Keene State College Strategic Plan 2015-2020

Establishing Our Vision for a Liberal Arts College in the 21st Century

Council Charge

Thank you for serving on Keene State College’s Strategic Planning Council (SPC). Your participation is critical to the College’s future, and very much appreciated. We are all stewards of our students’ education. By agreeing to serve on this council, you are demonstrating your stewardship and in fact your willingness to be a campus leader in this regard.

A well-designed and implemented strategic planning process empowers an institution to establish priorities in alignment with its mission and develop strategies for advancing that mission. More important, effective strategic planning provides a campus community the opportunity to reach consensus on the institution’s future direction through campus-wide conversations. Because the process we use is as important as its outcomes, I will take this opportunity to delineate the values that will serve as the basis for the College’s strategic planning. Specifically, we intend to conduct a process that

• reflects first and foremost the concept that all members of the campus community are stewards of the College and have responsibility for the welfare of the institution and of its students;
• entrusts leadership with the faculty and staff, with guidance and support from the administration;
• invites broad participation from all college stakeholders, on-campus and beyond;
• takes place in a context of civility and respect, allowing for discourse and debate and valuing all voices and viewpoints;
• requires transparency in all endeavors to the campus community, with regular reports on the process provided and frequent forums held for presentations, discussions, and input; and
• utilizes a data-informed strategy, accompanied by the opportunity to supplement quantitative information with qualitative impressions. 
 I ask each of you to keep these values in mind as the strategic planning process unfolds, and to act in accordance with them at all times.

I. The Council

The Strategic Planning Council is a standing committee established to develop and monitor the strategic planning process for Keene State College. The composition of the membership includes:

• 2 co-chairs, one representing the faculty and one representing the staff
• 5 faculty members, including one adjunct faculty
• 2 PAT members
• 2 OS members
• Director of Marketing and Communications
• 2 students
• 1 representative from the KSC Alumni Board
• 1 representative from the local business community

The SPC co-chairs will be appointed by the President, and administrative support to the Council will be provided by the President’s Chief of Staff.

II. The Charge

The SPC is charged to oversee and guide the development of a strategic plan for Keene State College that will chart its direction for the next fifteen years and establish specific priorities and action plans for the next five years. This process will include the following steps.

• development and oversight of all appropriate planning documents (Vision Statement, Strategic Plan, Implementation Plan);

• development of a 5-year cycle for implementation of the plan;

• establishing a regularized annual cycle of implementation and assessment; and

• delineating institution-level components and department-level components that are aligned with those at the institutional level. 
 Specific responsibilities for committee members include the following.


• understand the components of an institutional strategic plan;

• develop a Vision Statement, Strategic Plan, and Implementation Plan for submission to the President for her approval; advise the President regularly on the Council’s progress;

• engage stakeholder groups in the development of the vision statement and the plan and communicate with those groups on an ongoing basis;

• promote and advocate for implementation of the College’s Strategic Plan to internal and external stakeholders;

• hold campus forums on a regular basis to seek input and disseminate information;

• work with the Director of Institutional Research and Assessment to identify or develop key performance indicators appropriate to tracking progress on strategic planning goals; and

• recommend a process and structure for monitoring and implementing the strategic plan beginning in July 2015. 
 Thank you again for serving the College in this critical endeavor. As I said at our opening meeting in August, we have the building blocks in place to succeed in securing Keene State College’s future for generations of students to come. This strategic planning process is the way we will get there, and I am deeply gratified by your willingness to participate in and lead this process.