Monday, November 13, 2000
A worthy cause
Egerton, award-winning journalist, will deliver Ralph McGill Lecture
Campus Closeup
Kudos
College of Education announces two administrative appointments
Meet the press: Palestinian journalists visit Grady College
Forum
Headed in the right direction
By Donald Eastman
deastman@uga.edu

The University of Georgia University Council will consider the proposed institutional strategic plan for 2000-2010 at its meeting on Nov. 16. This plan has been unanimously recommended for approval by the University Council’s Strategic Planning Committee, and is the result of more than 18 months of effort by the university’s broad-based Strategic Planning Advisory Group. Large focus-group discussions of the challenges and opportunities for UGA over the next decade were held last semester with students, staff, faculty and administrators, and two open forums to discuss the plan, sponsored by the Council’s Strategic Planning Committee, were held this semester.

While the complete draft of the strategic plan for the University of Georgia for the next decade, entitled “UGA: 2000-2010: Building Georgia’s World University,” is available both on the Web (www.strategicplanning.uga.edu) and on paper (from the Office of Strategic Planning; planning@uga.edu; 542-2558), here’s a quick glimpse of this document.
It comprises four primary
documents:
• An institutional (or university-wide) plan in two parts, “The Institutional Strategic Plan” and a contextual set of definitions, data and observations entitled “The Planning Environment.”
• A compendium of the strategic plans of the 26 primary units of the university, including the 13 colleges and schools, the athletic department, the Georgia Museum of Art, the State Botanical Garden and others.
• A set of the proposals for major new units, including a School of Public and International Affairs, a College of the Environment and a Faculty of Engineering.
The central document is the institutional plan, which attempts to articulate the primary opportunities for the University of Georgia to achieve its goal of being one of the best public universities in America. The plan characterizes the current situation of the university and the state of Georgia, suggests some of the larger trends affecting contemporary higher education, and proposes three strategic directions to orient the institution’s priorities for the coming decade. A number of programs and projects are delineated to help pursue each of those three strategic directions, which are:
• Building the New Learning Environment (focusing on technology, campus residential community and teaching),
• Research Investment (focusing on building endowment for faculty positions and on research
facilities), and
• Competing in the Global Economy (focusing on language and cultural study, international programs, and Athens/UGA joint endeavors).
Budgetary implications for each project are indicated, as are the general sources of new revenue to support new programs and proposals over the decade. Benchmarks for each strategic direction are also offered.
Strategic plans usually make excellent door stops, and little else. The following steps have been proposed to ensure that UGA’s plan will be a timely, useful document throughout the life of the plan:
• Each of the unit plans and the institutional plan will be updated at least annually. Suggestions for improvements or alterations in the plan can be made at any time to the Office of Strategic Planning. Revisions in the institutional plan must be approved by the University Council and by the president of the university.
• An annual accounting of the progress each unit and the institution are making on accomplishing their strategic priorities will be developed, using the unit and institutional benchmarks.
• The University Council’s Strategic Planning Committee will work with the Office of Strategic Planning to make an annual report to the Council and the faculty on the institution’s progress in achieving its strategic priorities and directions.
UGA’s new strategic plan thus intends to be not only a compass to guide the university into the future, but a mechanism to help achieve the higher education ideal of shared governance on the UGA campus by continually enlarging, deepening and extending the institutional conversation about aims, priorities, opportunities and resources.
The Office of Strategic Planning is grateful to the literally hundreds of faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, volunteers and others who have contributed to the development of this plan. While it remains quite imperfect, this plan is a good start, and it will become better and even more useful as we all, through experience and repetition, become more effective planners to realize our dreams for this great institution.

Donald Eastman is Vice President for Strategic Planning and Public Affairs.

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