Consider this guide for writing a mission statement, a goal statement and a strategic or long-range plan:
In presenting your beliefs and values, decide who is the main audience of your mission statement. Prospective students? Current majors? Colleagues in other disciplines? The College dean? The University president and provost? ACEJMC? Your main audience should be prospective and current majors. Why should they study and seek employment in journalism and mass communications? What role do journalism and mass communications play in a society in which people mean to govern themselves? What role do journalism and mass communications play in your state or service area? How is your program distinctive in comparison with peer or competitive programs?
Decide whether the goal of your curriculum is learning for learning’s sake, learning for earning’s sake, or learning for serving’s sake. Decide whether you seek to teach and mentor students for journalism and mass communications as a:
Discipline – a branch of instruction or learning inherently worthy of study and scholarship
Job — an occupation requiring the performance of certain tasks and duties, for which they are accountable to an employer in exchange for a wage/salary and benefits
Craft — an occupation requiring mastery of certain skills and competencies for which they are accountable to the craft as well as to an employer
Profession — a vocation requiring, in addition to specialized skills and competencies, mastery of a body of knowledge and adherence to a code of conduct and ethics for which they are accountable to citizens or clients and the profession as well as to an employer
Career — an occupation, profession, or vocation that requires continued learning and development through life, or an extended phase of life
Calling — a vocation arousing a strong impulse to serve some principle or purpose, such as the public interest, an informed electorate, a community, an institution or clients, a vocation that transcends the personal rewards of salary and professional success.
You may prepare students for all of these goals but emphasize one or more of them in particular. You surely prepare graduates for more than entry-level jobs. For example, freshmen in fall 2012 will enter the field in 2016 and 2017 and will build careers through the next 40 years of their lives. Digital communication technologies in an interconnected, interactive world, people’s information-seeking behaviors, advertisers’ responses and other and new sources of economic support require informed imagining of the professions of journalism and mass communications ten or more years ahead.
Eloquent aspiration and intent may be appropriate in mission and goal statements. A strategic or long-range plan (typically for no more than five years) for achieving your goals and objectives should be more earthbound. To encourage the realistic and attainable, ACEJMC states in Indicator (a), Standard 7, Resources, Facilities and Equipment:
The unit has a detailed annual budget for the allocation of its resources that is related to its long-range, strategic plan.
Wherever possible, define a time line and a cost estimate for each objective.
Your university may have a diversity statement that defines certain principles, policies and practices and a diversity plan with targets and timelines. It may also have an administrator and office of diversity and/or affirmative action. By all means draw on these resources, but ACEJMC requires that you have your own diversity plan.
Note ACEJMC’s expectations for Standard 4, Diversity and Inclusiveness:
Your plan should originate in analysis of the extent to which your program meets each of ACEJMC’s expectations. As context and introduction to your plan, you may wish to identify where the program falls short and explain why and what the challenges are. These may include location, history, culture, and resources. ACEJMC seeks to understand special circumstances but will not excuse paralysis in face of them. Your plan, then, should define measurable goals and actions, with realistic timelines and resources, to address areas in which your program does not yet meet your goals and ACEJMC’s expectations.
A helpful resource is “Diversity Revisited: Good Ideas for Your Diversity Plan,” published by the ASJMC Diversity Committee in 2008.
To comply with the requirements for Standard 2, Curriculum and Instruction, you will have reviewed core and required courses to ensure they cover ACEJMC’s 10 values and competencies. You will also have reviewed syllabi to ensure they define learning objectives, including, as appropriate, ACEJMC’s values and competencies.
Your plan should explain how you will assess graduates’ mastery of ACEJMC’s 10 values and competencies, how you will analyze the results from your assessment, and how you will address weaknesses in learning outcomes that assessment reveals. To achieve compliance with this standard, you will have to show evidence that you have executed all phases of your plan.
Your plan should describe
Prepare, adopt and date – or update – mission and goal statements and strategic, diversity and assessment plans at least three or four years before preparing the self-study. Site teams are skeptical of statements and plans adopted in the year of the self-study. Because plans should include measurable objectives and actions, showing annual progress and achievement over three or four years will strengthen the case for compliance with individual standards and for accreditation. Nevertheless, statements and plans should not be immutable. Conditions and resources in the university, technologies and practices in the professions and people’s information-seeking behaviors change with alarming frequency. Plans have to adapt in response.
