The Collaborative Strategic Planning process, which started in October 2011 has recently entered its fourth of five phases known as the Vision Conference phase.

William Weber, vice president for business affairs, is a co-chair of the steering committee for the Strategic Planning process.

“In this phase we are trying to create a shared goal for Eastern and come to a general agreement what we want it to look like in five years,” Weber said.

He said after forming goals, they are now asking the questions of what changes need to made and what they would look like.

In order to form this plan, the steering committee held a day-long conference on Sept. 27.

Weber said there were 50 to 60 people at the daylong conference along with the steering committee, and they also invited a wide assortment of people who will be affected by this plan.

He said these people included: two members of the board of trustees, students, parents and alumni. It also included local business leaders including the presidents of First Midwest Bank and Trust, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System and Lakeland College as well as local school officials and the chamber of commerce members.

“I was really impressed by the interest of the community members in Eastern’s success,” Weber said.

The conference was broken into three parts including: Establishing Shared Knowledge, the stakeholders’ review and the shared vision part that pulled the conference together, he said.

At the conference five to six goals were generated to correspond to the six original themes created in the previous phase.

After the conference, Weber and fellow steering committee members used the goals to craft a vision statement which is currently in the drafting process and is available in rough form online, he said.

The committee hosted four open sessions to get feedback on the process.

Weber said he will present the feedback to members of the Council for University Budget and Planning on Friday to get their feedback as well.

Prior to this phase during August, the steering committee worked to create six main themes in the phase three, which was “Making Sense of the Issues.” Weber said this phase also consisted of a day-long meeting.

He said they took the data from more than 900 people and they spoke to a group to try to come to a consensus of major themes.

The six themes are: Academic Excellence, Marketing and Communication, Campus and Community Life, Financial Sustainability, Emerging technologies, and Global Competition and Changing Demographics.

After determining these themes the committee broke into subcommittees and wrote concept papers, which Weber said are about five to seven pages in length and go into greater detail concerning each of the themes.

Each of the papers can be found at the Collaborative Strategic Planning website, http://www.eiu.edu/strategicplanning/.

He said the next step is the Goals Conference phase where the committee will work to make action plans before presenting to the Board of Trustees at its January 2012 meeting.

The Goals Conference will take place on Nov. 1.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].