Old Westbury's Strategic Plan: 2010- 2015

On February 18^th, President Calvin O. Butts III presented the College's long awaited strategic plan. The Old Westbury Strategic Plan: 2010-2015 was created after a year-long process that included input and participation from each constituency of the campus: students, faculty, staff, administration, alumni, council members and foundation members.

In April 2009, over 180 members of the campus community attended the president's town hall meeting where talk of the campus' process for creating the strategic plan really began. Since then there have been various campus wide strategic planning committees, each including as many as 30 members represented by all the campus constituencies; three strategic planning workshops with nearly 150 participants each; thirteen mission focus groups; eight strategic planning sub-committees with nearly 60 participants; and a document review committee made up of eight members.  The construction of the strategic plan was spear-headed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a private consulting firm. At the president's town hall meeting, Dr. Butts handed the floor over to representatives of Booz Allen, including one of the firm's executive vice presidents, Reginald Van Lee.

The Strategic Plan of 2010-2015 is comprised of five elements: a vision for the future of the OW as an organization, a mission for the purpose for which we exist, goals for how we will progress towards our vision, objectives for each goal, and finally strategies for each objective. The strategic plan expresses a vision for OW towards becoming a competitive and comprehensive college with high quality undergraduate and graduate programs, a student enrollment of 4,500 students, and improvement of residential and commuter engagement.

The mission as redefined by the strategic plan calls for maintaining the diversity of the college, attaining academic excellence, developing faculty-staff interaction, creating a rigorous learning environment, forging an inclusive community and establishing values that are lived out on campus. Accompanying the mission statement of the strategic plan is a set of guiding principles founded upon a liberal education, integrity, participatory governance, intercultural understanding, sustainability, and social justice. These principles are to guide the implementation of the strategic plan.

The five key goals outlined in the strategic plan were narrowed down to five categories: academic, enrollment, retention, brand, and finance. The academic goal focuses on the expansion of academic support. The objectives supporting this goal are the addition of resources, implementing new academic initiatives, improving academic support, strengthening lower division advising and promoting early declaration of majors, and improving course sequences and scheduling. Some of the strategies mentioned for attaining the academic goal were increasing full-time faculty, enhancing staff development, and adding a new interdisciplinary bachelors programs.

For the enrollment and retention goals a focus has been placed on growing the student population to 4,500 and increasing the overall six year graduation rate by forty-four percent. The strategies set in place to achieve these means include expanding the freshmen class, increasing the residential population to a minimum of 1,200 students, and improving the transfer process. Within the objective there is also focus on creating more customer friendly services such as making service departments adjacent to each other and improving co-curricular activities.

For the goal of branding the objectives are to improve and further develop the identity of the college as an institution of high quality. This objective is supported by strategies of building partnerships to help build the image of the college. Such partnerships would also serve as a way to help provide employment and internships for our students while also serving as a source for potential funding.

The financial goal as outlined by the strategic plan consists of the objectives of achieving financial stability, pursuing sustainable resources, and expanding and diversifying funding partnerships.

The final two pieces of the plan included a break down of balanced measures for monitoring the progression of the plans and a detailed implementation plan. The implementation plan included four key elements: people, process, technology, and support. Each strategy outlined in the strategic plan is looked at in terms of one of the these four elements and then the appropriate element is used in successfully implementing action for the strategy

At the end of the presentation, President Butts announced his plan to create a College Planning Committee for implementing the plan. This committee is responsible for monitoring the college's performance against the strategic plan, recommending new directions for the future, initiating studies of planning and budget matters as necessary, disseminating information related to planning on the campus, as well as soliciting input and feedback from all campus constituencies and also receiving reports from and maintaining liaison with the college's faculty senate and SGA. Butts publicly announced that Dr. Caroline Sawyer, the chair of the Faculty Senate, would be asked to suggest a list of candidates for this committee. 

In closing, Butts expressed his faith and support in the strategic plan stating: "We believe that this plan is well conceived. It is an excellent collection of possibilities but that it may not represent all of the possibilities for our campus. It's a plan. We take this plan as a guide but along the way we may have to take a detour but we will do our best to be guided by the work that all of us have done together."

The Old Westbury Strategic Plan 2010-2015 can be accessed on the college website.