UPDATE (May 4): The Strategic Plan Development Group (SPDG) has recommended an extension of the final submission date of the UI Strategic Plan 2016–21 to October 2016. The Board of Regents has agreed.

The SPDG will present a draft of the strategic plan to Provost P. Barry Butler and Vice President for Student Life Tom Rocklin on June 30. This draft will be made available to the campus, and additional feedback will be gathered over the summer and early in the fall semester.

To gather more input, the SPDG is currently planning additional open forums to occur through September 2016 and will post the times and locations on the strategic plan’s website (provost.uiowa.edu/strategic-plan-2016-2021).

UPDATE (May 2): A second all-campus forum has been added, bringing the total number of forums to eight. The additional all-campus forum will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 4, in Lecture Room 2 of Van Allen Hall.

The University of Iowa is using an accelerated development process for the upcoming UI Strategic Plan 2016–21. This approach prioritizes inclusion and utility by combining shorter deadlines with a series of meetings between the Strategic Plan Development Group (SPDG) and university constituents, as well as open forums with the broader university community.

The SPDG will host a number of these forums through September 2016 for students, faculty, and staff who might not otherwise have a voice in the process. Attendees are invited to share their views on the overarching strategies and goals they see as central to the university’s mission.

The five-year strategic plan is a document that outlines a vision for the university’s future and the strategies for realizing it. The Office of the Provost is primarily responsible for implementing the plan and measuring its progress. Implementation will begin in the 2016–17 academic year.

Over the last 20 years, development processes for the UI’s strategic plans have taken up to 18 months, while only hosting two to four open forums for broader community input. The current development process will take less than a year and will include a number of open forums.

One of the current process’ designers is Sarah Hansen, SPDG co-chair. Hansen is the assistant vice president for student life and coordinator for the Student Success Team at Iowa, a grassroots organization of more than 400 staff, faculty, and students.

“Traditional planning processes can take over a year,” Hansen says, “but they don’t necessarily have a lot of feedback from the community, which is one of our priorities.”

Though some may have reservations about the accelerated pace, Hansen says it is actually an advantage. The process has shortened deadlines, she says, but “with these closer deadlines, we can start working toward those goals sooner.”

Co-chairing the SPDG is David Cunning, chair of the philosophy department and a former faculty senator and Faculty Senate officer. Cunning has served on the Faculty Staff Budget Committee, the Research Council, and the recent Task Force on Graduate Education.

“In addition to the open forums, we are visiting over a dozen standing meetings of various groups, and members of the committee will be sharing the plan with their constituents and bringing back suggestions,” Cunning says.

Cunning and Hansen agree that because of the meetings and forums, the final draft of the strategic plan should hold no big surprises for the campus and that it should inspire the university community to action.

All of the forums will follow a flexible agenda covering student success, faculty research and teaching, and services that the UI provides to the state, among other topics.

On June 30, after collecting strategies and goals from across campus, the SPDG will submit a draft of the UI Strategic Plan 2016–21 to Vice President for Student Life Tom Rocklin and Provost P. Barry Butler. This draft will be made available to the campus, and additional feedback will be gathered over the summer and early in the fall semester. The final draft will be submitted to the Board of Regents in October. Butler will then convene work groups to advise him on the implementation, which will begin in the 2016–17 academic year.

“Sometimes, strategic plans end up not guiding decision-making, for a number of reasons,” says Rocklin. “We have charged the Strategic Planning Development Group with developing a plan that is concrete and specific enough to be a useful roadmap as the university makes big decisions shaping our future.”

The UI Strategic Plan 2016–21 will be available to the public in the fall of 2016 and will be accompanied by metrics for gauging progress on the plan’s goals.