Every college and institution has a vision and a plan for the future. C of C just finished its strategic plan for the next 10 years, and President Benson believes this plan will help the College discover its purpose, and improve the educational lives of its students. 

“Every institution I believe needs a vision. If we don’t develop a vision, and a means to achieve that vision, we don’t have a direction,” Benson said. “It is for the leader of that institution to lead.”

The plan includes values, purposes, and goals of the College for the present and the next ten years. 

“I prefer that the institution develop a shared vision, that we all could get behind. The strategic plan, really, is a guideline,” Benson said. “It allows us to move from here to there. It allows us to make decisions.”

Benson said that the plan will help bring the College together. 

“It’s all about guidance, directions, decisions,” Benson said. “What its really about is a shared vision to get the institution together. We move forward together.”

The plan started with focus groups to evaluate what the current state of the College is, as well as what areas need the most improvement. 

“The plan was very much bottom-up,” Benson said. “So we started with focus groups. 30 or more focus groups of students, faculty, staff, alumni, legislators up in Columbia, and we asked them how we can improve, how we can get better, and we learned a lot.”

The inspiration behind the plan came from a popular business book by James Collins, Benson said. 

“We got the purpose from ‘Built to Last.’ One of the chapters, primarily a business book. What is it about the companies? What lets them go on and on?,” Benson said. “These companies understood what their purpose was, its always out there somewhere in the distance. It ought to be the same today as it is 100 years from now.” 

The core values was one of the most important aspects of the plan to write, Benson said. 

“We came up with 3, many were purposed and many were rejected, but we wanted to get down just to the basic core. These are also things that won’t change,” Benson said. “One was Educational excellence, student focused community, and the third was the most interesting. The history, traditions, the culture, and the environment of Charleston and the lowcountry and the opportunities it presents for students to learn, for faculty to do research, and academic programs in general.”

The values are what created the rest of the plan, Benson said.

“So if you take those three values, the rest of the strategic plan just almost flows out. You can almost write it yourself,” Benson said. “Those three things are what we value, what we are all about.” 

Following the values, the committee came up with the plan for the future, Benson said. 

“The next step is the envisioned future. It is what the institution will be like in the year 2020, write in present tense as if it is 2020,” Benson said. “Then you set up goals, if you achieve them, you achieve the future. Then develop strategies to achieve these goals. The envisioned future is the target. You get there through different strategies.” 

Benson said he hopes the school will repeat this process every year. 

“What we hope to go into is a regular strategic planning process year in and year out. Every year we will operate during the year, assess and see how we did, and tweak the strategic plan along with the progress we have made,” Benson said. “Then we will go into a budgeting phase and change the budget with the strategies, then we will start to execute the next year. It is what every business does year after year after year.”

The plan will help with fundraising for the school, and increasing finances. 

“It will help tremendously with fundraising,” Benson said. “It adds a sense of clarity and direction that donors like. Most of the donors come out of the business world, they know what strategic planning is.”

Communicating the plan to the State will help the College get more money, Benson said. 

“What we have to do going forward as far as executing the plan is communicating the plan,” Benson said. “It will help other people, including the legislator, know us better than they know us now. The state is important but it is not enough.”

The finances are the biggest challenge for executing the plan, Benson said. 

“Probably the most difficult part of the Strategic Plan would be marshalling the resources to implement the various aspects of the plan,” Benson said. 

Benson said that the College should utilize the city for its resources more. 

“More fundraising, more entrepreneurial things. This city is a world-class city, and the College has not really utilized that to generate revenue,” Benson said. “So why not have some programs in and out, say Spoleto festival, the college could have classes in arts management. We haven’t done this in a short course, executive type format, that people will pay for and come to Charleston, and match it up with other things.”

Benson said that the next step is to measure the results over the next few years. 

“The next step is a 3-year action plan. We are going to look at 3 years at a time. What are the priorities,” Benson said. “Then we will measure them, quantify them in a way we can track. It will show our progress against the strategic plan.”

The plan is not final, it will change over the next few years, Benson said. 

“You sometimes have to back up and recognize, too many things too fast. Each year we will evaluate if we are making progress or not, and if we are not, we will speed it up or back it off,” Benson said. “We will check that every year we go along. The dates that you see in the plan are not hard and fast. They will be changing as we move along.” 

The plan has just begun, Benson said. 

“It is a living document, it is not done now, it just started,” Benson said.