ISLAMABAD  -  USAID’s Higher Education System Strengthening Activity (HESSA) partner universities gathered in Is­lamabad this week for a workshop to kickstart strategic planning on their respective campuses. 

The event was led by the Univer­sity of Utah. Senior administrators and faculty members from sixteen (16) HESSA partner universities participated, including; Fatima Jin­nah Women University, UET Lahore, NUST, IBA Karachi, Lahore College for Women University, University of Peshawar, Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University, Karakoram In­ternational University, Women Uni­versity Swabi, Abdul Wali Khan Uni­versity Mardan, Peoples University of Medical Sciences, BUITEMS Quet­ta, Sindh Agriculture University, NUTECH, University of Swat, and Mirpur University of Science and Technology. 

Despite its importance in sustain­ing university operations, strategic planning is not yet an established practice in the public higher educa­tion sector in Pakistan. This initia­tive by HESSA will support partner universities to adopt this practice by engaging with experienced plan­ning experts with a successful track record of working with numerous American universities. 

The workshop laid the ground­work for the continuing process of strategic planning. On the sec­ond day of the event, a case study of strategic plan development at the University of Utah was pre­sented by professors at the Uni­versity of Utah; Dr Michael Barber (Principal Investigator HESSA) and Dr Aslam Chaudhry (Chief of Party HESSA).

Extensive follow-up training for the university planning teams is scheduled for later this year. The training will be followed up by reg­ular consultative sessions to en­sure that each university develops a draft strategic plan as an outcome.