INTRODUCTION

The University of Scranton's Strategic Plan: A Community of Scholars - A Culture of Excellence has a number of important functions.  It sets strategic directions for the University; it is also the first piece of the University's planning process.  But it is important for members of the Board of Trustees and of the University community to understand that the Strategic Plan, by itself, is not a complete operational document. 

In order for the goals and objectives set forward in the Plan to be accomplished, this key document needs to be followed immediately by a number of other operational documents:  five-year operational plans for all the colleges and divisions of the University and a Five-Year Financial Plan for the University, which includes a Five-Year Capital Plan.  These five-year plans need to be detailed by the annual reports of the various departments and programs within the major divisions, and they need to be supported by the annual budgets which incorporate, year by year, the resources needed to actualize the Strategic Plan.  A complete planning process will include the development, and then revision, of each of these pieces on a regular basis.  And the cycle will begin with the review and revision of the Strategic Plan itself.

FIVE YEAR OPERATIONAL PLANS

Once the new Strategic Plan has been approved, the various actions called for in the plan need to be detailed in the five-year operational plans of the five colleges and schools of the University and of the various major divisions.  These divisions will begin drafting their five-year operational plans in the summer of 1999, for review by their supervisors, the University Planning Committee, and the Administrators' Conference in the fall.  These plans will include both objectives assigned in the Strategic Plan and other operational initiatives that may not be addressed directly in the Strategic Plan.  In the colleges and schools, for example, the deans will be attempting to capture in a five-year plan the major directions that they have seen emerging in the annual reports of their departments.

FIVE YEAR FINANCIAL PLAN

The resource needs outlined in these five-year operational plans should provide one basis for the next revision of the Five-Year Financial Plan, which should be completed during the early part of the fall semester.  Space needs should be incorporated into the ongoing Facilities Improvement Plan, or, if they are major projects, into the Five-Year Capital Plan.  The emerging University Facilities Master Plan, which should be completed by August, should provide a framework and a broad set of priorities for these last two documents.

Those items in the five-year reports that are scheduled for accomplishment in the first year of the report should be incorporated into the annual budget proposed for the 2000/2001 academic year.

ANNUAL REPORTS

In the spring of the year vice-presidents and divisional heads should issue guidelines for departments to follow in preparing annual reports.  These reports should reflect applicable parts of the University's Strategic Plan.   They should be completed late in the spring or early in the summer and should include the following:

• a review of the current academic year;
• a revision of the objectives for the next academic year;
• a draft of objectives for the next academic year after that;
• a projection (in advance of budget requests to be made in the fall) of major resource needs proposed for inclusion in the five-year plans of their divisions or colleges.

THE ANNUAL BUDGET

Starting in the fall of 2000, the annual budget process will have the benefit of building on one complete planning cycle.  Budget requests submitted through the appropriate organizational channels should be based on the detailed resource needs outlined in the annual reports submitted in the previous summer.  The first step in drafting the 2001/2002 budget will, as has been customary, be a revision of the Five-Year Financial and Capital plans.

INNOVATIONS FOR AFFORDABILITY

The end of one planning cycle and the beginning of the next should be the review of the Strategic Plan, and the development of appropriate revisions that will look out another five years.  These revisions will be based on a consideration of how well and rapidly the goals and objectives of the plan had been accomplished. They should also be based on analysis of strategic indicators and on changes in the environment, which will be discerned by continued environmental scans.  They will be based, further, on unanticipated opportunities that will have developed, as well as unanticipated problems. 

Then the five-year operational plans will be revised, and so forth, and so forth.