Civil Engineering

Strategic Planning Process

On Feb. 23, 2021 the CE strategic planning team began its work to conduct an inclusive and collaborative process that will ultimately guide the department direction in the coming years and ensure alignment with the strategic initiatives of the college and the university. The core team followed a Strategic Directioning framework and the Organizations of Character ModelTM to ensure a comprehensive work product that addressed planning needs as well as successful plan implementation.

The following list describes the processes and decisions the team worked through during development of this plan.

1. Agree to project scope and timeline recognizing work will be online with shorter duration meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Initialize understanding of the “current situation”.

• Identify key stakeholders: CE Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Industry Representatives.
• Gather a variety of stakeholder input through one-to-one virtual interviews and focus groups.

i. Each group was asked the same questions to understand what key indicators represent CE future success, behaviors that are working and behaviors that are not working, what groups need most from CE.

3. Define Cornerstone behaviors to create a conscious understanding around each COE core value.

• Identify ways to demonstrate and connect the core values with each key stakeholder.
i. Faculty, Students, Staff and University/COE peers

4. Claim the future by discussing important goals, feedback and what success looks like.

• Analyze and identify themes from all information received.
• In context of the COE vision and mission, identify the CE strategic objective.

i. The strategic objective is the long-term desired condition or change resulting from departmental work and programs. It is what makes the department different and why it matters to the COE.

• Identify goals and strategies to further the department strategic objective and the COE vision and mission.
• Prioritize Year 1 strategies.

5. Provide opportunity for stakeholder feedback to the draft plan.
6. Finalize strategic plan.


[1] The Organizations of Character Model© can be found on the K2OHSolution website https://www.k2ohsolutions.com/organizational-development/