Rethinking Higher Education Strategy and Planning in Volatile Times
Traditional strategic planning processes—with their lengthy timelines, exhaustive committee work, and detailed metrics—often struggle to keep pace with today's rapidly changing higher education landscape. Join Barry Dornfeld and Cecilia Garza Madden at the Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences Annual Meeting for an interactive workshop bringing together deans and strategic planning practitioners to explore more practical and nimble approaches to strategic planning that are effective in our current moment.
In this moment of unprecedented risk and uncertainty in higher education, traditional models of strategic planning may not be adequately responsive to the needs of institutions. Schools are compelled to be more responsive and decisive than the conventional models of strategy, with extended data collection processes, ongoing discussions, and long wishlists, may not prepare schools for what they need to prioritize their efforts and meet their missions.
Whether you're launching a new strategic plan, revitalizing an existing one, or questioning whether you need one at all, this session will help you develop strategies that energize rather than exhaust your faculty, focus on principles rather than getting lost in the weeds, and create frameworks flexible enough to adapt as circumstances change.
Participants will leave with practical frameworks, examples, and concrete approaches for engaging faculty in strategic planning while maintaining momentum and relevance in an unpredictable environment.
This panel considers more grounded and responsive strategic approaches and frameworks that still engage faculty, staff, and students. After sharing these approaches, participants engage in a facilitated discussion about their own experiences and successful approaches to strategy and planning approaches. We end by sharing practical tools and resources for doing strategy in this moment.
Presenters:
- Kyoko Amano, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
- Camille Johnson, Dean, College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, Cal Poly Pomona
- Barry Dornfeld, Principal, CFAR
- Cecilia Garza Madden, Manager, CFAR