News > August 24, 2006

By Lizzie Rosen

News editor

The University Planning Council has entered the data gathering phase of the strategic planning process from which it hopes to identify key strategic priorities in order to produce a vision of strategic framework by the end of October.

The strategic framework will consist of a list of the university’s strategic priorities, goals to pursue to strengthen the university as an institution.

“The first thing that the planning council will do once it creates that list is to put those strategic initiatives out to the campus,” Provost William Gordon said.

“Then there will be a period of time of time when the campus gives the council feedback, because once we set those priorities we will put those out to all the units on campus and ask them to make plans to support those priorities.”

“Our goal is around the end of October to try to have strategic priorities.”

The planning process, which is one of regularity, last occurred with the class of 2000. “In terms of timing it was pretty much in the planning sequence and the normal timetable” Gordon said. “There were also a lot of units on campus that were gearing up to do their own planning for the future, so [Hatch] really led that effort once he got here.”

The UPC is comprised of 19 members plus two co-chairs, Gordon and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Nancy Suttenfield.

“It was designed to be fairly representative of the constituents across the entire Wake Forest community. We did it by and large by starting to look at key positions on campus not just administrative but key positions in faculty key positions held by students, staff because we wanted to get people who had been thoroughly engaged with the life of the institution and we wanted to get people on the council who could think more broadly about the university.” Gordon said.

The UPC reports to Hatch, although Hatch does not appear at all of the Council’s meetings. “Hatch does not meet with the council regularly but is updated with great regularity” Gordon said. “He delegates the day to day responsibilities,” Suttenfield added.

Student response has been encouraged by the Council despite Student Government president, senior Shannon Philmon holding the only student position on the Council.

Students have the opportunity to voice opinions through online surveys and focus groups.

“The process provides many opportunities for input from the students at large, faculty at large and staff at large, which is one of the reasons we provide a survey and why there is focus groups so there is more than one way to get input,” Suttenfield said.

Four different focus groups have been planned for students alongside online input and information from student representatives.

“The idea is to structure it with some basic questions, because what we are trying to find out in this phase of the planning process is where we are right now, where the university is right now, and what people think about it, what things have we emphasized, what should we give emphasis, what’s your view of Wake Forest and what its opportunities and challenges are?” Gordon said.

The focus groups were tested over the summer with basic questions concerning opportunities and challenges seen by council.

“The other thing that focus group discussion accomplishes is in the process of posing questions and through each individual picking through and giving answers. Other discussion and other topics are stimulated that need to be explored and that can’t be accomplished in the survey,” Suttenfield said.

Community feedback will also be considered from the Winston-Salem area including leaders and influential persons that would have a view on Wake Forest and what its role is in the community.

“It is the accepted wisdom when you undertake a strategic planning process to try to provide as many opportunities as possible for the full community to react to each major milestone,” Suttenfield said.

The UPC is currently in the midst of collecting data of quantitative and qualitative nature through surveys.

The qualitative data will involve people ranking things as important or not important to provide a method of gauging the relative status of how important various factors are.

Meanwhile, the quantitative data is intended to measure how effective the core missions of the university, instruction, research and service are being executed.

“The key measurements quantify how effective, how efficient, how high the level of quantity is and how we compare to other universities in these same areas, to answer all those kinds of questions and maybe look at what the trends have been over time and how we stand relative to other universities and how they are similar to us in certain respects,” Suttenfield said.

Nonetheless the mission of the university remains stable. “This is not an exercise that is designed to change the mission. We know what we’re about. We are a university. The real questions that we are trying to get to in this process are given our environment and our advantages and the challenges we have, how well have we been doing in carrying out our mission and what ways can we devise to do a better job of carrying out our mission” Gordon said.

Speculations have been made concerning the expansion of student population on campus however this has not been confirmed. “It’s too early in the planning process to know whether or not there is a desire to grow or stay exactly the same size” Suttenfield said.

Currently the Council is beginning to group the feedback it has received. “We are still in the middle of data gathering. We are undergoing a major body of work. The council has divided into subgroups, one group is trying to organize the quantitative data the other sub-committee is trying to pull together all the qualitative and put it into categories so we can find out what all these impressions mean” Gordon said.

Funding has come from university resources and voluntary efforts from members on the council, however once the plan is finished strategic goals and key initiatives will emerge and then a funding plan will be created.

“We are pretty fortunate here. There are a lot of real strengths within this university. I don’t think on the other hand that there is not a single part of the university that thinks it can’t be better and I think that is more the orientation. How do all of us do in our roles in the university? How can we be more effective?” Gordon said.

The plan is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2007 with implementation following soon after.