CASE STUDY: University of Nebraska at Omaha
From hours of HLC evidence gathering to a single report
30
minutes per reporting cycle, down from hours
1
quarter to leadership adoption
225
initiatives now visible institution-wide
Every accredited institution runs into the same structural problem: the strategic plan lives in one place and the accreditation evidence lives in another, so every reporting cycle means rebuilding by hand what the institution already knows. The University of Nebraska at Omaha carries more of that load than most. As a metropolitan research university inside the NU System, UNO aligns to the system's strategic plan, its own institutional priorities, HLC accreditation criteria, and its role in the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Institutions.
Keristiena Dodge, UNO's Chief of Staff, took a deliberate approach to changing that. Today strategic plan reporting takes her about 30 minutes a cycle, risk mitigation strategies are tracked by tag instead of by email, and HLC evidence arrives as a report rather than an assignment. Here is how UNO got there, and why the way they rolled it out mattered as much as the tool.
ORGANIZATION:
University of Nebraska at Omaha
INDUSTRY:
Public metropolitan research university
HLC accreditation evidence and strategic plan alignment
The Challenge
The real challenge: proving it, not just planning it
UNO has an unusually complex alignment picture. The same work has to answer to the NU System's plan, the university's own priorities, and HLC's criteria, and there was no central place holding all of it. So when leadership needed to know where a strategic initiative stood, the only way to find out was to interrupt someone.
"It was a lot of manual work. You would have to ask people that really have busy jobs, like deans, to stop what you're doing right now and respond to this email and figure out what's going on in your college in relation to topic X." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Answers came back in whatever format each person had time to send, then got compiled into spreadsheets that were out of date almost immediately. Accreditation ran the same way. UNO's accreditation liaison rebuilt the HLC evidence base by hand each cycle, pulling together work the institution had already done but couldn't easily point to. Risk was no different: when the NU System's audit office produced its risk heat maps, UNO had to email leaders and manually assemble what mitigation strategies existed, right as the Board of Regents started asking whether those strategies were actually being executed rather than just listed.
None of that reflects a lack of effort. It is what happens when the information isn't reachable, and Keristiena named the consequence plainly.
"When the data is not easily accessible, it's not going to be a priority for anybody to report on strategic planning. It just doesn't happen. Period." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Solution
One system, tagged for the plan, the risks, and HLC
UNO came onto VisionSync as part of the NU System's rollout, but what made the adoption work was how Keristiena's team ran it. Rather than asking deans and vice chancellors to learn a new tool and build their entries from scratch on a compressed summer timeline, her team entered the initiatives on leaders' behalf, based on what they already understood about the plan. Then they handed each leader a printout and asked them to react.
"We tried to minimize the burden on people. Even if it's a great product, if you tell somebody to drop everything, you're gonna create some resentment." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
It also wasn't a surprise. The whole leadership team had been briefed on what VisionSync was and how it would be used. And Keristiena framed it as something that would serve each college's own goals rather than a box to tick for the system, which is the distinction she credits for the difference between adoption that sticks and adoption that resents you.
"Where some campuses go wrong is thinking that VisionSync just checks the mark for the system. If that's what we're doing, then we're involving a lot of busy people in a time-consuming endeavor." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
From there the platform started doing more than hold the plan. Using tags, the same initiatives now carry their alignment to HLC criteria, to NU System pillars, and to UNO's primary risks. One entry, several audiences, no duplicate systems. The software part was quick. Getting a busy campus to trust it, and designing the rollout was the real work, and that is the part UNO got right.
The Results
Evidence on demand, and accountability by default
HLC evidence arrives as a report, not an assignment. UNO's accreditation liaison used to assemble the evidence base by hand every cycle. Now Keristiena tags initiatives against each HLC criterion and sends her a report showing exactly which work supports which criterion. Her next full cycle will be the first real measure of the time saved, but the shape of the job has already changed.
"Our accreditation liaison would do hours and hours and hours of work to get the evidence for HLC reports ready. Now, I just sent her a report with the initiatives that provide evidence for how we support the HLC criteria." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Reporting takes about 30 minutes. What once meant chasing emails and compiling spreadsheets, or quietly not happening at all, is now an export and a review. In Keristiena's words: "Reporting takes maybe 30 minutes. I download the Excel file and work with it." The bigger change isn't the time. It's that the reporting happens.
Risk mitigation is a tag, not an email campaign. When a unit's work mitigates one of UNO's primary risks, it gets tagged as such. So when the NU audit office produces its heat map, Keristiena answers with structured data instead of a scramble. "Instead of having to ask them what they're doing, I can just run a report and find out exactly where they're at."
A gap between institutional goals and unit goals became visible. This is the finding UNO couldn't have made any other way. With targets and unit-level plans side by side, the math stopped adding up, and now the university is building a process to close it.
"If I say I want to grow enrollment 50%, but every college is only putting in 2% growth, you're never going to get to your overarching goal. That's a huge gap." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Leadership came on board in the first quarter. Deans, vice chancellors, and associate deans were in the system providing updates within the first quarter after launch, which Keristiena credits to the low-burden rollout rather than to the mandate.
Accountability became part of the rhythm. Before, nobody could hold hundreds of initiatives in their head, so nobody asked. Now the cadence does the asking. "The status updates, whether you like them or not, are a mechanism of providing some accountability in terms of where you're at."
See VisionSync in Action
See it the way UNO does
This is the same view Keristiena works from: every initiative in one place, tagged to the plan, to HLC criteria, and to institutional risks, so a report for any one of them is a filter away. Take a two-minute self-guided tour, or see a real dashboard example below.
Take the 2-minute tour
Looking Ahead
From evidence to alignment
Year 2 is about depth. Keristiena is focused on connecting unit-level goals to institutional targets so the gap VisionSync surfaced actually closes, expanding use into college-level accreditation processes, and spotting where multiple units are working on similar initiatives and could be working together instead.
UNO is also revamping its website to publish VisionSync data openly, and continues to feature strategic planning in the biannual campus forums that draw 300 to 400 people. That turnout says something about the institution rather than the software.
"People want to be engaged. There is this desire to be part of a bigger picture that everybody has. It doesn't matter what level you are, you want to be part of that conversation." — Keristiena Dodge, Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Her advice to other institutions is the same thing that made UNO's rollout work: don't treat it as a checkbox. Show people how it serves their goals, carry the setup burden for them, and set timelines people can actually meet. That thinking shaped how we approach implementation across the NU System, and we're grateful UNO was willing to figure it out with us.
Keristiena Dodge
Chief of Staff, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Testimonials
FAQ
University of NE at Omaha FAQs
How does UNO use VisionSync for HLC accreditation?
How long does strategic plan reporting take at UNO?
How did UNO get leadership to adopt it?
What else does UNO track in VisionSync?
Who leads strategic planning at UNO?
