Howard Strategic Planning FAQS

Whether you’re a student, teacher, faculty, staff, or alumni pursuing your career, you typically plan out your goals and aspirations, and steps to achieve them, right? A strategic plan is similar. Imagine a document that outlines the steps to take for our university’s future, ensuring we charter the right path for the next few years and build a resilient future. It embodies our university’s collective vision while outlining key goals, strategies to achieve those goals, and indicators of success so we can track progress. A strategic plan is a roadmap to push us to even greater heights as a university.

With the conclusion of Howard Forward, our transformative 2019-2024 strategic plan, we saw great wins: the increase in student enrollment from 10,000 to 15,000 students, increase in faculty pay by twenty percent, and more. We’re proud of the work done to push our university forward. But, the work has truly just begun. Leaning into our principles of excellence, leadership, service, and truth, we're already planning ahead for what's to come for the 2025-2029 school years. We’re thinking of ways to not only set our university up for success, but to redefine what it means to be an HBCU in the 21st century.

When starting a strategic planning process, there are key priorities or focuses that guide the initiatives in the plan. Through insights gathered from President Vinson’s Bison Engagement Tour, we’ve identified the below priorities:

• Increase revenue to ensure Howard’s financial sustainability
• Position Howard to be a premier destination for undergrad, graduate, and professional students
• Establish a continuous improvement process for organizational procedures and services
• Advance our Capital and Campus Master Plan to increase our physical footprint and address needs around classroom space and housing
• Increase the national and international visibility of Howard to broaden our reach and gain access and insight to other places

Howard Forward, the 2024-2029 strategic plan, focused on securing more funding for our university, improving resources for our students and faculty, and continuing our legacy of service in the community. This plan pushed us forward to new heights by expanding our campus, making investments in state of the art classrooms and technology, as well as increasing our work in research.
 

Our new strategic plan will focus on strengthening our processes and long-term financial sustainability, advancing our position as a premier institution. Although the last strategic plan pushed us forward, this new plan will push us toward Maximum Strength to ensure Howard can serve as a more dynamic, inclusive, and forward-thinking institution for the years ahead.

Strategic plans are built from the priorities of the institutions they guide. As Howard closed out our last strategic plan,we came away with great findings on how to engage our community to discover not just the needs of the mecca that is Howard, but the people that make us great. Kicking off in 2024, the strategic planning process began with President Vinson’s Bison Engagement Tour to hear from Howard students, faculty, and staff on what they need to reach Maximum Strength. Coming out of the tour, the Office of Strategy alongside President Vinson developed the Bison Real Talk series, a wave of conversations covering the topics our fellow Bison knew Howard needed to lead on in order to reach Maximum Strength. We know the key to this process is hearing from our Howard community. After speaking with many of you, we developed the
following guiding principles to lead this process:

> Be Transparent
> Aim for Inclusive Engagement
> Align to Howard’s Mission and Core Values
> Be Sensitive
> Use Data
> Be Creative

Following these principles, we’ve worked alongside our Bison Vision Council and the Hilltop Architects to determine the priorities for not just Howard, but our entire Bison community. Since Fall of 2024 we’ve held conversations on emerging issues such as AI and challenges facing higher education. Coming this Spring, we’ll discuss the topics most impacting our community today such as financial challenges and mental well-being. We’re also engaging our external partners with regular communications on the process, meetings, and pop-up events on campus to gather input from all stakeholders.

We’re eager to explore the steps that our university will take these next few years with you. We’re in the process of drafting and refining the contents of our new strategic plan. Be on the lookout for the completed plan by late 2025. We’ll be sure to loop you into the final release date once identified.

Everyone is involved in creating the university's strategic plan—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. All stakeholders have a voice.

• The Bison Vision Council: A 70+ person advisory committee selected by the president to provide guidance and support on the university’s strategic goals, ensuring alignment with the needs of the entire community.
• The Hilltop Architects: A 20 person subcommittee whose members serve as the architects of the university’s strategic plan. The Hilltop Architects take the vision and priorities shared from across the university community and turn them into actionable insights, carefully curating key pieces of the plan to ensure it is practical, impactful, and aligned with the university's long-term goals.
   

These governance committees have representation from students, staff, and faculty to ensure an inclusive engagement process.

Thanks to the completion of surveys and intentional dialogue with our university community members, the Office of Strategy and our governance committees have been able to develop the themes and initiatives of our next strategic plan. This process involved honest and transparent conversations about some of the strengths, challenges, and opportunities for Howard. We then synthesized the conversations into key themes which lead to potential initiatives to take on within the plan. This was not an overnight process, but a collective university effort.

Research and data are the bread and butter of the strategic planning process. Not only does it inform our decisions, but it helps us measure progress. The Office of Strategy has been collecting data by surveying students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as looking into graduation rates, retention rates, and the financial health of the university. With the feedback gathered and the insights gained through research, we’re drafting a plan that is informed by both the thoughts and data findings of our community’s needs.

We’re glad you asked. Creating a comprehensive strategic plan requires us to have complete participation from our full university community. The Office of Strategy has filled the calendar with curated events and strategic planning conversations you can participate in. For the full calendar, please visit strategicplan.howard.edu/planning-our-future. Additionally, you can submit your thoughts and feedback by visiting strategicplan.howard.edu/contact-us. We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event and hearing your thoughts.

The new strategic plan is directly tied to who Howard plans to become and how we will excel as a university, together. Change is required for growth, so some initiatives developed in the plan may have a direct or indirect correlation to your Howard experience. Whether you are a student, faculty, staff, or alumni, our goal is to ensure you see yourself within this plan.

To stay up to date on the latest happenings regarding the strategic planning process, please visit strategicplan.howard.edu and be on the lookout for the strategic plan updates from the Office of Strategy.