Institutional Context | Strategic Planning | Master Plan | Divisional Planning Documents | Summary

III.   Institutional Master Plans

• The Academic Master Plan
• The Facilities Master Plan
• The Integrated Marketing Master Plan
• The Technology Master Plan

1. The Academic Master Plan
Developed by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a task force of forty-five people drawn from the Academic Affairs Division and related personnel, the Academic Master Plan envisions the college's academic future through a series of stated objectives and timelines.  The plan is reviewed, assessed and revised annually.

Academic Master Plan Executive Summary
In November 2002, forty-five members of the Ocean County College community representing faculty from each academic department, the instructional deans, and other administrators and support staff met at an off-campus retreat to initiate discussions about an academic master plan. In preparation for the meeting, the participants read Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College (2002), a report of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). During their discussions, the retreat participants agreed that the AACU report should serve as the basis of OCC's Academic Master Plan.

The AACU document advocated “a dramatic reorganization of undergraduate education to ensure that all college aspirants receive not just access to college, but an education of lasting value.”  To achieve this goal, the report called for “college students to become Intentional Learners who can adapt to new environments, integrate knowledge from different sources, and continue learning throughout their lives.”

To become Intentional Learners, the report stated, students must be able to:

• Master intellectual and practical skills
• Communicate effectively—orally, visually, and in writing
• Understand and employ quantitative and qualitative analysis to solve problems
• Understand and interpret information from a variety of sources
• Understand and work with complex systems and with diverse groups
• Demonstrate intellectual agility and the ability to manage change
• Transform information into knowledge and knowledge into action
• Be informed by knowledge about the natural and social worlds and about forms of inquiry basic to these skills

Informed learners have opportunities to study:

• The diversity of the human imagination and the variety of its expressions across the cultures
• Means of modeling the natural, social, and technical worlds
• The values and histories underlying American democracy

Responsible learners reflect:

• Intellectual honesty
• Responsibility for society's moral health and for social justice
• Active participation as citizens of a diverse democracy
• Discernment of the ethical consequences of decisions and actions
• Deep understanding of one's self and respect for the complex identities, histories, and cultures of others

Purpose of the Academic Master Plan
The Academic Master Plan is the core of the college's planning process. The master plan guides the faculty and administration as they seek to:

• Ensure that the academic mission, goals, and success strategies connect to OCC's values, vision, mission, and strategic planning
• Translate the college mission into effective programs
• Set priorities for the use of college resources

Academic Affairs will provide an educational environment of distinction for the Intentional Learner.  We commit ourselves to:

• Creating high quality instructional and cultural programs for a diverse population
• Preparing students for a rewarding life
• Developing informed and engaged citizens
• Encouraging lifelong learning and personal growth.

The Academic Goals
The Academic Affairs Division through the Academic Master Plan seeks to create Intentional Learners who are empowered, informed, and responsible as defined in Greater Expectations. This will be accomplished through the following goals.

• Provide a challenging, coherent, and integrated curriculum for both transfer and career students
• Establish a shared commitment to high and meaningful educational and ethical standards for students, faculty and administration
• Prepare students for success as they transfer to other educational institutions, or enter the workforce
• Encourage lifelong learning
• Develop a responsive culture based on assessment and review

• Develop required “College Experience” modules for all students
• Ensure continuing curriculum review
• Initiate a pilot program in Writing-Across-the-Curriculum and Writing-to-Learn
• Develop pilot programs in learning communities, interdisciplinary courses, team-taught courses, service learning opportunities, and capstone courses
• Promote experiential learning opportunities
• Initiate reviews of the mathematics and English programs: instructional methods, curriculum design, student tracking
• Develop departmental strategies for online course development and delivery
• Develop learning-focused budget priorities

Goal B. Establish a shared commitment to high and meaningful educational and ethical standards for students, faculty, and administration

• Collaborate with public school administration and faculty
• Create a system of opportunities and resources for individual departmental professional development activities
• Develop a faculty-mentoring-faculty program
• Initiate an orientation program and ongoing professional development opportunities for adjunct and new faculty
• Establish a culture of faculty professional development
• Encourage, support, and recognize, faculty and/or administrative technology initiatives
• Create a plan for academic leadership development

Goal C. Prepare students for success as they transfer to other educational institutions, or enter the workforce:

• Incorporate college-level reading, writing, speaking, research, and information literacy appropriate to the discipline in all courses
• Create a coherent and effective system of academic advising for both full-time and part-time students
• Review, systematize, and enhance the current procedures for awarding educational credit for prior life experience

• Define basic student information technology competencies, and establish an information technology graduation requirement based on these competencies

Goal D. Encourage lifelong learning:

Promote activities sponsored by the OCC Center for Peace, Genocide, and Holocaust Studies, and the Office of International Education

Goal E. Develop a responsive culture based on assessment, review, and accountability

• Introduce various classroom assessment techniques
• Establish a college-wide Faculty-Administrative Classroom Design Committee focusing on emerging classroom technologies
• Develop a system for assessment of organizational effectiveness in Academic Affairs
• Develop a comprehensive system to assess each strategy in the Academic Master Plan to ensure accountability and follow-up

Master Plan Assessment, 2004-05

2. The Facilities Master Plan

Executive Summary
Purpose of the Master Plan
The chief purpose of this Master Plan is to provide a work plan to guide the improvement and expansion of Ocean County College.  The components of this plan will address the needs of an expanding population and the heightened postsecondary educational aspirations of Ocean County citizens over the next ten years, in accordance with the Vision and Mission of Ocean County College (OCC).

• listen to students, energize people, and nurture excellence
• stimulate innovation through creative teaching and learning, technology, and strategic partnerships
• enrich the community with exceptional service and an abundance of programs for life-long learners
• take advantage of the learning opportunities provided by the coastal and pine forest environment, and
• offer access to learning at all levels of higher education throughout the global community.

Proposed Expansion and Enhancement of Campus Identity and Site Features
The main campus of the college is located on a beautiful upland portion of Toms River.  The college has made commendable efforts to maintain its beauty, and augment it with landscaping. The Southern Education Center, a southern extension center of the college, is located in Manahawkin.  The college has also implemented a campus-wide site signage program that has contributed an “Ocean” atmosphere to the campus identity.  To enhance the already beautiful main and satellite campuses, and to reduce the vehicular/pedestrian conflict the following are proposed:  

• Improvements to vehicular entrances and circulation
• Expansion and enhancements to parking lots
• Relocation of athletic fields and tennis courts
• Creation of a lower green
• Creation of a western mall and amphitheater
• Enhancements and additions to the mall and existing site features

• Addition to the Fine Arts Center and creation of northern campus entry
• Additions to the College Center
• Addition to the Health and Physical Education Building
• New Academic Buildings
• Addition to the Southern Education Center
• Addition to the Health Sciences Building

• Health and life safety – air quality and HVAC
• Health and life safety – roofs
• Health and life safety – ADA improvements
• Energy management – HVAC controls, emergency power, and fuel cells
• Security and fire alarm systems upgrade
• Equipment replacement
• Signage

Proposed Improvements to the Utility and Traffic Infrastructure
The engineering component of the Master Plan will support the proposed infrastructure improvements in the following categories:

• Traffic and transportation
• Water, gas and electricity
• Sanitary sewer system
• Wetlands and storm water management

Master Plan Approach
Over a six-month period, RJF-Fletcher Thompson Architecture (RJF-FT), participated in interviews and meetings facilitated by the college administration with the “stakeholders” of the college, the county, and the community at large. These “stakeholders” included the following:

• Faculty groups and departments
• Administrative teams, trustees
• Student groups
• Mayors of various Ocean County Townships
• School superintendents
• The County Engineering Department
• County administrators

Projected Student Enrollment Growth
At Ocean County College, students are enrolled in programs of study ranging from business studies and engineering to liberal arts programs such as fine arts and political science.  Students are of all ages and from all walks of life.  In addition to high school graduates using the college as a springboard to institutes of higher learning, the popularity of the programs offered by the college has attracted high school students to the Jump Start Program as well as adults 55 and older to the Academy of Lifelong Learning.

The current enrollment on a full-time equated (FTE) basis is approximately 5,500 credit and 400 non-credit students. The fall semester of 2003 has seen an FTE enrollment growth of 5.2% over that of fall 2002, indicating that the anticipated, average, annual FTE enrollment growth rate of 3.9% is very plausible. Projections based on various analyses done by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at OCC place the enrollment ten years from today at about 8,100 credit and 600 non-credit FTE students.

Academic and Support Space Projections
Based on widely accepted space standards for New Jersey community colleges, the college's current space inventory of about 455,000 gross square feet is inadequate to house all academic and student support spaces in the next ten years.  For planning purposes, 84 gross square feet per FTE student was utilized.The space projections on the main and satellite campuses will be proportional to enrollment increases.  To better plan future development, goals expressed by the “stakeholders” were assessed under the following categories:

• Quantity of space for housing projected enrollment growth
• Types of spaces envisioned to serve this growth

3. The Technology Master Plan
The Technology Master Plan was developed by the campus Technology Committee and reviewed by the entire campus community prior to its approval by the College Council in 2002.  The plan is reviewed, assessed, and revised annually.

Executive Summary
The Technology Planning Committee (TPC), appointed by President Jon Larson, makes available this summary of the Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP). 

• Technology enriches but does not replace community.
• Technology literacy is valued and required.
• Technology is available, accessible, and supported.
• Information technology is used to strengthen college teaching, student learning, faculty, and student support programs. 
• Information technology is used to support improved practices and procedures and enhance OCC administrative functions.
• Access to information is simple, secure, and reliable regardless of time, location, or tool.
• Basic levels of technology resources and services are provided to all members of the OCC community.
• The Technology Planning Committee defines technology standards based on collegiate communication and collaboration.
• Decision-makers are accountable for development and deployment of Information Technology.
• Users are responsible for the effective and appropriate utilization of Information Technology.
• Investment in Information Technology is an ongoing financial commitment.
• Systems are integrated, reliable, flexible, easily accessible, and secure.
• Technology's role in instruction, scholarship, and administration will be continually assessed.

1.     Improve faculty, staff, and students' ability to use technology to communicate via a variety of electronic, textual, audio, and graphic formats.

2.     Develop an OCC Academic Plan for Instructional Technology for teaching and learning technology that fits with the institutional vision.

3.       Install, maintain and upgrade technology in all classrooms.

4.     Enhance the responsibilities of the Office of Media Services to include classroom technology support and instructional design services.  

5.    Institutionalize the faculty development support that is necessary to integrate technology effectively into the learning process.

6.    Implement a full suite of online student services for all students regardless of course delivery mode.

7.     Help students gain technical skills they need for successful learning.

8.    Encourage staff members to use training and development opportunities to achieve technology proficiency.

9. Identify administrative problem areas, develop solutions, and provide clear, accessible documentation.

10. Complete and maintain a scalable and reliable Information Technology infrastructure.

11. Use technology to foster effective relationships between OCC and the community.  

• Communicate the case for OCC strategic planning
• Focus on internal and external forces contributing to planning
• Formulate and share a responsive communication plan so that people not involved in the strategic planning process know what's happening
• Define the audience, the message for each group, and the purpose (to gain consensus, approval, and feedback)
• Determine how best to share information
• Outline the consequences of success or failure in terms that the audience can identify with
• If feedback is encouraged, determine how to make use of comments and suggestions
• Communicate frequently and consistently

Acknowledgement
The Technology Planning Committee acknowledges and thanks
Ms. Barbara Bulanda
Senior Consultant, Collegis, Inc.
For her assistance, dedication, and commitment to the development of the
OCC Information Technology Strategic Plan