LHE-7600: Strategic Planning and Operations in Higher Education

Lorenzo, A. W., & Sanford, K. (2019). Engage with purpose: Seek broad, deep, and diverse perspectives in your planning process. Planning for Higher Education, 47(2), 1-5.
The authors present numerous ideas about how institutions involve stakeholders in planning processes. Planning is not just a leadership exercise, so if you want to make a significant and sustained change at any university, the change processes involve various constituent groups to see their input and expertise.

Suskie, L. A., & Ikenberry, S. O. (2015). Five dimensions of quality: A common sense guide to accreditation and accountability. Jossey-Bass.
Read Chapter 10, pages 107-117. Suskie and Ikenberry provide a concise overview of environmental scanning, SWOT analysis, and information on how institutions should craft their goals and action steps for planning.

Bennett, C. J., & Kinney, S. K. (2018). Modifying the strategic planning engine: A case study. Planning for Higher Education, 46(4), 18-26.
This article is a case study of a college within a large institution that revised its strategic planning process, including developing performance indicators (which you will learn more about in Weeks 3 and 4 of this course). This institution provides an excellent example to demonstrate how to operationalize the planning processes.

Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthing and sustaining organizational achievement (5th ed.). Wiley.
Read Chapter 5, pages 149-184. In this chapter, Bryson picks up on the themes introduced in Chapter 1 (Week 1 of this course). He discusses how institutions can identify “black swan” (rare) events and engage in SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analyses to understand the many factors – big and small – affecting nonprofit and government organizations. Notice the universal nature of the themes.