The Strategic Planning Committee and Academic Master Plan Committee officially convened on Feb. 10 for the first of many meetings to come in 2014. The committees serve separate but related functions in developing the overall direction of BC. Some major issues the committees are expected to address are the expansion of BC’s 4 year programs, BC’s status as a community college, how to improve student success and how to improve faculty conditions.
Knowing that student success is relative to the individual students, the committee will have to develop a comprehensive means of measuring and achieving student success. Each committee has two student representatives to aid in this insight. Taylor Anderson and Joel Allen sit on the Academic Master Plan Committee as student representatives and Tradon Jordan and Giulia Balzola on the Strategic Planning Committee. Furthermore, many departments and divisions across campus have already developed plans that aid in the committees’ ability to establish campus-wide plans.
White acknowledged communication to be a weakness in previous planning committees as well as the products they yielded. The progress, product and implementation made by the committees is planned to be highly visible. Various charts, documents and notes can be found in the board room for all to see for the duration of the committees’ work.
The strategic committee consists of approximately 30 members and are tasked with developing a five-year plan. The plan will be created with the expectation of being updated annually. “[We] know that we can’t get it right every time,” explains Ray White, vice president of Administrative Services. The Strategic Planning Committee is to dissolve upon the completion of the five-year plan and pass on the annual updates to the Planning Council.
The Academic Master Plan Committee consists of approximately 25 people but is more heavily weighted with instructional faculty. The legislature must approve program expansions and has been judicious in their approval of four-year programs. Even under these constraints, four-year programs are expected to expand.