Working assumptions:

• Funding from the state will continue to be inadequate in comparison to comparable peer institutions.
• MSU will continue to shift from being a state-supported to state-assisted institution.
• As it becomes more inextricably part of a global environment, the university will become more reliant on information technology.
• MSU has the capacity for limited, strategically focused growth.

Strategic concepts:

• Central to mission (CM)
• Fiscal leverage (FL)
• Political leverage (PL)
• Competitive advantage (CA)
• Public relations (PR)
• Friend raising; builds base of partners/allies. (FR)

STRENGTHS (Internal focus)

• Areas of excellence in teaching and research/creativity: The ability to articulate that MSU is a nationally and internationally recognized modern land grant university, with areas of emphasis and excellence in agriculture, the professions (i.e., architecture, business, computer science, education, engineering, nursing), the sciences (physical, biological, health) and a curriculum based on a strong and broad foundation of the traditional liberal arts. (CM/PR)
• Articulate areas of excellence and prioritize resource allocation to sustain and build strength.
• Integrate curricular programs that assure MSU graduates will be accomplished critical thinkers and excellent communicators.
• Identify and highlight MSU's faculty/student awards, achievements and research/creativity developments that validate the university's excellent reputation.
• Assure the availability of class sections to meet student demand and achieve desirable student-faculty ratios.
• Land grant mission: MSU's status as the state's only land grant university is unique and provides the opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Inherent in the land grant mission are the seeds for Montana's future economy and the foundations for building partnerships with government and the private sector for economic development. Faculty and staff in the MSU-Extension Service and AES research centers located throughout the state have frequent contact with Montana citizens creating the potential for student recruitment and regular dissemination of university-wide programs and information. (CM/PL/PR/FR)
• Plan and implement a continuing "MSU in your life" campaign.
• Actively engage off-campus Extension Service and Experiment Station faculty and staff in carrying out the concepts within MSU strategy.
• Use Extension contacts to provide opportunities for MSU students for state/community service.
• Use "MSU-for-a-Day" visits to inventory community needs for assessment of match with MSU resources.
• Educate and encourage Bozeman-based faculty/staff in outreach programs offered through or originating from the Extension Service.
• Location: MSU is located in an area of great natural beauty that offers abundant outdoor recreational opportunities, sharing the mystique that Montana enjoys in many other sections of the United States and the world. This asset should be consistently employed, with representations of MSU's academic quality, when marketing the university to prospective students and faculty. (CM/CA/PL/PR)
• Emphasize instructional and research/creativity programs that derive relative advantage based on MSU's location, consistent with their strategic relevance to the MSU mission.
• Sense of community: MSU faculty, staff, and students have a strong sense of community. This serves to engender loyalty to institution, place, and coworkers. It is attractive to prospective students, nurturing to matriculating students and builds strong alumni ties. (PR/FR)
• Develop and implement a philosophy and program that makes MSU a very "customer-friendly" environment from day one through commencement.
• Institutionalize annual freshman/parent welcome activities.
• Incorporate community building into the orientation of new faculty and staff by exposing them to experiences in our state and region that would assist them in understanding the role and influence of MSU.
• Create opportunities within courses to build community among students, such as freshmen seminars, capstone courses, etc.
• Offer specific community-building opportunities and training to faculty to improve "town-gown" relations.
• Encourage students to participate in community service activities.

WEAKNESSES (Internal focus)

• Need for strategic focus: The university cannot optimally deploy its resources until it has a well-articulated strategic vision and plan. SPC recognizes that there is an incremental process underway that may achieve this. (CM/PL/PR/CA)
• The university president should clearly and strongly articulate MSU's strategic focus, highlighting the primacy of undergraduate education and the complementary relationship of instruction with research/creativity and outreach.
• Ensure that the university standards allowing faculty to be financially rewarded, tenured or advanced on excellence and effectiveness, or promise of excellence, in either teaching or research/creativity, are fairly applied in every academic unit.
• Take every opportunity to demonstrate, for both individuals and organizational elements, the link between the allocation of rewards and efforts to advance strategic agenda.
• Recruitment/retention of students: This must be an emphasis in order for the university to strengthen the academic quality of its student body, drawing Montana's best and brightest as well as making MSU the institution of choice for students around the nation and internationally who desire to study at an academically excellent university in the Northern Rockies. It must be recognized that the marketplace for the best students is competitive; MSU must be able to compete successfully. The financial health of the institution is inextricably related to successful recruitment and retention efforts. However, the temptation to view growth as a financial panacea should be resisted. (FL/CA/PR)
• Continue the use of external marketing services for targeted student recruitment. Base targets on MSU strategic priorities.
• Raise admission standards with the understanding that demand will increase for an MSU-Bozeman education, particularly among the best students.
• Commit to quality advising that results in students feeling welcomed and assisted; implement rewards and incentives to academic units that provide it.
• Staff student support services at peer level.
• Support student-to-student mentoring programs.
• Level of investment in employees: MSU's faculty and staff are the university's knowledge capital and public relations infrastructure. MSU must do a better job of creating incentives and rewards enabling faculty and staff recruitment, retention, and renewal. Salaries and pay scales are comparatively low; benefits are becoming more costly and levels are diminishing. These factors make it very difficult to sustain existing and create new programs of excellence. (CM/CA/PR)
• Ensure the maintenance of salary reserves for promotion, MAP, equity and market salary adjustments.
• Allocate and maintain funding for raises/competitive salaries.
• Implement a program of regular, required renewal for faculty and professional staff via sabbaticals, exchanges and other development options.
• Allocate rewards relative to university/college/departmental priorities.
• Infrastructure: The quality of MSU's infrastructure creates a profound, often decisive first impression. It should be recognized that MSU's infrastructure needs to compare favorably with alternative institutions that prospective students and faculty are considering. While attending MSU, students and faculty need to be confident the infrastructure is capable of supporting their success as learners, teachers, and/or researchers/creators. Especially in need of bolstering are MSU's physical plant (custodial services, classrooms, and labs in particular), the information technology infrastructure (workplace, hardware, networking and staffing), and library (size of facility and collections). (CM/CA/PR).
• Increase the investment in information technology with budget allocations to a level proportional to comparable institutions.
• Increase investment in library budget allocations to a level proportional to comparable institutions.
• Invest in classroom renovation.
• Leverage G & C activity to upgrade and maintain labs and associated facilities.

OPPORTUNITIES (External focus)

• Student recruitment and retention: MSU is a very attractive option for students from Montana, elsewhere in the United States and around the world. There is opportunity to increase enrollment and strengthen the academic profile of the student body. Increased enrollment of graduate, international, and out-of-state students and increased general retention would produce an increased revenue stream of non-general-fund dollars. (CA/PR/FL)
• Make fundraising for general and targeted scholarship programs a stated priority for the university and the MSU Foundation.
• Raise admission standards. The imposition of rigorous admission standards can increase numbers of applicants and improve the average scholastic ability of the student body; this could result in improved retention as well.
• Continue the use of external marketing services for targeted student recruitment. Base targets on MSU strategic priorities.
• Develop and support undergraduate and graduate programs that take advantage of the university's location and fit the profile for desired areas of growth. This should result in increased enrollments in strategically targeted programs. (CA/PR/FL)
• Increase graduate student enrollments in those disciplines where there is departmental capacity, and which will not adversely affect undergraduate instruction.
• Implement programs that specifically recruit and retain students from Montana Native American constituencies.
• Exploit location: Unique aspects of MSU and its environs are assets that should be employed in marketing the university to prospective students and faculty. Bozeman has "all-American city" designation and is a safe place to live, work and play. The city's unique attributes should be also be capitalized in the university's curriculum and research/creativity agenda (i.e., with emphasis on programmatic relevance) to give the university a competitive advantage in achieving prominence as the institution of choice in the Northern Rockies. The Summer semester could and should achieve much higher enrollments. The university's facilities could be utilized to a greater extent for conferences and workshops to produce additional revenue streams for MSU as well as marketing MSU to non-traditional sectors. (CA/PR/FL)
• Hire an experienced administrator who has been directly involved in a successful summer program to expand MSU's summer session opportunities.
• Economic development partnerships: MSU is uniquely positioned in Montana by virtue of its land grant status and mission to become the partner of choice for government and the private sector to develop the economic potential of the state. The university has particular strength in the areas of the health-related sciences and professions, entrepreneurship, a broad array of technical fields, and agricultural sciences; it is likely that these areas will mirror the sectors that hold the most promise for development in Montana's future economy. (CM/PL/PR/FR/FL)
• Incorporate potential for economic development as a factor in prioritizing university support for campus entities and programs.
• Integrate input from and collaboration with Extension Service into the development of university instruction and research programs and agenda.
• Exploit distributive learning environments: The use of technology to deliver instruction or knowledge products to resident matriculating students and to non-resident students and members of the general populace will allow MSU to serve additional or underserved students, relieve pressure for space-bound instructional offerings while providing students with schedule flexibility and to transfer the pedagogical benefits of multimedia instructional content into the traditional classroom. (CM/CA/PR/PL)
• Invest in faculty training for the development of distance-deliverable instructional materials.
• Invest in information technology infrastructure to deliver digital instructional materials at a distance and on campus. Required investments include: classroom equipment for presentation of multimedia instructional materials (see Large Classroom Project consulting report), campus server and network infrastructure, and both central and departmental support for development and delivery of digital instructional materials.
• Develop online materials in a programmatic context, offering full degree or degree-completion programs online in strategically selected fields of study.
• Build a development culture at MSU: Extramural funding is and will continue to be essential and fundamental to the university's health. The university's long-term success in fund raising will ultimately be determined by its ability to create and sustain a "development culture." In order to accomplish this there must be an understanding of and commitment to the concept of perpetual stewardship. University faculty and staff must understand that everyday service and support activities inextricably influence prospective donors decades after their graduation. (CA/FL/FR)
• Each member of the faculty and staff needs to understand his or her role in MSU's evolution into a development culture.
• Include "development sensitivity" training in all new staff and faculty orientation programs.
• Include substantive discussion of development culture experience and expectations in all administrative candidates' interviews.

THREATS (External focus)

• Unstable policy, planning and fiscal environment: Overall, a sense emerges that state government lacks a commitment to higher education for contemporary and future Montana. Funding of higher education has shifted from the state to the student during the last 15 years. The building of quality programs may be undermined by funding and allocation formulas that are not based on careful planning and sound policies for growth and institutional focus, but simply reward student body growth. Essential to continued academic excellence is the current policy regarding the universities' retention of facilities and administration revenue (i.e., indirect costs) from research grants. (CM/FL/PL)
• Tacitly and publicly state as a MSU planning assumption that state support for the university by July 1, 2011, likely will have declined to 36 percent of the institutional budget.
• Raise admission standards. Increased tuition will be more palatable and justifiable if MSU is able to raise perception of value of product.
• Describe MSU as "state assisted," rather than "state supported."
• Create a "leadership college" for regents and members of legislative leadership; use it to build knowledge and partnerships.
• Tuition & scholarships: In order to build a student body of the appropriate quality and size, MSU needs to be able to set its tuition levels competitively with similar regional or national universities. Likewise, in order to effectively compete for students regionally and nationally, MSU needs to offer competitive scholarship awards. (CM/CA/FL)
• Raise the university's scholarship endowment to levels to make it possible for MSU to compete effectively for Montana high school students who are in the top quartile of their class.
• Competition and inefficiency among MSU campuses: Without unified, coordinated, and seamless management of budget, staff, procedures, processes, and programs there is and will continue to be bothersome, fractious, and costly competition among the various MSU campuses. Not utilizing all MSU resources as efficiently as possible diminishes the optimal leveraging of resources and puts MSU at a competitive disadvantage. (CM/FL/PL/PR/CA)
• The model of administrative and programmatic autonomy for MSU campuses should be replaced with a model of administrative and programmatic integration.

Summary of SPC's Highest SWOT Priorities (October 1, 2002)

The SPC has selectively extracted and prioritized, irrespective of SWOT category, its bulleted recommendations.

Priority Items with Indirect Budgetary Implications:

• The university president should clearly and strongly articulate MSU's strategic focus, highlighting the primacy of undergraduate education and the complementary relationship of instruction with research/creativity and outreach.
• The model of administrative and programmatic autonomy for MSU campuses should be replaced with a model of administrative and programmatic integration.
• Raise the university's scholarship endowment to levels that make it possible for MSU to compete effectively for Montana high school students who are in the top quartile of their class.
• Raise admission standards. The imposition of rigorous admission standards can increase numbers of applicants and improve the average scholastic ability of the student body; this could result in improved retention as well.

Priority Items with Direct Budgetary Implications

• Ensure the maintenance of salary reserves for promotion, MAP, equity and market salary adjustments.
• Increase the investment in information technology with budget allocations proportional to comparable institutions.
• Allocate and maintain funding for raises/competitive salaries.
• Increase the investment in the library with budget allocations proportional to comparable institutions.
• Maintain an emphasis and commensurate funding to ensure a safe campus environment.
• Increase graduate student enrollments in those disciplines where there is departmental capacity, and which will not adversely affect undergraduate instruction.
• Continue the use of external marketing services for targeted student recruitment. Base targets on MSU strategic priorities.
• Invest in information technology infrastructure to deliver digital instructional materials at a distance and on campus. Required investments include: classroom equipment for presentation of multimedia instructional materials (see Large Classroom Project consulting report), campus server and network infrastructure, and both central and departmental support for development and delivery of digital instructional materials.

Revised 10/21/02

Return to regular view	Text-only	Updated: 7/18/2006