Conclusion
Conclusion
The evidence presented through this self-study demonstrates to all of its various
constituents, to the public and to the North Central Association-Higher Learning
Commission (NCA-HLC) that Cameron University acts in such a way as to meet the
criteria for accreditation determined by NCA-HLC. Guided by a mission that reflects
the distinctive nature of the population that it serves, the university plans strategically
for the future and allocates the resources necessary to fulfill those plans, prioritizing
effective teaching, student learning and the development of a life of learning for all of
those it serves, including the southwest Oklahoma community.
Since 2001, the university has addressed the four areas of concern cited during the last
NCA visit; specifically, as mentioned in the introduction to this report, the institution has
• R
einvigorated its strategic planning efforts, developing both Plan 2008:
Preparing for Cameron University’s Second Century and its successor, Plan 2013:
Choices for the Second Century. In addition, the university has presented to the
OU, CU and RSU Board of Regents and to the public both annual updates and a
formal status report on the first of these plans, Plan 2008: Preparing for Cameron
University’s Second Century, demonstrating its commitment to accountability for
the goals and objectives it sets forth. A series of targeted plans aligned with the
university’s strategic plan govern areas from physical facilities to enrollment
management and alumni relations, ensuring that each part of the university
prioritizes its efforts in a manner that is consistent with the overall aims of the
university.
• Revamped its faculty evaluation process in such a way as to ensure fair and
consistent annual, promotion and tenure evaluation for all faculty members.
After extensive revisions, the Faculty Handbook now articulates clear and uniform
standards for annual evaluation, and although departments are encouraged to
interpret those standards in keeping with the best practices of their discipline
or disciplines, all departmental guidelines must be reviewed and approved by
the Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) in order to establish parity
across departments. In addition, the university has adopted and begun to utilize
a system of post-tenure review, also described in the Faculty Handbook, that
encourages continuous professional growth and development on the part of its
tenured faculty.
• Enhanced its assessment of student learning by developing a standard format
for the presentation of data regarding student achievement that is in keeping
with the guidelines set by NCA-HLC and by requiring all programs to
publicly present that data to a representative body of their peers for review
and comment. The university’s current Program Quality Improvement Report
(PQIR) format requires programs to provide an update on the results of past
program changes, present current data on student achievement, and outline a
plan of action for improving student learning. In addition, all programs are
required to demonstrate that their learning objectives align with the institution’s
mission and to provide data on program graduates. Rapid feedback from the
Institutional Assessment Committee regarding each program’s PQIR allows
for meaningful reflection upon and refinement of assessment strategies, and for
data analysis. In addition, the development of a PQIR for general education
will help the institution more effectively and more thoroughly assess its general
education curriculum.
• Developed an Affirmative Action Plan that annually sets targets by unit based
on regional availability of female and minority candidates and analyzes how
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effectively the university has met its targets for the previous year. Data concerning
employee race and gender are analyzed by an external agency in order to ensure
validity and objectivity. The plan also delineates a series of recruitment strategies
and employment practices designed to help the university meet its targets and
identifies a university Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) officer who
is responsible for ensuring the fair and consistent treatment of all university
employees regardless of race or gender.
In addition, the university has responded to each of the suggestions made in the visiting
team report, as outlined in the introduction to this self-study.
The last ten years, have not, of course been without their challenges. Many of those
challenges are simply inherent in the nature of the institution, its mission and the
region that it serves. Regional income, college graduation rates, ACT scores and college
preparedness all fall below the national means, and thus from its very inception, the
university has had as part of its mission making a quality education accessible and
affordable for the people of southwest Oklahoma. Keeping tuition costs in check,
providing scholarship assistance and textbook relief, offering pre-college leveling
courses and providing courses in a range of formats that meet the needs of a diverse
population of learners are important but costly objectives that at times can strain both
personnel and resources. In addition, the institution’s unusual dual mission as both a
two-year and a four-year college requires the university to maintain both a diverse range
of academic programs and a faculty with a broad spectrum of qualifications which often
prove difficult to measure by a common yardstick.
Even the university’s broad geographical presence across the state of Oklahoma, while
it has created some exciting opportunities for partnerships and sharing of resources,
presents new challenges. The remarkable expansion of the university’s Duncan site,
while both exciting and gratifying, has challenged the institution to provide a broader
range of services at that site, further straining university personnel resources. In
addition, ensuring consistency of faculty quality and student achievement across sites,
especially at sites where the university does not employ full-time faculty, often requires
a combination of significant training investment and creative problem-solving, as some
departments offer courses (often the same course) at as many as four different sites.
Such management issues are only compounded by the rapid proliferation of online
courses, which themselves often contain both students serving in Iraq and students
sitting in the dorms.
Other challenges are less institutional and more environmental, less endemic and more
transitory. The most obvious of these in recent years has been financial, as reductions
in state appropriations have forced the university to repeatedly raise tuition and to
make painful choices, not replacing departing and retiring staff members, not filling
open faculty positions and delaying the implementation of strategic initiatives such as
the Student Wellness Center. In Fall 2009, a student population that was 20% larger
than it had been in 2001 was served by a faculty that had not grown, as Cameron
has been forced to follow the national trend of increasing class sizes and relying more
heavily on adjunct faculty. The reduction in staff has also meant less cross-training, less
time and fewer resources for staff development, and fewer opportunities for effective
communication. In addition, while some aging facilities have recently been replaced,
most notably the Business Building and the Student Union, others, are badly in need of
renovation. One building, West Hall, was recently demolished.
The difficulties resulting from reductions in state appropriations have only been
compounded by the rising costs of technology, which have increased dramatically over the
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Conclusion
last ten years; in January 2010, the university implemented a new records management
system that replaced unsupported legacy software at a cost of approximately $6 million,
or slightly more than 10% of the annual budget. Over the last ten years the university
has significantly expanded the technology resources it offers its students, including
student computer labs, smart classrooms, laboratory equipment, software and databases.
All of that, however, comes at a cost measured in other services, and the institution must
constantly weigh its technology needs against other resources. At present, the university
is reviewing ways to make its use of technology resources more efficient, consolidating
smaller labs and scheduling computer classrooms more effectively.
At the same time as the financial strains created by the current economic climate and
by state funding priorities have often very obviously forced the university to make
difficult choices, the changing demographics of the population served by Cameron
University have more quietly presented challenges that have had just as significant an
impact on the institution. A shrinking number of high school graduates and a reduced
military presence at Fort Sill have forced the university to
rethink its recruitment and retention strategies, marketing
and its target audience in ways that have profoundly affected
the university’s allocation of resources and the nature of
university life.
With challenges come opportunities, however, and as each
of these challenges has forced the university to evaluate
its practices and its daily operations, the institution has
responded and adapted in ways that open up exciting
possibilities for the future. The growth of the enrollment
management area in response to the need to recruit and retain
more traditional aged students, for example, has resulted in
better coordinated recruitment efforts, more K-12 outreach
and new institutional retention tools including Early Alert.
In addition, pressure to improve first year retention has led
to a number of experiments with the university’s remedial
programs, including linked remedial classes, a mandatory
tutoring initiative, and the reintroduction of the university’s
administrative withdrawal policy. The resulting growth in
the number of traditional aged students has also led the
university to focus additional resources on student activities
and student housing in ways that have truly transformed the
culture and feel of the campus.
Similarly, the need to raise additional private funds to help
support university initiatives has led to a revitalization of
the University Advancement Office, including its Alumni
Relations office. The university now does a significantly
better job of tracking and soliciting input from its alumni,
has revitalized the alumni newsletter, and has built university homecoming into a
meaningful alumni reunion experience. At the same time, as mentioned several times
in this self-study, the university has recently concluded the most successful three-year
fund raising campaign of any university in the state of Oklahoma, with the exception
of OU and OSU, enabling the construction of the McMahon Centennial Complex,
the creation of Bentley Gardens and the addition of a number of student scholarships
and endowed faculty positions. As a result of the generosity of its many supporters,
the university also has more endowed lectureships than any university in the state of
Oklahoma with the exception of OU and OSU.
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New partnerships have also helped the university to more efficiently serve a student
population with a wide variety of needs that is spread across a significant geographical
area. The university has pooled resources with Western Oklahoma State College,
Great Plains Technology Center, Comanche Nation College, Redlands Community
College and Rogers State University among others, to offer programs that would
otherwise not be possible. In addition, new relations with corporate partners offer the
institution opportunities to provide students with field experiences and service learning
opportunities as part of their undergraduate curriculum, enhancing both student
learning and student opportunities after graduation.
Thus in spite of the challenges it has faced, the institution as a whole has not only
remained healthy, but has grown significantly in many areas, and it has continued to be
guided throughout by NCA-HLC’s criteria for accreditation. The institution as it exists
today is:
• D
riven by its Mission. The university’s mission is clearly and publicly articulated
and is supported by the vast majority of the university’s internal and external
constituents. It is derived directly from the university’s function as defined by
the OSRHE, and it directly informs the university’s core values, its strategic
planning, and its daily operations. The institution maintains an organizational
structure that is appropriate to efficiently and effectively carry out the university’s
mission, and it has in place a series of checks and policies that ensure that the
mission is carried out fairly, with integrity and in the best interest of all of the
university’s constituents.
• P
lanning for the Future. Cameron University maintains and makes available to
the public a number of strategic planning documents, including the university’s
overarching strategic plan, Plan 2013: Choices for the Second Century. Those
documents cover all aspects of university life, from faculty hiring to university
grounds and facilities and they make possible the focused allocation of resources
over time so as to ensure that the institution consistently and steadily moves to
enhance its ability to fulfill its mission, perseveres through inevitable challenges
and identifies and takes advantage of appropriate opportunities. In addition, the
university regularly evaluates its progress relative to its mission and its strategic
plan, and submits for review a series of annual reports that make public its
findings.
• F
ocused on Student Learning. Student learning is the first priority of Cameron
University, as the institution’s mission and its core values make abundantly
clear. Thus the university regularly assesses student learning at three levels:
entry-level, mid-level and program-level. The institution also assesses student
satisfaction. The results of those assessments are made public in a variety of
ways: entry-level assessment results in the annual student assessment report
and in the state regents’ remediation report; and mid-level, program-level and
student satisfaction assessment results through the PQIR process and in the
annual assessment report. In order to facilitate student learning, the institution
recruits, develops and evaluates a quality faculty, and invests significant resources
in student services, instructional technology and other instructional support,
while consistently evaluating those services and making improvements based
upon data collected.
• C
ommitted to the Acquisition, Discovery and Application of Knowledge. Cameron
University provides resources and opportunities that promote a life of learning
for its students, faculty and staff. The institution provides research support and
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Conclusion
professional development opportunities for all three groups, and faculty and
administrative staff evaluation is based in part upon research and professional
development. In addition, the institution offers to students significant field
and service-learning opportunities. The university’s general education program
provides a broad base of general skills and knowledge that is consistent with the
OSRHE guidelines, and both the general education program and the co- and
extra-curricular educational opportunities sponsored by the university provide
students the opportunity to become conversant with current technologies,
cultural diversity and globalization. In addition, the university maintains a series
of policies, publicly distributed in its various handbooks and on its website,
that encourage all constituents to act ethically and responsibly in the pursuit of
knowledge.
• R
esponsive to the Community it Serves. With a long history of participation in
the life and development of southwest Oklahoma, Cameron University remains
well-connected with and responsive to the needs of its external constituents.
The institution listens to its constituents and to its partners through a variety
of formal and informal channels, as community members serve on university
advisory boards, university employees serve on boards and both employees
and students provide volunteer services to various community organizations.
The university provides learning opportunities and services to the people of
southwest Oklahoma both through units specifically dedicated to public
outreach and through individual faculty who offer their expertise to local and
regional organizations, businesses and communities. Cameron takes seriously
its mission as a regional leader in economic and cultural development, both
through the funding and operation of CETES and through partnerships such
as that the university maintains with the Lawton Philharmonic Orchestra. As a
result of its efforts, the institution has a demonstrable economic impact on the
region it serves, and is highly respected by the southwest Oklahoma community.
Additionally, although the body of this report has not explicitly drawn attention to
the presence of the four cross-cutting themes in its analysis of university operations, it
has been demonstrated through the data and the discussion it provides that Cameron
University is future-oriented, learning-focused, connected and distinctive.
Over the last ten years, the university has expanded its strategic planning efforts at all
levels in an effort to position both the university as a whole and its diverse programs to
seize opportunities that arise and overcome obstacles as necessary. This forward-looking
attitude permeates the institution and all of its operations. Even as its mission expresses
a commitment to preparing its students for their own futures as productive workers
and citizens, the university takes pains to ensure that its comprehensive planning, and
its regular evaluation of the effectiveness of that planning, will allow it to continue to
provide a quality education in an atmosphere conducive to learning. Individual academic
programs also continually assess their effectiveness in order to make changes that will
both improve student learning and ensure that students not only are prepared for the
world into which they will graduate, but also are provided with a knowledge base and an
ability to engage in life-long learning habits that will allow them to grow and keep pace
with the needs of an ever-changing workplace. In addition, Cameron’s commitment to
economic and culture leadership in the region it serves means that it must continually
look not only to its own future and that of its students, but to the future of southwest
Oklahoma, as it strives to enhance quality of life for all of its constituents.
Through all of its planning, moreover, Cameron University remains resolutely learningfocused. Cameron’s mission promises quality educational opportunities for all it serves,
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and in pursuit of that mission, the university carefully directs its resources to ensure not
only the effective delivery of instruction, but also (more crucially) effective learning on
the part of all of its constituents. Thus, the institution regularly engages in the evaluation
and assessment of the learning services it provides in order to ensure that the resources
dedicated to student learning produce positive learning outcomes; through PQIRs,
IDEA evaluations, NSSE and ACT surveys and other internal studies and reports,
the institution measures the impact of the instruction it provides on student learning.
In addition, the vast majority of its external partnerships and community services are
centered around constituent learning of one kind or another; from CETES to summer
camps, Cameron provides programs from which constituents can and do learn to
enhance their opportunities and their lives.
The university’s ability to remain learning focused in the face of shrinking budgets,
has (as has been emphasized throughout this report) been in large part due to the
partnerships it has been able to forge, both with other institutions of higher education
and with the residents of southwest Oklahoma. One of the university’s great strengths
lies in its connectedness to external partners and to the southwest Oklahoma region it
serves; from its very inception, the institution has relied upon community partnerships
even as southwest Oklahoma has looked to the university to provide educational
services and leadership in the region. Today, those ties are more important than ever,
and the institution has actively sought to expand its community and higher education
partnerships in order to maximize the effectiveness of ever-dwindling resources. New
partnerships with other institutions such as Redlands Community College, Rogers State
University and Great Plains Technology Center have allowed the university to expand
the range of services it offers within the state while the generosity of the community
it serves has led to the radical enhancement of the university infrastructure, including
the new student union opened in Spring 2010 and the expansion of endowed faculty
positions and other instructional resources.
Above all, perhaps, as it moves into its second century, Cameron University has a clear
and unwavering understanding of itself, of its role in the community it serves and of its
mission. For more than one hundred years, Cameron has been committed to providing
for its constituents quality educational opportunities that are both affordable and
accessible, thereby enhancing the overall quality of life in southwest Oklahoma. In the
continued pursuit of that aim, the university has, over the last several years, increased
the funding it dedicates to scholarships and tuition waivers in order to offset the rising
cost of college education. It has also developed internal textbook and emergency loan
programs and partnered with the U.S. military to provide additional assistance to those
who need it most. As a result, Cameron graduates carry one of the lowest college debt
loads in the nation. Cameron also works to enhance accessibility by offering pre-college
leveling courses and dedicating funds to initiatives that seek to improve the success rates
in those pre-college courses. At the same time, the university provides the leadership
in cultural, economic and workforce development necessary to enhance local career
opportunities for the educated workforce it produces. And yet, as the university also
recognizes, none of these initiatives may come at the expense of the quality education
that lies at the core of its mission, a quality that the institution assures both by targeting
specific programs for educational excellence and by routinely assessing the learning
outcomes of all of its academic programs.
In all of its operations, Cameron University continually seeks to improve its capacity to
fulfill its mission and the distinctive role it plays in the southwest Oklahoma community.
Thus the University’s efforts to evaluate its own effectiveness, to assess student learning,
to learn from the results of those processes and to make public both its findings and its
plan of action are cited regularly throughout this report. As with any institution, room
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Conclusion
for growth remains, but overall this document describes a campus that has learned not
just to assess and evaluate but to internalize the inherent value of those activities in a
genuine quest for institutional improvement. In that spirit, Cameron has embraced the
opportunity for self-study, which has (in keeping with the goals initially set out for the
project) helped the university community to better understand itself, to celebrate what
it has achieved and to recognize where it at times falls short and must act to better serve
its constituents. Already the institution has begun to act based on self-study findings,
and the following initiatives have been put in place:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Increased visibility of mission and core values
Implementation of AggieAccess
Inclusion of Policies Channel on Aggie Access
New policies for electroniccampus communication
Designation of Cameron email address as official student email address
Increased opportunities for employee training
Availability of employee training through AggieAccess
Stipends for classified staff
Stipends for employees making less than $30,000 per year
Implementation of three year plan for increasing promotion raises
Market adjustments for full-time faculty with particular emphasis on instructors
and full professors
• Creation of a Faculty Human Resources Plan to display university salary goals
• Increased accountability for general education assessment
• Consideration of means for reporting data on student’s global awareness in
more useful form for decision-making purposes
In the year 2010, Cameron University stands poised between its past and future, with
a century of experience behind it and a second century full of possibility opening out
before. These are unquestionably times of uncertainty and change for higher education,
but Cameron has solid foundations, with its roots in the very soil of southwest
Oklahoma and in the work ethic and determination of those who live there and seek
growth and prosperity for themselves and for their children. With a strong conviction in
its mission and a long tradition of providing quality educational opportunities that are
both accessible and affordable, the university is well positioned to make the choices that
will guide it through the foreseeable future and lead it to a second century characterized
by educational excellence and the progress of the region it serves.
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