What is Strategy & Program Development?

The Office of Strategy & Program Development works with the Administration, Provost, schools, and divisions of Tufts University to support the identification, analysis, and development of innovative and strategic program opportunities that are both complementary to the university’s mission and which will generate significant revenue.

Whenever a new program or idea is developed, it typically follows the following process:

The Office of Strategy & Program Development supports the development of an idea across these phases – depending on the needs of each project – by providing support to existing administrative resources in a number of ways …

Ideation

• Researching and developing existing ideas
• Examining university enterprises to identify areas for enhancement and growth
• Monitoring external factors and trends that could support innovation at Tufts
• Creating opportunities for idea generation from all sources
• Supporting entrepreneurial proposals generated among faculty and staff and identified by school leadership as potential areas of growth

Business Analysis

• Transforming ideas into workable solutions
• Developing business plans
• Making business analysis easier for faculty and school leaders
• Making connections with other university functions needed to plan and execute new programs
• Prioritizing among various opportunities

Approval

• Proposing and reviewing presentation materials
• Briefings and/or presentation strategy
• Note: the Office will typically not make or give the presentation, but will provide support

Program Development

• Transitioning from business to action plans
• Creating a roll-out sequence
• Tracking roll-out over time
• Monitoring program success
• Note: the Office will typically not be involved in rolling-out the program beyond the process outline and monitoring described above

This office will largely focus on ideas that fall in the academic programming or University operations domains. While it welcomes ideas that are driven by fundraising, grant / research funding, IP, company spin-offs, etc., the majority of these ideas will be funneled through the existing resources found in University Advancement, Office of Research Development / Administration, Technology Transfer and Industry Collaboration, etc. See our current projects here!

Start down the path of engaging the Office of Strategy & Program Development!