Charting Our Course: Strategic Planning Approaches In Engineering And Technology

Changes in technology, advances in the professions, complexities in the external environment, and the need to continuously improve all require institutions of higher education to plan for the future. Strategic plans help provide direction and meaning to everyday activities within an organization. It is guided by the vision, mission, values, goals, and the relationships the organization has with key stakeholder groups. Strategic plans serve as a framework against which physical, fiscal, and human resources are allocated; courses, programs, and curricula are changed and/or created; decision-making occurs; organizational structures are changed; staffing decisions are made; faculty and staff development opportunities are provided; student recruitment, retention, and support activities are aligned; and program-, department-, and school-level objectives are developed. This paper discusses the importance of strategic planning in engineering and technology education, and describes the process used by one institution to chart its future. How strategic planning was undertaken, including involvement of relevant academic, professional, and industry stakeholder groups, is described. Ways to link strategic planning to continuous assessment, evaluation, and improvement are identified, and practical advice for initiating, reviewing, and implementing strategic plans is presented. Importance of Strategic Planning in Engineering and Technology Education Higher education, as a whole, is increasingly being asked to do more with less. State legislatures, policymakers, accrediting agencies, parents, employers, and even students themselves all expect postsecondary education institutions to deliver courses, programs, and services that add value to the economy, create and transmit knowledge, ensure employability, and provide a foundation for lifelong learning, among many other things. Professional schools, such as engineering and technology, must also adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace, defined P ge 903.1 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education" by the unique, and sometimes contradictory, needs of business, industry, and governmental organizations. 1, 2, 3 and 4 Faculty in engineering and technology face the daunting tasks of balancing teaching, research, and service activities, all while attempting to maintain currency in their respective technical specialty. Administrators in such environments face the challenging tasks of developing school, departmental, and program priorities, while seeking to align the activities of the specific academic unit to those of the broader campus. 5 Process Used for Strategic Planning Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is a large, urban institution serving 30,000 students, 1,900 full-time faculty, and operating with tremendous programmatic diversity. The twenty-plus academic units range from the traditional humanities, arts, and sciences to several professional schools (e.g. Engineering; Education; Business). Students are often first-generation college attendees; possess varying levels of academic preparedness; are largely commuter in nature; hold many adult social roles concurrent to their enrollment in postsecondary education; and persist to degree completion well beyond the typical 4to 6-year timeframe that is common at most largely residential institutions serving a more exclusively traditionally aged student population. This student and programmatic diversity is further complicated by IUPUI’s largely decentralized decision-making and budgeting approach. For example, the financial management system requires each academic unit to realize its own revenue streams (through tuition, state appropriations, indirect cost recovery from grants and contracts, and development/fundraising efforts); pay its direct costs (e.g. salaries); and pay for shared central services (e.g. Library resources) through a University-mandated tax. Against this backdrop of diversity, decentralization, and dynamic external marketplace conditions, the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI recently undertook its triennial strategic planning process. Because of the complexities of operating within the IUPUI organizational environment, coupled with advances in the engineering and technology professions, an updating of the strategic plan at regular intervals is required. In the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, the practice has been to revisit the strategic plan on a three-year basis, in order to provide a long enough time horizon for necessary changes to be implemented, yet short enough to account for changing and/or emerging expectations from our varied constituent groups. The process used for strategic planning in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI centered on six steps: (1) understanding the institutional context for planning; (2) conducting a situational analysis; (3) developing specific goals and objectives; (4) identifying internal champions; (5) prioritizing objectives and allocating resources; and (6) implementing the plan. 6 and 7