SJSU Capacity and Preparatory
Review Report
Essay 4: SJSU Capacity with Respect to Creating an
Organization
Committed to Learning and Improvement
Introduction (CFR 4.1, 4.6)
Since the last WASC visit, San José State University has planned
and been unified around quite a number of strategic initiatives. When
he first joined the University, former President Robert Caret held several
large meetings with faculty and administrators to work through the implications
of calling ourselves a Metropolitan University. Through the President's
Staff meetings, President Caret regularly discussed priorities and plans
for the University with a wide constituency of campus representatives.
Using the Budget Advisory
Committee of the Academic Senate, he expanded the influence of faculty
on campus spending. Annually in the fall, President Caret presented
an update on previous goals and an announcement of new goals at an all-campus
meeting. Shortly before he resigned, he announced "Vision 2007,"
which included a call for broad campus dialog and provided direction
with respect to an endowment campaign, and other goals.
These efforts constituted planning by initiative even if they did not
result in a single strategic plan document. Nonetheless, when campus
constituencies have been asked to name areas in which the University
can improve, planning, coordination, and communication have been at
the top of the list. Likewise, when Interim President Joseph Crowley
stepped into office in fall 2003, he immediately sensed that the individual
units were each setting their own priorities in the absence of central
direction to them from the University. President Crowley confirmed the
sense of the campus that there is little planning about such matters
as the optimal number of majors in any one program or the proportion
of graduate to undergraduate students. There is little coordination
between Advancement and the needs of the programs in the academic and
student affairs divisions.
Two important events led the campus to choose planning as one of the
themes on which it concentrated for these Preparation Review and Educational
Effectiveness reports. One was the self-analysis necessary to develop
a clear statement of the ideal characteristics of the next president.
The second was the occasion of the WASC visit. Our goal is to develop
a planning process that will enable all constituencies to contribute
to, articulate, and stand behind the direction of the University.
As a significant step in this process, President Crowley has created
a Resource Planning
Board, as recommended to him by the Academic Senate. It is co-chaired
by the Provost and the VP of Administration & Finance. Twelve additional
members represent all campus constituencies, including students. Major
decisions about budget reductions are before the committee at the time
of the writing of this document. Campus hopes are high that this Board
will bring the coordination and communication the campus desires--though
it is also understood that the campus needs to take further actions
in conceiving an overall strategic plan. Attendees of the all-campus
forums held in 2003-2004 to define and focus the campus on major issues
are calling for the continuation of similar meetings in the future.
Continuation will be a recommendation to the new president.
In the context of wishing to improve our planning process and outcomes,
San José State University is confident that it has the capacity
to think strategically and plan for its future. The completion of the
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, a joint project with the City of
San José, serves as one case study to illustrate how we went
about planning this unique and highly complex collaboration between
the University and the City.
Strategic Thinking and Planning
(CFR 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, & 4.6)
The idea for a joint library came from
discussions in 1996 between former SJSU President Robert Caret and former
San José Mayor Susan Hammer. President Caret knew that, although
the campus needed an updated, larger library, it would be virtually
impossible to get funding approved by the CSU system for a new building.
The City of San José, which also needed a larger main Public
Library to accommodate the expansion of the San José community,
needed a building site.
President Caret initiated planning for the Joint Library on multiple
levels at once. CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and the CSU Trustees were
involved because state funds on the SJSU side had to have approval from
the California legislature. On campus, the president worked through
the existing organizational structures from University Advancement to
the Facilities Development Office to the Academic Senate. Serious feasibility
discussions involved committees and councils from the time the president
and mayor signed a preliminary MOU in spring 1997 until December 1998
when a Library Policy
was approved by the Academic Senate and signed by President Caret, creating
a University Library Board. A significant sector of the academic community
was, at first, quite opposed to a plan for a joint library. In response,
the Special Committee on the Joint Library Project conducted open hearings
with a panel of the major administrators of the City and the University
(videotapes and transcriptions of which are available) to answer the
questions of the community and to hear objections that had not been
considered. To ensure that substantive responses would be obtained,
the panel was given seventy questions before the hearings. In addition,
the annual Senate Retreat in 1998 focused on the project to air as many
opinions as possible. At the end of the process, all parties agreed
that the Library Policy was stronger for having been discussed so widely
and thoroughly.
The final clause of the resolution for adopting the policy stated that
the document would be null and void if negotiations with the City were
discontinued because, at that point, the City of San José, too,
had its opponents to the plan and various delays in approving the idea.
Ultimately, the City approved the plan, undoubtedly in part because
a joint city-university committee convinced public officials by their
actions that collaboration would be possible.
While the academic constituencies were making their recommendations,
various feasibility studies on costs and design were being undertaken
by the SJSU Vice President for Administration and many members of his
staff. As soon as the city and the academic and administrative divisions
reached their initial conclusions, an operating agreement was drawn
up. The SJSU Provost and an external community member took the lead
on this phase of the plan.
From the beginning, of course, the University Library Dean was involved
in the detailed plans concerning the use of space; the appropriate technology,
lighting and furniture; the coordination of the two staffs, etc. Plans
had to be made to organize the two collections, to facilitate integrated
services, and to enable students and faculty to continue their work
during the transition.
Strategic plans were created at several stages by different groups
and for different purposes. Each included mission statements and goals,
some longer term, some shorter. earlier plans (links). For example,
the 2002-2003 Strategic Plan (link) details the move out of the old
Clark Library and into the new King Library.
SJSU moved into the new library in summer 2003 on time and under budget.
Faculty are currently doing research that will assess the amount and
ease of use by customers, satisfaction with service, etc. They are also
investigating librarian and faculty attitudes, number of books lost,
and other such questions to answer the initial concerns that campus
constituents raised. The results will, of course, be compared with assessments
of the previous library, and improvements will be sought. Statistics
already show that the University patrons' check-out rates are 86.2%
higher in 2003-04 than in 2002-03 and that the total number of visitors
in 2002-03 to both the San José Public Library and the previous
San José State University Library has increased 66.2% in 2003-04.
The point of this extended example is to indicate how SJSU solved the
seemingly impossible dream of attaining a new, large, high quality library
within a shorter time frame than the state could promise. Top councils,
such as the President's Staff, recognized the importance to the campus
of a larger, more technologically focused library and worked creatively
to find a method of funding it. The solution that was chosen was complex,
involving the agreement of many campus and community members, some of
whom were initially reluctant to move forward. Because of careful, unified
planning by all campus constituencies and with outside allies, a beautiful
new facility, which appropriately focuses the campus on scholarship,
is now in place.
That, however, is not the end of the story. Not only do the city and
the university have a new facility, they have a new relationship. The
building was designed to invite the community into the campus, countering
the older look of a walled island university inside the city. The building
was designed to demonstrate our commitment to being a Metropolitan University,
a strong urban resource. It was designed, that is, with a strategic
purpose, as well as a pragmatic one, in mind. It commits the University
to partnering in many ways with the City of San José in the future.
That the building opened on time and under budget despite the added
complication of serving two masters attests not only to the competence
of the talented individuals involved in managing all aspects of the
project but also to the excellence and responsiveness of the SJSU organizational
systems. Appropriate data, human and financial resources, and understanding
of the workflow enabled the campus to complete the building in an exemplary
manner. More than any other project in recent years, this one demonstrates
the capacity of the campus to set priorities, plan, and use the talent
of employees to make something great.
Commitment to Learning and Improvement
(CRF 4.1, 4.4, 4.5 4.6, 4.7, 4.8)
For many, many years SJSU has had quality assurance processes
embedded at all levels. For example, program
planning, which takes place every five years (with some variation
if a program's specialized accreditation has a differing cycle), begins
with the Provost's Office issuing a call for appointment of a department
coordinator to lead the review. After consultation with the University
Program Planning Committee (UPPC) to arrange a timetable and agree on
an outside evaluator, the coordinator engages the department in providing
material needed to write a self study. Following Academic Senate Policy
S93-14 Curricular Priorities
and the spring 1994 Program
Planning Guidelines, departments' future-oriented document must
address such topics as the quality of the instructional program; student
demand; societal need; financial effectiveness, viability and efficiency;
and availability of instructional alternatives. It must include an assessment
plan, and in the latest round of reviews, must address how the department
will reduce its program to 120 semester units (if more are required)
or provide a rationale for any higher number of units required.
Once completed, the self study is sent to the Undergraduate (or Graduate)
Studies Office, to the liaison member of the UPPC, and to the external
reviewer. The external reviewer visits the campus and, after an exit
interview with the Provost, the AVP for Undergraduate (or Graduate)
Studies, the College Dean, Department Chair, UPPC liaison, and the coordinator,
submits a report to the attendees of the exit interview. Responses to
the report are invited by all parties. Once the Provost receives these
responses, the Provost, Dean, and Chair discuss any suggested curricular
actions or other major changes to be made to the program, especially
those that involve fiscal increases or strategic alterations.
The strength of this carefully articulated policy is that every level
of the University is involved in the program plan. The downside is that
because it is a multi-sequenced process, there may be a long time lag
from start to finish. At one time, if the sequence was not completed,
new positions would not be approved, but this is no longer the case.
Much of the data required to write these self studies is supplied through
the Office of Institutional Planning
and Academic Resources (IPAR) and is available on line or by request.
Data from alumni, employers, and other stakeholders are collected by
the department itself. PeopleSoft, an integrated human resource, finance,
and student common management system, will soon enable the departments
to obtain much more University information on their own, but even now,
the IPAR data bases provide an enormous amount of data about students,
courses, and faculty to all very easily. In addition, the department
chairs have met with the PeopleSoft programmers to indicate the information
they would find most immediately useful for recruiting, enrollment planning,
scheduling, accreditation reporting, advancement activities, and budget
management.
Units in the Student Affairs, University Advancement, Intercollegiate
Athletics, and the Administrative & Finance divisions also undergo
periodic review. For example, Advancement is compared annually to all
other CSU campuses in fundraising.
The Administrative & Finance Division used the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award criteria for its 1998 self assessment and made
significant organizational changes to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.
As a result, the Division earned the prestigious California Prospector
award from the Governor's California Awards for Performance Excellence
(CAPE) program. (CAPE, a statewide program, was established in 1992
to recognize both private and public sector companies and organizations
for their commitment to performance excellence, which includes business
approach, deployment, and results.) The Division of Intercollegiate
Athletics recently completed a self-study
and peer review for NCAA recertification in 2003; the results, as of
the spring 2004 meeting, are that SJSU's athletic programs have been
recertified. Each division
also reports annually
(e.g. see item VIII in December minutes) to the Academic Senate. In
addition, the CSU system itself performs audits on our programs. During
2003-2004, for example, the auxiliary organizations, the Disability
Support and Accommodations, the Employee Relations, and the Risk and
Insurance programs were audited.
The existence of policies such as those guiding Program Planning or
Tenure & Promotion, procedures such as those required to add courses
to the curriculum or appoint faculty, and data such as those provided
by IPAR and Admissions & Records, color the culture of SJSU and
enable it to be a learning organization that improves over time. The
result is that when new circumstances arise, as in the case of our installation
of the Common Management System, employees from all divisions of the
campus know the procedures to follow to establish new policies. Policies
and procedures cover all issues that involve the unions, which represent
nearly all employees. The maturity of the University means that most
other areas are also governed by formal policies. The Academic Senate
is systematic in updating its policies as circumstances and technology
dictate. Our capacity to handle new situations and to improve how we
handle current situations is undeniable.
Summary
San José State University has the capacity in infrastructure,
human ability and desire, and systems to produce the information it
needs to plan and to improve the institution and the education of the
students it serves. Even the expected budget cuts for the upcoming years
do not diminish the institution's capacity so seriously that the campus
is left unable to plan or improve. Quite simply, not all improvements
depend on increased resources. For example, the CSU requires the campus
to write an annual update of the Academic Master Plan showing proposed
new degree programs. The campus does not currently use this plan to
its full advantage. Before approving a program, no committee or individual
is asked to consider how the proposed program fits with other programs
the campus offers, what priority the new program will have for the campus
as a whole, or how the enrollment management plan will or should change
as a result of adding the program. In other words, integrated campus
planning, based on information the campus already collects, is possible
but not currently part of the established processes. Making this change
will not occur with the flip of a switch; this is a matter of changing
the campus culture from individualistic decisions by divisions and colleges
to more concerted campus-wide efforts. With reduced resources, when
not all programs can be funded, the campus is ready to focus its planning
efforts wisely--for the good of the University and the students it serves.
SJSU can and does provide satisfying careers for faculty and staff
as well as educated graduates who will make Californians proud. Even
in the cases in which we do not ask for the data we should or use the
data we have to make improvements, we have the capability of doing so,
and we are developing a culture that encourages employees to take initiative
to make the University a better place for all.
Back to Table of Contents Page
WASC Standard 4
The institution conducts sustained, evidence-based, and participatory
discussions about how effectively it is accomplishing its purposes and
achieving its educational objectives. These activities inform both institutional
planning and systematic evaluations of educational effectiveness. The
results of institutional inquiry,research,and data collection are used
to establish priorities at different levels of the institution,and to
revise institutional purposes,structures,and approaches to teaching,
learning, and scholarly work.
WASC Categories Under Standard 4
- Strategic Thinking and Planning
- Commitment to Learning and Improvement
Criteria for Review addressed in Essay 4
Strategic Thinking and Planning
- CFR 4.1 - Institutional Reflection and Planning
- CFR 4.2 - Alignment of Resources, Objectives, Priorities
- CFR 4.3 - Planning Informed by Data
Commitment to Learning and
Improvement
- CFR 4.4 - Assessment of Effectiveness
- CFR 4.5 - Institutional Research
- CFR 4.6 - Commitment to Improvement
- CFR 4.7 - Teaching and Learning Inquiry
- CFR 4.8 - Assessment of Educational Programs
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