Integrated Planning: The “Difference that Makes a Difference” in Institutional Effectiveness Over Time

Higher education is at a crossroads. Institutions need to be increasingly adaptable to unexpected stressors while building more robust systems for assessing their students’ longitudinal, multifaceted development within the context of mission-driven operations. Integrated planning is a collaborative process that meets these goals through the intentional coordination, within and among units, to engage in long-term planning while nimbly responding to changes that warrant procedural alterations so that institutions can meet their strategic goals. In this paper, we demonstrate how the architecture of institutional effectiveness (IE) is inextricably linked to the quality of its integrated planning (IP), with student learning and developmental outcomes at its nexus.