Chair Talk 4.5 - Launching a Strategic Planning Process

Chair Talk 4.5  Launching a Strategic Planning Process

I know.  Seriously?  Another strategic planning exercise?  The short answer is “yes,” and I’ll say straight out that I’m totally behind this, and deeply engaged in it already.  I write this Chair Talk to explain why I think this is exactly what the UA ought to be doing right now, how I believe the process is going to play out, and to describe how you can contribute your voice to the process.

I will try to be concise.  Public higher education is under siege, and it is highly likely that only a handful of public Research 1 universities will thrive in the future.  If we want to be one of them, and I think we have a very good shot at it, we have to up our game.  There is a lot we do very well, and we should be proud of it. We need to get better at displaying what we can justly be proud of, but that’s not my issue for today. 

Upping our game in the current environment, where some institutions will thrive, and others decline, translates into clarifying how we are distinct – what’s the University of Arizona DNA?  A clear-eyed look at who and what we already are, coupled with a mission-driven sense of who and what we can imagine being in 5 years, in 10 years, in 25 years – this is what the just-beginning strategic planning process promises to be.

Why now?  The answer, beyond what I said above, is that we have a new President, installed this week, who is committed to the goal articulated above – to ensure that the UA gets better, and more distinctive, even than it is now.  What is more he is on record as promising a bold approach to the future.  If you think this is a bit edgy and risky – it is.  But it is also exciting. 

As I noted, I’m knee deep in this already, a voice for faculty at the strategic planning table.  One thing I will use that voice for is to bake in the importance of shared governance and a firm commitment to academic freedom in imagining our future.  You have my commitment to that.

The process involves a few steering committees at the outset, and will expand when it rolls out this coming week, during which input from every sector of the University will be sought.  Understanding our DNA and our dreams and aspirations for the future has to be both a bottom-up and a top-down effort.  That’s nice for me, by the way, because that’s the way the brain works.  The top-down part contributes meaningful structure to the process, and the bottom-up part – that’s all of us – contributes much of the content.  Within this week mechanisms will be worked out for gaining wide input, so stay tuned.  These mechanisms should play out at multiple levels, so there will often be several ways you could get involved.

The edgy part is that we as an institution will have to change – not our DNA, but how that DNA is expressed going forward.  Stability can be both wonderful and stultifying, but in any event stability is not on offer in the current higher education climate.  We either get better or – I’d rather not consider the alternative. 

I think we can harness this moment, benefit from the energy and commitment of our new President, and do something we all certainly aspire to – make the UA one of the leaders in higher education in the next generation and beyond.  And here, by higher education, I mean the full mission of the UA, which must always remain to discover new knowledge and to disseminate it to our students and the society of which we are a part.  Disseminating it to our students means preparing them as best we can for the future (and not just for a job, but for a meaningful life).  Disseminating it to society means bringing what we do to the broader world, helping it solve its pressing problems.

Upping our game is probably going to require changes in all those areas, so let’s get to it.  I urge as many of you as possible, all kinds of faculty, to get involved as best you can – make your voice heard about what the UA is and what it could.  It will be heard.

Finally, I promise regular updates about how things are going – except when I’m in South America over the holiday!

Lynn Nadel