UW-Milwaukee
Strategic Planning FAQs
Mark Mone, PhD
April 18, 2013
1. What do we mean by strategic planning at UWM?
Strategic planning, at its most basic level, is long-range, comprehensive planning for the
campus. Our planning teams will take into account our academic and research programs,
capabilities and goals, consider external challenges and opportunities, and determine
where we want to be in 2020 and how we will get there.
2. Has UWM ever done this before?
The most recent strategic planning at UWM occurred in 1996, resulting in a brief document
that outlined 4 key priorities:
1. Strengthening and more effectively integrating the university's central functions of
creating, disseminating and applying knowledge. In other words, better using
UWM's strengths as an urban research university to enhance the education of its
students.
2. Stabilizing the university's enrollment and resources.
3. Dramatically expanding the use of technology across the campus.
4. Enhancing the campus learning and working environment.
While this is a useful starting point, and these are still important objectives today, our plan
will develop more specific objectives and action plans, synthesize numerous existing
campus activities and initiatives, and reflect contemporary challenges and opportunities
facing UWM.
3. What is the imperative for strategic planning? Why are we doing this now?
There are at least two imperatives. First, at a general level, developing a thorough,
comprehensive strategic plan will position us to better face a rapidly changing future. Most
of us are aware of some of the daunting challenges and exciting opportunities facing UWM
and higher education. To name but a few, consider the changing levels and types of state
funding and political support, the role of technology (e.g., Massive Open Online Courses—
MOOCs), competitive pressures, faculty and staff morale (affecting attraction and
retention), and a compelling vision for us to move into the top tier of research universities.
These represent exciting, stimulating opportunities and, simultaneously, formidable
challenges. A more specific imperative is that we currently do not have a coherent, well
thought out plan for addressing the future. Within academic units and across divisions—
and across the campus—we are heading in many diverse directions. Indeed, Chancellor
Lovell mentioned more than three dozen major campus initiatives and actions in a recent
plenary. Therein lies a twofold risk—a risk that we have overlapping (duplicative) efforts
and a risk that there may be areas of need left unaddressed. With a coherent plan, one that
organizes these efforts by thematic, purpose-driven intent, we can better coordinate our
work and use our resources efficiently and effectively for the long-term realization of our
research and access mission.
4. What is the structure for planning?
In November, 2012, we launched the Core Strategic Planning Team of 16 people who
represent campus governance and community leaders. This group meets monthly and
provides oversight and coordinates the work of two other sets of teams:
One set is what we call the Functional teams--about 35 people spread across important
functions including communications, stakeholder engagement, data gathering and
benchmarking, synthesizing and writing, and technical and administrative support. These
teams met for the first time in January and will meet as regularly as it takes to perform
their work.
The other set of teams is what we call the Thematic teams, and these eleven main areas
include most, if not all, of the campus activities and initiatives. There will be over 100
campus and community members involved in these teams, and they will develop the initial
objectives for consideration as priorities to guide us on our path to 2020. Here is the list of
thematic team focal areas:
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Top-tier Research University (including interdisciplinary efforts);
Sustainable Prosperity;
Academic Planning;
Student Success and Enrollment (Recruitment, Retention, and Remediation);
Access, Diversity and Inclusion;
Financially Sustained University;
Technology (Digitization and other elements);
Physical Aspects: Green campus, Master Plan, etc.;
Internationalization;
BP2W (Human Capital): Faculty and Staff Attraction, Development and Retention;
and
Community Engagement.
The work of the thematic teams will be informed by the Data Gathering & Benchmarking
Team, which will assist with SWOT, inclusion of relevant data, trends and information
relevant to higher education, and comparisons with peer and aspirant schools.
5. How and why were these particular themes selected?
These themes were identified after carefully examining dozens of campus activities and
initiatives and categorizing them by natural affiliation. For example, in the Physical
Aspects of Campus category, UWM has been guided by our past Campus Master Plan, but
we also today have many related groups and activities that are not part of that Master
Plan—transportation planning, Bicycle Advisory Task Force, neighborhood relations, Space
Planning, Northwest Quadrant, and physical and other space issues for non-Kenwood
Avenue campus locations (Zilber School of Public Health, School of Freshwater Science,
Innovation Park, etc.). Overall, the eleven themes encompass many of the critical initiatives
and activities underway on campus.
6. How were members selected for these Strategic Planning Teams?
A core team of campus governance group leaders and community representatives, working
with the Steering Committee (Chancellor Lovell, Provost Britz, Vice Chancellor Prince, and
Interim Vice Chancellor Van Harpen), drafted the Functional and Thematic teams. For any
given team, we first identified people whose work naturally aligned with the team’s area.
For example, Professor Lee Ann Garrison and Dean Carol Colbeck have been the co-chairs
of the campus Academic Planning initiative, so they were a natural selection for the
Academic Planning co-chairs, and so forth. We next looked at the balance of faculty,
academic, classified, and administrative staff, students*, alumni, community members and
other elements of diversity. Finally, we wanted to keep the groups to a manageable size,
aiming for 10-12 people or fewer, if possible. In this way, when meetings are scheduled, it
will be possible to have a majority of people who can actually meet.
Given these guidelines, we did not include all people or groups who may make helpful and
necessary suggestions for each group. We have encouraged the teams to remain small
enough to be manageable, but to include as resources any individuals or group as needed.
There is no perfect selection mechanism or process, but we want to be inclusive—which is
why we have approximately 200 people on the strategic planning teams—and have a
Stakeholder Engagement team, covered in the next section.
*The Student Association has identifying 7-8 students for our teams and we are working
with them to provide additional students.
7. For employees who are not directly serving on committees, will there be
opportunities for them to participate in the process?
Yes. We will be scheduling listening sessions and information exchanges on our website, in
which we will share updates and seek the input of all campus constituents. We also will
have a feature on our website where you can provide direction and perspectives that will
be sent to the appropriate planning group(s). Finally, our Stakeholder Engagement group
will be seeking input in various ways as they develop their plans.
8. How will the Thematic Teams work with Functional and Core teams?
An attached schematic shows the flow of work from the 5 Functional teams to the 11
Thematic teams over time. The “Functions” refer to the actual work that those teams will
be performing, explained below, and the “Themes” represent the categories in which
significant existing and planned activities and initiatives reside. These themes are crucial
to our vision and mission and by necessity will be cross-cutting.
The Functional teams were formed before the Thematic teams so that they can work on
communications, gathering data and benchmarking, engaging with stakeholders, and other
functions. Importantly, by design and for efficiency, one group that will be providing
information right out of the gate is our Data Gathering and Benchmarking group. They are
amassing information on our campus’ environment—internal, external, current and future
risks, opportunities, goals for budget models, and other campus information—strategic
plans, website, and a host of other information. This group provides archival types of
information. A second group, the Stakeholder Engagement group, is responsible for
soliciting information from dozens of different stakeholder groups. They will initially have
general information that should be incorporated as planning work occurs and later they
will be an important conduit for receiving feedback on different drafts of our strategic plan.
The Communications group will be the vehicle to communicate both the processes being
used and the progress. As we create the initial long-term objectives in each thematic team
area, we will be sharing our outcomes with other thematic teams and the Synthesizing and
Writing team will be providing assistance here—identifying common themes, linkages, and
unified direction—in conjunction with environmental (e.g., fiscal, demographic, political)
factors. Later, this group will be responsible for pulling the disparate elements together to
forge the drafts of the campus strategic plan.
The Core team, made up of governance group leaders and community members, meets
monthly and has its members distributed across the Functional and Thematic teams. The
Core team provides coordination and oversight of the work done by all the teams. Cochairs of Thematic teams, like the co-chairs of the Functional teams, are encouraged to
attend the monthly meetings of the Core team. All of our work is shared routinely with our
Steering Committee, which includes Chancellor Lovell, Provost and VC Britz, VC Prince, and
Interim VC Van Harpen.
9. What is the specific deliverable for each thematic team?
Each team is charged with developing the 3-5 initial long-term objectives for their thematic
area. The work in some areas may naturally fall into several different areas (e.g.,
technology, research, successful students). We would like to have the first set of objectives
identified by May 8 for a first pass review. While this might at first sound ambitious (ok, it
is ambitious), we have put together teams that represent the persons most knowledgeable
and informed of planning in their respective areas—many plans are already well
underway. For May 8, we are asking the teams to: (a) extend the planning horizon out to
2020 and (b) incorporate additional integrative elements indicated in the template of
charges. We don’t expect to have 100% developed plans at that point—indeed, the point is
to share a draft of objectives to see where each group is. Based on these objectives, we will
see where there are areas of overlap, consolidation, gaps, and ways to begin synthesizing.
In the summer months we will ask teams to continue to refine plans and will be developing
plans further in the fall.
The template of charges asks for details for each goal: linkages with academic plans,
campus risks addressed, comprehensive campaign themes, vision and mission alignment,
enrollment contributions, and so forth. The goals that contribute more to campus mission,
vision, and values will be more likely to be incorporated and supported by the campus as
we develop the larger strategic plan.
10. How will the campus groups already working on these areas be included?
Indeed, none of the teams is starting from scratch. In each thematic area, planning has
been or is underway (e.g., internationalization, academic planning, technology, BP2W,
financial sustained university). In our strategic planning work, each thematic team's
charge is to:
(a) capture, integrate, and build on campus planning work that's related to its theme
(b) advance the planning to a 2020 horizon
(c) integrate this thematic area with the other themes, especially academic planning,
resource planning, risk management, and comprehensive campaign themes—per
the template of objectives given.
11. More specifically, what is the relationship between Strategic Planning, Academic
Planning, Budget Modeling and other important initiatives and activities?
Our strategic planning process is built on the academic plans that are generated by faculty
and staff in the schools and colleges, in conjunction with a resource model that will support
these plans. By necessity, our work is integrative and tightly linked. As but one basic
example, if we do not have the desired enrollments, we will not generate enough state and
tuition support to enable our desired goals and investments in faculty, staff, and
programming needs. As another example, our planning work is premised on growth in
federally funded research, which requires attraction and retention of top-caliber faculty
and staff. If we don’t incorporate the best possible practices related to talent management,
we will not realize our vision of becoming a top-tier research university. At a broader level,
the Thematic teams are charged with integrating risks, resource planning, other themes,
and many other elements into their plans. Working with the Thematic teams, we have a
group that is charged with synthesizing and integrating these different plans into one
coherent roadmap.
12. What sets this planning process apart from past campus initiatives?
This will be a large undertaking, one depending on the remarkable skills and talents of
UWM colleagues and community stakeholders. UWM has never had this type of
comprehensive, complete strategic plan and we are going to do this carefully and
completely. While the end product is vitally important, we won't be successful if we don't
carefully develop a process that is inclusive, flexible, and applicable uniquely to UWM’s
needs, culture, and history.
The process outlined involves a large number of people--and yet there are many more to be
involved if we are to do this right. In that context, first, we want to make sure that people
are continuously informed, so there will be a link from the Chancellor’s website to our
Strategic Planning work and our Communication team will be focused on keeping the
campus informed. Second, we also have a Functional Team focused on Stakeholder
Engagement that will be interested in making sure that our process includes and considers
all of the important voices that make this campus what it is and what it can become.
Campus members--students, faculty, staff, alumni, community members, elected officials,
and others--will participate in surveys, listening sessions, focus groups, social media and
other means to gather input as we proceed.
Our primary objective is to develop a plan for 2013-2020 that helps the University to
realize the following UWM vision:
We will be a top-tier research university that is the best place to learn
and work for students, faculty and staff, and a leading driver for
sustainable prosperity. We will accomplish this through a commitment
to excellence, powerful ideas, community and global engagement, and
collaborative partnerships.
In a collaborative, inclusive fashion, our comprehensive strategic plan will include:
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Identification of the University’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
(drawing from campus units’ academic and strategic planning, budget model
planning, Enterprise Risk Management work and other areas).
An environmental scan describing challenges UWM faces today and in the future.
The integration of current significant UWM initiatives and activities.
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A long-range establishment of priorities, clear and attainable measurable goals, and
timelines that support our vision and mission—consistent with our values.
The plan that we create will become the strategic blueprint for future success, one that will
enable UWM’s vision and mission to become realized in a manner consistent with our
values.
13. What has happened so far and what is the timeline for the Strategic Planning
process and completion?
Our planning process built on the Campus and Chancellor’s Vision as established in fall,
2011 and approved by campus governance groups that fall. We subsequently developed a
statement of Guiding Values in the fall of 2012 and with the campus’ input modified and
received approval from campus governance groups in February 2013. The Core team was
established in the fall, 2012 and met for the first time in November. The Functional teams
met for the first time in January, 2013, with the Thematic teams meeting with all groups in
March, 2013. The initial pass for preliminary planning goals is May, 2013 with further
development occurring in the summer. All teams will meet again in October with further
developed plans and we will build on the academic and research plans that will be well
developed by late 2013. Based on feedback and further development, we anticipate having
the plan submitted to the Steering Committee by late spring, 2014.