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College Performance

Dashboard(s) – Program indicators/financial – The Program Indicators Dashboard is an assessment tool for evaluating programmatic health, broadly defined as size, stability, student success (placement, retention, persistence), and growth potential. In addition to the quantitative indicators, it will also be shaped by qualitative evaluative criteria developed as part of an annual self-study. A comprehensive set of both quantitative and qualitative indicators can provide a holistic view of a unit while providing the necessary context. The goal is to develop a web-based dashboard that would be regularly updated to better reflect the qualitative self-assessments of programs.

Conversation on CPIL – The CPIL approach leads both to greater faculty success/career satisfaction and its corollary increased productivity. As mentioned above, it helps faculty, students, and staff focus their efforts via a workplan that outlines goals defined as “stepping stones”, “milestones”, towards their “horizon” goal. The articulation of this workplan and yearly revisiting with peers/mentors helps faculty to chart a progression of goals on a realistic timeline with identifiable periods when financial support would be the most strategic. During COVID-19, the model is proving to be very robust as it is flexible/ adaptable, inclusive, and transparent.

Budget Reduction Task Force (BRTF) – In the Spring of 2020 as the pandemic set in, the College established a Budget Reduction Task Force (BRTF) informed by the 2020 Contingency Planning document outlined above. The BRTF included three sub-committees that included College faculty, staff, and administrators.

  • Curriculum Integrity and Programmatic Shifts Subcommittee, chaired by Jackie Rhodes
  • Staff Structures and Personnel Adjustments Subcommittee, chaired by Yen-Hwei Lin
  • Academic Structures Subcommittee, chaired by Arthur Versluis

The BRTF identified three areas of focus where we hope to identify substantive savings: retirements, staff restructuring, and curriculum reform. Adopting a holistic, CPIL approach to facilitate planned faculty planned retirements over the next several years, we hope to generate significant salary savings in our recurring budget to meet a portion of the budget reduction. Staff efficiencies will be accomplished through attrition and staff reorganization on the hybrid-centralization model we outline above. Based on student success best practices in the respective disciplines, curriculum reform will focus on building a more diverse student body, the integration of more inclusive course content across the curriculum (using our Compelling Curriculum/Inclusive Pedagogy Initiative models), multiple pathways to the major (through our flexible curriculum strategy mentioned above), time to degree, the introduction of more high quality, high enrollment IAH courses, all of which will lead to an overall streamlining of total courses offered.

Long term plan to achieve budget cuts – The budget reductions will require a multi- faceted approach over multiple years. We have adopted an approach that allows us to bridge budget cuts to our recurring budget by using non-recurring monies to give us time to implement the strategies identified by the BRTF. Those strategies include:

  • Faculty retirements will not result in replacement TS lines – they will be used to address the budget reductions.
  • The curriculum will be streamlined to reduce the number of classes and programs offered.
  • Staff restructuring will create efficiencies and lower the need for as many staff lines.
  • Faculty research/travel funds will be used to offset budget deficits.
  • OCCI funds will be used to offset budget deficits, which are typically used to fund faculty research/travel, Graduate Assistantships/research/stipends/travel, facility improvements and new initiatives.