Strategic Planning

As faithful stewards of the public trust, Glendale Community College takes a holistic, integrated approach to strategic planning in service of our institutional mission and vision to provide quality learning experiences to all. To that end, GCC engages in proactive, diligent planning at all levels, ensuring continual improvement and maximal effectiveness in the use of resources for the benefit of our students and community.

Springing from our fundamental institutional values, our robust approach to planning sets forth the metrics by which we will hold ourselves accountable as we work to make our mission and vision a reality. Integrated planning at GCC includes the top-level college strategic plan, Elevate 2028, as well as the College Strategic Enrollment Management (CSEM) planning, academic planning, strategic budgeting, and climate action planning.

A key principle of comprehensive, multi-faceted planning at GCC is that our goals and metrics should be in alignment, across the college and throughout the whole of the planning framework. Additionally, because GCC is one of ten colleges in the Maricopa County Community College District, we ensure that our planning is in alignment with District Strategic Planning and the Chancellor's Priorities. In order to ensure this alignment, GCC employs a cyclical approach to planning, in which each step informs the next in a continuous cycle of improvement as we "iterate to excellence":

Elevate 2028 is GCC's college-wide strategic plan for 2025-2027, accessible via the link included in the Downloads section on this page, below. Developed through an inclusive process, this three-year plan leveraged the strength of shared governance and broad stakeholder engagement to define our top three strategic priorities:

• Elevating Student Success
• Building Institutional Capacity through Continual Improvement, and
• Intentionally Engaging in Future-Focused, Transformative Innovation.

Recognizing the need for a structured, diligent, and integrated approach to strategy execution, GCC has devoted significant institutional energy and resources to make sure its strategic action is achieving the goals set forth in the college's strategic plan. The tool we are using to support this is our Operational Planning and Execution (OPX) framework.

Developed internally based on best practices, OPX engages hundreds of stakeholders throughout the college in focused work to promote GCC's Strategic Focus Goal for 2025-2026: Improve Student Retention. Using the OPX framework, dozens of GCC teams meet regularly to make individual commitments, report and track progress, and celebrate success toward this college-wide priority. GCC's commitment to our strategic action framework is resulting in a stronger and more integrated engagement in our strategic efforts to better serve our students and community through access and ongoing support for our students.

The Glendale Community College Strategic Enrollment Management Plan 2024-2027 (GCC CSEM) is GCC's college-wide strategic enrollment management plan, accessible via the link included in the Downloads section on this page. Developed through the work of GCC's CSEM initiative and workgroup, this document is to illustrate how Glendale Community Colleges (GCC), College Strategic Enrollment Management (CSEM) Plan would adopt and add the MCCCD SSEM Strategies, SSEM College Goals, and SSEM College Activities. GCC identified milestones to support each SSEM College Activity in their college level plan. GCC also identified some additional strategies, goals, activities, and milestones to support college level strategic initiatives in the plan.

Executing the strategy outlined in Elevate 2028 requires an inclusive and engaging approach to ensure all constituents have the opportunity to share their ideas as we engage in this concerted effort to implement a plan for our future. If you would like to schedule a meeting or listening session, please contact us at [email protected] to coordinate a time that works for you and your group to ensure your ideas are heard and integrated into our strategic work at GCC.