爱豆传媒

In today鈥檚 rapidly evolving higher education landscape, change is constant. Demographic shifts, fluctuating research funding, climate-related disruptions, and leadership turnover are rewriting the rules for institutional planning. Prescriptive 鈥淧lan A鈥� roadmaps no longer suffice. Institutions need a contingency planning approach that enables teams to be ready for change.

To help colleges and universities meet the moment, 爱豆传媒 collaborated with the to update a pandemic contingency planning tool originally developed through roundtables with dozens of institutions. These sessions included participants from a variety of roles, including campus planning, academic affairs, student affairs, finance, and assessment.

The Campus Contingency Planner is a tool designed to help institutions plan for change in uncertain times. It鈥檚 a worksheet organized around your 鈥渙fferings鈥� – the services, functions, or programs within the institution, a division/school, or a department. After defining the situation at hand and the changes to consider, you identify how decisions will be made and how stakeholders will be engaged during the contingency planning process. Then, you determine how to adapt each offering by considering the related places, policies, procedures, programs, people, and platforms.

The Planner can reframe your approach to long-term planning. While contingency planning is often used to prepare for potential change, this tool can also help identify responses after a change has occurred, informing future planning. Although it can be completed individually, the tool is most effective – and transparent – when used collaboratively with your team.

You can download the planner and read the instructions below to get you started.

What are the dimensions of Campus Contingency Planning?

In recent months, we鈥檝e seen institutions freeze travel, hiring, and capital projects as well as layoff staff and cancel programs. They are shelving previous planning efforts and creating their Plan B, Plan C 鈥� so on and so forth.

The Campus Contingency Planner aims to provide a straightforward and simple approach for revisiting and adjusting plans by considering what you offer (courses, housing, dining, student health, etc.) and how these may have to change. The situation continues to be dynamic, and universities will continue to need to respond to new information, changing conditions, and other external drivers.

The tool enables you to pivot by establishing principles, adapting offerings, and anticipating roadblocks 鈥� and how you鈥檒l get over, around, or through them. The Planner can be completed at both the institutional level to get a bird鈥檚-eye as well as the departmental level to bring a boots-on-the-ground perspective.

It uses six dimensions to assess offerings across an institution: places, policies, procedures, programs, people, and platforms. For each dimension, thinking through how plans need to change, whether or not existing plans are still needed, and what new plans are necessary establishes the 鈥渁daptive鈥� part of the Planner.

• Places: Physical spaces, such as classrooms, labs, offices, libraries and study spaces, residence and dining halls, and fitness and recreation space.
• Policies: Institutional requirements, such as building hours, hybrid work policies, space standards, and space utilization targets
• Procedures: Processes, such as course scheduling, staff onboarding, accreditation, capital planning pipelines
• Products: Degree and certificate programs, mentoring programs, orientation programs, health and wellness programs
• People: University stakeholders and key partners, such as students, faculty, staff, alumni, and corporate/community targets
• Platforms: Digital resources, such as reservation systems, virtual collaboration tools, and ticketing systems

Research Funding at a University

Imagine you are the Vice President for Research at a large public research university facing potential funding cuts due to reduced indirect cost reimbursement rates and canceled grants. In response, you might begin by assessing the utilization of your lab spaces. Rather than defaulting to expansion, you could revise policies around space and equipment standards to support 鈥済rowing in place.鈥� This might include sharing, consolidating, or repurposing existing spaces.

To implement these policies, you would update space request procedures, review current leases, and develop a business case for whether to stay or vacate certain facilities. You might also evaluate your research programs to compare space usage with associated revenue (for more on this, see our recent whitepaper). Additionally, reviewing research support services could reveal opportunities to consolidate or centralize functions such as post-award administration, compliance, and communications. If there are redundant digital platforms, consolidating them could reduce costs while improving the user experience.

Enrollment at a Small College

Now imagine you are the Vice President for Academic Affairs at a small college experiencing a sudden and unexpected enrollment decline due to the introduction of a new 鈥渇ree college鈥� program in your state. Since your academic programs determine the spaces you use and the people who deliver and support them, you begin by revisiting your academic offerings.

You update a recent academic program review and rather than cutting entire programs – which could limit future revenue potential – you start by eliminating undersubscribed courses. Simultaneously, you introduce new offerings identified through a recent market study. Turning to physical space, you consolidate classes to take an aging building offline, explore subleasing options, or rent out spaces for events. Expansion plans are deferred.

At the same time, you evaluate support services, events, and instructional strategies to ensure strong student retention. You also collaborate with enrollment management to boost spring admissions and transfer enrollments.

How do you use the Campus Contingency Planner?

The Campus Contingency Planner is focused on identifying the key changes to the operations of your institution in response to a major event. It could be in response to a PR crisis, a policy shift, an enrollment decline, a natural disaster, or other unfortunate event you must plan ahead for.

After defining the situation at hand and identifying guiding principles, you move forward by considering the places, policies, procedures, programs, people, and platforms for each of your offerings 鈥� and identifying what needs to change for each.

Working individually or in teams in a facilitated workshop, you鈥檒l begin by imagining a specific situation 鈥� a set of changes 鈥� you want to plan for. Then you鈥檒l establish planning priorities, then adjust institutional offerings by considering the six factors of contingency planning noted above and finally anticipate the roadblocks that may alter your plan. Let鈥檚 walk through these steps:

1. Define the Situation: Identify the specific situation for which you will develop a plan. What prompted this change in institutional operations? For example, it might be a sudden loss in funding, legislative mandate, or natural disaster. Describe the key shifts occurring such as reduced staffing for research, new mandates to comply with, or long-term electricity outage.
   
2. Establish Guiding Principles: After defining the situation to plan for, list the principles that will guide decision-making and stakeholder engagement during contingency planning. For example, consider who will make decisions, how the community will be engaged or informed, and how vulnerable communities will be considered and prioritized.
   
3. Create and Adapt Your Plan: This section of the Planner allows an institution to outline a selection of offerings and assess the ways in which this offering needs to be altered in this new scenario. An offering might be a program, service, or function within the institution. Consider the different facets of campus through the lens of student touchpoints. For example, dining, housing, academics, recreation, and administration can all be considered different 鈥渙fferings.鈥� But the tool scales to whatever level of detail you need. So, you could complete one planner on academics and include courses, tutoring, mentoring, skills workshops, showcase events, etc. as the rows of offerings that make up academic programs.
   
4. Predict the Roadblocks: The last section of the Planner helps you plan for change. Brainstorm and select up to 4 hypothetical situations that would require an adjustment to be made to your contingency plan. Start by thinking: 鈥淲hat could go wrong?鈥� (e.g., financial downturn, public relations crisis, regulatory change, or enrollment drop).

Here鈥檚 an example of the kinds of offerings you can use the planner to adapt at different scales: on the left working at the institutional scale offerings, in the center zooming in on student life, and at the right zoom in further to student health within student life.

College or University	Student Life	Student Health
Academics  Technology  Student Life  Facilities  Libraries  Etc.	Student Health Housing  Dining  Recreation Athletics  Community Programs  Multicultural Initiatives  Student Organizations  Etc.	Primary Care  Counseling  Dental Care  Exams and Screening  Laboratories  Health education  Allergies  Immunization  Etc.

Tips for getting started:

1. Be transparent about your thinking: Even when you don鈥檛 have all the answers, early communication with clear priorities and goals helps reassure students, staff, and other stakeholders. This builds trust. In the absence of established procedures and policies, clearly articulating your assumptions, what has changed, and your key priorities can go a long way in fostering confidence across your community.
2. Seek feedback: Institutions should anticipate some pushback from students, faculty, and staff regarding contingency plans. While it may not be possible to meet everyone鈥檚 needs, this feedback presents an opportunity to develop more thoughtful solutions and align them with what stakeholder’s value most for their success.
3. Don鈥檛 delay planning: With so many uncertainties, it can be tempting to wait until key decisions are finalized before diving into the details (we get it – it鈥檚 a lot of work!) However, developing multiple plans now means you鈥檒l have a high-level Plan A, B, and C in place, providing a solid foundation for adapting as circumstances evolve.
4. Role-play and drill potential challenges: Even the best-laid plans can go awry. Don鈥檛 just talk about what might change – act it out. Role-playing scenarios helps your team anticipate challenges and begin thinking creatively about how to respond, even if immediate solutions aren鈥檛 obvious.

By using the Campus Contingency Planner, institutions, schools, and departments can better prepare for events that impact operations. Completing the Planner encourages collaboration and coordination across departments, helping to build a shared understanding of what spaces, policies, procedures, and other elements need to change – while ensuring that core principles remain intact, even in the face of disruption.

We鈥檇 love to hear from you about how you鈥檙e using the Planner and what feedback you have on it, reach out to Elliot Felix, Partner and US Higher Education Sector Lead, below.

If you want to learn more about the Campus Contingency Planner, check out our .