Shape our new Strategic Plan

Quick links

• Where we are in the process
• Working Group
• Community Advisory Group
• Launch date
• Regional events
• Feedback form

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News & Updates

• 
  Our new Strategic Action Plan (2025–2032)November 22, 2024
• 
  Introducing our new Strategic Action Plan (2025-2032)November 18, 2024
• 
  Progress update: Our new Strategic Action PlanAugust 16, 2024

Help us to collaboratively create a new strategic plan that will guide our decisions and actions for the next seven years.

Shape our strategy

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Why now?

2024 marks the end of our current Strategic Plan (2019-2024). Much has changed since we developed that plan, and we have seen lots of growth and change. The Department now operates with a hybrid working, teaching and learning environment across a network of distributed sites, and since 2019 we’ve been increasing in size each year.

• We’ve grown significantly:
  • in 2019 we were based on one site in Vancouver and now we have three distributed sites in Prince George, Surrey and Vancouver;
  • in 2019 we had 64 new students each year, we now have 96 students who will start their Master of Occupational Therapy program each September (64 at our Vancouver site, 16 at the Prince George site, 16 at our Surrey site);
  • in 2019 we had 12 faculty members, we now have a team of 22.
    
• Our clinical community and support network also grew:
  • in 2019 we had 350 clinical faculty, now we have over 500;
  • in 2019 we offered 240 fieldwork placements each year, now we coordinate 480.

What we hope to achieve

Creating a new strategic plan will help us to:

• collectively rethink our overall vision and mission
• reassess our values and goals
• define ways we can achieve our goals and measure progress over the coming years

The new strategic plan is intended to be a useful reference to align decisions and ensure everything we do is contributing to a bigger vision.

Our strategic planning approach

The development of our strategic plan will be:

• led by a faculty working group from across the Department
• shaped by feedback from our students, faculty, staff, alumni and clinical faculty
• guided by the expertise and experience of a community advisory group from across BC
• a collaborative, transparent process with validation from the community.

We are working with UBC’s Strategic Decision Support unit, who are helping to guide us through the process.

Meet our Faculty Working Group

The strategic planning process will be supported by an internal faculty working group, consisting of co-leads from four identified core areas:

• Education
• Research
• People & Belonging
• Organization & Governance

This working group will help to create, validate and advise on various aspects of the strategic plan.

Meet our Community Advisory Group

Our Community Advisory Committee consists of external partners who have a unique perspective on our direction and activities. Hailing from across BC, this group of leaders, professionals, recent alumni and patient advocates bring their experience and expertise to the strategic planning process, and help identify any areas that need further detail or priority:

Where we are in the strategic planning process

Last updated: November 2024

During the Framework Development stage, we generated ideas for our new guiding principles: our Vision, Mission and a list of Values.

In Strategy Development, we started to use the information gathered during the Situation Assessment (including the analysis of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats/SWOT) to help determine 3-4 goals for each core area (e.g., Education, Research, Organization & Governance, People & Belonging).

Now we are in Implementation and Sustainment, we will use the new Strategic Action Plan as the basis for decision making, and to help prioritize initiatives and ideas that we would like to progress and develop.

New plan and toolkit to be launched in Fall 2024

We started preparing for this process in December 2023, and formally started work with the UBC Strategic Decision Support unit in January 2024. We began our Situation Assessment in mid-March.

Our goal is to have a collaboratively-created new strategic plan in the Fall, preparing to launch the final version in November.

We intend to create an output that can be used for regular consultation in both major and minor decision making. The plan will include the metrics that will be used to track our progress towards goals, and this data will be reported at our monthly all-faculty meetings.

Shape our strategy with your perspective

There will be key consultations during the process, and we encourage everyone who has an interest in occupational therapy practice, research, education and the Department to share feedback at each and every stage.

We hope to collaborate with as many people as possible, through surveys, town halls and drop-in sessions.

Community Surveys

We launched 3 major surveys in 2024:

• Survey 1: Predominantly requesting feedback on proposed Vision, Mission and Values, and SWOT (May)
• Survey 2: Predominantly requesting feedback on proposed Goals (June)
• Survey 3: Predominantly requesting feedback on proposed Actions (September)

We are grateful for your responses to each and every survey.

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Regional events across BC – September & October 2024

As part of the development of our new Strategic Plan, Department Head Dr. Ben Mortenson met local OTs and health administrators in person at 5 locations around the province. Colleagues met over an informal pizza lunch to discuss ideas about OT education, research, and how the Department can best support the OT community.

It was a great opportunity to meet in person and hear location-specific feedback about the program and ideas for the future.

• Slide deck (Vancouver example) presented at the regional events as conversation starters for discussion.

Location and dates of regional events in fall 2024:

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Share your thoughts about the Strategic Action Plan (ongoing)