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Scottsdale Community College utilizes a three-tiered strategic planning process:
- Tier I is the College Strategic Plan.
- Tier II plans include the Instructional Plan and the Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan.
- Tier III are the unit level plans made up of sixty plus planning units throughout the college.
College Strategic Plan
At the institutional level, the college strategic plan is revised to be more focused on SCC’s core objectives. These objectives are: engagement, growth, and excellence. These three core objectives each have three implementation strategies. These strategies become the focal point for the college’s committee work. Each strategy in the college strategic plan has a strategy committee made up of administrators, faculty and staff. The strategy committees are led by co-chairs, one of whom sits on the President’s cabinet and the other representative of the area of focus/expertise. The strategy committees work consists of leading the implementation of specific tactics throughout the academic year that help the college realize the strategic objective.
The Strategic Planning and Allocating Resources Council (SPARC) oversee the entire process including the development of a master planning timeline which guides each strategy team (meeting dates, action item/tactic formulation, implementation, year-end reporting etc.). Each Strategy Committee reports its action items and year-end accomplishments to the President through SPARC. The following year each Strategy Committee embarks on the process again which may consist of new action items or the continuation of multi-year action items. The college utilizes the four disciplines of execution (4DX) to help implement our objectives.
Unit Strategic Plans
At the unit level, the annual Unit Strategic Planning (USP) process is an integral foundational planning component at SCC. The annual cycle of institutional evaluation and planning at the college is rooted in the vision and mission statements. The USP process provides an analysis of unit health based on criteria defined by faculty, staff and administrators. Unit faculty and staff review and analyze data, provide alternative interpretations, review actions taken in the previous year, and formulate an action plan for the coming year, along with resources needed to carry out that plan.
The Unit Strategic Plan is used as the core process for the SCC’s instructional programs and support areas to complete their annual review and resource allocation requests. Completing the USP engages faculty, staff and administrators in a process that involves:
- reviewing a broad range of relevant data;
- interpreting the data in terms of demand, efficiency, and effectiveness to understand more clearly what has been happening in their programs, divisions, units etc.;
- formulating plans to maintain and/or enhance performance;
- identifying, justifying and prioritizing the resources they will need to carry out those plans (resulting in a Planning List);
- then, justifying and consolidating the requests for resources.
Units upload their USP’s into Strategic Planning Online (SPOL) along with associated resource requests. All along the way, the process promotes communication and transparency—within programs, divisions, and units, then among various components and levels of the college, and finally with the public.