Virginia Tech’s new Strategic Planning Dashboard offers a shared tool for the Virginia Tech community to access and use data to inform decision-making. Available now, it is designed to show continuous progress toward achieving milestones in the university’s strategic plan, The Virginia Tech Difference: Advancing Beyond Boundaries.

Dashboard information from publicly available benchmarking data and university data has been gathered in partnership with leaders across the campus to ensure transparency and accuracy in reporting progress toward achieving milestones.

The Strategic Planning Dashboard includes information about research expenditures, student and employee representation, graduation rates, university endowment, and more. “The Dashboard measures our progress toward significant milestones in our Beyond Boundaries strategic plan priorities, while also gauging the overall health of our institution,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. “It’s a tool we can utilize as we continue to plan to address the opportunities and challenges ahead of us in a rapidly changing environment.”

The Strategic Planning Dashboard serves as a central source of information for Virginia Tech’s current status and progress to attaining milestones associated with university strategic priorities and its continuous planning process. It was developed by the Office for Academic Resource Management, including the Office of Analytics & Institutional Effectiveness and the Office for Strategic Affairs. Data within the dashboard will be updated on an ongoing basis.

In the spirit of transparency and open engagement, the Strategic Planning Dashboard is publicly available. All are encouraged to connect with the university through the dashboard to see how the university is progressing toward achieving institutional priorities.

The dashboard is also a resource for unit-level strategic planning. “Faculty, staff, and students have consistently expressed interest in having additional readily available data to understand the university’s progress toward achieving strategic planning milestones. The Strategic Planning Dashboard provides a new tool for all to help inform college, institute, and office-level strategic plans,” said Erin McCann, director for strategic planning.

Vice Provost for Academic Resource Management Ken Smith said, “The new dashboard is a key component of our broader University Data Commons. By allowing interested individuals both inside and outside the university to see our goals and progress, we hope to engage more people in aligning their activities and support of the university toward these milestones.”

The Strategic Planning Dashboard will also serve as a resource for reporting to the Board of Visitors on the university’s progress toward its strategic goals. The Strategic Planning Dashboard will be a key feature of the next continuous strategic planning milestones annual report for the Board of Visitors in November 2020.

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