Program Review. Such a cycle will liken department and program review to the accreditation cycle, where they update proposed new metrics and the achievement of metrics until a final formal review.

The SPR can and should make use of Biennial Assessment data. If relevant, assessment data should be used to defend the units’ goals and plans, thereby facilitating the integration of reports.

All units reporting to Academic Affairs with academic programs (undergraduate - including minors - and graduate) and faculty paid with E&G funds will be eligible to complete an SPR. Deans, in consultation with department chairs and program directors, can determine how many reports should come from different units. For example, departments with both undergraduate and graduate degrees will likely submit two SPRs. However, a dean, chair, and grad program director may determine that undergrad and grad initiatives align so that a single SPR can represent both programs. Similarly, when a department contains multiple undergraduate degree or certificate areas, the chair and dean may determine that numerous SPRs represent the areas more accurately than one, or they may agree that one SPR will provide sufficient information to readers.

The Academic Affairs Mission Statement captures what we aspire to realize. As we move into the future, Academic Affairs wants to ensure that units within the division have sufficient resources to realize our shared mission. We do SPRs to align units’ missions to Academic Affairs missions and the University's missions and serve as a basis for resource allocations.¹

^[1] Financial resources come from state legislative appropriations and student tuition in roughly equal parts, allocated to the division of Academic Affairs through the President’s Council. Departments and programs may also have additional funding from grants, donations, and other sources not mentioned here.