Support Services
April 30, 2008
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As we approach the end of the academic year, I thought it would be a good idea to give a short update on the progress we are making on a variety of fronts:
• Last month I reported on our enrollment facts. We now have specific targets for enrollment growth in online, on campus and on site student groups. We have installed specific strategies to build enrollment on campus by using creative financial aid packages, focused effort on traditional sources of students, and established new efforts to attract community college transfer students. Thus far our systematic approach to recruitment has yielded a positive upswing in applications for fall as well as an increase in spring enrollment in online instruction of 20%.
• More recently I reported to you some early work on retention. Three task groups are working quickly to start a comprehensive program for fall. The basic components will be a required Freshmen seminar; required pre-college, reduced rate courses for students who test at this level; and free, required EXCEL-like courses for 100-level classes that have high failure rates. The aim of these efforts will be to encourage student-mentor, student-student relationships as well as offer academic support where most needed.
• Our portfolio reviews for each academic program are now complete. After 21 separate meetings with faculty and deans we have a good beginning for resources for not only accreditation, but for OUS review, internal review, and marketing. The most essential work accomplished here is to articulate the major outcomes in each program, the assessments used to determine student success, and the analysis and recommendations about potential program modifications that may support heightened student performance. As I have read the work of each program and listened to the faculty talk about student accomplishments in each discipline, I am strongly encouraged that we will have a great story to tell our accreditation team.
• The initial draft of the accreditation report is available for review. We still have a great deal of writing and editing of several standards and the overall voice of the document will require alignment. The portfolios noted in the previous bullet will be condensed into single page reports. We still have a great deal of work to prepare for October, but we are on target.
• We have completed a comprehensive agreement between the Administrative Faculty and the administration that installs a new system of scored appointments, methods for review, and salary guidelines. This monumental work of the Administrative Faculty and subsequent negotiation with administration is a real victory for the University.
• Our integration of DDE into the Colleges and other existing structures has made a great deal of progress. After several meetings, deans and staff have an outline and some initial starting points to fully integrate planning, scheduling, and contracting faculty for online courses. I can report that we are very close to knowing how all the pieces will fit in the new integrated system and how we will be able to continue to recruit, serve, teach, retain and graduate online students.
• We have begun the process with the University Personnel Committee and the College Personnel Committee to examine the process for Promotion and Tenure and the criteria for review. Although this process has not come far enough to offer recommendations for fall of next year, a new process will emerge early next academic year ready for the faculty's consideration.
• We are making University data available to all as we carefully extract information and vet it to reality. We have established the "enrollment dashboard" where you can track our enrollment by SCH, FTE and head count over the years. We are soon to post the data for applications and admits. These data are vital to us as we look to planning and to forecasting our revenues. Data for program enrollments are subsets of these data that we have posted to the academic portfolios. We have been purposely slow in rolling-out institutional data to make sure it is understandable, helpful, and, correct. As staff time allows we will be running retention reports in the future and more detailed analyses about our student body.
• We have established a template for a strategic/implementation plan that will give the University an opportunity to organize the future around the highest priorities for sustainability. Similar to past documents, a spreadsheet-style planning document will contain the major initiatives, the specific objectives, the costs and the assessments required to reach specified goals. We will be bringing this template as well as a budget planning process to the Budget and Planning Committee and University Council and Senate for comment very soon. What is exciting about this way of doing planning is that we will have a process to develop priorities for funding new initiatives and we will establish a funding rota that can be activated as soon as we know there are resources.
• The communication plan proposed last month will have some minor modifications. If you haven't had a chance to look at the plan, please contact your dean or director. The methods and tempo of communication in this plan will be how the administration will communicate with the campus community.
• We are continuing to explore funding sources that will augment our normal revenue streams. We have submitted two policy option packages to the OUS system, one to recruit and retain Native American and Hispanic/Latino students and the other to establish an academic program in alternative energy and rural economy/environmental studies degree. We believe the former proposal resonates with many OUS initiatives and that if there are legislative earmarks, we will be funded at some level. In addition to the new initiatives we are pressing on OUS to retain funding for our Rural Access Initiative that supports many recruitment initiatives, the FYE program and our current Native American program. The second initiative resonates with some of the highest priorities in the OUS system and State. We hope to attract attention for OUS as well as other funding sources to seriously look at adding curriculum that fits our regional resources, economy and needs. We are also lobbying to retain the Heath Initiative funding. These sources of support could be very helpful in stabilizing many of our efforts to staff programs and services.
There are a host of other issues that we are working on bit-by-bit. I started counting the number of agenda items from our Wednesday morning Dean's meetings since January and found 90 separate topics! We have done a great deal, but there is so much more to do. Thank you all for working faster and harder than we ever have had to before. We are making a difference.
As always, your concerns, ideas, and interests are welcome.
Best wishes for a warm May!
Michael Jaeger
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
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Office of the President
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Eastern Oregon University
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phone: 541-962-3512
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Eastern Oregon University is a member of the Oregon University System