Creating CMU's Academic Vision for the future

Anticipating the needs of society through our teaching, scholarship, and service in a rapidly changing world

The initiative to develop Central Michigan University’s Academic Vision is officially underway. By shaping the Academic Vision, an essential element of the university’s strategic plan, CMU will position itself to respond to a wide range of challenges and opportunities in the future. This effort will be grounded in scenario planning, which is a strategy-related methodology employed by many organizations to test their long-term assumptions and explore the uncertain landscape of their future environment. 

One of the greatest strengths of scenario planning is the engagement of the organization in imagining a wide range of possible futures over a long-term horizon and developing strategies to prepare CMU to thrive.  The process is designed to make deeply held assumptions and beliefs explicit and to test those beliefs and assumptions against the critical uncertainties facing the university. Critical uncertainties become the building blocks for scenarios. The resultant scenarios provide a context to develop strategy and for monitoring the external environment in which CMU operates as it strives to build adaptive capacity and proactively shape its future.