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Purposeful Planning: A Model for Student Affairs Practitioners

Jennifer A. Lease, Teresa Raetz, Dr. Bobbi Lathrop, and Dr. Richard Mullendore, Office of VP for Student Affairs & Student Life Studies, The University of Georgia

The landscape of higher education is changing quickly and dramatically. Politically, legislatures appear to currently be focused on issues and priorities within the K-12 system. In institutions of higher education, productivity issues such as credit hours generated and rising costs are constantly being called into question. Technology issues have reached the forefront and distance education will likely have a dramatic impact on the way our institutions currently function. Each of these issues raises concern for resource allocation within our institutions. In order for divisions of student affairs to receive appropriate shares of new or redirected funding, it is imperative that we not only serve our students more effectively and efficiently, but also that our planning and assessment efforts occur and go hand-in-hand.

When our presidents speak of concerns regarding productivity, broad-minded thinking beyond our own areas of responsibility, and exploration of every source of funding, we need to listen. When our provosts speak of performance measures, benchmarking, rewarding productivity, budget redirection, and recall of vacant positions, we must listen. There is a great little book entitled, “Who Moved My Cheese?” (Johnson, 1998), which should be required reading for all student affairs administrators. If we are attentive to the times, we will realize that our cheese is being moved constantly. If student affairs is to be successful in gaining appropriate resources for our programs and services, we must recognize that within our divisions we must plan collaboratively in order to maximize our strengths. We must tear down any walls that may exist between departments and our resources to serve our students effectively.

Assumptions of the Model

Thus, in this environment we must consider planning and assessment as integral to what we do and not an extraneous activity in which to engage as an afterthought. The planning model that we propose, embodies our most cherished professional values and makes assessment and evaluation integral, not tangential, to planning and programming. The model emphasizes a structured, purposeful system of continuous, incremental improvement. It promotes prevention and solving problems at their roots to avoid recurrence. It requires top-level management commitment and involvement, organization-wide participation, shared responsibility and decision-making, and empowering employees at all levels. It assumes that change is a normal part of our lives, and that the scientific method and data can support decision-making. It requires a readiness to actively inspect the processes and outcomes of our programs and services and to make judgments as to their effectiveness. It induces us to expand the definition of our clients to incorporate people internal and external to our institutions, and it reminds us to exceed, not simply meet, the needs of clients. Finally, the model prominently features the link between resource allocation and performance. It instigates keeping viable programs, deleting less sustainable programs, and re-allocating resources internally. It is suitable for use in macro-level planning (e.g., division-level or department-level) or micro-level planning (e.g., program-level or student organization level).

Explanation of the Model

The graphic representation of the model [see Figure 1] helps the reader to visualize the underlying assumptions, values, emphases, and purposes of the model. The tools of the model are two-fold, (a) operational definitions of the terms used in the model [see Figure 2] and (b) worksheets, which were developed by the authors to assist departmental staff in applying the model. [Readers may obtain these worksheets by contacting the authors.]

In keeping with the theme of building a house, the model serves as a blueprint for a planned community within the Division of Student Affairs. Like a blueprint, the planning model can and should be shaped to match the functions, programs, and services offered by different departments. Using the model as a blueprint guarantees that individual houses fit the overall design of the neighborhood. The model is flexible enough so that individual distinctions between departments may be showcased while still allowing for a sense of unity within the division.

The model begins with the missions, goals, guidelines, and objectives pertinent to the Division of Student Affairs. At the top left of Figure 1 are the mission, goals, and objectives of the university. The top right section of Figure 1 serves as a reminder to include professional standards and guidelines as part of the specifications for planning. Central to the plan are the division’s mission, goals, and objectives as well as the department’s mission, goals, and objectives. This is a point in which unity and individualism combine to help fasten the planning process to the ideas that have been enumerated as important to the division and the department. These two areas are grounded in needs assessment, which reminds users to be aware of constituents’ needs when charting a course of action.

The model then splits into three sections: Critical Processes, Enhancements, and Innovations. Each program, service, and function carried out by a department is classified into one of these three categories. A Critical Process is a program, service, or function that forms the core of a department. Critical Processes are programs, services, or functions that must be accomplished effectively; they compose the unit’s raison d’etre. For that reason, the Critical Processes form the middle or the heart of the model. Horizontal arrows stretch from the Critical Processes to both the Enhancements and the Innovations. Enhancements and Innovations are different kinds of critical processes. An Enhancement is a Critical Process that is undergoing some revision or change to improve the program, service, or function. An Innovation is a Critical Process that is newly created by a department, as in a totally new idea for a program, service, or function, or an idea borrowed from another source that is totally new to the institution. The horizontal arrows among Critical Processes, Enhancements, and Innovations signify the inherent transitions that occur among three categories. For instance, a department may list a study skills seminar as a Critical Process. The director of the department may decide that the program is good but could be improved by making the curriculum more accessible to students from diverse backgrounds. This would move the Critical Process of teaching study skills to an Enhancement. When the seminar is over, a decision is made as to whether the program should be kept or deleted. If it is kept without any further changes, it moves back to the Critical Processes column. If the Enhancement still requires tweaking, the program will remain as an Enhancement for another year. If the program is not successful even with the new changes, the staff may decide to delete the program and re-allocate resources to other programs in the department.

In another example, the director of a department may decide that students would benefit from a program on speed-reading. Since this program has never been tried at the institution, it would be regarded as an Innovation. At the end of the speed-reading program, a decision is made to either keep the program or delete it. If it is kept with no revisions, it becomes a Critical Process. If it is kept with revisions in mind, it becomes and Enhancement for the next year. If the program does not achieve desired outcomes or indicators of quality, it may be deleted from the next year’s planning cycle.

Components of Critical Processes, Enhancements, and Innovations include strategies, indicators of quality and desired outcomes, assessment, evaluation and reporting. Strategies are all the pieces of the action plan for the Critical Process, Enhancement, or Innovation; examples include tasks such as determining timelines, personnel, facilities, an individual program budget, and work assignments.Indicators of quality and desired outcomes compel us to pinpoint our definitions of success and the minimum levels of success necessary to achieve an appropriate sense of accomplishment. An example of a quality indicator might be as follows: “90% of student participants will report that they are satisfied or very satisfied with departmental advising services.” An example of an outcomes indicator for a workshop to enhance skills in writing résumés might be as follows: “85% of students will show improved writing skills, as evidenced by comparing their initial, draft résumés to the final version of their résumés.”

Assessment refers to any means used by a department to gather data about a program, service, or function. It encourages departments and divisions to comprehensively collect data in a variety of ways, such as (a) tracking clients and their use of programs, services, and functions, (b) assessing needs, (c) assessing satisfaction, (d) assessing campus environments and student cultures, (e) assessing outcomes, (f) comparing services across institutions or departmental lines and/or (g) comparing services to professional standards and guidelines, such as the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) (Miller, 1999). An assessment plan may involve using only one of these forms or several in combination. Generally, tracking client usage of programs and services is considered a minimal requirement, and practitioners are strongly encouraged to embellish their assessment plan by tapping one or more forms of assessment (Upcraft & Schuh, 1996). Evaluation and reporting follow assessment and are critical steps in communicating about the success of a program, service, or function. Evaluation implies making judgments about the evidence, and reporting identifies how and with whom we will share our data and related judgments.The final step in the model moves all Critical Processes into the resource allocation procedure. However, before being referred to the resource allocation procedure, Enhancements and Innovations must pass through a decision phase, the outcome of which dictates where the program, service, or function in question will be positioned in the planning model during the next year. The model recycles the information presented in the resource allocation procedure and feeds it back into the beginning steps marked by needs assessment; the division’s mission, goals, and objectives; and the department’s mission, goals, and objectives. The purpose of feeding back into the model is to help users remember that monies dedicated to programs, services, or functions should be aligned with the needs, mission, goals, and objectives outlined by the institution and its constituents.

Socrates demonstrated that he was possibly the first student affairs planner when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Indeed, planning is often recognized as a necessary and beneficial endeavor and is frequently accomplished intuitively and idiosyncratically, rather than systematically. Non-standardized planning allows practitioners to tailor their efforts to specific populations, but it can also lead to duplication of programs, wasted effort, inefficient use of resources, and reduced long-term growth. Using a planning model, like using student development models and theories, allows practitioners to think and act more deliberately, ultimately benefiting both students and practitioners.

Deliberate action, however, must be guided by a vision. This planning model encourages visionary thinking and compels its users to think holistically, taking goals and ambitions from the abstract to the concrete and from start to finish. The model also demonstrates the cyclical nature of planning and the ways in which various activities are interrelated and mutually influencing. Many student affairs directors/department heads currently use team management approaches; this planning model supports team building within the department, within the division, and across the campus. Using the model on a division-wide basis gives units within the division a lingua franca with which to articulate plans and goals. Furthermore, because the model emphasizes effective and efficient use of resources from a divisional perspective, individual units are encouraged to cooperate with each other, especially when designing enhancements or innovations that benefit the entire division or university and when resource needs exceed a single department’s allocations.

In addition to collaboration, integrating assessment, planning, and budgeting efforts is becoming increasingly important. Currently, eleven states link some portion of higher education appropriation to performance measures, and fifteen states are considering similar measures (Carnevale, Johnson, & Edwards, 1998, April 10). By using this integrated perspective, staff and administrators increase the likelihood that they will achieve desired results, more accurately pinpoint areas in need of improvement, identify unnecessary redundancies, and secure sufficient documentation to fortify funding proposals. Such detailed, holistic planning allows for more intelligent, efficient use of resources. Many, if not most, state institutions have experienced reductions in state and federal funding over the past two decades (U.S. Department of Education, 1997, p. 341, as cited in Barr, Desler, & Associates, 2000). Consequently, the need for resource frugality within student affairs is only increasing.

This model can be used by anyone within student affairs who needs to plan, implement, and report the accomplishments of programs, services, and functions of a division, unit, or office. It can be used as a coherent, division-wide approach, as it is used at the University of Georgia, but it also lends itself to use on a smaller scale, such as within a single unit or even on a programmatic basis.

Paradoxically, many of the drawbacks of the model relate to its strengths. Although the model generates a common language for communicating about planning, staff members must take sufficient time and effort to familiarize themselves with the new vocabulary and conceptualizations of planning. Frequently, planning and resource allocation activities are made unilaterally at the department level. When this is the case, moving these functions to the division-wide level has the potential to invoke some resistance and confusion until sufficient trust and experience with the process has had time to develop. Other drawbacks of the model relate to when the model is implemented and the typical reservations people may have about assessment and planning. Frequently people view assessment and planning as restrictive and intrusive for a variety of reasons. However, involving affected parties in the planning process, including the assessment planning process, will often ameliorate initial resistances. Finally, because of its comprehensive and collaborative nature, the model is most effective when implemented at the beginning of a planning and budget-development cycle.

Recommendations and Conclusions

Appropriate implementation of this planning model should involve all staff within each department in the division of student affairs. It is important that planning have commitment from the top; but it should be developed from the grassroots, from those who serve our students on the front lines. Departments must plan and assess in a consistent manner in order to assure that we are providing our core functions effectively and efficiently and that we are anticipating new needs of our students and other constituencies. We must be appropriate advocates for student needs. We must be able to articulate the need for additional resources as student needs change or in areas where we may be behind. We must be credible players at the table when institutional resources are being allocated. In order for this to occur, department heads must move beyond the narrow thinking of their own departments to division thinking and beyond. Collaboration is imperative; visionary thinking a must. The model described in this article is an easy one to adapt to any division or department. Implementation of the model will involve change in thinking action but the results will be worth all the effort expended.

References

Carnevale, D., Johnson, N. C., & Edwards, E. R. (1998, April 10). Performance-based appropriations: Fad or wave of the future? The Chronicle of Higher Education [On-line]. Available: http://chronicle.com/che_data/articles.dir/art_44.dir/issue_31.dir/31b00601.htm

Johnson, S. (1998). Who moved my cheese? An a-mazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Miller, T. K. (Ed.). (1999). The book of professional standards for higher education. Washington, DC: Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education.

Upcraft, M. L. & Schuh, J. H. (1996). Assessment in student affairs: A guide for practitioners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics 1997. Washington, D.C. :U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 1997. As cited in Barr, M. J., Desler, M. K., & Associates. (2000). The handbook of student affairs administration. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS* FOR THE STUDENT
AFFAIRS PLANNING MODEL

ASSESSMENT Any effort to gather, analyze, and interpret evidence which describes the effectiveness of an institution, department, division, agency, program, service, or function.

ENHANCEMENTS Changes to existing critical processes that increase quality, or provide more complex or sophisticated features, or otherwise improve, expand, or intensify the critical process.

EVALUATION Any effort to use assessment evidence (data) to improve the effectiveness of an institution, department, division, agency, program, service, or function. Also, any effort to use assessment evidence (data) as part of a rationale for changing or eliminating a program, service, or function.

INDICATOR Something that is visible or otherwise serves as a sign for believing in the existence or presence of something else. For example, the data from a student satisfaction survey may be used to indicate students’ perceptions of the quality of a program’s processes.

INNOVATIONS New or different programs, services, or functions introduced by an office, unit, or department. These may be programs, services, or functions that have not existed or have not been used on this campus.

QUALITATIVE A systematic, in-depth exploration producing data that is rich in detail from

ASSESSMENT
A relatively small sample and emphasizing subjective, lived experiences. Examples of data derived from qualitative methods include detailed descriptions of situations, events, people, interactions, and observed behaviors; direct quotations from people about their attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts; and salient excerpts or entire passages from documents, correspondence, records, and case histories. A method well-suited for answering the question, Why? Concerned with the process as well as the outcomes and products. Inductive analysis is used and generalization/prediction ability is de-emphasized.

QUANTITATIVE Measurement of relatively large samples of individuals who are representative

ASSESSMENT of a population, using objective instruments and statistical analysis for the purpose of generalization/prediction. The instruments may be standardized or locally developed. Respondents’ responses are recorded in pre-determined categories or response patterns. A method well suited for answering the question, What? Deductive analysis is used.

REPORTING Detailed accounts or statements (written or verbal) which summarize assessment results and conclusions, or which describe the status of an institution, department, division, agency, program, service, or function. Examples are annual reports, SACS accreditation, professional association reports, reports to other accrediting agencies or local, state, regional, or federal reports.

STRATEGIES Plans and methods for directing operations and/or achieving a specific goal, program, service, or function.

*Adapted in part and designed to be compatible with perspectives presented in Upcraft and Schuh (1996)

Planning Model (Figure 1.) (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)