UB's Environmental Scan is a tool to inform the decisions of Senior Leadership and other university planners by pinpointing external trends that may present potential opportunities or challenges. The scan will support planning efforts during the ARPP.
The effort first launched in fall 2015 by the VPFA, with the first iteration composed of several articles from industry publications on general higher education trends. Sources included the Chronicle of Higher Education, Society for College and University Planning and NACUBO. The articles were referenced in the Resource Planning Guide.
In spring 2017, Resource Planning (Laurie Barnum and Mary Luisi) partnered with University Communications (Jeff Smith) to engage with units to develop a robust scan.
Materials were collected from contacts throughout the university. The working group included:
In spring 2017, University Communications (Jeff Smith, Amy Dauber and Craig Garaas-Johnson) aggregated and synthesized the working group input into the draft scan framework.
