Trends Working Group

Meetings to date: Sept. 24

Next meeting: October 29 at 9:00 in Enderis 597 (tentative)

Meeting of September 24, 2003

Members present: Hasbrook, Kritek, Petro, Rodriguez, Torres

Notes on Discussion

• We will eventually produce a "narrative plus."
• Each group member reviewed part of the materials in the Source Documents under Core Component 2a.
• Does what's provided support 2ai?
• What does capacity mean? E.g., human resources, financial, physical plan, faculty, enrollment, etc.
• What do we take as evidence that they reflect a sound understanding of the organization's capacity?
• How are planning documents integrated?
• How do we pay attention to demographic shifts?
• Find and use the Milwaukee Commitment documents.
• 2aiii lists no documents. Consider Cultures and Community, faculty, staff and student diversity, pre-college efforts, paying attention to retention, etc. Track down in School/College planning documents.
• Cynthia Hasbrook prepared a written analysis of the two sections she reviewed. The rest of us agreed to follow her lead with our sections.
• 2avii references Chapter 36. Also need to look at UWM policies and procedures. We agreed that leadership can work in the shared governance structure.
  

Meeting of October 29, 2003

Members present: Hasbrook, Holme, Kritek, Petro, Rodriguez, Torres

Academics misread lowering of state support. It's now to the point where we are "state-assisted." This affects planning because, unless we acknowledge that it won't turn around, we'll be operating with unrealistic optimism. There is a need to educate faculty about this. Health benefits are also eroding. We need to plan for how we'll fight to get additional state support and how alternate sources of funding can be secured.

We are doing some things to address lowering of state support. An example is Nursing getting partnership support from Aurora.

We have to do a better job of paying attention to our competition.

To counter society's push toward insularity and isolation we need to recruit and retain international scholars and students.

Note that item 2aiv on the resource list is "empty." That seems to indicate that we do not have a very effective environmental scanning capacity at the campus level. UWSystem does some of this, e.g., in noting job opportunities in various sectors and by requiring an analysis when a unit plans for a new degree or program. But environmental scanning is not required in graduate or undergraduate reviews. Campus level environmental data that should be collected includes technology, student data, salaries, competition, budget, etc. We may need to go to the departmental level to get the data.

How do we set up structures to attend to these issues? Maybe there ought to be a committee to get this information and provide it broadly on campus. We can't leave scanning up to a single charismatic leader. One possible approach is a periodic campus forum to share information in a proactive way. Establish a "think tank" to monitor curricular changes nationally. Connections with national and state politicians would help in this regard.

Our media group is behind other campuses. For example, we ought to be producing videos that can be sent to TV stations.

How do other campuses plan?

National organizations (e.g., NASULGC) does planning; how do we use it.