Long process finished, but not a model for future business
Katherine Aiken, University of Idaho interim provost and executive vice president, said the Idaho State Board of Education’s program prioritization mandate — dubbed Focus for the Future at UI — is completed, but isn’t an example of how the university will conduct future business.
In 2013, SBOE required all Idaho four-year higher education institutions to examine the efficiency of their academic and non-academic programs. Last August, SBOE approved UI’s proposal for eliminating, consolidating, investing in and keeping a close eye on 32 programs.
“In my estimation, this is not a way we will do business on a regular basis,” Aiken said. “This is the way we did business in this process because we were told to do that. It does not set a precedent for where I see us going for any of these issues in the future.”
Aiken spoke to Faculty Senate members Tuesday with an overarching message — the Focus for the Future process is complete.
“It’s a finished process, as far as I can tell,” Aiken said.
She said the academic programs set to be eliminated per the proposal are already removed from UI’s course catalog.
The non-academic programs to be eliminated, such as the Office of Community Partnerships and campus pharmacy, have been closed.
Aiken said adjustments to UI’s academic programs are made continually through the University Curriculum Committee, which will continue to look at programs that were unchanged after being categorized as needing consolidation or investment, or were put on the “watch list.”
“From my standpoint, (any changes to the programs on the watch list) would need to be done through the regular shared governance process,” Aiken said.
During the program prioritization process, Aiken said there was confusion about if changes to academic programs needed to go through the University Curriculum Committee at all.
“Since we’ve never done this before, I wasn’t exactly sure how to do it,” Aiken said.
However, she said after SBOE accepted UI’s proposal, the programs were already eliminated or restructured through Focus for the Future and the committee didn’t need to oversee those changes.
Although Aiken said the program prioritization process is not one she would have chosen to undertake, she thought it was open and transparent.
Kattlyn Wolf, Faculty Senate member from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, asked Aiken about the accessibility of the data collected by UI administrators through the program, specifically for use in creating action plans.
“How do you improve yourself without seeing that data?” Wolf said.
Wolf said the rankings of programs on the Focus for the Future list is important in determining how to proceed with action plans.
“As far as I’m concerned, almost as soon as I gave (SBOE) that list, that list no longer had no relevance,” Aiken said. “No one at the University of the Idaho is exactly the same as a year ago.”
Aiken said she is not sure how useful the data would be for action plans. She said there is a spreadsheet with all of the process’ data and she suggested the spreadsheet be updated with this year’s numbers to see how things have changed since the implementation of the program prioritization process last year.
Katelyn Hilsenbeck can be reached at [email protected]