Welcome to the 2010-2015 Patrick Henry Community College Strategic Planning Website

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The Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) welcomes you to our site, designed to keep you informed about strategic planning at Patrick Henry Community College. The SPC is charged with facilitating and coordinating PHCC’s 2010-2015 strategic planning activities.
If you have questions about our work, are interested in getting involved, or have comments to offer, please contact the SPC Chair, Natalie Harder.

The SPC is committed to a collaborative process with many opportunities for involvement of those within the college and in the community that we serve. Throughout the planning cycle, we will schedule big and small group meetings, community meetings, consultations with key constituencies, all of which combine to enable broad based participation in the various phases of creating, updating, and evaluating the Strategic Plan.

The SPC membership includes: Dr. Nolan Browning, VP for Academic Services and Student Affairs, Natalie Harder, VP of Institutional Advancement, Rhonda Hodges, Dean of Workforce Development and Continuing Education, Dr. Taiwo Ande, Coordinator of Institutional Research, and Dr. Jason Lachowicz, Associate Professor of Mathematics.

Created in September 2009 with a goal of completing a new strategic plan in Spring 2010, the SPC will meet bi-monthly beginning September 2009 through April 2010.

Design Principles for the Strategic Planning Process - The SPC established the following principles to guide the strategic planning work: (These are numbered for ease of reference, but are not listed in any priority order.)

1. The planning process and the plan that it yields will be learning-centered, will be grounded in the college’s history of excellence, innovation, and community.
2. The process will be strategic by impacting the results the college aims to provide to society and to students as they progress in their programs of learning.
3. The planning process will be collaborative to ensure broad-based participation and means for stakeholder groups to be heard and to influence the plan.
4. The process will build trust through effective communication and negotiation, by making it safe to identify and challenge assumptions, and by supporting agreements on shared values and the making of mutual commitments that are the basis for the strategic plan, and that are honored as the plan is implemented.
5. The process will be meaningful in that it will help the college to establish a vision of the future that shapes, defines, and gives meaning to its strategic purpose, and in that it will help to shape strategic decisions, some of which are identified in advance.
6. The process will be data-driven, using qualitative and quantitative data, routinely reviewed as the plan is implemented, with the aim of continuous improvement.
7. The plan will include formative and summative evaluation components that evaluate the planning process itself, as well as the implementation of the plan, using agreed upon performance indicators.
8. The process will have a clear cycle of activities, with a beginning and an end, and timed and structured to coordinate when appropriate with other reporting requirements such as SACS, VCCS, etc.
9. The process will be as simple as possible while yielding a viable plan, avoiding the trap of imposing more order than the college can tolerate.
10. The process will support the integration of fiscal, learning, and facilities plans with the strategic plan of the college, through careful timing and by clearly connecting each of these plans to the college’s revised Vision, Mission, and Goals.
11. The strategic plan will be useful to and therefore used by councils, campuses and departments as they prepare their plans, and will encourage a future orientation to their work.
12. The process, its language, its products, and the results of the plan will be communicated to all employees internally.
13. The plan will be expressed clearly, with language that is understood by stakeholders and with clear means of measuring progress.
14. The process will be truly comprehensive, and will have clearly assigned roles for individuals and groups, including students.

Work Products of the Planning Process - The SPC has named the following as the products of the planning process:

Phase I – Institutional Mission, Vision, and Goals
• Over arching needs assessment/situational analysis/environmental scan, providing a common understanding of the present and the anticipated future, including information about our competitors and clearly defined gaps in results at the mega, macro, and micro levels,
• Reviewed/revised mission, vision, and goals.

Phase II – Implementation Plan
• Departmental/division strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis, objectives (measurable outcomes that the division/unit/department seeks to achieve that will address the college goals), champions of each objective, action steps (the means or processes used to achieve those objectives) an evaluation plan, including indicators/measures of institutional effectiveness, revised as needed, and a means of assessing the extent to which decisions are consistent with the plan.