We’re on a journey this year to develop a dynamic strategic plan that will guide our collective work for the near future.
I am particularly excited about this process because it gives us, the Portland State community, the opportunity to reaffirm our mission and values in a way that validates the work we do to serve our students, and the work we want to be doing to live up to what makes PSU unique — both in Oregon and in the wider higher education landscape.
I know and understand the skepticism that can accompany the strategic planning process. I know we’re all busy with our jobs and hesitant to put time and effort into something that will ultimately serve no operational purpose. But this will not be a staid, traditional strategic plan that will gather dust on the shelf — it will be something useful in guiding us forward and directing our work for the next six years. I am confident that we can work together to build something meaningful for all of us who are invested in advancing Portland State, better serving our students, and deriving fulfillment from our individual and collective labor. In the end, our strategic plan will lead us toward a successful future because it represents unity in purpose: a shared vision and collective understanding of the steps that we must take together to achieve it.
First, the why.
In addition to strengthening the connection for every student, faculty, and staff member to the mission, vision, values, and long-term goals of PSU, a plan will inform the decisions we are called to make daily about how we spend our time, our budget, our attention — even our physical space.
PSU’s current financial constraints adds urgency to the need for alignment between our budget and our strategy, but we also need to take the longview and answer the question: What does the future need from Portland State?
To meet both of those needs, we’ll develop two kinds of plans.
The longer-term plan, which includes future-oriented goals and the affirmation of our vision, mission and values, will give us a “north star” to guide our long range planning. We’ll also work on shorter term dynamic strategies that will provide a bridge between where we are now and that longer-term vision. The near-term plan will be adaptable, allowing us to course correct as we get new information or seize new opportunities.
Traditional strategic plans don’t adjust to changing realities, but ours must. The pace of change is so rapid that we must be able to plan for multiple scenarios and revisit strategies as we observe their results.
We know we can’t rely on what we’ve always done to address the current conditions, demands and opportunities of higher education. We also know we have to prioritize the programs and initiatives at PSU that are the most distinctive, the most future-oriented, and are the most uniquely Portland State.
Strategy is about what you don’t do as well as what you do. We have a structural budget deficit that will only get worse unless we prioritize initiatives that will increase revenue and reduce costs given our strengths and market conditions. This is not fundamentally about the money; it’s about ensuring that we can continue to exist and fulfill our noble mission to enable opportunity and social mobility as Portland’s urban research university. We will ensure that we allocate the required resources to enact our plan and reach our goals. We will also hold ourselves accountable for the results we need to reach our goals.
Here’s the game plan in two phases:
Phase 1: Between now and January, we’ll tackle these three objectives:
1: Affirm our Vision, Mission and Values: Portland State’s last strategic plan ran from 2016 - 2020 and included the establishment of PSU’s vision, mission and values that still guide us today. Do those guiding statements still hold true? How should we go about affirming or adapting them?
2: Analyze the External Market: Whatever we do internally to serve students will be buffeted by external factors that drive the higher education market. These range from demographic shifts to labor market and employment trends. Our analysis will look at how those trends are shifting and what we can expect in the years to come.
3: Differentiate our Value Proposition: This is where we start to identify what makes Portland State unique. First we examine how PSU is meeting the needs of our students — including the practical, emotional, social and other factors — in ways that other universities aren’t. Where are we falling short? What competitive advantages do we have and what can we cultivate to deliver consistently excellent results? How are we meeting the needs of our employees so that they can better serve our students? How do we provide value to our community partners and the region as a whole? How can we do all these things more effectively in the future?
Phase 2: In the second half of the academic year, we’ll use the findings from the first three objectives to craft our dynamic plan:
4: Define what PSU looks like in 2030, and the Performance Targets we’ll meet if we are fulfilling the Value Propositions: This is a big one and also where we start to really identify our aspirations. This step requires us to think about how PSU will grow in impact and reputation if our differentiated strengths are delivering great results for our students over time and at scale. How will we measure that success with time-bound metrics of progress? What goals will we seek to achieve?
5: Identify and Prioritize Strategic Imperatives: In addition to our vision, mission and values, the strategic imperatives will be our guide for bridging where PSU is now to where we want to be. We will identify a set of large-scale actions that we can pursue to reach our long-term goals.
Those steps will take us through the year and inform our budget conversations starting in the 2024-25 fiscal and academic year. We’ll be ready to scope our prioritized initiatives, make sure the budget model funds them, and create accountability metrics for the responsible units. From there we monitor results, determine whether we’re on the right course, and adjust as needed.
The opportunities for engagement of the campus in this process will begin soon. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee is forming working groups who will design specific engagement processes to answer the key questions raised by our process. Working groups will seek input from inside and outside the university in pursuit of meaningful ideas about the future of PSU.
If you want to get involved, we’d like to hear from you. Check out the strategic planning website; it will house information about the process and opportunities to engage with each of the working groups. If you have any questions, send a note to info@pdx.edu.