Atlas Stage 2: Strategic Visioning

Stage 2 Process

Visioning allows stakeholders to review the Stage 1 Report and engage with possible long-term solutions without the limitations of current systems, logistics, staffing and budgets.

This process seeks to answer the question: “What do we NEED to achieve zero waste?”

The Zero Waste Strategic Vision serves as a proposal to campus administration for establishing cross-departmental solutions to sustainable materials management.

Learn More About Strategic Visioning

College of the Atlantic's Strategic Visioning

What's included in the Vision?

The Zero Waste Strategic Vision is a high-level overview of the infrastructure, staffing, logistics, programs and systems that are needed to achieve zero waste on campus, summarizing all the proposals and ideas that came out of the facilitated visioning conversations. The vision is organized following the Atlas Zero Waste Scopes Methodology with a clear analysis of how each proposed initiative will improve the campus’s Atlas zero waste score assessed in Stage 1.

What's not included in the Vision?

The vision does not contain the key characteristics of a strategic plan: a budget, timeline, and details for implementation. These are all components that would be worked out during the Stage 3 Strategic Planning process. Developing these details requires time and research. We don’t recommend moving into the Strategic Planning process until a Strategic Vision has been presented to Administration for approval.

Fellow Responsibilities

Fellows will schedule all sessions and manage all communications with stakeholders. They will also be trained by PLAN staff to co-facilitate all stakeholder engagement sessions. Fellows will attend all trainings and weekly check-ins. Fellows will draft the Strategic Vision and manage the stakeholder feedback process to ultimately finalize the Strategic Vision for Zero Waste.

Logistics & Pricing

Stage 2 is a semester long project. The total cost is $4700.

This cost does not include financial or credit based compensation for the Fellow(s) on your campus.

“This entire process, especially the stakeholder meetings, was extremely eye opening. We all now understand what stakeholders want to see in improvements towards sustainability. It was comforting to know that all the stakeholders we talked to want to support us in achieving zero waste efforts.”

Olivia Grose

Student, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"As a newer staff member on campus, this experience has been incredibly beneficial to helping me understand the systems at play at the College and how we can effectively make changes towards a more circular economy while keeping everyone in mind. The whole campus plays a part in this work so being able to bring stakeholders together to collaborate in visioning created a space that allowed people to speak freely on their current challenges but with a solution based mindset. This process is invaluable in getting campus stakeholders connected and onboard with zero waste and setting campuses on the right path towards a zero waste action plan. This process also provides Atlas Fellows with experiential learning that can prepare them for future job responsibilities."

Katie Doherty

Supervisor, College of Charleston

"PLAN was essential and instrumental to getting zero waste conversations started on Wesleyan’s campus. They recommended bringing together stakeholders that we hadn’t thought to engage, which in turn yielded different and more substantive discussions. We’ve just had our first post-stage-2 meeting with stakeholders and have developed a list of eight new initiatives that folks are working on this spring - and almost none of these would have happened without PLAN’s guidance and support. Thank you, PLAN!"

Jennifer Kleindienst

Supervisor, Wesleyan University

"From Day 1 of Stage 2, I knew the schedule and steps for the entire semester including the expectations for my role, my students, and our campus partners. I appreciated how organized and process oriented this stage was. Everything went so smoothly!"

Leana Houser