AACTE’s Strategic Plan: It Won’t Succeed Without You!
Greetings, colleagues. We are honored and excited to be co-chairing AACTE’s Strategic Planning Task Force. The task force is charged with creating a plan to guide AACTE’s activities through 2022. We had our first meeting on September 12, and we will be working hard over the next several months to produce a final plan in time for the 2019 Annual Meeting in Louisville.
We are embarking on this effort at a pivotal moment in the Association’s history. Colleges, schools, and departments of education have fewer resources to spend on representation and professional development, and there are more competitors for those scarce resources. AACTE has to constantly demonstrate its value and rapidly evolve to meet the changing needs of our profession.
Our goals for this strategic planning process are to honor the Association’s achievements and strengths, articulate the challenges it faces, and propose strategic priorities that will enable the Association to thrive in the years ahead. The process and our conversations are guided by research that we have and will continue to conduct on member needs, the environment confronting membership associations in general and AACTE in particular, and AACTE’S existing programs and activities. As we conduct this work, we will model contemporary notions about planning–that its purpose is not to set a plan in stone but rather to identify promising ideas that the association can prototype, evaluate, and continuously improve.
We have assembled a great group of association leaders and national office staff on the Task Force (see the AACTE web site for the complete list), but we cannot succeed without your active involvement. We need to hear from you! What are your most pressing needs from the organization? What will make the difference for you when it is time to determine whether to renew your AACTE membership?
Throughout the strategic planning process, there will be several opportunities for members to weigh in. Now and through September 28, you are invited to complete a three-question member flash poll (login required) about your needs and priorities. We will conduct additional polls at multiple points throughout the process to collect your real-time insights. Later this fall, we will share the draft strategic plan with AACTE members and invite you to share your reactions through several webinars and an online survey. Finally, there also is a “comment box” on the web site where you can send us your thoughts whenever you have feedback to share. Please use all of these mechanisms; AACTE is your association, and we want to ensure that it meets your needs!
To keep you informed, we will regularly blog about the process as it moves ahead. The task force is meeting in person in early October to create a first draft of the plan, and you can expect a report from us shortly thereafter. In the meantime, please visit the web site to complete the member flash poll and check out additional information, including a video message from AACTE President and CEO Lynn Gangone and an outline of the process and timeline the task force will follow.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Tags: AACTE governance, membership
