Connecting the Dots:
How Ozarks Tech Links Data, Budgets & Strategy

00:38Thank you for joining me today for another episode of Data Stakes, where I have conversations with professionals who work directly in the institutional research or effectiveness field or are data adjacent in their role in higher education. Today's conversation will focus on an integrated methodology for strategic planning that creates a partnership between strategy and daily work. My guests today are Dr. Callie Holden, College Director, Director of Strategic Planning and Grant Development at Ozark Tech, and Misty Tolet, Director of Strategic Planning, also at Ozark Tech, a two-year technical community college with a main campus in Springfield, Missouri. Callie and Misty, it's always great to talk with you. Let's jump right into our main subject, and at the end, let's finish by telling our listeners in the Midwest about midair. So let's start by talking about how integrated planning is defined and implemented at Ozarks Tech and the role data plays as a strategic asset.

01:42Yes, well first Debbie, thanks for having us here on the podcast with you. Integrated Planning at OTC was really born out of knowing that we had these processes that were really similar but had a lot of different due dates and ways that you would approach them and training. And we just saw that it was kind of, it was complicated for people to follow. Because you didn't know, was that one going into Excel? Was that one going into the software system? When was that due date again? And so we really spent some time coming together and saying, okay, we're going to bring assessment of student learning, departmental planning, new budget requests, and then we do a peer review meeting. We're going to bring them, program review, we're going to bring them all into one process, which we called integrated planning. At the time, HLC, the accrediting body, here in the Midwest, they used integrated planning in their criterion. So that's where we got the word—not original to us. Now kind of later on, the Society for College and University Planning, SCUP, they use integrated planning in their materials. And I've learned that that definition can kind of take on different lives at different institutions. But for us, it was bringing that model together. And as a part of that, that was also an opportunity for us to take a look at the data literacy that we had on campus. We had put in our pillars of care. So we wanted to have this, you know, really student centered environment on the college campus. And one of those pillars that we had was being data informed. So that was a then a journey to kind of bring data to everyone at the college, regardless of what your position was, and also kind of teaching our approach to data, which was that it was going to inform the decision. So we were going to also put that in with your experience and those contexts as well. So we brought all that together with Integrated Planning. It took us about a year to establish that. A lot of that discussion was centered around timeline and budget creation and how we could kind of fit that in just right. And then we launched it and now we are on our fourth year of this process. So we operate on a three year cycle. our first group that we did, we're now on their second go around. We've learned a lot throughout the process, made some changes and we're just excited to see how it is for this year.

04:05Okay, Callie, did you have anything you wanted to add there?

04:08No, think Misty really covered the key points. think one of the things that has really set Ozarks Tech apart for a long time is we have had a commitment to data. Our chancellor is—he's always been a numbers guy and he really appreciates having information to help inform decision making. And so that culture was really established at the top, a culture of strong planning and strong data informed decision making and integrated planning really helps to take that culture and integrate it of processes that support and reinforce data informed decision making at the departmental level. you know, it's been a long journey to take a lot of those different processes that lived all across the college and bring them into one integrated planning process. But I think Misty in particular really has a gift for working with all different areas of the college and seeing ways that we can not have conflicting processes, but complementary processes. And that's been, think really the gift that integrated planning has brought to us is rather than having to do three or four processes that so many times are asking you for similar information, integrated planning, we get to ask, you know, once that important piece of information and ask, you know, in another part of that process, the key pieces there rather than the budget office needing to know why do you need this budget request while your departmental plan also is talking about that budget request or your assessment plan is talking about using this data and then you're talking about it again and you're planning documents about how you're going to use that data to make decisions. Bringing all of that information into one place. While it's a little bit of a heavier lift that first time you do it as a department because you're doing a lot of different pieces all at once, over time I think departments have really started to see how much time it saves them because they're not doing so many different processes and turning them into different areas. And so my hope is as we continue to go, you know, that we keep seeing more and more improvement in departments and really their comfort with data informed decision making in that planning level.

06:17And that just takes time. That's been my experience. It takes more than one cycle for people to begin to feel comfortable. So how