Process Committee Charge
Aloha! Mahalo for agreeing to serve on this important committee. The charges for the group are critical to ensuring the continued success of UH Mānoa by our being well-prepared to address the challenges and opportunities we face in an ever-changing world.
Our campus needs to reflect on the current strategic plan and develop plans and processes to determine priorities going forward. Several circumstances make this activity particularly important at this moment: state budget restraints, potential significant turnover in our faculty due to retirements in the next two to three years, and the approaching end of the first strategic plan, "Defining our Destiny." These are significant issues and UH Mānoa needs a process to assist discussions and decision-making regarding campus academic priorities, including how available facilities and resources should be invested to support those priorities.
Over the past year I have heard from many members of the UH Mānoa community about the efforts that went into the original strategic plan. Clearly, it was a tremendous amount of work and continues to be a source of great pride—and a number of the original objectives have been met. However, there is still much work to be done and my sense is that our campus may want to revisit or update the plan. I am also hearing, however, that it would not be necessary to spend the majority of our efforts redoing the plan and should instead focus on updating or refreshing our existing strategic plan. The initial charge to this committee is thus to recommend a process for updating or refreshing our strategic plan in order to clarify our academic priorities.
The second charge is to recommend a process to advise me on the investments and reallocations needed to accomplish those priorities. For example, when our campus needs to make budget cuts or receives additional funding, this process would engage and solicit input from the campus in a timely manner to implement needed actions. Any such process should be transparent and nimble because our campus needs to be well-informed about priorities and able to move quickly if financial circumstances change (which they do fairly often). The goal is to invest resources strategically in order to accomplish academic priorities and to ensure that UH Mānoa is respected and recognized for its accomplishments as a top tier research university now and into the future. To the extent possible, this process should align academic, personnel (e.g. potential retirements), fiscal, physical, and technological needs with the strategic objectives and priorities of the institution.
Please consider these charges and make a recommendation to me by the conclusion of the fall semester. I encourage and support your engaging in a dialog with the UH Mānoa community as you formulate your recommendations.
My office will schedule an initial meeting with this committee, the vice chancellors, and myself so we can address any questions you may have. We are all ready to support the committee and are willing to provide resources should you have specific needs.
I look forward to our meeting and I thank you in advance for your important efforts on behalf of UH Mānoa.
Virginia S. Hinshaw
Chancellor
vhinshaw@hawaii.edu