Many planning offices are experiencing an identity crisis. Before the recession, their role was clear: provide colleges and universities the analytical support needed to develop academic programs and expand facilities. For more than a decade, planning offices were the workhorses supporting ambitious growth strategies. New and improved programs and…

This article suggests that developing a strategic plan, even through a highly participative and data-driven process, is not sufficient to sustain change if implementation of the plan is not monitored as an organizational change event. To the degree that a strategic plan is institutionally transformative, monitoring change during implementation…

In 2009, Herman Miller, Inc., a Zeeland, Michigan-based furniture manufacturer, convened a leadership roundtable intended to identify trends that would affect higher education in the year 2015. Representatives from research universities, state colleges, community colleges, private institutions, and architectural and design firms participated in…

Several of the campus heritage plans funded by the Getty Foundation served as laboratories for applying the relatively new field of cultural landscape preservation to campus planning. With a strong landscape component, the heritage plans of The University of Kansas, Cranbrook Academy, the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere remind…

This article critiques the diversity crises model of diversity planning in higher education and presents a decentralized diversity planning model. The model is based on interviews with the nation's leading diversity officers, a review of the literature and the authors own experiences leading diversity change initiatives in higher education. The…

Strategic planning is critical to ensuring that institutions of higher education thoughtfully and systematically position themselves to accomplish their mission, vision, and strategic goals, particularly when these institutions face a myriad of risks that can negatively impact their continued financial viability and compromise their ability to…

Institutional mission influences college and university decision making by providing a shared sense of understanding about core values and aspirations. For institutions to maintain the benefits of having a clear mission, they must periodically revise and redefine the institutional purpose. This article compares the changing missions of two liberal…

The University Consortium Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, allows the development of joint programs by the local college and the extension units of three distant universities. (Author/MLF)

The Division of Student Affairs at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor engaged in an iterative strategic process to create and implement a set of long-range goals. This strategic journey continues to evolve, uniting a guiding framework of strategic planning steps, a reflective process with an assessment component within each step, and a group…

Explores whether organizations that purport to advance learning themselves can learn relative to global ecological trends. Asserts that although there is no single formula, organizational learning requires mastery at seven levels. Discusses those seven levels. (EV)

Discussion of emerging higher educational organizational structures focuses on the increasing importance of distance education. Considers the emerging organizational landscape, three types of network organizations, six organization archetypes, organizational forms that support distance education, and implications for higher education planners. (DB)

Offers planning advice to colleges and universities considering restructuring their operations to contain costs and/or improve faculty and student services, based on the experience of Bowdoin College (Maine) and a survey of other institutions undergoing similar change. Outlines eleven basic principles for creating both a supportive context and a…

Highlights of a conference--"Designing Diversity '75," the Second National Conference on Open Learning and Nontraditional Study. Reviews the ideas, options, and trends that emerged, focusing on serving adult learners through technology-based learning systems. (Author/MLF)

Planning approaches are in a dynamic relationship with organizational culture. This article uses a case study of academic planning at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona to draw a correspondence between types of organizational culture and planning approaches. The case study shows the differing conceptions of organizational culture held…

While many colleges and universities have undertaken organizational change, many also have failed to produce such change. One reason may be that the failed planning processes have been overly rational, quantitative, and linear, neglecting intuition, artfulness, and sudden social and human shifts. Chaos theory, which describes systems and…