Planning With, Not For: Why Colleges and Universities Should Build Their Regions Into the Strategic Plan

A strategic plan does more than establish institutional priorities. It defines who the institution is accountable to, how it will use its resources, and what role it intends to play in the future of its students and surrounding communities.

For community colleges and universities, that accountability extends beyond campus boundaries. Their service regions are not simply recruitment territories, labor markets, or audiences for occasional outreach. They are communities with distinct assets, challenges, institutions, and aspirations. Those partners and places should be built into both the planning framework and the implementation steps, not added to an engagement appendix after the strategy has already been decided.

This is the difference between planning for a region and planning with it.

The Region Belongs in the Strategic Framework

Community engagement is most effective when it is connected to institutional identity, resource allocation, governance, and measurable outcomes. It cannot depend solely on individual faculty members, isolated projects, or short-term programs.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s 2026 Community Engagement Classification reflects this institutional approach. As of the 2026 cycle, 277 institutions hold the classification: 237 received it in the 2026 cycle, joining 40 institutions recognized in 2024. The elective, evidence-based self-study assesses how institutions collaborate with communities through the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources.

Similarly, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ Innovation and Economic Prosperity University designation recognizes 103 universities demonstrating a strategic, holistic commitment to economic engagement across talent, innovation, and place.

These frameworks point to an important conclusion: community engagement and regional economic development are not peripheral activities. They are indicators of institutional effectiveness when they are integrated into the way an institution defines its mission and measures its progress.

A strong institutional strategic planning process should therefore ask:

• Which communities does the institution serve?
• What regional priorities should shape institutional goals?
• Which partners should participate in decision-making?
• How will community knowledge influence implementation?
• What outcomes will be assessed and shared with partners?

These questions belong at the beginning of planning, not at the end.

Unintegrated Systems Limit Regional Progress

The case for regional integration is also supported by research on how economies and communities function.

In “How research universities are evolving to strengthen regional economies,” Joseph Parilla and Glencora Haskins of Brookings Metro describe regional economies as a “multi-system” process. Talent, research, entrepreneurship, infrastructure, and governance are often shaped by separate systems that too often remain unintegrated.

When these systems operate independently, communities can struggle to move from promising ideas to coordinated action. A college may be developing programs without a clear connection to regional priorities. An economic development organization may be pursuing an industry opportunity without access to relevant research or talent. A workforce board may be addressing immediate employer needs without a durable connection to institutional planning.

Brookings’ analysis of the Economic Development Administration’s $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge shows why coordination matters. Among the 60 finalist coalitions, research universities served as the quarterback organization in 12 and in a supporting role in another 29. More than one-third of the EDA’s investments were awarded to research universities.

The work extended beyond talent development. University-related investments included research and commercialization, infrastructure and placemaking, entrepreneurship and capital access, and governance. The implication is clear: regional progress requires more than producing graduates. It requires institutions that can help align multiple systems around shared objectives.

Brookings also cites research by economists Baron, Kantor, and Whalley showing that universities’ ability to affect local economies solely by supplying college graduates is limited. The more important channel is highly localized knowledge spillovers. Particularly when university-generated knowledge is complementary to industry needs.

That insight applies beyond economic development. Colleges and universities hold expertise that can help communities address complex issues in public health, education, housing, infrastructure, civic life, environmental sustainability, and social wellbeing. But that expertise creates regional value only when it is connected to community priorities and delivered through sustained partnerships.

The Two-Way Value of Regional Partnership

Planning with a region creates value in both directions.

Institutions bring faculty expertise, research capacity, clinical and technical programs, student talent, facilities, data capabilities, and established relationships. Those resources can help communities examine problems that may initially seem impractical or intractable. Academic expertise does not replace community knowledge, but it can expand the range of solutions available to local leaders and organizations.

Communities, in turn, provide context, lived experience, practical constraints, and a deeper understanding of what will work. They help institutions identify meaningful questions, interpret evidence responsibly, and design solutions that fit local conditions.

Students benefit as well. When community partnerships are intentionally connected to academic programs, students gain opportunities to apply learning in real settings, develop professional relationships, and understand the region where they may study, work, and build their lives. These experiences can support career development while also strengthening students’ connection to the community.

The objective is not to turn every community project into a workforce program. Regional vitality includes workforce readiness, but it also includes institutional trust, social wellbeing, entrepreneurship, public services, civic participation, and the capacity to solve shared problems.

Designing for Reciprocity and Continuity

The research of Marijke Visser, Geertje Tijsma, and Marjolein Zweekhorst, “Realizing Reciprocity in Community-University Partnerships When Addressing Complex Societal Issues,” offers a useful framework for understanding why this work is difficult.

Based on three years of action research at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the authors distinguish between transactional reciprocity. Specific, short-term outcomes supported by clear deliverables, and transformational reciprocity, which involves long-term collaborative change, co-produced knowledge, and shifts in how participants understand their work.

Both forms have value. The challenge is that complex regional issues usually require more than a single course, semester, or deliverable.

Visser, Tijsma, and Zweekhorst identify three strategies that can help:

1. Reduce complexity without oversimplifying it. Break broad issues into manageable subthemes and allow students to produce deliverables that meet partner needs, including infographics, podcasts, webpages, or other practical formats.
2. Use iterative learning. Establish regular dialogue so partners can provide feedback, refine the work, and adapt as conditions change.
3. Accumulate and integrate knowledge. Sequence courses and projects so that students build on prior work rather than starting from zero each term.

These principles should inform institutional strategic planning. A plan should identify the coordination function responsible for maintaining relationships, connecting projects, and carrying knowledge forward. It should establish shared subthemes that can organize multidisciplinary work. It should also define how community partners will participate in implementation and assessment.

Without this structure, partnerships can become dependent on a few individuals, overburden a single organization, or produce reports that ultimately “end up in a drawer.” Strategic intent must be matched with institutional support.

What Planning With the Region Looks Like in Practice

Several current examples demonstrate that this approach is already taking shape.

In December 2025, Colorado Northwestern Community College launched a community-driven strategic planning effort connected to Moffat County’s needs. The process engaged residents through focus groups, surveys, and discussions with business leaders, elected officials, school administrators, and nonprofit partners.

That approach positions the college’s future within the future of its service region.

Holyoke Community College’s regional planning discussions similarly brought together regional leaders and community members to help shape the institution’s next chapter. Its Strategic Plan 3.0 process identified collaboration, partnerships, and workforce and post-graduation success among its emerging priorities.

In 2026, Waubonsee Community College’s RISE 2030 initiative continued a five-year effort to deepen local involvement. The plan includes a priority to redefine the college’s relationship with the community and draws on stakeholders across business, education, healthcare, social services, government, and community organizations.

The Southern Illinois University System and The Springfield Project also launched the Springfield Model for Community-Led Change in 2026. The framework aligns academic expertise, institutional resources, community knowledge, and local leadership around priorities defined with Springfield residents and community leaders. Its areas of collaboration include community-informed research, entrepreneurship, workforce and leadership development, non-credit education, graduate research support, and shared resource development.

These examples differ in structure and scale, but they share a common principle: the community is not merely a recipient of institutional activity. It is a partner in defining priorities and shaping implementation.

A Practical Strategic Planning Framework

For presidents, provosts, planning leaders, governing boards, and regional partners, the work can begin with five commitments:

1. Define the service region as a strategic context. Identify the communities, institutions, and regional priorities connected to the college or university.
2. Include community partners in governance. Give external partners meaningful roles in planning, implementation, and assessment, not simply opportunities to comment.
3. Organize around shared regional themes. Use themes broad enough to support multidisciplinary work but focused enough to produce practical progress.
4. Connect academic experiences to community priorities. Build sequenced courses, internships, research, clinical experiences, and technical projects that allow students to contribute and learn in the region.
5. Create the capacity to sustain the work. Assign responsibility for coordination, relationship management, knowledge integration, funding alignment, and continuous feedback.

The plan should also distinguish activity from outcome. Convening partners is an activity. Building shared capacity, improving community conditions, strengthening student learning, and advancing regional opportunity are outcomes.

Strategic Planning That Endures

Community engagement should not be treated as a collection of admirable projects operating beside the institution’s core strategy. It should be reflected in priorities, budgets, governance, academic planning, partnership development, data use, and measures of institutional effectiveness.

Morse Strategies, LLC partners with colleges, universities, governing systems, economic development organizations, and regional workforce leaders to embed community partners and service regions into institutional strategic planning and implementation. We help institutions connect education, social service, workforce, and community systems so that strategy becomes coordinated action, and so that the work can be sustained beyond a single grant, leader, or course.

Planning with the region creates a stronger institution and a more capable community. Visit morsestrategy.com to begin the conversation.