The Importance of, and Resources for, Successful Strategic Planning

Recent trends in U.S. higher education have led many institutions to adopt or refine strategic planning efforts. Strategic planning at the academic department level (in alignment with university-wide planning) is crucial to identify opportunities and to provide a quality education to students. Rather than taking a proactive approach, too often academic departments engage in traditional (ad-hoc or activity-based) planning and leave genuinely strategic planning to be guided by administrators. In this paper, the authors emphasize not only the importance of strategic planning at the department level but also a process that can be used. This process includes following what they refer to as the C-SALT principles (Communication, Specificity, Assessment, Leadership, and Transparency) and collaborating with academic support units such as Institutional Research and Information Technology to aid in the development and implementation of successful strategic plans. The paper concludes with a “real-life” example of a chair who utilized the described process in her department to design a three-year strategic plan