Overview
Following the CSUSB Strategic Plan Town Hall meeting in May 2015 SPAC presented the final draft of the Plan to the members of the campus community and local communities. SPAC collected responses and reviewed them and, where appropriate, made improvements to the strategic plan. Following the collegial model, the SPAC Implementation Team (SPAC-IT) continued the consultative collegial model and charted six phases to build a proposed budget associated with the strategic plan.
Phases of Assembling the Strategic Plan Budget Estimates and Future Expectations
Phase 1
Following up on the May 2015 Town Hall meeting, beginning in July and continuing through mid-August (2015) the SPAC Co-chairs met with campus leaders whose knowledge and expertise closely matched with goals, objectives, and strategies of the strategic plan. The purpose of the meetings was to establish our first cost estimates associated with each goal, objective, and strategy of the plan.
Phase 2
The estimates obtained were vetted with members of the central administrative leadership and academic leaders. Their feedback was reviewed and budget revisions occurred.
Phase 3
On two separate occasions in September the Strategic Plan Implementation budget estimates were presented at the University Budget Advisory Committee (UBAC) meetings. Responses from the meetings were considered and resulted in further refinements of the proposed budget.
Phase 4
Subsequent to the presentations to UBAC and in consultation with the Vice President of Administration and Finance budget team members, SPAC Implementation Team (SPAC-IT) members revised the proposed budget and presented the estimates to various constituents of the campus community for review and comment. SPAC-IT sent the budget estimates to the Vice President Council (VPC), the Academic Affairs Council (AAC), Student Affairs management leadership and other units on campus for review and comment. College deans presented it to department chairs and presumably department chairs shared it with faculty members. Responses were used to make refinements to the estimates.
Phase 5
On 13 October SPAC-IT sent an email with a link to a survey to the campus community for responses to the budget and requesting campus community members (students, faculty, staff and management) to review the budget associated with the strategic planning implementation plan and comment accordingly. The survey closed 5:00 p.m. Thursday 22 October 2015. The survey had two purposes. First, SPAC-IT wanted campus constituents to share their opinions about the proposed strategic plan budget allocation. Second, SPAC-IT wanted to know what campus divisions, departments or units should have the responsibility of implementing the goals, objectives and strategies given the budget estimates. Responses were collected and data analyzed with further adjustments prepared for presentation at the Academic Leadership Retreat on Thursday 29 October 2015 where SPAC-IT yet again asked colleagues to review the proposed budget and suggest effective strategies to implement key elements of the strategic plan.
Phase 6
Following the retreat, CSUSB leadership continues to review comments from the survey and leadership retreat and will adjust budget estimates and allocation accordingly.
Future expectations
The measurement of progress toward our five strategic goals and related objectives is basis to the success of our strategic plan. To measure our progress toward our goals and objectives, CSUSB will develop a dashboard with “clickable tabs” that chart performance of our goals and objectives. Tabs will be updated monthly, quarterly and yearly for formative and summative evaluation by campus leadership. For instance, Academic Affairs and Student Affairs will review the academic initiatives; Academic Affairs and Development will review the campus engagement and identity tab so on. SPAC-IT will continue to color-code budget performance indicators to show progress. The dashboard will afford members of the campus community an opportunity to review the strategic plan implementation progress at a glance helping us focus necessary resources in areas where action may be needed. SPAC-IT expects metrics to associate to our five goals and objectives. For instance, data will appear on the strategic plan website to show how CSUSB is progressing toward achieving its objective to: Increase tenure track density based on projected student demands and FTES growth; and, decrease Student to Faculty Ratio (SFR) based on data collect by Academic Personnel. The metric will help us understand how well we are achieving our goal of insuring Faculty and Staff Success. Metrics for other goals and objectives related to the strategic initiatives will appear on our strategic plan website. CSUSB is committed to a shared vision and will achieve its goals by identifying points of progress and establishing the metrics to measure that progress.