1. What this Innovative Practice does and how it works.

Strategic planning enables colleges and universities to consider where they have been, where they are, and where they want to be. It enables them to recognize their strengths, their challenges, and their opportunities for development—and to chart their future.

2. What motivated us to develop or adopt this Innovative Practice.

A change in leadership and a state-led emphasis on quality indicated the time was right for Missouri Western to develop its first formal strategic plan.

3. How long it took us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.

We developed our strategic plan in five stages over one year (2001). Each stage of planning widely involved campus and community participation, with over 400 campus and community individuals participating throughout all stages. Stage one (April-May) provided opportunity to shape the vision, mission, and values. With these important pieces in place, we held open forums (May-September) during which time we discussed, drafted , and determined strategic issues and goals. We identified seven areas of opportunity as critical to the future of Western. Individuals continued their work (September-October) by writing goals and objectives for each of the seven opportunities. In November, a writing committee drafted the strategic plan and received wide-based support from the institution and community to take it to the Board of Governors for approval. The Board approved the plan in December.

Following the five stages of developing the strategic plan, we became excited about its implementation over the next five years, beginning in 2002. We chose thirty campus and community individuals to serve on a Steering Committee to oversee this implementation. For each area of opportunity, we identified main or umbrella committees members to work on sub-committees and tasked them with helping to write specific action items for each of the goals and objectives. For each action item, the individuals responsible for implementation were identified and timelines established. Although the opportunities, goals, and objectives remained constant over the five years of implementation, action items provided flexibility and could change from year to year. The Steering Committee created an annual timeline with regular meetings established (8 or so a year) to receive progress reports from all areas of implementation. A strategic planning web page became critical for receiving and archiving reports, providing committee members, and meeting dates. We published and widely disseminated comprehensive annual progress reports in 2003-2007.

We recognized early that an effective implementation of the strategic plan required all units across the institution to develop unit plans aligned with the University plan. Units, colleges, and divisions provided annual reports, these posted to the strategic planning web pages. The annual progress reports became critical for assessing the accomplishments over each of the years of implementation and helped us to establish the action items (targets for improvement) for the next year. Special forums occurred at the beginning of each year during which the campus and community discussed the progress of the last year.

In 2003, we applied to and was admitted to AQIP on the basis of our continuous improvement through strategic planning. We made a deliberate decision to integrate AQIP into strategic planning. Our first three Action Projects originated directly from three areas of opportunity in the strategic plan: Applied Learning, Student Engagement, and Communicating Quality. Our Systems Portfolio (appraised in 2006) includes a matrix at the beginning of each Category that demonstrates the alignment of strategic planning goals and objectives important to a particular Category. The Appraisal Team identified this as a Significant Strength.

In the fifth implementation year of its first strategic plan, we developed our second five-year plan Building the New American Regional University. Building on the success of the first plan, we continued the same stages of planning, writing, and implementing the new plan. We continued to use the same committee structure, main or umbrella committees with co-chairs, sub-committees, and a Steering Committee that has oversight for continued implementation and annual progress reports, again at the unit, college, division, and institutional level. Upon successful completion of the three AQIP Action Projects, we launched another three, these again taken directly from areas of opportunity in the new plan: Building Graduate Programs, Enhancing Academic Quality through Critical Thinking, and Using Measurement and Assessment. To sustain our first Action Projects, we identified an area of opportunity in the new plan called Sustaining Institutional Accreditation Priorities.

4. What it cost us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.

Our leadership recognized early in planning that funding would be important to realizing the desired outcomes for our strategic planning goals and objectives and AQIP Action Projects. In the first year, we allocated $350,000 accessed by successful proposals and recommended to the President by the Strategic Planning Implementation Funding Committee. Subsequently, we allocated $100,000 annually for each of the three years of the Action Projects. Because we wanted to sustain Action Projects, once we completed their three years as formal projects, we put the $100,000 into base. We will have a new President in July 2008, who has indicated support for strategic planning and AQIP. He understands that the plan belongs to the institution and we have every reason to believe he will continue this funding. In the first year of implementing the new strategic plan, we have allocated $500,000 for strategic initiatives, including $100,000 to each of the three new AQIP Action Projects.

5. What resistance we faced in developing and implementing this Innovative Practice, and how we reduced or overcome it.

The only real resistance to strategic planning came early in the first stages of developing the plan, this easily overcome once it became clear that we had committed to its implementation, involved the institution broadly in that implementation, funded important priorities, and established a clear plan and structure for implementation. Because we had involved people widely in creating the plan, they felt ownership. Faculty, staff, and students who had not actively participated in developing the plan became involved at the unit level and over time committed more fully to continuous improvement through implementation of the strategic plan.

6. What it costs us to maintain and operate this Innovative Practice, and what it saves us.

As indicated earlier, we began by committing $350,000 annually to strategic planning goals and objectives, increasing that to $500,000 annually for the second strategic plan. The launching and successful completion of the first three three-year AQIP Projects attest to successful results in the areas of Applied Learning, Student Engagement, and Communicating Quality. We believe that the three current Action Projects in Enhancing Academic Quality through Critical Thinking, Building Graduate Programs, and Using Measurement and Assessment will also be completed successfully due, in part, to funding the attainment of goals and objectives. While we have a good idea of what it costs us to maintain our strategic planning and integrated AQIP initiatives, we have not calculated any savings through overall efficiencies gained across the institution.

7. How we measure or check whether this Innovative Practice performs the way we intend it to.

We publish an annual Progress Report that describes strategic planning goals and objectives as 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent to goals and objectives. We have been able to chart that progress over the five years of implementing the first plan and continue to do so with the second plan. We have developed matrices that show this progress and overall alignment to AQIP Categories in our Systems Portfolio.

Probably the single most important indicator of successful performance comes through multiple reports throughout implementation years of action items completed in relation to strategic goals and objectives. The Steering Committee receives these reports about seven times a year from implementation co-chairs of all strategic planning areas of opportunity.

8. Print or web documents available that provide more detail and explanation about this Innovative Practice.

http://www.missouriwestern.edu/StrategicPlan/stratplan.pdf

http://www.missouriwestern.edu/Masterplan/Final%20Strategic%20Plan/stratplan.pdf

We maintain a non-public strategic planning web site where we archive documents relating to strategic planning and will be glad to share some of these with interested groups.

9. How our organization currently uses this Innovative Practice.

We know that we become the vision that guides us, and we have discovered that strategic planning focuses our success in realizing that vision. In our first strategic plan, we envisioned setting the standard for excellence in student development and community leadership. In our second five-year plan, we have built onto this vision by seeing ourselves as setting the standard of excellence for the new American regional university focused on the development of students as learners, as persons, and as citizens through applied learning, and on the development of the region through applied research and service. This guiding image of success helps the institution and community to commit to shared expectations, aspirations, and performance. Looking five years into the future allows us to anticipate needs, resources, and challenges, and to react to them proactively.

10. Whom one should contact at our institution for more information or help about this Innovative Practice.

Jeanie C. Crain, Ph.D.

Special Assistant to the President

Professor of English

Missouri Western State University

4525 Downs Drive

St. Joseph, MO 64507

St. Joseph, MO 64507

St. Joseph, MO 64507

St. Joseph, MO 64507

Telephone: 816.271.5997;Fax:816.271.5982

Email: crain@missouriwestern.edu

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