You may recall that in September I shared with you the effort by Drake leadership to introduce continuous improvement planning as an new approach to institutional strategic planning. To recap, continuous improvement is an ongoing, flexible planning process designed to deliver outcomes that improve communication, resource prioritization, and alignment with mission. This approach is a fusion of traditional strategic planning—we are drawing on the work done over the past few years—and HLC reaccreditation efforts, and offers an innovative strategy to improve our University.
Since my email in September, I have met with a number of stakeholders on campus, including Faculty Senate, All Staff Council, and the Board of Trustees to present the idea of continuous improvement and how we envision it working for us. I’m happy to now be able to share this information more broadly.
The campus at large can learn more about continuous improvement and what this means for Drake in one spot online. (You can also access the site via the blueView Homepage or Employee tab.) To give you a brief overview of the process and how it is being integrated across different areas of our University, I encourage you to view the following videos:
- Overview of continuous improvement
- Continuous improvement and academic operations—Joe Lenz
- Continuous improvement and HLC reaccreditation—Kevin Saunders & Craig Owens
- Continuous improvement and campus technology—Chris Gill
- Continuous improvement and budget planning—Teresa Krejci
I invite your ongoing feedback as we make this transition. While we will no doubt have our growing pains with this change, it is a shift that will provide great benefit to the University.
Sincerely,
Marty