Home
Guide Overview
How to Create and Use Foundational Documents

How to Create and Use Foundational Documents

Version 2022.1

Description
Benefits
Effective Practices
Resources
Evidence

Foundational documents are statements and/or policy documents that articulate and shape the purpose, identity, direction, and future plans of your program or department. They can include:

Mission Statement: describes the primary functions and activities of your department, whom it serves, and what it aims to accomplish. The statement should be aligned with your institution’s mission.
Vision Statement: aspirationally articulates the qualities your department needs to have in order to fulfill its mission and what the results of fulfilling that mission would be. The statement should be aspirational yet attainable, and aligned with your institution’s vision.
Values Statement: articulates your department’s core values. The statement should be aligned with your institution’s values.

This section provides guidance for creating departmental mission, vision, and values statements and related documents through an inclusive process that engages and supports buy-in from a broad range of stakeholders inside and outside of your department and ensures that your documents are aligned with institutional values and objectives. The section also provides guidances for ensuring that these documents are used to guide strategic decisions in your department. Not every department or institution needs to create and maintain all kinds of foundational documents, though some of them are required by certain accreditors. While this section focuses on creating mission, vision, and values statements, the guidance on process can be applied to other kinds of foundational documents. For details about other kinds of documents, see the sections on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan; How to Be an Effective Chair (e.g., management plan); Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (e.g., action plan for equity); Departmental Culture and Climate (e.g., code of conduct); Ethics (e.g., departmental ethics guidelines); and Advising and Mentoring of Students (e.g., framework for mentors engaging students).

Benefits

Creating and maintaining departmental foundational documents provides an opportunity for members of your program or department to reflect on, define, and state your department’s identity and values. Foundational documents form the groundwork for strategic planning (see the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan) and program review (see the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review), and contextualize

(see the section on How to Assess Student Learning at the Program Level). The process of constructing and revising foundational documents provides an opportunity to build consensus within your department on priorities and directions, and to ensure these are aligned with institutional goals, directions, and values. These documents can help focus efforts of faculty and staff, prioritize resource investments, distinguish among competing priorities when making difficult choices, and plan for the future. The documents help forge strong relationships with your institution’s leaders by aligning the core values and priorities of your department with those of your institution. Foundational documents can also help department leaders clearly articulate your department’s needs and advocate for support and resources. Students benefit from being in a department that uses such documents to guide and support improvement efforts. These documents can also be used to share your department’s mission, vision, and values when recruiting students and faculty, and when engaging in fundraising.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Who should be involved?

What will you do?

How did it go and what comes next?

To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.

Learn more about the Cycle of Reflection and Action and how it can help your department.

Effective Practices

Design and articulate an inclusive process for creating and maintaining foundational documents
1. Share your institution’s vision, mission, and values statements and strategic plan with faculty and staff. If applicable, include foundational documents at the college, school, or other intermediate level, as well as foundational documents from other departments in your institution.
  Discuss your institution’s foundational documents at a faculty and/or staff meeting. Consider also reviewing how changes at your institution have impacted the evolution of these documents.
  Incorporate institutional (and eventually departmental) foundational documents into your department’s promotional materials (e.g., website and recruitment flyers) and post them prominently in department spaces (e.g., department offices, student areas, and lobbies).
2. Discuss with your department the purpose of these documents, how they will be written, and how they will be used.
  Determine which documents are needed for institutional and
  requirements.
  Consider which documents will best aid your department in articulating its identity, purpose, direction, and future plans.
  Discuss your plans to create these documents with members of your administration (e.g., the dean), in order to secure their support for the process.
  Develop a timeline for creating documents.
  Consider creating all documents in parallel, as there will likely be considerable overlap among the processes used to develop each document.
3. See the section on How to Create and Sustain Effective Change for details on how to implement the strategies below.
  Encourage buy-in among department members. Help them understand how the process of creating foundational documents, and not just the final products, can support your department in coming to shared agreement on the key elements of your department’s identity.
  Establish a broad, representative stakeholder group to contribute to the creation and review of your foundational documents. Include, e.g., pre-tenure faculty, tenured faculty, non-tenure-track
  , other staff, students, postdocs, departmental advisory council members (see the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for details on how to use an advisory council), alumni, and/or members of
  . At the same time, avoid overburdening new faculty or people from marginalized groups.
  Engage members of your administration (e.g., the dean) in the development process (e.g., by asking for feedback on drafts of documents) in order to inform them about your mission, vision, and values; secure their buy-in; and gain their support for initiatives that support your department’s mission, vision, and values.
  Develop a simple, inclusive process that supports your department in shared reflection on its identity and purpose. Ensure that this process includes clear start and end points, aims to build broad consensus, includes multiple opportunities for community feedback as documents are being developed, clearly defines how and by whom final decisions about language and/or content will be made, and defines a process for final approval of the documents.
  Balance the goal of getting sufficiently broad input from all departmental constituencies with the need to converge on a specific and meaningful set of statements. Consider assigning the initial drafting of each document to a subgroup of no more than three people from the broader stakeholder group, to distill input into its key elements rather than “writing by committee.”
  Recognize the time commitment of faculty, staff, and students by explicitly acknowledging work developing these documents as service or as part of their work assignments, or by providing other forms of compensation such as public recognition or modest stipends for student participants.
  Establish a timeline for reviewing and revising the documents. See 4.B below.
  Review your process with all departmental stakeholders before proceeding with document development.
Implement your process to create and maintain foundational documents
1. Set a goal to create documents that distill big ideas about your department into a few sentences that are short enough to be easily understood and remembered; that articulate your department’s identity, purpose, direction, and future plans; and that serve as concise reminders of departmental shared agreements.
  Pay particular attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion; departmental culture and climate; and ethics when creating these documents. See the sections on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Departmental Culture and Climate; and Ethics for details.
  Set a goal to develop documents that will be referred to and used in order to focus efforts of faculty and staff, prioritize resource investments, and distinguish among competing priorities when making difficult choices.
  Set a goal to develop documents that can be used to convey your department’s mission, vision, and values to people outside your department, including donors, members of your administration, alumni, potential hires, and prospective students.
  In developing each document, collect ideas from a wide range of stakeholders. Provide multiple channels for input, including faculty discussions, focus groups, town halls, surveys, and anonymous input.
  Distill those ideas, through an inclusive process, to no more than five key elements.
  Have the writing subgroup craft a concise statement that incorporates the key elements. Seek feedback from your departmental community and revise the draft according to the process agreed upon above.
  Ensure consistency between departmental and institutional statements. Consider also comparing your draft statements to those of other relevant departments at your institution and at other institutions, and consider whether any strong differences (e.g., with respect to focus on teaching versus research) are appropriate.
2. Set a goal of crafting a concise statement describing your department’s primary functions and activities and the constituencies it serves.
  Collect ideas from a wide range of stakeholders about the constituencies your department does or ideally should serve (e.g., students from the region, international students, first-generation college students or other underserved groups, a diverse population of students from across the country, physics majors, non-majors, and/or faculty invested in excellent teaching and research), and what your department aims to help those constituencies accomplish (e.g., earn a bachelor’s degree, find employment, be admitted to a graduate program, find internship opportunities, acquire specific skills or competencies, serve the community, engage in impactful research, and/or provide outstanding instruction for physics majors and non-majors). See 2.A.iv–vii above.
  Ensure that the key elements of your department’s mission are aligned with your institution’s mission and strategic directions.
3. Set a goal of crafting a concise statement articulating an aspirational vision for your department’s future and what it will create over the next five to ten years.
  Collect ideas from a wide range of stakeholders about specific characteristics of their ideal department that are achievable in that time frame. See 2.A.iv–vii above.
  Ensure that the key elements of your vision for the department’s future are both aspirational and achievable, and that they are aligned with your institution’s vision and strategic directions.
4. Set a goal of crafting a concise statement of your department’s principles and values that will guide decision making and treatment of departmental community members. See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to establish and communicate a collective vision for a healthy culture and climate.
  Collect ideas from a wide range of stakeholders about specific values and ideals they see or would like to see expressed in the department’s messaging and actions. See 2.A.iv–vii above.
  Ensure that the key principles and values held by your department are aligned with your institution’s values and strategic directions.
5. Use anonymous surveys, focus groups, and/or other means to learn about departmental attitudes and concerns about your draft documents, especially if the documents were drafted by a committee or other small group. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for ways to gather feedback.
  Invite written feedback from faculty and other
  , students, relevant members of your administration, alumni academic or industry partners, and other departments or programs at your institution that depend on your courses or facilities.
  Sponsor discussions of draft documents with groups including faculty and other
  , relevant members of your administration, students, and alumni.
  Request feedback from outside groups, e.g., a departmental advisory council and/or local employers. Ensure that members of these groups understand their role in your process and how their feedback may (or may not) be used.
6. Have the writing subgroup address divergent responses using the inclusive process determined in 1.C above.
  Acknowledge directly the value of all feedback, even if it is not incorporated into your documents.
  Circulate revised documents to department members and provide ample opportunity for further discussion and review.
7. Adopt finalized documents according to the agreed-upon process, e.g., by bringing the proposed documents to the full faculty for a vote and, if appropriate, seeking approval from other stakeholders (see 1.C.v above). Record the date of adoption in the documents.
  Review and document the final process used for developing the documents to inform similar future efforts.
  Consider requesting that a member of your administration (e.g., the dean) sign off on the document in order to acknowledge their agreement with its general principles and directions.
8. Determine what fraction of departmental stakeholders actively participated in the development process.
  Determine what fraction of the faculty or other stakeholders not directly involved in the development process provided feedback and/or attended meetings related to the documents.
  Survey stakeholders formally or informally to evaluate their perceptions of how inclusive the development process was, how it could be improved, and what they learned from participating.
  Estimate the time and effort required to create and maintain documents, and sponsor a discussion to assess the degree to which the benefits justify the time expended.
  Create a document summarizing your assessment of the process, to inform future efforts.
Share and use foundational documents to guide departmental discussions and decisions
1. Share documents with your entire departmental community, being sure to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of everyone involved in the process.
  Make foundational documents easily accessible, e.g., by posting them on your department’s website and/or in departmental spaces.
  Share documents with relevant members of your administration (e.g., the dean, provost, and/or development or fundraising officer) to demonstrate your department’s commitment to self-reflection, continuous improvement, and thinking creatively about the future; to provide a reference point for future discussions on priorities and resources; and to enable sharing with accreditors.
  Share documents with other interested stakeholders (e.g., alumni, prospective faculty, and/or students), particularly those who provided input.
2. Refer to your department’s mission, vision, and values (and the conversations that led to the creation of the documents articulating them) in meetings and other settings when making strategic decisions, setting priorities, resolving conflicts, or making resource or fundraising requests. See the section on How to be an Effective Chair for details.
  Ensure that department leadership refers to and gets guidance from foundational documents, in order to build support for and demonstrate to department members the relevance and utility of these documents.
  Refer to your department’s foundational documents as the starting point for conversations about future plans and actions. See the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan for details.
  Refer to your department’s foundational documents when conducting a review of your department, including when writing your self study and evaluating your department’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. See the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review for details.
  Discuss how your department’s mission, vision, and values are supported by your
  . See the section on How to Assess Student Learning at the Program Level for details.
  Encourage all department members to use your foundational documents to guide everyday choices and actions. For example, encourage
  to use these documents to guide what they emphasize in the classroom, and encourage department members advocating for departmental change to ground their advocacy in these documents.
Evaluate the impact of your foundational documents and review them periodically
1. Determine whether elements of your department’s mission, vision, and values statements are referred to and used in decision-making processes, strategic planning, assessment of student learning, committee reports, policy discussions, or other contexts. If not, convene a small group of stakeholders to determine how to better integrate your foundational documents into the work of the department.
  Survey stakeholders or sponsor a conversation about the relevance of your department’s mission, vision, and values statements to departmental planning and decision-making, to identify strengths and areas for potential improvement.
2. Define a timeline for periodic review and updating of foundational documents, typically on the order of 5 to 10 years, to ensure that they remain relevant. Consider aligning this review with required program reviews (see the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review for details).
  Discuss your department’s mission, vision, and values at least annually in order to ensure they are present in department members’ minds and remain current and relevant. Gauge whether changing conditions or attitudes indicate the need for a change to the review schedule.

Resources

Guidance on how to write mission and vision statements. (Because these documents are written for a non-academic context, some of the example vision statements are less attainable than we recommend in an academic context.)

K. Halvorson, What Is Strategy (and Why Should You Care)?, Brain Traffic (2017): A description of the differences among and importance of specific foundational documents, such as vision and mission statements. Useful as a quick reference on how to use these documents.
Nonprofit Hub, What is a Vision Statement? Why Nonprofits Need Them: A brief discussion of the importance of mission and vision statements and why and how they should be centered by organizations.

Guidelines that may provide a starting point for discussing values relevant to physics departments

APS Council, Guidelines on Ethics, American Physical Society (2019).

Examples of mission, vision, and values statements from physics and other STEM departments. (Inclusion on this list does not imply endorsement by EP3. Some of the suggested examples mix together elements of mission, vision, and values statements as they have been defined in this section.)

Amherst College, Physics and Astronomy Department mission
California Polytechnic State University, Physics Department Mission and Vision
The College of New Jersey, School of Science and departmental mission statements
Elon University, Physics Department Mission Statement
Howard University, Department of Physics and Astronomy mission
Ithaca College, Department of Physics and Astronomy Vision, Mission, and Values
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Physics Department Community Values
Morehouse College, Department of Physics mission
Roanoke College, Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics vision
Tennessee State University, Department of Mathematical Sciences Mission Statement and Vision Statement
University of Iowa, Department of Physics and Astronomy Mission, Vision, and Strategic Plan
William and Mary, Physics Department Statement of Values
Science Education Resource Center (SERC), Mission or Vision Statements: Examples of mission and vision statements from geoscience departments around the country.

Evidence

Reference 1 provides a case study that illustrates how the process of developing a mission statement can transform departmental culture. Reference 2 reports on a study that analyzes equity, diversity, and inclusion statements at various universities and finds that universities that make moral arguments for diversity have demonstrably better outcomes for

students than those that make utilitarian arguments.