Developing a Partnership Strategy
As discussed in Why Partnerships, Why Now, international linkages are taking on new meaning for colleges and universities around the world. They are performing new roles and functions, reaching out to new partners, and seen as essential for student learning and scholarly research. In this light, partnership development is increasingly approached through intentional, institution-wide, strategic planning.
The strategic partnerships needed to enhance U.S.-Japanese student mobility especially benefit from such an overall planning process. Throughout this process, institutions must consider linkages that emerge from faculty interests and those that reflect institutional priorities, allowing for development in both directions. The process must also involve all relevant constituencies and decision-makers.
When done carefully, strategic partnership planning enables colleges and universities to develop a balanced portfolio of linkages that reflects institutional priorities and can be sustained over time. Partnership plans bring clarity to deciding on possible new partners, definition to institutional responsibilities in making a linkage work, and direction to the activities and projects to be pursued.
Characteristics of a strategic partnership plan
A strategic partnership plan:
- Reflects an inclusive, transparent, and legitimate process of development
- Takes stock of existing partnerships
- Ties partnerships to faculty strengths, institutional mission, and international goals
- Defines institutional purposes and goals for partnerships
- Sets targets for number, location, and types of partnerships
- Sets criteria and procedures for prioritizing possible partnerships
- Commits institutional support for partnership work
- Includes processes for assessing and reworking partnerships over time
In the developing such a plan, institutions have found it useful to do each of the following:
- Establish policies and procedures for
- Approving new partnerships and new activities for existing partnerships
- Guiding faculty, staff, and students in participating in existing partnerships
- Managing and keeping existing partnerships going
- Keeping track of existing partnerships
- Managing crises, travel warnings, disagreements, and similar situations
- Streamline existing procedures, removing obstacles to international work
- Processes for spending funds overseas
- Travel advances and reimbursements
- Processes for paying colleagues at partner institutions
- Processes for dual and joint degrees
- Develop financial and other support for partnership work
- Seed grants for faculty and administrators to engage with partners
- Workable funding models for student and faculty exchange
- Understanding and support for the strategic partnership concept from administrators and faculty leadership
- Identification and pursuit of external grants
- Sharing resources with partners for mutual benefit
- IT infrastructure needed for long-distance communication
- Develop effective administrative structures to manage partnerships
- Connect the various offices that must be involved in managing a partnership
- Designate an administrator in charge of partnerships for the institution
- Develop a steering committee for each strategic partnership
- Provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff
- Workshops, web resources, lectures, and group travel that provide information on:
- Complexities, obligations, and implications of establishing partnerships
- History, language, culture, politics, economics of partner nation
- Skills of cross-cultural interaction, engaging colleagues at partner institution in providing some of this information
- Workshops, web resources, lectures, and group travel that provide information on:
“We will leverage existing relationships when possible—and cultivate new relationships when necessary—with a small, highly select group of true peer institutions around the world to form institutional partnerships that are both broadly and deeply impactful—crossing departments, colleges, centers and institutes to inform and enhance all of our core mission activities: research, education, public service, and economic development.”
University of Illinois, Strategic International Partnerships strategy statement
Next up: Establishing Selection Criteria and Procedures »