Developing the Plan | Montgomery College, Maryland

This page provides background information for the process we undertook to develop the Strategic Plan as well as an overview of how it will be implemented over the course of the five-years. For an update of the current initiatives and work currently underway to support the plan, please see Tracking Implementation and for data regarding our progress toward reaching out outcomes see Measuring Progress.

In 2019, the Board of Trustees adopted a visionary five-year Strategic Plan, which went into effect in July 2020, and was intended to go through 2025. However, the arrival of the global coronavirus pandemic ended the routines we had known. The pandemic led to immediate changes in how the College served its students and community and supported its faculty and staff. The pandemic kept us home, changed how we connect with one another, and redefined our sense of self and community—but it was only one of many critical changes affecting postsecondary education at the start of this decade.

Through listening and learning about the lived experiences of members of internal and external communities and their desire for transformation, it became clear that there was an opportunity for our Strategic Plan to reflect changes brought on by these unprecedented times. Therefore, in fall 2022, the College began a refresh of the Strategic Plan. This effort was led by the Strategic Plan Advisory Committee (PDF, ) , also known as SPARC, composed of 40 faculty, staff, and administrators from across all areas of the college who worked through five subcommittees: Student Success Subcommittee, (2) Employees Subcommittee, (3) Community Subcommittee, (4) Workforce and Partnerships Subcommittee, and (5) Mission, Vision, and Values Subcommittee. The work of the committee was reviewed and guided by a Steering Committee.

Several key MC resources played an important part of the committee’s research and underscored the needs of our students and our community today. These allowed the committee to build upon what we have already learned through the following:

The Presidential Transition Advisory Committee report, issued in September 2022
The Your Voice, Your MC employee survey results from 2021
The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (PDF, ) results from 2021
The transformational aspirations shared during Dr. Jermaine F. Williams’ inauguration as MC president
Strategic plans from 30 other community colleges, which were reviewed and evaluated for ideas and best practices
Scholarly higher education research, for example, The Great Upheaval, by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt

While the plan is organized by four overarching interlocking Goals, it is the Intended Outcomes that are the north star—these are the things we want to achieve. So, the committee began with outcomes in mind and developed Supporting Strategies that would lead to those outcomes, and then from there, a goal statement to reflect them, and indicators to measure progress toward meeting them.

A draft of the refreshed plan was shared with the college community in February 2023 and feedback gathered through online forms, campus and collegewide forums, and student focus groups. In keeping with the College’s vision of being the community’s institution of choice, input from community leaders and employers was also critical and so forums for them to provide feedback were also held. All feedback was carefully considered by the committee who finalized the plan which was adopted by the Montgomery College Board of Trustees at their April 2023 meeting (PDF, ) and took effect in July 2023.

The Goals of the Strategic Plan serve as the College’s Annual Institutional Priorities. Each year a subset of the Intended Outcomes and associated Supporting Strategies will be selected for focus. These will form the basis of the annual goals of senior leaders whose team members’ annual goals will align and support the Strategic Plan. Intended Outcomes will be tracked formally and informally on an ongoing basis with progress reported annually via Indicator data.

The Strategic Plan is intended to be a living and dynamic roadmap, fortified by consistent review and changes as needed. The implementation of this plan will be assessed through formative and summative means that will allow us to analyze all components of the plan and make data-informed adjustments as appropriate to ensure the ongoing progress toward meeting the Goals and Transformational Aspirations. Review of the Strategic Plan progress will be reported to the Board of Trustees and College community periodically.

The “refreshed” Strategic Plan is designed to guide the College for five years through 2028. The timeline is no coincidence. It aligns with the conclusion of our next re-accreditation during the 2026–2027 academic year, so that—when composing the next Strategic Plan—the institution can take full advantage of what it learns during the accreditation process.