Operation Refresh, stragetic plan for Mount Mary College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Our community can take pride in recent progress on objectives established during the 2007 strategic planning. We come together now to reflect on that progress and to begin a conversation about Mount Mary's future: How as a community can we not only extend but elevate our work to carry forward the mission of our College in the most meaningful ways?

At the April 2010 College forum, the 2007-2012 strategic plan's six initiatives were reviewed: and repositioned within five new areas - Academic Excellence, Campus Renewal, Student Success, Community Impact, and Financial Vitality - with three critical factors (diversity, Catholic identity, and women's leadership) integral to all five areas. Progress in each of these areas enables us to update
our planning and to lay the groundwork for an upcoming Higher Learning Commission review and a comprehensive fundraising campaign.

Operation Refresh makes possible accelerated but thoughtful planning through multiple participatory platforms for dialogue: campus convenings, interviews with stakeholders, online surveys, and a dedicated Web site with a confidential email comment link.

The outcome will be a robust scaffold - vision, priority initiatives, strategic keys - for review by the Board of Trustees in late October and ready for building out detailed goals and objectives going forward.

Mount Mary has much to celebrate, with many advances on the goals identified in 2007. We all can take pride in the many accomplishments of recent years, and for me this is a welcome moment to thank all members of the Mount Mary community for their dedication and hard work.

Complacency or self-satisfaction, however, would be a mistake. Mount Mary has great momentum. While there assuredly will be strong challenges in the years ahead, I believe we have the people and programs with the potential to convert those challenges into opportunities for new levels of excellence and meaningful growth in line with our mission and values. To that end, we are refreshing Mount Mary’s strategic plan for 2011 – 2016. Key drivers are:

So I invite you to read on, as I consider where we’ve been, some of the demographic and economic trends with implications for higher education, and Mount Mary’s particular strengths as well as challenges. Finally, I put forward some of the probing questions I believe we must discuss, debate, and ultimately answer. I close with my dreams for our College. Dreaming out loud, I envision a future Mount Mary that fully realizes institutional potential and carries forward the legacy of our School Sisters of Notre Dame in creative and vibrant ways.

Rising cost of a college education
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent over the past 25 years – more than 4 times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.

Ongoing economic uncertainty
The economic crisis has affected higher ed. As students’ financial needs have increased, endowment values have declined, and many institutions have faced budget cuts in personnel and programming to make ends meet.

Changing demographics
The student body on American college campuses will continue to become more racially diverse, older and more female over the next decade, according to projections from the U.S. Department of Education.

List of Sources for Trends: Implications

"Best Practice Trend Analysis and Peer Reviews," a report prepared for Regis University by The Napa Group, a consulting organization in Novato, California, dated February 16, 2010.
Trends in Higher Education, Volume 6, Number 12, by Phyllis T. H. Grummon, Ph. D., Director, Planning and Education, Society for College and University Planning, 2010.
Glendale Community College Strategic Plan 2009-2012, Glendale, Arizona, February 2009.

Increasing lack of student preparedness
Many entering students continue to arrive underprepared for college-level coursework. First-generation college students especially are anticipated to need additional academic support.

Rise of for-profit higher ed institutions
The Career College Association expects that for-profit colleges will be educating 15 percent of all college students by 2020, compared with 7 percent now.

Continued pervasive nature of technology
Trends identified as key drivers of technology adoptions from 2010 to 2015 include these— the ability to work, learn and study whenever and wherever; cloud-based technologies and decentralized IT support; collaborative work by students; more cross-campus collaboration between faculty and departments.

Increasing demand for alternative delivery systems and around-the-clock services
Students seem to want educational access 24 hours a day, seven days a week and expect on-demand access to research tools, podcasts, online-library resources and electronic textbooks. Flexible scheduling alternatives such as satellite locations and weekend/night/online delivery of courses and services address the needs of all students, including those already in the workforce.

Increasing calls for accountability
Congress and other watchdog groups are demanding measures to ensure that colleges and universities fulfill their promises relative to graduation, placement rates, learning outcomes, student debt load, and board accountability.

Increasing pressure to commit to sustainability goals
The sustainability movement is transitioning from facilities to the curriculum and, now, to total institutionalization. The Presidents’ Climate Commitment (signed now by nearly 700 colleges) has accelerated the call to action.

21st century learning competencies require educators to rethink what is taught and how
The character of knowledge is changing, from where we collect it (from traditional sources to open sources), to when we gather it (always), to how we gather it (in personal, individualized ways).

Benchmarking is a process relatively common in the for-profit world undertaken for the purpose of evaluating various aspects of a business in relation to best practice, typically within a company’s own industry. In recent years, benchmarking has been adopted by governments and nonprofits, including higher education institutions. In its simplest form, benchmarking is just a way to gauge one’s own performance against that of others considered to be similar (peer) or, in some way, improved (aspirant).

In 2008, Hanover Research Council (an independent research organization) undertook research designed to identify peer and aspirant institutions to Mount Mary College. The goal of the research was to identify a handful of institutions with which Mount Mary could compare itself to better understand its own operations as well as to glean best practices from others.

The pool of peer institutions was drawn from an initial list of institutions with a predominant (90% or more) enrollment of women. The list was subsequently narrowed by a number of Carnegie Classification variables. The list was then ranked using criteria and weights offered by the college.* This process generated a list of peer institutions that includes the following institutions:

A similar process generated a list of aspirant institutions that includes the following: **

* Potential women’s college peer institutions were selected based on Carnegie and IPEDS enrollments between 1,800 and 2,500. The variables and weights applied were these: Endowment (10%), Recruitment Area (20%), Average ACT (20%), Student Type Commuter (20%), and Enrollment Growth (30%).

** Potential women’s college aspirant institutions were selected based on Carnegie and IPEDS enrollments between 1,440 and 2,160 (+/- 20% of 1,800). The variables and weights applied were these: Endowment (10%), Urbanicity (10%), Pell Grant Eligibility (20%), Average ACT Score (20%), Student Type (20%), and Tuition (20%).

NOTE: This list is relevant to all Strategic Initiatives except Academic Excellence. Please refer to Academic Excellence for the individual list.

Refreshing the Strategic Plan 2011-16: