Structure of a Strategic Plan
For more information on strategic plans, see the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan.
To ensure that your strategic plan is accessible and will be read and understood by a broad constituency, it should be no more than two pages long. Some elements and examples this document could contain are listed below.
Strategic Plan for the Physics Department of X College/University
Adopted: Date
Mission of the Department
The department strives to provide an optimum undergraduate physics education for students with a broad range of career and post-graduate education goals. (Include more details specific to your institution and your particular strengths. See the section on How to Create and Use Foundational Documents for guidance on creating a mission statement.)
Strategic Objectives and how they will be accomplished
Provide a list of
(potentially in a format), the motivations behind them, and corresponding to accomplish these goals. The number of objectives should be limited to allow your department to focus its efforts within the identified timeframe, and objectives should be achievable with available resources.Increase the number of sophomore physics majors by five in each of the next three years, to create larger student cohorts and to surpass institutional minimum enrollment levels.
Motivation: While enrollments have been stable, they remain relatively low compared to those of peer departments.
Department actions: Susan will lead an effort to market our existing engineering physics major to local high school teachers. She will meet with them and their students each fall to describe our program and provide a contact for students and their parents to reach out to for further information… (See the supplement on Creating SMART Goals for additional examples.)
Recruit three physics majors within the next two years to enroll in education courses required for high school physics teacher licensure, to better meet regional and community needs for physics and other science teachers.
Motivation: There has been pressure on our institution to educate and certify more physics and other science teachers. Currently very few physics graduates enter teaching careers.
Department actions: Mike will invite local high school physics teachers to speak at department events about the joys of teaching physics and will encourage those teachers to invite current physics majors to work with them as interns… (See the supplement on Creating SMART Goals for additional examples.)
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