The pace of change is accelerating rapidly. We see evidence of this in our everyday lives, with new innovations in automation and AI emerging almost daily.
Such exponential change makes it hard for community college leaders to plan effectively for the future. How can leaders anticipate the trends and developments that will shape their institutions three, five or 10 years down the road? How can they keep abreast of rapid changes to make sure their students are prepared for the future workforce?
This article is an excerpt from the new issue of the Community College Journal, published by the American Association of Colleges (AACC) since 1930.
“We know things change a lot in five years,” says Arlene Rodriguez, vice president of academic and student affairs at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts. “No one foresaw Covid when it exploded on the scene five years ago.”
Savvy campus leaders use a variety of tactics to ensure their strategic plan not only remains relevant but is used to drive better learning outcomes.
“We’ve all experienced strategic plans that were pretty, but then sat on a shelf collecting dust after they were enacted,” Rodriguez says.
Strategic planning will be an important area of focus during the AACC annual conference April 12-16 in Nashville. Here’s a look at how three community college systems are successfully navigating this challenge.
Foresight
With a service area that’s 26,000 square miles in size — larger than the states of Rhode Island and Vermont put together — California’s Kern Community College District must deliver educational services across a broad (and economically diverse) region. This makes the strategic planning process even more critical to the district’s success.
To plan effectively for an increasingly uncertain future, Kern CCD has adopted a framework called “strategic foresight,” which originated from the University of Houston’s Future Studies program.
The process involves scanning the horizon to identify the driving forces that will impact the organization’s future across several domains, such as socially, economically, politically and technologically. Then, the planning committee develops different scenarios for how to approach the future, such as muddling through without a clear vision, growing a little or transforming the college system altogether. Finally, the committee forms a plan that will enable the institution to achieve its chosen scenario.
“Strategic foresight is a very proactive planning model,” says Chancellor Steven Bloomberg.
Pillars of a new strategic plan
Using this model, a 16-member central planning committee is currently developing a new strategic plan for Kern CCD that will be presented to the board in June.
Identifying the key driving forces is the single most important part of the process, Bloomberg says. Economically, the committee determined that the Los Angeles wildfires could affect the state’s budget for years to come. Politically, the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and illegal DEI could affect how the district attracts and retains an ethnically diverse student population. Socially, the growing dissatisfaction with higher education amid rising student debt is another trend that could affect enrollment. Technologically, the emergence of AI and virtual reality are changing the nature of jobs across all industries, and these changes need to be reflected in classroom practices.
Despite these formidable challenges, the committee agreed to meet them head-on by pursuing a transformational vision for Kern CCD’s future.
“If you do nothing to address the drivers that will affect your future, you get left behind,” Bloomberg explains.
The new strategic plan calls for embedding AI within tutoring and other student wraparound services, integrating virtual reality into instruction across the curriculum, and creating micro-credentialing programs that allow new cohorts of students to start classes every 30 days, among other initiatives.
“People want access to higher education when they want it,” Bloomberg explains, and not when an academic calendar dictates.
To ensure that the plan remains relevant, leaders will continually scan the horizon for new and emerging drivers and will make adjustments as appropriate.
“Is it hard to build a plan that looks 10 years out?” Bloomberg asks. “Yes, it is. But we’re building a plan that’s flexible and open to change.”
‘Strategic doing’
Turning a college’s strategic plan into action can be challenging. To overcome this hurdle, Middlesex Community College (Massachusetts) has adopted a planning model from Purdue University’s Agile Strategy Lab, called “strategic doing.” This approach transforms an institution’s strategic plan into a living, breathing document by having committee members continue to meet every month even after the plan is enacted.
President Phil Sisson learned about this model in an AACC workshop. He shared it with his senior-level cabinet during a leadership retreat, and team members decided to apply it toward the college’s current strategic plan, which expires in 2027. The plan is built around four directives:
- Build a college-wide culture of equity-mindedness and “expansive excellence.”
- Strengthen pathways to student retention.
- Strengthen identity as a community-based hub for equity, centering student and community voices.
- Prioritize fiscal stewardship and sustainability.
Each year, the college’s Strategic Leadership Council (SLC) identifies six or seven key goals that will help the college meet these directives. Committees are formed around each of these goals, and every member of the SLC must choose at least one committee to participate in. The committees also recruit members from outside this senior leadership team.
To achieve staff buy-in, Sisson promised his cabinet that they would fully drive this committee work.
“I asked them to commit at least three hours per month to this effort,” he says, noting they meet for 90 minutes in their committees and then come together as a group for a 90-minute meeting. “I also told them: If you need any outside resources, we’ll get them for you.”
