Our “ground-up” process began with a charge from the Office of the Provost and a core team of strategic thinkers.
Then-Provost Joyce McConnell charged Maryanne Reed (former dean of the Reed College of Media) and Melissa Latimer (former director of the WVU ADVANCE Center) with leading an institution-wide effort to gather and analyze input regarding the vision for WVU’s future. Reed and Latimer identified a core team of strategic innovators from across WVU entities and launched a series of visioning sessions facilitated by trained leaders in nearly every University unit.
FALL 2018
Building a core team to lead the process
Reed and Latimer identified a core team to lead the Strategic Transformation process. The team comprised faculty and administrators from across WVU campuses who had been identified as creative, strategic and innovative thinkers.
Spring 2019
Understanding the “big picture” challenges and opportunities
Meeting twice a month, team members engaged on a deeper level throughout the Strategic Transformation process. They gathered for presentations and workshops that focused on a “big picture” understanding of the current and future higher education landscape, including challenges and opportunities.
Topics included:
- R1 status and implications for the future
- National enrollment trends and challenges
- Enrollment management at WVU
- Finance and budget at WVU
View the EAB Presentation on National Trends
Training unit leaders to facilitate visioning sessions
The WVU ADVANCE Center team developed and provided training to identified leaders in nearly every unit, college or school across WVU’s campuses. Those leaders were then tasked with facilitating visioning sessions in their respective units, gathering feedback and submitting it back to the team.
Crowd-sourcing ideas through visioning sessions
Once trained, unit leaders led visioning sessions in their respective departments, offices and units to brainstorm a vision for the future of WVU. Nearly 1,000 faculty, administrators and selected staff shared their ideas what WVU is doing well and what it could do better. These sessions gave the campus community opportunities to help construct a vision for WVU's future.
Identifying themes for a vision
As results from the visioning sessions poured in from 67 units across WVU, team members spent the late spring coding, analyzing and organizing the information to identify common themes.
Summer 2019
Shaping a vision for WVU
Team members Nate Sorber and Maja Holmes transformed themes into a working draft and shared it with members of the core team. A few revisions later, the document was finalized with guiding principles, goals, illustrative initiatives and sample metrics to support strategic transformation at WVU.
Fall 2019
Sharing the vision with leadership
In September, Provost Reed shared the results of the Strategic Transformation process with President Gee and other members of WVU leadership. This high-level summary statement of the faculty’s shared vision and purpose will serve as a blueprint for WVU’s future growth.