Board Corner: Incorporating Strategic Foresight

During the last three years, the Board has had a committee focused on thinking about the future of Institutional Research and Institutional Effectiveness (IR/IE) as a profession and how AIR can help all our members excel in that future. Under the leadership of Laura Palucki Blake, the early work focused on defining the critical issues facing the profession in the near future. The committee identified those issues to be 1.) demonstrating the value of IR/IE; 2.) promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; 3.) amplifying student and institutional success; and 4.) cultivating leadership for the IR/IE professional. Partly in response to the committee’s recommendations, the Board in 2023 updated AIR’s Vision, Mission, and Mission Objectives statements. Additionally, the Board and the committee held sessions at the 2023 and 2024 AIR Forums to discuss its work and promote the idea of strategic foresight thinking among IR/IE professionals.

Now a standing committee, the Future of AIR Committee, led by Adrea Hernandez, is focused on how the Board can better and more routinely incorporate strategic future thinking into its processes, and to provide greater opportunities to the membership to utilize those skills. Toward that end, the Committee set up a learning experience at the October Board meeting on strategic foresight. Bob London and Lindsay Curie of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) provided an overview of the ASAE ForesightWorks process, and then Adrea led the Board through an initial strategic foresight exercise. It was a great introduction to the efforts for the Board, and I look forward to the work we will do to make this a significant part of the Board’s work.

I am very excited by the work that the Future of AIR Committee is doing. I look forward to its recommendations on how to incorporate this work more into Board efforts, and eagerly anticipate their ideas for providing opportunities to the membership. By the nature of our profession, we too often are consumed by taking care of “what is on fire,” and I think the important work of this Committee will help us to maintain a focus on the future that we want to steer ourselves and our institutions toward.