The following Strategic Planning Report will demonstrate that the educational program, educational services, financial and physical resources and administrative process of the University are adequate and appropriate to ensure that the University fulfills its stated purpose.

The current planning process conforms to the University’s administrative structure. The President is responsible for developing the University's final plan. There are ten planning units at the institution and they direct their goals and objectives through respective vice presidents for approval to the President's Planning Group, which synthesizes their reports and develops the final plan which is then presented to the President for final approval. The President’s Planning Group consists of the President, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Vice President for Business and Finance, the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Deans of the Colleges of Business Administrative, Liberal Arts Sciences and Sciences and Technology, the Assistant to the President, the Director of Planning and Institutional Research, and the chairperson of Learning Support.

Each planning unit determines the planning process within that unit and is encouraged to have broad-based involvement and to base unit plans on the University purpose and goals. For example, academic planning takes place in the Academic Vice President's Council which consists of all unit heads which report to the Vice President.

Planning then, logically proceeds from unit faculty and/or staff to unit level planning to planning unit heads to the President's Planning Group to the President, who submits the completed University Plan to the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia.

The President’s Planning Group is the unit which advises the President on the assessment of institutional effectiveness. The President chairs the meetings of the President’s Planning Group. The President’s Planning Group seeks to ascertain how the University can become more effective in implementing its mission, and develops specific ways by which effectiveness can be determined. The ultimate authority for institutional effectiveness is clearly within the purview of the President. In the dispatch of this authority, the President relies on the advice of the President’s Planning Group. The Committee on Institutional Effectiveness (CIE), with a chairperson as its head, functions as staff to the President’s Planning Group. All planning goals are developed to be consistent with the goals of the University which are established to fulfill the mission or purpose of the University. The President sets the purpose and goals of the University, after being advised by the members of the President’s Planning Group and the college faculty; then the Chancellor approves them, and finally by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.