20 August 2012
9:00 – 2:30
Robbins’ Lake
Crockery Chateau
SPNHA Department Retreat
Facilitators:
Attendees:
Guests:
Mark Hoffman
Recorder:
Ashley Rosener
Donjo Robbins, Dan Balfour, Greg Cline, Rich Jelier, Diane Kimoto, Quincy Williams, Priscilla Kimboko,
Sherry Moyer, Fran Cain, Michael Moody, Lara Jaskiewicz, Niel Buckwalter, Davia Downey, Heather
Carpenter, Sal Alaimo
William Crawley, Ashley Rosener
Minutes
9:00-9:30 welcome back / introductions
Mark shared what he learned on sabbatical with Korean food. Water is very important. Palaces had manmade lakes because water has calming, reflective influence. Thus the retreat is on the lake.
Mark reviewed his activities on sabbatical including the classes he taught in Korea and Poland. He taught
some very large classes in lecture halls. He had 370 students total. Korean classrooms had amazing
technology. Poland’s technology was more minimal. It was interesting to see what faculty do in other
countries. He enjoyed the faculty retreat in Korea in the mountains. They did karaoke.
Everyone gave brief introductions and summer reports: Salvatore, Rich – working on Fulbright proposal
and Jay’s book is selling well, Diane with 16yr old now driving, Heather with 10 month old daughter,
presented at conference in Italy, Lara is new!, Greg – landed 2 3yr evaluation contracts, Fran – dept.
secretary and adopted a baby girl and has a 2nd job with Adopt-A-Family, Dan – caught fish, Davia – came
in from Seattle yesterday and working with Johnson Center, Priscilla – Health administration, Neal –
moved here and has 4 kids and going back to defend later this year and is almost a doctor, Donijo – splits
time between GVSU and City of Grand Rapids as Controller, Sherry – took some trips home to DC and
went to swearing-in ceremony for ambassador to Swaziland, Quincy – oldest child is off to college,
Michael – at Johnson Center and is affiliate faculty, teaches 660 and this summer traveled for work (Italy
at same conference as Heather)
9:37 Upcoming Events and Announcements
1. Graduate Student Orientation on Wednesday from 5:30-7 PM in 136E
a. Coordinators will run orientation and talk about programs. Mark can cover
expectations for students. Donijo talks about expectations in 611
b. Faculty should be there to introduce themselves and students introduce themselves.
c. End of program, students touch base with advisors.
d. Ashley can give short intro. to herself as liaison librarian.
2. New Governance Structure for the department – coordinator for each graduate program, for
concentration and soon-to-be masters in philanthropy, and for undergraduate program
(Quincy)
3. Donijo needs someone to write a director’s message for the handbook – a coordinator
can write this or Mark will
4. Heather is the new United Way Campaign Representative
9:46 Strategic Plan review. We will review the strategic plan adopted last year, point by point. In
particular, items indicated as "Year 1" will be reviewed for their completion status. Items marked as
"Year 2" will become the primary departmental goals for this year.
1. Mark: We have a strategic plan/road map for everything that should happen from now on. This
is like stone tablet come from God.
YEAR 1
2. Determine which classes only tenure-track faculty and affiliate should teach: Grad and
undergraduate capstone (PA 495 and 619, 520, PA 660, and 630) and intro. classes
 But then anyone can teach them even if not qualified – just need tenure
3. Form Adjunct Peer Committee to review and establish clear standards on adjuncts
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Priscilla went over her action steps. She has a 4 page document and provided us with a
1 page overview.
 Should orientation be mandatory? We can’t plan just 1 meeting, therefore informal
orientation with coordinator may be better
 Adjunct academy for adjuncts is not well advertised, and this happens 1 time per
semester. Someone should attend this to see what they are learning here.
Objective: Improve recruitment and admissions process to better identify, attract, and admit
high quality graduate students
 Rich worked on this – work-in-progress
 Admissions will change from year to year as we work to streamline and improve
 Mark would like to do this differently – GVSU transcripts are in Banner and it takes lots
of paper for Fran to print them, so we should only print transcripts from other
universities because of the large cost to print them all. Essays and other application
materials will still be printed
 Davia: Printed transcripts were helpful when making notes about classes that students
took.
 These notes could be made elsewhere.
Recommendation from Donijo: Could we set up admission committee meetings and bring
transcripts up on a screen? This might be too time consuming and difficult given our rolling
admissions
Heather: Maybe we need to review standards for admission in Year 2 of strategic plan,
especially Nonprofit subcommittee
Dan: We could have occasional meetings regarding admissions decisions for questionable
applicants.
Heather: Coordinators can take care of admissions standards that are agreed upon, but
everyone wants to have input. This should help with efficiency.
Mark: MHA will be done differently: paperless with admission officer system. This doesn’t
need to be Greg. We need to make a decision tree and define obvious denials and acceptances
with questionable applicants going to committee and this number will decrease as people
come to understand standards
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Only thing in student folder is student study plan and forms for exemption or waiver
from internship, etc. and that will be entirely electronic soon too
10. Salvatore: So now 3 people look at application at once instead of taking 3 weeks when each
person would have to look through applications themselves?
 Mark: Over time very few students will need to go to the entire committee
 Rich: We haven’t gone paperless because of lack of ease of getting all documents?
 Mark: We will train people how to access documents electronically in an easy manner.
 Heather: We have shared drive for the department. Each student can have a folder.
11. Mark: Next time Johnson Center needs our time, one of their programmers can create a system
for us to organize student applications. It would be nice to have this over the web.
 Greg: MHA to make student plans a fileable pdf because students must physically sign.
 Davia: Some PDF files can get electronic signature
 Mark: Good discussion. This is where we want to go. It would be great to have plans
available electronically so easier to access.
12. Mark: MHA program will be small to begin with, so easy to try this new idea out.
13. Mark: Fran’s time is limited. She should handle application materials just 1 time per week. The
length of time it takes for application review should be capped at 30 days (starting at date
when it is printed or could use on-base date), after which there should be a hold if necessary. A
student shouldn’t have to wait more than 30 days to be reviewed.
 Mark: See page 4 of stats pages compiled by Fran.
 Mark: The official policy is that applications must be done in 2 weeks. After 30 days, we
should let a student know where we are in the process.
 Heather: We need at least 1 week per admission committee member.
 Davia: Let’s create a list for the program coordinator to use when making an
admission decision. If it is difficult, then more people will review application.
 Fran: I can email coordinator about no-brainer admissions/denials
 Rich: Some students haven’t actually completed their applications and so statistically
they look like faculty are being too slow. We can designate this as a hold.
 Fran: You can put a note on someone’s file, ie. Notify student they need MPA essay.
14. PAGE 2 of strategic plan
 Sal: What is a common portfolio?
 Diane: It maintains what other people are doing in master’s programs
 Mark: What is inside this portfolio is still to be decided.
 Sal: Do we know the exact steps of what will be accomplished to achieve these
objectives?
 Heather: How do we access common grading rubric? Ask Fran. These are only used for
capstone papers and such. I would like consistency.
15. 3 year grading assessment needs work.
16. Mark: Define common roles for program coordinators. Greg, Sal, and Quincy contributed.
 Mark: MPNL original plan: Program coordinator gets a course release, which means
Mark needed to write job description. A lot was written to justify release. Dean insists
we have measures and outcomes with these, such as number of open houses and
recruiting visits. These specific numeric things to do must be included to ensure job is
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being done so Dean knows. We will work on this throughout this semester and year
to create specific position description.
 Donijo: Tenure promotion point of view: Will assistant professors be in these roles?
They get a course release, but will doing this service take time away from other
activities they need to do. The work as coordinator does not count for tenure, so how do
we protect faculty?
 Rich, Sal, and Heather argued whether serving as program coordinator counts as
service. Dan pointed out that whether someone is coordinator or not, expectations for
publishing do not change. We must make sure coordinators are making progress in
other dimensions so are on right track for tenure.
 Davia: Perhaps we can consider this coordinator role for people who are further along
toward tenure.
 Dan: We can oppose someone taking on this role if they can’t handle it. So someone not
in nonprofit could take on that coordinator role.
 Heather: Are coordinators the go-to people for student concerns? Do they meet with
prospective students?
 Mark: Yes, this is on the list.
 Rich: Mark must decide what belongs with director vs. coordinators.
 Heather: If someone wants to transfer, send them to coordinator for sake of
consistency.
 Sherry: If we take a call from someone needing a particular person not available, then
send to Mark or someone else. I try to field these appropriately.
17. Rich: We have formed a Scholarship Committee. We have new position descriptions. We had
38 applicants. Donors are happy. Process went well. Scholarships went primarily to Year 2
students.
 Mark: We should consider scholarships for incoming students and in order to recruit
more people.
 Rich: Scholarships are worded such that not many applicants are eligible
 We should include scholarships in application packets.
18. Davia: Have we created SPNHA Policy and Procedure Handbook for students?
19. Rich: We have one for students.
20. Mark: We need one for the department.
21. RTD Document – Review tenure promotion – must be done
Year 2
22. We are increasing communication and interaction with alumni!
 Sal: When I finds out about alum’s jobs, I tell people. We need a formal procedure for
this. This is a university goal. We have the baseball card bulletin board.
 Rich: We can create more vigorous alumni page on website. We can create alumni
association. We named 1st distinguished alum last year.
 Sal: How can we connect alum with new students?
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23. Page 4, number 3 of strategic plan - Heather: I would like this action item to be more specific.
Encouraging students to participate in particular activities is not specific. We can use more
action steps.
 Mark: Perhaps we need to redo FARS because have new data to capture.
 Rich: Every year you will be asked about service learning hours. The items we need to
capture are not well communicated to us and not in a timely manner.
24. Mark: We have so much and need to tackle it in smaller groups. I suggest that (on last page) we
have a committee structure with thematic pieces and subcommittees.
 Mark: Everyone will serve on 1 program committee and 1 subcommittee. Meetings are
on Wednesdays. There will be a rotation of meetings for subcommittees. Every other
Wednesday there will be program based meetings. There will be a meeting every
Wednesday, but you will not be part of all committees so you will have some
Wednesdays free.
25. Greg: I am the MHA coordinator, but I have dropped CHC and other committees because of this.
26. Mark: For today, you are all split into different groups in order to come up with a task for this
year. Your job is to brainstorm a goal for this year and tasks to accomplish it within the
department. Please keep in mind the strategic plan, but feel free to introduce new ideas. The
goal here is to take the strategic planning process seriously and make some progress. We need
to prioritize and make sure I know what needs to be done.
William Crawley speaks
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Welcome back/welcome. Thanks to Rich! He was a great leader for you last year advocating for
the department.
A couple of issues on budget and personnel. The budget is tight. Our president and provost do
good job of messaging us. In prior years there has been some conversation that we won’t hire
many tenure-track professors, and that is probably true for the next few years. Having said that,
we hired 33 tenure-track faculty and our college had 9 of them. Our college at GVSU is the 2nd
fastest growing only behind health sciences, and their growth is coming from new programming.
We haven’t had any new programming, though we have tried. We’ve grown without that! There is
a new Masters in philanthropy though.
Personnel: There are changes in terms of the number of reviews. Your leadership team needs to be
careful in watching the different tracks and mentoring. Faculty work load plans are more
important. It occurred on annual basis prior, but now it is only once before tenure review. Faculty
plans are key! We share responsibility on a person’s struggles with that.
Digital Measures – Davia spoke and said that at the end you can create faculty work load report
by clicking a button, which is good. William says that most faculty CVs are in it. It does take a lot of
time to revamp that.
o Where do you put Independent Study? We are working on improving this. The goal is that
we use this for everything by this winter, such as for FARS, workload, and resume. Take
time this fall to complete this. Print your CV and check that. You can upload an electronic
copy of journal article, etc. Personnel reviews will be much easier now.
o First, try this out. If it doesn’t work, send suggestions to William. He will speak to vendor on
our behalf. There is no section for journal reviewer, only editor, under service. There are
places to place notes to put in abstracts, etc. This cross pollinates, so if two people write a
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journal article, only one person has to upload. This is a tool many other universities are
using.
 Goals for the college are being set. We take ideas from all over. Goals come out at the beginning of
year and reports come out periodically. One example is how we are working with ties with
adjuncts. This is a theme we recognize. We need oversight and quality control. Last year social
work gathered with adjuncts. The adjuncts wanted to be a part of everyone. They filled out a
survey. An adjunct professor in CJ was very happy to meet another professor AFTER 13 YEARS.
We need better connectivity and communication. We have lots of hires, and we are working on
lowering numbers of adjuncts. Budget will be tight going forward because we did hire people with
our money - a good decision.
 One of the goals was to get feedback from faculty about leadership. Are we transparent? We value
your feedback. Thank you for responsiveness to unit head surveys. Last year we had small group
feedback circles from around the college = cross pollination of ideas. This is an opportunity to
communicate among faculty and dean/administration. We get great ideas this way. George wants
to set up weekly office hours for faculty to drop by. We want to prioritize in house people and
increase transparency.
 Our coordinator positions are an example of how the complexity of the work in your degree
programs is intensifying so you need to develop leadership team and spread workload.
 I spoke with philanthropy after being at U. of Louisville – Ruth Stagemen (invite her to meeting).
At U of L, we looked at how they embraced community engagement. They have been working on it
10 years. They launched their signature project 5 years ago. One is 13th poorest census track in US,
and they are doing great work. The infrastructure they had to build, we already have. Ie. Johnson
Center like community indicator project. We already do it, but don’t push it forward as being
unique to our program. They have marketing and advertising but few publications – this we do!
We combine service, teaching, and scholarship well. They have Kent College of Social Work in
everything.
 We brought in an external consultant to the college to emphasize how we need more data!
o Data reports will be coming your way to point out important facts and trends.
 Jeff Prodigar said in Grand Rapids, they went from 6-8 universities to 16 with physical presence.
Market pressure is ramping up. Social Work placements are growing more competitive as well as
hiring. We need these students to have an edge when look for jobs. Community engagement can be
one way we stand out.
 Last thing, thank you and welcome. I am honored to represent GVSU when I travel. SPNHA is a star
in the GVSU story.
Questions for William
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Sal: How soon before we move to decentralized development?
William: The VP we hired worked for Mary Beth. Before they worked at Aquinas. I’m not sure. We
are not growing much now as far as students. We need growth from somewhere else. You guys are
thinking and talking with alumni. I love your baseball cards. Students look at that board all the
time. It is great! Alumni relations – only 6% give because we haven’t asked them. We haven’t
cultivated a spirit of giving. We want engagement by grads. They can give time. We need to build
tradition. Faculty invests in students, so how do we have students see value in giving their time.
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Priscilla: Is there a place to track activities you are engaged in with alumni? No. There are other
data collection methods, but we do need more systemic measures.
 William: We need to be able key word search digital measures, so there are some kinks
 Dan: Brooks College – Someone went to that family to ask for money. We need to be able to do this.
We have much more substance, but there is a gap. We have people we could target for money to
advance our institutional standing.
 William: How do we engage development? We have a VP. Start and ask permission later?
Collaborate with development. There are upcoming case conferences that GVSU wants to attend. If
we build traditions with alumni and other relationships, then development will work better.
Grand Valley way – just do it, and then get resources. People feel like they can take from SPNHA,
such as GA. It was messy with GAs this year. Decisions should be made at college level as opposed
to university level. We must stay centralized for now to keep things organized.
 Michael: Donors like to give $ to new things where they can use name. The college needs to be on
mind of development person who meets with donor. The donor must know SPNHA has
community engagement. We need “stories” for development to tell on our behalf or have professor
come along with development officer. Donor will then be excited.
Gifts: Lara and Neil – glass mugs from Poland since gift giving is important in Korean tradition. Ashley
received bookmarks from Korea and Poland. Fran and Sherry received Eurocup shot glasses and
chocolate and kitten tongues. Rich received a Czech Republic elixir. William Crawley received Goldwasser
lacquer with real gold in it. Priscilla received chrysanthemum tea. Dan received Blackberry flavored
brandy. All others get sugar wafer bars, instant tea, and soap.
In Korea, former deans are respected because have moved beyond and above past. It is a term of respect.
Ashley Rosner, library liaison
See her if you want books, journals, databases, DVDs. See her if you’d like library or research instruction
in your class. Deposit your scholarly work in ScholarWorks.
Unit Goal Confirmation
Adopt goals of the unit and an action plan and designated responsibilities. "Year 2" items from the
strategic plan will be goals by default. Suggestions from the Dean's office, intended to help the College
reach its strategic goals, will be considered. There will also be a "Director's initiative."
External Relations Committee Report by Donijo, Quincy, Michael, Diane, Ashley
1. Scholarships
a. Most geared toward grad students
i. Undergrads – AGAR, OROS, MAWBY fellowships
ii. How to develop more? Cultivate more through relationships. We can work with
alumni. Must go through development and identify 1- 2 donors through alumni
network each year
iii. We have a special marketing fund for this year and need to decide how to
spend this $ early
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iv. Grad studies making promotional videos and may make dept. videos – link to that on
website
2. Recruitment
a. Undergrads
i. We are working with undergraduates with “the project” to replace the Nonprofit
Leadership Alliance and this cost money.
ii. We are trying for a presidential teaching grant
iii. Open houses for “The Project” and PA 270 – people from “The Project” will go into to
PA 270 every semester
b. Grads
i. Everything we are doing with undergrads can be extended to grad level
ii. YNPN – Young Nonprofits Professionals Network – BLEND – Black Leaders
iii. Get career services involved in recruitment
iv. Get CCPS advising involved in this
v. Conferences like MNA
vi. Marketers good at advertising grad programs - Do we have flyers to send out about
all programs?
vii. MPNL – We need marketing and promotional ideas for this.
viii. Look at Central Florida
c. Adjuncts/Faculty
i. Steve has grant writers roundtable at Johnson Center
ii. We can have foundation roundtables
3. Admission Standards
a. Compare with U of M, Eastern, Western, Case Western, and IU
b. Rosanne Marybella has list of all nonprofit schools – has website linked from NACC
(Nonprofit Academic College Council) – for comparison of admission standards
c. NASPAA and NACC Standards
4. Student Placements
a. We need to do better job tracking them, especially tracking. Alumni relations person – Dan?
b. Conduct Survey – get contact info. from alumni relations
c. Facebook – where are you now?
d. Kim Schmidt has alumni information
e. Alumni – encourage them to fill in form on website, encourage them to update
i. Alumni Relations is key – future student placements, student internships
5. GAs can help with some of the research outlined above. Unfortunately, demand for GAs is huge
and not met. Deans are bartering GAs. This is a problem internally and externally. Should add this
to internal issues. Tenured track faculty shouldn’t get a GA. Want those GAs to get a good
experience, so maybe should be with tenure track faculty.
Internal Relations
1. Lara: Program Coordinator Roles and Responsibilities to be finalized by Mark and taken to Dean’s
office.
2. 2 goals regarding graduate curriculum and class sizes
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3. Identify courses that need to have max class size like 20 and justifications, at what point do we add
other section, what is reasonable max class size for some courses?, enforce class size caps. We can
look at this at Sept. meeting
4. Review curriculum across concentrations and how handled in courses – need consistency and can
learn from others
5. Develop and implement syllabi of record– repository of syllabi being taught – Program
Coordinator will request syllabi from Fran and share with adjuncts
6. Create SPNHA procedure manual – develop topics at Sept. meeting and create initial draft at Oct.
meeting – look at draft by Seidman and CJ
7. Examine excessive overlap in grad courses within the school. Focus groups with students indicate
that our students were happy but some courses had same information. Content has been the same
across some classes. The flexibility of our program makes this hard.
Evaluation Committee
1. Course evaluations – problem with response rate. We need to discuss this as full faculty meeting
so we get more enriched response.
a. We need a way to notify students and faculty when evals are available. We should check
with other depts. To see how get large response rates. We need an incentive/penalty.
Student can see grade earlier if have done eval.
b. Evals should be open longer than end of semester.
c. Adjuncts with less than 10% response rate. This is bad. Coordinator will need to be able to
email adjunct‘s students to tell them to fill out eval.
2. Role of Accreditation: MHA – NASPAA will come up with competencies and we want to fill gap
beforehand and can do so by answering what is expected of someone graduating with NPA! This is
complicated, but NASPAA may be helpful.
3. We need to review existing assessments. All 3 learning assessments came back with work needed
to be done here. We need to fix stuff by Dec. 7 and then need to adjust this assessment and invite
Julie to help us before Dec. 7.
a. Dan: Don’t expect much from NASPAA, we have program based NPAs. There is no tried and
true set of competencies. What if NPNL goes through? No accrediting body so like
professional degree.
4. Determine program learning assessment pieces and analyze syllabi course goals/outcomes to see
if match assessment. Check buzzwords in syllabi.
a. At end we need to see what classes we use to assess – maybe could use different classes to
get data?
b. MPA grad learning assessment – nonprofit concentration – will have different answer of
what expect grad to know. But degree can only have one expectation – but maybe split into
common goals with specifics for concentrations
5. 619 – class on professional competence with technical skills and leadership and ethical skills. Can
evaluate technical, not so much others but the other two are common. Assessment is skill-based.
a. Assessment is about counting because lots to assess.
6. Performance Review – not sure what it is?
a. Annual reviews are more important now for untenured people now.
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b. Mark: Should we change how evaluations are done. Should director do the performance
eval or should it be done differently?
c. FTLC – internal mentoring system for new faculty.
d. Rich: We need more eyes on evaluation of new faculty.
e. Dan: Mentoring should be voluntary. Coaching is better and should occur especially when
going for tenure.
f. Send annual review to coordinators, but what if not tenured?
g. We did not address strategic planning yet. As we get to year 3 we will look at it again.
h. Priority is getting done by Dec. 7 and accrediddation.
i. When splitting up committees, tried to give everything a home, but some tasks go under all
committees.
j. Question: Can we move current committees from last year into these 3 committees?
k. Mark: Yes, I think we can do this. Consolidation is good. These committees – spend so much
time just trying to schedule a meeting time.
l. Let’s tie adjuncts to alumni and recruit adjuncts from alumni.
Closing Remarks
1. Heather: Student projects committee met before graduation and will meet this semester – starting
to document types of projects happening in courses – goal is to maintain consistency across
courses so orgs. And businesses not contacted by students in different courses. There is software
we can use for this that is upcoming. Goal is to see this across department.
2. Priscilla: When I teach grant writing, I don’t know where other grant writing faculty send students.
Also assessment of those interactions would be good – who is good to work with. We don’t want to
burden people – local agencies and orgs.
3. Sal: Katherine’s award was paid for by me. I propose students’ awards paid for by dept. This is
$50. Phi Kappa Phi – 1 per year. We can pay for grad student but not undergrads
4. Davia: We have a PowerPoint of student announcements will be sent by Fran and published on
website. She will solicit every couple weeks. Announcements like internship fairs, scholarship
apps. Jobs should be separate from other announcements so more up-to-date and posted to FB.
5. Priscilla: Don’t advertise jobs that not in MI? Fran received notice from students that they don’t
want jobs from outside MI.
6. Mark: Our Neighbors want to tear down wall in offices. They want more space, but too loud. So we
will say no.
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