The Planning Process

The development of the new three-year Plan has been an ongoing process over the previous two years. It has involved extensive participation by different communities, including groups internal to the College and external communities with expertise relevant to the planning process. These communities have come together through a structured series of meetings to develop the initiatives in the new Plan.

The first meeting was held in October 2006 when the Planning Committee convened to review the planning process. Preliminary discussions continued through November and December 2006 and included a review of the status of the 2006-2008 College Plan implementation.

Regular meetings of the full Planning Committee throughout late 2006 and into 2007 involved students, faculty, staff and administrators. In addition, the Planning Committee identified potential external panelists and subsequently individuals were selected and invited to share economic developments and planning issues pertaining to their areas of expertise. Through sharing their expertise, they helped identify issues that would be important to our community over the next three years. The representatives included members of the business and education communities. Six expert panelists made presentations to the full committee and participated in question and answer sessions that provided valuable information and guidance on the development of the Plan. The panelists included city water use experts, a Pima County development, planning and zoning project manager, and local town managers.

In addition to hearing from members of the community, the planning meetings covered many important themes. Key topics included the identification of the data required for the Plan; institutional measures and benchmarks; evaluation of external publications related to higher education issues at the local, state and nationwide levels; consideration of College strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; and an evaluation of a recent environmental scan. Taking into account the input of the different participants and the results of the ongoing discussions, the full committee engaged in many open discussions to formulate the new initiatives. Nearing the conclusion of the 2007 school year, the initiatives began to take shape and development leaders were selected. Initiative work groups were established, comprised of planning committee members and College employees, as well as members of external business and education communities.

Developments continued through an iterative procedure in which the initiative leaders and their work groups held discussions and then reported back to the full committee. Feedback from the full committee guided the discussions in follow-up initiative meetings. This process continued from fall 2007 though to March 2008 as the initiatives, strategies and action items were fine-tuned to fully capture the needs of the College and our community.

A draft of the Plan was presented to the Board of Governors at a workshop held on April 9^th, 2008. Members of the Board provided feedback and discussed issues relating to the Plan content. It was recognized by the Board that accountability is a central theme and it was agreed that Accountability would be added as a new College Value. The feedback from the Board of Governors was incorporated into the strategies. The Plan was presented to the Board of Governors for formal adoption on May 14^th, 2008. This three-year Plan will run from July 1^st, 2008, through to June 30^th, 2011.

Planning Committee