When you’re implementing a process as big as this one and you’re being thoughtful about it, adjustments may be necessary along the way… As we’ve progressed through our plan development process, the steering committee has realized that our original plan to conduct regional focus groups across the state to gather ideas about strategies for inclusion in the Division Strategic Plan may have been a bit overly ambitious…

Our original plan for these focus groups in Phase II was for Lena to meet with folks across the state in our 10 regions and conduct at least two meetings on campus in a two-week period – a lot of car time and a lot of prep time in only 10 days! Also in our original plan was for faculty, staff, and external stakeholders to all meet together in these meetings to identify ways the Division might make progress toward our new goals. But we’re realizing now that mixing these two groups may have stifled open conversation and would likely cause unnecessary conflict because external stakeholders probably would not have any desire to discuss strategies for making progress toward some of our internally-focused goals (like improving our workplace culture or better integrating into the university). So, we’ve decided to adjust the process a bit. Instead of regional focus groups we’ll do the following:

1. Hold 5 two-hour webinars, for each of the goal areas, open to all Division faculty and staff. During these webinars the participants will learn about the strategies that have already been identified from the survey and offer suggestions for additional strategies or build on the initial suggestions.
2. Hold 1 two-hour webinar open to members of the public for them to offer suggestions about the strategies the Division could use to achieve the goals that involve the public (these would be goals like providing multiple and varied ways for people to access education, research, and information, but not goals like integrating outreach and engagement throughout OSU).
   • To identify these members of the public I will send out an email to the Division leadership (RAs, Program Leaders, Ecampus directors, Open Campus director, PACE director, Summer Session director, Exec Team, etc.) asking them to nominate 1 or 2 people to participate in this webinar – these people may be members of their Citizens Advisory Networks, members of the public they think are just really good thinkers about these things, or people who represent organizations that are succeeding in any of our goal areas. I will then invite them to participate in the webinar.
3. Then, as planned, the steering committee will meet to discuss all this feedback and then hone the strategies for presentation to the Exec Team and the rest of the Division.

Here’s a visual of the modified process. The only change we’ve made is to the method we’ll use in the second step, when we “identify additional strategies.”