Tuesday, October 29 3 NEWS Budgeting part IV: the Strategic Plan
Michigan Tech Lode RAND SILVERS Lode Writer The university’s audited financial report comes out at the end of October, and so in preparation the Lode is releasing a number of articles on the university’s finances and budget. This week’s article focuses on the university’s Strategic Plan. Last week, this column discussed how the numbers of the university’s budget come together. But numbers alone don’t make a budget; there have to be guiding principles that direct those dollars into objectives. These come from the university’s Strategic Plan, a document that outlines the university’s goals and priorities. The plan is two pages long and has three sections. The first is the mission, which is a one-sentence statement of what Michigan Tech does. It is, and has been since 2000, “We prepare students to create the future.” The next section is the vision, which is a one-sentence statement of what the university will do in the future. The current vision statement for the university is “Michigan Tech will grow as a premier technological research university of international stature, delivering education,
new knowledge and innovation for the needs of our world.” This is further explored in a separate document, the University Portrait 2035, which outlines quantitative milestones for the university to have reached by 2035. The final section of the Strategic Plan are the goals, which explain how the university will implement its mission and vision. This section makes up the majority of the body of the document, as each goal contains two to three subgoals, each of which have a number of more specific bullet points underneath them. For instance, goal 1 is: “A world-class and diverse faculty, staff and student population,” which is to be understood as one facet of attaining the university’s vision so that it can complete its mission. The first subgoal underneath this is, “Outstanding professional environment for all members of the Michigan Tech community,” which is one way the university wishes to accomplish goal 1. The first bullet point to attain this subgoal is “provide competitive compensation, recognition and rewards to attract, retain and support faculty and staff.” The bullet points, being the most specific, can be directly implemented through the
allocation of funds in the budget process, in this case by ensuring that wages being offered by Michigan Tech are at the same level as peer institutions. The current format of the plan originated in 2006 and was updated in 2009 and 2012. The target for the next revision is the spring of 2015, but the process begins much earlier. “Fall of 2014 we will begin preparing the revision,” said Dave Reed, Vice-President of Research. “We start that process with an open, web-based comment period. So the old plan [is] put up there, and anyone who has any comments at all can contribute to that. Early in the fall semester, the Deans… take those comments, take the plan and do a revision.” The Executive team then review what the Deans have put together, and in meetings with the University Senate, the Staff Council and a variety of other groups, the plan goes through between three and five revisions. “In the early spring there’s another comment period right before we go into the Board retreat in February… where we review the updated draft with them, get their concerns, maybe go back to particular groups with concerns, talk through the issues and try to get a resolution,” said Reed. The process is completed in May when the
Board approves an updated Strategic Plan, which guides the university in budgeting and policy-making for the next three years. But how extensive is this revision? In theory, it could be completely rewritten. In practice, the changes are usually rather minor. “The first meeting I have with the Deans, I tell them ‘Here’s the plan it’s two pages long. You can’t change the font, you can’t change the margins and you can’t add any pages,’ and that’s the guidelines,” said Reed. “The three main goals… have been reworded, but they haven’t really changed. What’s changed is down on the subgoals, and even what’s under the subgoals. Those get mixed and matched, and sometimes they get done. Three years from now, one might be done, and others may not have made much progress, so they get a little more emphasis.” Michigan Tech’s current Strategic Plan, along with the University Portrait 2035 and the Michigan Tech Dashboard, which displays metrics cataloguing how the university is doing relative to its goals are available at (www.banweb.mtu.edu/pls/ owa/strategic_plan2.p_display). Do you have any questions you’d like answered? E-mail lodesubmit@mtu.edu.
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