Strategic Plan 2002 - 2007
PREFACE
In order to meet with confidence the needs of its students, faculty and staff, as well as the Morgantown community, the region, state, and nation, now and in the future, the College of Creative Arts, West Virginia University, has undertaken a disciplined and comprehensive strategic planning process. In a highly participatory and collegial fashion, the Dean, Division Chairs, faculty, staff, and students have looked back on where the College has been, assessed its current condition, envisioned a future that will best serve its constituents and external stakeholders (parents, alumni/alumnae, legislators, and friends). The purpose was to create a structure to align daily activities with our five-year Strategic Plan and to focus on allocating resources to secure that future.
To accomplish this critical task, the College identified its Strategic Planning Team as a joint committee comprised of the Executive Committee and the Partnership Council, supported by the Dean and an outside consultant. Throughout the planning process, every effort was made to solicit a wide range of input. Through presentations to the College and through Division meetings and small work groups of undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty, everyone was kept fully informed of the progress in the planning process and invited to comment on the process and its results.
No strategic plan can offer a certain picture of the future. Instead, a strategic plan is a systematic effort to define critical issues and to allocate resources to increase the likelihood of achieving the best possible future state for an organization. For the College of Creative Arts, the planning process has made it possible to take a hard and disciplined look at the environment in which we operate and the resources–human, physical, and financial–available to us. It has helped us to define the strengths and weaknesses of the College, the larger environment in which it operates, the principal challenges that it may face, and the opportunities from which it may be able to benefit.
A strategic plan is much more than merely an aggregation of Divisional plans or a budget extrapolation. Rather, a well-conceived plan defines a shared perspective that can:
- Establish and focus the College’s purpose so that resources–people, time, money–can be appropriately allocated;
- Serve as a rallying point for everyone;
- Persuasively communicate the College’s focus and direction to stakeholders, thus enhancing the likelihood of ongoing support;
- Provide a logical system for defining structure and differentiating tasks and roles;
- To clarify how performance is linked to the Mission and Vision as defined below;
- Strengthen the significance of every position in the College by making clear its contribution to the Mission and Vision;
- Provide a framework that contributes to consistency and coherence in day-to-day decisions;
- Ensure that planning decisions are driven by agreed-upon outcomes rather than by demands or opportunities of the moment;
- Help to secure consensus and accountability concerning measures for tracking progress and accomplishment;
- Enhance a collegial environment through a greater understanding of the overarching College purpose.
The principal elements in the Strategic Plan are:
- The Mission, which defines the College of Creative Arts in terms of the programs and services it provides and the people to whom those programs and services are provided;
- The Vision, which identifies the goals of the Strategic Plan to which the College is committed;
- The Values and Guiding Principles, which offer direction and provide for accountability as to how the faculty, staff, administrators, and students of the College, as responsible citizens of the University, the community, the state, and the nation, will perform and interact in fulfilling the promise of the Mission and Vision;
- The Strategic Priorities, which identify the key concerns that focus on the College’s resources;
- The Strategic Outcomes, which define the results the College must achieve, based on choices among its strategic priorities, in order to move firmly and progressively towards the accomplishment of its Vision;
- The Annual Plan, which aligns the strategic outcomes with daily activities and provides a systematic way of tracking progress and accomplishment.
In summary, a Strategic Plan aligns and unites administration, faculty, staff, and students by clarifying what is accepted, what is expected, and what is important. It gives everyone associated with the College of Creative Arts a common direction and common guidelines for setting priorities and making decisions. This focuses energy, resources, and actions on getting agreed-upon outcomes and minimizes disagreements. And when disagreements arise, the elements of the plan–particularly the Vision and Values–help determine how to proceed.
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