YSU strategic development plan as a driving force

The strategic planning process of YSU is organized by the Center for Strategic Planning, which prepares the projects of development programs, the monitoring and evaluation plan, and also performs monitoring.

Anna Babajanyan, Director of the Center for Strategic Planning of YSU, highlighting the strategic planning process, noted that the taken steps are aimed at improving the academic environment, modernizing educational processes and creating the best conditions for students, teaching staff and scientists to continually record success. Although YSU's strategic development plan is the action plan document for 2021-2026, according to the Director of the Center, 70-80% of the strategic plan has already been implemented.

Speaking about the activity of the center, A. Babajanyan emphasized that planning gives an opportunity to form an objective opinion on YSU's activity. Currently, the activity of the center is directed towards the organization of the planning process, its ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and providing support to the departments during the planning process.

"The Center for Strategic Planning of Yerevan State University was established as a result of the university's accreditation process and has been actively operating since September 2022. Before the establishment of the center, YSU's strategic development plan was already developed, therefore, our first major action in that direction was the evaluation of the progress of the strategy, as well as the development of the planning process of the university's activities," said Anna Babajanyan.

The director of the center, referring to the activities carried out to plan the activities of the departments, emphasized that such a planning process, standing out with its volume, clarity and predictability, is being implemented for the first time in the university. She mentioned that each department plans the actions for the given year, develops approaches, appoints responsible officers for those actions, evaluates the expected results, defines targets, etc.

"The important thing is that we are able to evaluate the effort, time and efficiency we put in. At the end of the year, we may understand whether we have achieved the goal we set for ourselves or not. This document also serves as a basis for financial planning," the director of the center highlighted.

A. Babajanyan emphasized that 19 mandatory actions have been developed for educational departments and faculties (e.g. curriculum evaluation, student feedback collection, analysis, curriculum improvement, etc.), but apart from the mandatory part, the departments have the opportunity to decide which specific actions have priority for them.  

Then, the activity terms for the given year are described pursuant to the schedule, and then at the end of each quarter, the department will present the details of the activities planned for the given quarter.

"The center, in addition to organizing the process of developing action plans, implements monitoring of their realization and prepares relevant reports. We have the summary report of the previous year's activities, with which we recorded, for instance, that 35 of the 533 actions developed or recorded have not been launched and have not been implemented. We prepare these reports also for the vice-rectors, which gives them the opportunity to find out in which areas of activity difficulties have arisen for the departments operating under their coordination, what was the reason for not overcoming the difficulties, etc.," A. Babajanyan stated.     

A. Babajanyan thinks that such analyzes are indicators of the internal situation, which inform about considering the next steps and evaluating the current situation.

Speaking about the difficulties faced during the planning process, Anna Babajanyan noted that sometimes people either overestimate their abilities and plan more than they will be able to do, or they plan less due to certain fear, mistrust, and unpredictability.

"It was expected, and we took into account the fact of facing such a situation at the beginning of the process; this is specific to the newly started planning process. At the same time, difficulties arose not only in working with such an electronic document but also in terms of content. Difficulties arose in formulating measurable performance indicators. Over time, through our support and discussions, we managed to overcome the challenges. Now people have more experience in similar processes and are able to plan their actions more clearly," the director of the center emphasized.

Last year, the Center for Strategic Planning conducted an analysis of the data chain of the university, taking into account that access to this data is central to the evaluation of the strategy.

"We conducted an analysis describing what the data (for example number of students, number of published articles, teaching staff, profile, data on educational programs, progress, data on the field of activity, etc.) 'tree' looks like, whether it exists at all, what format it's in, how it's used, etc. We also identified all the data that were significant for evaluating the activities of the faculties, and based on this, defined the format in which the deans present the annual reports on the activities of the faculty," said Anna Babajanyan.

Now the center is organizing the development of a new strategic plan, working on the methodology, planning to carry out baseline assessment, analysis and studies, after which, in a participatory manner, using certain interactive methods, it will review the vision of the university's development and set new goals.

It should be noted that the center has carried out quantitative and qualitative data collection on strategic planning activities, preparation of annual report, external discussions, assessment of the need for capacity development of planning officials and staff, support for development of annual plans and many other programs.