Savannah State University
Self-Study & Strategic Planning Model
for Academic Departments & Colleges
IRP November, 1999

(Note: The"Self-Study & Strategic Planning Model" is a comprehensive "default" model including exercises useful to develop a comprehensive yet practical strategic plan and yet prepare summary template sheets for University review. A systematic, wide grass-roots process should be used to develop an integrated departmental self-study and strategic plan: all members of the department must have an opportunity to be involved in its construction. The department head/chair is accountable for delivering copies of the completed draft plan to her or his Dean and to the SACS steering committee by the specified deadline. The SACS steering committee will place draft plans on its web site for review by appropriate SACS sub-committees, the Deans Council, the Academic Vice President, and the President's Cabinet. Recommendations by reviewers will be returned to departments for consideration in preparing a revised plan. Throughout this document, the term "department" is intended to signify any single academic and budget unit, including all the various majors and/or services provided or performed by that department.)

1. Guiding Values, Beliefs, Assumptions & Attitudes: List 6-12 most important guiding principles subscribed to by professionals in your department. These are the academic and educational values, beliefs, assumptions, & attitudes held in common by the faculty for whom you are designing a strategic plan. These statements should be about things that matter collectively and specifically for the disciplines and/or knowledge domains represented in your department-ideas that typically influence how practitioners in the disciplines undertake problem identification, problem-solving, and judgement-forming. Often, these principles underlie and define professional organizations to which members of the department may belong and may be found published in relevant by-laws or ethics codes. (E.g.: American Historical Association; American Management Association, etc.) Alternatively, they may be developed through brain-storming sessions with department employees. It is critical that any important hidden assumptions or beliefs should surface and not remain covert.

2. Vision Statement: Specify how in five years the learning experience at SSU will have become better and different as a result of your department's work. Craft a single sentence in the future-perfect tense ("...{noun} will have {verb} {object}...") that describes how, in an ideal world, the community will have become better off as a result of your department doing a highly effective job with truly outstanding results. How will the university and its students have been advantaged by your department's successful performance? Create a more positive future by first imagining and visualizing it before planning and acting.

3. Clients, Students, Beneficiaries Identified: Specify explicitly who are the primary intended recipients or beneficiaries of the services or functions of your department. Who exactly are the learning arrangements in your department intended to support and whose goals are they intended to fulfill? (E.g.: all entering students; students seeking graduate schools; students interested in cutting-edge science; students desiring leadership roles in government; etc.) What attributes ("predictors") of these beneficiaries can be identified in advance to assist in recruiting and attracting more appropriate students?

4. Comprehensive Learning Plan Developed: Specify the learning arrangements (curriculum & pedagogy) provided by your department for its clients at the present time. Does a comprehensive plan integrate curriculum, pedagogy, technology, testing, outcome measures, and student success goals for each learning plan in the department? Do learning plans incorporate relevant skills in active learning, communication, group processes, diversity, research, writing, etc. If not, when will it be available? (Note: comprehensive learning plans should address system wide, university-wide, college-wide, and departmental learning goals .)

5. Competitors Identified: Identify what other institutions and departments (either inside or outside the university), might provide (nearly) the same learning arrangements for your students if your department were unable to do so.

6. Comparative Advantage: Describe how and in what way the learning arrangements provided by your department are better for students than they would be if provided by competitors identified above. What unique competencies or skills important to your students do employees in your department foster that may be lacking in the work of other departments or institutions? How are our students better off than they would be if one of the possible competitors provided the same service? How do you know?

7. Mission or Purpose Statement*: Drawing on the above exercises, identify in no more than a single paragraph (a sentence would be better) what specific learning is to be fostered by the department; for whom the learning is intended; and in what way(s) is the learning unique, different, and distinctive-in terms that are important to the students attending SSU. Answer the question "Exactly what learning do we provide here?" Paste it on the wall or over the entrance like a slogan. [As you develop your department's mission statement, check to see what students and other institutional stakeholders-including your Dean and colleagues from other departments- think your mission should be; do not rely solely on perspectives from inside the department and compile documentary evidence of your investigation.]

8. Department Positioning Statement: How exactly will SSU's stakeholders come to believe that this department is the single most effective and efficient supplier of these learning arrangements available to them anywhere? That is, what observable behavior by faculty and staff in your department will lead students to believe in the basic effectiveness and efficiency of the department? Remember: SSU no longer has a "lock" on the market like it once did; students now easily can vote with their feet and go to the institution that they think is best positioned to help them achieve their own goals. [Idea: You might, either through creative role-playing or open inquiry among peers, investigate how similar learning arrangements are provided by SSU's closest competitors.]

9. Department Cost (Budget), Staff Competencies, & Production (Output):

1. Resources: How has the total budget available for this department changed over the last decade? [Breakdown by major category: personnel, equipment, supplies, etc.]
2. Staffing: How many faculty and staff have been employed in the department each year over the past decade? Who is employed there now? List what unique skills, competencies, or training each current employee has that makes him/her particularly valuable for the department's function. Are current employees the best available for the assignment? If not, what staff development plans are underway to make them so? Are current job descriptions available and accurate?
3. Production: How many units of production (courses, student credit hours, graduates, etc.) have been processed each year over the past decade?

10. Base Performance (Effectiveness) Indicators*: Devise six specific sets of performance indicators for monitoring and judging the basic effectiveness of your department and collect data over time to document and support findings. While you work towards collecting 10-year trends, review what information is available now.

1. Cost Efficiency: What is the cost per unit of production over time? (E.g.: What is the average cost of producing a student credit hour? What is the average cost of developing a successful graduate?)
2. Time Efficiency: What is the average cycle time for students to complete degrees, programs, or processes over time? (Note: Focus on empirical findings, not planned intentions. E.g.: How long does it really take a student to complete the Regents' examination requirement? On average, how long does it take students to complete the program in electrical engineering? On average, how long does it take a student to be properly counseled or advised?) Hint: focus especially on real time required from students to meet institutional requirements.
3. Staff Productivity: How much production (student credit hour; enrolled students) is obtained per faculty member annually?
4. Customer Satisfaction*: What do your students notice and say about your on-going service and the way it is delivered? Remember, in the service business, customer perception is the only reality. (Use formal focus groups or attitude surveys; you cannot afford to guess at this but must really find out.) Track information over time. Is satisfaction increasing or decreasing?
5. Benchmark Standards: what are industry standards & stars (norms or averages; outstanding targets) for A-D and how do SSU's learning arrangements compare?
• Higher Education? Collect norms for similar curricula in GA public institutions or for SSU's immediate competitors and demonstrate comparisons
• Other Industry? Collect norms for similar curricula in other types of institutions or settings and demonstrate comparisons. (E.g.: How long does it take for folks to gain similar learning in private industry? In the military? In proprietary and trade colleges?)

11. Initiative Responsiveness*: In recent years, a variety of expectations and/or demands have been placed upon SSU by different agents and agencies requiring important change and development. Review each of those sets of expectations and describe in what way your department has responded or is responding to each of the sets of expectations or demands as they relate to the activities of your department. Documents identifying these initiatives are all available on the IRP planning web site located at: http://168.20.194.37/

1. Last SACS Accreditation Report (1990)
2. Board of Regents' Strategic Goals (1996)
3. SSU's last Strategic Plan (1997)
4. President Brown's Vision Statements (1998)

12: Results of Prior Planning; Program Review; Constraints & Limits: In previous planning cycles, your department likely has identified specific goals and/or outcomes towards which it has been working. Further, the University's Program Review Process has identified strengths and weaknesses of your programs both compared to others within the university and in terms of critical dimensions of academic program excellence. Review these findings and the effectiveness and/or efficiency with which prior intended goals have been achieved and identify or explain the source of any constraints and/or limitations imposed by the department's context that may inhibit the ability of your department to effectively and efficiently achieve its goals.

13. Curricular Integration & Overlap: How well is your department, its curriculum, and its scheduling embedded in and coordinated with the overall University?

1. In scheduling courses in your department, what arrangements are made to coordinate scheduling with other departments to ensure that students can enroll in an appropriate set of courses each semester to complete programs in a timely way? Identify those trans-department interactions, relationships, or transactions that could be improved to enhance the overall effectiveness of the university.
2. Some departments may offer courses or learning modules highly similar to those provided by your department. Identify departments offering courses/modules that substantially duplicate or overlap learning offered by your own department; identify those courses or learning modules that seem to be duplicated or to overlap. (E.g.: How many departments on campus teach introductory courses in statistics, research methods, or technical writing?)

14. Planning Objectives: List the five highest-priority goals or objectives that should be undertaken over the next 12-18 months to more effectively or more efficiently accomplish the mission of your department. Caution: the objectives should not be random personal preferences of individuals. Rather, they should be your department's initiatives directed towards vitalizing one of the following items which have been agreed upon by members of the department as well as the Dean to whom the department reports:

1. Improve the performance indicators identified above.
2. Enhance the initiative responses described above.
3. Cultivate some comparative advantage over competitors.
4. Strengthen curricular integration or eliminate overlap in some fashion.

15. Action Steps, Tactics, or Operational Steps: Specify exactly and specifically what steps will be taken (identify behavior), by whom (fix responsibility), and at what time (fix due dates) to accomplish each separate objective outlined above. What results are expected from these steps?

16: Outcome Effectiveness Measures*: Describe exactly what specific, overt outcomes or consequences are expected to rise from each plan, tactic, or step identified above, and show how these will be measured and compared with appropriate benchmarks or industry norms. Hint: when developing action plans (above), plan measurable outcomes that can document whether and the extent to which each of your actions accomplishes the intended goals. Be alert, also, to any unintended or negative consequences of your plans that may be experienced.

17: University Implications: Predict (as well as you can) just how the plans, tactics, and steps you will undertake (steps 14-15) might affect or influence other key processes or departments on campus. Whose assistance will your department require to effect these plans? How will other departments be influenced, impacted, or inconvenienced by any of these plans? What can be done to ameliorate any negative influence and magnify any positive influences of your department's plans? Exactly how will students be advantaged? Describe in particular the budgetary or enrollment (recruiting and/or retention) implications expected from any initiatives.

• Budget:
• Enrollment Management:
• Purchasing:
• Facilities:
• Library:
• Academic Support:
• Student Support:
• Academic Affairs:
• Students:
• Other?

Invitation: The office of Institutional Research & Planning as well as members of the SACS Steering Committee and the Institutional Effectiveness Committee are prepared, at your request, to offer advice, counsel, and guidance in the preparation of your department's self-study and strategic plan. For assistance, please contact them via e-mail or office phone-before of the due-dates!.

M. Crow, Institutional Research & Planning
Dr. Wright, Dr. Goings, SACS Steering Committee
Dr. Hahn, Dr. Blood, Institutional Effectiveness Committee

______________

* [SACS Critical; all members of your department should understand and be able to recite the department's mission statement in their own words, describe how effectiveness is monitored in the department, know how the department is responding to institutional initiatives, and understand the general goals of integration and coordination across the University. Furthermore, they should all agree! SACS visitors may well test us. Our own SACS Effectiveness committee is expected to review and react to these various items with compelling recommendations.]