Administrative Leadership 2. Planning Strategically for Honors Education at Penn State

Tom Weber, Penn State University Schreyer Honors College
Patrick T. Mather, Penn State University Schreyer Honors College

Strategic plans can be helpful to any organization and in higher education they are often required.
In our experience we have found value in the strategic planning process, particularly the meaningful conversations that planning encourages. With new leadership in Schreyer Honors College, along with a slightly dated strategic plan, we took on the task of creating a new strategic plan for the College. With the new project, we sought to center core values and to yield a format that was lean and had a relatively long “shelf-life”. After 15 months, 100’s of volunteer hours, and with the help of a consulting partner we have arrived at a clarifying and mobilizing strategic framework (rather than a plan, per se) that will guide us through 2030 as we make decisions, generate new ideas, and manage operations. In our presentation, we will step the audience through the processes we used, share the final product, and discuss plans for implementation. Particular attention will be given to the portion of our project related to values discovery and articulation and an engaging exercise will be utilized during the presentation. In addition, the challenges faced in including as many stakeholders as possible, while keeping project moving, will be shared openly with the hopes of driving conversation among those in attendance.