Designing Where We Grow

I have spoken often this spring about the headwinds NDSU is navigating: declining enrollments, tightening state appropriations, and increasing scrutiny of academic program productivity. But we cannot wait until those pressures are here to plan. The best decisions in moments like this are made from a place of preparation, not pressure.

We are preparing through two connected processes. The Academic Portfolio Review, featured in last month’s Behind the Numbers, tells us where to grow our programs and where to sunset them. The Strategic Hiring Plan, which began as that review concluded, tells us where to invest in faculty and staff that will deliver on our mission.

Hiring is the most consequential investment any university makes. Each faculty decision shapes the institution for decades; each staff hire determines what programs can deliver. When every dollar matters more, we cannot adapt by trimming uniformly or by leaving hiring decisions to chance. We meet what is ahead by being deliberate about where we invest — and where we do not.

For too long, though, our process for authorizing those decisions has been built around individual transactions: a vacancy opens, a form is filled, a search is approved. That made sense as an administrative step. It does not make sense as a strategy.

This year, NDSU is replacing that approach with the Strategic Hiring Plan: an annual plan, submitted by each academic college. Each plan is built by the dean in consultation with department chairs and unit heads, and has three parts: the college's strategic workforce context, individual position requests in priority order, and a plan for part-time faculty. The plan moves from the department/unit level through the college and is then reviewed across the institution, bringing local input to the institutional direction. Approved positions move directly to recruitment, and the separate Request to Recruit form is no longer required.

The shift is more than procedural. Each plan considers the college's whole workforce at once, not one position at a time. The Provost's Office reviews each plan in the context of every other, so prioritization happens at the institutional level. And each plan asks colleges to be explicit about how a position supports program productivity and the long-term mission of the institution. If the narrative justifying the position is insufficient, the position will not be supported.

The framework comes directly from the Academic Portfolio Review. Both processes use the same six lenses, applied first to programs, then to the workforce decisions that follow: strategic alignment with institutional priorities; program landscape and demand; research, scholarly activity, and creative work; extension, engagement, and outreach; current staffing and impact; and operational efficiency.

Key Dates this Cycle

There is no cap on the number of positions a college may request, but every request must be supported by available college funding. The Provost's Office does not maintain a strategic fund to underwrite new investments. Position prioritization allows colleges to pursue more or fewer positions as budget realities emerge. The structure is designed to adapt with a future none of us can fully predict.

Colleges operating in a deficit must include a plan to reallocate resources. Positions funded by sources that are time-limited or not guaranteed to recur, such as grants, contracts, one-time allocations, and New Horizons positions, must include a long-term funding plan. These requirements bring tradeoffs into the open. That discipline is by design.

The strategic order stays the same. The budget determines depth.

The strategic order, set through weeks of consultation across colleges and lenses, does not change with circumstance. What changes is how far down the list conditions allow us to go. The institution knows what matters most before it knows what is possible.

A reasonable question sits underneath all of this: why invest in a comprehensive hiring plan when budgets are contracting? The planning matters more, not less, in that environment. A strategic process forces choices that get harder under pressure: whether a position aligns with where the college is going, whether the funding will hold, what we lose without it, what we should do instead. When budgets allow for everything, those questions get less attention. When resources are limited, making the right choices is what positions the institution to emerge stronger rather than simply smaller.

We do not yet know what the months ahead will bring. This work does not pause for the answer. This is when the analysis behind it earns its keep. The strategic case each college is building this spring is not contingent on the outcome of any single budget decision. It is the framework that lets us respond to whatever comes, coherently, defensibly, and on our own terms.

The plan is annual, but not rigid. Faculty retire unexpectedly. New grants are awarded. Enrollments shift. Opportunities emerge that no one could have anticipated in June. The plan accommodates these realities through an amendment process, but those amendments are grounded in the same strategic analysis that drives the annual plan. A mid-year request is not a new conversation. It is a continuation of the one each college began this spring, with the same lenses, the same priorities, and the same fiscal discipline.

Every position we authorize this cycle will shape the institution for years to come. Approaching those decisions with rigor is part of being responsible stewards of the public mission entrusted to us. It is also how we navigate the financial realities ahead without sacrificing the academic and research priorities that define NDSU.