The strategic plan writing team has produced final drafts of an ASU-Jonesboro mission statement, core values statement, and vision statement along with a condensation of the more lengthy strategic planning narrative. The points identified as strategic directions now have coalesced into a group of institutional priorities. That material has been reported previously in First Friday issues. Constituents were asked to provide responses to the planning material. Written and verbal reactions were given to and considered by the writing team, which now has provided final drafts for integration with unit-level plans.

The writing team has finished its essential work. It is appropriate to insert here an expression of institutional gratitude to members of the writing team. Theirs has not been an easy chore: They have been asked to recall, consider, discuss, and sometimes translate hours of commentary and pages of notes from the campus and civic community planning meetings. They have struggled to unite divergent viewpoints, and they have debated the most precise wording and phrasing to convey intentions of the planning participants. The writing team has produced an elegant summary of a year’s activity, thought, and discussion and they have expressed our university’s ambition. It is a good product. We are grateful to have received it.

The material from the team has gone to the vice presidents, to the deans and to division directors in order for each level of organization to define how it will actualize the strategic plan in their own activities. These separate and very different interpretations will serve to animate a plan that otherwise would be static. It is to be hoped that the plans would be internalized not only at the unit level, but at the personal level as well, so that each person may take ownership and responsibility for success of the plan.

Over the next month, these separate plans will be reviewed, questioned, changed, strengthened, and integrated into a final document. That compendium of the campus-wide effort will be presented to the Board of Trustees in December and, assuming their concurrence and encouragement to proceed, will be posted in the First Friday report in January 2005, a year before the Higher Learning Commission team returns expecting to see the plan in place and operational.

Enrollment Management Planning

Following discussion about enrollment issues in the First Friday reports that preceded this one, Dr. Jim Black has been hired through a competitive process to provide expert counsel for our development of a strategic enrollment plan. Concepts of this effort were presented recently to the University Planning Committee, and a campus-wide task force now has been created. The co-chairs, Vice Presidents Allen and Stripling, and task force members will work with Dr. Black to identify a series of issues regarding our enrollment situation, strategies for improvement and assessment methodologies. Dr. Black will provide for the president and task force several written audits: admissions office functions; financial aid policies and distributions; advising and counseling activities; the process that is used to define enrollment goals; and an environmental scan of our current situation. These audits will result in a final report from Dr. Black to be produced in early spring 2005.

This report and additional information reviewed by the task force will form the basis of an enrollment plan to be produced in the spring 2005 and made operational during the 2005-06 academic year. While some positive results from the planning activity will be seen with fall 2005 enrollments (the recruitment for which is currently underway), the full impact will be realized in the fall 2006 and beyond. This is so because an enrollment plan unfolds over the course of several years, as targets for enrollment are defined by academic leaders, as university recruiters cover their territories throughout the year, as faculty and staff develop personalized contacts with prospective enrollees, as scholarship and housing arrangements are finalized, as we go through a series of preview days and orientations, and finally through the process of accommodating students in academic courses and student support programs.

When the Higher Learning Commission team returns, it will want to see a plan that has produced the specific students we would want to enroll at ASU, in addition to the many other students who would want to come for the excellent educational opportunities we provide. The development of that plan will begin with Dr. Black’s visit on November 8.

The strategic planning process also has identified the priority to study and refine the university image, as it is perceived inside and outside the institution. Using materials developed and organized through the enrollment management study, we may proceed into an image study that would lead to a new concept of “branding,” or how we would freshly present ourselves to many constituents. Again, this process would extend over the course of the next year.

Shared Governance Planning

For the last decade, at the least, ASU has struggled with the concepts of shared governance, and many legitimate concerns have been raised about whether the process we employ is actually shared, or whether it actually is governance. The importance of a shared governance system is appreciated differently among constituents inside and outside the university, with some individuals and groups caring passionately about the process, and some caring not at all. The ASU shared governance system has been criticized as being ineffective, and there has been confusion and uncertainty about how the shared governance system works, and how issues are resolved and results made known. The Higher Learning Commission rightly identified shared governance as an area that needs attention, and one that will be reviewed by the visitation team in 2006.

A shared governance task force, composed of interested faculty members, has been meeting over the last year to provide a clear conceptual basis for a shared governance system, and the subsequent definition of a process through which the concepts may be expressed in practice. Professor Julie Isaacson has led the task force that recently released the draft report of the University Governance System, included here as attachment. Commentary is invited and sought in response to the draft, which includes:

• Principles and Guidelines of University Governance, including:
  • Communication and accountability
  • Representation
  • Procedural integrity
• Academic Governance, including:
  • Definition
  • Major areas of faculty responsibility
  • Academic governance committees
• Institutional Governance, including:
  • Definition
  • Institutional Committees
• Operational procedures for the implementation of university governance

A listing of academic governance committees and institutional governance committees also is included in the attachment.

As a draft, this material is open to commentary, revision, and any necessary refinement to make the university governance system one we all can support, use, and in which we may participate. Please take time to review the draft and send your thoughts about it to Professor Julie Isaacson (jisaacson@astate.edu) or to me. Some version of this draft will find its way into policy, so please offer comments during this period of development.

This report has attempted to relate the progress our campus is making to respond to the observations of the Higher Learning Commission, but more importantly the collaborative effort that has been, and will be joined by many persons to make ASU a better university. Progress is being made, thanks to all of you who have contributed time, effort, and energy, which is too briefly summarized in this short report.

If you have comments about this material or any aspect of Arkansas State University, I would welcome your communication to president@astate.edu.

Leslie Wyatt
President

Referenced Material:

University Governance (Microsoft Word document)

Academic Governance and Institutional Governance Committees (Microsoft Word document)
 

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