EDHE 6740
03.12.2009
Guest speaker: Allen Clark
Assistant VP for Research & Effectiveness at UNT
(a graduate of the UNT EDHE program)
135 higher ed institutions failed in the last 40 years
was this a failing of strategic planning?
want wide participation in planning process; partially because you need broad buy-in
discuss the environment (various contexts, including international)
focus groups discussing these various contexts & climates
in the most recent UNT plan, the most successful aspect was this participation
how do you know that the strategies that you specified are the right ones to accomplish the goals you want?
(still don't know the answer)
consensus vs. a leader making the hard decisions
leadership team needs to be the ones coming up with the strategies
environmental scan comes first and involves everyone, including students
but strategies should then be developed by the leadership team
trickle-down from there for buy-in (in staff, at least)
harder to convince faculty to get on board
moving faculty behavior usually involves both carrots and sticks, and may take a generation
carrots are usually more effective
keep in mind what the institution is about: faculty & students
if faculty are against the strategic plan, it can easily fail
not everyone has to do everything; the UNT plan has enough in it that almost faculty can find their niche in it
Dr. Pohl started the emphasis on distance education, and started the College of Engineering, without them being in a strategic plan--he wanted the flexibility to take the university in the direction he saw fit
accreditation process:
- no strategic plan; consultant advised creating one
- academics was the core of the plan (because it revealed it was already a present focus)
- faculty overwhelmingly supported that idea
- Board of Regents said for the next-to-last plan, too many measures
- President Bataille weeded the plan down
TracDat and WeaveOnline: systems that help you "close the loop"
- take ownership of strategies (each VP takes specific measures that will help them accomplish these)
- SACS: strategic plan and institutional effectiveness (tied together)
- TracDat:
- Allen had been talking about having specific strategic outcomes tied to institutional effectiveness
- but TracDat doesn't track strategic outcomes
- it measures how effective the offices are
- put in an outcome; choose from a drop-down menu
- that ties to a specific strategy
- assess at the end of the year
- decide how to improve the outcome
- in the system, can see what everyone in the institution has said they will do toward a specific strategy
- much more effective instead of a paper plan "on the shelf"
- used to use Word templates for office reports; it was hard to boil down to "are we doing what we need to do?"
- have to keep the contract to keep your data (WeaveOnline won't export it if you unsubscribe)
also need to be tracking what happens in classrooms to move toward accomplishing strategies
Richland Community College won the Malcolm Baldridge Award for excellence
Malcolm Baldridge model reporting:
- at the very top level, the president states four measures of goals to accomplish (those are his/her outcomes)
- VP creates five measures that support one of his/her measures
- president has a dashboard that update every month, red or green lights on measures
waiting until the end of the year to assess something isn't effective:
- need to catch early warning signs and correct them (use dashboard)
- data management techniques
there is a lot of literature on how to create a strat plan, but little lit on how to make a strat plan effective
plans shouldn't be cut in stone
- changes every year, re-assess environment
- top-level goals remain the same (otherwise you won't be able to accomplish anything)
currently trying to get a data management process in place with good data
- for instance, larger card-swipe system (track student attendance at activities, and relate to rank, grade, etc.)
- need more ways to gather data on various transactions, actions, etc.
- hard to show the effectiveness of student development, for instance (card swipe is a start)
- also tracks student learning outcomes beyond merely faculty response of "i taught the students this subject"
online portfolios:
- student pays $35/year
- posts their papers to the website
- creates portfolio for student (current trend) as well as for institution to track learning
- NKate
TK20 - doing that web-based portfolio of student work
accountability in higher ed:
- parents demanding "what are we getting?" for all the increased tuition
- people used to the business world
- now have to prove the worth of higher ed
COE is looking at the online portfolios now (because of NKATE)
UNT-wide hasn't made the decision yet, but is looking at it
hopefully TK20 will be up and running within a year
how did the decision to be a student-centered research university come about?
it was a classification process
- UT and A&M at top, deemed research
- 7 determined "emerging research"
- UNT had to make the decision--is that where we want to be? (2004, during process of formulating the Academic Plan)
- had to look at history as teaching school
- UNT decided this because 1) wanted to be student-centered, and 2) felt we have the infrastructure to be a research university
- funding is different within the state depending on the type of institution you're classified as
- currently a battle to be next *research* institution
- currently fighting over the criteria for "research" institution
- for instance, our research dollars are comparatively low, but we graduate 200 doctoral students a year, which is quite a lot
- PUFF vs. HEEF funds (PUFF only for UT and A&M)
- trend: becoming multidisciplined in research
grant research office
- under military chancellor, bureaucracy, was all about policing--what you did wrong, what you can't do
- stifled research, didn't support and encourage faculty, or promote new research opportunities
- lots of transition in leadership styles at UNT from 1970s to now
Class Discussion
offering professional development for grad students across all disciplines in grant-writing, teaching, etc.
discussion of level of involvement growing active researching grad students
the more mentored students are, the more involvement it takes, the more faculty or faculty time it takes (or fewer grad students)
Dr. Fan's potential course on studying transfer students affected by policy in Texas (12 institutions)
"quantitative tells you what; qualitative tells you why."