educational strategic plans

Ensure your strategic plan succeeds with your educational partners’ input

September 29, 2023

Sarah Mathias

Strategic planning in education – 3 keys to success.

Effective strategic planning is critical for creating positive change in your district. Among the many benefits, strategic plans align educational partners with a shared vision, mission, and values; promote productive decision-making; and help students reach their full potential.

While having a plan in place will usually improve results, strategic planning can present challenges—resulting in endless meetings, countless goal and tactic revisions, and plans that are never fully realized.

In this post, we explore strategic planning in education, touch on some K-12 planning tips, and share three best practices for making strategic planning successful in your school district. With your community’s insights and the right tools, you can win at strategic planning. Here’s how.

In this Article

• What is Strategic Planning in Education?

Strategic planning tips for K12

See thoughtexchange in action — start the product tour, what is strategic planning in education.

Strategic planning is the process of setting goals, deciding on actions to achieve those goals, and mobilizing the resources needed to take those actions. A strategic plan describes how goals will be achieved using available resources.

While the concept initially stemmed from business practices due to people moving from the private sector into educational leadership positions, many strategic planning tools and paradigms have been adapted to focus on engagement and consensus.

This is because effective strategic planning requires community support at the school district level, both functionally and legislatively. School districts of all sizes use strategic planning to improve student outcomes and respond to changing demographics while staying within the given funding box.

In top-performing schools, leaders have proactively shifted their strategic planning process to include their educational partners. They know that their strategic plans are more likely to succeed with community support and the insights that come with community engagement.

Strategic planning is key to setting students up for success in K-12 and beyond. A solid strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission, and values, increasing engagement while providing a framework to ensure students’ needs are met so they can reach their full potential.

Your strategic plan will benefit from your district’s input. Here are a few effective ways to engage your district in K-12 strategic planning.

Tap into your educational partners’ wisdom

Your educational partners have valuable insights. Consult teachers, staff, students , parents, and community members throughout the planning process, so your strategy aligns with their perspectives.

Whether you’re setting strategy at the district, school, or department level, consulting diverse participants will uncover unbiased insights, enhance trust and buy-in, and ensure greater success with new strategic directions.

Using ThoughtExchange , leaders can scale their engagement to efficiently and effectively include their community in their district strategic plans.

Use climate surveys

Completed by all students, parents/guardians, and staff, school climate surveys allow leaders to collect participants’ perceptions about issues like school safety, bullying, and mental health and well-being, as well as the general school environment.

ThoughtExchange Surveys get you both nuanced qualitative and robust quantitative data with instant in-depth analysis, ensuring your district understands all angles of school climate. Run surveys independently or combine them with Exchanges for faster, more accurate results.

• Collect benchmark comparisons while tracking and measuring improvements over time
• Gather quality quantitative data for reporting to state agencies or funders
• Identify outliers and trends across demographic groups

Put in some face time with town halls, meetings, or listening tours

In-person gatherings like town halls, meetings, and listening tours are effective ways to understand your educational partners’ wants and needs to ensure they line up with your strategic priorities.

When managed effectively, they give staff and other educational partners the chance to closely interact. In-person gatherings can build trust and morale, promote transparency, and help create a sense of purpose.

Leverage community engagement platforms

Community engagement software lets you streamline your community engagement initiatives. It allows education leaders to gather feedback and get tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people on the same page in just days. It also facilitates candid, collaborative community conversations that help districts realize their goals.

A comprehensive community engagement platform like ThoughtExchange allows you to integrate your strategy with your community and take decisive, supported action in less time. It provides planning, scheduling, and analysis tools to help you quickly set strategy and monitor execution.

3 keys to strategic planning success

1. get everyone on the same page.

Make sure your educational partners are on the same page by allowing them to contribute to and shape your strategy from the start. Lack of alignment about what strategy involves can hinder even the best plans. So the first step in creating a successful strategic plan is getting everyone involved to provide their insights and opinions.

Letting your people know you’re listening and that their insights affect decisions, builds trust and buy-in. Your community will be much more likely to support—not sabotage—a strategy or decision.

2. Be a collaborative leader

According to ThinkStrategic , creating a school strategic plan should always be a collaborative process. Avoiding a top-down approach and getting input from educational partners will help minimize blind spots and unlock collective intelligence. It will also ensure everyone is committed to the plan. Get all community members involved in how to make the most of the school’s possibilities.

Commit to becoming a collaborative leader and put a plan in place to ensure you can achieve that goal. That may include implementing technology that can support scaled, real-time discussion safely and inclusively for students, teachers, and other educational partners.

3. Get a holistic view of your district

Getting a holistic view of your educational partners’ wants and needs helps you build more inclusive, supported strategic plans.

Depend on a platform that meets all your engagement needs in one place—from surveys to Exchanges—and allows you to consult more people in an inclusive, anti-biased environment. You’ll reduce the time and resources spent on town halls and meetings, and reach your district’s goals more efficiently and effectively.

Engagement and survey software has been proven to contribute to more effective strategic planning in education. It empowers leaders to run and scale unbiased engagement initiatives where they can learn what the people who matter really think— explore ThoughtExchange success stories to learn more .

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Strategic planning

The need for an iiep remains higher than ever.                                    (unesco internal oversight services, 2013).

 An effective ministry is guided by a plan which brings together all stakeholders and is regularly monitored and updated. IIEP strongly believes that planning is not a one-off activity. Rather it is a continuous practice that should engage all ministry departments and partners at national and subnational levels in a consultative and participatory process. Institutionalizing planning necessitates that ministries establish a strategic vision and priorities, coordinate their programmes and budgets annually and within a medium-term expenditure framework, negotiate with national and international financing agencies, and periodically monitor that it is on track to achieve policy objectives through implementation reviews.

Strategic planning guides educational development by giving a common vision and shared priorities. Educational planning is both visionary and pragmatic, engaging a wide range of actors in defining education’s future and mobilizing resources to reach its goals. For policy-makers, planning offers the path to:

• implement education reform and system transformation;
• realize equal opportunities for children and youth;
• provide quality education for all.

IIEP has strong experience and expertise in strategic planning and has developed in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) two newly published documents to help ministries in charge of education transform their processes and operations to meet the challenges of a changing world:

• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Appraisal
• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Preparation
• Guidelines for transitional education plan preparation

• train and coach on concepts, processes and tools to improve the practice of educational planning and management;
• analyse and reflect on education trends and issues from a policy and planning perspective;
• provide technical assistance and policy advice on critical issues for educational development.
• IIEP in Action 2018-2019
• Capacity development in educational planning and management: Learning from successes and failures

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5 Steps To Highly Effective Strategic Planning In Higher Education (FREE template)

A crystal clear strategic plan can be the big difference between becoming the leading university… VERSUS ending up at the bottom. You know - where you struggle to attract students, the right staff members or even funds to support your institution.

So, in order to achieve your university’s goals, you need to learn how to build an effective strategic plan. 

In this blog post, we will reveal:

• The #1 reason university strategies fail
• The overlooked role of a strategic plan for higher ed
• The 5-step process you can follow to build a plan with your team

What is strategic planning in higher education? 

Strategic planning is the process an institution follows to realize its vision of its ideal future state. It’s a roadmap for getting there. Your vision becomes a reality through the process that defines specific goals, needs, and actions. It helps you to structure and contextualize information leading to important decisions. 

Sounds obvious, right? 

So, the question is:

Why do so many universities fail at strategic planning?

Because they forgot what the main role of a strategic plan is.

Most universities and colleges work on some form of strategic planning, but they usually come out as a 28-page PDF. They create an impressive presentation with shiny headings, upload it to their website and consider themselves successful. 

The end result is a ‘strategic plan’ that serves more as a marketing brochure and less like a roadmap to success.

What’s wrong with this usual approach?

Most vice-chancellors and vice presidents are not even aware of what they are losing. Staff members and faculty members work in silos with no focus on the big picture. Departmental plans are unaligned with the overall strategic plan. This leads to inefficiency, wasted resources, and things getting missed.

Clearly, this approach lacks the organization and accountability necessary for success. As a result, some institutions are losing their reputation, while others are losing program accreditation, experiencing declining student success, or having fewer funds available.

Sometimes all of the above. 

Strategic planning goes beyond ambitious and attractive presentations that describe the organization’s state in the next 5, 10 or more years.

Now let's take a closer look...

What is the real purpose of the strategic plan in higher education?

Your first and foremost goal should be to stay true to the promises you made to your stakeholders.

Think of your strategic plan as the foundation to achieve your long-term goals.

It’s supposed to help you translate high-level ambitions into tangible actions at a departmental level. Furthermore, it organizes everyone so that they can do those actions and report on them in a systematic and transparent manner. 

It serves as a guiding light for your staff, allowing them to focus on the things that drive real progress towards the university's strategic goals. 

On top of that, it’s an important resource for planning your yearly budget allocation. Even in the most difficult financial times, integrating strategic planning and budgeting throughout the organization creates opportunities for success.

It's obvious, isn't it? You need to stop treating your strategic plan as merely a glorified marketing document.

What are the 5 steps in the strategic planning process?

This five-step process will help you to craft a strategic plan that goes beyond marketing and delivers on promised results.

1. Understand your current situation

An effective planning process starts with a thorough understanding of your current situation. 

You can start by asking these questions: 

• What are our core competencies?
• Which important KPIs are trending over the last few years upwards? 
• Where do we notice a drop in performance? What led to this drop?
• Where do we want to be in 5 or 10 years?
• Do we need to develop new programs?
• How do we get there? 
• What external factors can impact us in the future?

Search for answers and go deep into every department and aspect of your institution. From financial health and university rankings to student enrollment, retention rates, and placement rates.

Next, understand the expectations and needs of your internal and external stakeholders.

Remember, top-down approach doesn’t work for universities. Higher education institutions are highly interconnected with their community and shouldn’t neglect its interest when making strategic decisions.

Collect feedback from every stakeholder group whose expectations affect your performance:

• Alumni members
• Faculty members & campus community
• Community groups
• Senior administrators
• External partnerships

Include their input into planning and translate it into the institution’s major goals. Embrace this collaborative approach and prevent too many unexpected "buts" in the future.

Don’t forget that you’re only collecting information at this stage, not brainstorming solutions or action plans. 

‍ Cascade tip:

The SWOT analysis framework  is still one of the most effective methods for evaluating internal operations and the external environment. Be honest and thorough in your evaluation. You can use it numerous times through strategic planning but you should start early in the planning process.

2. Lead with vision and values

Your university's vision is a part of its identity and a powerful latent tool.

Higher ed institutions of any size can utilize it, but they usually don’t. They don’t believe that people care about the big picture or that it affects the university's daily operations.

However, a clear and unique vision statement will set you apart from the competition and make you more memorable to potential students. They will know exactly what to expect from studying at your university and why they should come. 

At the same time, it gives a strong sense of pride and belonging to current students, faculty, and alumni. It becomes an emblem that attracts the right students, staff members, and funding opportunities. 

Here’s  an example  of a vision statement for the university: 

We will work as one Oxford bringing together our staff, students and alumni, our colleges, faculties, departments and divisions to provide world-class research and education.

- University of Oxford

You can take it one step further and include your institutional mission statement. 

And don’t forget about the values. They define your university’s culture. They determine how people act, which behaviors are praised and which are condemned. 

When you build a culture intentionally, then everyone inside and outside your school knows what you stand for, reinforcing all the benefits of a harnessed vision.

Cascade tip:

One of the biggest blockers to the successful execution of a strategic plan is the attempt to accomplish too much at once.  Creating a Vision Statement  will help you to avoid that trap right from the start. It becomes your north star guiding your strategy. It will be easier for you to identify what is relevant and worthy of your attention versus what isn't.

3. Concentrate your strategic planning efforts on key areas

There's a problem most presidents and strategic planning committees face: they don't define the real focus of their plans. 

You see, you can’t achieve everything, everywhere, all at once.

Your resources are limited, and you should prioritize accordingly. 

I’m glad you followed the first two steps. Now you have all the information you need to identify the biggest and most urgent challenges your university faces.

Clarifying the obstacles ahead of time helps you prioritize your strategic goals and develop focused efforts to achieve them.

For example, let’s say you’re creating a 5-year strategic plan. Here are some key focus groups you might want to focus on: 

• Provide superb undergraduate experience 
• Ensure graduate education and lifetime learning 
• Increase community engagement 
• Increase research excellence 
• Optimize financial resources

Focus areas help you decide what falls outside the university's priorities and prioritize your strategic planning efforts. 

We usually suggest creating between 3 to 5 Focus Areas. Any fewer and they will probably be too vague. Any more, and well..... you lose your focus. Dive deeper into focus areas with this  guide . 

4. Translate plan into tangible actions

This is the part that turns your strategic plan into reality. 

If you ever want to achieve your goals, you need to break down the plan into smaller, granular pieces specific to each department. Start by adding strategic objectives to your focus areas. 

The secret to  writing great strategic objectives  is simplicity and specificity. Avoid jargon and use a verb to indicate action. Accompany it with a deadline and preferably an owner (or two).

Here is an example:

Increase citations per faculty by 5% by May 2024, owned by Jane Doe.

The next step is to migrate from goal-setting to action-planning with projects. Projects describe what you’ll do to accomplish your objectives.

Projects  articulate a set of actions within a certain timeline. They include specific tasks, milestones, dependencies and dates (deadlines). Every objective should include at least one project or action-like event. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve any progress towards it.

Of course, nothing is so linear, but this process forces you to come up with action plans to support every strategic initiative and allocate funds and your staff’s time appropriately.

One of the most important steps in the planning process is to take the high-level plan and break it down into tangible actions at the departmental level. 

Cascade  helps you to achieve that with  planning models completely customizable  to your strategic planning approach. 

You can create a university-wide strategic plan and then break it down into  portfolio or departmental plans.  Clarify their goals, projects and key metrics. Collaborate with your teams to build multiple inter-connected plans and tie them back to the overall plan.

You get complete  visibility into how different plans or projects are connected  and contribute to the overall strategic plan. 

5. Don’t forget to measure progress

There is no perfect strategic planning for higher education (or anywhere for that matter). 

Every plan can be derailed by events beyond our control (such as a pandemic, change in public policy, or an unstable economic environment on a global scale). There is, however, disciplined execution through regular reviewing habits. The secret lies in the way you measure your progress and the frequency of reviewing it.

Determine the indexes that you want to improve and then  set key performance indicators (KPIs)  to drive and measure your performance against set targets. 

Here are some examples of KPIs you might want to keep track of:

• University ranking
• Post-graduation placement rate
• Number of students involved in undergraduate research
• Fundraising ROI

Establish the KPIs you will be reporting on in advance, and always end your reviews with a "next steps" discussion.

Create dashboards to measure progress in real-time.  Cascade’s customizable dashboards  help you to quickly identify areas that are underperforming and act before it’s too late.

Zoom your screen in on the screenshot below to check out Cascade's beautiful dashboards!

Extra tip:  Use Cascade reports to help you demonstrate your success in a transparent way and attract more investments in the key areas of your university. 

What’s next for your university?

Most university’s failure to reach their strategic goals isn’t because of bad strategy, but because strategy is constrained by PowerPoint. Kept miles from those who can make it happen. The best in Advancement, the finest HR, the most profound ideas - they’re all framed in slides rather than shaping every day’s activities for everyone across the university.

Remember, a strategic plan isn’t just a glossy presentation to attract new students or to get that accreditation approval for your academic program. It’s a manifesto for every employee to embrace and enact in whatever they do at your university. 

So, the next step is to transform your strategy from an intellectual exercise to an executable plan. It’s just a matter of shifting your approach and using the right tools. 

And once you make that shift, you’ll be able to create  an organized and aligned approach  to make your strategic goals happen.

Do that and get your plan to everyone, and your competition will be choking in your dust.

Are you ready to create your plan and start executing it? Turn your strategic plan into a competitive advantage with our 100% free, battle-tested strategic plan template , built for teams in higher education. 

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Five steps to planning for improved learning.

Improving educational quality through education sector plans

The techniques of strategic planning in education are well-developed, but students’ actual learning experiences have not always been the central concern. In the context of the new Education 2030 focus on education quality, what steps can planners go through to ensure that their education sector plans give priority to improving students’ learning outcomes?

Developing an education sector strategic plan can be a complex and iterative process. But in its simplest form,  Planning for Learning   involves five basic steps, from analysis of the current situation through to the detailed planning needed to accomplish change. Below, we suggest some of the key questions education planners need to ask in order to focus each step of this process on improving learning outcomes.

1. Education sector analysis: Where are we now?  

The process of planning for improved learning outcomes starts with a diagnosis of the current situation in the education sector, with a specific focus on learning.

Questions to ask : What information about students’ learning do we have, and what are we missing? What are students learning and how well are they learning it? Does their learning match the needs, aspirations, and plans of their parents, communities, and the nation? What are the major learning successes and weaknesses, and what are the causes behind them?

Tools planners can use:   Assessment data ,  Other monitoring data ,  SWOT analysis ,  Problem tree analysis . 

2. Policy and strategies: Where do we want to go?  

A plan for improving learning outcomes should offer a vision of a desirable situation for the education system in the future, and identify the ways to reach this situation.

Questions to ask : What are our end goals for improving learning? What are our medium-term objectives? Which strategies will be effective in achieving these learning goals and objectives?

Tools planners can use : Explore  strategies for improving learning , Convert your  problem tree into a solution tree ,   Complete a  strategic planning grid .

3.  Programmes: How do we get there?  

Once policy priorities and key strategies have been defined, they must be translated into specific actionable programmes.

Questions to ask:  What are the immediate results or outputs that must be achieved in order to meet our learning objectives and end goals? Which programmes and activities must be carried out in order to produce those outputs? How will objectives and outputs be measured?

Tools planners can use : Complete a  Logical Framework Matrix , Develop  indicators and targets .

4.  Costing and financing: How much will it cost and who will pay?  

To be achievable, policy priorities and strategies have to be consistent with the demographic and economic realities.

Questions to ask : What are the categories of costs involved in each of our activities to improve learning? What are the other recurring costs in the education sector? Do we need to account for growth (population growth, increased attendance, etc.) when calculating our recurring and new programme costs? What are our projected sources of funding and does the total match our projected costs?

Tools planners can use:   Simulation models ,  Budget template for GPE grants .  

Once projected costs have been established, policies, strategies, activities and/or targets may have to be revised in an iterative process until the plan is feasible in all respects.

5. Action plan: Who will do what and when?  

The action plan is sometimes referred to as an implementation plan or operational plan. It outlines the detailed activities for a specific period of the plan, with information on timing, roles, responsibilities, and costs.

Questions to ask : Which institutions and departments are responsible for each activity to improve learning outcomes? When should each activity be accomplished? Will the financial resources be ready on time?

Tools planners can use :  Action plan template ,   Gantt chart .  

The Next Step: Monitoring your plan

Once an action plan has been determined, planners need to ask themselves: How will we monitor whether these activities, outputs, and objectives are accomplished? What kind of data will we collect in order to see whether we are improving our education quality and students’ learning outcomes? and, How and when will this information be collected and analysed? For a more in-depth look at the education sector planning process, two helpful resources are the GPE/IIEP   Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Preparation  and IIEP’s  Strategic Planning: Techniques and Methods .

You can also learn more by reading our  Plan for Learning articles  and searching for resources in the  IIEP Learning Portal Library.

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Strategic Plan 2021-2025

Brief overview of our college foundational commitments.

The Penn State College of Education is committed to reimagining education to improve the lives of learners, educators, and community members at the regional, state, national, and global levels. Through our work, we will contribute to the creation of more equitable educational opportunities and outcomes for learners across their lifespan, ensuring all learners acquire essential literacies, and supporting the mental health and well-being of all learners and educators. Our commitment to these areas will be supported by our actions in four areas: 1) Community Enhancement and Development; 2) Transforming Educational Professionals; 3) Research Addressing Social Issues; and, 4) Outreach, Dissemination, and Partnerships. Ultimately, we endeavor to change our education systems to educate for change to create a more equitable society for all.

Our Mission

We reimagine the existing EC-12 and adult education systems, including the College of Education, by identifying and addressing the systemic inequities that impede many individuals from realizing their full potential.  We improve student outcomes, conduct research, develop effective policies and strategies, create new experiences for existing educators and students that are community-based and globally minded preparing the next generation of educators, integrate innovative technologies that contribute to our mission, and actively engage with families and in communities within and beyond our borders. We are deeply committed to progressive social change by bridging research to practice and developing partnerships with a wide array of individuals and organizations. We focus on equity and access, anti-racism orientations and practices, essential literacies, and the mental health and well-being of all individuals across the lifespan. We embrace the challenge of preparing a new generation of education professionals with the skills and dispositions needed to create powerful learning experiences for all learners, across the lifespan. Our mission is nothing less than being a leader in the creation of a more equitable and just education system for the people of Pennsylvania, the nation, and the world.

The Penn State College of Education will work collaboratively to transform education systems to promote progressive social change that leads to an equitable society and world, in which all learners , families, schools, workplaces and communities thrive.

The College of Education shares the University's values of Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Discovery, Excellence, and Community .  In addition to those values, the College of Education strongly identifies with these values:

ANTI-RACISM/RACIAL JUSTICE - We strive to actively identify, describe, counter, and dismantle individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism in all components of our work.

TRANSFORMING EDUCATION – W e are committed to changing education to promote and practice equity in collaboration with international, national, and community-based partners to ensure an equitable and just world.

LEARNING ACROSS THE LIFESPAN – We are committed to cultivating purposeful learning for individuals and communities throughout development, transitions, and contexts.

SYSTEMIC UNDERSTANDING AND AWARENESS – We embrace the synergy among efforts to mitigate climate change, and to promote social justice, essential literacies grounded in deep and integrated disciplinary knowledge, mental health and well-being in changing education for healthy communities and the world.

GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING AND INCLUSIVITY —We are committed to supporting the exchange of knowledge and furthering research that includes perspectives from, and addresses issues pertinent to, the attainment of education for all around the globe.

Definitions of Key Terms

As you read through our strategic plan you will come across certain key terms.  Below are those terms and how we are defining them in the context of this plan.

DIVERSITY: The College of Education advocates for the inclusion of and support for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, including, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, ability, religious affiliation, veteran status, socio-economic status, nationality, and geography.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: The College of Education believes in creating a fair and equal society centered on improving the lives of groups historically marginalized based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, age, religion, and disability.

ESSENTIAL LITERACIES: The College of Education views a wide array of knowledge and skills as important. However, the College views some specific literacies as critical. These include the traditional subject matter areas as well as global citizenship, climate change, social justice, understanding of systemic racism, democratic participation, civics education, mental health and well-being, and inclusivity.

EDUCATORS/EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS: The College of Education represents and includes anyone who positively impacts the human condition through teaching, assessment, research, clinical practice, or professional development.

Strategic Plan Goals

We will engage in intentional practices to develop an inclusive college of education that derives strength from multiple identities and lived experiences and mirrors the representation of individuals in our society., objective - societal representation.

Increase the diversity of the students, faculty, and staff of the College of Education to reflect our national and global society more fully.

ACTION ITEM

Recruit, support, and retain faculty and staff from historically underrepresented groups, particularly people of color.

IMPLEMENTATION TASKS

• Collaborate with the Office of Education and Social Equity to review existing College of Education policies and strategies for recruitment, support, and retention.
• Develop and implement an improvement plan for faculty and staff candidate pool identification and hiring processes to increase the number and percentage of faculty and staff of color as well as individuals from other historically underrepresented groups.
• Identify and develop partnerships with higher education institutions and organizations to enhance recruitment efforts (e.g., Historically Black and Latinx Institutions, UCEA’s Barbara Jackson Scholars).
• Build upon current mechanisms, groups, and initiatives to provide infrastructure that supports faculty and staff of color and other members from historically underrepresented groups.
• Explore the possibility of remote work to expand the geographic radius from which staff are recruited.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2023

Recruit, support, and retain students from historically underrepresented groups, including students of color, students from families living in poverty, rural students, students with disabilities, male students in elementary teaching areas, and other identified students at all levels.

• In collaboration with the Office of Education and Social Equity and the Associate Dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Student Studies, review existing strategies, and based on the findings, develop and implement an improvement plan for graduate student recruiting efforts, particularly with respect to students of color.
• Review and enhance the College of Education’s student engagement opportunities to better align with needs and interest of students of color and other historically marginalized students.
• Administer surveys that collect the perceptions of undergraduate and graduate students (both graduates and non-completers) about their experiences and capture suggested areas or ideas for improvement, particularly with respect to equity, diversity, inclusivity, and support.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2022

OBJECTIVE - INCLUSIVITY, BELONGINGNESS, AND PARTICIPATION

Increase the sense of inclusion, belonging, and participation for all members of the College of Education with a particular focus on individuals from historically underrepresented populations.

Develop an inclusive culture that focuses on creating a sense of belonging and participation for all members of the College of Education community .

• Establish a Faculty Fellows Program in the College that will provide leadership opportunities for faculty members in the areas of teaching, engagement, diversity, and other areas as needed.
• Develop opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to connect to important professional practices such as teaching and learning, mental and physical wellness, ethics, bias, advocacy, service, democratic participation, public pedagogy, stewardship of the environment, and global citizenship.
•  Provide professional learning activities to promote self-awareness, inclusive teaching, listening, managing difficult conversations, and expressive communication skills to support meaningful discussion.
• Invest in and enhance opportunities to engage with colleagues across the College, University, and Community, especially regarding teaching, learning, and curricular issues.
• Develop an organizational structure that promotes collaboration across college organizations focused on diversity, equity, justice, inclusion, and anti-racist teaching and curricula.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2024

We will develop educational professionals who are active change agents and ensure they have the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions for improving and transforming education for all learners with respect to essential literacies, inclusive instruction, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being.

Objective - curricular and instructional assessment.

Assess how well our programs prepare educational professionals through instruction, curriculum, and experiential participation to act as change agents focused on a more just and equitable future of the educational system while being mindful of the past.

Conduct a thorough set of formative reviews on existing program curricula and instruction.

• Assemble a diverse team of faculty, students, and community members to facilitate the review of curricula and instruction across the College of Education and Commonwealth Campuses to ensure courses and programs include and address effective and inclusive instruction, appropriate learning objectives, essential literacies, as well as mental health and well-being.
• Establish a stakeholder group to understand how our programs address education’s role in developing an equitable society, including the curriculum and instruction employed by programs
• Conduct an equity audit of each program to ascertain how we may be implicitly complicit in perpetuating cycles of systemic inequities through the design and implementation of our curricula and instruction.
• Conduct gap and market analyses between our programs and the demands of the education labor market as well as societal needs.
• Develop tools to support continuous revision and development of college programs, including the curricula and instructional approaches employed by programs
• Identify facilitator(s) to work within departments to develop and enact continuous cycles of review of program curricula and instruction.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2025

OBJECTIVE - STRATEGICALLY BALANCE CURRICULAR OFFERINGS

Engage in the process of revising and developing our curricular offerings to prepare our students to understand and serve the needs of all learners including: a) those residing in urban and rural settings and poverty contexts; b) those with disabilities; c) English language learners; d) multilingual students; e) people of color; f) LGBTQ+ individuals; and, g) linguistically and culturally diverse populations with specific attention on addressing systemic inequities, essential literacies, mental health and well-being.

Focus work across the college in ways to enable student enrollment growth.

• Employ strategies such as reducing the number of sections and consider a rotating schedule for some courses, where possible, to create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify curricular synergies, within and across departments, to reduce redundancies and create bandwidth for curricular work.
• Identify programs within the College that would benefit from additional support and resources to better align course and program offerings with a student demand, the needs of the field, and society.
• Hire a marketing professional to develop an overall brand for College of Education programs, develop a marketing plan, and assist in undergraduate and graduate student recruitment.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2024

Incorporate essential literacies, inclusive instruction, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being across all programs with attention to the intersection of these areas.

• Identify the knowledge, skills, and dispositions we expect our students to acquire through our teaching, curricula, and experiential opportunities related to essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being .
• Conduct a needs assessment of instructors regarding the adoption and implementation of essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being in our curricula and instructional practices.
• Based on the results of the needs assessment, provide resources and support (e.g., professional development and course materials) to instructors to implement anti-racist, equity-based curricula and instruction that also reinforce the essential literacies needed by education professionals to transform the education landscape.
• Identify and integrate curricular and instructional mechanisms that enliven the mental health and well-being of all students.
• Develop structures to implement, evaluate, and study innovative approaches to educator preparation—including curricula and instruction--that develop change agents in respective fields who are well-prepared to address known and new systemic inequities.
• Develop materials, resources, and learning opportunities, to train faculty and graduate students in the self-awareness, listening, and expressive communication skills that are needed to support meaningful discussion as one component of effective and inclusive instruction.
• Train and support professionals to disrupt instances in which marginalization occurs.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2025

Expand the contexts within which our curricular offerings are implemented to better afford a diverse set of experiences from which students can build.

• Identify and support the development and implementation of internship experiences that include diverse student populations and a variety of educational experiences threaded across the curriculum with a specific focus on systemic inequities and injustices.
• Develop new school district partnerships to expand contexts where curriculum and instructional activities and internships can take place.
• Increase remote opportunities for students to engage virtually with diverse students (e.g., on-line tutoring for EC-12 students who are struggling academically or are in need of English as second language skills, support for schools in need of counseling services).
• Provide instructional and practical experiences that empower students to effectively advocate for and enact change.
• Create support networks for current students and graduates engaged in efforts to address systemic inequities, mental health and well-being,
• Enable students to provide educational solutions using technology to the community and community partners. 

OBJECTIVE - INNOVATIVE PATHWAYS AND PROGRAMS

Transform existing and create new programs to capture the interest of students seeking to engage as meaningful agents of change through education with a particular focus on high need areas.

Develop innovative new courses and programs that broaden the reach and impact of education beyond our traditional student population.

• Based on the gap and market analyses (objective 2.1.1, Task 4), transform existing programs as well as explore and innovate new programs to address known needs in the development of an anti-racist and equity-focused educational workforce  (e.g., online D.Ed., dual credit, alternative certification and new undergraduate programs).
• Develop new general education courses that facilitate the development of anti-racist and equity-focused skills and the enactment of those skills in a variety of disciplines and contexts.
• Explore creative new technologies and other means to provide programming across a variety of modalities, including new modes of instruction.
• Explore the development of a Teaching Scholars program for high needs areas (e.g., Special Education, STEAM, ESL).
• Plan for new faculty hires where current capacities and skills are insufficient to support program transformation and growth.

We will prioritize and support research that addresses global issues relevant to reshaping equitable communities across our nation and globe. Through our research, we will address issues that are global in scope and local in focus, including cultural, linguistic, and racial equities, mental health across ages and locations, technology in schools and workplaces, and disability to better the lives of those in the Commonwealth and beyond its borders.

Objective - innovative research contributions.

Build on existing areas of high-quality scholarship and expand our research portfolio to include a research agenda on education for societal change.

Establish our College as a leader in the field of education for the study of our own efforts to prepare educators for societal change.

• Conduct a self-study on leadership in transformative education for social justice.
• Leverage the newly established Faculty Fellows program (a task from the Inclusivity, Belongingness, and Participation Objective in the Community Enhancement and Development Goal ) as a space for conducting research on leadership in the areas of teaching, curricular development, engagement, diversity, and other areas as needed.
• Identify new hires that can expand capacity in this area.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2025  

Build research programs focused on teaching, learning, and policy, with a focus on essential literacies, social justice, anti-racism efforts, inclusivity, as well as mental health and well-being.

• Design, develop, and study instructional interventions for teaching and learning that target systemic inequities.
• Explore innovative uses of technology to advance the study of essential literacies beyond the medium of print and with use of other representations.
• Infuse existing research goals on science, technology, art, engineering, and mathematics (STEAM) in the study of essential literacies and to promote social justice.
• Promote mixed-methods research as a primary mechanism to facilitate systemic research initiatives addressing inequities and academic and professional development in research areas, including essential literacies, STEAM, mental health and well-being, policy development and implementation, English Language Learner instruction, and other areas
• Study and develop interventions examining the role of mental health and well-being on the lives and outcomes of educators and students.

OBJECTIVE - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN RESEARCH

The College will build on current efforts to provide opportunities and experiences that enhance the research capacities of students and faculty.

Enhance the research experience and expertise of all students.

• Expand programs supporting the academic training, individualized mentorship, and placement of historically underrepresented students with interest in graduate study.
• Establish internal resources for student-initiated research and innovation projects that will aid access of media technologies, software, and hardware for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research.
• Maintain and increase the number of dissertation research initiation grants to support student research initiatives.
• Engage undergraduate researchers in projects to promote transformative education for social justice, including innovative approaches to teaching and curricula.

Enhance the research experience and expertise of all faculty.

• Provide research methodology workshops on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods to support research goals.
• Schedule seminars to feature innovative uses of technology (e.g., data visualization, game-based learning environments, simulations) to support research on social justice, essential literacies, curricula, instruction, and mental health and well-being.
• Continue the invited speaker series focused on research that addresses issues of essential literacies, inclusive instruction, anti0-racist curricula, equity, diversity, inclusivity, anti-racism, as well as mental health and well-being.
• Host a workshop series for faculty and their collaborators, postdoctoral research scholars, and undergraduate and graduate students that features socioecological systems and research methodologies that are directed toward the empirical study of the intersections among essential literacies, instruction, social justice, and mental health and well-being.

OBJECTIVE - RESEARCH, CULTURE, AND PARTNERSHIPS

Coordinate fiscal and other supports to enhance a culture of research by providing professional learning opportunities, improving the recruitment of faculty and students, recognizing outstanding research, and developing and sustaining impactful collaborations, particularly research-practitioner partnerships.

Continue to enhance the local culture of research and scholarship that reflects the College’s values.

• Recruit additional top scholars whose research focuses on issues of diversity, inclusion, social justice, and anti-racism.
• Recruit scholars with expertise in socioecological systems research and methodologies to foster study of the intersections among essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2022  

Value and support new pathways for research and creative accomplishments in annual evaluations as well as promotion and tenure.

• Recognize and reward initiation of collaborative partnerships within the University and beyond.
• Recognize and reward engagement in equity, inclusion, and anti-racism outreach work, particularly those that address leadership, instruction, and curricula
• Recognize, incentivize, and reward the use of diverse publication venues and research dissemination strategies (e.g., open access journals, policy briefs, amicus briefs, books).

Develop and support research-practitioner partnerships (e.g., museums, non-governmental organizations, school districts).

• Work collaboratively with Pennsylvania and other school districts to identify and select projects for research-practice partnerships, particularly projects related to essential literacies, inclusive instruction, equity, mental health and well-being, social justice, and anti-racism.
• Establish field-based and on-site research training opportunities to facilitate the professional development of faculty, students, and partners as research-practitioner community members.
• Identify and develop innovative uses of technology (e.g., data collection methods, database management, communication networks) to support the short- and long-term goals of research-practitioner partnerships and its members.
• Conduct systemic, developmental, and ethnographic case studies on research-practitioner partnerships to inform adoption of future research goals and practices in changing education to educate for change.

Support collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects with a wide array of organizations within the College, University, Commonwealth, Nation, and across the World.

• Develop mechanisms by which the College of Education captures the perceptions, concerns, and needs of education stakeholders at all levels of the education system, especially from those who historically have had less voice in decision making.
• Coordinate efforts across the College and University, especially with respect to the Centers in the College of Education, to enhance collaboration and effort regarding research.
• Work with Penn State Institutes (e.g., Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Social Science Research Institute, Sustainability Institute) to advance research initiatives pertaining to the synergy of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Cultivate research opportunities with other Universities, Organizations, Research Centers, and Institutes in the US and across the world (e.g., American Educational Research Association, National Center for Educational Statistics, national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations, international higher education institutions)

OBJECTIVE - SUPPORTING RESEARCH FOR CHANGE

Coordinate existing resources and enhance current mechanisms to increase our capacity to procure external funding for research activities.

Leverage internal resources to increase strength of external funding proposals.

• Provide grant writing workshops that focus on identifying appropriate funding, writing effective proposals, and managing grants.
• Develop a grant-mentoring program that pairs experienced grant writers with less experienced grant writers.
• Create internal research grants for projects that are intended to improve the well-being of under-resourced and underrepresented communities.
• Provide research funds to support mentorships and research collaborations across disciplines.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2023  

Enhance support for the submission of external grant proposals.

• Develop mechanisms to assist in identifying priorities of funding agencies, revising proposals based on panel review.
• Facilitate partnerships with other Colleges and Universities to identify key personnel in needed areas of expertise (e.g., research methods, technology)
• Cultivate and coordinate clusters of proposals to support research for systemic change around themes of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Hire a grant editor to organize, to help edit proposals, and to check for required sections of proposals in research funding announcements.

Improve the functionality of College and University spaces to support research.

• Leverage existing College of Education spaces (e.g., Krause Center, mathematics lab, science wing) to increase the likelihood of securing funded research grants.
• Establish the Herr clinic as a research space in the study of educational, assessment and counseling practices that promote mental health and well-being.
• Identify other University spaces at University Park (e.g., Knowledge Commons, Millennium Science Complex) and across Commonwealth Campuses (e.g., Hershey Medical Center, Plastics Processing Laboratory at Penn State Behrend, Pullo Family Performing Arts Center at Penn State York) to support research projects.

The College of Education will strengthen its leadership roles as a change agent for education systems and societies locally and globally. We will widely share our research, programs, materials, and interventions by means that are easily accessible by the public, adopt new strategies for outreach to individuals and communities, create more effective strategies to disseminate our work, and expand our partnerships.

Objective - partnerships.

We will engage collaboratively with families, community members, educators, and policymakers within the state, nation, and around the world. We will foster and develop mutual partnerships with families, schools, and community organizations to address pressing social issues, including poverty, essential literacies, racism, inclusion, mental health and well-being, and climate change, among others.  

Make essential literacies, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and mental health and well-being the foci of the College of Education’s partnership work such that the College is seen as a leader within the state and nation as well as around the world in these areas.

• Conduct a review of current partnerships, including the organizations, individuals, and goals of the partnership.
• Conduct a needs assessment of the current infrastructure and supports to determine what is needed to sustain effective partnerships.
• Cultivate new collaborations with community members, nonprofit educational organizations, and schools/districts, particularly those serving high-need populations, to provide mental and behavioral supports to students in need of such services .
• Enhance international collaboration with the world’s leading institutions of higher education to expand the student experience, faculty development, and the impact of research.  
• Leverage technology both as a tool for connecting to these partners and as an innovative means to support their growth.
• Assess the impact of community-based participatory research to continuously improve partnership work.

Create new internal structures to facilitate connections with educator preparation program graduates and their employers to better support career transition, help ensure our programs are aligned with the needs of communities with educational disparities and inform programmatic priorities.

• Create a process that digitally records and stores graduates’ and employers’ information for ease of contact beyond the Graduate School and maps the placements of employment of our graduates.
• Capture the perceptions of graduates and non-completers on the strengths and weaknesses of our educator preparation programs to inform program improvement efforts.
• Capture principals’ and superintendents’ perceptions of the quality of our educator preparation programs to inform program improvement efforts.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2021

Expand collaborations and develop synergistic relationships across Penn State units.

• Engage with Commonwealth Campuses to develop better articulations and leverage 2+2 options.
• Increase affiliate and dual appointments between departments, research units, outreach units, and colleges. 
• Increase cross-listed courses between departments and colleges.
• Encourage co-advising between departments and colleges.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2023 through 12/31/2024

OBJECTIVE - OUTREACH AND DISSEMINATION

The College of Education will develop and implement effective outreach and dissemination strategies that ensure we are recognized widely as a leader by the general public, educators, and policymakers across all levels of education at the regional, state, national, and international levels.

Improve access to and visibility of work in the College of Education.

• Assess the use and effectiveness of current outreach and dissemination strategies.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify effective outreach and dissemination strategies such as videos, webinars, practitioner briefs, policy briefs, research summaries, and mini conferences.
• Based on results from Tasks 1 and 2 above, develop a college-wide outreach and dissemination strategy that widely disseminates the variety of initiatives in the College.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2021 through 12/31/2021  

Facilitate the publication of practitioner and policy briefs, particularly those focused on essential literacies, social justice, essential literacies, and mental health and well-being, by members of the College of Education.

• Hire an expert in digital publication design and layout.
• Develop the capacity of students and faculty to write for non-academic audiences by creating a course, holding workshops, and providing individual support.
• Streamline the process by which policy and practitioner briefs are reviewed and approved for dissemination.
• Publish policy and practitioner briefs that address important topics identified by practitioners around the Commonwealth and distribute digitally to educational organizations, especially policies regarding equity, systemic racism, social justice, mental health and well-being, and essential literacies.
• Collect data on the reach of these briefs and use it to refine the mechanisms for dissemination to targeted audiences.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2022 through 12/31/2023

Provide consultation, mentoring, and/or professional development to recent College of Education graduates employed as EC-12 educators on how to address issues of equity and diversity, mental health and well-being, and essential literacies in the classrooms and in our schools.

• Offer professional development seminar series, including those that provide Act 45 and Act 48 hours, that address: equity and diversity in classrooms and schools; mental health and well-being; essential literacies; and the effective selection and use of technologies in content delivery and pedagogy.
• Create supports for faculty to engage in helping school district personnel develop their professional skills to address essential literacies as well as issues of equity, diversity, systemic racism.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2023 through 12/31/2025

Disseminate findings of research partnerships through various means.

• Create and maintain a web space dedicated to dissemination of College of Education research for practitioners and other interested constituents including Penn State students.
• Create an in-house, free access, web-based research publication administered by College of Education faculty and graduate students that is devoted to all forms of educational research addressing social justice, essential literacies, and mental health and well-being.
• Hold an annual College of Education conference that rotates themes of essential literacies, social justice, and mental health and well-being.
• Work with the communications team and marketing specialist to showcase research addressing social issues to help establish the College of Education’s leadership with a local, state, national, and global presence.

TARGET DATES:  1/1/2024 through 12/31/2025

• Development Testing

Building on Ghana's achievements in expanding education, the Education Strategic Plan sets out the vision and policies for realizing the ambition of transforming Ghana into a ‘learning nation'. It puts Ghana on the road towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and represents a deliberate reorientation towards this aim, as it replaces the previous ESP for 2010-2020.

This plan not only sets the long-term vision but also how this will be operationalized in the medium term through the accompanying Education Sector Medium Term Development Plan 2018-2021.

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In education, evolution and adaptation are constants. Academic institutions must stay up to date with technology and teaching methods to succeed, while also managing students' social, emotional, and academic needs. With all of these considerations in addition to budgetary constraints, It's easy to see why ensuring student and institutional success requires a dynamic strategic plan.

This blog post will outline the best practices academic institutions should consider when developing an effective strategic plan to address these challenges. To create an effective strategic plan, we need to eliminate the disconnect between leadership's high-level vision and employees' tactical work. Leading academic institutions, growing companies, and organizations adapt to change through dynamic strategic planning. 

A dynamic strategic plan breaks down an organization's long-term vision into short-term goals and then builds a roadmap to achieve those goals. As part of this process, the organization's plan should be reviewed and revised regularly to ensure relevance and alignment with its mission. Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans and organizations often face challenges in developing effective strategic plans that are easy to understand and execute. Here are a few suggestions to help address these challenges:

• Clearly define your vision: The first step in developing an effective strategic plan is to define the vision for the school. This should be a clear, concise statement that articulates what the school hopes to achieve. 
• Identify key objectives: Once you have a clear vision, identify the key objectives that will help you achieve them. These should be specific and measurable goals that align with your vision.
• Create measurable, outcome-focused key results: With your objectives in mind, it is important to focus on creating key results that drive outcomes, not outputs to help you reach your targets. Schools that focus on driving actionable objectives with outcome-based key results will ensure they stay aligned on what truly matters.
• Prioritize and allocate resources: It's essential to prioritize your strategies and allocate resources accordingly. Determine which strategies are most critical to achieving your objectives and ensure that you have the resources (e.g., time, budget, personnel) to implement them effectively.
• Monitor and evaluate progress: Finally, monitor and evaluate progress regularly to ensure that you are on track to achieving your objectives. This will help you identify areas where you may need to adjust your strategies or allocate additional resources.

By following these steps, academic institutions can develop a strategic planning framework and process that is effective, simple, and links vision to tactical execution. So now that we have the steps needed to build our strategy, let's start to bring it to life.

Take a field trip: host an annual Strategic Planning Offsite 

Before each academic year, we recommend holding a strategic planning meeting offsite with your leadership team. This is dedicated time to focus on the priorities for the upcoming year. Before diving into where you're headed, set aside time for a retrospective to discuss the previous year. In addition, discuss the current education landscape.

To build a future-focused and tailored plan for your academic institution, the team should reconfirm your mission and values, set your vision, and define your top strategic priorities. 

As you head into your offsite, we recommend the following best practices that lead to success:

• Get Outside of the Office : Find space outside of the work environment to reduce distractions and encourage collaboration.
• Set a Clear Agenda : Agree ahead of time on the purpose of each day, the deliverables, and actionable next steps. 
• Make Space to Think: Carve out time for free thinking vs. relying on group thinking to encourage new ideas. If you need a template, we recommend using this worksheet to guide the conversation .

Simplify the strategic plan: align your high-level strategy with tactical execution

Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans (5-year plans are most common) which can lead to a very detailed and dense plan. Given the complexity and length of the strategic plan, it can feel overwhelming and difficult to break the plan down and prioritize what’s most imperative to execute and focus on. We recommend breaking the larger multi-year plan into digestible annual plans that are more manageable. 

We recommend identifying 3-5 main themes in your strategic plan, often referred to as pillars or rallying cries. Once you have core themes, you can prioritize and bucket the most critical initiatives and objectives. Every theme will have specific supporting objectives and key results. We recommend using consistent nomenclature when creating themes, objectives, and key results so any team member can easily understand why the work is significant. 

Once we have the multi-year plan broken into annual plans and themes identified, we recommend defining short-term objectives (quarterly or semi-annually) and measurable metrics to drive key results. Breaking down the plan into quarters will feel more approachable and attainable. In addition, it will provide clarity and transparency for the executing team. When the strategic plan is broken down into actionable items, small wins can be celebrated along the way. This boosts motivation, engagement, and morale.  

Consistency is key to a successful strategic plan

When individuals understand how their work aligns with the high-level strategy and vision, they can prioritize their initiatives. Establish clear, measurable objectives and key results that are easy to track and provide consistent nomenclature. Keep these three tips in mind when writing your strategic plan objectives:

• Objectives should be aspirational and push people outside their comfort zone.
• Each objective should have 2-3 measurable and quantifiable results.
• Have a clear, defined owner responsible for recurring status updates. 

The best way to write objectives is to start by asking, “Why is this initiative important?” When you understand the why, you can create measurable outcome-driven results. Let’s walk through an example objective with key results laid out in Elate.

Theme: Develop and retain a diverse educator workforce.

Objective: Strengthen and diversify the educator pipeline and workforce.

Objective Purpose Statement: Increase mentoring and leadership development programs to retain educators, particularly educators from under-represented backgrounds. 

Key metrics: 

• Increase mentoring program engagement by 50% 
• 96% educator retention rate 

Implement rituals and track success with dynamic strategic planning

After your plan is built, it is imperative to establish rituals to stay on track and measure progress against the strategic plan. Rituals are defined as a rhythm, cadence, and process for reviewing objectives and strategic plans. Establishing strong rituals allows critical conversations to happen proactively. When objectives are stuck in limbo or fall off track, proactive discussions can happen. However, many academic institutions have different rituals for different teams. Implementing consistent rituals regularly will help you stay aligned, measure progress, and ensure you’re having the right conversations at the right time.

To keep everyone on the same page and connect tactical execution to strategic vision, we recommend objective owners provide bi-weekly updates. Across many academic institutions, strategy, and operations leaders spend countless hours tracking down updates that become outdated quickly. With Elate, reminder notifications are automatically sent to team members so they can focus more on execution and less on chasing down updates. 

We recommend spending a few minutes in executive team meetings reviewing objectives that are off-track or not making progress to create an action plan moving forward. This ritual of reviewing the plan early often brings awareness to the leadership team about objectives that need attention or are falling behind. It also allows space to celebrate accomplishments and wins. 

This makes it easy to ensure the strategic plan lives and breathes. Setting and clearly defining rituals for how the plan progresses, updates are made and reviewed, and addressing red flags is key to success. 

Focus on the right metrics to measure your strategic plan's success

With key results, objectives, and business-as-usual metrics all in one place, Elate keeps the strategic plan organized with a consolidated view. In Elate, scorecards provide an essential view of business-as-usual metrics and progress. Create specific scorecards for the board, enrollment, grant, and donor activity. 

Elevate your strategic plan with Elate

Strategic planning is critical for academic institutions that want to stay competitive, adapt to change, and achieve their goals. By following these best practices, higher education and academic institutions can achieve their goals and stay competitive in an ever-changing environment. 

Strategic planning has never been easier with Elate. Our platform simplifies and streamlines the strategic planning process, taking the stress out of it. We make it easy to stay on track with transparent reporting, simple collaboration, and one-click integrations with Salesforce, Google Sheets, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Your vision can finally meet your strategy.

Learn more about our strategic planning tools and services, or contact us today to learn more about how we specifically work with other Academic Institutions!

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Strategic Planning

7 reasons why schools need strategic planning.

By Mary King

20 march 2023.

• 1 1. A strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission and values
• 2 2. A strategic plan effectively organizes schools, staff, and time
• 3 3. A strategic plan defines how success is measured
• 4 4. A strategic plan helps with decision-making, responsiveness, and innovation
• 5 5. A strategic plan increases communication and engagement
• 6 6. A strategic plan keeps everyone in a school—from teachers to administrators—connected
• 7 7. The best reason of all for strategic planning comes back to every great school’s number one priority: students
• 8 Download the guide ↓

The past three years have been disruptive for every sector. For educational institutions, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone–from staff and teachers, to the students who had to switch to a new modality of learning, to the parents supporting them. Strategic planning in education has revealed itself to be a very important part of recovering. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the COVID-19 pandemic forced nearly 55 million children home in the US alone—and at least 1.4 billion children out of school or child care across the globe. Higher education institutions have been profoundly financially impacted , and both the learning experience and mental wellbeing of the students has been negatively affected.

While every educational institution was impacted by this, some schools were more prepared than others to face the unique challenges COVID-19 posed–those schools who had previously established strategic plans were better prepared to navigate the pandemic than those without.

It’s clear to us: Schools that embrace a great strategic plan, and commit to strategic planning in education, have clear advantages over schools that don’t.

We’re going to talk about some of those advantages now, look at some examples of strategic planning in education, and give 7 reasons for why every school with a vision of excellence for their students should embrace a strategic planning process for schools. Whether it’s getting back on track after a hugely disruptive, global event like COVID-19, identifying the most important strategies to improve student outcomes, or increasing staff engagement, all schools benefit from strategic planning and strategic plan implementation.

1. A strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission and values

The ability for schools to collaborate, share, and communicate short and long term goals is a critical part of moving plans forward in line with a vision, mission, and values. Schools benefit from a well communicated and executed strategic plan that keeps everyone informed of their strategic goals, and how their actions are contributing to the achievement of these goals. This enables parents, staff, community members, and stakeholders to work towards a common vision.

A major additional benefit of strategic planning in education is that it provides an opportunity for active employee engagement across an organization. When it comes to strategic planning for educational institutions, that benefit remains present. Research suggests that a leading cause for employee discontent (in general, but especially in the public sector) is that employees don’t understand how the work they’re doing helps their greater organization.

If the school is able to clearly define and remind employees and stakeholders of the shared vision, employees are more likely to feel connected to the work they are doing within that organization. Whether that work is educating students, organizing reports, performing critical administrative duties, or coordinating the process of standardized testing, everyone plays a part in a student’s success.

2. A strategic plan effectively organizes schools, staff, and time

We understand that schools–whether they are elementary schools, high schools, or higher education institutions– are complex institutions, with boards, committees, districts, unions, and many different types of stakeholders involved. Because the organizations themselves are so large, and plans are often multi-year, complex entities built up by multiple stakeholders and workers, struggles with organization and effective time management are common.

Envisio provides strategic planning software for educational institutions , and because Envisio works exclusively with the public sector, we understand the unique, complex, and often large scale planning needs of public sector organizations.

“I see Envisio very much as a focusing tool as I work with my team. If you’ve got great people, your primary job is not to get in their way […] I can stay on top of performance in a way that is really unobtrusive, and I don’t have to necessarily interact directly with an individual to get a sense of what’s going on. I can stay abreast of the action plans in the communications department or the action plans in a particular school. If we’re missing the mark on a key performance measure, I can focus more time on having the right conversations.” – Peter Hilts, Chief Education Officer for District 49

3. A strategic plan defines how success is measured

In order to achieve success, it’s important to know what success means, and where to take action first. It is difficult to get a strategic action plan underway without a firm understanding of what problems you’re wanting to solve. When it comes to strategic planning in the public sector, determining clear benchmarks for success is especially important, because the goals are often a combination of abstract, impact-based metrics, and concrete, output-based goals.

Different types of educational institutions are going to have different challenges, and different metrics of success: the educational strategic plans of a public school board district are going to look a lot different from a college or university! The shared reality is that every school with a strategy is better able to monitor its progress toward key outcomes and evaluate where and how it may have gotten off track. Using a strategy implementation software like Envisio can help with measuring success.

At Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), in Portage County, Ohio, they are measuring success across six pillars, with forty two strategic initiatives . Many of their strategic plan elements (goals, strategies, and actions) include promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion for their students, staff, and employees. Being a major medical research university that is training future medical professionals, diversity, equity, and inclusivity is a critical—and practical—metric! Some of the performance measures that NEOMED tracks include gender demographics, and actionable items towards decreasing disability stigma as part of their Strategic Plan: Creating Transformational Leaders Dashboard .

No matter what your benchmark for “success” is—be it a more impact-focused concept such as “be more welcoming” or more concretely articulated in output terms such as “create a low-cost tutoring center using the library after school”, your strategic plan will provide you with the steps to make get that success underway, and stay on track.

4. A strategic plan helps with decision-making, responsiveness, and innovation

A strategic plan helps educational institutions remain agile during times of change, and also helps them better define what they intend to achieve when it comes to their student success objectives and their greater organizational goals. With a strategic plan in place, educational institutions have a roadmap which they can use to track, evaluate, and modify plans to facilitate better governance decisions and provide clearer direction for the future of the school. This helps a school maintain a steady rhythm of progress towards their goals, and remain ahead of the curve–both in terms of educational innovation, and when (not if) a disruptive change occurs.

“It’s difficult, because you’re trying to help students prepare for the future – to prepare for jobs that might not exist yet. You’re trying to develop educators and an education that gives them the skills to think critically.” – Dr. Alison Gillespie, the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning with White Bear Lake Area School District (WBLAS) in Ramsey County, Minnesota

White Bear Lake Area School District (WBLAS), MN, was able to leverage their strategic plan as a way to embrace change and turn obstacles (like COVID-19) into opportunities for success. They embraced active learning techniques and, through their strategic plan, were able to think ahead to turn disruptions into teachable moments that engaged students and staff alike.

5. A strategic plan increases communication and engagement

A strategic plan ( and particularly, one that is publicly communicated on a dashboard ) helps with overall communication and engagement. For a school board, communicating that your plans and your metrics for success are part of a larger, holistic plan, is critical to building trust with stakeholders and maintaining effective engagement—both internally, and externally.

Strategic planning in education is critical in settings where trust is paramount. Educational institutions—at all levels—work on the understanding that one group (the educators) has knowledge they can impart, share, or coax out in another group (the students). The need for a trusting relationship with the students and everyone involved in that student’s success needs to be central to a positive educational environment.

A strategic plan that can be easily found, referenced, and understood helps assure everyone involved that the school in question is aware of their plans, has them in focus, and has a plan for their shortcomings. Educational strategic planning also has the additional benefit of keeping stakeholders—such as donors—excited about the school’s vision. When it comes to fundraising, donors are more likely to support a school that has a clear vision and a strategy to make it happen.

6. A strategic plan keeps everyone in a school—from teachers to administrators—connected

A well implemented and communicated strategic plan holds all staff accountable for their actions and encourages collaboration. In educational settings, this circle of responsibility is extended out towards the community; providing excellent and accessible education is an effort that requires all hands on deck. Being able to simplify the strategic planning process and make it visible and easy to use is one way to ensure everyone stays connected.

One of the benefits of using a strategic planning software partner like Envisio is that individual action plans (from individual schools or departments) can be aligned, all the way up to a greater strategic objective. For multi-year, complex plans, such as setting a national standard of excellence, or incorporating culturally significant teachings—it’s important that teachers and staff are able to understand who is working on what, and where it fits into the greater whole.

7. The best reason of all for strategic planning comes back to every great school’s number one priority: students

Best of all, strategic planning in education provides a framework so that the most important priority of the school – students’ educational achievement – is taken care of. Having a sturdy educational strategic plan helps keep issues like digital equity , accessibility , literacy , preparation for an ever changing workforce , and social and environmental enrichment , front of mind. When the experience of the student is the priority for the school, the strategic plan becomes a collaborative effort to figure out how best to set students up for success.

Being on the same page for these goals is extremely important for schools: sound planning and communication helps ensure that stakeholders, including parents, teachers, administrators, principals, board members, and the greater community, are all striving for the same overall vision. And, when it comes to putting those plans into action, schools especially benefit from the habit of consistent performance measurement, which is something a strategic plan can help in ingraining.

For complex, multi-layered institutions such as an educational institute to successfully reach their goals—particularly after being so dramatically impacted by COVID-19—it requires not only proper management of human, budgetary, and time resources, but the creation of high-output teams, engaged and effective staff and teachers, and the consistent monitoring of progress. For schools, a strategic plan provides a north star for deepening a sense of community and knowledge, and breaks down the actionable steps to reach critical goals.

Download the guide ↓

Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments. For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members. Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.

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The Importance of Strategic Planning in Education

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Strategic planning is a method used in various industries to deliberately guide decision-making. In education, strategic planning provides leaders with guidance to keep the institution operating, carry out its missions and comply with regulations. Educational strategic planning focuses on the future of a college or university, providing an intentional way to reflect on performance and determine where to implement initiatives to make positive changes for the future.

To create effective university strategic plans, administrators and stakeholders must understand the ins and outs of how they work and how they can apply them.

In This Article

• Lack of Ownership
• Poor Strategic Alignment
• Poor Communication
• Slow Plan Adoption
• Improve Efficiency
• Engage Stakeholders and the Community
• Form a Focus
• Plan a Future
• Test Your Hypotheses
• Use Specific Language
• Make Implementation a Priority
• Hold Team Members Accountable

Transform Strategic Planning and Execution Within Your Education Institution With AchieveIt

The challenges of strategic planning in education.

Universities and colleges face several pressures and challenges that can complicate strategic planning in educational environments. Understanding some of these challenges can help you overcome them to create an impactful approach.

1. Lack of Ownership

While strategic plans involve feedback and participation from all of your institution’s departments and entities, you should limit ownership of the plan and documentation to one person. Without explicit ownership over the strategic plan, initiatives are more likely to be lost, forgotten or overlooked. With one person in charge, your school is more likely to achieve success.

2. Poor Strategic Alignment

Alignment and representation across your university are crucial to success. Universities and colleges often experience a lack of strategic alignment because the church and state divisions typically have different goals for schools. These clashing perspectives lead to poor strategic alignment and a stand-still in decision-making.

3. Poor Communication

Many educational institutions also struggle with strategic planning due to poor organizational communication. Effectively implementing a strategic plan requires institutional-wide teamwork. Poor communication significantly increases the difficulty of agreeing upon and executing effective solutions and setting attainable goals.

4. Slow Plan Adoption

With a significant focus on innovation and growth, universities may make numerous changes in a year. Constant changes often lead to low motivation to adopt new plans. The longer your teams take to implement a strategic plan, the more likely it is to become outdated. When this situation happens, the plan becomes irrelevant to your current processes.

Why Education Institutions Need Strategic Planning

Despite the inherent challenges, educational strategic planning is necessary for a successful institution operation. A strategic plan can help you improve several aspects of your educational institution through intentional goal-setting and initiative implementation. Strategic planning for colleges and universities helps students, staff and the community progress toward a better future.

Here are a few reasons you should use strategic planning in education:

1. Improve Efficiency

One of the biggest reasons to begin strategic planning is the opportunity for improved efficiency in numerous areas of your organization. The challenges of educational planning often lead to a lack of efficiency. Strategic planning for schools allows leaders to determine more effective ways to streamline processes.

For example, your decision-making teams may take significant time to agree on new policies or procedures. Strategic planning helps your institution use time more efficiently because it allows you to form decision-making strategies.

Improved efficiency also results in better cost-effectiveness. The less time is wasted, the more money you’ll save, especially over time.

2. Engage Stakeholders and the Community

Strategic planning involves more people than only the primary decision-makers — your planning should involve your community and stakeholders. Feedback from these entities can help you develop a more beneficial and strategically targeted plan based on what these entities want or need from you. Engaging the stakeholders and community also shows you value their input and want to create an environment where they want to be.

3. Form a Focus

Determining a focus for the school year ahead can be challenging without clear objectives. Without focus, your institution will struggle to grow and attract students and staff. For example, you may have vague expectations for the upcoming school year, which prevents decisions and progress from being made. A strategic plan allows you to determine your goals and focus for the upcoming year and beyond while also helping you track your progress.

4. Plan a Future

Strategic planning is ideal for planning a successful future for your institution. Developing a plan for your future helps ensure your school can grow and continue benefiting from its offerings. Rather than being unprepared for the next year and future school years, you can effectively strategize to make the most of your school year.

Strategic Planning Tips for Education Institutions

While every school’s strategic plan will look different depending on its goals and resources, the strategic planning process is often similar for colleges and universities. Explore a few tips for educational strategic planning to help you get started:

1. Test Your Hypotheses

You’re ultimately hypothesizing the outcome when you set initiatives in your strategic plan. These hypotheses are often based on assumptions, though it’s typically best to experiment to determine what would work and what may not. For example, if you ask your faculty to begin submitting weekly reports, conduct a quick test to ensure they can do so and have time to do so.

2. Use Specific Language

Using vague or wordy language increases the risk of confusion and the possibility of initiatives being misunderstood and ignored. Swapping out complicated words for simpler, more specific words can help ensure everyone understands your plan. It can help to have someone review the language you use to ensure nothing is confusing and everyone is on the same page.

3. Make Implementation a Priority

Because schools involve numerous departments and divisions, implementing a plan can be difficult without prioritization . Make your plan a priority to ensure it’s properly implemented. Doing so is often easiest when leaders promote and require implementation.

4. Hold Team Members Accountable

Another way to make university strategic plans stick is by holding team members accountable. School performance management software allows you to track reports and other strategy-related information to determine who’s completing their duties so you can keep them accountable.

Educational institutions require significant planning to ensure a successful school year. Strategic planning software for higher education can help you focus your strategy despite your institution’s challenges. Software like AchieveIt has features that help your team turn ideas into actions.

A few things you can do with our software include:

• Solve common implementation challenges: AchieveIt makes connecting members of your team and various initiatives easy. You can track projects, keep everyone on the same page and quickly send updates.
• Gain comprehensive visibility: Our platform lets you see every initiative in real time, providing comprehensive visibility over progress.
• Consult with our experts: Our strategic plan experts help you execute your plan effectively. Draw on our expertise for inspiration or customize one of our templates to create your plan.

Let’s actually do this. Request a demo of AchieveIt to see what we can do for you today.

Meet the Author   Chelsea Damon

Chelsea Damon is the Content Strategist at AchieveIt. When she's not publishing content about strategy execution, you'll likely find her outside or baking bread.

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Educational Strategic Plan

Education is key to a good future. This is what a lot of students often hear or are told in order to be motivated to succeed. However, how does one even learn to succeed without any plans to guide them to the right path? When you think about a strategic plan for education, may it be in the form of a university, a college , or an institute, you think of carefully thought out steps to help you find the right path or the right road to reach your goals. With that being said, here are examples of an educational strategic plan that you can download, edit, and use for your purpose and advantage.

10+ Educational Strategic Plan Examples

1. department of educational strategic plan.

Size: 191 KB

2. Educational Strategic Plan Template

3. 21st Century Educational Strategic Plan

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4. Higher Educational Strategic Plan

5. College of Education Strategic Plan

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6. Student Educational Strategic Plan

7. Professional Educational Strategic Plan

8. Educational Strategic Plan Process

9. Special Educational Strategic Plan

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10. Faculty of Education Strategic Plan

Size: 662 KB

11. Undergraduate Education Strategic Plan

Size: 110 KB

What Is an Educational Strategic Plan?

An educational strategic plan is a document that helps the people running the school to understand what needs to be done in order to achieve their academic goals. This kind of plan shows them the steps and the roads that lead to a better solution and a better educational achievement in a practical and timely manner. In addition, this plan also explains how others can help in order to reach the academic goal. The length of this strategic plan is usually only four pages long but may differ depending on the goal, the objectives, the strategies and the people involved. 

How to Make an Educational Strategic Plan

How to make an effective educational strategic plan ? We know for a fact that an educational strategic plan is made and done when the right people are involved, and all of them share the same goal. To start this kind of plan, here are steps to help you write them.

Step 1: Defining the School’s Goals, Mission and Vision

Start the plan by defining the school’s goals, mission and vision statement. The goal must be simple, practical and easy to understand and do. The mission and vision statement should be about the school, the college, the university or the institution. When you write your mission statement , explain what you are hoping to achieve for the benefit of the people who will benefit from it as well.

Step 2: School Budget and Financial Resources

Next step is to think about your school budget and other financial resources. Since putting up a college or a university is basically like setting up a business, you will also need to think about the budget and other resources to make it a success. Think about the other resources you will need in order to make this educational strategic plan a success.

Step 3: Monitor Any Changes to Your Plan

Monitoring any changes to your action plan is also part of the entire planning. Any changes that have been made, whether it is through progress, an update, or a report, you must make sure to monitor and record it in your strategic plan.

Step 4: Review the Entire Strategic Plan

The last step is to review and proofread your strategic plan. To make sure you have not missed any important detail that will also affect the entire plan.

What is an education strategic plan?

An education strategic plan is a kind of plan that focuses on the wants and the needs of a school and how to achieve the educational goals for that school year. This kind of plan shows them the steps and the roads that lead to a better solution and a better educational achievement in a practical and timely manner.

Why do you need to have a strategic plan for education?

The purpose for making an educational strategic plan is to make sure you and your team will be able to follow the set of roads to take. In order to get an idea on what you can also do to reach the educational goals you set for yourself, for the students, the teachers and the entire school.

What should not be in an educational strategic plan?

Avoid adding objectives that do not match with your goal. As well as avoiding any strategies or solutions that may not reap positive results.

Setting up a school is basically like setting up a business. You go through a lot of brainstorming and ideas in order to formulate a good strategic plan for it. When you think about an educational strategic plan, you know for a fact that you need practical solutions to help achieve your goals.

Text prompt

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Create a study plan for final exams in high school

Develop a project timeline for a middle school science fair.

JPS unveils its new 5-year strategic plan

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - On Wednesday, the top leader in the Jackson Public School District unveiled the district’s new 5-year strategic plan aimed at improving your child’s education.

Dr. Errick Greene presented the plan during a weeklong professional development conference.

The plan is geared towards bringing in more resources to improve the learning environment for both students and educators.

The plan focuses on five different commitments: innovative teaching and learning, JPS joy, talented individuals and teams, organizational effectiveness, and having a strong finish.

“A focus on joy, and not just joy for children, joy across from the district,” said Greene. “We talk a lot about focusing also on organizational effectiveness. We know we’ve got to be a better organization. We’ve got to continue to grow as an organization, that our systems, procedures, responsiveness, customer service, and all of that.

“And for sure, we need to focus on pathways for our scholars. Where are they going as they prepare to graduate from Jackson Public Schools,” Greene continued.

Dr. Greene said it took roughly three months to craft this plan.

“We’re anxious about those goals because you put them out there and you invite people to hold you accountable for them, but that’s part of the magic in setting the goals and being confident about them,” the superintendent said. “We’re confident that things that we will implement, the strategies for creating more joy in our schools across schools, getting kids connected, building relationships between our scholars, between adults and scholars.

“Between the adults, whether that’s team members or our team members and parents, or other community members. All of those will help us deliver on the goals we’ve set,” he continued.

JPS leaders say they are always looking to grow and improve the district every year.

Along with this plan, Dr. Greene believes more funding will also go a long way in helping improve the district.

“We want to continue to provide the kinds of upgraded technology,” Greene explained. “Again, I’ve spoken to compensation, but we can never say too much about that, that’s a huge issue that we want to continue to build and to invest in, and of course our facilities. We’ve got to continue to invest in these facilities. Those are ways that we keep people, the adults, the educators, and those are the ways we keep scholars, and keep them and their families here in the district.”

Another big thing JPS wants to improve upon is its graduation rate.

Right now, the graduation rate is at 84.1 percent.

Greene said the district wants to see that number jump up to 90 percent.

This plan will be in place when the upcoming school year starts in August.

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Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2024-2028

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Advancing Alcohol Research to Promote Health and Well-Being

Cross-Cutting Research Themes

The cross-cutting research themes provide a lens for examining high-priority topics that span two or more of the research goals and other areas of the strategic plan.

Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Alcohol Research Enterprise

Capitalizing on the range of talent in the nation and understanding and addressing the issues that face underserved and underrepresented populations

Advancing Research on Women’s Health

Understanding how alcohol use and misuse impact women and developing interventions tailored to the unique needs of women

Applying a Life Course Approach to Alcohol Research

Addressing critical knowledge gaps about the impact of alcohol misuse unique to each life stage

Encouraging a Whole Person, Integrated Approach to Health

Enhancing the understanding of whole person health and facilitating integrated care to improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs

Innovating Alcohol Research and Care Through Data Science

Encouraging data science and multi-omic approaches to predict vulnerability to alcohol misuse, individualize AUD treatment, and guide recovery

Cross-Cutting Research Programs

Cross-cutting research programs are NIAAA-managed research portfolios that include topics spanning multiple research goals outlined in this strategic plan.

• FASD Research Program
• Alcohol and HIV Research Program

Research Goals

NIAAA aims to advance research on the brain cells and circuits that underlie and are altered by alcohol misuse, and the complex relationships between alcohol misuse and physiological effects throughout the body.

NIAAA will continue to support epidemiological research to identify and track patterns of alcohol use and misuse, drinking-related outcomes and disparities, and individual and environmental variables that confer risk or resilience.

NIAAA encourages the development, evaluation, and implementation of culturally appropriate individual, family, school, community, and policy-based strategies to prevent alcohol misuse, alcohol use disorder, and related consequences.

NIAAA encourages research to refine diagnosis, enhance treatment, sustain recovery, and ultimately, to reduce the treatment gap for alcohol use disorder and other alcohol-related health conditions.

Supporting the Mission

Goal 1: building a robust research capacity.

At the core of NIAAA’s efforts are cultivating a talented and diverse scientific and administrative workforce to advance research to the next frontier and maximizing NIAAA research resources and infrastructure to promote discovery.

Goal 2: Serving as a Responsible Steward of the Public’s Investment

NIAAA upholds the values of responsible stewardship, research integrity, and public trust. These values are reinforced by NIAAA’s commitment to optimal management and accountability, strategic collaboration, and communication of research results.

Download the NIAAA Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2024-2028

To download and review a full copy of the current NIAAA Strategic plan, click the link below.

niaaa.nih.gov

An official website of the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Explore how Microsoft's partnership with Khan Academy is enhancing the future of education with AI innovation and tools for teachers >

• AI in education
• Published Jan 23, 2024

Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot

• Content Type
• Microsoft Copilot

With new advancements in AI happening faster than ever before, you might be wondering how you can use these tools in your classroom to save you time and energy. Educators worldwide are making strides to understand and integrate AI into their work and often find it to be a valuable tool. You can use AI to save time creating rubrics, personalized content for students, and educational materials such as quizzes and lesson plans.   

Generative AI is a newer piece of technology and a unique category of AI that focuses on creating new content. With generative AI you can generate new content like text, images, code, or audio. It achieves this by learning patterns from existing data and understanding the context and intent of language. This provides you with new opportunities for content creation, personalization, and innovation. Because this technology is creating new content, checking for accuracy in generative AI is essential—especially in the field of education.  

Microsoft Copilot is a tool that uses generative AI to serve as a helpful assistant to you in the classroom. Copilot can help you save time, differentiate instruction, and enhance student learning. With Copilot, you can easily create lesson plans, quizzes, rubrics, and other class resources for any level of learner.  

5 ways to use Copilot in education 

Here are just a few examples of the many ways you can use Microsoft Copilot to save time and energy: 

• Personalized learning: Copilot can support personalized learning by helping you create content, tailored feedback, and guidance for students based on their individual needs and learning styles. 
• Brainstorming: You can use Copilot to brainstorm new ideas for activities, lesson plans, supporting materials, and assignments.  
• Lesson planning: Copilot can help you plan lessons by suggesting or drafting activities, resources, and assessments that align with learning objectives. You can also use Copilot to start a rubric for the lessons. 
• Provide feedback: Copilot can help you draft initial feedback and ideas for students on their work, which you can edit and personalize for your students.  
• Get quick answers: Copilot can help you get quick answers to your questions without having to read through multiple search results. Also, Copilot provides links to content sources so you can assess the source or dive deeper into the original content. 

Microsoft Copilot showing suggested prompts for educators. Copilot uses generative AI to serve as a helpful assistant to you in the classroom. 

Getting started with Microsoft Copilot

To get started with Microsoft Copilot, you can follow these steps:  

• Open copilot.microsoft.com or select the Copilot icon on the sidebar in your Microsoft Edge browser. 
• Type your prompt into the chat window. 
• Review the sources linked at the bottom by “Learn more.” You can fact-check the information provided or dive deeper into a topic by accessing the original articles, studies, or reports. 
• Review the response to make sure the output is what you want and accurate. You are the expert, and you decide what goes into the classroom. 
• To get the most out of Copilot, you can keep the conversation going by following up on your prompts. This helps you collaborate with Copilot to gain more useful, tailored responses.   

You can also give feedback to Copilot based on the quality of its responses to help the AI learn and match your preferences.  

How to write a prompt for AI 

To effectively guide generative AI, you want to give it clear and concise instructions, known as prompts. A well-crafted prompt enhances the generative AI’s output in the quality, relevance, and diversity. A good prompt should be clear, specific, and aligned with the goal of the generation task. A bad prompt can lead to ambiguous, irrelevant, or biased output. To get the best response from Copilot, consider the following tips:  

• Define clear objectives.  Determine the main goal of the prompt and the role AI should take. Whether creating a syllabus, drafting a quiz, or revising lesson content, have a clear vision of the end goal. 
• Be specific.  Chat experiences operate best when given detailed instructions. Specify grade level, subject, topic, or any other relevant parameters. For instance, “secondary math quiz on algebraic expressions” is clearer than “math quiz.” 
• Structure the prompt.  Break complex tasks into smaller parts. Instead of asking the AI to draft an entire lesson, request an outline, then delve into specific sections. 
• Iterate and refine.  The first response from AI might not always align perfectly with expectations. Don’t hesitate to rephrase the prompt, ask follow-up questions, or provide more context based on the initial output. 
• Combine expertise.  Use AI as a tool to enhance and streamline work but remember to overlay its suggestions with your educational expertise. AI can suggest content, but the educator decides the best way to edit and present it to their audience.   

A infographic about how to write AI prompts to get better answers from Copilot. A good prompt should be clear, specific, and aligned with the goal of the task. 

Want a fun way to practice creating effective prompts? Minecraft Education just announced Prompt Lab for Minecraft Educators , a free playbook on how to use Microsoft Copilot to write compelling prompts, develop interactive learning content and assessments, and generate creative ideas for Minecraft lesson plans.   

Create images from text with Copilot 

You can use Image Creator from Designer in Copilot to create personalized, engaging visuals for all sorts of lessons or topics. You can type in a description of an image, provide additional context like location or activity, and choose an art style. Image Creator generates an image straight from your imagination. Prompts can begin with “draw an image” or “create an image.” You can use this tool to create images for a class newsletter, lesson, or Teams post.   

• Get started in Copilot prompting “create an image…”  
• Then build out your prompt with adjective + noun + verb + style.  
• Click on your favorite image to open the result in a new tab and save the image. 

 An example would be “Create an image of an adorable black puppy wearing a hat in photorealistic style.” 

An example of Copilot creating an image of a black dog wearing a hat in a photorealistic style, based on text descriptions. 

Try creating an image in Copilot for your lesson, or just for fun!   

Protected AI-powered chat

At Microsoft, our efforts are guided by our AI principles and Responsible AI Standard and build on decades of research on grounding and privacy-preserving machine learning. Copilot provides commercial data protection and delivers a secure AI-powered chat service for educational institutions. This means user and organizational data are protected, chat prompts and responses in Copilot are not saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access to them, and they aren’t used to train the underlying large language models. Additionally, our  Customer Copyright Commitment  means education customers can be confident using our services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims.  

Get to know your Copilot 

Dive deeper into the world of generative AI and unlock its full potential for your classroom.  

• The new  AI for Educators Learning Path  on  Microsoft Learn is made up of three modules to help educators learn about and benefit from AI. 
• Prompt Lab for Minecraft Educators demonstrates how to use Microsoft Copilot with Minecraft Education to design engaging learning experiences. Level up your Minecraft teaching with this useful new resource! 
• AI classroom toolkit provides instructional information for educators and students to use generative AI safely and responsibly. 
• AI for education on  Microsoft Learn is a collection of resources and courses on how to use AI for educational purposes.  

Ready to elevate your teaching with Microsoft Copilot? Start using Copilot today! copilot.microsoft.com  

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