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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


As our 2012-2016 Strategic Plan comes to a close, a group of cross-institutional stakeholders—the Strategic Plan Leadership Team—is finalizing a plan nine months in the making. This important document will guide our work for the next five years, through some of the most challenging times for higher education. It’s important that we all understand the plan’s foundation and the goals it lays out for us.

The Strategic Plan Leadership Team started its work with a review of MCC’s current Strategic Plan, including our progress toward the identified goals. This team was composed of the following members of our College community:

Chairs:
  • Hezekiah Simmons, CFO and Vice President Administrative Services
  • Paul Emerick, Associate Professor, Biology

Members
  • Valarie Avalone, Director, Institutional Planning Effectiveness, and Accountability
  • Brenda Davies, Personnel Assistant, Human Resources
  • Debra Davis, Director, Marketing and Community Relations
  • Joel Frater, Executive Dean, Damon City Campus
  • Julianna Frisch, Interim Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives
  • Karen McCarthy, Coordinator, Academic Services
  • Blake Moore, President, Student Government Association, Brighton Campus
  • Todd Oldham, Vice President, Economic Development and Innovative Workforce Services
  • Mitchell Redlo, Professor, Business Administration
  • Mary Jo Witz, Interim Dean, Curriculum and Program Development

In addition, then-Associate Vice President, Enrollment Management, Randy Bowen served with this group.

Over the past nine months, team members gathered information through interviews of internal and external stakeholders, presentations from divisions and offices, focus groups, surveys, data review, and gap analyses. In addition, during the strategic thinking stage of the process, the team completed a study of MCC’s culture; a political, economic, social and technological (PEST) analysis; and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. All of this information created a comprehensive context for the Strategic Plan Leadership Team’s review and update of MCC’s mission, vision, and core values, the plan’s assumptions, directions and goals.

Some elements of the 2017-2021 Strategic Plan should look familiar to you, as it shares much in common with our concluding plan. Other elements, however, are new and represent the team’s work to align the previous plan with new assumptions and to address the team’s findings throughout its process. Several of the key differences are:

  1. As suggested in our recent Middle States Self-Study Report, more concise and purposeful language was used in our mission and vision statements.
  2. A review of our values led to the addition of a sixth value statement—Stewardship—in recognition of the commitment we have today to sustaining a strong MCC into the future.
  3. Rather than include a separate direction on “partnerships,” the new plan recognizes the importance of partnership to MCC’s success by infusing it throughout all directions.
  4. The “Learning First” direction now reflects MCC’s new general education outcomes, the College’s adoption of SUNY’s applied learning framework, and our growing emphasis on non-traditional delivery models.
  5. A new direction, “Student Success,” recognizes the College’s commitment to the Schools model and to improving student retention, persistence, and completion through structured pathways, strategic partnerships, and technologies.
  6. A second new direction, “Organizational Culture,” underscores MCC’s commitment to supporting and developing our employees, to building a collaborative culture of mutual respect and trust, and to sustaining and enhancing an inclusive and diverse working and learning environment—all with the goal of supporting the success of our students.

As you read the draft 2017-2021 Strategic Plan, you should be able to see how your work at MCC relates and contributes to one or more of the five directions. Each direction supports our shared mission: how we serve our students, how we interact with our community, and how we move our College forward. Once the plan is finalized, we will adapt existing performance measures and establish new ones that will document our progress; our current practice of reporting these out to the Board of Trustees will continue.

On behalf of the Strategic Plan Leadership Team, I encourage you to review MCC’s draft 2017-2021 Strategic Plan and respond to the feedback survey by October 21. My thanks go out to the Strategic Plan Leadership Team members for their work and to all who have assisted in this process.

I invite you to share your overall thoughts on the blog.

Feedback through October 21:
<https://monroe.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_esXk5XXAwhweYW9>

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Anne M. Kress
Office of the President
10/12/2016