Planning Process, Design, and Participants

Planning Process and Design

Development of the Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC) strategic plan has been a comprehensive and broad based process that involved

• extensive research and environmental scanning techniques including data analysis, meetings with committees of community and business leaders, reviews of the literature conducted by scanning teams, Internet research, and analyses of recently completed internal and employment market surveys;
  
• situational analyses including SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), trend, and market analyses conducted by over one hundred Central Georgia Tech personnel;
  
• strategy development and analysis; and
  
• strategic resource needs assessment.

The Department of Technical and Adult Education's (DTAE's) strategic plan was designed to provide overall guidance for all technical colleges in Georgia, including CGTC. The DTAE strategic goals, desired outcomes, and objectives were written with the intent that the technical colleges use the plan's goals, desired results, and objectives as their own. Each college is intended to contribute to the achievement of the statewide objectives by developing and implementing its own unique mission, vision, market position, and strategies. When formulating the CGTC strategic plan, the college had the opportunity to select and/or adapt appropriate statewide objectives to meet local needs, to add its own quantitative standards to the desired long-term outcomes, and to add details such as timelines and quantitative standards to the goals, desired outcomes, and objectives, if needed. The DTAE plan does not include any strategies; therefore, all strategies in this plan are unique to CGTC and address service area needs, capabilities, and interests.

Planning Participants

CGTC used a highly participatory planning process to complete this strategic plan.

• The CGTC management team and other representatives formed the "strategic planning steering team" who guided the planning process, integrated feedback from the community and staff into the plan, and developed successive drafts of the plan.
  
  
• Every employee of CGTC was invited to participate in an electronic SWOT survey, and over one hundred of the college's full-time employees returned a SWOT response by email or fax.
  
  
• Six "scanning teams" conducted in-depth research on future strategies and programmatic directions. Each scanning team was comprised of one steering team member and several faculty volunteers.
  
  
• All full-time CGTC employees were invited to participate in a strategic planning conference, and over one hundred staff members attended the conference where the SWOT and strategies were discussed.
  
  
• Adjunct instructors (over one-hundred-fifty) attended a meeting in which they shared in the planning process with suggestions and identified CGTC strengths and weaknesses
  
  
• The strategic planning steering team and the Board of Directors conducted a planning retreat where overall consensus was reached concerning the draft mission, vision, market position, desired outcomes, and major strategic projects.
  
  
• President Palmer conducted a community meeting in Wilkinson County, a new county within the service area, to discuss CGTC's tentative plans and to gather additional community input into the plan.
  
  
• President Palmer also conducted a meeting involving all program advisory committee members (over three hundred area business representatives). Each program advisory committee analyzed the vision of CGTC and reported their feelings regarding each component of the vision.
  
  
• The Board of Directors reviewed the final draft plan, approved it, and adopted the plan.