Colleges, departments, units, and areas looking to create or revise a strategic plan can access valuable resources with a new toolkit available on the website for the University’s strategic plan, Educate Connect Elevate: The Strategic Plan for Illinois’ First Public University.
“These resources provide a starting point for anyone working with a strategic plan, whether they are starting from scratch or honing and updating a current plan,” said Director of Planning, Research, and Policy Analysis (PRPA) Angela Engel, who serves on the Steering Team for Educate Connect Elevate. PRPA also provides assistance and guidance for those creating strategic plans.
Resources include:
- Planning Framework that guides a unit through the strategic planning process from start to finish
- Communication Plan to ensure stakeholders receive timely information and opportunities for involvement and feedback
- Mission and Vision Statements guidelines
- Analysis tools for information gathering stage to help determine the future direction of a unit, including outlines for SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results) and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analyses
- Plan Checklist that offers an inventory of strategic plan components
- Action Step Implementation template that outlines how to achieve and measure actions within a plan’s strategic directions/goals and objectives.
The resources also include a “crosswalk” to assist units in aligning their current strategic plan with Educate Connect Elevate.
“Many strategic plans across campus are aligned with the University’s previous plan, Educating Illinois,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Administration Dr. Sam Catanzaro, who also serves on the Educate Connect Elevate Steering Team. “Because ECE builds on the success of Educating Illinois, these existing plans probably have some degree of alignment with the new plan already. The crosswalk tool shows units where their existing strategic plans align well, and where they can revise their documents to better align them with the University’s current strategic directions.”
Members of the PRPA office are available to assist with the resources. PRPA is also available for consulting for those navigating the process of creating a plan. Requests can be sent to strategicplan@ilstu.edu.
