By Emily Bruzzo, News Editor

Published in print Mar. 4, 2015

With a chancellor search underway, budget cuts coming from every direction and a shaky campus psyche, UNC-Greensboro has a lot up in the air right now.

Some community members argue the university lacks an identity. Others say it needs a clearer vision for its direction.

Provost Dana Dunn contends that the path toward healing and a more unified campus community will come with UNCG’s new strategic plan.

The plan, which is currently only in phase two of the six stage process that will produce the final result, is meant to guide the university’s goals and campus philosophy for the next ten years.

Dunn sat down with The Carolinian to discuss the planning process and the larger political issues that shape a institution’s culture.

“If you lack a strategic plan,” Dunn explained, “you run the risk of being buffeted around by whatever is occurring in the environment.”

She continued, saying, “If you have a strategic plan, you can stay focused on what you want to accomplish.”

A strategic plan, which Dunn argues is “ a road map to the future,” allows an organization to focus its resources, allocate its funds appropriately and fundraise more effectively because the organization has a definitive vision of what its long-term goals are.

But with a volatile economic environment and the vestiges of 2008’s recession still wreaking havoc, the question of how set in stone the plan should be certainly comes to mind.

“They are not fixed documents that are cast in concrete,” Dunn said. “They evolve almost continuously.”

Dunn says that a community must be disciplined in always thinking about how to update the plan in order to make it more conducive to the current environment.

As to how a strategic plan can help a university through sudden jolts to the economic landscape, such as in 2008, Dunn said, “You do everything you can in the early stages of planning to try to work out into the environment and project ahead.”

“You can reduce some of the uncertainty,” she said, “by having a very deliberate process whereby you examine the trends into the future.”

Phase two of the planning process, which Dunn and the Strategic Planning Committee are currently undergoing, is just the time for predicting the future.

During the environmental scanning phase, as phase two is called, a consultant comes to campus and gathers massive amounts of data about things like: student pipeline projections, economic trends, employment fields and the ebb and flow of the markets.

But will all the plans that are made now still hold up several years down the road when the strategic plan is supposed to be operating in a different world?

“Once you have a plan in place,” Dunn said, “if you follow the plan, you’re structuring the university environment in a way that is more likely to attract those students who are a good fit.”

“If you choose to emphasize certain areas…you then begin to market the institution in accordance with your plan.”

And that’s what a strategic plan comes down to in the end: “branding,” as Dunn referred to the process of an institution’s identity formation.

This issue of branding and an institution’s viability in the markets has been a major topic of discussion in the North Carolinian political arena.

Gov. Pat McCrory has called for the “commercialization” of higher education research, and many members of the UNC system have voiced their concerns about this corporatization of academe.

Dunn posits commercialization doesn’t have to be a negative thing, however.

“Commercializing something doesn’t mean that you have to create a product. You can have this wonderful process for doing something new— new knowledge that helps achieve a goal.”

UNCG may be the third largest generator of profitable research in the UNC system, but it doesn’t have the types of programs that historically produce sizable cash flows, such as engineering programs or medical schools.

Dunn says that UNCG’s liberal arts focus is its niche and its advantage.

“We’ll do very well with what we have in appropriate fields,” she argued, “We do other things that I think are very much parallel in terms of economic and social impact from a university.”

““If one listens carefully to what employers say… they are telling that the things they want to see in the graduates they employ are much more focused on the ability to think critically, to be nimble, to assimilate and evaluate information— to do the very kinds of things that are a hallmark of a strong liberal arts education.”

However, with a permanent 2.0 percent cut and a temporary 1.25 percent cut coming UNCG’s way next fiscal year, many are wondering how the strategic plan will hold up and how public institutions of higher education can successfully convince policymakers that their work is relevant.

The strategic plan will be incremental in UNCG’s upcoming capital campaign, acting as a sort of sales pitch the university will use to sell itself as a product to potential third-party donors.

Dunn says the future of the strategic plan is important but right now the focus has to be on the process.

“The process is as important as the plan—as the product,” Dunn argued. “Coming together and discussing the future, it really shapes who we are.”

Dunn says that a well-defined plan that leads to wise budgetary decisions and smart business endeavors will help prove higher education’s relevancy to legislators.

As for right now, however, Dunn is more focused on how to get UNCG’s campus community behind UNCG’s cause.

Dunn argues that the key is listening.

“[The community] owns the plan. It’s not forced on them,” she said.

“You can’t involve [people], and listen to them and then ignore what they say,” Dunn concluded.