Tampa, Fla.
College business officers often hold the key to realizing institutions' big plans: the pot of money. So for colleges to get somewhere strategically, there have to be good working relationships between the campus dreamers and the bean counters.
That was one of the take-aways at a session here at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. In a packed room, finance administrators from three very different institutions—Bryn Mawr College, Emory University, and Villanova University—detailed the ways that they are involved in their institutions' strategic-planning processes.
Jay Bellwoar, a managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who moderated the panel, opened the session by reminding the audience of the importance of sound leadership in defining a college's financial profile. Moody's Investors Service, he said, considers a college's strategic planning and effectiveness of management when determining its ratings for higher-education institutions.
Ken Valosky, vice president for administration and finance at Villanova University, emphasized the importance of good relationships between the chief financial officer, the president, the provost, and other top administrators. He and the provost at the Roman Catholic institution, the Rev. Kail C. Ellis, have a regular weekly meeting in the late afternoon on Fridays—a time slot that made many people in the room groan. But, Mr. Valosky emphasized, that standing meeting has given the two of them opportunities to regularly hash out differences and form cohesive plans—despite their different personalities. On a few occasions, he has even gone to art museums with Father Ellis—one of the provost's favorite pastimes.
"He likes museums and I prefer martinis," Mr. Valosky said, "yet somehow it works out."
He also said that Villanova has clearly defined differences between its strategic-planning committee and its budget committee—although he initially feared that the strategic-planning committee would overwhelm the budget process and that decisions about spending would be made outside of the budget committee.
As it turned out, the strategic-planning committee acts as kind of a filter. Requests from various departments go though the planning committee, which prioritizes them before sending them to the budget committee. The budget committee determines what resources are available for the strategic plan.
John Griffith, the chief financial officer and treasurer at Bryn Mawr College, said that the college does not do strategic planning—at least under that name. "When I came to the college, I asked if there was a strategic plan, and they told me that the capital-campaign document was the strategic plan," he said.
Instead, the college has trustee-led "task forces" that consist of trustees, faculty members, and administrators. The groups study topics—like alumni engagement or student demand or the role of graduate schools—in depth for one to two years. The process can teach the task-force members that the problems don't have easy answers and can lead to a deeper understanding of what is happening at the college.
A central group, called the "Thinking Forward Group," which includes the president, the chief financial officer, the provost, and others, coordinates some of the more strategically oriented task forces.
The small size of the college and the involvement of various kinds of people in the process has allowed Bryn Mawr to move ahead with some difficult but strategically savvy steps: The college, under faculty direction, cut eight faculty positions. It reduced the size and number of graduate programs. It established benchmarks for graduate programs, enhanced collaboration between graduate and undergraduate programs, and beefed up career services for students.
Edie Murphree spoke on behalf of an institution that is anything but small: Emory University, which has 13,000 students and a $3.2-billion operating budget. Ms. Murphree, the vice president for finance, said the strategic-planning process at Emory involved 200 people and 100 hours of work over the course of eight weeks.
She noted that the university's finances have provided discipline to the strategic plan. A financial plan was developed at the same time as the strategic plan—and that involved determining sources of money for the various goals, identifying fund-raising needs and capital requirements, and determining where there might be financial gaps.
By 2015, the gaps in various programs have to be zero. "One of two things is going to happen: Either they are going to get their funding on a permanent basis, or they are not going to be able to continue," she said. "There are a couple of initiatives that have already fallen off, and there are one or two that have been incorporated into the academic budget or the operating budget. The rest are still trying to become self-supporting."
