INSTITUTIONAL PLANNING PROCESS

DRAFT October 2010 Office of the President

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Mount Holyoke College is committed to a comprehensive institutional planning system that is cyclical, recurring in accordance with a designated schedule and including annual planning as part of the overall cycle. The planning system described below integrates four distinct but related institutional functions:    

Research and outcomes assessment Institutional planning including strategic planning Financial planning Reaccreditation processes

The system provides for a five-year strategic planning window tied to the reaccreditation cycle set by NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges). The system also allows institutional strategic plans to be modified within a planning cycle if annual research-based analyses reveal a need for change. Two planning cycles form the comprehensive planning structure. (1) Strategic planning takes place in the final year of the five-year planning cycle, which is also the year preceding the preparation of a ten-year NEASC self-study or a fifth-year NEASC report. In this way, self-study documents can report on the success of the most recent strategic plan, introduce the newly adopted plan, explain why the institution has adopted its new goals, and provide this information to the self-study groups or individuals who carry out the institutional assessments that form the substance of the self-examination process. A five-year financial plan is part of, and coincides with, the strategic plan. (2) The annual planning cycle is based on the College’s fiscal year (beginning July 1) in order to formalize the tie between institutional and financial planning and budgeting. The purpose is to launch each fiscal year with clear and measurable goals and objectives aimed at supporting the current strategic plan and to allocate funds in accordance with the College’s priorities. The annual budgeting process usually begins in November, resulting in the budget for the year following as approved by the Board in May. The model elaborates a system of institution-wide planning through the divisional level. However, to be most effective, planning should extend into all departments and actively involve a wide cross-section of the institution. A culture of planning and assessment should permeate college functions from top to bottom.

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OUTLINE ONE: TERMS AND CONCEPTS Chart: Comprehensive institutional planning 0. A note on language I. Purpose: focus and alignment II. Main institutional documents: mission, values, and vision statements III. Types of plans Long-range plan Institutional strategic plan Unit strategic plan Operating plans Financial planning and budget development TWO: PROCESS IV. Purposes of MHC’s integrative planning model: efficiency and coherence Chart: Four functions V. Steps in the strategic planning system Part A. Institutional strategic planning process Step 1: Research and analysis Data collection and interpretation Environmental scan including SWOT 1 analysis Outcomes assessment Status report Step 2: Needs assessment Step 3: Strategic goals Step 4: Objectives Part B. Unit Strategic Planning Process VI. Financial planning and budget development VII. Annual strategic planning VIII. Operational planning THREE: NEASC IX. NEASC 2 accreditation: Fifth year self-studies FOUR: SCHEDULE X. Planning schedule Chart: Five-year comprehensive planning cycle Chart: Annual planning cycle FIVE: GOVERNANCE XI. Governance: organizational structure and authorities for institutional planning XII. Conclusion Appendix A Strategic plan table of contents template Appendix B Action plan template 1 2

SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats NEASC: New England Association of Schools and Colleges, our regional accrediting agency

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Comprehensive Institutional Planning

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5 0.

A NOTE ON LANGUAGE Planning is an established field of endeavor with its own vocabulary, structures, concepts, and texts. Planning’s terms, objectives, and processes are familiar to many in the Mount Holyoke community, including administrators and managers, deans and division heads, and trustees. The language of planning and its sister field assessment is not, however, known to all, nor does its terminology always co-exist easily with academic discourse. But the underlying concepts of planning—research, evaluation, decision making, hypothesis testing, adjustments in the face of new findings and changed conditions—are core concepts in the academic as well as the administrative world.

I.

PURPOSE Institutional planning is designed to focus and concentrate institutional energy and guide resource allocation to achieve highest priority institutional goals.

II.

MAIN INSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS: GUIDES OF THE PLANNING PROCESS 

MISSION The mission is typically a one-sentence expression of the institution's raison d’être, explaining the fundamental purposes for which the institution exists. Mount Holyoke’s current mission statement is well known on campus: Mount Holyoke College reaffirms its commitment to educating a diverse residential community of women at the highest level of academic excellence and to fostering the alliance of liberal arts education with purposeful engagement in the world.

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CORE VALUES Core values express an institution's most fundamental beliefs, sometimes expressed as guiding principles. These beliefs or principles encapsulate part or all of an institution's essence – the driving forces that identify it as the particular institution it is. Implicitly or explicitly, values shape and are shaped by the College’s process of assessing needs, identifying goals, and setting priorities. Mount Holyoke has several statements of institutional and academic principles, including the rationale for our curriculum (Catalogue, p. 5), the statement on Individual Rights and Community Responsibility (Faculty Legislation, Appendix I), and the principles set forth in the report of the Presidential Commission on Diverse Community. Despite a pervasive sense that we share a set of core values and commitments, however, the community should periodically attempt to name and order those values, and examine the extent to which principles are shared. Some values are explicit in our mission statement: academic excellence, diversity, women’s education, purposeful engagement. Others explicitly or implicitly guide our work together. A campus-wide discussion of these and other principles, characteristics, and commitments of the College—shared or contested—is an important element of strategic planning. Such a discussion can be launched simply by asking members of the Mount Holyoke community what they most admire, appreciate, or cherish about the College. Or we might get at the matter another way, by asking what members of the community would least—or most—like to see changed.

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VISION A vision is a narrative depiction of the institution as it would be at some designated future time— a future picture—if institutional hopes and aspirations could be fully realized. The purpose of a vision statement is to provide a more expansive direction to individual plans of shorter duration.

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6 Many parts of the College, including many academic departments, have a clear vision of where they hope to be in five or ten years. An earlier strategic planning process asked every department for written comments on how it envisioned its medium-term future. Such statements can be an important part of divisional and departmental planning. More critical to institutional planning, though, is a vision statement for the College as a whole. What is our shared image of the future we seek to create? Toward what are we moving, and why? III.

TYPES OF PLANS 

LONG-RANGE PLAN (10+ YEARS) Long-range plans typically cover periods of not less than ten years, but they can be much longer. Long-range planning (sometimes called master planning) is often associated with campus development, due to the useful life of physical assets and due to the large capital requirements associated with renovation and new construction, sometimes necessitating incremental approaches to financing. Mount Holyoke has developed long-range plans to guide work on facilities, space, technology, landscape, and residence halls. But such planning is not confined to the physical plant. The approach can be useful in planning significant but incremental changes in, for example, academic programming, student life, or development. Long-range plans can also be institutional in breadth. A long-range plan is akin to the design concept for a patchwork quilt. The individual patches might give little insight into the overall design, but once completed, the quilt reveals the concept that drove the weaving of the individual patches into a distinctive pattern. Long-range plans are the thread providing overall coherence to a series of individual plans of shorter duration.

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INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC PLAN (5 YEARS) The institutional strategic plan is based on a research-based needs assessment identifying the College’s most important or pressing goals (usually six or fewer) arrayed in priority order. The goals are often characterized as "stretch goals." Although intended to be realizable, they are formulated so as to stretch the institution to high levels of achievement. Emulating business practices, many institutions of higher learning are adopting shorter range strategic plans so as to adapt to the rapid changes occurring in the competitive environment. This approach has merit and should be considered in the future. However, at this time, Mount Holyoke will adopt a five-year strategic planning model designed to align with NEASC's five-year accreditation cycle and its requirement that colleges have well developed, fully functioning institutional planning models. The institutional strategic plan is responsive and dynamic. Regular assessments of progress against the plan are built into the annual planning cycle. The annual cycle also provides for amendments to the plan when necessary or appropriate.

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UNIT STRATEGIC PLAN (5 YEARS) Unit strategic plans are like ISPs except that they identify the major needs, goals, and objectives of a designated unit of the College: a division, department, or other entity. Unit heads are responsible for the production of these plans in accordance with NEASC's expectation that colleges will plan at all levels of institutional life. LITS and the Alumnae Association, for example, have strategic plans.

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OPERATING PLANS (ANNUAL) Operating plans are derivative. They are "how" documents, describing how individual units will focus their energies on achieving strategic goals at the institutional and unit levels. Operating plans identify initiatives and projects, adopt measurable objectives, assign responsibilities, and specify due dates.

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FINANCIAL PLANNING (FIVE YEARS) AND BUDGET DEVELOPMENT (ANNUAL) A five-year financial plan is part of the institutional strategic plan. The annual budget represents the actualization of the annual operating plan, projecting anticipated revenues and how the institution will use those revenues to advance its goals and objectives. The financial plan, and the annual budgets, should reflect the priorities established in the institutional strategic plan and the approved unit strategic plans. In consequence, the strategic planning process informs the financial planning and budgeting processes. This relationship between strategic, financial, and budget planning is one of the hallmarks of the Plans for 2003 and 2010 upon which we seek to build.

IV.

PURPOSES OF MHC's INTEGRATIVE PLANNING MODEL: EFFICIENCY AND COHERENCE The planning system integrates four main planning-related functions: STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4

Research and Analysis Planning: Strategic and Financial (five year) Operational Planning and Budget Development (annual) NEASC Accreditation Self-Study and Fifth-Year Report

The planning process is recursive. It always begins with research, leading to a synthesis in the form of a status report on the state of the College describing the current standing of the institution, or a unit of it, across a spectrum of internal and external dimensions. This status report informs the strategic and operational planning processes. In turn, the strategic plan informs the NEASC fifth-year self-examination with an outcomes assessment of the former plan and an explanation of the purposes to be addressed in the new one. The strategic plan also informs financial planning and budget development, which reflect the established institutional or unit priorities, all of which produce data for the next cycle of research and planning.

STEP 1 Research and Analysis



STEP 2 Strategic and Financial Planning  Operational Planning STEP 3  Budgeting STEP 4 Accreditation Reports and Self-Study STEP 1 Research and Analysis

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Informs

Informs



Informs

8 V.

STEPS IN THE STRATEGIC PLANNING SYSTEM The strategic planning system consists of a five-year cycle of annual planning. The last year of the cycle is distinctive. It focuses on wrapping up the concluding plan and preparing a new one to be implemented in the year following, which is the first year of the new planning cycle. Strategic planning takes place at both the institutional and unit levels. Thus the resulting strategic plan has two main parts: Part A Institutional Planning and Part B Unit Planning. Although the foci are different, the two types of planning are similar: the institutional strategic plan focuses on the institution as a whole; the unit strategic plan focuses on a particular unit of the College. The steps in the fifth-year strategic planning processes at each level are summarized separately below. The institutional strategic planning system is supported by the Institutional Planning and Research office, under the direction of the President. (See Section XI on Governance.) PART A. Institutional Strategic Planning Process The institutional strategic planning process consists of four main steps: STEP 1: Research and Analysis: Research and Analysis includes four functions: 

Data Collection and Interpretation The institutional strategic planning process begins with research-based data collection and an environmental scan. Through its Institutional Research office, Mount Holyoke College implements an annual research and assessment function. The College Planning Committee described in Section XI on Governance, augmented every fifth year to become a Strategic Planning Committee, will collaborate with the College's Institutional Research office to orchestrate the data collection and interpretation effort in support of the strategic planning process. It will make use of additional resources which might be available to it such as a research staffer or outside consultants or services. The Senior Advisor to the President with responsibility for institutional planning serves as the convenor of the Committee.

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Environmental Scan including SWOT Analysis The environmental scan augments the College's standard research collection regimen through outreach to various college constituencies including but not limited to the Board of Trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumnae. Constituents receive a questionnaire on College or unit life (sometimes combined into a master questionnaire), usually containing up to 30 questions. The questions incorporate a SWOT analysis, which evaluates an institution’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Attention to external opportunities and threats includes consideration of such market needs as admissions climate and employer expectations. Since the questionnaire is distributed only once every five years, it is not intended to be a quick response instrument but rather a document to provoke thoughtful response and commentary. Sometimes qualitative measures in the form of interviews or focus groups are used to supplement the surveys.



Outcomes Assessment In conjunction with the College's Institutional Research office, the College Planning Committee annually reviews three sets of documents: the main institutional planning documents—the statement of core values and the vision and mission statements—to determine continued relevance; long-range plans to ascertain progress; and the

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9 concluding strategic plan to gauge success and to identify any residual matters that should be carried over into the new strategic plan. 

Status Report The status report is a narrative which organizes, integrates, and interprets the research data from all sources, external and internal, explaining its significance for institutional life. It presents a freeze frame picture of the current status of the College and its separate units. It also sets the stage for the needs assessment, and it informs the selection and priority listing of strategic goals and measurable objectives. It moves from the past and the present towards the future, from an appropriately backward and inward review to a necessarily forward- and outward-looking identification of needs.

STEP 2: Needs Assessment The status report identifies institutional needs. These needs are whittled down to a relatively small set, usually six or fewer, of the most important or urgent needs facing the institution. They are then arranged in priority order and expressed in the form of needs statements. In this manner, the institution's needs are condensed into a concise agenda of challenges to be addressed. Needs statements can be compressed into one sentence, or they can be elaborated in a short paragraph. Each statement should be sufficient to make the need evident. STEP 3: Strategic Goals The strategic goals are the needs statements expressed in the form of institutional goals, which, if achieved, would address and meet the needs. Strategic goal statements tend to be general, aiming at achieving a broad purpose. Usually goal statements are expressed as infinitives, for example, "To double MHC's endowment by the end of the planning window." STEP 4: Objectives A set of measurable objectives accompanies each strategic goal. The objectives state precisely what is to be accomplished, to what extent, and by when. Often the objectives are put into chronological order, showing a sequence of objectives to be achieved by semester or year. This strategy allows for progress to be measured in incremental phases. An example would be "To increase the endowment by 20% by the close of Year 1 of the strategic planning cycle." PART B. Unit Strategic Planning Process The unit and institutional strategic planning processes are essentially the same. Each unit determines how its plan will be developed. Some divisions or departments will identify a version of a steering committee to function at the unit level like the College Planning Committee. Others will create a different structure. Once drafted, the unit strategic plans are submitted to the College Planning Committee for review, approval, and integration into the institutional strategic plan with each unit plan forming a chapter of Part B. In this manner, the institutional strategic plan attains both breadth and depth. Readers can elect to read Part A to get an institution-level snapshot of Mount Holyoke, or they can delve into Part B to get a more detailed depiction of various aspects of College life and goals. Sometimes a strategic goal established for a particular unit will, in the opinion of the College Planning Committee, rise to the level of an institutional goal. With the concurrence of the President, such a goal would then appear among the Part A strategic goals. The unit strategic plans are intended to be divisional in scope although division heads are encouraged to extend the planning process to sub-units as well. Sub-unit planning also mirrors the basic steps in the strategic planning process. The resulting plans are integrated into the overall unit strategic plan so that each major division or unit submits only one strategic plan. Each unit strategic plan becomes an individual chapter of Part B of the institutional strategic plan. Since all plans at the College have similar formats, the institutional strategic plan has the look of a unified and coherent document.

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At the departmental and unit level, environmental scanning is encouraged rather than required. Unit managers at this level may elect to forego or postpone environmental scanning during a cycle. They may, however, elect to add unit-specific questions to the institutional environmental scan. VI.

FINANCIAL PLANNING AND BUDGET DEVELOPMENT To be successful, the strategic planning goals must align with fiscal realities. For this reason, the unit strategic plans are submitted to the College Planning Committee in draft form for review, possible amendment, approval, and incorporation into the institutional strategic plan. The Vice-President for Finance and Administration, who will be a standing member of the College Planning Committee, informs the members of the funds anticipated to be available to support strategic initiatives during the five-year window of the plan. The central question is: Can the College afford its aspirations? If funding is insufficient, then aspirations may need to be moderated or curtailed. However, the strategic planning process is intended to stretch institutions to higher levels of performance than they might have deemed possible, so financial realities should inform but not drive strategic goal setting, even as they may limit how much progress can be made in any given period of time. In addition, the College Planning Committee should keep in mind the distinction between strategic goals and the means used to achieve those goals. The strategic goals are the overarching ends or purposes which the College wants to achieve. The means are the approaches the College will use to attain those goals. Sometimes the means used to achieve an institutional goal are very expensive; sometimes they are cost-free. However, means will not be clarified until operating plans are developed in the first year of the planning cycle. Such considerations highlight the importance of the College Planning Committee’s application of prudence and judgment when approving, disapproving, or limiting a plan based on financial realities. At the end of this process of review, alignment, and approval, the College Planning Committee recommends an institutional strategic plan. A financial plan is then developed to fund the strategic initiatives over the five-year planning window. The annual budgeting process then reflects the incremental allocation of funds which the financial plan envisions.

VII.

ANNUAL STRATEGIC PLANNING During each of the first four years of the strategic planning cycle, the College Planning Committee (CPC) conducts a formative evaluation. It conducts an abbreviated review process, starting with a brief reexamination of leading institutional documents for relevance. It also undertakes research and analysis, relying primarily on data from the year concluded (without environmental scan). It then formulates a concise status report focusing on environmental changes, outcomes assessment, and progress toward achieving the strategic planning goals. As warranted, modifications to the strategic plan are adopted and then appended to it, making the institutional strategic plan an accretion. In this way, a reader can review the amendments to the strategic plan in order to understand its most current iteration. Units conduct a like procedure with respect to their unit strategic plans. The office of Institutional Planning and Research and the unit heads publish annual progress reports.

VIII.

OPERATIONAL PLANNING After the College has adopted its goals for the next five years, the planning focus shifts from ends to means and from five-year to one-year windows. Operational planning takes place at the unit level. It is intended to focus institutional resources and energies on the goals set forth in Part A and Part B like laser beams locked on targets. During a strategic planning cycle, each unit will develop and implement five such operating plans, one per year. Collectively, these plans express the effort that a unit proposes to contribute to the achievement of the strategic plan. The College Planning Committee collects the

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11 operating plans from unit heads and produces from them a master action plan. In general, units should stretch to achieve maximum effort. However, effort will vary due to differences of mission and resources. Appropriately some units will not contribute to the achievement of each specific Part A goal or objective. However, at the bare minimum, each should have a tactical plan for achieving all its Part B goals. The College Planning Committee will also solicit and collect ideas for meeting various goals from the broad campus community. The operational planning format is concise and deliberately reductive. It shows the goals and objectives to be achieved, actions to be undertaken, requirements, task assignments, and due dates for completion. Operating plans are also called 'action plans' because they are blueprints for action. Unit operational plans, and the master action plan formed by the College Planning Committee from those plans, are submitted to the President for approval. Once the plans are approved, managers function with a high degree of autonomy in implementing their plans and monitoring plan execution throughout the year. Appendix C provides a template for an action plan. Imagine a newly adopted strategic plan containing six goals. The plan for a unit of the College cites each goal to which that unit is contributing, and formulates objectives to meet that goal. The action plan supports the implementation of these objectives. A manager appends a budget derived from the requirements column and a brief budget explanation. In this way, the costs associated with plans for achieving the strategic goals can be aggregated and the affordability of plans assessed. IX.

NEASC ACCREDITATION: FIFTH YEAR SELF-STUDIES In the year following the development of the College's new institutional strategic plan, a major NEASC activity is conducted: either a fifth-year report or a full ten-year self-study. These NEASC processes are well-established at Mount Holyoke College, and they have been successful. The basic format will be substantially retained. The strategic planning process, which occurred in the prior year, supplies the selfstudy committees or working groups with a wealth of substantially current information. It also allows committees to frame their reports within the context of accomplishments during the previous five years and a new plan designed to address current needs.

X.

PLANNING SCHEDULE To effect the transition from the previous to the new planning system, fiscal year 2011 (academic year 2010-2011) will be designated a strategic planning year concluding with the adoption of a new five-year strategic plan spanning the period from FY 12 (AY 2011-2012) through FY 16 (AY 2015-2016). By stipulation, FY 11 will become the fifth year of the strategic planning cycle. In FY 12, the College will implement its new plan, initiating the first year of annual operational planning, which will also be a year in which MHC produces a fifth year NEASC progress report (due fall 2012)

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FY 2011 (2010-2011)

Strategic Plan Developed and Adopted

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FY 2012 (2011-2012)

New Strategic Plan Implemented Action Plans Prepared and Submitted Self-study Process for NEASC Fifth-year Report Conducted

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FY 2013 (2012-2013)

Action Plans Prepared and Submitted NEASC Fifth-Year Report Submitted Fall 2012

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FY 2014 (2013-2014)

Action Plans Prepared and Submitted

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FY 2015 (2014-2015)

Action Plans Prepared and Submitted

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12 Strategic Planning Process Prepared 

FY 2016 (2015-2016)

Action Plans Prepared and Submitted for Concluding Plan Strategic Planning Process Conducted Strategic Plan Adopted

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FY 2017 (2016-2017)

New Strategic Plan Implemented Self-Study Process for NEASC Ten-Year Evaluation Conducted Action Plans Prepared and Submitted

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FY 2018 (2017-2018)

Action Plans Prepared and Submitted NEASC Ten-Year Comprehensive Evaluation Fall 2017 Completed

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Five-Year Comprehensive Planning Cycle Annual Planning, NEASC Self-Study Preparation, Strategic Planning

OUTCOMES: Strategic Plan by the end of 2010-2011 NEASC Fifth Year Report by the end of 2011-2012 Annual Planning annually October 2010

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Annual Planning Cycle Note: this chart is in fuller prose form on the next page. Step 1 (July): Informing the Planning Process Step 2 (July, Aug, Sept): Evaluating the Annual and Strategic Plans Step 3 (Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June): Planning Step 4 (July through June): Implementing the Strategic and Annual Plans Step 5 (July): Recursion

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Annual Planning Cycle STEP 1: INFORMING THE PLANNING PROCESS JULY Research / Outcomes Assessment Prepare research reports on year-end outcomes JULY Status Report Examine internal and environmental forces including perceived opportunities and threats STEP 2: EVALUATING SUCCESS JULY Divisional Year-End Reports Data-based evaluation of the success to date of the divisional strategic and operating plans AUG Strategic Plan Progress Report Data-based assessment of progress made on the current strategic plan SEPT Summary Status Report Executive summaries of the status report and the success of strategic and operating plans STEP 3: PLANNING OCT Review and reaffirm or amend as appropriate Mount Holyoke’s mission, values, and vision statements NOV Review or amend as appropriate the current strategic plan NOV Initiate annual operating planning at the divisional level, tied to strategic planning goals NOV Initiate annual budget planning and implementation cycle DEC Affirm or reaffirm the strategic plan JAN Submit divisional annual operating plans, tied explicitly to strategic planning goals FEB Review and approve divisional annual operating plans FEB Divisional budget requests submitted MAR Divisional budget requests reviewed and prioritized APR College budget compiled MAY Institutional budget reviewed and approved JUNE Divisional budgets confirmed STEP 4: IMPLEMENTATION JULY through JUNE Implementation of strategic plan continues JULY through JUNE Implementation of divisional annual operating plans STEP 5: RECURSION JULY

Start year-beginning annual planning cycle

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16 XI.

GOVERNANCE: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND AUTHORITIES FOR INSTITUTIONAL PLANNING Institutional planning requires a governance structure. An organization needs to be approved that routinizes and distributes planning across the College, while preserving existing structures insofar as possible. At the minimum, an authorized body needs to act as a steering committee. We propose a College Planning Committee charged with organizing and implementing the planning system college-wide. It would have the following duties and functions: 1.

INSTITUTIONAL (PART A) FUNCTIONS 1.1. Review and recommend reaffirmation or amendment of main institutional documents. 1.2. Review previous status report. 1.3. Conduct environmental scan including SWOT analysis to solicit input on institutional needs. 1.4. Draft and recommend new status report. 1.5. Recommend short list of three to six Part A institutional needs in priority order. 1.6. Recommend short list of three to six Part A institutional goals in priority order. 1.7. Recommend list of measurable institutional objectives.

2.

UNIT (PART B) FUNCTIONS 2.1. Develop guidelines and formats for divisional and unit managers to use in undertaking strategic planning at their respective levels. 2.2. Receive divisional and unit Part B strategic plans and review them for compatibility with institutional planning and fiscal realities. 2.3. Recommend modifications to Part B plans as appropriate and work with divisional and unit administrators accordingly. 2.4. Recommend approval of Part B plans.

3.

STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS 3.1. Draft an integrated strategic plan including Parts A and B. 3.2. Invite comments from the College community, with the objective of achieving consensus if possible. 3.3. Amend strategic plan as appropriate. 3.4. Recommend a comprehensive strategic plan to the President. 3.5. Support the President in overseeing alignment of institutional objectives with financial planning and with annual operating and budget plans.

The Senior Advisor to the President with responsibility for institutional planning will be a standing member of the Committee and its secretary, convening meetings, recording and distributing minutes, discharging duties on behalf of the body, and representing the President during the processes of deliberation. The Vice-President for Finance and Administration will also be a standing member of the Committee. The College Planning Committee will need to articulate with existing Mount Holyoke governance structures. The Faculty Committee on Planning and Budgeting (known as FPBC or P&B) has as its first responsibility to “participate in the various phases of the College’s budgeting and planning process.” The Board, the President, the senior administrators of the College, the Operations Policy Council (OPC), Staff Council, the Student Government Association, the Alumnae Association, together with the constituencies that each of those entities represents, all have a stake in institutional planning and all will have—under the structure outlined in this document—significant planning responsibilities. There is also a successful tradition at Mount Holyoke of forming ad hoc committees for the purpose of developing strategic plans.

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17 We thus further propose to augment the College Planning Committee each fifth year to form a larger and more representative Strategic Planning Committee to carry out the strategic functions (3.1 through 3.5) outlined above. The expanded committee and its continuing core would look like this: 

STRATEGIC PLANNING COMMITTEE (SPC) In Year 5 of the strategic planning process, which is the year a new plan is developed and which is by stipulation the year 2010-2011, a Strategic Planning Committee is appointed by the President with a view to incorporating broadly diverse perspectives of faculty, staff, and other constituencies. Members should include: o o o o o o o o



COLLEGE PLANNING COMMITTEE (CPC) In Years 1 through 4 of the strategic planning process, a subset of the larger ad hoc committee will oversee and sustain the annual planning functions outlined in this document. This committee might have: o o o o



XII.

students: two faculty: three, one each from (or appointed by) P&B, APC, and FCC staff: two, selected on recommendation from OPC and Staff Council co-chairs alumnae: two—President of the Alumnae Association or designee, alumna-at-large trustees: one or two, appointed by the Chair of the Board administrators: two—VP for Finance and Administration, Dean of Faculty ex officio: Senior Advisor to the President, Director of Institutional Research guests as the SPC determines, ex officio and pro tem

faculty: two or three, selected by a process to be developed by FCC staff: two administrators: two—VP for Finance and Administration, Dean of Faculty ex officio: Senior Advisor to the President, Director of Institutional Research

REPORTING Commentary and reports flow from members of the Mount Holyoke community, internal and external (students, faculty, staff, alumnae, friends) to the College Planning Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee, to the officers of the College, to the President, and to the Board.

CONCLUSION The proposed planning system for Mount Holyoke College is intended to be a comprehensive system of interlocking and mutually informing and reinforcing functions, based on an annual cycle of research and assessment. The process incorporates two related five-year cycles: strategic planning and fifth-year NEASC self-assessment activities. The strategic planning process articulates main institutional and unit goals with associated measurable objectives reviewed annually for documented progress. Each five-year cycle also incorporates annual operational planning for the purpose of coalescing institutional energies and resources in support of approved goals at the institutional and unit levels. The system is replicable and recursive, allowing for a single structure to be applied at all levels of planning throughout the College. In this fashion, the system attains overall coherence, efficiency, and effectiveness.

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APPENDIX A STRATEGIC PLAN TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTERS PART A: INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC PLANNING I.

INTRODUCTION A. B. C.

COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING SYSTEM PLANNING CYCLES ARTICULATION OF FUNCTIONS

II.

STATUS REPORT

III.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT

IV.

INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

V.

FINANCIAL PLAN

VI.

EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT

PART B: DIVISIONAL AND UNIT STRATEGIC PLANS VII.

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

VIII.

LITS

IX.

STUDENT AFFAIRS

X.

ENROLLMENT

XI.

COMMUNICATIONS

XII.

ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE

XIII.

DEVELOPMENT

XIV.

COMPLEMENTARY PROGRAMMING

XV.

INSTITUTIONAL PLANNING AND RESEARCH

XVI.

ATHLETICS

CONCLUSION

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APPENDIX B ACTION PLAN TEMPLATE

Name of department or office: Action Plan 2010-2011 STRATEGIC GOAL: OBJ 1

ACTION

REQUIREMENTS

1.1 1.2 1.3

2

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

3

3.1 3.2

4

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WHO

WHEN

PROGRESS