The University’s Planning Process
John Simon
Since February 2001, Duke’s academic development has been guided
by the strategic plan Building on Excellence. By connecting
academic goals to fiscal resources, this strategic plan has enabled
Duke to build new facilities, establish new programmatic
initiatives, and strengthen academic units. It is now time to work
towards developing Duke University’s next strategic plan. During
summer 2005 the Provost's office charged the schools and major
institutes to begin to develop strategic plans to address both
their internal development and their relationship to
University-wide priorities and initiatives.
Strategic plans serve to identify aspirations as well as the
resources needed to support these efforts. While the immediate
focus is on the next five years, these plans must continue efforts
begun under Building on Excellence and also look ahead to planning
for the next ten-year period and even beyond. Ideas for ways to
further our institutional efforts in interdisciplinarity,
internationalization, and diversity are paramount. These themes,
central to Building on Excellence, remain important priorities for
the University. We cannot lose our lead and our momentum in making
these goals integral parts of our institutional programs and
culture. Planning documents need to articulate school and
cross-school efforts relating to these emerging broad university
themes: creating coherence and distinctiveness in the undergraduate
experience, translating research for the service of society, and
strengthening the role of the arts within the University. If we are
willing to act on our most ambitious thoughts, other themes and
novel ways to contribute to these emerging themes will certainly
result from the planning process.
Oversight of the planning process will be the charge of a Planning
Steering Committee (PSC), which will be appointed in the next
month. The development of the University strategic plan will be an
iterative process among faculty (within the schools and though
working groups that will be created), schools, institutes,
supporting infrastructures such as libraries and technology,
faculty governance bodies, and University administrators. The PSC
will examine plans and obtain input from several existing faculty
committees (e.g., Executive Committee of the Academic Council,
Academic Programs Committee, the University Priorities Committee,
Standing Committee on Faculty Diversity, Information Technology
Advisory Council, and Council for the Arts). It is our goal to
provide the Board of Trustees with a draft of the strategic plan in
May 2006.
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