Strategic Directions

Strategic Direction - Commitment to Student Learning and Success

Student success at Lane is defined as the journey through which our students develop, progress toward, and achieve their goals. Lane supports student success by recognizing the symbiotic relationship between teaching and learning, providing high quality and accessible learning experiences, and ensuring our structures and practices support our students in reaching their goals.

Our strategic focus for the next five years is to build upon Lane’s history of student success work to ensure that effective and proven practices are integrated throughout the college.

This goal will only be achieved by developing a shared sense of ownership for ensuring quality student learning experiences and success, improving service across all areas of the college, recognizing that student success is predicated on learning, and fully supporting faculty and staff in developing and improving curricula, co-curricular activities, and services to support our students.

Strategic Objectives:

Foster a collegewide culture of service to student learning, academic excellence and success
Define, build shared understanding, and implement practices that lead to student learning and success
Improve communications, services, systems, and structures to maximize access and opportunity for all students

Key Strategies:

Provide Extraordinary Service to our Students and Potential Students
Develop and maintain a service mindset in all student-facing services, programs and activities; regularly seek feedback on service issues and opportunities; and collaborate to implement service improvements.

Expand Advising and Academic Planning Services
Implement a holistic advising and academic planning model that engages multiple units of the college in providing students with clear pathways and proactive communications from their first point of entry through to completion of their educational goal at Lane.

Provide Seamless Transitions for Students
Ensure application, enrollment, and transcript evaluation systems and practices support high school, prior college, continuing education (including ABSE and ESL), and other students’ successful transition to credit programs at Lane and seamless transfer to university upon completion.

Strategic Direction - A Culture of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation

Innovation relies on engaging and supporting faculty in their role as agents for learning and change; supporting the advancement of teaching and learning; providing meaningful professional development opportunities for faculty, staff and managers; and developing and sustaining structures that support regular, systematic review and adaptation.

Lane has made advances toward this strategic direction through the efforts of the college’s Assessment Team, Open Educational Resources (OER) Steering Committee, Faculty Interest Groups, Faculty Professional Development, Academic Technology, Library, Honors Program, a new campuswide program review process, and an emerging vision for the scholarship of teaching and learning.

In order to further advance this work, we will focus on developing systems, structures and processes to support and sustain teaching, learning, and innovation.

Strategic Objectives:

Support teaching, learning, assessment and innovation through faculty research and scholarship
Develop cross-disciplinary structures and supports to improve collaboration and innovation in Lane’s programs and services
Provide professional development opportunities for faculty, staff and managers that advance teaching and learning at Lane
Build capacity to expand and support online teaching, learning and educational resources

Key Strategies:

Sustain and Expand Program Review
Bring all college programs and services into a five-year program review cycle that is aligned with planning and resource allocation processes, and part of an ongoing cycle of assessment that fosters curricular innovation. Ensure organizational structures support the work of coordinating committees and review teams in curriculum development and revision, service and structural improvements, and improved student outcomes.

Create a Center for Teaching and Learning
Create a new center to support the advancement of teaching and learning, innovative pedagogical practices, cross-disciplinary efforts, enhanced faculty community and engagement, and curricular evaluation and improvement. The center will support ongoing professional development in advancing knowledge of proven practices that impact student learning and success.

Develop Collegewide Assessment of Student Learning
Develop and implement systematic assessment of learning and infusion of learning outcomes in academic programs, co-curricular activities and student services. Embed assessment practices in program review, provide professional development aligned with assessment goals, and use assessment goals to inform and improve curriculum and teaching practices to support student success.

Expand Quality Online Instruction, Curricula, and Course Materials
Provide professional development and engagement opportunities to support the development, use, and integration of online pedagogies and open and low cost education resources. Enhance systems to support online teaching, learning, and student success.

Strategic Direction - Access, Equity, and Inclusion through Social Justice

Social justice—ensuring that issues of privilege, oppression, discrimination are recognized, understood, and addressed—is the means by which access, equity and inclusion are achieved.

In order to fully realize Lane’s commitment to these outcomes, we will develop a social justice framework (Equity Lens) to guide our work. This framework will provide structures, systems and support for: (1) advancing individual and collective growth in cultural fluency, agility and competency across the institution; (2) bringing stakeholder groups together to identify and remedy barriers to social justice at Lane; (3) improving recruitment and retention of diverse students and staff; (4) increasing the range, scope and depth of curriculum available to students focused on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion; and (5) demonstrating leadership in social justice to the communities we serve.

Strategic Objectives:

Integrate principles of social justice throughout the college learning and working environment
Develop a culture of inclusivity and respect through dialogue, outreach, education, and equitable policies and practices
Improve recruitment, retention, and support of diverse students, faculty, staff, and managers

Key Strategies:

Create an Equity Framework (Equity Lens)
Develop and implement a comprehensive Equity Lens framework for Lane to ensure considerations of equity and social justice are applied throughout the college. The framework will consist of a series of questions focusing on an overarching principle of purpose. The “purpose” framework will be constructed in four key areas: people, place, process, and power; applications of these questions will highlight issues and opportunities for improving access, equity and inclusion. This framework will also act as a resource for addressing policies and practices that create and sustain oppression and discrimination.

Provide Cultural Competency Professional Development Opportunities
Develop and offer a comprehensive, sustainable range of opportunities for engagement in meaningful professional development around topics of diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice to enhance levels of cultural competency across the college.

Institute Diversity Orientation and Professional Development for Students and Staff
Create a permanent, ongoing structure for orientation and education of Lane students, faculty, staff and managers focused on diversity, inclusion, equity, cultural competency, and social justice.

Improve Recruitment and Retention of Diverse Students and Staff
Increase outreach and engagement with underrepresented communities, identify policy and practice barriers to student and staff application and entry, and implement intentional recruitment communication strategies to improve student and staff recruitment. Enhance and leverage existing relationships with communities of color and other communities to improve communications and support for students, faculty and staff. Support affinity-based groups, clubs, organizations, and professional development opportunities to improve engagement and retention.

Strategic Direction - Strengthened Community

Meaningful engagement is essential to strengthening the communities Lane is comprised of and serves. It involves collaborative relationships, effective communication, common goals, shared resources, and the practice of balancing visionary thinking while serving present needs.

We will strengthen our college community by developing new and improved channels for dialogue, participation and collaboration; supporting leadership and innovation in all areas of the college; and increasing engagement through shared vision.

Building upon our community relationships and input, we will develop quality, relevant programs and services; leverage resources; and advocate for policies and legislation that support our mission.

Strategic Objectives:

Foster a sense of college community through engagement, dialogue, transparency, and leadership development of Lane faculty and staff
Identify, evaluate, and agilely respond to evolving community needs, issues and opportunities
Strengthen the effectiveness of collaborative partnerships with employers, advisory boards, K-12 school districts, universities, and community organizations

Key Strategies:

Build College Community
Work to deepen and improve a sense of community for Lane faculty, staff, managers and students by providing regular opportunities for robust engagement; proactively soliciting input and feedback; clearly communicating processes, timelines, and decision-making structures; and expanding opportunities for participation and community-building.

Improve Advisory Committee Structures and Support
Review and improve advisory committee structures and processes to increase participation, improve Lane’s ability to receive timely and meaningful input to create and adapt curricula to meet community and workforce needs, and measure the success of our students in the workforce.

Create an Information Sharing Network
Develop a structure for sharing information, resources, outreach and communications in order to deepen relationships with external partners; leverage involvement and service; and effectively and collaboratively respond to issues and opportunities.

Strategic Direction - Financial and Environmental Stewardship

In both financial and environmental contexts, responsible stewardship involves providing a learning environment that builds understanding of evolving financial and environmental ecosystems and impact, integrating practices that support and improve the health of these systems, and taking an active role in building resilient communities through our work as educators and upholders of a public commons in which diverse groups of people collaboratively create solutions to local and global problems.

Drawing upon the resources of the college’s Institutional Effectiveness Committee and Finance Council, our focus over the next five years is to continue developing and aligning strategic and operational planning structures that support strategic allocation of resources to provide long-term financial stability for our teaching and learning environment.

We will apply principles of environmental sustainability to our wealth of built and natural resources on campus and surrounding areas, and make substantive progress toward carbon neutrality.

Strategic Objectives:

Develop planning, decision-making and resource allocation structures for programs and services to achieve optimal enrollment levels, student affordability, and fiscal sustainability while continuing to support a high-quality teaching and learning environment.
Implement environmental sustainability principles and practices
Increase adaptive capacity in our staff, students, community and built environment to create organizational and environmental resilience

Key Strategies:

Improve Planning and Institutional Effectiveness
Support the continued development and implementation of department planning, program review, governance council plans, and other planning processes that meaningfully engage faculty and staff, and align with budget development and resource allocation. Create and implement systematic assessment of current institutional practices, policies and approaches that foster innovation rooted in the desire to increase institutional effectiveness in areas in which assessment feedback indicates there are gaps or challenges.

Implement Lane’s Climate Action Plan
Apply principles of sustainable economics, resource use, and social institutions to Lane’s teaching, learning and working environments to achieve our climate commitment goals. Incorporate carbon reduction strategies into facility, financial, and other institutional plans.

Increase Adaptive Capacity
Develop and implement strategies to increase the resilience and adaptive capacity of our staff, students, campus infrastructure, and community through education, professional development, and emergency preparedness. Utilize scenario-planning tools to cultivate long-term strategic thinking and planning despite external uncertainties.

View the 2010/11 through 2014/15 Strategic Directions on our archive site.