Monday, October 25, 1999
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Internal responses to external conditions
Strategic Planning Advisory Group reviews draft plans from campus units
By Sharron Hannon

Don Eastman, vice president for strategic planning, chairs the institutional Strategic Planning Advisory Group that has gathered for Thursday morning meetings on an almost weekly basis since February.
The group has heard presentations on topics important to UGA’s future and, over the past several weeks, has been reviewing draft strategic plans submitted by more than 20 units across campus--from schools and colleges to the Georgia Museum of Art to the UGA Athletics Association. Eastman provided the following update on these efforts.

Columns: Where are we in the strategic-planning process?
Eastman: The institutional Strategic Planning Advisory Group and the campus groups involved in creating plans for their units have been at work for eight months now. At this point, my office has
received draft plans from almost all those campus units. The advisory group has reviewed the drafts and offered comments, and in many cases I’ve met with the various planning groups around campus. We’re now in the process of getting second--and we hope final--drafts.

Columns: And how has this been working out?
Eastman: There’s been a lot of back and forth discussions about these plans. Strategic planning can be defined lots of ways. What we’re trying to focus on is internal responses to changes in external conditions in order to achieve internal goals. The problem with a number of the plans we’ve reviewed from campus units is that they fail to identify the external challenges or opportunities that affect them and to delineate specifically how they will respond. But if you’re not responding to the external environment, you’re not being strategic. That’s especially true for a state university, particularly a land-grant institution with a special mission to serve the people of the state.
In these times, the university increasingly depends on private as well as state support. With 200,000 alumni--well over half of whom live in this state--there’s potential for a huge amount of external support if we tap it.

Columns: What are the next steps?
Eastman: The institutional advisory group expects to have all the unit plans in as final a form as they’re going to be by Jan. 1. Then we’ll start to work on the institutional plan. I’ve told President Adams that I’ll have that draft on his desk by May 1. So by next spring all the unit plans and the institutional plan should be done, but that’s just the start. How they will be implemented is the important part. These plans will be used to provide a framework for the next fund-raising campaign and for decisions about capital-outlay priorities and budget development. The plans should be reviewed every year and modified as needed.

Columns: Do you think people understand the difference between the strategic-planning process and the SACS self-study that’s also in progress?
Eastman: I think people are probably confused and perhaps overwhelmed by the plethora of long-range thinking efforts going on right now. It’s all healthy, but it’s a lot to deal with. A major part of the self-study is a plan for improving the undergraduate experience at this institution. So we’ll be working with the self-study group to see that the strategic elements of their plan get incorporated into the institutional strategic plan. Bob Boehmer, who chairs the self-study, is a member of the Strategic Planning Advisory Group and we are keeping in close touch about this.
We’re also keeping our eye on the progress of the six institutional initiatives launched by President Adams last January (school of public policy, college of ecology and environmental science, college of communications, college of fine arts, Yamacraw Project and the biomedical initiative). Some of these, as he expected, are coming together; some are not. We’ll stay alert to those developments as well.
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