DATE:
TO: Members of Planning Committee on Strategic Direction No.{1, which concerns Strategic Resources and Planning}
FROM: Brian L. Foster, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
SUBJECT: Charge to Committee

Thank you for agreeing to serve as a member of the strategic planning committee on strategic direction number 1, which concerns strategic resources and planning. A membership list is attached; the committee will be co-chaired by **********. Most generally, your committee’s charge is to write a thoughtful essay on the topic of your assigned strategic direction.

To give you a sense of how your committee’s work fits in the broader strategic planning effort that is underway, I have attached a brief summary of the planning process and its calendar, along with some other background materials. Your committee is one described in the section referring to strategic directions. We have now completed several important foundational activities that will guide the next steps:

• UNM’s mission, vision, and value statements - a small group has reviewed these and suggested changes.
• environmental scan - the environmental scan examined the environment in which UNM will exist for the next five to ten years.
• brainstorming sessions - a series of these sessions with a wide variety of university constituencies and community members produced a comprehensive list of activities that the University should undertake together called "the domain of the plan."
• working committee reports – a series of reports produced by nineteen working committees of faculty, staff, community people, and students.
• forums for public comment – a series of 26 public forums were held in December and January to provide comment on the nineteen working papers.

It is important that you keep each of these foundation activities in mind as the committee’s work proceeds. Each step has built significantly on the preceding ones; your report must take account of the prior work of several hundred participants in the process.

Your committee is one of seven that are writing essays on the strategic directions; these papers will be the primary point of reference when the Planning Task Force meets in late spring to write the first draft of the Strategic Plan. A list of all seven strategic directions, each with an explanatory paragraph, is attached. In the Plan, each of these strategic directions will be associated with a set of major objectives as well as tactical means of reaching the objectives. The strategic directions, along with the objectives and strategies, are the means of achieving our vision and mission. They cannot be read meaningfully without reference to UNM’s Vision and Mission Statements. Again, most generally, your committee’s charge is to write a thoughtful essay on the topic of your assigned strategic direction. It is not to write the specific objectives or tactics.

More specifically, the charge to your committee is to:

• Produce an essay no more than twenty-five pages long on Strategic Direction Number {1} as defined in the attachment.

• Describe broadly how well we are doing in your committee’s area. Most of the essay, however, should have a forward-looking orientation and focus on what we should be doing over the next five to eight years to achieve our vision.

• Please consider the entire University in your thinking, including, for instance, both the Main and Health Science campuses, the branch campuses, broadcast media, the Research Park, and the Extended University.

• Your committee’s deliberations are sure to intersect with those of other strategic direction committees (e.g., several have service, teaching, technology or resource components). You may wish to communicate with other groups to understand the nature of these common concerns and perhaps cross-reference them in your report. This kind of coordination is not necessary, however, and need not be a primary concern.

• Consider UNM’s unique resources, strengths, and competitive advantages in the area as well as our limitations and prospects.

• Provide a one- to two- page set of bullets that summarizes the major points of your essay (this is in addition to the twenty-five-page report).

• You may append some background information to the essay, but the essay itself should not exceed twenty-five pages. It is unlikely that the Task Force will be able to consider voluminous appendices carefully.

• Please keep in mind the Task Force was not constituted with the kinds of expertise needed to analyze the specific subject matter of your report. That is the task of your committee; we hope that you will present thoughtful and grounded conclusions that are based on your expertise and that will guide the Task Force in its task of crafting the draft strategic plan.

• We ask that the completed essay reach the Planning Task Force no later than March 30, 2001.

The Planning Task Force encourages you to think broadly about your topic, but please focus your essay squarely on the topic as defined. As mentioned above, many people have worked for more than six months on the antecedents of these seven strategic directions, and the integrity of the process depends significantly on our ability to move in a disciplined way, building each successive phase of the process on what has come before. It is likely that the strategic directions themselves will see minor adjustments after the Task Force has seen the seven essays, since it is virtually certain that overlapping subject matter, new information and perspectives, and overlooked concerns will surface. We anticipate, though, that the seven strategic directions will remain substantially intact.

It may be helpful to mention two key elements of the Plan. First, it will be tied closely to our resource base. All objectives and tactics will have to be accompanied by credible and reasonable resource scenarios. Second, all working papers, reports, draft plans, and other materials produced in the process will receive close public scrutiny, and all comments received will be considered as part of the record in subsequent planning activities. Much dissemination of the information and public comment will be accomplished through our strategic planning web site (www.unm.edu/~unmstrat).

Again, for the Task Force and for President Gordon, and for me personally, I want to thank you for your willingness to serve in this important role.
 

cc: William C. Gordon, President
Members of the Strategic Planning Task Force

Attachments:
Summary and Schedule of Planning Process
Membership list
List of Strategic Directions with Vision and Mission Statements
Environmental Scan
Summaries of the nineteen working papers