Strategy, Policy, and Integrated Planning (SPIP)
At the heart of Portland Community College’s commitment to excellence, the Strategy, Policy, and Integrated Planning (SPIP) Division ensures our institution remains adaptive, forward-looking, and aligned with the ever-evolving needs of our community. We are dedicated to aligning our college’s strategic vision with meaningful policies, securing resources, and ensuring effectiveness in every aspect of the college’s mission.
What We Do
- Strategic Planning: We oversee the college’s long-term vision, aligning it with our mission, values, and the needs of our students and community. The 2025-2028 “Reclaiming Your Momentum” Strategic Plan is PCC’s blueprint for the next three years, emphasizing student success, community engagement, and sustainable growth.
- Policy and Governance Development: Creating a transparent, updated, and robust policy framework that governs our institution’s decisions and operations. The division also serves as stewards of the institution’s policies, ensuring they are clear, updated, and relevant.
- Integrated Planning & Continuous Improvement: By integrating different planning efforts at the college – academics, operations, community outreach, among others – we strive for a harmonized and holistic approach to education. We continually refine our strategies, approaches, and operations, ensuring that we remain adaptive and effective.
- Institutional Effectiveness: Assessing and evaluating the impact of our initiatives, ensuring that our actions lead to tangible, positive outcomes for our community.
- Grants: Identifying, applying for, and managing grants that further the college’s objectives and amplify our resources.
The Origins and Goals of SPIP
In the Reaffirmation of PCC Accreditation in July of 2022, PCC’s accreditors, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), made four recommendations that help structure and define the work of SPIP.
- Recommendation 1: Continue to integrate its planning processes (e.g., strategic plan, equity plan, and other planning efforts) and their associated metrics to ensure they are systematic in defining mission fulfillment and facilitating continuous improvement.
- Recommendation 2: Further refine its use of disaggregated data from its planning processes to inform and implement strategies to guide planning, decision-making, and allocation of resources.
- Recommendation 3: Fully demonstrate that the results of its assessment efforts are used to inform academic and learning-support planning practices to continuously improve student learning outcomes and learning-support planning practices.
- Recommendation 4: Comprehensive alignment of policies, procedures, and administrative guidelines that are clearly stated, easily understandable, readily accessible, and regularly reviewed.
With these recommendations in mind, the division of Strategy, Policy, and Integrated Planning was created, and is leading the charge to innovate in these areas.
How our Planning Aligns
Integrated planning is a sustainable approach to planning that builds relationships, aligns the organization, and emphasizes preparedness for change. It is more than a process; it is an approach, which is:
- Sustainable: Build a culture of planning
- Collaborative: Engages all stakeholders
- Aligned: Across the college
- Change-ready: Poised to respond to a volatile environment
The college’s different divisions and departments have done a great deal of planning, and SPIP is currently working on aligning and integrating those plans. When all the planning efforts are aligned in addressing the college’s strategic issues, the college will be much more effective in achieving our goals. Our planning efforts will include:
Student Learning and Assessment
The goal of assessment at Portland Community College is to inform improvements to learning, curriculum, and instruction. Each assessment cycle is documented through an annual reporting and feedback process carried out by the Learning Assessment Council (LAC). The LAC is a faculty body that guides the work so that it can be a mechanism for college learning.
The LAC collaborates with Academic Affairs and college leadership to ensure our Subject Area Committees (SACs), such as Math or Biology, for example, provide assessment data that keeps the college aligned with the NWCCU 2020 Accreditation Standards. The Learning Assessment Committee encourages SACs to design assessments using authentic questions about student learning in order to grow their curriculum and programs. It emphasizes looking at student achievement across their courses and programs to identify areas for growth and development.
IT Planning
The published IT Strategic Plan was launched in fall 2016 to provide an institutional blueprint of strategic technology projects that aligned with PCC’s core strategies and key college-wide planning efforts, as well as driving IT operational maturity. The plan focused on a five-year timeframe to drive IT infrastructure, data, applications, and processes to best-in-class status for educational technology. Most of the objectives of the current IT Strategic Plan have been achieved and as of the 1st quarter of 2022, PCC’s IT team is working on a revised strategic plan in alignment with the upcoming accreditation cycle.
Key documents:
2021 Climate Action Plan
PCC’s 2021 Climate Action Plan: Resiliency, Equity, and Education for a Just Transition is the college’s five-year roadmap towards climate justice. Unified under a shared vision, PCC’s 2021 Climate Action Plan establishes a new carbon neutrality goal of 2040 and builds off an impressive amount of work done to date to outline clear pathways for equity-focused climate action. PCC’s 2021 CAP has four focus areas, two of which address PCC’s GHG emissions from its operations, a section focused on education and outreach to ensure the PCC community has the tools, resources, and knowledge to lead in climate action, and resiliency to help PCC equitably adapt to global climate change. Each focus area has five-year goals and associated strategies, vetted through a Climate Action Equity Guide, to set PCC on the path to 2040 carbon neutrality and climate justice.
Key documents:
Meet the SPIP Team
- Kurt Simonds, Vice-President, Strategy, Policy, & Integrated Planning
- Heather Allenby, Executive Assistant
- Dieterich Steinmetz, Dean, Effectiveness and Planning
- Chris Armstrong-Cortez, Administrative Assistant
- Laura Massey, Director, Institutional Effectiveness
- Institutional Effectiveness Team:
- Programmer/Analyst: Trey Guy
- Programmer/Analyst: Djambel Unkov
- Programmer/Analyst: Ryan Bohac
- Research Analyst: Alyssa Eggebrecht
- Institutional Effectiveness Team:
- Sarah Rose Evans, Manager, Strategic Planning
- Jeannie Moton-Winn, Manager, Policy/Special Projects
- Lorraine Churchill, Manager, Emergency Preparedness
- Vanessa Wood, Director, Grants
- Grants Team
- Grant Specialist & Assistant: Shannan Cox
- Grant Specialist & Assistant: Marcie Evans
- Pre-Award Grant Officer: Jill Gear
- Pre-Award Grant Officer: Lori Gates
- Pre-Award Grant Officer: Michelle DuBarry
- Post-Award Grant Officer: Beth Gebstadt
- Grants Team
Questions?
Contact us: spip@pcc.edu
Thank you for your interest in our division. Together, we look forward to crafting a vibrant and inclusive future for Portland Community College.