Lisa Jasinski, UTSA senior director of strategic initiatives, was recently named one of two 2023-2024 fellows for The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), a community of higher education leaders building a sustainable future for higher education. Her research will inform the future of integrated planning strategies, shaping how university planners do their jobs for the next generation of students.
The SCUP Fellows program fosters new research initiatives in integrated planning for higher education leaders. Fellows complete a research project that uniquely contributes to the field and SCUP’s international knowledge base. Projects and outcomes are presented at the conclusion of the fellowship at SCUP’s annual conference.
“In her first year at UTSA, I’ve been inspired by Lisa’s work to embrace and implement innovative approaches to advance the university’s strategic plan refresh,” said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. “I look forward to seeing Lisa lean into her fellowship research to further imagine how UTSA can move closer toward its strategic destination of becoming a model public research university.”
Jasinski’s project, “The Future of University Planning in 2040: Using Foresight Analysis to Help SCUP Look Ahead, Adapt and Innovate,” will undertake a comprehensive foresight analysis to describe what university planning may look like in 2040. Guided by the Thinking about the Future Framework (Hines & Bishop, 2007), her project will follow a systematic, six-step process to identify signals of change, trends and drivers of change and develop scenarios of how these drivers might result in different possible futures.
“When we think about the pandemic, shifts in enrollment, the rise of online education, and the increasing competition for research dollars, it’s hard to know exactly where higher education is going next,” Jasinski said. “Leading with research from my SCUP project, I’m eager to play even a small part in helping conceptualize the role that planning will play in navigating an uncertain future.”
Since May 2022, Jasinski has served as the senior director of strategic initiatives in the Office of the President. Prior to joining UTSA, she spent 15 years at Trinity University, most recently serving as special assistant to the vice president for Academic Affairs.
Jasinski earned a B.A. in the history of art and architecture from Middlebury College, a M.A. in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ph.D. in educational administration and Policy from The University of Texas at Austin.
She served as an American Council on Education fellow-in-residence at the University of New Mexico and completed a Fulbright to the University of Jyväskylä in central Finland. She completed a Professional Certificate in Foresight from the College of Technology at the University of Houston.
