February 22, 2008
Volume 1 Issue 5
In this issue:
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A Message From the Provost
Dear Colleague,
A daunting range of activities and responsibilities are essential to the excellence of the University of Illinois. Neglect of any of them diminishes the greatness of the whole enterprise. A major challenge of strategic planning is to keep the stewardship of this broad array of needs in view while working hard to support new initiatives in education and research.
Strategic Planning as a core organizing principle for advancing the goals of the institution is relatively new to Illinois, and we are still learning about the practices that will make it effectively meet the distinctive needs of our campus. Periodic program review is a closely related exercise in self-scrutiny, essential to providing an understanding of how our units are performing that complements the assessment dimension of Strategic Planning. Illinois has been without a systematic process for reviewing its units since the last of the COPE reviews many years ago. We need the deep self-understanding generated by an effective program review process. How can we set up a process that will benefit the units under review, our academic colleges, and the campus as a whole without tying up valuable resources better expended on other important processes?
President Lincoln’s signing into law of the Morrill Act ushered in the development of the great land grant universities. Illinois’ heritage as a land grant university has been basic to our mission from our beginnings. A key part of that mission is providing educational opportunities for diverse, high achieving students across the state, including those who begin their post-secondary education at community colleges. What can we do to strengthen our capacity to provide degree completion opportunities for highly qualified Illinois students?
The everyday operation of the university requires the dedicated work of hundreds of people who staff our academic and administrative offices. The services provided by staff are essential to all that we do. We have the responsibility to make certain the performance of these crucial services is distributed across the academic and administrative structure of the university as effectively as possible – maximizing the efficiency of our use of the available resources, delivering the quality of service necessary to support our educational and research missions. How can we develop service centers to make sure all our units have access to the support they need for everyday operations?
This Newsletter provides an update on actions in the Office of the Provost in response to these questions about deferred maintenance, our capacity to recruit highly talented transfer students from community colleges, and our efforts to create operational efficiencies through service centers. As always, I welcome your comments on this newsletter.
Sincerely,
Linda Katehi
Program Review
This semester a small working group – Abbas Aminmansour, Craig Dutton, David Irwin, Laurie Kramer, John Ory, Ruth Watkins, Stig Lanesskog, Dick Wheeler – will give preliminary consideration to how program review can be implemented effectively at Illinois. This group has looked at what appear to be successful program review processes at peer institutions and at a report on program review completed by a high-level committee from our Senate in 1999. This group will present a preliminary concept statement to the Council of Deans later this spring. If the deans are supportive, the group will then consult extensively with appropriate Senate committees, and with faculty and staff more broadly, about the key elements of the review process. The final report of the committee will reflect this consultative process. We hope to have a report approved and a procedure in place by fall 2008, and to initiate the first program reviews in this new process as early as spring 2009.
If you would like at this time to propose ideas that you believe would help create a strong, effective, and efficient program review process at Illinois, please send your suggestions to Jane Baumgartner at jmbaumga@illinois.edu.Transfer Initiative
A key strategic aim for our campus is to expand access to the University of Illinois through increased recruitment of high ability students from community colleges throughout the state. The Transfer Experience and Advising Mentor (TEAM) Project, funded in part by the Lumina Foundation for Education, was officially launched on January 31, with a campus kick-off event for the eight initial community college partners: College of DuPage, Danville Area Community College, Harold Washington College, Harper College, Illinois Central College, Oakton Community College, Parkland College, and Wilbur Wright College. Representatives from our campus met with community college partners to refine goals and tactics for this project, with the shared aim of promoting baccalaureate degree completion for greater numbers of Illinois students. A number of units on campus are participating in focused efforts to increase enrollment of community college transfer students, and to promote the success of these students through graduation. Fourteen Illinois undergraduates have been hired to serve as peer resources for transfers; they will help guide applicants and new students to the many institutional resources available to them and they will support transitioning students with social integration. The TEAM Project is a central component of our effort to more effectively partner with the Illinois higher education community, expanding access to the University of Illinois for capable students throughout the state.
Service Center Initiative
President White recently announced the University’s Resource Initiative, aimed at providing maximum resources to the academic front-line. Increasing process efficiencies and improving service levels are methods by which we can achieve this goal. To that end, the Office of the Provost is launching an initiative to identify opportunities both to improve the service level to faculty, students and staff, and to enhance the working environment of individuals providing those services. Over the next few months, the activities of the Provost office’s units will be studied to identify potential new models of service delivery. Both individuals working in these units and those served by these units will have significant input into this process. The initial functions for review will include Human Resources, Information Technology, Accounting/Finance and Marketing/Communications.
Based on this assessment, recommendations will be made regarding process improvement opportunities and alternate methods to deliver these services, including the potential development of service centers. The expectation is that the lessons learned during this process can also be applied more broadly across campus.
In addition, Facilities and Services is beginning a process improvement initiative. They have engaged Business and Industry Services, a unit of the University, to assist with this effort.
Feedback
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