Background

In 1984, Missouri Southern State College began the development of its first long-range plan.  This plan was revisited in 1987.  As the college prepared for a third iteration, the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education (CBHE) announced a new statewide study of Missouri higher education.  Since the initiative called for a discussion of more focused missions for public colleges and universities, a decision was made to delay further institutional long-range planning until the Coordinating Board concluded its planning process.

The statewide study was conducted by a taskforce named the Business and Education Partnership Commission.  The commission was made up of prominent business persons, legislators, and members of the Coordinating Board.  College and university presidents were excluded.  After one year of hearings and staff reports and in an effort to improve Missouri higher education, the Commission ended its work by recommending to Missouri voters a $360 million funding measure.  Among other recommendations were more focused missions for institutions, increased spending for technology and scholarships, and new accountability measures.  Voters rejected the measure resoundingly in November of 1991.

Convinced that the public still wanted accountability, in 1992, the Coordinating Board created another taskforce named the Taskforce on Critical Choices for Missouri Higher Education.  This time, the taskforce was composed of members of the Coordinating Board and the chairperson of the governing boards of each public college and university.  Again, presidents and chancellors were excluded.  After another year of discussions, hearings, and reports, the taskforce concluded its work by issuing a report calling for accountability goals for colleges and universities, a four-tier admissions policy for public institutions (from open door to highly selective), and increased emphasis on assessment of outcomes.  Assessment of outcomes measures served as the basis for incentive funding and the beginning of a “funding for results” component in the traditional funding formula.  Missouri Southern State College chose the category of “moderately selective” as its admissions policy.

In 1994, a new funding initiative was proposed to the Missouri General Assembly calling for increased funding for “enhanced missions”.  The governor of the state signed legislation in the summer of 1995 designating Missouri Southern as a moderately-selective, baccalaureate-level institution that “shall develop such academic-support programs and public-service activities as it deems necessary and appropriate to establish international or global education as a distinctive theme of its mission.”

With a more defined mission and increased funding, Missouri Southern embarked on a strategic issues planning effort in the fall of 1996.  The strategic plan was presented as part of Missouri Southern’s 1998 Higher Learning Commission (HLC) continued accreditation self-study report and was titled Strategic Issues, Strategies, and Goals for the 21st Century.  The plan was the result of a limited campus-wide effort by a Strategic Issues Taskforce.  The taskforce concluded its work of analyzing internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and challenges by refining the process to six overarching issues that should be addressed by the college as it began to implement an international approach to education.  The six issues were:

1. The entire campus community should focus on student satisfaction and needs.
2. The primary focus should be on teaching and learning.
3. The institution needs to ensure that it has a high quality curriculum that meets the needs of its students and their employers.
4. The institution must become more marketing oriented.
5. MSSC needs to fully implement and take advantage of the distinctiveness of the international mission.
6. Recognizing scarce resources and increased demands for accountability, the college should continue to stress efficiency of operation while recognizing that it may need to be more selective in some of its initiatives.

For each of the six issues, the taskforce identified several suggested strategies for goal accomplishment.  However, the sixth issue clearly implied that since not all intended strategies for goal accomplishment could be implemented due to resource limitations, priorities had to determine which strategies would be implemented.

The 1998 Report of a Visit to Missouri Southern State College by a consultant-evaluator team from HLC recommended continued accreditation for Missouri Southern until the academic year 2007-08.  However, the team also mandated that the institution submit a progress report by April 30, 2001.  The report was to document plans to recruit women and minority faculty, staff, and administrators and to recruit, retain, and graduate minority students.  In addition, the report was to communicate the college’s efforts to implement the strategic initiatives identified in its strategic plan.

Since the 1998 HLC peer-review team visit, state legislation has changed the institution’s name from college to university and expanded its international emphasis to a statewide mission.  This legislation also enabled MSSU to enter into agreements with other institutions in the state to offer joint graduate programs.  To fulfill the state’s objective of expanding opportunities for graduate education in southwest Missouri, MSSU began to incrementally develop collaborative graduate programs in 2003.

During the ten-year period following the development of the 1998 strategic plan and the 1998 consultant-evaluator visit, no formal strategic planning efforts were undertaken.  As a result, in its Report of a Comprehensive Visit to Missouri Southern State University, the 2008 HLC peer-review team made the following comments.

• “The campus has no comprehensive strategic plan and no process in place to develop a plan.  The planning culture on campus is restricted to specific offices or programs that have developed a plan in isolation of the rest of the campus.  Data to support institutional planning is limited and is often generated by individual offices without a uniform definition of variables.  Additionally, discussion with faculty and administrators indicate that data analysis is conducted in isolation and that a number of offices do not rely on data to guide decision making.  Without a strategic plan and a culture of data driven decisions, the campus is unable to systematically respond to the evolving environment in higher education.”
• “The budgeting process is completed in the absence of a strategic plan and in isolation.  Unit budgets are determined without consideration of re-allocation opportunities or unique budgeting needs.  Given the historically limited budget levels, enrollment declines, and the funding reduction in 2001, the absence of a plan to establish funding priorities seriously jeopardizes the ability of the university to shape its future.  It was noted that the net assets of the University have declined each of the past 2 years.  This decline is particularly troubling in the absence of a strategic plan.”

Although the team recommended that the institution be granted a 10-year continued-accreditation status with HLC, it also required that a focused visit be conducted in spring 2011 to review the status of institution-wide strategic planning and the institution’s system of shared governance.

During the summer of 2008, a project guide, which articulates a model and an organizational structure for initiating and carrying out a systematic, broad-based, and highly-participatory strategic planning project, was developed.  The document also serves as the guide for embedding the strategic planning effort into a larger process that will prepare the institution for the spring 2011 HLC focused visit.