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University Design Team Phase II Report and Recommendations
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The University Design Team (UDT) was appointed at the start of
the spring 2003 semester and was asked to examine a set of issues
within the context of preparing a five to ten year "road map" to
accommodate increasing numbers of students. Specifically,
the University Design Team was charged to: Phase I
- Determine the identity and character of the four
different campuses. How does one establish differentiation
among the four campuses? Do they have distinctive missions,
thrusts, and/or topical clusters of programs? Do
they all have the ASU brand?
- Recommend programs that are needed at the campuses
to support or define those identities in charge # 1. Should
existing programs on one of the campuses be moved to reinforce
the identity of another campus? Should new programs be
started that help build the image of a particular campus?
Phase I recommendations are addressed in University Design
Team Phase I Report and Recommendations (May 2003).
Phase II
- Determine how the various university services need
to be provided. Should support services be centrally organized
and managed or should they be decentralized to the campuses? How
much autonomy should each campus have in the various service
areas? Should
the roles of the Graduate College, College of Extended Education,
and the Office of VPR be revised? (Also coordinate with
the other task forces, such as the admissions standards, University
College, etc.)
- How should we manage enrollment within and among
campuses?
University College
The UDT began by reviewing A Design for University College, a
report prepared by another university working group. The
following recommendations are based on that review and subsequent
discussions of the UDT:
Serving Students in Transition
First, the primary purpose of University College should be as
the academic home and/or help/success center for students in transition,
whether they be new undeclared students, highly qualified students
seeking to explore the many disciplines of the university, students
leaving a major and in search of another, students seeking to move
between campuses, etc. Further, as a part of this
focus on students in transition, the College should place particular
emphasis on academic advising and career exploration and guidance. With
an emphasis on these kinds of student academic services, students
who are immediately admissible and/or continuously qualified for
their chosen major should receive such services from their college
or school rather than from University College. That is,
University College should not be structured to provide such services
to all undergraduate students. However, University College
and its services should have a presence on all campuses, although
tailored to meet the special needs of each student body.
While there may be other organizational drivers for the creation
of University College, the UDT believes it should be designed to
influence specific student outcomes including: improved retention
and graduation rates for both first-time freshmen and transfer
students, decreased time to degree for students, and increased
levels of student satisfaction with the academic experience, in
general, and with academic advising, in particular.
Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (BIS) Program
The UDT also recommends that University College not be the home
of the BIS. Rather, the UDT believes that BIS students at
ASU Main would be served best by the creation or designation of
an academic home (e.g., school or department) for the program,
students, and faculty. Similar programs at ASU West (Integrative
Studies) and ASU East (BIS) already reside in academic units. Some
concerns were expressed that the creation of an independent academic
entity would enable the BIS entrance and curricular requirements
to be changed in ways that lock out many of the students it was
designed to serve. As a part of creating this type of unit,
the Design Team believes that mechanisms should be set in place
to ensure this would not occur.
Graduate College
(In this section, the term "Graduate College" will be used
to refer to an organizational entity that serves as a facilitator
of graduate education processes in the university. As used
at other universities, alternative labels include Graduate School
or Graduate Division.)
Background
The UDT collected information about the structure and function
of graduate colleges at several other universities as a basis for
discussing possible changes for ASU. The other universities
included UCLA, University of Oregon, University of Washington,
University of Michigan, Rutgers, and Ohio State. The roles
of these various graduate colleges are similar to those at ASU,
although the extent to which some of the functions are decentralized
to colleges and schools varies considerably among the institutions.
The biggest issues with the current functioning of the Graduate
College concern the delays in processing of applications and the
admissions process more generally. Also, concern was expressed
that the most critical roles of the College (i.e., serving and
advocating for graduate students, quality oversight) had become
secondary to the more peripheral roles of program review and accreditation
oversight. Based on these concerns and the review of other
universities' graduate processes, the UDT recommends the following.
Proposed Functions of the Graduate College
First and foremost, the Graduate College should be an academic
service unit that serves and advocates for prospective and current
graduate students and that offers varying levels of service to
academic departments/units to assist them in recruiting and retaining
the best students. Toward that end, the UDT supports the
new dean's effort to streamline the admissions and financial aid
processes to better serve graduate students and academic departments. With
quality control and customer service as goals, this streamlining
effort should consider:
- Establishing the department/unit as the first
point of contact for graduate applications materials;
- Maximizing the benefits of an electronic application;
- Creating electronic copies of application materials
only for students admitted to the university;
- Defining the quality control role of the Graduate
College at the end of the admissions process;
- Managing financial aid processes to ensure departments
can make timely offers to prospective students;
- Continuing the role of the Graduate College in
managing the evaluation of international and non-degree applicants;
and,
- Examining the appropriate role of the Graduate
College in post-baccalaureate and certificate program admissions.
Also as a part of serving and advocating for graduate students,
the Graduate College should continue to coordinate programmatic
initiatives such as Preparing Future Faculty, Preparing Future
Professionals, and Integrative Graduate Education and Research
Training Program.
Underlying this key role as an academic service unit, the Graduate
College should provide strategic direction for the development
of graduate education. This includes fostering differentiation
and diversity among campuses as well as development of the ASU
brand of graduate education through appropriate new program development
and program review processes. As a part of this role, the
Team recommends that the Graduate College be reestablished as a
single administrative unit with university-wide responsibility,
headed by a dean that reports to the University Provost.
In addition, several of the current functions of Graduate College
ought to be reassigned to a different organization within the university
to better enable its focus as a service enterprise. In particular,
oversight of accreditation processes and undergraduate program
review should be assigned to a university officer within the Office
of the University Provost. Also, the administration
of interdisciplinary graduate programs should be evaluated on a
case-by-case basis and be located in the most appropriate administrative
home. For many interdisciplinary programs, the most appropriate
administrative home may be a college or school because those entities
are better able to adjust resource levels to support interdisciplinary
initiatives than the Graduate College.
Extended Education
The Design Team reviewed and discussed the current organization
and functions of the College of Extended Education. Recognizing
how the current structure and function of Extended Education has
evolved based on several studies of other universities, the UDT
chose not to do a similar review. As such, the focus of
the discussion and recommendations were based on an assessment
of the appropriate roles for extended education within ASU today.
Extending programs and services beyond the boundaries of the four campuses
is essential to implementing "ASU as a force, not just a place".
Given that context, the primary goal of an extended education organization
ought to be identifying new markets and facilitating the process to
serve those markets. The range of products ought to include programs
and courses for credit and/or non-credit, including training programs
for specific populations (e.g., state agency professionals). As an academic
service enterprise, the extended education entity should focus on assisting
academic units to connect with these new markets and vice versa. As
well, extended education might develop programs and courses to serve
markets that are outside the bounds of the academic colleges and schools.
Potentially, extended education could move into offering degree programs,
if colleges and schools choose not to respond to certain market demands.
Organizationally, the UDT believes that extended education, as
an academic service unit, might be headed best by a dean or vice
provost. Whether or not it should be a "college" ought
to be answered dependent on the function's revised portfolio.
As a means to foster cooperative relationships and positive responses
to the market, the UDT recommends that extended education assign
staff liaisons to work with each college or school. Finally,
it is important to establish clear distinctions between the Downtown
Campus and Extended Education as the two entities evolve.
Enrollment Management
Consistent with recommendations in the Phase I report of the Design
Team, admission standards to the university should continue to be the
same at all campuses, with variations in the standards and requirements
among programs and schools. In support of such a policy, there should
be a single administrative office within the university responsible
for undergraduate admissions. One, university-wide, organization responsible
for admissions will require redesign of some aspects of the process
including: a new application that enables indication of student preference/priority
for multiple programs and/or campuses; creation of structures and processes
to guide the distribution of students among programs and campuses; and
recruitment and follow-up processes that market and support all programs
and campuses in the university equally. Finally, given the university-wide
mandate, locating the undergraduate recruitment and admissions functions
off of the Main campus should be considered seriously.
Comment on the Phase II report
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