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Strategic Planning

Centralia College’s strategic plan provides a roadmap for the next five years as the college approaches its 100th year anniversary in 2025.

Process

In Fall 2022, Centralia College began a process to develop a broad, comprehensive, and collaborative strategic plan to guide Centralia College through 2027-28. A Strategic Planning Steering Committee was convened with members from numerous college stakeholder groups.

The college’s strategic planning data gathering process began at the annual Fall Conference 2022 with a general workshop attended by 207 college employees. Participants worked together in small groups and responded to the following questions:

• What do you do to help other employees feel like they are valued at Centralia College?
• What do you do to help students feel like they belong at Centralia College?
• What do you need from other employees to feel valued at Centralia College?
• What do you wish you could do more of to help students feel like they belong at Centralia College?
• What is one thing that your table learned today that you want the college to prioritize?
• What would the college look like if every student felt like they belonged and if every employee felt valued?

The responses were compiled, posted on the college’s intranet, and communicated through the All-Staff email distribution group.

During the next phase of the process (from September to December 2022), the college conducted 39 internal and 29 external listening sessions to seek stakeholder feedback on the College and its future. Over 200 internal and 137 external stakeholders, including students, employees, K-12 leaders, and community, business and industry partners participated in the Listening Sessions. The listening sessions focused around seven questions:

• What are your hopes for the College’s future?
• What do you see as the key strengths of the College?
• What is the College not currently doing that you would like to see us do in the future?
• What are some areas that you feel could be strengths with some modifications?
• If you could change one thing about the College, what would it be?
• What do you see as the key priorities the College should establish in its strategic plan?
• What do you think the College can do to close equity* gaps and increase degree/certificate completion?

* “Equity” is ensuring that each student receives what he or she needs to be successful through the intentional design of the college.

* “Equity gaps” is defined as disparities in educational outcomes and student success across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, physical or mental abilities, and other demographic traits.

These same seven questions were also presented to college stakeholders in the form of surveys published on the internal SharePoint site and the public-facing college website. All feedback was transcribed, summarized, and analyzed for major themes. The data revealed several key strengths of the college, as well as numerous institutional challenges:

Key Strengths 

• Longevity of the college, well respected and deeply rooted in the community
• Location, affordability, smaller class sizes
• Variety and quality of educational programs and support resources
• Dedication of faculty and staff, resilience in the face of adversity
• Financial solvency, beautiful campus and grounds, strong alumni network
• Strong sense of pride (internal and external), responsive to community needs

Challenges

• Declining enrollments (national trend)
• Employee retention, wage equity, professional development
• Need for more effective communication strategies, cohesive branding and marketing
• Technology resources and training, facilities maintenance/upkeep, safety and security
• Requests for a more inclusive, respectful, and collaborative college culture
• Broader support for innovation, adapting to new processes, streamlining workflows.

After a thorough review of the themes that emerged, the strategic planning steering committee identified three themes within a larger encompassing theme of Culture. The three themes prioritized included Supporting Students, Employee Development and Retention, and College Campus and Community.

Forming Sub-Teams

Three Strategic Planning Sub-Teams were formed to address the emerging themes. The teams met in person and virtually during March and April 2023 and were charged with developing strategic goals and objectives with targets to gauge progress toward each strategic goal.  Sub-Teams reviewed the aggregated data from the listening sessions and environmental scan to guide their work. They also sought input from the larger campus community in a variety of ways, including holding an All-Campus open forum (with a virtual as well as in-person option), administering surveys, and conducting informal feedback sessions with individual stakeholders.

View the Plan

A final draft of the strategic plan was presented to the campus at an all-campus open forum on May 10, 2023.  The strategic plan was adopted by the Board of Trustees at its June 2023 meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

Strategic Planning Dashboard

The Strategic Plan Dashboards provide information about where Centralia is currently trending for each of the goals in the Strategic Plan. The dashboards are updated every year at the beginning of Fall term.

Themes/Goals