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Using External Environmental Scanning and Forecasting to Improve Strategic Planning
written by Joel Lapin
The Community College of Baltimore County
Vol. 11, No. 2, Spring 2004
The effectiveness of community colleges is increasingly dependent on their understanding of the external
environment and their capacity to forecast and respond to the changing external landscape. As a result, they
need to establish a system to continuously monitor changes in that environment and to identify and weigh the
implications of changes on the communities they serve and on the colleges as well. This can be accomplished
in part by developing and implementing an external environmental scanning and forecasting activity to
identify trends in the external environment and use external trends to develop a strategic plan. This article
will explain external environmental scanning and forecasting and discuss its essential role in developing
a strategic plan that anticipates and responds to forces of change affecting both community colleges and
the communities they serve. Evidence of success includes two case studies of community colleges which used
external environmental scanning and forecasting to identify core trends in their respective communities and
developed strategic plans to address these forces of change.
read more...
Envrionmental Scanning Abstract Form The idea of Environmental Scanning
is to improve the systematic collection and analysis of information (i.e. “trend spotting”)
by the entire campus community, and to provide an external focus to the strategic planning process.
External environmental scanning will play an integral part in the development of
Indiana University South Bend Strategic Plan 2010 and beyond. Environment Scanning teams are in the
process of collecting information for this purpose. If you have information you would like to share
please submit it by completing a
Scanning Abstract Form and emailing it to the Office of Institutional Research.
Any questions regarding the form can also be directed to the Office of Institutional Research.
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