Georgia Institute of Technology

Recent Updates

On September 3, following a luncheon celebrating the investiture of President Bud Peterson, members of the campus, city, and state communities turned their attention to shaping Georgia Tech's next twenty-five years.

Students, alumni, faculty, staff, and affiliates of Georgia Tech were invited to provide input in at least one of nine strategic themes, ranging from the Institute's culture and preserving research preeminence to Tech's statewide and global role. Approximately 700 turned out to participate.

"A fundamental challenge in higher education is reaching a consensus with faculty and staff about strategic issues and actions," said Chet Warzynski, facilitator and executive director of the Office of Organizational Development. "A meeting of this kind is based on the premise that the people most closely associated with the work have valuable information and experience from which good decisions can be made and appropriate actions determined.

"The participation of these individuals in an open and self-regulated planning and learning process leads to greater understanding, which in turn leads to greater coordination and commitment, as well as better results."

Now, Steering Committee members will take suggestions and the "big ideas" from the public discussion forums and either reinforce or reshape the key points. Steve Cross, the vice president and director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute who also is serving as a meeting facilitator during the planning process, said "These [nine] themes may change. We want [them] to be defined by the big ideas generated by the community. These ideas will be road maps to help inform the Institute's direction for the next twenty-five years."

The process will continue through November, with a preliminary draft report completed by the end of that month. Final drafts are planned by May 2010. Feedback will again be solicited from members within and outside of the campus community in summer 2010. Tech's new strategic plan will be introduced in fall 2010.

"There has been a high degree of enthusiasm at all levels for the strategic planning initiative," said meeting facilitator and Industrial and Systems Engineering Professor William Rouse. "At the same time, there have been many questions about how best to think twenty-five years into the future. We have addressed this concern by developing scenarios of alternative futures—not specifically for Tech, but of the world in which Tech will have to succeed."

Tech's strategic plan, he said, will have to be "sufficiently resilient" to be adaptable in the coming years, regardless of the world that exists at the time.

"Public dialogue about the future circumstances we are likely to encounter, as well as the future circumstances we hope to create, will be a very important and invaluable element of the community's involvement in the process," Rouse said.