Strategic Plan Analysis --- University of Miami I have been to university of Miami visiting my friend at winter last year. When I first arrival there, I was amazed by her beautiful campus view and I felt warm, energetic, friendly come from their students, employees. So when professor talk about analysis a university, I decide to talk about university of Miami. At the time that we need to apply for collage, some of my classmates choose to apply university of Miami, because they learned that this university has really big and beautiful campus, also they want to stay in a city with warm weather, which Florida is definitely fit their condition. Besides university of Miami has a good ranking at USNEWS, and some teacher said this collage is easier for student to get admission comparing with other same level collages. So, this university becomes one of the most popular school students want to attend among our high school. I was to apply it also, however I want to study for finance and I was dream to attend a great business collage, which university of Miami didn’t achieved. Then I change my mind into Penn State University. This is one weakness I learned about university of Miami at the first time. Fortunately, almost my friends who apply this university was admitted by university of Miami, they feedback me some feelings about their university after they really living in. the most thing they mentioned about is the career opportunities and guide the collage supply. Because of the location, university of Miami gets lots of internship chances from big successful enterprises for students, also they setting lots of class to help students find out which jobs are great fit in students personality and major, which give a really important hand on student’s future life. In addition, university of Miami provide the convince campus serving system, on-line programming abundantly, and completed student health care. All these make students have a better campus life. Nevertheless, no university could be perfect. As the time they spend in this collage increasing, my friends and their classmates also realized some weakness exist in university. Firstly, for example, one of my friends who are really pay attention at the learning atmosphere thinks that this university is lack of this element. Also, I found some student comments that mention this point: “People should know that although UM preaches diversity, they really are just a collection of rich kids who didn't go to Ivy League, but could have afforded it if they had the motivation. Everything you hear about money, brands, tans, and beach time is true for a majority of the population. Smart kids who work hard can still get a good education, but they won't find themselves surrounded by like-minded, hardworking peers.” “The stereotype of this being a rich-kids playground (PLAY is the key word) is overwhelmingly true! You walk on campus and you can just spot them. Everywhere. Like trees. Except way more pricey.” Unfortunately, I didn’t find out the university made any strategy to ameliorate this weakness. Secondly, the highly tuition fees make this university lose lost opportunity to get more high value students. Here are some comments from students talk about this weakness:” Price of school is way too much. I would have rather have gone to a public school with as a good of a music program and paid half as much.” “The only thing that sucks about UM is the tuition price.” “The school is beautiful, the weather warm and there's lots to do in the surrounding area, but it's just not worth the cost and putting up with the people here.” The highly tuition fees problem makes university of Miami face the threat come from low cost public collage. Same with the last condition, university of Miami still insist their highly tuition fees and made none of strategies to relief their threats. Thirdly, although university of Miami has the good rank in USNEWS Best Undergraduate College ranking, their college has no major could be the top10 among all the university, which make school face the threats about losing students who want to be more professional. The comments from students grateful prove this problem: “The Greek Life at UM is a bit disappointing, I was told it was a lot bigger, but alas it is not. My sorority does not even have its own house, and we are the biggest sorority on campus. I was between UM and UF. Honestly, aside from the beach 5 minutes away, and downtown Miami, I would have much rather gone to UF. I am actually thinking about transferring next semester.” “The professors are hit or miss...I have had some really good ones and really bad ones. If I had the chance to do it over I would have chosen another school. I plan to transfer.” It’s delight that university of Miami notice this weakness and make lots strategic plans to change the current situation. And I think these strategies are basically realistic and viable, but they are still exist flaws. In order to improve the student’s ability to master knowledge well, also stimulate student’s enthusiasms about study, university of Miami create a project “Engaged scholarship” which is scholarship that puts the academic resources of the university to work in solving pressing public problems and thereby contributing to the public good. Within the broad category of engaged scholarship are two main areas of focus: first, academic serving learning Courses that link the classroom and community through hands-on, experiential education that is transformative. These courses could promote the interrelationship of teaching, research, and service through theory, action, and reflection in response to community needs. Develop and translates academic knowledge, critical thinking, and community engagement into civic responsibility. Foster mutually beneficial collaborations between the university and the community to promote positive social change. Second, community based research. This research projects undertaken by faculty and students in collaboration with community organizations that respond to community-identified needs, promote civic engagement, and enrich the scholarship of the institution. What the university believed in is that according to this project, it will foster stronger connections between UM and the larger South Florida community; coordinate existing University-wide efforts that promote community partnerships; embed experiential learning more fully into the curriculum. Develop new courses in which community-based partnerships are central to course learning outcomes; enhance existing courses by integrating community engagement into course curriculum, work with the Butler Center for Volunteer Service and Leadership Development to promote community service among students and link those experiences to experiential learning; create new initiatives that bring multiple schools and disciplines together to work on shared community-based projects. A university’s core business is the discovery, dissemination, and application of new knowledge. In addition, I found some scholar resources below, which showing research developing research is important for university: Research is a key to a university’s reputation and increasingly the basis of its academic and financial success. At all levels research and innovation are recognized as critical for expanding the knowledge base and the supply of highly educated individuals who provide economic vitality and competitiveness. Research also drives improvements in teaching and learning which then results in social and individual gains. As universities have sought to increase and diversify revenue streams and reduce their dependency on governmental base-budget appropriations, and as tuition approaches maximum acceptable levels, externally sponsored research has achieved greater prominence. ----This study was motivated by a similar study commissioned and funded by the United Kingdom (U.K.). Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and was conducted in collaboration with Imperial College London and Elsevier1. Not only the resource make me think that UM make a right decision, but also another reason why I think this strategy give the organization a sense of direction and purpose is that according to student’s comments I learned that the student who already attending in made a bad evaluate, which will result in student who want to apply college have a awful impression about university of Miami academic field. Improve the link from UM between Florida community could change student’s mind about UM’s academic field thereby have more interesting about attending UM to gain more academic value. Besides the “engaged scholarship” strategy, UM also focus on their campus marketing. They created their own system called “INDUSTRAT”. At the start of the simulation, each program participant is placed on the management team of a company competing for business against other teams in the same space. INDUSTRAT allows participants to learn modern techniques and concepts by making competitive strategic decisions and then seeing the results of those decisions. The teams compete though a period of several years of a virtual industry's evolution, gaining a perspective that they rarely have in their normally short-term oriented working life. I also think this project strategy is viable for UM. Marketing management is important for operator to engage in a successful company, students in this project could learn more about how to manage their company in order to have a successful career. Hence, UM may have larger probability to cultivate famous successful people, which increase the fame about UM. Additionally, UM make strategy that employ more highly education scholars to teach students. Top scholars and pioneers in strategy management gathered at the University of Miami in November as part of an extension to the Strategic Management Society’s (SMS) 31st annual conference. We try to capitalize on having world-renowned scholars in Miami by creating platforms for them to share their latest research, findings and results,” said Luo, who believes such conferences are helping to position the School as a leader in the field. Other University of Miami workshop panelists included Mike Hitt of Texas A&M University, Marjorie Lyles of Indiana University, Oded Shenkar of Ohio State University, Yan (Anthea) Zhang of Rice University, and Jeff Reuer of Purdue University. A good professor is one of the factors that make student want to attend the university and want to study with. This strategy is realistic for me, and I think it could bring the positive impact on UM’s academic field. The impact that a faculty member can have on the student experience can be seen in and out of the classroom. We found that faculty behaviors and attitudes affect students profoundly, which suggests that faculty members may play the single-most important role in student learning. Because faculty play a critical component of the collegiate experience, colleges and universities need to find ways (perhaps new ways) to support and reward faculty in their teaching role. As the researched I found in the UM website shows that UM have already keep these strategies doing for ten years, and they gain a great improve. After ten years trying, nowadays, UM has a significant improvement on Best college ranking, also it become a famous university not only in American, but also around the world. Ten years after the creation of the national center aimed at improving undergraduate education at leading research universities around the country, a growing number of those institutions have initiated programs to enhance the freshman experience while also ramping up opportunities for baccalaureate students to conduct laboratory research alongside top scientists. And the headmaster saying that he will still do a better job of offering those students more research opportunities in the humanities and performing arts and in making sure that they are educated as global citizens consortium of 65 public and private schools hosted by the University of Miami. UM said they are committed to increasing the percentage of first-generation and underrepresented minority students in higher education. UM wants the Reinvention Center to be the source to which media and public policy officials turn for matters related to undergraduate education. According to the Time Horizons of Plans, Long-term plans are usually 5 years or more; Intermediate-term plans are 1 to 5 years; Short-term plans are less than 1 year. The plan UM doing for ten years is a long horizon plans, but I think this time period is not too long for collage, because the reputation and achieved students need time to accumulate. However, I think these strategic plans UM made are not viable enough in the current competitive environment. “For the most part, is an arrogant, superficial and obnoxious bunch. I have met very few genuine people who care about anyone except themselves. A good number of the people here get wasted Thursday through Saturday and the ones that don't are in the library studying non-stop. There is not much in-between.” This is one part from the student’s comments to university of Miami. In this word, I learned that most students in there are not pay their attention at study, which will made other student who want to focus on study disappoint, even want to transfer, therefore resulting in lose student problem. So I felt that UM not following the three steps in planning, which is: first, determining the organization’s mission and goals (define the business establish major goals). Second, formulating strategy (analyzes current and develops strategies). This is the most part UM missing about making their planning. Third, implementing strategy (allocate resources and responsibilities to achieve strategies). This part UM achieved successfully. Meanwhile, I think UM should using some time to concentrate on manage student who need to do their main job.

Scholar rescores:
1. Directed by Dr. Brad Fenwick2, with the support of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and sponsored by Elsevier, the study is based upon interviews with 25 leading public and private research universities. The preliminary results of the study were presented and discussed at a meeting of the Participating Universities held April 19 - 20, 2012 in Washington, D.C. http://www.researchuniversitiesfutures.org/RIM_Report_Research%20Future's%20Consortium%20.pdf 2. Paul D. Umbach, Project Manager and Research Analyst, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research.
Matthew R. Wawrzynski, Michigan State University, Assistant Professor of Higher, Adult, & Lifelong Education, Michigan State University.
http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/research_papers/faculty_do_matter.pdf