In February 2006, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT)
brought the following faculty, staff, and Board members to the
AQIP Strategy Forum as the Strategy Forum (SF) Team: • Mr.
Robert Bright, Interim Chief Executive Office and Chairman of
the Board of Trustees, serving as RHIT President for the 2005-06
academic year (Mr. Bright is also an alumnus of Rose-Hulman) •
Dr. Art Western, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of
the Faculty • Mr. Bill Schindel, member of the Board of Trustees
and an alumnus of RHIT • Mr. Peter Gustafson, Vice-President for
Student Affairs • Dr. Phil Cornwell, Professor of Mechanical
Engineering • Dr. Bill Weiner, Assistant Professor of Applied
Biology and Biomedical Engineering • Dr. Julia Williams,
Executive Director, Office of Institutional Research, Planning
and Assessment & Professor of English The members of the SF team
reviewed the Rose-Hulman AQIP Systems Portfolio and the Systems
Appraisal Feedback Report on the portfolio before attending the
Strategy Forum. In addition, they reviewed the assessment of the
Systems Appraisal Feedback produced by the Institutional
Planning and Review Committee, the group on campus charged with
reviewing the institution’s annual goals and benchmarks. Among
the “Strategic Issues” identified by the evaluators were two
items that caught the attention of the SF team: “An opportunity
exists to formalize processes” and “There is an opportunity for
the leadership to provide direction for defining and setting
specific performance targets and holding others responsible for
meeting those targets.” The SF team agreed that RHIT could make
great strides in this area, especially since the faculty,
students, and staff share a clear sense of the mission of the
Institute and its emphasis on undergraduate education in
engineering, math, and science. The team recognized, however,
that there was no equally shared sense of the planning process
or a clear methodology for making plans, setting targets, or
establishing accountability. The reasons for this gap rest
primarily in the recent history of Rose-Hulman. For 28 years our
dynamic president led the Institute successfully, improving
Rose-Hulman’s status nationally (we are recipients of U.S. News
and World Report’s #1 ranking for colleges offering an
undergraduate degree in engineering, math, and science, 8 years
in a row) and creating a culture of excellence internally. In
many ways, however, the previous president’s planning was, as
one member of the SF team put it, “in his head,” that is, he
made plans but didn’t document the process by which these plans
were made. The SF team, therefore, looked up the development and
dissemination of a Strategic Planning Process as a key Action
Project for Rose-Hulman. There was also a second consideration
that went into our choice of a Strategic Planning Process
project. Mr. Robert Bright was serving as the interim president
as we conducted a national search for a new president. The new
president would take office on July 1, 2006. Thus we wished to
document processes already occurring within the Institute, so
that when our new president arrived, he could gain a clear
picture of the current operations of Rose-Hulman with regard to
planning. We did not, however, wish to spend time creating and
instituting a complete planning process before our new president
arrived; we believed that he would want to have input into the
process. Dr. Gerald Jakubowski assumed the presidency of
Rose-Hulman July 1, 2006. His efforts to begin the strategic
planning process have included two major tasks. First, he has
begun the process of developing a plan for the 2006-07 academic
year by asking all departments and offices on campus to provide
him with short term goals and tactics for the coming year. The
form specifies that the department/office include its mission
and goals (which were established though previous planning
cycles), then relate each tactic to a goal. This form has been
in use at RHIT for 4 years, and faculty and staff are familiar
with it. These forms will be compiled by the Office of
Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment in September
2006, then provided to the President and his Cabinet for use in
designing the Institute’s Long Range Strategic Planning during
the coming year. Dr. Jakubowski’s second task has been to set a
direction for the next phase of our Strategic Planning efforts.
His work builds on activities that were begun in the previous
academic year. During the 2004-05 academic year, members of the
Rose-Hulman community were asked to suggest critical components
of a vision for the Institute ten years out, in 2015. Comments
were received from hundreds of participants. The input was
cataloged, sorted, summarized, and discussed. This data provided
a valuable resource for the work accomplished during the 2005-06
academic year. In the fall of 2005, under the leadership of Bob
Bright and Bill Schindel, the Institute initiated a study to
identify the central elements that were likely to be most
critical to Rose-Hulman’s continued success in the next decade.
The study was modeled after a diagram in James Collins’ book,
Good to Great. The diagram depicts three partially overlapping
circles like that of the classic Venn diagram. In Collins’
terms, one circle encompasses those things that we are
passionate about. A second circle encloses those things we can
be best at, while the third represents those elements that drive
our economic engine. Collins argues that if one looks at the
intersection of these three rings, one will discover the core
elements of one’s business that should be embraced and enhanced
to ensure future success. In the fall of 2005, three teams were
formed, one for each ring: “What are we passionate about?” “What
can we be best at?” and “What drives our economic engine?” Each
team was comprised of members from the faculty, staff, student
body, and alumni/industry representatives. That team charged
with finding what we can be best at, adapted their ring theme to
better fit Rose-Hulman, by asking “What is our educational
niche?” They became known as the “Niche Team.” Similarly, the
“economic engine” team decided early on that the fundamental
driver of economic engine (tuition revenue, gifts, grants, and
other income) was the value added to our students’ wellbeing
over their lifetime. They became the “Value Added” team. Each
group authored a report that was then sent to the interim Chief
Executive Officer and his cabinet. The last step of the
preplanning process was to identify the intersection of the
collection of elements described by each of the three teams. The
cabinet made a first attempt at capturing the essential core
elements from the three “ring” reports. This deliberately
succinct statement summarizing the intersection of the three
rings was presented to the Institute Planning Committee
comprised of cabinet, academic department heads, and staff
supervisors at their August 17, 2006 planning retreat. There,
the description of the intersection was dubbed the “Fab Four”
for ease of reference. At the retreat, a number of excellent
suggestions were made for clarifying the statements regarding
personal growth to insure that it is clear that the statements
are intended to apply to the entire Rose community: students,
faculty, staff, and outside persons that we touch. However,
rather than creating a second draft, the Planning Group
recommended that this first draft be shared with the broader
community. In order to gather that feedback, the Pre-Planning
documents, as well as the Fab Four statements, were published on
the Institute Planning website
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/planning). We are currently gathering
feedback from the community that will that can serve to guide
discussions in the next phase of the next campaign. As President
Jakubowski asked in his letter to the community, Can these
statements stand as the center of our efforts this year to renew
our strategic goals, create a strategic plan, and lay the
foundation for our next development campaign?
Review (10-15-06):
RHIT's leadership and planning are in transition and RHIT is
making an effort to formalize processes, a documented
opportunity from their Systems Portfolio feedback. Within this
project is an opportunity for "the leadership to provide
direction for defining and setting specific performance targets
and holding others responsible for meeting those targets". RHIT
is beginning the process by listening to students' and other
stakeholders' input on the initial draft of the pre-planning
documents. This is a positive approach that values people and
cultivates broad-based involvement - both principles of high
performance organizations. With a culture of involvement, RHIT
will be able to garner buy - in and further the institution's
mission.
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