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Appendix I

UTSA 2016 STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

UTSA's strategic planning process focuses on excellence in teaching, the creation of new knowledge and engagement in public service while remaining committed to providing access to higher education. The strategic plan, UTSA 2016, recognizes and communicates the University’s commitment to developing a road map that will guide its activities over the next 10 years.

Following the University’s 35th anniversary celebration, the UTSA community embarked on an extensive, inclusive effort to chart a course for the institution. UTSA 2016 is a collaborative effort intended to ensure that all members of the University community have an opportunity to participate in establishing institution-wide priorities and strategies crucial to UTSA's journey to become a premier public research university.

Work on the plan began in spring 2006 with a retreat that included representatives of the administrators, faculty, students, staff, alumni, and external constituents of UTSA. From this retreat, nine strategic themes were identified and values important to our University citizens proposed. At the close of the retreat, participants volunteered to serve on thematic teams to develop the themes to which they were committed. In addition, one team volunteered to address the University vision, mission, and values statements to reflect UTSA's evolving role.

During the summer, the teams organized, began meeting and gathering information about their themes, and began the work of determining how to flesh out their themes. A second retreat in September provided an opportunity for participants of the initial retreat to learn of progress to date from the thematic team leaders, to discuss and evaluate the proposed vision, mission, and values statements, and to provide feedback. In mid-October, each thematic team incorporated suggestions from the September retreat and submitted a rough draft with proposed strategic goals, objectives, strategies, and metrics for its theme. Revised vision, mission, and values statements were also submitted. A series of focus groups, involving both internal and external community members, met in November to review the vision, mission, and values statements. The focus groups also learned about the nine themes. The teams then integrated recommendations from the focus groups into their work. The final drafts of the thematic team reports, as well as the mission, vision, and values statements, were submitted in mid-December. These reports were given to a professional writer to combine into one document and to incorporate consistent tone and voice.

In January 2007, when the combined document was returned, the Central Planning Committee delegated to volunteers from the Committee the task of clustering the thematic reports around strategic initiatives and of extracting related goals. The new, shortened document was approved by the Central Planning Committee and given to internal writers to enhance and polish for presentation at a final retreat of the initial participants in February. The strategic plan draft was discussed in depth, and suggestions were incorporated into the document during the retreat.

Also in February, the Provost held an Academic Affairs retreat to review and propose input for the draft document. The group identified three foundational themes to underpin the UTSA educational experience as well as five areas of collaborative excellence on which to concentrate. These elements were incorporated into the draft.

In March, the draft Strategic Plan document was presented to personnel in each vice presidential area for response and feedback. In addition, the Silver to Gold Commission, representatives of UTSA's external community involved in planning for UTSA's 50th anniversary, reviewed the Plan on several occasions. The Plan was further refined based on the feedback of these groups.

In May, the draft was finalized and submitted for professional refinement to prepare it for submission. It was submitted to The University of Texas System at the end of May and approved in August.

All documentation related to the planning process, as well as drafts of all reports, was made available and continuously updated on the UTSA Strategic Plan Web site.