The Planning Committee’s Role and Scope

In Spring, 1992 the President created the Long Range Planning Assumptions Committee, now the Planning Committee. The charge was originally twofold: First, the committee was asked to provide recommendations to the president regarding a Statement of Philosophy, a Mission Statement, and Goals for the College. Second, the committee was to solicit proposals for new spending, review, and make recommendations to the President. The latter process was designed to give all members of the College access to the budget-making process and to ensure that the College’s Goals were reflected in its budgets. Since that time, the committee’s charge included the review of the Vision Statement, which replaced the Statement of Philosophy in 1998.

Assigning both tasks to one committee helps ensure that the college’s resources are used to support projects that help the College realize its Goals. This linkage is demonstrated by the committee’s practice of requiring persons who submit proposals for new spending to cite the College Goal that their proposals will support and by its practice of ranking the proposals by the Goals they address as the firs step toward producing an overall ranking.

While the Planning Committee’s major responsibility in spring semesters involves reviewing and ranking proposals for new spending in the following year, it was also necessary to recommend cost cutting measures for 2003/04 because of State of Texas budget reductions. The Committee used the procedures and processes that had been developed to make those recommendation for cuts and for spending that was critical to the college.