OUS Provosts’ Council Meeting
The OUS Provosts’ Council met on November 4, 2004 from 10:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. in Room 122C, Building 9 of the Portland Community College–Rock Creek Campus in Portland.
Attendees: Lorraine Davis, Chair, UO; Lesley Hallick, OHSU; John Miller, EOU; John Moseley, UO; Earl Potter, SOU; Sabah Randhawa, OSU; Michael Reardon, PSU; Jem Spectar, WOU; Dave Woodall, OIT; Scott Burns, IFS; Susan Weeks and Helen Stampe, OUS.
1. Announcements
· Lorraine Davis indicated that she will be giving an update to Gretchen Schuette on the joint meeting of the Council of Instructional Administrators (CIA) and Provosts’ Council that was held earlier so Gretchen has it for the Board report being presented the next day. She and others felt that the meeting went well.
· Lorraine announced that the EDP Working Group Summit on General Education Transfer Module will be on November 19 at Chemeketa Community College – both she and John Miller will be attending. All provosts and/or their representatives are welcome to attend.
2. EDP Work Plan/Report
· John Moseley indicated that he asked Connie Green for guidance on the next steps on Course Availability; she said they will be discussing it further in the CIA meeting. We can write up a general problem statement for OUS drawn from summarizing the paper that John passed out earlier. (Each provost should look at it to make sure their campus is represented correctly – still need statements from OSU and EOU). Each campus would report back on how they would use funds to improve course availability. If they were going to put money into it, would rather see it in enrollment growth. It was noted that there will be accountability for the specific funds so we need to find a way to monitor it.
· Sabah Randhawa raised questions on the dates that the report will be reviewed and possibly endorsed: JBAC will be meeting on November 18; EDP Working Group Summit on November 19; OSU IFS meeting sometime in December; and OSU Faculty Senate is looking to meet in January or February. He felt that we, as a group, need to have a conversation to endorse the plan and build it in this process somewhere. The timing may be a little critical. John Miller pointed out that JBAC is proposing to take the proposal to the Board as an information item in January and possibly an action item in February. He noted that the Board may have to move this forward to the legislature before it is even endorsed. There also will be campus senate meetings somewhere in the timeline but the anticipation is that there will have to be a consensus. Question was raised if we can conceptionally endorse it at the next Provosts’ Council meeting. Sabah said he was reluctant to do so because the proposal wouldn’t have time to go through the OSU Faculty Senate. It was suggested that possibly doing a preamble that puts everything in context. Sabah and Jem Spectar will look into putting a preamble together on the outcomes. Hopefully it will be available prior to the November 18 JBAC meeting so they can have input. It was suggested that even if JBAC doesn’t go along with it in terms of what goes forward to the State Board, that it will be part of the Provosts’ Council endorsement.
3. Program Proposals
UO –
M.A./M.S. in Conflict and Dispute Resolution
·
Lorraine reported that this is a program that is
facilitated from the Law School that will provide graduates and law students
with advanced opportunities to learn about and master a breadth of fundamental
principles and skills through interdisciplinary study, research, and practical
application. It is designed to be half law students and half non-law students,
about 20-25 students will be admitted each year. There is a master’s
program at PSU that has about 130 students in it and they are supportive of the
UO’s program. The program is a self-support program with Law School fees
– no General Funds are involved. Michael Reardon reported that the
PSU’s program is also self-supporting and their program is going fine.
·
Question was raised on how the American Bar Association
(ABA) accreditation would impact this program. The program will be part of the
accreditation review, but is not accredited per se; it will enhance what the
Law School is doing from the ABA perspective.
·
Sabah submitted a paper from the OSU Speech Communication
Department with a couple of concerns – basically about strong components
around international negotiation and communication. OSU is also supportive of
the program.
·
Lorraine will raise any questions or concerns to the
faculty bringing the proposal forward. Programmatic adjustments will be made as
needed through the review processes.
·
Consensus was that it is OK to proceed for ODA
notification and the external review process.
PSU – External Review of the Ph.D. in Applied Psychology
Michael Reardon reported that this was a strong external review report and it supports the program. He noted that there were some concerns in the report under the Areas of Need and addressed them as follows:
· On the first bullet, the reviewers wanted a “new faculty line for coordination and oversight of practica and internships is highly desirable.” The department is currently searching for that now.
· On the third bullet, the reviewers indicated a need for “growth in the areas of program evaluation, policy development and prevention would enhance the quality of training and increase student skills and marketability.” The department is already underway on this.
·
The fourth bullet states “The constraints of a
minimum enrollment of 11 students for foundation graduate classes may unduly
limit the ability to offer courses and may inhibit student progress.”
This is a mistake and will be corrected.
·
It was agreed that it was a strong external review and
supports the program.
·
Consensus was that it is OK to forward this program to
the January 2005 Board consent agenda for approval, with the stipulation that
all the Areas of Need concerns have been
addressed. It should also state that there is very strong support for the
coordination of grant funding at PSU, coming from the external review in a
larger perspective.
4. New
Performance Measures Framework and Legislative Information Needs
Susan
Weeks distributed several handouts for review. She indicated that there are
three topics to concentrate on: (1) the most critical piece is where we are converging
on performance measurement generally – how we conceptualize it and how we
communicate it; (2) the OUS Budget Office has received a request from
Legislative Fiscal Office (LFO) for data that has to be in by January and
requires help from the campuses; and (3) what kind of faculty related
information can the campuses provide for supporting the faculty recruitment and
retention policy package and related issues during the legislative session.
The first handout was OUS Major Performance Areas and Indicators and Supporting Performance Indicators that was an attempt to organize and consolidate the several different sources for performance indicators. The key performance areas shown in the new framework – while not labeled precisely like the Board goals of affordability, access, excellence, and economic development – reflect the areas in which we are being asked for measures to support the initiatives and goals of the Governor, or legislatively-driven requests. Over the long-term, they may match up well with the four performance goals identified in SB 919 (access, quality, employability, and cost-effectiveness) but they are not labeled the same way. Affordable Access would be the first one, incorporating affordability indicators still under development, along with established indicators for access. Student Progress focuses on indicators that measure whether students are getting through. Education Quality was initially called Faculty Quality; it tries to get at the dimensions of quality, including teaching effectiveness. Economic and Civic Contributions includes the existing measures for economic development and employability, and also addresses the civic contributions of higher education, such as volunteerism.
We are trying to identify one primary indicator and one secondary indicator in each category, for a total of no more than eight on which we would focus conversations with legislators and other stakeholders. Nearly all of these eight indicators could be considered “outcome” indicators (as opposed to “input”). The idea of listing the supporting indicators is to show that we do have some other in-depth ways to address performance, but they are not the ones we are going to identify as the primary and secondary with legislators and others. This is the concept that we would like to share with Representative Morgan and Senator Schrader in a discussion about how we communicate and draw together these measures.
It was noted that the most difficult to measure and communicate is Education Quality, especially “teaching effectiveness.” How we measure teaching effectiveness will be hard since there is no perfect metric for this. We could start with the quantitative data from teaching evaluations campuses currently collect. Lorraine asked that provosts send her campus-wide data from the teaching evaluation forms currently used, as a starting point.
Following
discussion of the secondary indicator for Education Quality – total
R&D expenditures – provosts recommended using R&D expenditures
per tenure-track faculty instead. There was discussion about whether to show
this ratio for all campuses (reported at the system level) or for just OSU,
PSU, and UO, as currently reported. Susan will provide both sets of data
and come back later with a recommendation.
Sabah suggested including international study experience as a supporting performance indicator under Education Quality. He also raised a question about the inclusion of the part-time faculty percentage as an indicator. The reason that is included is that as budgets have been reduced, campuses have relied increasingly on part-time faculty to support instruction, and that has implications for overall education quality.
Regarding the primary Affordable Access indicator, John Moseley suggested using “net cost” rather than “total cost,” and to include in parenthesis a notation about the percent of need met by financial aid. Susan will incorporate those changes into the next draft for discussion.
Susan shared the Template for Performance Targets Under Different Funding Assumptions, which is designed to be a first step in developing a very simple model that allows us to look at what our targets will be under different funding assumptions. We may want to go back to the DAS Links to Benchmarks and, rather than set targets assuming full funding of EBL and policy packages, set them assuming EBL funding only. We need to be prepared to respond if legislators ask what happens if we don’t get funding or what can you achieve with fewer resources, or even what happens if you get additional funding. At least, this template gives us a range of funding options and targets for response. Susan noted that the focus would be on system-level data but that particular legislators would likely want to know how “their” campus was doing. After further discussion, it was determined that the template should display only the four primary measures, rather than the eight. Susan will redesign the template and share the next version with provosts.
Susan also reported that Steve Bender is asking for two other pieces of data that need to be obtained from campuses: program/course additions/eliminations and course/section offerings. He is trying to see over time the budget impact on programs and courses offered. Earl indicated that he has a template that shows course section offerings and will forward it on to the provosts for review.
Discussion was held on faculty issues that included failed searches, faculty turnover, and other information that will be needed during the legislative session. We would report the campus total without identifying discipline, but if we identify disciplines, we will report it as a System total. Susan will draft a format so that information can be consistent, drawing on topics covered in material from UO, WOU, SOU, OSU, and others, and will forward it to provosts for review.
5. PEBB
Presentation
Director Jean Thorne asked if the Provosts’ Council would be interested in reviewing the PEBB presentation called Vision 2007. She will be presenting it to the Administrative Council on November 17 and to the IFS on December 3. Scott Burns indicated that they will be asking Director Thorne to make presentations at all the faculty senates. It was agreed that we did not need a special presentation and will review the slide handouts and get back to Director Thorne with any questions.
6.
Distribution of Minutes
A request had been made on how to receive Provosts’ Council minutes. It was noted that they are posted on the Council’s website, and Helen will inform the interinstitutional committees of the site address.
7. Next Meeting
The next meeting of the Provosts’ Council will be by telephone on December 2, 2004 from 10:00 a.m. to noon.
Submitted by
Helen Stampe