Abstract
Creating an IT strategic plan is (relatively) easy. Aligning it with budgets (especially in tight financial times), various approaches to academic program delivery, and the overall university strategic plan for future growth is quite another story. This session will report on how to make it happen by using existing planning processes, making processes more transparent, getting buy-in, and creating opportunities for faculty and administrators to be highly entrepreneurial. By combining some existing processes with judiciously made improvements in others, the University of West Florida was able to create and implement its first IT strategic plan, blend it with the ongoing creation of online programs, and integrate it with an aggressive strategy for expanding the geographical scope of UWF's primary service region in one year. Implementation success to date will be discussed.