CAES Strategic Planning 2020

Data Collection Meetings

During January and February 2012 regional, departmental and town hall meetings will be held for CAES employees and stakeholders to provide input.

• Register for Regional Meetings
• Read the news release

Take the Online Survey

We welcome your input and ideas for the 2020 College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Strategic Plan. We hope to receive face-to-face input from as many of our stakeholders as possible, but if you are unable to attend one of our Strategic Planning Stakeholder meetings, please submit your input through this survey. Please respond using the survey that most closely identifies your association with CAES.

• Alumnus
• Employer of CAES Graduates
• CAES Undergraduate Student
• CAES Graduate Student
• Stakeholder, staff and faculty surveys are coming soon.

Process is Important!

By Laura Perry Johnson – CAES Strategic Plan, Co-Chair

When I first started trying to educate myself about strategic planning, everything I read and every expert I consulted, said the same thing – "You have to follow process. The process is crucial to success!" To begin with, I wondered what they meant, but as the process is unfolding, it is becoming more and more clear.

What is the process we are following? The first step in our plan is to gather as much input as we can from as many people, groups and organizations as we can. We are doing this using the context of four main themes or questions to make the masses of information we are receiving more manageable. These questions are:

1. What forces and trends will affect CAES in the next 10 years?
2. What is CAES doing well?
3. What are we not doing so well?
4. What would the ideal CAES look like in 2020?

The way we ask these questions might vary slightly by the audience, but gathering data in these main themes helps us to put some manageable parameters in the process and also allows us to compare data gathered across groups.

We have been asked why we are gathering such widespread input and why we are spending so much time, effort and resources meeting so many groups face-to-face. Wouldn't a survey be just a good? The answer is "no." The process we are following of gathering as much open-ended input from as many people and diverse groups as we can find is ensuring us that all issues are brought to the table for discussion in the beginning. It is like a huge net we are throwing out. As we progress we will begin to categorize this data into themes and drill down on the big and recurring issues. Protocol in strategic planning assures us this is the proper way to gather data that will be reliable and valid in the end.

Our timeline has us gathering this data in January and February, so your prompt participation is of the essence. Once we assimilate all of the information, we will begin to sort and look for common themes. That is when we might use surveys, personal interviews or other means to clarify responses, gather more specific information or target certain themes. As we progress, we will continue to be as transparent and open about the process and allow you to be as involved as you want to be. Eventually, we will post much of the raw data to this website for everyone to see the responses we are getting.

To date we have completed four of 10 departmental faculty meetings, 1 of 6 regional meetings and many of the interviews with key officials. We are already seeing common themes emerge. If you were able to attend one of the sessions, I hope you saw for yourself how common themes emerge from multiple groups. As I see this happen, I become more and more convinced the process is actually working!

The CAES Strategic Planning Process is in full swing. Every day we are gathering more data and progressing in the process. If you have not made a point of being a part of this important effort, I urge you to change that today. There are still many ways you can be involved including the following:

• Attend one of the regional meetings (please preregister at our website)
• Attend an on-campus town hall meeting for staff and non-departmental faculty
• Go to the website and fill out the on-line survey (We prefer your in-person participation, but this is preferable to not being involved at all.)

I also encourage you to bookmark and keep checking our website, www.caesplan.caes.uga.edu. We are posting information every day. If you have questions or comments, send them to us via our website or contact me, Jean Bertrand or one of the committee members. Thank you for being a part of a process that involves us all.

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Tell us what you think about the CAES Strategic Planning process. Your opinions and comments are very important to us!

Your comments will be anonymous unless you provide your name and email address. All comments are submitted directly to the committee co-chairs.

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