September 16, 2005

President Wilson convened the second SPBC meeting of 2005-06 at 8 a.m.    He welcomed Jen Carden, ’08, as the new student representative and thanked retiring student member Emilee Bocker, ’07, for the very high quality of her contributions to the Committee over the past year. 

The Committee immediately turned to a discussion of work group activities. The various constituent groups (faculty, staff, and students) will have elected their representatives to the work groups by the last week of September.  Work group co-chairs intend to convene their work groups immediately thereafter. 

Co-convenors of each work group shared their preliminary thoughts on organizing the groups’ work.  Many good ideas surfaced in these collective musings, including:

-- Making sure from the outset that the work groups understand their charge, which is limited to developing four to six strategies on which the University can hope to make progress in the next three to five years

-- Making available to work group members the results of the many surveys and studies that have been conducted at the University in the last 5 to 10 years, especially last year’s surveys of the campus by the Strategic Planning Steering Committee

-- Being sure to consult with standing committees and other groups throughout the 2-month period (October-November 2005) in which the work groups’ activities will occur.

-- Where appropriate, using the wealth of existing assessment information gathered through the University’s ongoing assessment program 

o-- Considering how the groups might benchmark practices/policies in their spheres of concern against practices/policies at a common set of peer and aspirational institutions

-- Recognizing that there may be some overlap among the interests of individual work groups and that the SPBC will reconcile any overlaps after it receives the work groups’ reports

The Committee reminded itself, with some relief, that work groups are not designed to implement the strategic plan in the next two months—committees, departments, and specific administrators will be charged with implementation after strategies are in place—but rather are intended to recommend the strategic priorities that should be implemented in the future.

The SPBC agreed to meet again on September 23.   At that time, members will review a report on potential benchmark institutions developed by the Strategic Planning Steering Committee in previous years.   The group will also continue its discussion of the budgeting process.

Distributed to all faculty and staff: September 23, 2005