Background
The University of the Virgin Islands engages in a strategic planning process every
five years. The University's current Strategic Plan, VISION 2012, will end on September
30, 2012. The process to develop a new strategic plan to cover the period 2012-2017
commenced in October 2010 with an initial dry run of the process to ensure the adoption
of a collaborative approach to planning that is consistent with the University's philosophy
of shared governance. This approach allows for full consultation with internal and
external stakeholders prior to presenting the draft plan to the Board of Trustees
for approval in June 2012. In addition to other University institutional effectiveness
requirements, the strategic planning process is also driven by the new Title III cycle
which begins on October 1, 2012, the need to maintain a current strategic plan as
required by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and the University's
Capital Campaign.
As part of the inclusive process to develop the plan, the following steps were taken
by the University:
- Retained a qualified and experienced consultant with expertise in higher education
planning to assist in guiding the process and offering an external view to refining
the plan in concert with internationally accepted best practices for such plans.
- Conducted a series of constituency-focused planning sessions for faculty, staff, administrators,
and students to include organizing for the task, guidance on identifying stakeholders,
data gathering and engagement, planning assumptions, and concept paper writing, among
others.
- Established a Planning Task Force (PTF) with representation from all internal stakeholders
comprising of faculty, staff, students, administrators, and other ex-officio personnel
appointed by the President. The PTF agreed on the common themes from information gathered
and presented by all constituency groups and followed a process to develop a draft
of the new strategic plan within established timelines.
- The PTF conducted additional data gathering and engagement activities (including conducting
an external environmental scan) with external stakeholders in an effort to capture
external views of the preferred picture of the University's future.
- The draft plan was submitted to the University's formal shared governance process
prior to being submitted to the Board of Trustees for approval.
- The new Strategic Plan 2012-2017 will be officially launched in fall semester 2012.
Collaborative Strategic Planning
The University elected to use a collaborative approach to develop Strategic Plan
2017, Pathways to Greatness. The benefits of this approach are more extensively articulated
in Appendix B, the following guiding principles undergird this approach to planning:
- Meaningful engagement of institutional stakeholders through face-to-face interaction
and discussion.
- Open and transparent sharing of information obtained during the planning process with
everyone.
- Effective facilitation/consultancy to help tap into and build the capacity of the
internal stakeholders and guide the planning process.
- Observation and use of external trends in higher education to avoid institutional
stakeholders becoming too inwardly focused.
- Engagement of external stakeholders including alumni, community leaders, and business-persons.
Their inclusion helps create a plan that responds to the pace and complexity of change
and to different stakeholder-interests. (Sanaghan, 2009)
The collaborative approach also increases the chances that the plan will gain wide
support during the implementation phase.
Engaging Stakeholders
The initial approach to engaging stakeholders during the development process began
in October 2010. A cross-section of leaders from all internal constituencies brainstormed
a number of ideas that provided part of the data on which this plan is built. In July,
August, October, and December of 2011, a number of data-gathering sessions were conducted
with faculty, staff, students, members of the Board of Trustees, and alumni. The views
and opinions of the general public and key public officials, obtained through public
meetings and focused interviews, are also reflected in the plan.
Planning Task Force
The PTF was created from the inside out. Stakeholder groups named their representatives
to the PTF and the President named a few key administrators to serve on the PTF. All
persons were in turn appointed by the President and given a charge to facilitate and
lead the development of the strategic plan. The PTF was both a "thinking" and a "working"
group. It consisted of 32 members (faculty, staff, students, and administrators) and
was co-chaired by a faculty member and an administrator.
Planning Assumptions
Pathways to Greatness was developed on the following planning assumptions:
Economic
- the economic outlook for the Virgin Islands will continue to be flat for the immediate
future but (entrepreneurial) opportunities for diversification of the economy through
technology based global export of services will increase in the medium term.
- inflation will on average exceed 3 percent annually (USVI Bureau of Economic Research,
2012)
- unemployment will remain above 8 percent
- higher education costs will outpace inflation
- government appropriations to the University will remain flat or even drop to lower
levels
- costs of energy will continue to rise
- costs of Internet access and voice communications will drop
- the disparity between the highest and lowest levels of income will increase and the
percentages of people at the extreme levels will increase more quickly in the territory
than nationally
- costs of training and professional development will drop as technology based options
increase
Social
- the growing diversity of the Virgin Islands population will exert a strain on the
social services sector
- the aging population will have a significant impact on education across the territory
- crime and other social ills will remain on the radar of government and society
- the growing Hispanic population will significantly impact the ability of education
and other social services to provide for the needs of this population group while
the continued growth of the political and economic power of the group will increase
its demands and the efficacy of those demands
- women will outpace men as the seekers of higher education opportunities at an ever
increasing ratio
Technological
- available connectivity bandwidth to the Internet in the territory and at UVI will
increase
- online programs and other distance learning opportunities will constantly increase
beyond present levels in availability and the percentage of higher education delivered
by these modalities will continue to increase
- the level of student college-readiness in general will hold steady for the immediate
future and technological skills and expectations among entering students will continue
to increase
- new technologies will continue to challenge faculty and staff who are unable or unwilling
to absorb new innovations
- employers will continue to demand more technology-skills from graduates
- information services will be increasingly based in the cloud and servers/services
sited at UVI will decrease
- dependence on radio connections between campuses will decrease and the reliability
of UVI information services will improve
- distinctions between telephony and computing will continue to blur and mobile access
to information services will become widespread
Demographics
- the percentage of the general population and of students born in the territory will
continue to decline
- the number of persons with special needs will impact the ability of government and
educational institutions to respond to their needs
- more adults or non-traditional students will seek to access training and retraining
opportunities
- part-time students will continue to represent a significant portion of the total University
enrollment
- adjustments in population ethnicities will continue to broaden as more people of differing
ethnic backgrounds make the Virgin Islands their home
Competition
- the growing developmental needs of the community and pressures on external institutions
to expand their markets will initiate the entrance of other colleges and universities
into the Virgin Islands market
- recruitment drives by mainland institutions (particularly those in the US Southeast
region) will continue to lure high performing Virgin Islanders
- colleges throughout the Caribbean region will continue to expand their program offerings
and recruitment reach
- the growing trend of Virgin Islanders enrolled in online degree programs will continue
to increase
- the market advantage of U.S. based education will continue
- technologically enabled collaborations among institutions will increase and partnerships
will become more important both in products and services and in obtaining funding
Political/Legal
- governmental interventions will seek to regulate the higher education industry and
pose a real threat to regional accreditation
- financial aid availability regulations will become more complex as federal, state,
and local governments grapple with growing budget deficits
- legislators and other funding bodies will increasingly demand greater accountability
of financial resources
- funding to institutions will be increasingly linked to performance indicators, including
retention and graduation rates
- the costs of regulation compliance will increase
- financial risks associated with privacy and security responsibilities will increase
