• College strengths, challenges, and external influences

• How we want students to experience our college

• External factors that will impact the College

• Possible goals and strategies for the 2022-2028 Strategic Plan

One of the themes for this year's strategic planning process is for us to focus on creating measurable, meaningful goals. These goals would essentially be outcomes or achievements that we hold ourselves accountable to for the next 6 years. Once we identify a limited number of goals, then we will need to develop overarching, multi-year strategies to achieve those goals. One way to think of goals is to make them:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-bound

Setting SMART goals will help us truly be able to determine whether or not we have met them within our 6-year strategic planning cycle. In addition, specifying the exact things we are hoping to achieve for students will allow us to see where our work intersects with the student experience. We need to make sure our goals are attainable given the timeframe and our resources and also relevant to our mission and vision. Lastly, since we know our strategic planning cycle is 6 years, we our goals will be time-bound.

Strategies are the multi-year, overarching methods we will use to guide our annual action plans, funding priorities, and program- and service-area plans. Our 2016-2022 strategic plan identifies 3 strategies for improving our student outcomes:

• Acceleration

• Guided Student Pathways

• Student Validation and Engagement

Each of these strategies or "big bets" could be easily linked to a specific student outcome or measurable college goal, such as the following:

• Acceleration => Increase the percentage of students who complete transfer-level math and English in their first year

• Guided Student Pathways => Increase the percentage of students who complete a certificate, degree, or transfer within 4 years

• Student Validation and Engagement => Increase the percentage of first-time students who persist to their second fall semester at the College

When strategies are explicitly linked to goals they provide a strong sense of direction for our college and can serve as a powerful guide for each of our committees, councils, and operational units in their work.