education strategic plan example

Ensure your strategic plan succeeds with your educational partners’ input

September 29, 2023

Sarah Mathias

Strategic planning in education – 3 keys to success.

Effective strategic planning is critical for creating positive change in your district. Among the many benefits, strategic plans align educational partners with a shared vision, mission, and values; promote productive decision-making; and help students reach their full potential.

While having a plan in place will usually improve results, strategic planning can present challenges—resulting in endless meetings, countless goal and tactic revisions, and plans that are never fully realized.

In this post, we explore strategic planning in education, touch on some K-12 planning tips, and share three best practices for making strategic planning successful in your school district. With your community’s insights and the right tools, you can win at strategic planning. Here’s how.

In this Article

• What is Strategic Planning in Education?

Strategic planning tips for K12

See thoughtexchange in action — explore the product tour, what is strategic planning in education.

Strategic planning is the process of setting goals, deciding on actions to achieve those goals, and mobilizing the resources needed to take those actions. A strategic plan describes how goals will be achieved using available resources.

While the concept initially stemmed from business practices due to people moving from the private sector into educational leadership positions, many strategic planning tools and paradigms have been adapted to focus on engagement and consensus.

This is because effective strategic planning requires community support at the school district level, both functionally and legislatively. School districts of all sizes use strategic planning to improve student outcomes and respond to changing demographics while staying within the given funding box.

In top-performing schools, leaders have proactively shifted their strategic planning process to include their educational partners. They know that their strategic plans are more likely to succeed with community support and the insights that come with community engagement.

Strategic planning is key to setting students up for success in K-12 and beyond. A solid strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission, and values, increasing engagement while providing a framework to ensure students’ needs are met so they can reach their full potential.

Your strategic plan will benefit from your district’s input. Here are a few effective ways to engage your district in K-12 strategic planning.

Tap into your educational partners’ wisdom

Your educational partners have valuable insights. Consult teachers, staff, students , parents, and community members throughout the planning process, so your strategy aligns with their perspectives.

Whether you’re setting strategy at the district, school, or department level, consulting diverse participants will uncover unbiased insights, enhance trust and buy-in, and ensure greater success with new strategic directions.

Using ThoughtExchange , leaders can scale their engagement to efficiently and effectively include their community in their district strategic plans.

Use climate surveys

Completed by all students, parents/guardians, and staff, school climate surveys allow leaders to collect participants’ perceptions about issues like school safety, bullying, and mental health and well-being, as well as the general school environment.

ThoughtExchange Surveys get you both nuanced qualitative and robust quantitative data with instant in-depth analysis, ensuring your district understands all angles of school climate. Run surveys independently or combine them with Exchanges for faster, more accurate results.

• Collect benchmark comparisons while tracking and measuring improvements over time
• Gather quality quantitative data for reporting to state agencies or funders
• Identify outliers and trends across demographic groups

Put in some face time with town halls, meetings, or listening tours

In-person gatherings like town halls, meetings, and listening tours are effective ways to understand your educational partners’ wants and needs to ensure they line up with your strategic priorities.

When managed effectively, they give staff and other educational partners the chance to closely interact. In-person gatherings can build trust and morale, promote transparency, and help create a sense of purpose.

Leverage community engagement platforms

Community engagement software lets you streamline your community engagement initiatives. It allows education leaders to gather feedback and get tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people on the same page in just days. It also facilitates candid, collaborative community conversations that help districts realize their goals.

A comprehensive community engagement platform like ThoughtExchange allows you to integrate your strategy with your community and take decisive, supported action in less time. It provides planning, scheduling, and analysis tools to help you quickly set strategy and monitor execution.

3 keys to strategic planning success

1. get everyone on the same page.

Make sure your educational partners are on the same page by allowing them to contribute to and shape your strategy from the start. Lack of alignment about what strategy involves can hinder even the best plans. So the first step in creating a successful strategic plan is getting everyone involved to provide their insights and opinions.

Letting your people know you’re listening and that their insights affect decisions, builds trust and buy-in. Your community will be much more likely to support—not sabotage—a strategy or decision.

2. Be a collaborative leader

According to ThinkStrategic , creating a school strategic plan should always be a collaborative process. Avoiding a top-down approach and getting input from educational partners will help minimize blind spots and unlock collective intelligence. It will also ensure everyone is committed to the plan. Get all community members involved in how to make the most of the school’s possibilities.

Commit to becoming a collaborative leader and put a plan in place to ensure you can achieve that goal. That may include implementing technology that can support scaled, real-time discussion safely and inclusively for students, teachers, and other educational partners.

3. Get a holistic view of your district

Getting a holistic view of your educational partners’ wants and needs helps you build more inclusive, supported strategic plans.

Depend on a platform that meets all your engagement needs in one place—from surveys to Exchanges—and allows you to consult more people in an inclusive, anti-biased environment. You’ll reduce the time and resources spent on town halls and meetings, and reach your district’s goals more efficiently and effectively.

Engagement and survey software has been proven to contribute to more effective strategic planning in education. It empowers leaders to run and scale unbiased engagement initiatives where they can learn what the people who matter really think— explore ThoughtExchange success stories to learn more .

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5 Steps To Highly Effective Strategic Planning In Higher Education (FREE template)

A crystal clear strategic plan can be the big difference between becoming the leading university… VERSUS ending up at the bottom. You know - where you struggle to attract students, the right staff members or even funds to support your institution.

So, in order to achieve your university’s goals, you need to learn how to build an effective strategic plan. 

In this blog post, we will reveal:

• The #1 reason university strategies fail
• The overlooked role of a strategic plan for higher ed
• The 5-step process you can follow to build a plan with your team

What is strategic planning in higher education? 

Strategic planning is the process an institution follows to realize its vision of its ideal future state. It’s a roadmap for getting there. Your vision becomes a reality through the process that defines specific goals, needs, and actions. It helps you to structure and contextualize information leading to important decisions. 

Sounds obvious, right? 

So, the question is:

Why do so many universities fail at strategic planning?

Because they forgot what the main role of a strategic plan is.

Most universities and colleges work on some form of strategic planning, but they usually come out as a 28-page PDF. They create an impressive presentation with shiny headings, upload it to their website and consider themselves successful. 

The end result is a ‘strategic plan’ that serves more as a marketing brochure and less like a roadmap to success.

What’s wrong with this usual approach?

Most vice-chancellors and vice presidents are not even aware of what they are losing. Staff members and faculty members work in silos with no focus on the big picture. Departmental plans are unaligned with the overall strategic plan. This leads to inefficiency, wasted resources, and things getting missed.

Clearly, this approach lacks the organization and accountability necessary for success. As a result, some institutions are losing their reputation, while others are losing program accreditation, experiencing declining student success, or having fewer funds available.

Sometimes all of the above. 

Strategic planning goes beyond ambitious and attractive presentations that describe the organization’s state in the next 5, 10 or more years.

Now let's take a closer look...

What is the real purpose of the strategic plan in higher education?

Your first and foremost goal should be to stay true to the promises you made to your stakeholders.

Think of your strategic plan as the foundation to achieve your long-term goals.

It’s supposed to help you translate high-level ambitions into tangible actions at a departmental level. Furthermore, it organizes everyone so that they can do those actions and report on them in a systematic and transparent manner. 

It serves as a guiding light for your staff, allowing them to focus on the things that drive real progress towards the university's strategic goals. 

On top of that, it’s an important resource for planning your yearly budget allocation. Even in the most difficult financial times, integrating strategic planning and budgeting throughout the organization creates opportunities for success.

It's obvious, isn't it? You need to stop treating your strategic plan as merely a glorified marketing document.

What are the 5 steps in the strategic planning process?

This five-step process will help you to craft a strategic plan that goes beyond marketing and delivers on promised results.

1. Understand your current situation

An effective planning process starts with a thorough understanding of your current situation. 

You can start by asking these questions: 

• What are our core competencies?
• Which important KPIs are trending over the last few years upwards? 
• Where do we notice a drop in performance? What led to this drop?
• Where do we want to be in 5 or 10 years?
• Do we need to develop new programs?
• How do we get there? 
• What external factors can impact us in the future?

Search for answers and go deep into every department and aspect of your institution. From financial health and university rankings to student enrollment, retention rates, and placement rates.

Next, understand the expectations and needs of your internal and external stakeholders.

Remember, top-down approach doesn’t work for universities. Higher education institutions are highly interconnected with their community and shouldn’t neglect its interest when making strategic decisions.

Collect feedback from every stakeholder group whose expectations affect your performance:

• Alumni members
• Faculty members & campus community
• Community groups
• Senior administrators
• External partnerships

Include their input into planning and translate it into the institution’s major goals. Embrace this collaborative approach and prevent too many unexpected "buts" in the future.

Don’t forget that you’re only collecting information at this stage, not brainstorming solutions or action plans. 

‍ Cascade tip:

The SWOT analysis framework  is still one of the most effective methods for evaluating internal operations and the external environment. Be honest and thorough in your evaluation. You can use it numerous times through strategic planning but you should start early in the planning process.

2. Lead with vision and values

Your university's vision is a part of its identity and a powerful latent tool.

Higher ed institutions of any size can utilize it, but they usually don’t. They don’t believe that people care about the big picture or that it affects the university's daily operations.

However, a clear and unique vision statement will set you apart from the competition and make you more memorable to potential students. They will know exactly what to expect from studying at your university and why they should come. 

At the same time, it gives a strong sense of pride and belonging to current students, faculty, and alumni. It becomes an emblem that attracts the right students, staff members, and funding opportunities. 

Here’s  an example  of a vision statement for the university: 

We will work as one Oxford bringing together our staff, students and alumni, our colleges, faculties, departments and divisions to provide world-class research and education.

- University of Oxford

You can take it one step further and include your institutional mission statement. 

And don’t forget about the values. They define your university’s culture. They determine how people act, which behaviors are praised and which are condemned. 

When you build a culture intentionally, then everyone inside and outside your school knows what you stand for, reinforcing all the benefits of a harnessed vision.

Cascade tip:

One of the biggest blockers to the successful execution of a strategic plan is the attempt to accomplish too much at once.  Creating a Vision Statement  will help you to avoid that trap right from the start. It becomes your north star guiding your strategy. It will be easier for you to identify what is relevant and worthy of your attention versus what isn't.

3. Concentrate your strategic planning efforts on key areas

There's a problem most presidents and strategic planning committees face: they don't define the real focus of their plans. 

You see, you can’t achieve everything, everywhere, all at once.

Your resources are limited, and you should prioritize accordingly. 

I’m glad you followed the first two steps. Now you have all the information you need to identify the biggest and most urgent challenges your university faces.

Clarifying the obstacles ahead of time helps you prioritize your strategic goals and develop focused efforts to achieve them.

For example, let’s say you’re creating a 5-year strategic plan. Here are some key focus groups you might want to focus on: 

• Provide superb undergraduate experience 
• Ensure graduate education and lifetime learning 
• Increase community engagement 
• Increase research excellence 
• Optimize financial resources

Focus areas help you decide what falls outside the university's priorities and prioritize your strategic planning efforts. 

We usually suggest creating between 3 to 5 Focus Areas. Any fewer and they will probably be too vague. Any more, and well..... you lose your focus. Dive deeper into focus areas with this  guide . 

4. Translate plan into tangible actions

This is the part that turns your strategic plan into reality. 

If you ever want to achieve your goals, you need to break down the plan into smaller, granular pieces specific to each department. Start by adding strategic objectives to your focus areas. 

The secret to  writing great strategic objectives  is simplicity and specificity. Avoid jargon and use a verb to indicate action. Accompany it with a deadline and preferably an owner (or two).

Here is an example:

Increase citations per faculty by 5% by May 2024, owned by Jane Doe.

The next step is to migrate from goal-setting to action-planning with projects. Projects describe what you’ll do to accomplish your objectives.

Projects  articulate a set of actions within a certain timeline. They include specific tasks, milestones, dependencies and dates (deadlines). Every objective should include at least one project or action-like event. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve any progress towards it.

Of course, nothing is so linear, but this process forces you to come up with action plans to support every strategic initiative and allocate funds and your staff’s time appropriately.

One of the most important steps in the planning process is to take the high-level plan and break it down into tangible actions at the departmental level. 

Cascade  helps you to achieve that with  planning models completely customizable  to your strategic planning approach. 

You can create a university-wide strategic plan and then break it down into  portfolio or departmental plans.  Clarify their goals, projects and key metrics. Collaborate with your teams to build multiple inter-connected plans and tie them back to the overall plan.

You get complete  visibility into how different plans or projects are connected  and contribute to the overall strategic plan. 

5. Don’t forget to measure progress

There is no perfect strategic planning for higher education (or anywhere for that matter). 

Every plan can be derailed by events beyond our control (such as a pandemic, change in public policy, or an unstable economic environment on a global scale). There is, however, disciplined execution through regular reviewing habits. The secret lies in the way you measure your progress and the frequency of reviewing it.

Determine the indexes that you want to improve and then  set key performance indicators (KPIs)  to drive and measure your performance against set targets. 

Here are some examples of KPIs you might want to keep track of:

• University ranking
• Post-graduation placement rate
• Number of students involved in undergraduate research
• Fundraising ROI

Establish the KPIs you will be reporting on in advance, and always end your reviews with a "next steps" discussion.

Create dashboards to measure progress in real-time.  Cascade’s customizable dashboards  help you to quickly identify areas that are underperforming and act before it’s too late.

Zoom your screen in on the screenshot below to check out Cascade's beautiful dashboards!

Extra tip:  Use Cascade reports to help you demonstrate your success in a transparent way and attract more investments in the key areas of your university. 

What’s next for your university?

Most university’s failure to reach their strategic goals isn’t because of bad strategy, but because strategy is constrained by PowerPoint. Kept miles from those who can make it happen. The best in Advancement, the finest HR, the most profound ideas - they’re all framed in slides rather than shaping every day’s activities for everyone across the university.

Remember, a strategic plan isn’t just a glossy presentation to attract new students or to get that accreditation approval for your academic program. It’s a manifesto for every employee to embrace and enact in whatever they do at your university. 

So, the next step is to transform your strategy from an intellectual exercise to an executable plan. It’s just a matter of shifting your approach and using the right tools. 

And once you make that shift, you’ll be able to create  an organized and aligned approach  to make your strategic goals happen.

Do that and get your plan to everyone, and your competition will be choking in your dust.

Are you ready to create your plan and start executing it? Turn your strategic plan into a competitive advantage with our 100% free, battle-tested strategic plan template , built for teams in higher education. 

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Strategic Planning

3 exceptional examples of strategic planning in higher education.

By Mary King

25 october 2023.

• 1 Strategic Plan Example 1: Data-Driven Strategy for Equity with Green River College, WA
• 2 Strategic Plan Example 2: Strategic Innovations in Accessibility with Gallaudet University, DC
• 3 Strategic Plan Example 3: Best Practices Measuring Performance with NEOMED University, OH
• 4 Get the Guide↓

The landscape of higher education is one of rapid change and innovation. Institutions are constantly challenged to adapt and plan strategically to ensure that they stay relevant, on-mission, and competitive. While current and prospective students are critical stakeholders for higher-education institutions, there is also a board of governors, a complex internal employee system of both educators and administrators, and the broader local community. All of these entities interact and form an ecosystem of needs, hopes, ambitions, and goals: balancing so many differing entities and groups (sometimes with competing interests) is where strategic planning in higher education comes in.

An educational institution’s strategic plan plays a pivotal role in guiding positive, sustainable, inclusive, and student-focused growth. From embracing strategic planning software for education and nuanced data to support ground-up change, to improving overall accessibility and work opportunities, let’s explore three examples of strategic planning in higher education that have set benchmarks and best practices for other higher education institutions—whether they are universities or colleges—to follow.

Strategic Plan Example 1: Data-Driven Strategy for Equity with Green River College, WA

In the spring of 2020, Green River College initiated an Equity-Centered Strategic Visioning and Planning process . The primary objective was to create a comprehensive equity-centered strategic plan that would serve as a guiding light for the college’s future endeavors. This plan aimed to articulate a vision, mission, and core values that would shape the college’s path, emphasizing the importance of building a more equitable community. To ensure the inclusivity of all stakeholders invested in the college’s success, a meticulous 10-month community engagement process was conducted. They collected data as part of an Environmental Scan initiative, which offered a thorough overview of both external and internal trends, and provided valuable insights, suggestions, and points of interest from both Green River College and community stakeholders. All of this input played a crucial role in shaping the college’s Equity-Centered Strategic Plan .

The resulting strategic plan stands as a blueprint guiding the entire college forward over the next five years. It delineates clear goals for this period, shows areas for improvement, and details the ways the strategic plan can remain agile and evolve in tandem with the college’s growth and aspirations.

The six strategic pillars of focus (and their success metrics) are:

1. Success for All Students: Green River College has specific KPIs and deadlines to measure the progress made towards this strategic pillar. By 2026, Green River College will have established an extensive student onboarding procedure, ensuring that all students develop educational, financial, and career transition plans within their first two quarters of enrollment. Green River also aims to diminish or eradicate opportunity gaps in students’ retention, progression, and completion by 2026. Finally, they’re aiming to raise the student completion rate from 38% to 43% in that same time period.

2. Excellence in Teaching and Learning: By 2026, every faculty and staff member will have undergone training in anti-racist, equity-focused, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles. The objective is to reduce or eradicate instructional opportunity gaps associated with race, gender, economic status, and other demographic factors.

3. Responsive Educational Programs and Support Services: There is a targeted goal to increase the percentage of students who experience a “sense of belonging” at Green River by five percentage points annually. The college is measuring this through student surveys, to help them determine whether or not this objective is being met.

4. Integrated and Effective Organizational Structure, Systems, and Processes: By 2026, Green River College is aiming to have established an equity-focused approach for employee recruitment, hiring, and onboarding. They’re also working towards implementing a comprehensive organizational framework, which employs equity-centered principles in shared governance, planning, resource allocation, assessment, and policy development. Included under this strategic pillar is also an effort to increase the representation of faculty and staff of color, aiming to match or surpass the levels in neighboring colleges by 2026.

5. Accessible and Responsive Facilities and Technology​​: One of the success metrics for this pillar is the goal that by 2026, they will have implemented a Facilities Master Plan and a Technology Plan designed to promote accessibility and equity-centered teaching and learning.

6. Impactful Community Connections : By 2026, Green River will be the foremost institution of higher education in the region; one of the ways they are doing this is by building strategic community connections. They are making inroads with the local food bank, strengthening connections with veteran services, visiting and volunteering at local high schools (in fact, all educational institutions—from K-12), establishing artist and speaker series’, and uplifting partnerships with the City of Kent, and South King County, Washington.

Strategic Plan Example 2: Strategic Innovations in Accessibility with Gallaudet University, DC

Located in Washington, D.C., Gallaudet is the world’s only university that specifically caters to Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Deaf-Disabled, and Deaf Blind people, of all backgrounds and identities.

Gallaudet’s strategic plan spans an impressive 10 year vision that will situate them as a “beacon” for the community’s values and vision for their student community. This vision will offer improved opportunities for work, career advancement, and an accessible student experience that affirms the value of their diverse student body. In their “Gallaudet Promise,” they aim to uplift the “lives and experiences of all Deaf people of different intersectional identities, wherever they are.”

The “Gallaudet Promise” is the university’s strategic focus built around five action areas:

• 1. Transformational Accelerators
• 2. Anti-Racism
• 3. Bilingual Mission
• 4. Academic Reimagining
• 5. Creativity Way, Including the Memorial Project

Watch an explanation of Gallaudet’s new Envisio-powered public dashboard in ASL! Click “CC” on the video player for closed captioning.

Gallaudet’s strategic plan has made a particular effort to embrace innovation as a tool across all of their pillars. This makes sense: accessibility and innovation go hand in hand. Assistive technology, as well as improved online access and tools, are a component of the first action item, but relates to the other areas as well.

In general, when it comes to higher education strategy and accessibility, higher education institutions are a great place to implement changes around accessibility. They are (typically) moving to be more welcoming to assistive technology, and may even be involved in the development of innovative approaches to education, accessibility justice, and the role technology can play. All students with all sorts of access needs attend universities or colleges—ensuring accessibility to higher education is critical for those with disabilities to be prepared for the workforce and (ideally) achieve a better degree of upward economic mobility and access.

A strategic plan in higher education related to accessibility should include a comprehensive needs assessment. It should also work carefully to ensure a budget that allocates adequate resources to the students, while providing training and raising awareness among faculty and staff, ensuring physical and digital accessibility, offering tailored academic support services, collaborating with disability support organizations, and implementing a feedback mechanism, so they can evaluate and improve their services on an on-going basis.

Gallaudet University is working on all of these areas. They are measuring progress by establishing new customer service operating models, establishing an online platform to disseminate research, lectures, films, and other content produced by The Center for Black Deaf Studies , and restructuring entire sections of the university learning management systems that are able to accommodate a truly bilingual (ASL and English) experience, to better create opportunities for their students and help other sign language economies grow.

Strategic Plan Example 3: Best Practices Measuring Performance with NEOMED University, OH

Best practices for strategic planning in higher education include getting very clear on what objectives are being measured, and why. Understanding the definition of success and identifying priority areas for action are crucial. Without a clear understanding of the problems to be addressed, it’s challenging to initiate a strategic action plan in higher education. As we see across the public sector, higher education strategic objectives can often involve a mix of the more abstract, impact-oriented metrics (measuring a “sense of belonging”), and tangible, output-focused goals (“Increase number of mobile clinics in low-income areas by 15%”). As a best practice, it’s good to be granular and specific about what kind of performance measurement program you’re using, sharing how success is measured, and making sure your goals are all SMART : S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R elevant, and T ime-Bound.

At Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) in Portage County, Ohio, they do exactly that!

At NEOMED, success is measured across six pillars through forty-two strategic initiatives. Their strategic plan emphasizes promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion among students, staff, and employees. Given NEOMED’s role as a leading medical research institution training future medical professionals, these values are also very practical metrics. For instance, the university tracks performance measures such as gender demographics and specific actions aimed at reducing disability stigma as outlined in their Strategic Plan: Creating Transformational Leaders Dashboard. Whether it’s a broad, impact-focused goal like fostering a more inclusive environment or a specific, output-oriented objective like establishing a low-cost tutoring center in the library, a well-structured strategic plan provides the necessary steps to initiate and maintain progress toward these goals.

For instance, we can see with regards to their financial aid banner optimization, they are measuring the performance of this project against data regarding financial aid and tuition. Financial aid is a pressing matter for NEOMED–they want to ensure people from diverse backgrounds, including economically disadvantaged backgrounds, are able to attend medical school. They want to become experts in financial aid content, utilizing their expertise to educate NEOMED faculty, staff, and students about the available student aid policies and possible funding opportunities. Tracking data over time—such as seeing how many scholarships have been awarded over time—demonstrates how often these resources are being used, and can indicate how accessible they are.

It’s important for higher education institutions to strategize effectively to maintain their relevance and competitiveness. Embracing progressive, innovative processes and being meticulous with data is a great way to lay down a strategic plan that also balances the complex network of relationships of internal educators, students, administrators, and the wider communities served. A higher education institution’s strategic plan plays a pivotal role in the growth of the institution and the wellbeing of students! We love to see these strategic plans that embrace data to drive equity, make changes around accessibility, and push for better, more meaningful performance measures.

“All of the metrics related to our strategic plan live in Envisio, and we have assigned the ownership and agency of those data points to certain people. It’s helped us develop a common lexicon, and it is the tool in which we demonstrate our progress. Oftentimes, the focus of it is really to celebrate all of the people who contribute to our strategic plan. All of those contributors, the 90 plus folks that are in Envisio, deserve to be recognized and congratulated and to see the impact of the work that they’re doing. It’s important to show the collective impact on driving the mission forward.” — Lacey Madison, VP Strategy and Transformation, NEOMED.

Get the Guide↓

So you’ve got your plan, but how can you go from strategy to operationalization? What about aligning your budget with your strategy? Our free, comprehensive guide From Strategy to Action: A Guide to Operational Planning for Local Governments & Public Sector Organizations , contains insights gathered from the experiences of over 150 public sector organizations, including higher education institutions.

Download now for practical guidance on operational planning now!

Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments. For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members. Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.

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In education, evolution and adaptation are constants. Academic institutions must stay up to date with technology and teaching methods to succeed, while also managing students' social, emotional, and academic needs. With all of these considerations in addition to budgetary constraints, It's easy to see why ensuring student and institutional success requires a dynamic strategic plan.

This blog post will outline the best practices academic institutions should consider when developing an effective strategic plan to address these challenges. To create an effective strategic plan, we need to eliminate the disconnect between leadership's high-level vision and employees' tactical work. Leading academic institutions, growing companies, and organizations adapt to change through dynamic strategic planning. 

A dynamic strategic plan breaks down an organization's long-term vision into short-term goals and then builds a roadmap to achieve those goals. As part of this process, the organization's plan should be reviewed and revised regularly to ensure relevance and alignment with its mission. Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans and organizations often face challenges in developing effective strategic plans that are easy to understand and execute. Here are a few suggestions to help address these challenges:

• Clearly define your vision: The first step in developing an effective strategic plan is to define the vision for the school. This should be a clear, concise statement that articulates what the school hopes to achieve. 
• Identify key objectives: Once you have a clear vision, identify the key objectives that will help you achieve them. These should be specific and measurable goals that align with your vision.
• Create measurable, outcome-focused key results: With your objectives in mind, it is important to focus on creating key results that drive outcomes, not outputs to help you reach your targets. Schools that focus on driving actionable objectives with outcome-based key results will ensure they stay aligned on what truly matters.
• Prioritize and allocate resources: It's essential to prioritize your strategies and allocate resources accordingly. Determine which strategies are most critical to achieving your objectives and ensure that you have the resources (e.g., time, budget, personnel) to implement them effectively.
• Monitor and evaluate progress: Finally, monitor and evaluate progress regularly to ensure that you are on track to achieving your objectives. This will help you identify areas where you may need to adjust your strategies or allocate additional resources.

By following these steps, academic institutions can develop a strategic planning framework and process that is effective, simple, and links vision to tactical execution. So now that we have the steps needed to build our strategy, let's start to bring it to life.

Take a field trip: host an annual Strategic Planning Offsite 

Before each academic year, we recommend holding a strategic planning meeting offsite with your leadership team. This is dedicated time to focus on the priorities for the upcoming year. Before diving into where you're headed, set aside time for a retrospective to discuss the previous year. In addition, discuss the current education landscape.

To build a future-focused and tailored plan for your academic institution, the team should reconfirm your mission and values, set your vision, and define your top strategic priorities. 

As you head into your offsite, we recommend the following best practices that lead to success:

• Get Outside of the Office : Find space outside of the work environment to reduce distractions and encourage collaboration.
• Set a Clear Agenda : Agree ahead of time on the purpose of each day, the deliverables, and actionable next steps. 
• Make Space to Think: Carve out time for free thinking vs. relying on group thinking to encourage new ideas. If you need a template, we recommend using this worksheet to guide the conversation .

Simplify the strategic plan: align your high-level strategy with tactical execution

Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans (5-year plans are most common) which can lead to a very detailed and dense plan. Given the complexity and length of the strategic plan, it can feel overwhelming and difficult to break the plan down and prioritize what’s most imperative to execute and focus on. We recommend breaking the larger multi-year plan into digestible annual plans that are more manageable. 

We recommend identifying 3-5 main themes in your strategic plan, often referred to as pillars or rallying cries. Once you have core themes, you can prioritize and bucket the most critical initiatives and objectives. Every theme will have specific supporting objectives and key results. We recommend using consistent nomenclature when creating themes, objectives, and key results so any team member can easily understand why the work is significant. 

Once we have the multi-year plan broken into annual plans and themes identified, we recommend defining short-term objectives (quarterly or semi-annually) and measurable metrics to drive key results. Breaking down the plan into quarters will feel more approachable and attainable. In addition, it will provide clarity and transparency for the executing team. When the strategic plan is broken down into actionable items, small wins can be celebrated along the way. This boosts motivation, engagement, and morale.  

Consistency is key to a successful strategic plan

When individuals understand how their work aligns with the high-level strategy and vision, they can prioritize their initiatives. Establish clear, measurable objectives and key results that are easy to track and provide consistent nomenclature. Keep these three tips in mind when writing your strategic plan objectives:

• Objectives should be aspirational and push people outside their comfort zone.
• Each objective should have 2-3 measurable and quantifiable results.
• Have a clear, defined owner responsible for recurring status updates. 

The best way to write objectives is to start by asking, “Why is this initiative important?” When you understand the why, you can create measurable outcome-driven results. Let’s walk through an example objective with key results laid out in Elate.

Theme: Develop and retain a diverse educator workforce.

Objective: Strengthen and diversify the educator pipeline and workforce.

Objective Purpose Statement: Increase mentoring and leadership development programs to retain educators, particularly educators from under-represented backgrounds. 

Key metrics: 

• Increase mentoring program engagement by 50% 
• 96% educator retention rate 

Implement rituals and track success with dynamic strategic planning

After your plan is built, it is imperative to establish rituals to stay on track and measure progress against the strategic plan. Rituals are defined as a rhythm, cadence, and process for reviewing objectives and strategic plans. Establishing strong rituals allows critical conversations to happen proactively. When objectives are stuck in limbo or fall off track, proactive discussions can happen. However, many academic institutions have different rituals for different teams. Implementing consistent rituals regularly will help you stay aligned, measure progress, and ensure you’re having the right conversations at the right time.

To keep everyone on the same page and connect tactical execution to strategic vision, we recommend objective owners provide bi-weekly updates. Across many academic institutions, strategy, and operations leaders spend countless hours tracking down updates that become outdated quickly. With Elate, reminder notifications are automatically sent to team members so they can focus more on execution and less on chasing down updates. 

We recommend spending a few minutes in executive team meetings reviewing objectives that are off-track or not making progress to create an action plan moving forward. This ritual of reviewing the plan early often brings awareness to the leadership team about objectives that need attention or are falling behind. It also allows space to celebrate accomplishments and wins. 

This makes it easy to ensure the strategic plan lives and breathes. Setting and clearly defining rituals for how the plan progresses, updates are made and reviewed, and addressing red flags is key to success. 

Focus on the right metrics to measure your strategic plan's success

With key results, objectives, and business-as-usual metrics all in one place, Elate keeps the strategic plan organized with a consolidated view. In Elate, scorecards provide an essential view of business-as-usual metrics and progress. Create specific scorecards for the board, enrollment, grant, and donor activity. 

Elevate your strategic plan with Elate

Strategic planning is critical for academic institutions that want to stay competitive, adapt to change, and achieve their goals. By following these best practices, higher education and academic institutions can achieve their goals and stay competitive in an ever-changing environment. 

Strategic planning has never been easier with Elate. Our platform simplifies and streamlines the strategic planning process, taking the stress out of it. We make it easy to stay on track with transparent reporting, simple collaboration, and one-click integrations with Salesforce, Google Sheets, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Your vision can finally meet your strategy.

Learn more about our strategic planning tools and services, or contact us today to learn more about how we specifically work with other Academic Institutions!

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What's In Our Manual?

Our Manual explains everything you need to know about strategic planning, including:

• Strategic Planning Process
• Benefits of Strategic Planning
• Common Elements of Successful Strategic Plans
• Eleven Tips to Make Your Strategic Plan a Success
• Key Planning Terms
• Strategic Planning vs. Long Range Planning
• Strategic Planning Defined
• What Strategic Planning Is “Not”
• Key Factors that Must be in Place before Starting the Planning Process
• Overview of The Typical Phases in Planning
• Key Essentials for a Facilitator
• Using Consultants or Facilitators
• Strategic Planning Models
• Examples of Various Planning Models
• Five Stages of Strategic Planning
• Pitfalls of Strategic Planning
• 7 Critical Problems that may Arise
• 15 Common Mistakes of Strategic Planning
• Examples of Actual Strategic Plans
• The Board's Role in Planning
• Example of a 5-Year Strategic Planning Cycle
• Example of an Academic Year Planning and Committee Schedule
• Example of a Strategic Planning Committee Calendar
• Example of a Strategic Planning Committee 2006-07 Calendar
• Draft Format of the Strategic Planning Document
• The 10 Steps To Developing YOUR Strategic Plan and Checklist

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Is Your Strategic Plan a List of Ideas or a True Change Engine?

Throughout any given year, I often meet with cabinets, presidents, and boards who are in the process of building/renewing their strategic plans. Strategic plans can be a fantastic way to create and propagate vision and—more importantly—progress toward needed changes at an institution. That being said, these initiatives often fall far short of being the catalyst of transformation at institutions and rather serve as a comprehensive list of ideas with little means of prioritization and filtering. Let’s discuss ways to shift this mentality and create a stronger pathway for plans to transform.

Find the real focus of your strategic plan

The power of a strategic plan is to create a focused vision for change (emphasis on focused ). One problem most presidents and planning committees face is that ideas largely tie to institutional missions and values. While these are extremely important ideals, missions and values tend to be extremely broad and therefore extremely poor filters to decide which plan initiatives to pursue—and perhaps more importantly, which ones not to pursue. 

One way that Carnegie gets through this conundrum is by using a different type of metric for filtering: institutional personality . The personality and culture of an institution is much more specific than its mission and values. This enables a committee to wrestle with the ideas that will enhance or confirm culture. As a successful university president once said to me, forming a strategic plan is like creating a 27-lane highway. Personality helps me figure out which cars to put in which lanes.

Avoid planning fatigue

A second problem facing many presidents is the fatigue that the planning process takes on the campus and the appetite for continuation. Most plans are huge consensus-driven projects with dozens to hundreds of campus constituents weighing in to the project. Consensus is a critical component of any shared governance culture, but using it in strategic planning is often misguided. 

The reality of most plans is that 10%–20% of the people involved create 80%–90% of the ideas that make it in the plan. As a result, consensus is wasted when it could be harnessed to enhance the understanding of culture, personality, or, even better, involvement in plan implementation. Considering the moment to call for consensus is very important to ongoing plan success and fatigue reduction on campus.

Maintain your momentum

A third and more problematic issue facing strategic plans is the fact that they often fail to produce momentum after competition. A plan will have a great website and fanfare only to fail to produce results in the outer years. 

One way we recommend harnessing your plan is through continuous planning processes (sometimes called “Evergreen”). In this philosophy, planning is never really complete and always in a state of implementation, evaluation, and renewal. Universities implementing such a model often republish their plans for the subsequent three-, four-, or five-year period annually and seek board adoption of the revision as well. 

As a result, institutions following this method often see much more focus and progress on critical initiatives, an increase in implementation activity, and the potential for a rise in institutional transformation. 

Whether your strategic plan is on its next iteration or you’re just initiating the first of many versions to come, it’s important to reflect on the way to filter ideas, the timing and use of consensus, and the process for plan renewal in order to realize the desired transformation at your institution.

Happy planning. 

If you are considering a strategic planning project and want to learn more about how institutional personality can help you create a plan that inspires authentic change, contact us to set up time to talk. 

Scott Ochander is a Partner and Chief Client Solutions Officer at Carnegie. As a former Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing, Scott is regarded as an expert in reputation and enrollment strategy in higher education. He pioneered a consensus-building reputation and change management research model in higher education that has empowered campus communities and enabled enrollment growth and reputation transformation. Scott has worked extensively in marketing and enrollment strategy, completing hundreds of strategy development projects across higher education at some of the largest and most influential institutions in the nation.

Follow and engage with Scott on Twitter and Linkedin , where he shares content and opinions on enrollment strategy, marketing, brand management, change management, and organizational operations.

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Strategic planning

The need for an iiep remains higher than ever.                                    (unesco internal oversight services, 2013).

 An effective ministry is guided by a plan which brings together all stakeholders and is regularly monitored and updated. IIEP strongly believes that planning is not a one-off activity. Rather it is a continuous practice that should engage all ministry departments and partners at national and subnational levels in a consultative and participatory process. Institutionalizing planning necessitates that ministries establish a strategic vision and priorities, coordinate their programmes and budgets annually and within a medium-term expenditure framework, negotiate with national and international financing agencies, and periodically monitor that it is on track to achieve policy objectives through implementation reviews.

Strategic planning guides educational development by giving a common vision and shared priorities. Educational planning is both visionary and pragmatic, engaging a wide range of actors in defining education’s future and mobilizing resources to reach its goals. For policy-makers, planning offers the path to:

• implement education reform and system transformation;
• realize equal opportunities for children and youth;
• provide quality education for all.

IIEP has strong experience and expertise in strategic planning and has developed in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) two newly published documents to help ministries in charge of education transform their processes and operations to meet the challenges of a changing world:

• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Appraisal
• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Preparation
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Strategic Plan 2021-2025

Brief overview of our college foundational commitments.

The Penn State College of Education is committed to reimagining education to improve the lives of learners, educators, and community members at the regional, state, national, and global levels. Through our work, we will contribute to the creation of more equitable educational opportunities and outcomes for learners across their lifespan, ensuring all learners acquire essential literacies, and supporting the mental health and well-being of all learners and educators. Our commitment to these areas will be supported by our actions in four areas: 1) Community Enhancement and Development; 2) Transforming Educational Professionals; 3) Research Addressing Social Issues; and, 4) Outreach, Dissemination, and Partnerships. Ultimately, we endeavor to change our education systems to educate for change to create a more equitable society for all.

Our Mission

We reimagine the existing EC-12 and adult education systems, including the College of Education, by identifying and addressing the systemic inequities that impede many individuals from realizing their full potential.  We improve student outcomes, conduct research, develop effective policies and strategies, create new experiences for existing educators and students that are community-based and globally minded preparing the next generation of educators, integrate innovative technologies that contribute to our mission, and actively engage with families and in communities within and beyond our borders. We are deeply committed to progressive social change by bridging research to practice and developing partnerships with a wide array of individuals and organizations. We focus on equity and access, anti-racism orientations and practices, essential literacies, and the mental health and well-being of all individuals across the lifespan. We embrace the challenge of preparing a new generation of education professionals with the skills and dispositions needed to create powerful learning experiences for all learners, across the lifespan. Our mission is nothing less than being a leader in the creation of a more equitable and just education system for the people of Pennsylvania, the nation, and the world.

The Penn State College of Education will work collaboratively to transform education systems to promote progressive social change that leads to an equitable society and world, in which all learners , families, schools, workplaces and communities thrive.

The College of Education shares the University's values of Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Discovery, Excellence, and Community .  In addition to those values, the College of Education strongly identifies with these values:

ANTI-RACISM/RACIAL JUSTICE - We strive to actively identify, describe, counter, and dismantle individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism in all components of our work.

TRANSFORMING EDUCATION – W e are committed to changing education to promote and practice equity in collaboration with international, national, and community-based partners to ensure an equitable and just world.

LEARNING ACROSS THE LIFESPAN – We are committed to cultivating purposeful learning for individuals and communities throughout development, transitions, and contexts.

SYSTEMIC UNDERSTANDING AND AWARENESS – We embrace the synergy among efforts to mitigate climate change, and to promote social justice, essential literacies grounded in deep and integrated disciplinary knowledge, mental health and well-being in changing education for healthy communities and the world.

GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING AND INCLUSIVITY —We are committed to supporting the exchange of knowledge and furthering research that includes perspectives from, and addresses issues pertinent to, the attainment of education for all around the globe.

Definitions of Key Terms

As you read through our strategic plan you will come across certain key terms.  Below are those terms and how we are defining them in the context of this plan.

DIVERSITY: The College of Education advocates for the inclusion of and support for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, including, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, ability, religious affiliation, veteran status, socio-economic status, nationality, and geography.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: The College of Education believes in creating a fair and equal society centered on improving the lives of groups historically marginalized based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, age, religion, and disability.

ESSENTIAL LITERACIES: The College of Education views a wide array of knowledge and skills as important. However, the College views some specific literacies as critical. These include the traditional subject matter areas as well as global citizenship, climate change, social justice, understanding of systemic racism, democratic participation, civics education, mental health and well-being, and inclusivity.

EDUCATORS/EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS: The College of Education represents and includes anyone who positively impacts the human condition through teaching, assessment, research, clinical practice, or professional development.

Strategic Plan Goals

We will engage in intentional practices to develop an inclusive college of education that derives strength from multiple identities and lived experiences and mirrors the representation of individuals in our society., objective - societal representation.

Increase the diversity of the students, faculty, and staff of the College of Education to reflect our national and global society more fully.

ACTION ITEM

Recruit, support, and retain faculty and staff from historically underrepresented groups, particularly people of color.

IMPLEMENTATION TASKS

• Collaborate with the Office of Education and Social Equity to review existing College of Education policies and strategies for recruitment, support, and retention.
• Develop and implement an improvement plan for faculty and staff candidate pool identification and hiring processes to increase the number and percentage of faculty and staff of color as well as individuals from other historically underrepresented groups.
• Identify and develop partnerships with higher education institutions and organizations to enhance recruitment efforts (e.g., Historically Black and Latinx Institutions, UCEA’s Barbara Jackson Scholars).
• Build upon current mechanisms, groups, and initiatives to provide infrastructure that supports faculty and staff of color and other members from historically underrepresented groups.
• Explore the possibility of remote work to expand the geographic radius from which staff are recruited.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2023

Recruit, support, and retain students from historically underrepresented groups, including students of color, students from families living in poverty, rural students, students with disabilities, male students in elementary teaching areas, and other identified students at all levels.

• In collaboration with the Office of Education and Social Equity and the Associate Dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Student Studies, review existing strategies, and based on the findings, develop and implement an improvement plan for graduate student recruiting efforts, particularly with respect to students of color.
• Review and enhance the College of Education’s student engagement opportunities to better align with needs and interest of students of color and other historically marginalized students.
• Administer surveys that collect the perceptions of undergraduate and graduate students (both graduates and non-completers) about their experiences and capture suggested areas or ideas for improvement, particularly with respect to equity, diversity, inclusivity, and support.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2022

OBJECTIVE - INCLUSIVITY, BELONGINGNESS, AND PARTICIPATION

Increase the sense of inclusion, belonging, and participation for all members of the College of Education with a particular focus on individuals from historically underrepresented populations.

Develop an inclusive culture that focuses on creating a sense of belonging and participation for all members of the College of Education community .

• Establish a Faculty Fellows Program in the College that will provide leadership opportunities for faculty members in the areas of teaching, engagement, diversity, and other areas as needed.
• Develop opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to connect to important professional practices such as teaching and learning, mental and physical wellness, ethics, bias, advocacy, service, democratic participation, public pedagogy, stewardship of the environment, and global citizenship.
•  Provide professional learning activities to promote self-awareness, inclusive teaching, listening, managing difficult conversations, and expressive communication skills to support meaningful discussion.
• Invest in and enhance opportunities to engage with colleagues across the College, University, and Community, especially regarding teaching, learning, and curricular issues.
• Develop an organizational structure that promotes collaboration across college organizations focused on diversity, equity, justice, inclusion, and anti-racist teaching and curricula.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2024

We will develop educational professionals who are active change agents and ensure they have the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions for improving and transforming education for all learners with respect to essential literacies, inclusive instruction, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being.

Objective - curricular and instructional assessment.

Assess how well our programs prepare educational professionals through instruction, curriculum, and experiential participation to act as change agents focused on a more just and equitable future of the educational system while being mindful of the past.

Conduct a thorough set of formative reviews on existing program curricula and instruction.

• Assemble a diverse team of faculty, students, and community members to facilitate the review of curricula and instruction across the College of Education and Commonwealth Campuses to ensure courses and programs include and address effective and inclusive instruction, appropriate learning objectives, essential literacies, as well as mental health and well-being.
• Establish a stakeholder group to understand how our programs address education’s role in developing an equitable society, including the curriculum and instruction employed by programs
• Conduct an equity audit of each program to ascertain how we may be implicitly complicit in perpetuating cycles of systemic inequities through the design and implementation of our curricula and instruction.
• Conduct gap and market analyses between our programs and the demands of the education labor market as well as societal needs.
• Develop tools to support continuous revision and development of college programs, including the curricula and instructional approaches employed by programs
• Identify facilitator(s) to work within departments to develop and enact continuous cycles of review of program curricula and instruction.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2025

OBJECTIVE - STRATEGICALLY BALANCE CURRICULAR OFFERINGS

Engage in the process of revising and developing our curricular offerings to prepare our students to understand and serve the needs of all learners including: a) those residing in urban and rural settings and poverty contexts; b) those with disabilities; c) English language learners; d) multilingual students; e) people of color; f) LGBTQ+ individuals; and, g) linguistically and culturally diverse populations with specific attention on addressing systemic inequities, essential literacies, mental health and well-being.

Focus work across the college in ways to enable student enrollment growth.

• Employ strategies such as reducing the number of sections and consider a rotating schedule for some courses, where possible, to create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify curricular synergies, within and across departments, to reduce redundancies and create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify programs within the College that would benefit from additional support and resources to better align course and program offerings with a student demand, the needs of the field, and society.
• Hire a marketing professional to develop an overall brand for College of Education programs, develop a marketing plan, and assist in undergraduate and graduate student recruitment.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2024

Incorporate essential literacies, inclusive instruction, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being across all programs with attention to the intersection of these areas.

• Identify the knowledge, skills, and dispositions we expect our students to acquire through our teaching, curricula, and experiential opportunities related to essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being .
• Conduct a needs assessment of instructors regarding the adoption and implementation of essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being in our curricula and instructional practices.
• Based on the results of the needs assessment, provide resources and support (e.g., professional development and course materials) to instructors to implement anti-racist, equity-based curricula and instruction that also reinforce the essential literacies needed by education professionals to transform the education landscape.
• Identify and integrate curricular and instructional mechanisms that enliven the mental health and well-being of all students.
• Develop structures to implement, evaluate, and study innovative approaches to educator preparation—including curricula and instruction--that develop change agents in respective fields who are well-prepared to address known and new systemic inequities.
• Develop materials, resources, and learning opportunities, to train faculty and graduate students in the self-awareness, listening, and expressive communication skills that are needed to support meaningful discussion as one component of effective and inclusive instruction.
• Train and support professionals to disrupt instances in which marginalization occurs.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2025

Expand the contexts within which our curricular offerings are implemented to better afford a diverse set of experiences from which students can build.

• Identify and support the development and implementation of internship experiences that include diverse student populations and a variety of educational experiences threaded across the curriculum with a specific focus on systemic inequities and injustices.
• Develop new school district partnerships to expand contexts where curriculum and instructional activities and internships can take place.
• Increase remote opportunities for students to engage virtually with diverse students (e.g., on-line tutoring for EC-12 students who are struggling academically or are in need of English as second language skills, support for schools in need of counseling services).
• Provide instructional and practical experiences that empower students to effectively advocate for and enact change.
• Create support networks for current students and graduates engaged in efforts to address systemic inequities, mental health and well-being,
• Enable students to provide educational solutions using technology to the community and community partners. 

OBJECTIVE - INNOVATIVE PATHWAYS AND PROGRAMS

Transform existing and create new programs to capture the interest of students seeking to engage as meaningful agents of change through education with a particular focus on high need areas.

Develop innovative new courses and programs that broaden the reach and impact of education beyond our traditional student population.

• Based on the gap and market analyses (objective 2.1.1, Task 4), transform existing programs as well as explore and innovate new programs to address known needs in the development of an anti-racist and equity-focused educational workforce  (e.g., online D.Ed., dual credit, alternative certification and new undergraduate programs).
• Develop new general education courses that facilitate the development of anti-racist and equity-focused skills and the enactment of those skills in a variety of disciplines and contexts.
• Explore creative new technologies and other means to provide programming across a variety of modalities, including new modes of instruction.
• Explore the development of a Teaching Scholars program for high needs areas (e.g., Special Education, STEAM, ESL).
• Plan for new faculty hires where current capacities and skills are insufficient to support program transformation and growth.

We will prioritize and support research that addresses global issues relevant to reshaping equitable communities across our nation and globe. Through our research, we will address issues that are global in scope and local in focus, including cultural, linguistic, and racial equities, mental health across ages and locations, technology in schools and workplaces, and disability to better the lives of those in the Commonwealth and beyond its borders.

Objective - innovative research contributions.

Build on existing areas of high-quality scholarship and expand our research portfolio to include a research agenda on education for societal change.

Establish our College as a leader in the field of education for the study of our own efforts to prepare educators for societal change.

• Conduct a self-study on leadership in transformative education for social justice.
• Leverage the newly established Faculty Fellows program (a task from the Inclusivity, Belongingness, and Participation Objective in the Community Enhancement and Development Goal ) as a space for conducting research on leadership in the areas of teaching, curricular development, engagement, diversity, and other areas as needed.
• Identify new hires that can expand capacity in this area.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2025  

Build research programs focused on teaching, learning, and policy, with a focus on essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism efforts, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being.

• Design, develop, and study instructional interventions for teaching and learning that target systemic inequities.
• Explore innovative uses of technology to advance the study of essential literacies beyond the medium of print and with use of other representations.
• Infuse existing research goals on science, technology, art, engineering, and mathematics (STEAM) in the study of essential literacies and to promote social justice.
• Promote mixed-methods research as a primary mechanism to facilitate systemic research initiatives addressing inequities and academic and professional development in research areas, including essential literacies, STEAM, mental health and well-being, policy development and implementation, English Language Learner instruction, and other areas
• Study and develop interventions examining the role of mental health and well-being on the lives and outcomes of educators and students.

OBJECTIVE - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN RESEARCH

The College will build on current efforts to provide opportunities and experiences that enhance the research capacities of students and faculty.

Enhance the research experience and expertise of all students.

• Expand programs supporting the academic training, individualized mentorship, and placement of historically underrepresented students with interest in graduate study.
• Establish internal resources for student-initiated research and innovation projects that will aid access of media technologies, software, and hardware for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research.
• Maintain and increase the number of dissertation research initiation grants to support student research initiatives.
• Engage undergraduate researchers in projects to promote transformative education for social justice, including innovative approaches to teaching and curricula.

Enhance the research experience and expertise of all faculty.

• Provide research methodology workshops on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods to support research goals.
• Schedule seminars to feature innovative uses of technology (e.g., data visualization, game-based learning environments, simulations) to support research on social justice, essential literacies, curricula, instruction, and mental health and well-being.
• Continue the invited speaker series focused on research that addresses issues of essential literacies, inclusive instruction, anti0-racist curricula, equity, diversity, inclusivity, anti-racism, as well as mental health and well-being.
• Host a workshop series for faculty and their collaborators, postdoctoral research scholars, and undergraduate and graduate students that features socioecological systems and research methodologies that are directed toward the empirical study of the intersections among essential literacies, instruction, social justice, and mental health and well-being.

OBJECTIVE - RESEARCH, CULTURE, AND PARTNERSHIPS

Coordinate fiscal and other supports to enhance a culture of research by providing professional learning opportunities, improving the recruitment of faculty and students, recognizing outstanding research, and developing and sustaining impactful collaborations, particularly research-practitioner partnerships.

Continue to enhance the local culture of research and scholarship that reflects the College’s values.

• Recruit additional top scholars whose research focuses on issues of diversity, inclusion, social justice, and anti-racism.
• Recruit scholars with expertise in socioecological systems research and methodologies to foster study of the intersections among essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2022  

Value and support new pathways for research and creative accomplishments in annual evaluations as well as promotion and tenure.

• Recognize and reward initiation of collaborative partnerships within the University and beyond.
• Recognize and reward engagement in equity, inclusion, and anti-racism outreach work, particularly those that address leadership, instruction, and curricula
• Recognize, incentivize, and reward the use of diverse publication venues and research dissemination strategies (e.g., open access journals, policy briefs, amicus briefs, books).

Develop and support research-practitioner partnerships (e.g., museums, non-governmental organizations, school districts).

• Work collaboratively with Pennsylvania and other school districts to identify and select projects for research-practice partnerships, particularly projects related to essential literacies, inclusive instruction, equity, mental health and well-being, social justice, and anti-racism.
• Establish field-based and on-site research training opportunities to facilitate the professional development of faculty, students, and partners as research-practitioner community members.
• Identify and develop innovative uses of technology (e.g., data collection methods, database management, communication networks) to support the short- and long-term goals of research-practitioner partnerships and its members.
• Conduct systemic, developmental, and ethnographic case studies on research-practitioner partnerships to inform adoption of future research goals and practices in changing education to educate for change.

Support collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects with a wide array of organizations within the College, University, Commonwealth, Nation, and across the World.

• Develop mechanisms by which the College of Education captures the perceptions, concerns, and needs of education stakeholders at all levels of the education system, especially from those who historically have had less voice in decision making.
• Coordinate efforts across the College and University, especially with respect to the Centers in the College of Education, to enhance collaboration and effort regarding research.
• Work with Penn State Institutes (e.g., Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Social Science Research Institute, Sustainability Institute) to advance research initiatives pertaining to the synergy of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Cultivate research opportunities with other Universities, Organizations, Research Centers, and Institutes in the US and across the world (e.g., American Educational Research Association, National Center for Educational Statistics, national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations, international higher education institutions)

OBJECTIVE - SUPPORTING RESEARCH FOR CHANGE

Coordinate existing resources and enhance current mechanisms to increase our capacity to procure external funding for research activities.

Leverage internal resources to increase strength of external funding proposals.

• Provide grant writing workshops that focus on identifying appropriate funding, writing effective proposals, and managing grants.
• Develop a grant-mentoring program that pairs experienced grant writers with less experienced grant writers.
• Create internal research grants for projects that are intended to improve the well-being of under-resourced and underrepresented communities.
• Provide research funds to support mentorships and research collaborations across disciplines.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2023  

Enhance support for the submission of external grant proposals.

• Develop mechanisms to assist in identifying priorities of funding agencies, revising proposals based on panel review.
• Facilitate partnerships with other Colleges and Universities to identify key personnel in needed areas of expertise (e.g., research methods, technology)
• Cultivate and coordinate clusters of proposals to support research for systemic change around themes of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Hire a grant editor to organize, to help edit proposals, and to check for required sections of proposals in research funding announcements.

Improve the functionality of College and University spaces to support research.

• Leverage existing College of Education spaces (e.g., Krause Center, mathematics lab, science wing) to increase the likelihood of securing funded research grants.
• Establish the Herr clinic as a research space in the study of educational, assessment and counseling practices that promote mental health and well-being.
• Identify other University spaces at University Park (e.g., Knowledge Commons, Millennium Science Complex) and across Commonwealth Campuses (e.g., Hershey Medical Center, Plastics Processing Laboratory at Penn State Behrend, Pullo Family Performing Arts Center at Penn State York) to support research projects.

The College of Education will strengthen its leadership roles as a change agent for education systems and societies locally and globally. We will widely share our research, programs, materials, and interventions by means that are easily accessible by the public, adopt new strategies for outreach to individuals and communities, create more effective strategies to disseminate our work, and expand our partnerships.

Objective - partnerships.

We will engage collaboratively with families, community members, educators, and policymakers within the state, nation, and around the world. We will foster and develop mutual partnerships with families, schools, and community organizations to address pressing social issues, including poverty, essential literacies, racism, inclusion, mental health and well-being, and climate change, among others.  

Make essential literacies, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and mental health and well-being the foci of the College of Education’s partnership work such that the College is seen as a leader within the state and nation as well as around the world in these areas.

• Conduct a review of current partnerships, including the organizations, individuals, and goals of the partnership.
• Conduct a needs assessment of the current infrastructure and supports to determine what is needed to sustain effective partnerships.
• Cultivate new collaborations with community members, nonprofit educational organizations, and schools/districts, particularly those serving high-need populations, to provide mental and behavioral supports to students in need of such services .
• Enhance international collaboration with the world’s leading institutions of higher education to expand the student experience, faculty development, and the impact of research.  
• Leverage technology both as a tool for connecting to these partners and as an innovative means to support their growth.
• Assess the impact of community-based participatory research to continuously improve partnership work.

Create new internal structures to facilitate connections with educator preparation program graduates and their employers to better support career transition, help ensure our programs are aligned with the needs of communities with educational disparities and inform programmatic priorities.

• Create a process that digitally records and stores graduates’ and employers’ information for ease of contact beyond the Graduate School and maps the placements of employment of our graduates.
• Capture the perceptions of graduates and non-completers on the strengths and weaknesses of our educator preparation programs to inform program improvement efforts.
• Capture principals’ and superintendents’ perceptions of the quality of our educator preparation programs to inform program improvement efforts.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2021

Expand collaborations and develop synergistic relationships across Penn State units.

• Engage with Commonwealth Campuses to develop better articulations and leverage 2+2 options.
• Increase affiliate and dual appointments between departments, research units, outreach units, and colleges. 
• Increase cross-listed courses between departments and colleges.
• Encourage co-advising between departments and colleges.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2023 through 12/31/2024

OBJECTIVE - OUTREACH AND DISSEMINATION

The College of Education will develop and implement effective outreach and dissemination strategies that ensure we are recognized widely as a leader by the general public, educators, and policymakers across all levels of education at the regional, state, national, and international levels.

Improve access to and visibility of work in the College of Education.

• Assess the use and effectiveness of current outreach and dissemination strategies.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify effective outreach and dissemination strategies such as videos, webinars, practitioner briefs, policy briefs, research summaries, and mini conferences.
• Based on results from Tasks 1 and 2 above, develop a college-wide outreach and dissemination strategy that widely disseminates the variety of initiatives in the College.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2021  

Facilitate the publication of practitioner and policy briefs, particularly those focused on essential literacies, social justice, essential literacies, and mental health and well-being, by members of the College of Education.

• Hire an expert in digital publication design and layout.
• Develop the capacity of students and faculty to write for non-academic audiences by creating a course, holding workshops, and providing individual support.
• Streamline the process by which policy and practitioner briefs are reviewed and approved for dissemination.
• Publish policy and practitioner briefs that address important topics identified by practitioners around the Commonwealth and distribute digitally to educational organizations, especially policies regarding equity, systemic racism, social justice, mental health and well-being, and essential literacies.
• Collect data on the reach of these briefs and use it to refine the mechanisms for dissemination to targeted audiences.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2023

Provide consultation, mentoring, and/or professional development to recent College of Education graduates employed as EC-12 educators on how to address issues of equity and diversity, mental health and well-being, and essential literacies in the classrooms and in our schools.

• Offer professional development seminar series, including those that provide Act 45 and Act 48 hours, that address: equity and diversity in classrooms and schools; mental health and well-being; essential literacies; and the effective selection and use of technologies in content delivery and pedagogy.
• Create supports for faculty to engage in helping school district personnel develop their professional skills to address essential literacies as well as issues of equity, diversity, systemic racism.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2023 through 12/31/2025

Disseminate findings of research partnerships through various means.

• Create and maintain a web space dedicated to dissemination of College of Education research for practitioners and other interested constituents including Penn State students.
• Create an in-house, free access, web-based research publication administered by College of Education faculty and graduate students that is devoted to all forms of educational research addressing social justice, essential literacies, and mental health and well-being.
• Hold an annual College of Education conference that rotates themes of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Work with the communications team and marketing specialist to showcase research addressing social issues to help establish the College of Education’s leadership with a local, state, national, and global presence.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2024 through 12/31/2025

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Five-Year Strategic Plan

The IU School of Education is dedicated to making an impact in the field of education. As we look to the future, we must consider the changing landscape of education and the evolving needs of our students, faculty and staff. This strategic plan is intended to guide our efforts over the next five years and help us to continue to be a leader in the field of education. The plan lays out our vision in the areas of research, service and student success, with goals, objectives and strategies for each area.

We aim to identify and promote high-impact, transformational, interdisciplinary research areas; advance the SOE’s research reputation; and develop partnerships and a community to drive research and innovation.

We aim to develop and disseminate educational resources across contexts and populations; engage in collaborative partnerships with more schools and organizations; and engage strategically with diverse stakeholders to promote just and equitable learning opportunities.

We aim to work toward equity and justice in all SOE programs; evaluate issues of availability and affordability; encourage the development of new programs; and become a leader in the design and use of technology-enhanced active learning spaces to support high-quality teaching.

We continually strive to ensure that our students feel safe and can thrive in an environment that challenges and motivates them to reach their highest potential. Dean Stacy Morrone

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Below are s trategic   pla n s of UNC’s peer institutions. The list includes peers that UNC identified in 2011 for Colorado Department of Higher Education performance reporting and enrollment   plan ning, as well as those identified in 2006 by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS). An asterisk indicates an institution is in both peer groups.   

• Ball State University*  Destination 2040: Our Flight Path    
• Bowling Green State University*   Focus on the Future  
• Illinois State University   Educate • Connect • Elevate  
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania*   IUP   Strategic   Pla n   2015-2020  
• Louisiana Tech University   Five Year   Strategic   Pla n  
• Miami University   Strategic   Pla n   for Miami’s Future  
• Middle Tennessee State University   2015-2025 MTSU   Strategic   Pla n  
• Northern Arizona University   2018-2025   Strategic   Pla n   One NAU. Side by Side.  
• South Dakota State University   Imagine 2023: Aspire. Discover. Achieve.  
• State University of New York at Binghamton   Road Map to Premier  
• University of Louisiana Lafayette   Strategic   Pla n   2015-2020  
• University of North Carolina Greensboro*   Giant Steps  
• University of North Texas   University of North Texas   Strategic   Pla n   2012-2019  

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Sample School Strategic Plan

Education is the very foundation of every professional. This fact makes it important, regardless of whether you tackle elementary, high school, college , or postgraduate levels. It became so important that it has been included in the top priorities and goals of each individual. For this very reason, a school administration has to see to it that its departments are introduced to continuous improvement for it to satisfy their market’s demands. And, the best way to do so is through the process of planning. During such a process, a school outlines sets of strategies and the project action plans that would likely sustain the business in 3 year’s time, more or less. A good example of this is a one-page strategic plan for the whole school approach. Get more samples by having a look at our Free 15+ School Strategic Plan Examples in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Apple Pages.

15+ Sample School Strategic Plan Examples

1. school strategic plan.

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2. School Educational Strategic Plan

3. School Academic Strategic Plan

4. Primary School Strategic Plan

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5. Private School Strategic Plan

Size: 120 KB

6. Strategic Plan For School Improvement

Size: 570 KB

7. Sample Strategic Plan For School Improvement

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8. Five-Year Strategic Plan For Schools

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9.  Quality Strategic Plan in Secondary Schools

Size: 181 KB

10. 5-Year School Strategic Plan Example

11. School Strategic Development Plan

Size: 325 KB

12. School Management Strategic Plan

Size: 294 KB

13. Basic School Strategic Plan

14. Formal School Strategic Plan

Size: 200 KB

15. Simple School Strategic Plan Example

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16. Printable School Strategic Plan

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What Is a School Strategic Plan?

A school strategic plan is a document that establishes a certain institution’s development path with the goals, objectives, strategies, and activities taken into account. In fact, Eric Vo wrote in his 2018 article for Hartford Insurance’s website that if such a plan is prepared well, it can lead to the awakening of an organization and its employees’ responsiveness to both opportunities and challenges. In other words, a high school strategic plan , college strategic plan, or an academic strategic plan is not just good for a school to generate profit but also for it to sustain itself when disadvantageous circumstances arise.

Keys To a Successful Strategic Planning

The keys to making a successful strategic plan can be broken down into three, including team chemistry, communication, and adaptability.

Team chemistry, just like in sports, plays a crucial role in smoothening the functions of every employee in a company, which can gradually lead to the success in any undertaking, such as the implementation of strategic planning. It can be gained by also planning, implementing, and maintaining an employee engagement strategy and communication plan .

In another aspect, the success of the strategic plan also relies heavily on the adaptability of a company and its constituents—the main reason why is that such a plan is set for long-term company goals. Within the timeframe of its project implementation plan , a lot could happen. With the ability to adapt to sudden changes, the project workflow will not be affected, and the overall strategic plan will be carried on.

How to Organize a School Strategic Plan

Planning is one of the hardest parts of a project. Apart from elongating your patience, you also have to be very careful in taking each step of the process. Given its difficulty, it is understandable that you have to go through a series of process analysis , and will be answering a couple of project evaluation questionnaires . And, failing those can cause a loss of your time, effort, and money. To prevent your company from losing any, we have set our list of guidelines and insights below on how to successfully organize a school strategic plan.

1. Identify Rooms for Development

There are many aspects in a school that needs to be developed for it to cater to more students, to have better business results, and to prepare its constituents from unforeseeable endangerments. To narrow down your focus as you organize your business development strategies , you have to identify which among the rooms for development you should be working on.

2. Cite School Resources

Before you go on in conceptualizing your plan, know what resources school has. This is so it will be easier for you to manage the asset allocation that will be useful in the pursuance of your future strategic plan.

3. Set Goals and Objectives

The goals and objectives are the main drivers of any plan. This is why setting your short-term and long-term goals are necessary. With these drivers in hand, your company employees will have a clearer overview of what they should prioritize.

4. Meet With Stakeholders

It takes more than just one mind to achieve a successful strategic plan for your school . Therefore, you need to call in people who have long experiences in your school’s management – executive stakeholders. Creating an executive meeting agenda may be a hassle, but the fruit that the meeting bears will surely be sweet and highly beneficial.

5. Draft Plan

Once you have discussed your strategic plan with the stakeholders, it is time to put them into technical writing . Why? Obviously, the reasons are mainly for formality, legality, and guidance. By documenting the details of such a plan in your data inventory , all concerned employees will have a good reminder about their tasks, responsibilities, and targets.

6. Present, Evaluate, and Revise

After drafting your plan’s specifications, present them to the stakeholders one more time. This is for you to identify faults and garner recommendation reports from them that can make your strategic plan more effective and efficient. Once the suggestions are collected, revise your output accordingly. This step might be repeated until the stakeholders are satisfied.

1. What are the major components of a standardized strategic plan?

A standard-based strategic plan must include the following:

– Mission, Vision, and Values Statements

– SWOT Analysis

– Goals and Objectives

– Strategies and Relevant Activities

– Evaluation and Maintenance Strategy Plan

2. What is the difference between a strategic plan and tactical plan?

A strategic plan gives out the broader context of how to achieve long-term goals. A tactical plan, on the other hand, focuses more on detailing the activities to reach the set goals.

3. Are schools businesses?

Yes, they are. Schools offer services, which take forms of educational programs, to students who are their customers or clients in exchange for a specific amount of money.

Almost all individuals know how important schools are in our society. And businesses, by nature, have to build themselves up for it to cope up with the changes, especially the ones that influence the customer preference. While doing so, they also have to take into account several internal factors. In line with this, a school strategic plan is a perfect document that must be developed to ensure the completeness of a development project .

Text prompt

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Create a study plan for final exams in high school

Develop a project timeline for a middle school science fair.

47+ SAMPLE Educational Strategic Plan in PDF

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Step 1: defining the school’s culture and values, step 2: mission and vision statements, step 3: analyzing the current situation, step 4: developing and executing action plans, step 5: monitoring and evaluating the progress, share this post on your network, you may also like these articles.

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Plan template bundle, education business plan template bundle, 11+ sample school strategic plan templates, private school student strategic plan example, higher educational institution strategic plan template, printable strategic plan graphic design template, primary & secondary school strategic plan, creating a school strategic plan:, step 1: goals and objectives, step 2: materials and resources needed, step 3: assess future opportunities, step 4: action plan, step 5: review, annual high school strategic planning template, academic public school strategic action plan template, operational school objectives strategic plan template, graduate college strategic plan template, five-year business strategic plan template, 3 year school strategic plan outline template, school goal success strategic plan template, graphic visual school strategic plan template, elements of a school strategic plan:, purpose of the school strategic plan, plan templates, 11+ sample school strategic plan templates in ms word | pdf | pages | google docs.

Running a school is similar to running a business. You need the latest facilities, benefits, and programs for any student, teacher, and school employee. When we work in the office, sometimes we cannot see what everyone needs. Like giving customer feedback form , you can also launch research with an interview or a question and answer survey form to help your respondents, and you get the information you need. Our sample school strategic plan templates help develop your content efficiently.

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• All the improvements that you want to achieve with the teachers, students, building and other facilities.
• A strategic plan to reach those goals is made and worked upon for the successful running of a school.
• It helps to ascertain the list of the improvements needed in the schools.
• It contributes to planning out the role of teachers and other people for improving the education methods within the schools. View a wider selection of strategic marketing plan  templates right here.
• It provides the improvements you need to achieve with the teachers, building, technology, and students.
• It outlines the plan for the improvements.
• A school strategic plan is generally made to reach certain goals and to keep doing well in schools with regards to education and also, the overall growth of the child.

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Digital Learning

• Communicating behavioural expectations to students (Acceptable Use Agreements)
• Student digital device provision
• Strategic planning for digital technologies

On this page:

Ict online planning tool, ict strategic planning resources, updating school ict strategic plans.

Schools are encouraged to develop an ICT strategic plan that aligns with their School Strategic Plan and Annual Implementation Plan. An ICT strategic plan describes how school goals will be enabled by digital technology.

The online ICT planning tool helps schools simplify the ICT strategic planning process, by assisting schools to:

• develop their ICT vision
• identify current infrastructure, hardware and fleet usage and areas for improvement
• identify current ICT and target practices aligned with learning and teaching goals
• develop a plan of action, including a Gantt chart, that will lead to the achievement of their identified goals
• develop a plan for infrastructure and device management
• plan their school ICT budget expenditure over a 4-year period.

Principal class members and school service technicians have default access to the tool. Access for other staff members can be delegated. Contact the Service Desk via the Services Portal External Link (staff login required) or email at [email protected] for assistance.

To access the online planning tool, refer to: ICT planning tool External Link (staff login required).

A collection of resources and examples have been curated to assist schools with ICT strategic planning. To access these resources, visit Strategic Planning for Digital Technologies External Link on Arc Learning.

Prior to transitioning to department-provided technologies, as outlined in the Technologies and ICT Services policy , schools are encouraged to review and update their ICT strategic plans to align with the requirements and objectives of this policy.

Reviewed 02 September 2024

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