Strategic Management Committee

The College has established a Strategic Management Committee (SMC) to address strategic planning.  The SMC exists to coordinate mission and vision development and attainment of goals and assures regular consultation with faculty.  The SMC is composed of the Director of Business Programs, who serves as chair, the major area coordinators, a professor who teaches strategic management, the Director of the SBDC, and the Dean as an ad hoc member.  Its primary function is to provide a strategic planning framework to consider mission, goals, objectives, and procedures for achieving these; establish both learning and other goals and measurements of attainment; and assure existence of continuous improvement.  The SMC works with input from stakeholders including faculty, university administration, industry recruiters, employers, the Dean’s advisory board, students and others.  Strategic planning below the SMC level is accomplished for the major areas of Accounting, Business Administration, and Computer Information Systems by committees chaired by the area coordinators.

Faculty Input: The COB has meetings of all faculty several times each semester to address operational and strategic issues. Many issues are addressed by a committee of the whole given the small size of the faculty.  Standing or ad hoc committees also meet at the call of their chair.  Faculty meetings include reports from standing and ad hoc committees.  Faculty committees other than the SMC are typically formed to address specific issues.  These include committees for each discipline area, e. g., Accounting, Business Administration (sometimes further divided into economics, finance, law, management, marketing, as necessary to address a specific sub-area), Computer Information Systems, and an Associate Degree committee composed of all persons who teach courses in the particular area.  Promotion and Tenure Committees are variously composed to render a decision on a particular application for promotion and/or tenure.  An Online Learning committee also was composed to address this particular course delivery system.  Other committees may be established as necessary.  These committees meet at the call of an appointed chair or at the request of the Dean or Director of Business Programs.  The discipline area committees identify strategic issues that they believe are important to successful learning within their areas.  These typically fall into the four areas identified as important for the college.  The SMC takes these area plans and distills them into a smaller number of more specific action activities for the college to emphasize during the next year.

Student Input: As part of the process, a Student Advisory Group (SAG) composed of the four primary officers (president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer) of the three student organizations (AITP, BPA, SIFE) acts as a sounding board for examining COB issues. The composition of this group typically changes each year.  Graduating Senior Surveys (GSS) are taken each semester and analyzed for identifying problem areas and discussed with the SAG.  GSS include student perceptions of:  (1) overall NSU and COB academic programs; (2) knowledge gained in such areas as accepting and fulfilling of citizenship responsibility and cultural change; (3) knowledge gained in chosen academic field; (4) how their education helped them; and (5) their level of satisfaction with their major and the faculty who taught them among many other items.  A rolling comparison of the GSS results is routinely used in strategic planning.

Strategic planning within the SMC addresses four general areas in which objectives are established and creates priorities for those major activities during the fall semester of each academic year.  The SMC may also meet occasionally at other times at the call of the Dean if there is a need.  In establishing prioritization, the SMC recognizes that accomplishment of certain activities may be beyond the control of the college, but these may still be listed and prioritized in the eventuality resources become available.

The general areas in which the SMC establishes plans and priorities are as follows:

Area I:  Develop and Improve Quality of Academic Programs--subsumed under this goal were all curricular matters including majors, minors, concentrations, accreditation, satellite offerings, etc.

Area II:  Maintain, Develop and Recruit Quality Faculty—subsumed under this goal were all issues concerning faculty including endowed professorships, salary, promotion and tenure, etc.

Area III:  Maintain, Develop and Recruit Quality Students—subsumed under this goal were all efforts involving students including student organizations, outreach, service learning, etc.

Area IV:  Improve Infrastructure Support for COB Programs—subsumed under this goal were all contextual activities designed to improve delivery systems, general and administrative support, etc.

Within each area, activities to be accomplished are labeled as follows: (Prioritization of 1- 3 with 1 = Highest within the next year).  Activities from previous years may be labeled as follows: C = Completed, or P = Pending/In Process.  Pending/In Process items will generally be continued from year to year unless they cannot be achieved.  It is recognized that some activities such as measurement, fine-tuning, and improvement of accomplishing learning goals are constant and will never be removed from planned actions.  The sense of the prioritization is that no more than 2 items should be in Priority 1 during any fiscal year and that these would receive specific emphasis.

Efforts toward accomplishing Assurance of Learning and Continuous Improvement regarding the four College Learning Goals and their subordinate Objectives fall under Area I and will always be carried from one year to the next.  Specific focus of the effort toward College Learning Goals/Objectives will be in accordance with the AoL Task Implementation Guideline.