An Oct. 3 campus forum on the Strategic Resource Allocation (SRA) project served mainly as an opportunity for faculty, staff and students to ask questions about the process. In his opening statement, President Fritz Erickson addressed confusion related to the five quintiles that programs fall under in the reports completed by the academic and support task forces.
“There seems to be confusion that the quintiles are some sort of ranking, with 1 better than 2 and 2 better than 3,” Erickson said. “They’re really categories. We are looking at each as a set of opportunities. Some programs have more opportunities. Others are fully realized and require additional resources to continue to grow. And those with low and declining enrollment, we’ll take a close look at and try to find ways to increase interest or explore partnership opportunities. My advice is, don’t put too much stock in the number itself. The important thing is how we as a university community make the right kind of investments to shape the university and the groups of students we serve.”
Provost Kerri Schuiling addressed a question about what comes next in the process. She said the Implementation Task Force has received the reports from the two task forces and is going through them quintile by quintile.
“We started with quintile 5 academic, then 5 support. There has been a lot of discussion around that,” she said. “The reports looked at a snapshot year. We’re looking at the financial and enrollment data since that snapshot year to see if there are trends. Maybe a program’s grown since then or is continuing to go down. We are also looking at all of the comments. As we deliberate, we will look at criteria established by the task forces and the context of the strategic plan. This is the first pass-through. We’ll go back through everything again and then make our final recommendations.”
The Implementation Task Force (ITF) recommendations will be sent to Erickson for his review. He will present an initial report to the Board of Trustees at its December meeting.
Two other faculty/staff questions were raised at the forum. Professor Amy Orf asked about possibly returning to a model of a single international programs office with a single director, rather than the current divided structure. International student recruitment is handled through Extended Learning and Community Engagement in Cohodas, while assistance for international students and study-abroad programs is provided by International Education Services in Hedgcock. The other question related to possible increased resources for Counseling and Consultation Services if there is a goal of increasing availability beyond traditional hours. Administrators said they are exploring both.
ASNMU President Cody Mayer and other students in attendance expressed frustration that they were not represented on the task forces and were not able to provide feedback on the reports. Administrators recently made the reports available to students and said their comments would be allowed with the same guidelines as employees.
