Criterion Two: Preparing for the Future The organization's allocation of resources and its processes for evaluation and planning demonstrate its capacity to fulfill its mission, improve the quality of its education, and respond to future challenges and opportunities. Opportunities for improvement

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	The instability of leadership at the campus level has been the single greatest stumbling block to bringing together the UMKC community in sustained strategic planning. As of September 2009, we will have had six chancellors and seven provosts serving under three different UM System presidents in the previous nine years. Each change of administration has resulted, at a minimum, in delaying on-going campus-wide planning processes. In some instances, there were complete changes in direction on specific strategies. Our current leadership, whose demonstrated commitment to the University, faculty leadership, and community collaboration, bodes well for our continued improvement in strategic planning. However, we will continue to need to be vigilant to keep budgeting and planning processes inclusive and transparent so that ongoing improvement can occur.
We need to continue to develop our mission focus as a central, rather than academic unitspecific, mission, so that all units can see themselves in the strategic plan and can enhance opportunities for cooperation and collaboration. The current strategic plan’s development of the visual and performing arts strategies reaching beyond the Conservatory of Music and Dance to a broad-based University plan is a good example of this type of planning that needs to be continued. In some instances, our planning needs to be better defined, particularly in our role as an urban institution. This focus — urban engagement — provides one of the greatest challenges to trust (as much urban focus planning in the past has been viewed with distrust by the faculty as “external control”), while at the same time presenting one of the best opportunities for collaboration (as all academic units have excellent urban collaborations and programs).
Both our strategic planning processes and budgeting processes have made remarkable progress in developing cohesive plans with strong, broad-based support. As we move forward, the challenge will be to link the budget process more closely to the strategic plan without a retreat to the centrifugal forces of internal competition and distrust of the past.