November 11, 2004
President Wilson convened the third meeting of the 2004-05 Strategic Planning Steering Committee (SPSC) at 11:45. The Committee approved a draft of a report to the community on its November 11 meeting and asked Professor Gardner to distribute the report electronically to all faculty and staff members. The report will also be posted on the Strategic Planning Web site for students, alumni, and other visitors to read at:
http://www2.iwu.edu/president/Strategic/
The President led the Committee in a discussion of how to gather input from the community. Several Committee members from the faculty and staff noted that their colleagues were expecting opportunities to contribute to the plan. The President reminded the group that, in fact, it had agreed at the last meeting to solicit input from the larger community after today’s meeting. Since the last meeting, at the President’s request, several SPSC members had submitted suggestions for phrases that could be used to describe some of the broad themes the Committee had been brainstorming since its first meeting. During the subsequent conversation about gathering input, the following additional issues were discussed.
> How broadly or narrowly should ideas be grouped under the major themes? Some members worried that if the themes are conceived too broadly, the resulting plan will not remain fresh over the years. The President noted, however, that even if the themes from which planning goals are subsequently derived are broad, they can remain fresh as new initiatives under those themes replace initiatives that have been accomplished.
> Should the Committee acknowledge the considerable overlap among specific issues that could be listed under the themes? (The working lists of themes and topics the committee had generated up to that point had not had any overlap—that is, an individual issue had been listed under one and only one broad theme.) The committee decided that it would be desirable to show overlap rather than to give the appearance to the community that the planning process is farther along than it is.
The President then asked the Committee to generate additional short phrases, each of which might capture a broad area of such importance that the community might wish to make it a strategic planning priority, joining the theme of Creating a More Diverse Community that has already been chosen by the Board of Trustees. There was consensus that the number of themes submitted to faculty, staff, and students for comment should exceed the number that will ultimately be selected so that colleagues can express preferences for some emphases over others.
Finally, the Committee agreed that soliciting community input as quickly as possible was essential, given the President’s hope that a strategic plan can be completed within this academic year. Because campus-wide work groups cannot begin to articulate planning goals and strategies until broad themes have been designated as priorities, there was a recognition that faculty, staff, and students must have time this semester to react to the brainstorming and rough organization of topics that the SPSC has been doing since late October. The President said that he would work with Professor Gardner as quickly as possible to draft materials based on the ideas generated at this meeting. These materials would be circulated to all SPSC members for review, revision, and approval. Only after the Committee is comfortable with the resulting documents would anything be distributed to the campus. All members agreed to participate in the refinement of materials once drafts are available. The target distribution date to the campus was set as late in the week after Thanksgiving so that faculty, staff, and students have as much time as possible to respond before the end of the term.
The next meeting of the SPSC will be December 10, at which time the Committee will consider responses from the community received to that point. There will be an additional SPSC meeting toward the end of exam week.
Distributed to all faculty and staff: 12/16/2004