The Process

Calvin University is not looking to survive the higher education challenges on a year-to-year basis, it’s planning to thrive through them.

As Calvin University leadership continues to chart a course toward Vision 2030, Calvin Tomorrow is coming alongside as a key guide. It will define a specific process for developing a plan, and will then create a strategic, coherent, multi-year financial plan that moves Calvin toward its vision.

Paving a path

The university will pair (a) expense reductions that are more than the sum of their parts and have longer implementation timelines with (b) strategic investments that meaningfully boost revenues and promote excellence. Calvin will not just take steps but envision whole pathways between the university’s current point and its desired destination: Vision 2030.

Enhancing the planning process

In the past three years, Calvin has made major strides—reducing costs, restructuring debt, exceeding fundraising goals, investing in the Global Campus, securing resources for first steps in the university structure masterplan, and strengthening the institution’s work with undergraduate enrollment. But, considerable work remains. On the one hand, Calvin Tomorrow is the result of the institution’s continuous improvement in this area, but on the other hand, it is not only what Calvin has done before. It will focus on what leadership has learned, add new analytical tools, enhance the planning process, and extend a hopeful pathway into the future.

The university begins this work from a position of long-term financial health. In the coming months, faculty, staff, and administration leaders will undertake a number of projects that will, together, support development of a sustainable plan for university operations within projected budgetary means, strengthen select areas through reallocation, and identify additional strategic investments that will position the university for greater long-term success.

Key planning groups, such as a university-wide strategic budget review team and, in the academic division, a reimagined academic portfolio planning task force, will be supported by new analytical tools and by policies, processes, and practices that help the university (1) reduce costs, (2) ensure that future expenses do not grow faster than revenues, (3) bridge through the next two years of fewer resources, and, most importantly, (4) build toward the future. All faculty and staff will have opportunities to engage in this process along the way. Recommendations from this process will be made to the Planning and Priorities Committee, a committee chaired by the president that includes administrators, faculty, staff, students, and trustees.

This process will give Calvin an outlook that allows the institution to develop a compelling plan for the next three, five, and ten years.