Committee Members: Greg Brown, Barbara Friedman, Shifra Bronznick (consultant), Lewis Barth, Howard Bernstein, Norman Cohen, Ken Ehrlich, Nina Hanan, Larry Hoffman, Shirley Idelson, Sam Joseph, Bob Kopple, Sheila Lambert, Fred Lane, Sara Lee, Jerry Lerner, Michael Marmur, Aaron Panken (on sabbatical leave), Terry Rosenberg, Jerry Teller, Bonnie Tisch

I. Overview of Process

FOCUS: Recent meetings of the Committee have emphasized the need for balance in the strategic planning process:

• Balancing short-range decisions with long-range decisions;
• Balancing deep internal analysis while simultaneously ranging widely so that the various alternatives are understood, both from the perspectives of external and internal stakeholders;
• Creating agreement about decision-making criteria -- that will be applicable for decisions that emerge from this strategic planning process and can also be used to establish mechanisms for setting priorities in the future.

TIMELINE AND PROCESS: Given the magnitude and the scope of the work, the Committee has established a new time line for the strategic planning process. The Board retreat in August will set the stage for exploring emerging recommendations. These recommendations will be developed and presented in writing by the end of December 2005. The strategic plan will be reviewed, discussed and voted on at the Board meeting in February 2006.

To date, the strategic planning subcommittees have been asked to gather information and facts about the present activities of HUC-JIR. A considerable portion of the work to date has involved guided self-assessments prepared by program directors. The self-assessment process will be amplified by feedback from faculty, students, alumni and other stakeholders.

Shifra Bronznick, Barbara Friedman, Greg Brown and Jerry Teller will visit each campus to meet with groups and individuals of administration, faculty and students. Alumni will also be interviewed. The intelligence gathered through interviews and site visits will serve to refine surveys for students and alumni. The feedback from all of these constituencies will also be used to inform the Committee's and subcommittees' thinking about a range of strategic issues.

The Subcommittees on Resources, Technology, Benefits and Compensation, Facilities and Faculty and Student Life are scheduled to begin in-depth work following the February Strategic Planning Steering Committee meeting.

ESSENTIAL OUTCOMES OF PLANNING: One of the key immediate goals of the Steering Committee is to develop criteria and the mechanisms that should be used in planning and assessment. It has been noted that the accreditation teams emphasized the need to establish a framework for ongoing strategic planning and assessment at HUC-JIR; a one-time planning process will not suffice. By having an agreed upon system in place, it becomes possible to refer to these criteria before any critical decision is made.

It is important to balance our process of making thoughtful, conscientious decisions that are aligned with HUC-JIR's mission while also responding to market changes and challenges.

The new mechanisms that will emerge from this strategic planning process are already having an influence with the deans in this year's budget process, since the deans and other department heads have been asked to identify their priorities.

COMMUNICATION: The HUC community will be informed about the strategic planning process by regular updates on the HUC website, of which they will be notified by email. Feedback is welcome on the website. A member of the staff will monitor the website for comments and refer them to the appropriate parties for response. The value of transparency must be balanced with the importance of providing appropriate context, so that the entire community can interpret the information properly.

II. Mission and Shared Values

The strategic planning process must be anchored in HUC-JIR's mission and shared values. Every choice contemplated in the strategic planning process must reflect these values.

The mission and shared values suggest that we must be responsive to the needs of our core stakeholders (the Reform movement) while seeking to influence the Jewish community with the values of liberal Judaism. Thoughtfulness and deliberativeness are critical for our academic and religious integrity. Simultaneously, the spirit of innovation and the capacity to take risks are also essential to our ability to fulfill HUC-JIR's role in a changing landscape.

The rabbinic core curriculum document, prepared under the leadership of Norman Cohen, offers an inspiring model for a well-designed change initiative that reflects HUC-JIR's core values.

The Committee has discussed the need to understand the risk and value of making changes and being innovative; to do so requires that we integrate a tolerance of failure into what we do. This vision should be made manifest in our ongoing work and will be an important context for the future efforts of the Steering Committee.

The Committee recognizes the need to find a balance between financial viability and innovation. Jim Collins in his groundbreaking book From Good to Great says that leaders and organizations need to look at what they are uniquely suited to do and what they are passionate about and that these activities should intersect with financial viability. What we do must be financially sustainable over time.

The URJ and HUC-JIR have a shared mission to strengthen Reform Judaism. Members of the Committee have reached out to the leadership of the URJ and have met with members of their administrative team. It is hoped that through these discussions we can increase our connection to URJ, maximizing opportunities for collaboration and partnership.

It was agreed that the question of whether or not our mission statement should explicitly mention HUC-JIR's responsibility to strengthen the capacity of synagogues to create compelling communities for Jews requires further exploration. The renewal and vitality of synagogues is essential to our mission, visibility and identity. However, the Committee decided that this commitment is implicit in the current statement of mission and shared values. The Committee has also noted that HUC-JIR's commitment to Israel is not specifically expressed in the mission statement, and this issue should be addressed as well in future discussions.

III. Trends

As part of strategic planning, it is essential to understand the external conditions and trends that affect HUC-JIR. This process takes place in the larger context of changes among Reform Jews, among Jews, and in the world at large.

As a starting point, the Committee discussed key findings of the National Jewish Population Study from 2000-01. The growth of Reform Judaism, compared to the shrinkage in the Conservative movement, was noted as was the growing access to adult Jewish learning from Jewish studies courses on other college campuses and community-led learning programs for lay leaders. The popularity of programs like the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles sparked a conversation about the emerging need of Jews to be touched and taught in some way, though many Committee members considered the example of the Kabbalah Center to be tangential and almost diversionary as a focus of discussion.

The Committee has discussed the critical role of HUC in educating the Jewish community. The fundamental issue is the scope of our programming, ranging from educating professional leaders from rabbis to cantors to communal professionals to professional educators, to capitalizing on the growing appetite of lay leaders for high quality educational experiences, to educational outreach to individual Jews.

Clearly, HUC-JIR's core mission is teaching Jewish leaders and Jewish professionals. The question is whether this can and should be extended to lay leaders and to individual Jews. Does this detract from HUC-JIR's essential responsibility? Does it conflict with the roles and responsibilities of HUC-JIR's partner, URJ? These issues need to be addressed and resolved during the course of the strategic planning process.

IV. Strategic Challenges

The academic program SWOT analyses helped serve as the basis for developing a draft of initial strategic challenges. In reviewing the emerging themes and issues that were presented at the October Board meeting as the key strategic challenges of the planning process, the Committee added and amplified the original thinking as it was reflected in the October draft document.

One institution, multiple programs should be interpreted in actions that leverage the distinct resources and strengths of each program for the collective well-being of the overall institution. Can technology be deployed to assist in avoiding redundancy and duplication?

The Klau Library and the American Jewish Archives are vital to ensure academic excellence. The strategic challenge as originally outlined should be extended beyond the notion of expanding access to HUC-JIR's holdings to indicate the importance of preserving and expanding the collection.

Emerging Themes should be expanded to include establishing a framework and process for making decisions and setting priorities. A robust discussion focused on the critical need to ensure that these decisions take into account financial viability and sustainability over the long haul. This change in the decision-making culture in the institution should be reflected in the budgeting process, in the review process of prospective grants and in the balance between annual fundraising and endowment.

The Steering Committee explored a range of additions to the emerging themes and issues, without necessarily categorizing each one. These include the need to:

• Affirm the depth of HUC-JIR's commitment to Israel;
• Ascertain the needs and expectations of HUC-JIR's most important partner, the Union of Reform Judaism, and strengthen our capacity to meet them;
• Raise the visibility of HUC-JIR in order to enhance development, recruitment and communal impact;
• Understand the trends in American Jewish life in order to ascertain how HUC-JIR can deepen its impact on the Reform movement and the Jewish community at large;
• Expand HUC-JIR's capacity to develop leaders for the Reform movement and the Jewish community;
• Work with URJ to ensure the vitality and continuous renewal of synagogues, helping them to fulfill their potential to create inspiring communities.
• Leverage the full range of external resources for HUC-JIR, including funding, partnerships and technology;
• Incorporate HUC-JIR's role in being a center for spirituality, worship and liturgy in addition to its position as the center for intellectual excellence.

V. Overview of the SWOT Analyses of Academic Programs

The Subcommittee on Academic Programs has undertaken a process for program analysis and self-assessment in order to glean better information about HUC-JIR's degree-granting programs and to evaluate the strategic issues of each program. This process includes:

1. Review of program materials and a brief description of each program

• Program description, goals, etc.
• Accreditation materials
• Available planning documents
• Previous survey data (where applicable)
• Material from "snapshot"
• Available market analyses, e.g., URJ rabbinical study, study of supplemental schooling
• Other appropriate material

2. Internal Program Analysis

• Each program director was asked to analyze his/her program.
• A subcommittee member acted as facilitator to guide the evaluation and lead discussion at weekly meetings held in August-October.
• A toolkit was provided to aid analysis SWOT, stakeholder, and competitive analysis, questions for program directors to shape discussions based on earlier developed criteria.
• Themes and Issues were developed.
• SWOT were prioritized separately by each program director and facilitator.
• Preliminary criteria for planning and prioritizing were developed.

3. Financial Analysis of each program

4. Market Analysis

• Constituencies to survey: internal and external stakeholders
• Survey instruments developed: questionnaires, focus groups, other
• Implementation of surveys
• Analysis of survey data

5. Repeat of SWOT, Stakeholder and Competitive analyses based on both internal and market analysis

6. Planning and prioritization based on developed criteria and analysis

The language of SWOT, specifically of 'threats' - external challenges - should not preclude our understanding that 'threats' may represent potential opportunities.

VI. Criteria for Establishing Priorities

The Committee has had an initial work session devoted to the development of the criteria that will be used for establishing priorities and evaluating the present and proposed activities of HUC-JIR. The discussion on criteria has focused on developing questions that will help to set priorities based on mission, excellence, financial sustainability, uniqueness, service to the Reform Movement and the greater community, the ability to meet stated goals, and the anticipated future needs of our stakeholders.

The Committee will spend considerable time during the course of the next few months to develop and refine appropriate questions that will become the basis for establishing priorities and evaluating the activities of HUC-JIR.

VII. Measuring Excellence

To give substance to the aspiration of "attaining excellence", HUC-JIR needs to define the ways in which it recognizes and measures excellence, quantitatively and qualitatively. As a starting point, the Committee has begun discussions to brainstorm about creating indicators of excellence in the following areas: Students, Faculty, Alumni, Impact on the Reform Movement and Influence on the Jewish Community.