Strategic Plan
The Steering Committee for Strategic Planning for the Wiess School of Natural Sciences was charged by the Dean with creating a vision for the Division as a whole that will carry us over the next 5-10 years. Input was sought from all interested parties, including faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students, and all other elements of the Rice University community. The purpose of this effort was to generate input that would help identify goals for the Division and ways to achieve these goals.
Four Subcommittees were established to gather and sift information relevant to their assigned areas: Faculty Issues and Research Resources, Undergraduate Education, Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, and Outreach. The membership of these Subcommittees is in Appendix B. A Web page was constructed with links to Listserves for the Steering and Subcommittees for facile input from the community. The Subcommittees worked through the fall and early spring semesters to generate reports to the Steering Committee. These reports were used in designing the Workshops held in January (see below) and ultimately in generating the Strategic Plan itself.
The Steering Committee utilized several venues to obtain input into the Strategic Plan. During November, 1996, representatives of the Steering Committee met with faculty in each Department in the Division, and each meeting was summarized and distributed to the faculty in the respective Departments for feedback. A Summary of Department Meetings was also generated and posted on the Web page for the Strategic Planning exercise (Appendix I). A number of issues were articulated in these meetings that were not strategic in nature, but were quite relevant and important in terms of the function of our campus infrastructure. A summary of these issues was generated and conveyed to the Deans, Provost, and President for consideration and corrective action (Appendix H).
The Subcommittees met with graduate and undergraduate students during the Fall, 1996 semester. A graduate student questionnaire was distributed by the Graduate and Postdoctoral Education Subcommittee. The personal meetings were designed to generate input, both at the time of the meeting and through other mechanisms.
Workshops were held over the weekends of Jan. 18 and Jan. 25, 1997 in the four subcommittee areas: Outreach, Faculty Issues and Research Resources, Undergraduate Education, and Graduate and Postdoctoral Education. Summaries of the recommendations that emerged from the workshops were generated for Subcommittee use and posted on the Web. Participants in these workshops totaled about 150 members of the Rice community, including faculty, staff, administrators, students, and alumni. Each of the workshops, led by Frank Koehler, CEO of Transitional Leadership Institute, began with a group session that provided orientation to the topic and to the process to be employed. Small groups addressed specific questions with recommendations and strategies for implementation. These workshops were quite successful in focusing ideas and generating suggestions for the subcommittees, and the exercises provided a unique opportunity to meet others in the Division and in the University with common interests. The Strategic Planning Committee is very grateful to Mr. Koehler for volunteering his time and expertise.
From the data gathered, conversations, workshop information, and careful deliberations, the Subcommittees generated their Reports, copies of which are found in Appendices D-G . From these reports, a draft Strategic Plan was generated by the Steering Committee and was circulated in late March with two open meetings to provide an opportunity for further feedback held on April 1, 1997. Responses from the community were examined and evaluated by the Steering Committee, and the Strategic Plan was delivered to the Dean, Provost, and President on May 5, 1997.
This page is maintained by Rachel Miller (mail to:
rmiller@rice.edu)
Created 20-Mar-97
Updated 06-May-97