Academic Planning Committee

The planning process required units to self-focus and articulate their long-range aspirations. Divisions now need the campus to acknowledge, or not, the division’s articulated vision.
Campus short-term workload pressures must be mitigated; programs cannot continue meeting workload increases without sacrificing quality.
Divisions operationally experience the opposite of the Provost’s intended model. Specific faculty FTE recruitments are still requested for and approved annually on a line-item basis. Divisions prefer broad allocations for departments and division to manage.
There is a perceived difference between the Provost’s message and the Office of Planning and Budget and Academic Human Resources processes. The central administration language has changed, but the change is not reflected in operations. Divisions want clear knowledge of their resource flexibility.
Divisions need the capacity to use all their resources, not just new funds. They need resource formula parameters for multi-year planning, and authority to balance resources within clearly stated campus boundaries.
Academic planning without clear resource allocations is meaningless.
The campus goal of doubling graduate students by 2010 may not be realistic. Reasonable graduate growth goals should be defined. There are serious risks to projecting an unrealistic goal if resources are not available to support quality programs.
The most effective path to increasing graduate enrollments may be fewer new programs, with resources concentrated on the best. Recent trends in graduate program applications indicate that student quality may be difficult to maintain in the face of growth, and future support resources are unpredictable.
Divisions need clarity in expected campus fellowship support. The campus would benefit from a graduate student support methodology. Support varies across the disciplines, and extramural funding is more likely in the sciences and engineering.
Resource decisions affecting graduate programs are made without divisional knowledge.
Divisions need help in developing flexible resource management strategies, and they would benefit from support from the Office of Planning and Budget which is now seen as offering only a control function.
Resource allocations to academic divisions place general education service courses, especially topical courses, in a vulnerable position. In times of resource constraints, these courses may be discontinued. The department and campus perspective are often both correct. The campus should identify an authority to review campus allocations when there may be conflicting programmatic priorities.
The planning process is incomplete without resource allocation methodologies and a campus commitment to the plans reasonable expectations. Faculty start-up, staffing, and general operational resources must be known to determine how plans will be phased.
Divisional budgets are complex and interrelated. The central administration may sense there is more flexibility than exists.
Divisional capacity to recoup resources from the existing base is overstated and unrealistic.
New resources are unpredictable; division plans set their major focus, funding and subsequent phasing determine the ultimate result.
Provost Simpson requested critiques of the academic plans from CPB, to identify the areas of strengths and weakness. Dialogue based on overall assessment and the best goals to pursue will be more helpful than a detailed feedback on individually proposed faculty FTE. Detailed feedback is requested on divisional resource strategies and recognition of how change is impacted by resource distribution.

Provost Simpson noted:

Traditionally, the provost consults with the Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget for all faculty FTE allocations. It might be feasible for deans to consult directly with CPB or for CPB to change its practice.
The campus provost, in concert with divisions and departments, will hold divisions accountable for impacts to programs driven by resource allocations or constraints.

Provost Simpson distributed draft accountability matrixes for the campus as a whole and for academic divisions. The administration is looking for appropriate benchmark reporting methods. They are intended to be measures of accomplishment. They should address two top program quality outcomes, 1) research impact, and 2) student assessment. These two elements are the core of good scholarship.

Members of the committee made the following comments:

Accountability is complicated. The planning process assumes an accountability matrix to fit the campus goals. Clear expectations targeted for each division is necessary. What component of accountability measurement will be based on campus goals versus division goals? The accountability matrix must address the reality of limited division flexibility.
Accountability measures should reflect the fact that rapid enrollment growth drives some division planning. Programs are not static, but must often react to enrollment shifts.
The draft handouts omit one of the most significant measures, student satisfaction.
Departments develop peer review standards appropriate to their discipline; consulting with the departments on how they do comparisons would be beneficial.
The draft templates are confusing; divisions originally asked each department to identify the most relevant measures, and variance among the disciplines is significant.
If the accountability measures are meant to enable self-regulation, feedback to departments should be positive and strategic rather than negative and punitive.
Divisions now use measures to evaluate where new resources can be best allocated. Identifying a good idea and focusing attention on how well some departments perform are examples.
Campus accountability reporting may be healthy, but if it is only one more exercise, in addition to program reviews and routine budget accountability, it is not useful.
Focusing on how to use existing data better and not adding new burdens to department faculty would be more helpful. Faculty are heavily focused on individual professional career growth; it is rare for faculty to focus on the larger institutional vision.
Collective consciousness as a department varies across divisions; it is easier and more successful to pull people toward common goals rather than push them.
Campus administration must work together to develop faculty assent to common goals.
Department measures should define what they do and how they present themselves.

4. Members Items. No items were presented

Attest: George Brown, Chair