Planning & Research

• Creating a Stronger Future 2025

  Creating a Stronger Future 2025 was launched in September, 2022. Read More

  The strategic planning process at Saint Paul College was a yearlong collaborative process that involved the development of a comprehensive environmental scan, four formal planning forums that included internal and external stakeholders. Results of these forums were reviewed, summarized and incorporated into recommendations for four strategic directions.

  Strategic Direction One: Develop as an anti-racist, trauma-informed college

  1. Demonstrate the public institutional commitment of Saint Paul college to becoming an anti-racist, trauma informed institution and internally embed this commitment through vertical and horizontal institutional structures
  2. Review the policy manual through an anti-racism, trauma informed lens and change policies that provide barriers to equity
  3. Attract, hire, and retain BIPOC faculty and staff while supporting and expanding the goals outlined in the college's affirmative action plan
  4. Develop and sustain an employee base of anti-racist trauma informed professionals through initiatives that increase the knowledge, skills, and abilities of all college employees.
  5. Provide resources for enacting equity priorities
  6. Embed the colleges commitment throughout the academic experience and improved teaching and learning through culturally responsive anti racist trauma informed curriculum and pedagogy
  7. Provide support for understanding where efforts should be focused as well as benchmarking progress and all priority areas

  Strategic Direction Two: Cultivate a student-centered learning environment promoting and supporting academic excellence and personal development

  1. Maximize the academic portfolio through strengthening academic programs and promoting innovative instruction and programming
  2. Create and sustain a clear, coherent and inspiring academic environment for all students, supporting their journey from orientation to commencement and on to employment.
  1. Build and enhance holistic support that contributes to educational success.
  2. Revise and implement strategic enrollment practices to enhance our commitment to increase educational opportunities for underrepresented students and serving students with diverse academic needs
  3. Increase efforts to retain, facilitate transfer, and graduate students

  Strategic Direction Three: Strengthen the organizational culture by encouraging collaboration, transparent communication, and optimizing operations

  1. Strengthen organizational culture to prioritize a positive and engaging environment that nurtures innovation and creativity; encourages contributions; and develops compassion and respect towards other’s ideas and views.
  2. Provide development opportunities that strengthen employee roles as leaders, mentors, educators, and enhance the quality of teaching and learning.
  3. Optimize operations that improve space utilization, employ innovative technologies, and increase data-fluency that prioritize student success.
  4. Enhance communication across campus departments, divisions, and teams through intentional, respectful sharing of ideas

  Strategic Direction Four: Build, enhance, and sustain relationships with community partners that respond to the changing economic and workforce needs of our community and contribute to a more socially just world

  1. Enhance and grow strategic partnerships
  2. Increase market share of surrounding high school districts by developing positive and sustained relationships with K- 12 allies
  3. Utilize a comprehensive and focused strategy to develop, support, and promote community engagement and philanthropy
  4. Advance public awareness of Saint Paul College through innovative, comprehensive, and dynamic branding, marketing, and promotion strategies

• Fact Book
  

  Saint Paul College Fact Book is a centralized collection of information and data about enrollment, degrees, majors, student demographics and student outcomes.
  

  The Fact Book contains student achievement data disaggregated by credential level (Associate, Certificate, Diploma), including retention and completion rates.
  

  The Fact Book is updated annually by the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Grants.

  All definitions in Fact Book are in the Data Dictionary.

• Annual Planning at Saint Paul College
  

  Annual planning allows each department to establish specific objectives and actionable tasks that outline how the department plans work to support the goals of the strategic plan and illustrate how the staff and faculty play a role in achieving the goals.

  Division and Operational Plans

  Saint Paul College engages in systematic divisional and operational planning. Divisional and operational plans align with the College’s strategic plan, Creating a Stronger Future, 2025. Each division or operational area has identified key activities to complete and outcomes to measure to assist Saint Paul College in meeting its goals.

  Integrated Planning and Budgeting

  Planning at Saint Paul College occurs in an integrated manner across academic and non-academic units and takes into account long-range and yearly needs. On an annual basis, all academic programs, academic support units, student services, and administrative units participate in an integrated planning and budget process which is designed to gather and collect input from all levels of the college.

  Integration is evident through:

  • Processes—The planning processes integrates the strategic plan, operational plans, and annual work plans with program review, assessment of student learning, and institutional and external data.
  • Finances--The budgeting process is aligned with our planning process and develops budget priorities based on the strategic plan priorities, operational plan priorities, and annual work plans.
  • Structures--The integration process occurs across academic and non-academic units.
  • People- Input, feedback, and collaborative decision making is woven throughout the entire planning and budgeting cycle with multiple opportunities for participation.

  Strategic Planning Online (SPOL)

  Saint Paul College uses an integrated planning process supported by a comprehensive software system, known as Strategic Planning Online (SPOL). SPOL is an electronic planning system that allows for the full integration and alignment of the strategic plan, annual planning priorities, assessment and program review data, budget requests as well as priorities of the Minnesota State system. SPOL tracks the implementation and progress of improvements to education programs, services, and operations in an ongoing and continuous improvement cycle.
  

• Academic Research and Student Outcome

  Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness provides summary research reports several times each year in order to provide a comprehensive and user-friendly resource f or college stakeholders. The summary reports provided each year vary based on frequency of data availability, schedule of survey administration, and local research projects.

  IPEDS Comparison Report
  The IPEDS comparison report is updated on an annual basis and uses the annual IPEDS Data Feedback reports create by the National Center for Education Statistics. IPEDS collects institution-level data related to enrollment and graduation rates, institutional costs and finances, faculty and staff data, and student demographics. Saint Paul College is compared to a comparison group of similar institutions located in Midwestern states for the last 3 years .

  Saint Paul College IPEDS Data Comparisons

  Student Satisfaction and Engagement
  Saint Paul College administers three national surveys on a rotating basis to better understand student engagement and satisfaction. The Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Survey measures student satisfaction in relation to key campus services and student experiences. The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) look at student engagement related to student experiences and participation in activities or resources that promote student success. The CCSSE survey focuses on all students on campus while the SENSE survey focuses on students earliest experiences at Saint Paul College.

  Student Right-To-Know: Graduation and Transfer-Out Rates
  Student Right-To-Know is a federal law that requires all colleges and universities to disclose certain information to students. A college must provide to students on graduation rates and transfer-out rates for full-time students seeking degrees at Saint Paul College.

  Students Right to Know - Graduation and Transfer-out Rates

• Budget Plan
  

  The annual operating budget is an organizational plan stated in monetary terms. Saint Paul College prepares budgets, plans expenses and allocates funds consistent with Board policies and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system procedures.

  The Saint Paul College Finance Department seeks to provide excellent customer service in support of the College’s mission through a budget process that links strategic and financial planning to insure the long-term financial health of the College.

  FY21 Budget

  • FY21 Budget
    
  • Additional information relating to the colleges budget can be found here
  • Planning + Budget Portal

  Planning and Budget Principles

  The College will make planning, budgeting, and decisions based on a commitment to the College’s budget planning principles:

  • Principle 1: The annual budget is informed by the annual priorities established by the College. For the budget process to be strategic, decisions related to resource allocation must be grounded in the annual planning process and support the identified college priorities.
  • Principle 2: Budget development utilizes and prioritizes decision made from a data-informed process. The budget must be balanced. The planning of the annual budget must be done in a way that anticipated expenditures do not exceed anticipated revenue. Annual evaluation of spending patterns including a critical review of past spending decisions and the impact on strategic priorities is considered.
  • Principle 3: All final budget decisions are based on a fair and equitable evaluation of both cost and strategic prioritization. Once budgets are approved, departments are expected to operate within the annual budget, unless unforeseen circumstances arise (e.g., state appropriations reductions, enrollment changes, unfunded mandates etc.) occur during the year. If costs arise that were unplanned and/or unexpected, departments are expected to evaluate how the costs could be absorbed with current, available resources prior to requesting additional funds.
  • Principle 4: Maintain transparent, timely, factual, and honest communication throughout the college community. The College will provide timely information and updates about the budget and planning process including Shared Governance Committees, college-wide town hall discussions and department/division feedback.
  • Principle 5: Focus on long-term strategic outcomes. Budget and planning requires a multi-year perspective on attaining strategic objectives, priorities and goals.
  • Principle 6: Minimize the impact cost to students whenever possible. The budget is planned to limit the additional costs to students that may occur as a result of new initiatives and services/programs. Use of one-time funds to off-set these expenses are made whenever possible.

  Budget Resources

  Please see the following budget resources for more information:

  • Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Finance Division
  • Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Budget

  If you have questions or comments about the Saint Paul College Budget process, please send an email to Scott Wilson.

  
  

• Assessment for Student Learning
  

  Saint Paul College is committed to improving student learning through assessment and evaluation of student learning at the co-curricular, course, program, and college levels.

  Assessment for Student Learning