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Notes from OA Co-chairs presentation to Board of Trustees Finance Subcommittee Committee (April 10, 2014)

Howard provided an overview of OA Task Force work and noted two themes that have arisen:  transparency and interdisciplinary. He then introduced Amit to present the slide.

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1.  Curricular flexibility (hand in hand with finance)
2. Empower those who have responsibility to have authority to make decisions
3. Respect/faith Trust across the community

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Discussion `Finance Committee Discussion and clarification:

• Decisions should be at the college and department levels
• Question:  Can you quantify risk?
• From business perspective, sounds like a license  to have cost explosion
• All boils down to communication.  There is more government compliance required these days and that results in some level of bureaucracy.  Need to better communicate why we have to do it.
• Re Fixing silos:  Communication is key, but it is hard to develop collaborative work across colleges.
• We are poor at reallocating to match resources.  If a student changes starts in one college and changes to another, not credited to the new college.  Resource re-allocation does not follow.
• University of Michigan is more flexible.
• What are next steps?  Fact finding to benchmark, will look at University  of Manitoba, Georgia, etc.
• Conflict between number one and local decisions.
• Takes significant risks to achieve that.
• Curricular flexibility:  faculty positions that extend across colleges, tenure decisions, authority gets diluted?
• College structures undermine these opportunities.

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• Faculty don’t like to take risks to jeopardize tenure.
• Interdisciplinary research and collaboration are important part of culture we need to build.
• We have inherent conservative nature and operating on the margin prohibits innovation.
• Create a fund—potentially have department return discretionary funds to get it started.
• Should interdisciplinary college be formed to create more collaboration ?  Is that creating more silos,  or maybe have a resident in a department with interdisciplinary role.
• How do we change the nature of the deans territorial realm?
• Want you to think more about structure and reporting lines.
• Are barriers for compliance for us higher than others?

OA Meeting Minutes

• Enid:disparity between what was being reported and how it was being received. Discussion on risk was interesting. This was interpreted very differently.
• General vibe from the board was that mission statement needed to be bold. Want to push for more vision. Don’t need to do everything the same but better. The Plan needs to be transformational.
• Discussion of BOT reactions to the report.
• Budget structure and Budget distribution that restricts interdisciplinary interactions and rewards disciplinary and silo.
• Taking risks that aren’t compliance/government related but on how we make decisions and how we do business.
• Finding ways to come out of the silos and create these curricula and programs. 
• Gary: Pockets where we are doing these things now. And where we have tried and failed.
• Process of iteration rather than a checklist/product based mentality.
• How can we respond to the ‘cost explosion’ issue? Find business practices that respond to this issue.
• Concern—who is going to manage the budget.
• More flexibility within the budget process. Not fully decentralized, but where people can identify themselves and their priorities within the process.
• Focus means what areas can we be internationally renowned.
• Opportunities in places such as Center for Multidisciplinary Studies—self-designed curricula
• Matt: in 10-15 years what is the advantage to coming here? 
• What is the value proposition? This is our guiding principle and what would it look like? 
• Budget allocation process that doesn’t reward college for a university achievement. Only entry is calculated. Not point of exit.

• Inflexible Curriculum may end up diminishing our value proposition. That students can come here and and have all of these disciplines available to them.
• Questions of community. Extending the discussion to Rochester. The strengths of the area.
• Students used to like having the major at the get go.
• Milagros: Budget zero-corporate approach which is an incremental approach
• WHAT IS OUR VALUE PROPOSITION? We have a greater than 95% placement rate. We are confident in this rate. Not all colleges can say this. We have 87% response rate.
• Placement. You will get a job.
• You will become fluent in high end technological practices. You will gain hands on experience in the classroom and in industry. You will be able to 
• We don’t just want competencies. We need more on the types of people we create. The citizens we create. Critical thinking. Ethics.
• Value proposition for the lifecycle of the student from choosing the place to succeeding to looking back favorably.
• Examine individual cost centers. Each of these areas may have multiple possible solutions. 
• Proposing transformational change in two months is a problem. The speed of the process is very worrying. Worst time of the year for the faculty.
• Shared governance is unhappy with Academic Senate.
• Self governance is an issue. Both Staff and Faculty are feeling left out of the process.
• Sophia: shared governance. faculty don’t bother any more. Know they are discussing changes to tenure policy. But still say they are too busy to be involved.
• Faculty meet once a month in their colleges. Senators need to communicate better. Needs to work within existing structure that faculty already deal with.

• Senate has to set the expectations of the Senators.

Meeting Five

Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2014

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