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Each unit plan typically will contain the same components as Appalachian State’s Strategic Plan, 2008-
2013 plus a few key activities selected by the unit to support the Strategic Plan
(http://irap.appstate.edu/index.php?module=pagesmith&uop=view_page&id=76). Those five components are:
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Unit Mission: purpose or reason for the unit’s existence;
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Unit Vision: aspirations for a desired future, including an ideal view of the unit;
Unit Essential Character: unique identity or distinctive attributes of the unit;
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Unit Core Values: fundamental principles that govern the unit’s policy decisions; and,
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Unit Core Assets: basic resources and capabilities that enable the achievement of the unit’s mission and vision.
In addition to the above five components, each unit plan will contain a small number (i.e., 2-3) of highly valued activities linked to the University’s Strategic Priorities and Strategic Initiatives. These activities should be selected and proposed because of their importance both to the unit and the University during the stated planning period. Each activity will have the following components:
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Title and Brief Description;
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Rationale: reason, including evidence obtained from assessment findings, for including the activity in the unit plan;
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Person Responsible: the person charged with insuring that the activity is achieved;
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Timeline: year or years ahead when the activity will be achieved;
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Costs: personnel, recurring costs, and non-recurring costs associated with the activity;
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Indicators: measures for determining successful achievement of the activity; and,
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Findings: evidence of the successful achievement of the activity; includes further actions when the activity has not been achieved fully.
By August 1, 2009, all unit plans should be entered in TracDat, from Nuventive, LLC. TracDat has been configured locally with text boxes and dropdown windows to retain University-wide unit planning data and to facilitate tracking Appalachian’s successful achievement of Strategic Priorities and Initiatives.
TracDat is accessed from the URL, tracdat.appstate.edu/tracdat, or from the Institutional Research,
Assessment, and Planning URL, irap.appstate.edu. Guidelines for using TracDat are being prepared and will be ready in January 2009.
The template shown below matches text boxes in TracDat, and the content of the text boxes can be copied and pasted into TracDat. In preparing unit plans, the following considerations may be helpful.
There is no one right way to plan. Instead, there are many systematic ways to convert visions and good intentions into results, and more specifically, prepare to populate TracDat with relevant content. The following strategic planning model and accompanying suggestions are offered as a guide to the planning process recommended for Appalachian's planning units. All planning units are strongly encouraged to undertake a formal, collective process to prepare unit plans.
Steps in Planning
1. Decide Upon an Approach to Planning.
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As a first step, it is recommended that the head of the planning unit decide who is to participate in the planning activities, what planning process will be followed, and how the results will be shared with all members of the unit. Although in a large unit a representative group may be charged with producing the plan, everyone should have an opportunity to offer suggestions and to react to proposals. One means of achieving this is to give all members of the unit copies of the University's Strategic Plan and departmental educational or program goals and to solicit their ideas relevant to the unit plan’s components, along with suggested responses or actions.
Once the planning process is under way, the following caveats are suggested: a.
Avoid drawing out the process over a long period of time. For some units it may be sufficient to hold a single meeting to discuss and articulate the plan’s components, follow up by sharing drafts of the results of the meeting, and then hold a final meeting to adopt the unit plan. b.
Avoid collecting large quantities of data. A few key findings or defined judgments may be sufficient rationale for including an activity in the unit plan, and then focused data collection can tell how well the activity is being achieved.
2. Review or Develop the Unit's Mission and/or Affirm a Mandate.
Planning customary involves beginning with a review of the unit's current mission and mandates to ensure that participants in the planning process have a common understanding of the unit’s fundamental purpose.
The mission may be mandated by legislative or administrative bodies and aspects of the statement thus may be prescribed externally. A useful mission statement should not consist of only platitudes and expressions of good intentions. It should be operational, simple, and clear so that each person in the unit can judge his or her contributions to the unit's reasons for existence.
A unit's mission is usually long-range, subject to periodic review and revision. For example, part of the mission of an academic department may be "to educate students in the discipline," and may change very little over many years. Thus, the mission statement represents a current statement of what the unit is really trying to be or do across time. It keeps each unit focused and on track, and it mobilizes the persons in each unit to get the right things done.
3. Review or Develop the Unit’s Vision Statement.
A unit’s vision conveys a compelling, conceptual image of the desired future for the unit. It provides inspiration and challenge to all members of the unit to reach toward an ideal of what the unit can become.
It should be purposefully articulated to bridge the present and future and to serve as a critical impetus for change. Thus it should be brief enough to be memorable and complete enough to direct effort.
Several criteria may be applied to evaluate a vision statement:
 future-oriented, deriving from reasonable assumptions about the future;
 idealistic, envisioning a future that is beyond the present;
 appropriate, fitting with the unit’s history and culture;
 inspirational, encouraging enthusiasm and commitment; and,
 ambitious, causing members of the unit to stretch to reach it.
Much is written and spoken about the importance of a “shared vision” for any organization, meaning that the vision is widely understood and supported within the unit. Such a shared vision can serve as a roadmap for the members of the unit to see where they aspire to go, and it can help them see what it will take to get there.
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4. Review or Develop Statements about the Unit’s Essential Character, Core Values, and Core Assets.
This activity can replace the traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) exercises, or a traditional SWOT exercise can be followed with the intent of articulating these components of the unit plan. All three of these components require candid self-appraisals about (a) the main attributes or characteristics of the unit, (b) what it stands for, and (c) what it has going for it. There is no one right way to arrive at these components, but one good way is to use feedback data collected from students, clients, customers, unit members, and external evaluators to help find key words for each of the three components. The results simply may be short lists of statements much as those presented in the
University’s Strategic Plan. A fundamental assumption in preparing these three unit plan components is that they manifest a forthright honesty.
5. Develop Activities that relate the Unit’s Mission, Vision, Essential Character, Core Values, and Core
Assets to the University’s Strategic Priorities and Initiatives.
The purpose and format of these activities is summarized on page 1. It is important to keep the number of activities to the few that are highly valued by the members of the unit, and that number may be fewer than three or four. The fundamental question for the members of each unit to address is, what will we focus on during this planning period to advance both our particular unit and to contribute to the advancement of the
University’s Strategic Plan ? Knowing that every possible good idea cannot be adopted and developed, members of units must dedicate efforts to achieving a few well.
As with other unit plan components, members of units may use a meeting to propose activities or to review activities already proposed by committees, and then use electronic exchanges to refine the activities and reach a point at which activities can be adopted for the unit plans. What really is important is that all member of the unit have opportunities to contribute to the development and adoption of activities stated in unit plans.
These five components—Mission Statement; Vision Statement; Statements of Essential Character, Core
Values, and Core Assets—plus a small set of Activities thus comprise a unit plan. They will be retained in
TracDat as an institution-wide electronic database evidence of collective effort to achieve the University
Strategic Plan, 2008-2013 .
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