DRAFT
Minutes
2020 Task Force
October 8, 2010
8:00 – 9:30 a.m.
Plaza Room - AC
Attended: Rick Anderson, Bonita Butner, Curt Crespino, Karen Dace, Gary Ebersole, Jack Fincham, Gail
Hackett, Carol Hintz, Doranne Hudson, Janet Justus, Sarah Morris, Tony Persechini, Jeffrey Rydberg-Cox,
Kevin Truman, Mel Tyler, Luke Whitworth, Peter Witte.
Absent: Bob Yang, Peggy Ward-Smith, Marsha Pyle
Team reports
Iowa
This was primarily an assessment of graduate programs
The criteria relate to program outcomes and characteristics
 Time-to-degree
 % of completion
 Placement
Too many programs were eliminated from consideration
Membership on committees was not comprehensive or inclusive
Time-to-degree is not a very useful criterion
Interconnected programs are better programs
Professional programs collaborating like a liberal arts program would be a free-for-all
Lessons learned from this report that we could emulate in some way:
o It was a data-driven process
o Create criteria ahead of time – may be difficult to achieve consensus
o Make the committee memberships inclusive
o Be courageous about ranking i.e. “good-better-best” is too weak
o The finding that 14% of programs need further review is not out of line
o Include E-Learning and distance learning
o Include non-academic programs in the review
o Criteria should be bound to what it means to be strong in the discipline
o Length of time: 9 – 10 months. Is this too long?
Southern Mississippi
 Good job of pulling many things together from a lot of sources and boiling it all down
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Use judgments of faculty leadership to drive program ratings.
All participants operate from the same mission statement, program criteria and weights.
They divided the work into academic and non-academic sub-committees
Dividing things up is appealing – criteria and detail is available in the report
The committees were inclusive
Fairly short time-line (8 months)
They didn’t look much at the future – were more about cutting now.
We can learn from their disciplined process
Ratings in the criteria were worked on in the committee and with the deans – a holistic approach
We should look at both academic and non-academic together in an integrated way to avoid opposing
goals
Esoteric things are included, not just data
The level of detail and specificity was good
Have each program look at how they would fare over the next 3 years with 5 – 10% cuts and 5 – 10%
increases
Think about what makes money and what doesn’t
University of Virginia
The report was called “The Future of the University”
Liked the strategy of using a set of questions to define the effort
There were 4 committees
o Schools/Hospital
o Program initiatives
o Student/faculty life
o Funding & resources
Each Dean had to assess programs for three years in three pages
Are the processes we have in place today good for student and faculty life?
Are they within the context of the mission and goals?
Good sub-committee structure
Similar to UMKC in the focus on the future: “Who do we want to be?”
There was a comprehensive set of performance measures
Discussion
Think about organizing the committees and sub-committees in a different way than is typical
We should look at the charge and the set of questions we are asking i.e. How do students want to learn in the
future?
Do we want to develop a set of questions?
We would not use the typical division of academic/non-academic to identify our subcommittees.
Academic Programs
1 subcommittee on Academic Administration
1 subcommittee on professional schools and academic program review
Non-Academic Programs
1 subcommittee on (non-academic) program review (i.e. shared services)
1 subcommittee on administrative review (already existing information)
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How do we integrate these with each other?
Where does student and faculty life fit in?
We also need to address community engagement.
Next Agenda:
Create committee structure and charges
Draft list of questions
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