DRAFT

Provost Advisory Committee Notes

January 9, 2001

 

Attending:  R. Anderson, J. Armstrong-Zwart, G. Brown, M. Chemers, S. Gillman, W Godzich, L. Goff, F. Hernandez, E. Houghton, S. Kang, D. Kliger, L. Merkley, M. Michaels, B. Meister, C. Sandeen, J. Simpson, R. Suduiko, T. Vani, F. Talamantes

 

Absent:   J. Hay

 

Staff:  G. Jarvinen, L. Kittle, B. Willis, L. Sunell

 

Information Technology Committee Report (Calendaring System)

 

Larry Merkley reviewed the recommendation of the Information Technology Committee that the campus implement the Corporate Time shared calendaring system as an option for campus units.  Participating campus users will be asked to contribute $21 per workstation, an amount equivalent to the license fee and anticipated incremental costs that will be incurred by CATS. 

 

Integrating Institutional Priorities

 

John Simpson noted that his December 22, 2000 letter regarding “Long-Range Planning and New Budget Allocation Process” set out preliminary allocation ranges for I&R and academic support units in 2005-06 and in 2010-11.  This planning process is designed to guide the next era of campus development (to an enrollment of 16,900 FTE) and requires that the campus consider the shape of the institution in 2010-11.  The context for this planning includes the campus’ unique history and attributes along with the outcomes of past planning processes (e.g., Millennium Committee, LRDP, etc.).

 

At the last PAC meeting, Dave Kliger and Meredith Michaels lead a discussion regarding the major issues facing the campus.  While someone needs to take the leadership role for each of these issues, the effort must be coordinated and there needs to be processes in place to facilitate forward movement.  Issues will be addressed within the campus’ divisional structure, administrative planning committees, Senate committees, and ad hoc task forces.  Linda Kittle distributed two draft documents intended to provide a basis for priority setting, identify who is taking major responsibility for individual issues, and designed to graphically illustrate how the various issues relate to one another and to the campus’ fundamental goals.

·        Resources, Targets, and Milestones.  For the goal, “Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Public Service,” this document lists the guiding planning documents, outlines a planning timeline, and lists a number of implementation milestones and accountability measures.

·        UCSC Planning Issues—Outcome Based Perspective.  For the same goal, this document graphically displays the planning components, major issues, drivers, and tasks associated with that goal.

 

In the discussion that followed, a number of points were raised.

  • A framework that showed the relationships between issues and their contribution to campus goals would advantage planning discussions within the PAC committees and within individual departments.  Such a framework would help inform a discussion of priorities.
  • It was noted that a more explicit discussion of the internal and external forces that influence the campus’ future would be helpful.
  • Milestones and accountability measures will help the campus measure its progress toward its goals.  In fact, it would be a mistake not to have an “annual checkup” to re-verify goals and assess progress.
  • A timeline and dependency chart might assist in integrating the various unit plans/planning efforts with campus plans.  The timeline is also key to keeping the planning process on target and to facilitate integration of divisional plans.  (For example, lead times for capital project are sufficiently long that they often require key academic program information years in advance of their opening.)
  • The campus may wish to consider three parallel planning processes:
    • A divisional strategic planning process to articulate the 2010-11 departmental and programmatic profiles of academic and academic support divisions;
    • A process that identifies the capacity of campus lands (i.e., considerations raised at the “Growth & Stewardship Retreat”); and
    • A process to develop a comprehensive space plan that assesses the current situation (e.g., graphically analyses the distribution of Humanities space), articulates the principles that will inform space planning, and broadly outlines future requirements.

 

Not all campus units have experience in doing long-range strategic planning and would require assistance.  A number of possible approaches were identified:

  • John Simpson offered the services of Planning and Budget staff to those departments who felt that they needed assistance in structuring their strategic planning discussions.  He noted that the 18-month schedule outlined in this letter was designed to accommodate the fact that campus units were at different stages in their strategic planning efforts.
  • Among the topics that might comprise a day-long PAC/Department Chair retreat:

o       Sharing of divisional goals and planning to date (e.g., academic support divisions would like to understand where academic departments want to be and what services they will expect; topics such as the role faculty vs. staff will play in student advising; etc.).

o       Understanding the planning context (e.g., internal and external forces, constraints, opportunities).

o       Developing a common language (e.g., what types of students are included/excluded from the 16,900 FTE enrollment target) and identify underlying assumptions (e.g., opening date and enrollment capacity of UC Merced).

o       Understanding the campus goals and perspectives that will form the basis for decision-making regarding the campus’ future.

o       Strategic planning primer.

  • Focused workshops (e.g., training for those new to strategic planning; build consensus around a list of major campus issues; a primer on summer session and the market forces that will constrain what is feasible; etc.)
  • Sharing of unit strategic planning documents or planning processes, especially those identified as “best practices”, might also benefit departmental planners.  Several members outlined their processes [e.g., articulate where your department wants to be in 2010-11 in terms of program and how you want to accomplish that, before doing developing the numbers.  In order to avoid unattainable “wish lists”, however, planners need to scale expectations to a basic resource envelope (e.g., in terms of numbers of faculty or staff that might be accommodated by the allocation ranges in the budget letter).

 

Next steps.

 

  • Follow-up:  Committee support staff will meet with PAC committee chairs to further develop the concepts raised in the PAC discussion.
  • Action:  PAC members send their perspectives on retreat ideas by Tuesday, January 16, 2000, to Beau Willis, Beau.Willis@adm.ucsc.edu or phone 9-2535.

 

Member Items

 

  • Action:  John Simpson would like comments on the draft “Call for 2001-02 resource requests and faculty recruitment proposals” memorandum within two weeks. 
  • Action:  Tom Vani would like comments on the draft “Energy Conservation” by Friday, January 12th.
  • Information:  Francisco Hernandez reported that applications for admission are up 3,000 for fall 2001.  The campus will therefore need to make some strategic decisions about its enrollment management strategies.  For a future meeting, J. Michael Thompson will outline the issues the campus must consider.