Campus Strategic Planning

At WSU Tri-Cities, the chancellor leads the iterative planning effort as the executive sponsor, providing guidance for faculty co-chairs and planning teams at each phase of development.

Phase I – A small steering committee did the preliminary “planning to plan” work, conducting internal and external environmental scanning, focus groups, town halls and preliminary surveys. They also prepared the Baseline Study – an inventory and analysis of the institution’s environment key functional areas. Through this work, three common values and six distinct themes were identified.

The overarching values of distinctiveness, relevance and inclusiveness were integral in all of our conversations and are woven throughout this document. Within this environment, six broad strategic themes emerged, which were refined into our strategic goals.

Phase II – A strategic planning team studied the data and developed broad goals for each of the strategic themes. Team members (20+) represent faculty, staff, students and community partners. Through a series of workshops and presentations, they synthesized and prioritized the collected information. Broad goals were crafted to become our institutional priorities for the next five years.

Phase III – An implementation and planning support team develops strategic objectives for accomplishing our goals. They also work with academic and operational units to identify the specific strategies and metrics to track in each area. This standing committee is charged with supporting, tracking and reporting progress toward strategic goals. They also facilitate the annual refresh of the rolling five-year strategic plan.

Unique to WSU Tri-Cities is an implementation process that reviews and rewrites the plan annually through an inclusive and transparent planning process. It is a rolling five-year look-ahead that is monitored and reviewed each year. This strategic planning process leads directly into the local budgeting process at WSU Tri-Cities, thereby informing critical resource allocation.

Conducting a thorough environmental scan, planning teams considered relevant trends affecting higher education from five lenses: social, technological, economic, environmental and political (STEEP analysis). From this analysis, fifteen trends were prioritized for the WSU Tri-Cities to address in this five-year plan. In addition, local economic, demographic and political environments were analyzed and yielded important data and insights about continuing demand.

Benton-Franklin Economic Trends data suggests that WSU Tri-Cities explore strategies that engage adult learners and high school graduates differently. Significant growth and shifts in workforce demands will require WSU Tri-Cities to adapt. While this may sound ominous, in reality, adaptation is the strength of liberal arts education. WSU Tri-Cities’ ability to develop critical thinkers who learn and adapt will be key to meeting industry demands.