July 16,2001
Abington, Pa. — Now in the final year of its five-year strategic plan, Penn State is reflecting on the results that have emerged over the past few years, and focusing on the next cycle of planning activities.

“Strategic planning continues to improve Penn State’s efficiency, effectiveness, and our joint sense of purpose in creating academic excellence,” Rodney Erickson, executive vice president and provost, told the Board of Trustees today (July 16).

The University’s current strategic plan, “Academic Excellence: Planning for the 21^st Century,” is a 34-page document that contains goals and strategies to strengthen the core missions of Penn State and move it into the year 2002. The overarching goals of the strategic plan include enhancing academic excellence and enriching the educational experience of Penn State students, building a more considerate and civil community, and serving people–while identifying new revenue sources and reducing costs. Erickson told the Board that these remain clear goals for the University to pursue in the coming years.

“Each unit’s strategic plan serves as a guide for determining direction and for making unit level budget and resource allocation decisions,” Erickson said. “This has enabled Penn State to improve all kinds of processes involving our teaching, research and outreach.”

Literally hundreds of new initiatives and programmatic re-directions have emerged from Penn State’s current strategic planning process. “Bringing people together to formulate unit goals and directions has many positive outcomes; new ideas emerge and new collaborations develop,” he said. For example:

• One academic initiative resulting from cross-college collaboration that emerged through strategic planning is the master’s degree program in Quality and Manufacturing Management (QMM). Jointly taught by faculty from the College of Engineering and the Smeal College of Business Administration, the QMM curriculum blends engineering and management course work with interactions in major manufacturing facilities.  Last year, the QMM program won the very prestigious Leadership and Excellence Award from the Society for Manufacturing Engineers.
• The Penn State Educational Partnership Program (PEPP) is the College of Education’s strategic initiative to enhance outreach activities. PEPP is an after-school academic enrichment program for at-risk high school students. Nearly 900 Penn State students have served as mentors and tutors.
• The Center for Advanced Undergraduate Studies and Experience (CAUSE) exemplifies the overarching goals of enriching the educational experience of students and of serving people of the Commonwealth.  Each year, outstanding juniors and seniors in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences participate in an intensive year-long experience with research and field observations related to critical issues such as global change, natural hazards, or industrial ecology.

Erickson also noted four examples of University-wide initiatives that have emerged from the strategic planning process: the Life Sciences Consortium, the Materials Research Institute, eLion, and the Web Task Force.

According to Erickson, the next cycle of strategic planning will continue the University’s progress toward academic and administrative excellence, while streamlining and focusing the process even more. It will be a three-year rather than a five-year planning cycle in order to maintain maximum flexibility and because of the uncertainties surrounding the national and Commonwealth economies and the associated implications for future sources of funding.

Integrated planning is an aspect of the current planning cycle that the University will continue to refine for each campus during the next cycle, in order to better integrate academic planning with budget, enrollment and facilities planning. 

Erickson said University administrators have worked with each campus to collect data and develop individual business and academic plans. Through integrated planning with the campuses, Penn State hopes to answer the following questions:

• How many students will enroll at this campus and how many will move to University Park or another campus to complete their degrees?
• Do we have enough faculty and staff to support the projected enrollments?
• What type and amount of space is required to support the projected numbers of students, faculty and staff?
• What funding sources are available to support the projected programming?

“The objective is to advance our academic goals while taking into account infrastructure and human resource needs,” Erickson told the Board. “This process is providing an excellent context for the strategic planning that our campuses are undertaking with respect to new baccalaureate and other academic programs.”

One highly positive outcome of the current cycle of University planning was the creation of the report entitled, A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State: 1998-2003.  Erickson said the report is a comprehensive document and set of challenges woven from each unit’s Diversity strategic plans.  Budget executives have been asked to submit a status report on their progress in meeting the challenges listed in the report.  “Our diversity initiatives are strongly interrelated with other academic initiatives,” Erickson said, “We want to focus particular attention on units and progress in meeting these challenges.”

In addition, all University budgetary units are being asked to recycle at least one percent of their permanent budgets on an internal basis each year, moving funds from lower priority to higher priority academic and administrative needs. The practice of annual budget recycling – when units redirect a portion of their permanent budgets to other needs – has been in place at Penn State since 1992.  Over the past decade, the University has recycled $87 million. “Penn State consistently ranks as one of the most effective universities in the nation while accounting for academic quality,” he said.

“Eighteen years of planning experience has made Penn State a national model, and strategic planning has become very much a part of the Penn State culture,” Erickson told the Board. “I’m pleased with the attention and care that the University community has given to this process and I’m proud of the outcomes we’re seeing.”

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Contact: Amy Neil (814) 865-7517 or aen4@psu.edu