INTRODUCTION TO
PLANNING
Barbara McNeice-Stallard
Director
Research and Institutional Effectiveness
Parts of this document were taken from similar work done by McNeice-Stallard, Umbdenstock
and Narvaez in 2007 for The Research and Planning Group.
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Fundamentals of Planning
Inputs and Dialogue

What is planning?

How do the plans fit together?

How to do planning by committee?
Scope and Institution’s Perspective

Why do planning well?
Evaluation and Integration

How to keep the plan alive?

Theoretical versus practical considerations
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INPUTS AND DIALOGUE
What is planning?

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Planning is a way to create a set of actions to
achieve an outcome.
Planning involves people, consideration of the
political environment and many other aspects
and it sometimes gets out of control (that is the
fun part – really).
Planning has department-level input (PIE) and
Presidential input (BP3250) (i.e., top down and
bottom up approach)
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What is planning (continued)

Based on the college’s mission statement
and goals, planning involves deciding the
college's focus/ priorities, setting
institutional goals, developing institutional/
departmental strategies, outlining tasks
and creating schedules to measure if the
goals are reached, evaluating the outcome
and doing it all again (i.e., think, plan, do,
and evaluate cycle).

Plans are tools that guide you and they
are dynamic.
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How do the plans fit together?

Types of Plans:
 Educational
Master Plan
 Facilities Master Plan
 Program Review (Planning for Institutional
Effectiveness (PIE))
 Budget Planning
 Strategic Plan
 Along with the other plans: Student Equity
Plan, Basic Skills plan
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Fitting Plans Together

Plans should be interrelated much
like the threads in a woven rug.
Take away one plan (i.e., thread)
and the rest may not fit together well
and the whole planning cycle (i.e.,
rug) might fall apart
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How to do planning by committee?

What is the committee’s
charge?

Who is the committee & how
does it relate to the doers?

Set parameters for the
committee’s role, the doers’
roles and watch the
boundaries change while
protecting the plan.
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SCOPE AND INSTITUTION’S
PERSPECTIVE
Demonstrated concern with honesty,
truthfulness, diversity and equity
 Importance of planning, evaluation and
link to resource allocation for students and
effective teaching and learning
 External needs for planning (e.g.,
accreditation)

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EVALUATION AND
INTEGRATION

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Continue with ongoing integration of all plans as
realistically as possible and as meaningful as possible
Use ongoing and systematic cycle of evaluation,
integrated planning, implementation, and re-evaluation
that supports all institutional planning and is linked to
resource allocation and decision-making

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Making it measureable, realistic and useful
Creating a timeline, responsibilities, tasks, and enabling
structures
Having an institutional planning calendar
Disseminating the findings
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How to keep the plan alive?

The planning cycle: Don’t let the dust
settle. Consider using Project Mgt.

Action needs to be taken on the plan.
Who is responsible for it? How much
work really should be done within a year?

Embed the plan into routines

Motivate people & groups to work with
the plan – become an inspirational
speaker

Frame the message--constantly
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Re-working the plan
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Re-visit the plan, especially when you have
new key players (e.g., President)
Keeping on task
Create a quality representation of the
college’s vision
Fix a timeline for renewal
Language of rationale for renewal: clarity &
interpretation, new information, inquiry
mode as evolving part of college culture,
expectation of learning, reflection,
responsiveness
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Plan Creation: Theoretical
versus practical considerations

Books tell you only one way of doing the
planning process – and each book has a
different idea of how to do it

In practice, whatever will work with your
organization, given the current state of
the plans, the organizational culture and
the accreditation standards, is what you
do
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