About study and survey findings:

The Southern Association for Schools and Colleges as well as numerous professional accrediting bodies for SSU’s professional programs, has been pleading for years that planning objectives should derive, at least in part, from empirical analysis of prior practices in the organization. The guiding assumption of accreditation review is that the organization studies and evaluates its past performance, identifies aspects of that performance that are not meeting expectations, and sets out to devise plans to rectify or improve performance on those dimensions. It is for this purpose that SACS has for many years stressed the role of evaluation throughout its accreditation processes.

The focus is understandable. It is the key to a rational organization. Study what is going on and fix what is not working right. But, ironically, it is on just this requirement that most schools falter during their SACS accreditation review. Folks persist in developing initiatives unsubstantiated by prior analysis and evaluation. Folks continue to provide compelling analysis that is not followed by new planned initiatives for change. The situation is as if the organizational brain is somehow bipolar: the portion that analyzes can’t plan into the future while the portion that plans can’t bother with prior analysis and evaluation.

SSU’s Strategic Planner facilitates developing planning objectives congruent with formal findings from prior study by posting findings from prior studies as well as from prior functional task and planning objective evaluation directly in the Strategic Planning data base where they may be linked directly to new planning objectives with a click of the mouse.

Whenever any formal study within SSU is brought to light, its findings are listed in the Strategic Planner on the Study/Survey Findings screens. Results of evaluation and analysis of prior planning and functional behavior are retained in the Strategic Planner.

A word of caution: No new planning objective should be launched and supported unless it is rationalized first by linking to some appropriate and compelling finding from prior institutional experience. Unit leaders, supervisors, and the budgeting authority need observe this formality if they wish to sail through SSU’s next accreditation review. If these linkages are observed and made overt in the Strategic Planner, it will be a trivial task to generate from the data base a comprehensive list showing the connections of all planning efforts to prior evaluation and analytical work on the occasion of our accrediting review.