Current Strategic Planning Efforts

Strategic Planning: Shaping Monroe Community College's Future

Monroe Community College is embarking on a collaborative process to develop the College's next Strategic Plan. Guided by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Resilient by Design framework, the planning process is designed to be inclusive, evidence-informed, and focused on preparing Monroe Community College for the opportunities and challenges of the decade ahead.

Building on the strong foundation established through Vision2027, the College will engage faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni, employers, community partners, and other stakeholders in meaningful dialogue about Monroe's future. Through broad participation, environmental scanning, institutional data, and stakeholder engagement, the College will identify the strategic directions and priorities that will guide Monroe Community College in the years ahead.

The Strategic Planning Leadership Team (SPLT), serving as the project's steering committee, will provide leadership and oversight throughout the Strategic Planning Process. The College is partnering with Collaborative Brain Trust (CBT) to facilitate stakeholder engagement, support organizational and project planning, and assist in developing the Strategic Plan.

Beginning in Fall 2026 and continuing through Summer 2027, members of the College community will have opportunities to participate through surveys, interviews, listening sessions, campus and community engagement activities, and the Strategic Planning Online Portal. Project updates, meeting materials, engagement opportunities, key milestones, and opportunities to provide feedback will be shared through the website and online portal throughout the planning process.

The resulting Strategic Plan will establish Monroe Community College's strategic directions, priorities, goals, and implementation framework, ensuring the College remains responsive, innovative, and committed to student success, workforce development, and community impact.

How to Participate

Your voice matters.

The success of Monroe Community College's Strategic Planning Process depends on broad participation from across the College and our community. Throughout the project, faculty, staff, students, alumni, employers, and community partners will have opportunities to share their ideas, experiences, and perspectives through:

Surveys
Listening sessions
Interviews
Campus and community engagement activities
The Strategic Planning Online Portal, where participants can submit comments, access project updates, meeting materials, key documents, and project timelines, and share ideas and feedback throughout the planning process.

We encourage every member of the Monroe Community College community to participate and help shape the College's future.

Please use the comment form to share thoughts, ideas and feedback about the Strategic Plan Effort

Members

Purpose

This document is designed to support kickoff and ongoing project coordination by providing a shared reference point for how Monroe Community College’s (MCC) strategic planning timeline aligns with the Collaborative Brain Trust (CBT) work plan and consulting approach.

The MCC RFP establishes the official institutional milestones, governance structure, timeline expectations, and required deliverables governing development of the Strategic Plan through August 2027. The CBT proposal operationalizes the planning approach through three project stages and applies the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Resilient by Design framework as the primary organizing context for environmental scanning, stakeholder engagement, strategic prioritization, and implementation planning.

This crosswalk is intended to clarify sequencing, roles, responsibilities, governance touchpoints, and expected outputs throughout the engagement. It is designed to serve as a working project management document and does not replace the official RFP or proposal.

Summary of Expectations

This Summary of Expectation (SoE) is being issued from Dr. DeAnna Burt-Nanna, the President of Monroe Community College (College), to the Strategic Planning Leadership Team (SPLT), co-chaired in 2026-2027 by Kelsey Bright, Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs and Tori Matthews, Assistant Professor, Biology, to develop a new MCC strategic plan (Plan) to be implemented in 2027.

The SPLT and co-chairs are to function as a recommending body to the MCC President and the MCC Board of Trustees (Board). The President and Board shall act in good faith to consider the SPLT’s recommendations in making final decisions and determinations regarding Plan priorities, content, and implementation.

The President has authorized the engagement of a strategic planning consultant (Consultant) to serve as a resource by leveraging its regional and national perspective on the higher education landscape at this critical juncture in the 60-year history of the College. The Consultant will facilitate, supplement, and support the work of the SPLT and present its findings to the College, President, and Board in preparation for the Board’s approval of the Plan in August 2027. An RFP has been issued, and the Executive Committee of the SPLT is tasked with reviewing the proposals and recommending a Consultant to the President and Executive Leadership Team in March 2026.

The SoE to the SPLT is to develop a strategic plan which is ready for a first review by the Board during its June 2027 meeting and in anticipation of approval at the August 2027 meeting of the Board.

The SPLT will also submit to the President and Board recommendations for potential revisions to the MCC Mission, Vision, and Core Values statements for alignment with Plan goals and objectives.

The makeup of the SPLT must be diverse and reflective of the diversity of employee classification, demographic makeup, operational interests, and campus locations.

The Plan’s outcomes and priorities must be student-centric for today and tomorrow’s community, economic, and workforce needs.

Input into the Plan must intentionally reflect the depth and breadth of perspectives from MCC students and employee groups across the College, as well as MCC’s Foundation and Association and the Board of Trustees.

As the “community’s college,” the Plan’s impact must bear evidence of the College’s response to the interests of diverse external stakeholders across the community (including a diversity of zip codes), primary business and industry sectors, and K-12 and higher education partners. The Plan must also be agile to adapt to changing needs.

The Plan is to yield a minimum of three (3) but not more than five (5) key priorities that serve to chart a strategic direction for the College over the next five years. Goals developed in support of Plan priorities must be Strategic, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, Time-bound, Inclusive, and Equitable within the Plan timeline. These priorities and goals will be operationalized and actualized through the development of divisional plans led by the respective members of the President’s Cabinet, the President, and the MCC Board of Trustees.

The SPLT is to integrate the priorities of existing plans into its recommendations to effectively guide divisional planning across the College.

Finally, the SPLT is hereby tasked to ensure its work consistently reflects MCC’s values, to innovate and “Catalyze Bright Futures for our Community and its People.”

Strategic Planning Context – AACC Resilient by Design

Monroe Community College has elected to use the AACC Resilient by Design framework as the organizing context for development of its next Strategic Plan. Consistent with the RFP and the CBT proposal, the framework is intended to serve not as a prescribed planning model, but as a lens to help the College examine institutional resilience, adaptability, long-term sustainability, and responsiveness to changing student, workforce, demographic, technological, and higher education conditions.

As reflected throughout this work plan, the planning process is intended to integrate environmental scanning, stakeholder engagement, institutional sensing, synthesis, prioritization, and implementation planning to help MCC identify a focused set of strategic priorities that will guide the College’s future direction beginning in 2027.

Accordingly, project activities, engagement approaches, and deliverables are designed to support MCC in charting its future direction through a strategic planning process that is data-informed, inclusive, implementation-oriented, and aligned with institutional mission, vision, values, and related plans.

Timeline

January 2026: Appointment of Strategic Planning Leadership Team (SPLT) co-chairs and issuance of an RFP for a Strategic Planning Consultant.
February 2026: Announce committee membership to the College community.
March 2026: Committee recommends Strategic Planning Consultant to the President and ELT; President and ELT select Strategic Planning Consultant.
April - June 2026: Following consultant selection, MCC leadership, SPLT, and project participants engage in startup coordination and preparation for formal project launch activities
June 2026: Committee confirms stakeholder and focus group structure in consultation with President and ELT
June - December 2026: Quantitative and qualitative data collection occurs including document review, surveys, focus groups, interviews, and open forums; key findings shared with the College community
January - February 2027: MCC leadership, SPLT, and planning participants review findings and engage in synthesis discussions leading toward recommendations
March 2027: Committee advances recommendations to President and ELT
May 2027: Strategic priorities finalized in consultation with President and ELT
June 2027: Strategic Plan proposal presented to the MCC Board of Trustees for first read
July 2027: Leadership and planning participants review Board and stakeholder feedback and finalize plan content
August 2027: Board approves Strategic Plan and plan is shared with the College community

View the full Timeline and Workplan Alignment Table

Meeting Schedule, Agenda, and Notes

Fall 2026

September 4, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Friday)
September 16, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Wednesday)
September 30, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Wednesday)†
October 14, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Wednesday)
October 30, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Friday)
November 13, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Friday)
November 25, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Wednesday/Thanksgiving Recess 11/26/26)‡
December 11, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Friday)
December 23, 2026, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (Wednesday/Final Exams Week)‡

Winter 2027

January 21 & 22, 2027 – Goal-Setting Retreat (Thursday afternoon to Friday morning)

Spring 2027

Meeting dates to be added as confirmed.

†May be in person, pending the stakeholder meeting schedule.

‡Tentative; meeting will be confirmed based on the project schedule.