Trusteeship - May/June 2020 - 25

strategic direction for the whole institution (e.g., SNHU's transformation through adding a national online college).
The culture of shared governance on college campuses can be
the facilitator or, too often, the impediment to both innovation and
strategic planning. Marcy agrees when she says, "Actually transforming an institution around a common vision is a challenging
objective because it demands that shared-governance models focus
on the needs of the students and the sustainability of the institution."
These observations make clear why faculty must be at the table
with trustees and presidents and administrators in understanding
and responding to current higher education challenges in ways that
expand traditional notions of shared governance for all involved.
Questions for trustees, administrators, and faculty to ask
together include:
1.	 Is our current strategic plan strategic and, if not, how best
can our institution's leadership create a strategic planning
process that will address in innovative ways current external
challenges to our institution's sustainability?
2.	 What issues in our institution's shared governance and decision-making culture do we need to address to enable real
innovation in our strategic thinking and planning?

The Intersection of Shared Governance and
Leadership in Thinking Institutionally
Steven Bahls, in his book Shared Governance in Time of Change,
provides a useful summary of three types of shared governance
models that exist on college and university campuses and advocates
for a new, fourth model that says presidents, trustees, and faculty
"should seek to align institutional priorities"-together.11 This view
of shared governance dovetails well with AGB's notion of "integral
leadership" by presidents and trustees "which links the president,
faculty, and board in a well-functioning partnership devoted to a
well-defined, broadly affirmed institutional vision" as described
in The Leadership Imperative.12 However, the actual governance
culture and strategic planning processes on many private college or
university campuses are far more complex, and messy, than these
recommendations for collaborative constituent roles recommend.
First of all, on virtually all college and university campuses
there are positive core values that are in tension within and among
trustee, administrator, and faculty constituencies. These tensions
include: teaching vs. research; liberal vs. professional education;
undergraduate vs. graduate education; tradition vs. change; transparency vs. confidentiality; authority vs. participation; and faculty-centered vs. student-centered decision-making. These and other
competing values form a key part of the cultural context on most
college or university campuses and often result in passionate disagreements in any strategic thinking process that recommends substantial change-even when all parties agree that change is needed.
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Second, there are nearly immutable lines drawn on most campuses between the "authority" and final decision-making responsibility of trustees and administrators who oversee financial matters (e.g.,
budgets, endowment management, etc.) and of faculty who assume
primary responsibility for academic matters (e.g., curriculum, student learning goals, etc.). With major changes needed in both the
financial and academic areas, this division in responsibilities can be a
huge impediment in collective decision-making on most campuses.
The combination of disagreements about which core values support
which decisions and who should make the final decisions complicate
"shared" governance even more in tough financial times.
A recent example is the charge by the faculty senate at Tulsa
University that the strategic planning process led by the provost
violated shared governance practices in finalizing the "True Commitment" plan that cuts approximately 40 percent of the university's arts and sciences programs and reorganizes the rest into
divisions. The faculty have now gone to court to ask the attorney
general of Oklahoma to overturn the administration's and board's
repeated decisions to move forward with the plan. A counter
example is the innovative Summit Program at Agnes Scott College.
Questions about the financial viability of the 600-women Agnes
Scott College were ultimately engaged by the president, board, and
faculty together. Through leadership by the president and regular
collaboration between all three constituencies over more than a
year's time, the Summit Program that focuses on leadership and
global awareness for women students is now infused in a thoroughly revised curriculum, a four-person advising board for each
student, a study abroad or off-campus experience for each student,
and a revitalization of campus life programs. In the fall of 2018,
Agnes Scott had its largest enrollment ever at 1,040, with nearly
90 percent of new students saying the Summit Program played a
significant role in their enrollment decision. However, the typical
cultural tensions may have expressed themselves, Agnes Scott's
reconceived institutional vision is a good example of why strategic
planning participants-trustees, administrators, and faculty-must
rise above their constituency roles to "think institutionally."
In his monograph called Thinking Institutionally, Hugh Heclo
says that individual and constituent disagreements and distrust can
be healthy if they are grounded in a sincere commitment to an institution shared with others. Processes of strategic thinking require
participants to reflect holistically and comprehensively about their
institution and its future instead of thinking out of their institutional roles as a member of "the faculty member," "the trustees," or
"the administration." Heclo concludes, "To think institutionally is to
stretch your time horizon backwards and forwards so that both the
shadows of the past and future lengthen into the present."13 That, in
essence, is what trustees, administrators, and faculty are asked to do
in Mintzberg's or Collins' "strategic thinking" questioning.
Such collaborative, holistic, and innovative thinking can only
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