TC Works on Strategic Plan
The Teachers College community is being asked to participate in formulating a shared vision for the future of the College and to determine how that vision can be implemented.
The Teachers College community is being asked to participate in
formulating a shared vision for the future of the College and to
determine how that vision can be implemented. To streamline the
process, Kaludis Consulting, a firm that works with higher education
institutions on strategic planning, has been brought in. John Stevens,
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the company and
Gwenn Weaver, Senior Associate, have been meeting with members of the
community, the senior staff and the Trustees to discuss what can be
expected over the next few years.Strategic Planning on the web, The
Strategic Planning Web site (www.tc.edu/strategic-planning), gives
members of the TC Community more than a place to learn about the school
wide initiative and keep informed about its progress, it also provides
an outlet to interact with the process. A message from President
Levine, FAQ's and newsletters are flanked by discussion groups open to
members of the TC Community to discuss the issues affecting the school.
"Strategic planning started with the Chinese military," Stevens
noted. "It was used for centuries and became something that businesses
used in a formal way in the last century. Higher education and
government started using strategic plans in the mid-1900s."The
process, he said, has shifted from being a centralized process that was
limited to a "cadre of people who were highly skilled and trained" to
being a more open and participatory process. While the strategic plan
itself will emerge into a written document, Stevens noted that the
document is simply a frame of reference and that the process of
planning must be ongoing. To develop the plan, Stevens said, there are
five phases. TC is currently in the first phase since March 2002. "The
first phase is what we call process design," Stevens said. "We
interview as many people in the institution one-on-one or in groups so
we get an understanding of the culture of the institution." Members of
the community are asked to come up with strategic questions that link
internal operations with external factors over which the college has
little or no control. For example, such a question might be: "What
academic programs should TC offer (internal operations) to respond to
the changing demographic composition of prospective students (external
environment)?" These strategic questions will be organized into
categories by a group of stakeholders-which include faculty, staff,
students, alumni, trustees, people from the local community, businesses
and other university partners. To date, several hundred strategic
issues have been collected. "Anyone from the campus can look at the
list of issues on the Web site to determine if what they think should
be there is there," Stevens said. "They can also
add an issue to the list." Phase I ends in October with a stakeholders
conference and a presentation of the process to the trustees.As Phase
II begins, a steering committee and task forces begin training
sessions. The community will be kept up to date and asked for feedback
through three open campus meetings. The main thrust of Phase II is for
the working groups to receive their charges and develop strategies to
answer them. Each group will be asked to begin preparing the document
that describes the College's vision in one particular area. By the
third open campus meeting, the groups will present a draft of the
reports they have prepared for feedback from the community. "The key
element to the process," Stevens stressed, "is that it is open,
transparent and participatory."Then Phase III begins in approximately
March of 2003, when the steering committee pulls out common themes for
the College and determines which are most important, which are less
important and how those themes work together. "The end result of that
discussion is that we have a very rough first outline about what the
strategic agenda for Teachers College should look like," Stevens said.
That outline is revised four to five times by the steering committee
and the president until they agree that they have come up with the best
possible future for TC. Then another open campus meeting is held and
more adjustments are made before the agenda is presented to the
trustees for their approval. "The trustees are constantly involved in
the process all the way along," said Stevens. "So they know how
everything is going, and they are not surprised by the document they
receive at the end of Phase III."Phase IV begins May 2003, and ends in
September. In this phase, an operational planning team will prepare a
document that will outline a plan for implementing the strategic
agenda. This operational plan will spell out the steps that will be
necessary-including programs, budgets, time-lines, and responsible
parties-to implement each part of the strategic plan and to ensure that
the plan is carried out. "For each action step, there is a capital
budget, an operating budget, revenue source, responsible party,
timeline and measurement," Stevens explained.By September of 2003,
Phase V, the implementation phase, should be starting. At this point,
TC will begin to take action on its strategic plan. The measurement
system that is set up will indicate if each step has been taken and how
things are progressing. "When most institutions fail at strategic
planning, they fail because they have not tied their vision to the
operations of the institution," Stevens said. "Our process is focused
on ensuring that the ball doesn't get dropped."
Published Monday, Feb. 3, 2003
