Committee calls for community involvement
Myra McGriff
Saint Mary's Editor
In Monday's public strategic planning committee meeting, students, faculty and staff had the opportunity to view the initiatives proposed by the Steering Committee. Mary Jo Regan-Kubinski, member of the Steering committee as well as co-chair of the curriculum committee presented a project entitled, Jubilee Community Commitment: Building a Learning Community, as a part of the tentative proposal of the Strategic Plan.
The Steering committee, comprised of two co-chairs from the five original committees gathered data from over the last year to present four main goals for Saint Mary's to accomplish over the next five years. Using information complied from the committees of: curriculum, diversity, student development, technology, and marketing/communication-Kubinski explained the purpose behind each of the four main goals.
"The strategic plan asks the questions: where are we now? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? How will we track our success? And how do we measure our success?" said Kubinski.
Attempting to answer these questions Kubinski presented the collective work of the Strategic Planning Committee and the Steering committee. In designing the Strategic Planning proposal, the steering committee not only specified the proposal's main goals but also the initiative and action needes to bring the goals into fruition.
The first of the four goals, to educate women to make a difference in a complex world, hopes to fulfill at least four outlined initiatives. One of those initiatives, to examine and renew the assessment of student learning at Saint Mary's, encompasses three separate actions to assure that the original goal is achieved.
To legitimize the written checks and balances, the steering committee will assign individuals or groups to each of the initiatives and subsequently the actions of those initiatives, "We have actions detailed and identified who will be responsible for the completion of the action based on the timeline," said Kubinski.
Considering that the entire Strategic plan rests on a five year time line, Kubinski also emphasized the need for a community effort to reap potential positive results of the plan. In efforts to involve the community, the steering committee asked for feedback from the audience on the presented material.
Not grasping the technical language of the proposal some were confused on how the strategic plan would organize the fulfillment of the four goals. Many were especially concerned specifically on how the committee would decide which of the four goals should receive attention first.
"In the process [of the timeline] there will a prioritizing of goals," said Kubinski. However others expressed concern over the document's general outline as well as what might happen after the Board of Trustees passes the proposal, tentatively in June 2001.
The feeling expressed is that the whole document's purpose can change once approved by the Board due to the general nature of the proposal. Saint Mary's President, Marilou Eldred addressed this potential concern on the fate of the proposal.
"The point [of the Strategic Plan] is to set a direction for the college and change [the plan] as we need to," said Eldred.
Eldred stressed that changes in the plan would also necessitate a community effort. Not only was there an emphasis on receiving feedback for the initial proposal after reviewal by the Board, but also for future proposals as well. Eldred also stated that the planning committee wants to have yearly focus groups ensuring that the college is still on target.
All News Stories for Tuesday, April 24, 2001
