Strategic Planning for COBE: SWOT Analysis
On a snowy Friday in February, dozens of students, faculty, staff, administrators, business partners, and alumni met at Cravath Lake to work on a revised SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis for CoBE. Participants came from within the college as well as across campus and the community. James Bronson (Mgmt) led the discussions, asking tables to generate their thoughts and share them with the group as a whole. At regular intervals, table teams explained their ideas and then compared and contrasted their comments with others at the session.
Top-rated strengths were the quality of the faculty and alumni, the new building, nationally-recognized student organizations, the general reputation of the business school, and the Dean (smiley face goes here)... Most commonly cited weaknesses were limited multiculturalism and diversity, weak branding and marketing, and the need for more fund raising.
Opportunities most often given by tables were globalization, relationships with businesses, and online education. Finally, threats were reduced state support, scarcity and cost of faculty, competition, and UW System initiatives that could lead to further regulation of college activities.
From this SWOT, the groups generated a number of possible strategic actions. The action most repeated among the table teams was the development of a marketing program and a brand for CoBE. Tied for second most frequently mentioned actions were integrating outreach activities with student projects to expand economic development and investing in and expanding fund raising activities. Other actions were to provide more support for multicultural students so that they could be more successful in the college and also doing more cross-university collaboration (including strategic planning, student organizations, social interactions, curriculum, and grant-writing).
The SWOT and action ideas have moved to the Strategic Planning Committee for their review and development. If you have further comments, each department has a representative on the committee.