Category: Quality

Design, Evaluation, Quality

Designing for a Smaller Future

Missy Alexander

The news about projected high school graduates in New England is not encouraging. Here in Connecticut the projected drop in high school graduates over the next ten years is 12%. We are all still reeling from the COVID drop and the impact of the last ten years of declines in high school graduates (@ 9%). In a nation obsessed with continuous growth, we are now in a conundrum. How do we balance our budgets in the face of continuous declines? Even if those projections turn out to be overly pessimistic, it seems it is time to design for less.

We often start this conversation as “how do we do more with less?” This is not a good idea. We can’t do more than we’re doing. In fact, we are already doing too much. In the lovely period where student populations kept growing, we allowed ourselves to add programs, courses, departments, and schools as ideas arose. This was exhilarating, to be sure. The freedom to just keep adding bolstered inventiveness and creativity (both wonderful things), with little concern for a future with fewer students. But trying to sustain all that we have created is not a path to sustainability. Nor is it a path to excellence. It simply strains resources so that nothing is properly supported. No, we should not try to do more with less. We should try to imagine our way to something that is smaller but still infused with inventiveness and creativity.

As soon as I suggest that we need to be smaller, our natural response is: “what will we stop doing?” This is both a reasonable question and a necessary reality. We have to stop doing some things because the spread of what most universities are doing is unsustainable without continuous growth. All institutions know which academic programs are thriving and which are not. They also know which co-curricular programs are thriving and which are not. All of this is pretty easy to see. This knowledge can point us in a direction for getting smaller, but it doesn’t tell us where we want to go. I think we need to start with a different question. Instead of asking about what we should cut, it might be more productive to consider what we want to achieve.

It is at this point, that I always think about missions. This is ours:

Western Connecticut State University changes lives by providing all students with a high quality education that fosters their growth as individuals, scholars, professionals, and leaders in a global society.

This statement is similar to those at peer institutions in the region and as such it does reflect some about how we see ourselves. But to make it truly useful we need to be a bit more specific. Here are some ways we might do so.

Let’s start with our desire to provide a high quality education. What are the essential elements of a high quality education? Universities were not always this sprawling and they did not always have so many choices of programs, courses, and majors. Since there were obviously some high quality experiences a century ago, it is clear we can achieve quality education with fewer options. But we need to figure out what the essential elements should be. This should be clearly defined in the general education curriculum, and in the balance of programs offered. How can we define that essentialness and then design from there? Can we do it without just defaulting to our favorite lists, but instead map it to our learning goals for our students? Can we consider some evidence-based practices? Can we approach this process as designing for quality, instead of cutting for financial reasons?

The same can be said of the structure of our majors. I’ll show my age when I note that the entirety of a liberal arts major used to be around 30 credits. This slim approach to the major seems to have disappeared over the last 30 years, as we all added more specificity to our programs, trying to reflect the breadth of ideas and respond to new skills or other developments. Well, I have no hope of a 30 credit liberal arts major, but I think it might be time to rein things in. We all have program learning outcomes: how might we achieve those outcomes with fewer requirements? Can we redesign courses to that end? Will this allow us to produce schedules that deliver the promise of a well-rounded major, without overwhelming our students? Can we approach this as designing for learning, instead of reducing choices for efficiency?

As for our co-curricular programs, might we consider how they help students grow as individuals, professionals and leaders in a global society? Our habit is to let our co-curricular programs emerge with our students’ interests each year. Some of this is to the good, but attendance and participation levels tell us that we could be doing better. Is it possible to have fewer programs, but get them focused on specific university goals? Could this foster greater coordination and collaboration between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs? Can we see this as supporting our mission to change lives, instead of over-direction?

The questions I am asking are not specific to WCSU. Every regional comprehensive in New England is facing this demographic shift. Every regional comprehensive will need to figure this out in a way that leads to a sustainable future focused on great education. As we all adjust to the projected demographics and the process of designing ourselves for a smaller future, we might be well-served by focusing on the idea of design. Instead of focusing on what we currently offer and how it should be reduced, we should focus on what we want to achieve and design to that end. This will give us the map to how to be excellent, even as we get smaller.

It will also make clear what we don’t need to do anymore. That will be a result, to be sure, and one that is uncomfortable. But starting with the goals in mind could create excitement about what we are building. It might inspire our imaginations, leading us to something altogether new and interesting. Most of all, it might help us see the power of what we are building instead of just feeling the losses of what we are cutting. This might just be a productive strategy for imaging a smaller, more sustainable future.

Evaluation, Quality

Assessment is fun?

Missy Alexander

In 2006, when I was an assistant professor on the tenure track, I wrote an essay that was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Those were the early(ish) days of the assessment movement in higher education and I was feeling the pain. The essay was really meant as an homage to the faculty in my doctoral program who had taught me to love playing with ideas. The loss I was feeling was what I described in that essay as the loss of the chance to wander. Specifying my learning outcomes seemed to rein in that wandering to the detriment of a good Socratic learning experience.

Well, as luck would have it, I wrote that little essay at the same time that the Spellings Report was released. My essay was attached to the back of a special section devoted to the work of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education and the Chronicle gave my essay the title, “Taking All the Fun Out of Education.” I received a lot of feedback, mostly from other faculty feeling frustrated with the too many rules that assessment seemed to be creating. I also heard from my boss and found myself in charge of assessment in my discipline and then my school shortly thereafter. That’s what complaining will get you.

Since that time, I have moved into administrative roles and the largest part of my job is assessment. When I served as the Dean of Arts & Sciences I was responsible for making sure that every program had an assessment plan and that the plan was followed. As Provost, I’ve expanded my focus from the assessment of programs to the assessment of general education, the development and assessment of university outcomes, and the appropriate measures of our academic success programs. I read numerous program review reports every year, serve on visiting teams for university accreditation, and coordinate the writing of our institutional self-study. It is assessment all day every day.

Today I embrace assessment in ways that I did not in 2006. There is value in setting goals at the course level, in the major, for the whole degree, or for a specific program, if those goals are not overly complicated. When faculty and program administrators take the time to define those goals, they invite us to consider the best strategies for achieving them. The goals are an invitation to start conversations about teaching strategies and the outcomes we value most as a university. They are an invitation to share ideas with our colleagues and to engage the robust literature about innovative and inclusive pedagogies. They are also a clear path to articulating our value to students, families, and the larger publics we serve.

I see the value and even the positive impact that assessment can have when our goals are not overly prescriptive. We do need to make room for some wandering, some inspiration, and some innovation. If we set very narrowly defined goals, we will stop all of that good stuff from happening. Still, there are some things that students must know. Chemists should know enough to keep laboratory work safe and productive. Nurses must know how treatments interact to protect the health of the patient. Musicians need to understand the scales that underpin the compositions they are creating. Historians need to understand the process of vetting information as they place it in a context for describing connections between events. Yes, there are some basics that might well be measured in traditional exams with right and wrong answers. This stuff is important.

But there are lots of places where our goals are broader and perhaps even more important. These goals are about the perspectives each discipline can offer, forms of reasoning to be cultivated, cultural awareness to be explored, the ability to communicate effectively, and the ability to weave new information and experiences into a defensible worldview. These goals need to be assessed, because they are the heart of an undergraduate degree. They help us describe the value we add to the lives of our students in terms that we recognize as important and meaningful. Assessment for the broader goals is more nuanced than an exam, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The key is focusing on a few important examples, not on everything.

But you know all of this already. The point I am trying to make is that using our assessments to refine our strategies can actually be rewarding. Seeing the impact of a change in curriculum or pedagogy or other interventions can be thrilling, especially when the results are improved outcomes. Letting that strategy go when it isn’t yielding results is also rewarding. It settles a question and helps us move on. The critical thing is not just the doing of assessment, it is using our results.

I’m not grumbling about assessment anymore (although I still want to protect time to wander through ideas). We shouldn’t overdo it, because then it will overwhelm us, and it will lose its value. But we must be sure to fully reflect on the results. We need to carve out time for the conversations that should ensue in departments, on committees, and with the full university after each assessment occurs. It is in those conversations that we will find paths to improvement. It is in those conversations that we will continue to develop our visions for great learning experiences. It is in those conversations that we might have some fun.

Evaluation, Quality

The Follow Through

Missy Alexander

Here is a question that I am frequently asked: Why would you want to be in administration? It started with my first truly administrative role, assistant dean, and it persists even now that I have served as provost for nearly six years. As a person whose career began as an adjunct faculty member, then tenure-track to tenured faculty line, it is not lost on me that there are losses when one leaves the classroom. That dreams that led me to higher education were built around love of my discipline and the desire to help students see its value. Teaching is hard work, often frustrating, often rewarding, but it carries with it a clarity of purpose–teach the students in front of you. Living that purpose is exhilarating.

So, why move to administration? Well, for me it was about an ever-widening circle of concerns about how students were experiencing their education. One of my earliest questions was about whether or not students were getting the most out of the totality of their degrees, instead of just focusing on the major. I worried about the connections students were not making between those required humanities or social sciences or science courses and their major. Once I opened that can of worms, my attention moved away from my discipline and toward education as a holistic. Thus, an administrator was born.

What does that holistic perspective mean now that I am a provost? It means I continuously examine data about who we serve, who is thriving, who is not, what students are learning, where our programs are strong and where they need support, what new ideas about teaching are emerging and how to engage faculty with those ideas, and of course, since WCSU is in New England, what to do about enrollment. There’s more. There are questions about equity for everyone (students, faculty, staff). There are questions about processes and organizational structures, and whether they are doing what we want them to do. There are questions about the balance of scholarship, teaching, service, for faculty and appropriate support for professional development for everyone. There is no shortage of things to think about when you are trying to imagine an effective and rewarding whole.

Unsurprisingly, I do a lot of reading about higher education developments and trends. Indeed, this Sunday, as I settled in to review the news and enjoy my morning coffee, I found my attention drawn to a publication from the Chronicle of Higher Education, called The Truth about Student Success. I know, why ruin a perfectly nice Sunday? But I am worried about outcomes and so I downloaded the document and read it through. When I was done, all I could think was, but we’ve done all that already!

Except we haven’t quite. Despite my best efforts to foster an environment where ideas are welcome, strategies for improvement are implemented, and then results are examined, I think I am falling short on the part where we learn from it all. It reminds me of my early days in administration when I realized that higher education is very good at starting (adding) things, but terrible at finishing (subtracting) things. Even worse, we are often missing the part where we examine results and act on them, you know, closing the loop.

Over the last twenty years, higher education as a whole has developed some reasonable habits around the use of assessment to improve curriculum. Everyone has learning outcomes now and assessment plans to trigger reviews of the results. Some plans are better than others, and some programs are more committed to the meaning of those outcomes than others, but overall, folks are trying to learn from their efforts at assessment. At WCSU, I can see the impact of this work on curriculum and to some degree on teaching strategies. This has room to grow, and the sharing of this information is spotty, but it is going on.

We are (I am) less successful at systematic use of the data about the rest of what we do. For example, has the implementation of Degree Works improved academic advising? Has asking about advising practices in annual reports resulted in any changes in strategies at the department level? Are the pre-major pathways (meta-majors) reducing the time to graduation and the accumulation of excess credits? When faculty have participated in teaching institutes, has it changed their teaching strategies? Has it improved outcomes? Has the transition to embedded remediation reduced the number of students stuck in foundational courses? When we see that some courses have very high withdrawal or failure rates, are we acting on that information? There is so much more, but this is the main idea.

As fast as I run, I can’t seem to stay on top of all of this. I have not even managed to implement a good data dashboard to try to keep people in the loop on these things. I hope to complete one this semester, but in the meantime, things are filtering through Deans to Department Chairs to Faculty (maybe), listed in my weekly announcements (sometimes), announced at our University Senate meetings (when time allows), and listed in annual reports (usually). I have to do better.

Without consistent examination of information by the whole community, all of those good things we are doing will just be in pockets (silos). Departments (academic and otherwise) will continue to try new things, but we’ll never see the full impact. We risk not learning from each other and duplicating efforts that would be better if coordinated across areas. We risk abandoning strategies too soon or simply forgetting they are underway. We risk under-investing in things that show signs of working. Most of all, we squander the value of a shared effort to be better, and that is a fundamental waste of talent and resources.

So, as I finished my coffee and that darned report on The Truth about Student Success, I realize that there is no more pressing initiative than establishing good processes for gathering, analyzing, and distributing the information we already have. There is nothing new to do but that. We’re doing all of the other things that everyone else is doing. If we get this part right, we might be able to re-double our efforts on things that are working and stop doing the things that are not. That’s the follow through, folks. We need to learn from what we do.

Examining our processes and making sure that a data dashboard gets done this semester is one more thing on my endless list of duties, of course, and I wonder how I’ll get it done. But I have to because there are no magic bullets to discover; there are only evaluations of what we have already done and plans for next steps. The data dashboard is on me, but I hope that the result is for everyone. I’m hoping with better follow through many more members of our community will work together to improve the whole of the university experience.

Higher Education, Quality

Time for Reflection and Celebration

Missy Alexander

It is the end of April and my calendar is filled with opportunities to celebrate. There are award ceremonies, commencement ceremonies (yes, plural for COVID reasons), student research presentations (for us that is Western Research Day) and even our system awards for teaching and research. Despite the restrictions we have had to navigate this year, there is a lot to be proud of. We have managed to create lots of wonderful opportunities to learn and thrive, as is our purpose.

As I begin to make the rounds, attending as many events as I can, I am reminded just how wonderful higher education can be. For example, last week I interviewed three students who will serve as our commencement speakers this year. Several years ago, WCSU decided to make our students to focus of our commencement ceremonies, instead of trying to bring in a celebrity speaker. As a public university that is proud of the many paths our students take to complete their degrees, we want the spotlight to shine on their accomplishments. Their stories never fail to inspire.

This year, we have three ceremonies to allow for appropriate safety protocols, so we have three speakers. Former police officer, now entrepreneur with a social justice focus, Isaac Jean-Pierre will represent the students of the Ancell School of Business. The Macricostas School of Arts & Sciences will be represented by Bakhtawar Izzat, a first generation college graduate who truly embraced every opportunity that our university offers and plans to make a life of helping other first generation students do the same. Music Education major, Serena Valentin, will speak at our combined ceremony for the School of Visual and Performing Arts and the School of Professional Studies. As a future teacher, Serena has a deep appreciation for the personal experiences of her faculty and how they have shaped her development as a future teacher.

Not only are the commencement speakers impressive, but so are the graduates. Thanks to the efforts of media services and the social media working group, we have a beautiful display of our graduates on our home page.

Under the leadership of Dr. Michelle Monette, WCSU will host its first virtual Western Research Day. Usually this is an in person affair and it is so much fun to talk to the many students presenting the results of their hard work in laboratories and libraries over the last year. This time it will be a three day online event, so that we have time to look through and interact with our students and select this year’s award winners. This is such an important opportunity for our students, but also our faculty. This is the time when get to see all of our efforts come together. I am always inspired.

This is also the time for our spring productions. The students and faculty in the arts really had to reimagine how to operate in a COVID-19 world. They rose to the challenge with the kind of creativity we’ve come to expect from them. So, check out the theatre productions this week https://www.wcsu.edu/news/2021/04/15/wcsu-theatre-arts-announces-spring-virtual-production-series/, and the virtual exhibition of the work of our MFA graduates https://www.wcsu.edu/news/2021/04/05/wcsu-master-of-fine-arts-students-present-virtual-exhibition-3/.

There will be lots of other smaller ceremonies to induct students into honor societies, and I will do my best to provide the appropriate congratulatory remarks. I don’t really matter – the work was done by our students and faculty – but I am so grateful to be part of all of the results. This year, more than ever, we need that opportunity to reflect on the work we have done together.

We must extend congratulations to two of WCSU’s faculty members, who have been honored with awards from the Connecticut Board of Regents.

Dr. Maya Aloni, associate professor of psychology, has won the system-wide award for Teaching. Maya has been a strong contributor to our First Year program and served as an important resource as our university transitioned to online instruction last year. She is a truly student-focused professor, who continuously strives to create great learning experiences.

Dr. Josh Cordeira, associate professor of biology, won the campus award for research. His research focuses on factors that are linked to obesity and to its reduction in mice. Josh shared the results of recent research on potential links between exercise and a reduced desire for fatty foods at the fall 2020 Scholars in Action Program. He regularly engages our students in his ongoing research projects, while continuously revising topics in Anatomy and Physiology to engage his students in this important line of inquiry.

And dare I mention it, but we have had an excellent year moving forward initiatives in our strategic plan. Two weeks ago, I took a few moments to gather some updates on strategic planning activities and was delighted to discover so much progress. The director of our Education Access Programs, Rob Pote, launched our re-imagined Bridge Program (EAP) last fall and the results are very positive. The hard work of Julie Hunter, First-Year Librarian, and Lauren Arvisais, Tutoring Resource Center Coordinator (with groundwork done by many others) has resulted in a new Peer-Mentor Program that will start in the fall. New career courses are on the schedule, thanks to the work of the director of the Career Success Center, Kathleen Lindenmayer, assistant professor of management, Alexandra Galli-Debicella, and assistant professor of Writing, Michael Lewis. All of these are great initiatives for recruiting and supporting our students.

There was so much more that I’ll have to wait until the strategic plan updates to get to the rest, but as I review the work, I am incredibly proud of all that my colleagues have managed to accomplish this year. But that is what the end of the year is all about, noticing the work we’ve done.

So, let’s not forget to reflect on our efforts and celebrate our accomplishments. This year is more impressive than ever because we’ve risen above so many challenges. Yet all along the way, people met those challenges and pushed ahead for the real goal–creating great educational experiences.

I am humbled, as always. Thanks everyone.

Accountability, Quality, Return on Investment

Outcomes Based Funding Metrics

Missy Alexander

This morning I read with interest a report from The Education Trust, entitled Re-Imagining Outcomes Based Funding. I was following up on Emma Whitford’s piece in Inside Higher Ed that focused on outcomes based funding (OBF) as a tool for supporting equity. I must admit, I shuddered as I considered the hundred ways outcomes funding goes wrong, but Whitford and the report helped me to think about things in new ways. Chief among those ways was that this approach actually supports a focus on who campuses admit, not just retention and graduation rates, and suggests that funding should take that into account. It seems we are getting somewhere on raising awareness about the bluntness of those measures. Hooray.

As I read through the metrics suggested, I saw some thoughtful connections between the students enrolled and the ways that our legislators might think about funding. Instead of just looking at retention and graduation rates, this approach prioritizes investing in campuses that serve more diverse student bodies. It also brings in an important new variable for OBF–campus climate.

Campus climate is often an invisible component in the retention and graduation rates of a university. We spend a lot of time looking at ways to support under-prepared students and we seek out opportunities for scholarships for our under-funded students and these are really important things to do. But, for first generation students and students of color these efforts are not sufficient. They must feel welcome.

So how do we do that? Well, campus climate surveys are one way. Interestingly enough, they are not inexpensive to administer, and they are even more expensive to use. It isn’t enough to gather the data; we need qualified personnel to analyze that same data and help the campus community find opportunities to improve. The funding for this work has to be new dollars. If it isn’t, it will get cut from the budget as soon as we have to prioritize our efforts. We will always focus on direct student support over the broader climate every time. So, I’m glad this idea was raised in the report, but there are important financial implications to consider.

Then there was another piece in the report that gave me pause. In the section called “Ten Steps for Design” (of outcomes based funding models), the following was step five:

“Discourage institutions from reducing access to high-quality degrees or credentials for students from low income backgrounds and students of color.”

This statement is a response to the negative consequences OBF as it has been implemented in the past. In short, the easiest way to improve retention and graduation rates is to change your admissions standards. Better prepared students do better than those on the margins. Better funded students do better than those who struggle to pay for their education. First-generation college students manage more uncertainty than their second or third generation peers and may be retained at somewhat lower levels. All of these students are likely to take longer than four years to graduate. Yes, the older model incentivized a less-inclusive campus. The new suggested strategies are a marked improvement.

At WCSU about 35% of our student body are the first in their families to go to college. We are a relatively affordable school and find that this is attractive to lots of Pell-Eligible students. We are also an increasingly diverse community, something we view as entirely positive, but our history is less so and we are still learning about our invisible barriers and biases, as we seek to be an inclusive campus. Most of what we do fits well into this Re-imagined OBE Funding Framework with its focus on equity. In theory, we should benefit from greater support for our campus based on this model.

But I must admit I do worry about additional unintended consequences if timelines for effectiveness are not robust enough and if there is not continuous dialog with our state representatives about how they read our metrics. For example:

  1. Even when recruiting and admission standards are comparable, a majority residential campus will do better on retention and graduation measures than a majority commuter campus. It is simply easier to help a student who is struggling when they have a regular presence in the campus community.
  2. Sufficient funding to create comparable experiences for our needier students is also an important consideration. Opportunities for internships, research experiences, or study abroad may require a cash infusion or higher need students will skip them for more work hours. They simply need the funds. Unfortunately, these are the same high impact educational experiences that inspire degree completion, applications to graduate schools, and broaden career opportunities. Without that funding stream, schools who serve the less wealthy are likely to have outcomes measures that look weaker than their better funded peers.
  3. Finally, timelines for evaluation are critical. Improvement of anything cannot really be seen in under six years in higher education. While degrees are imagined in four year increments, the students who need more support tend to take five to six years. The effectiveness of an intervention on retention could show up quickly, but its sustained impact will take time. All other interventions will be better seen over the course of a degree. But six years is also a minimum, because you will only be measuring a first cohort at that mark. Sustained improvement is better captured in 8-10 year cycles.

These nuances are hard to convey when elections are in 2- and 4-year cycles. No matter how invested elected officials are in education, there is opportunity for too narrow a view. So, I remain skeptical about the ability to create an outcomes based funding model that can truly support great education that is equitable. But I am very excited to see equity put at the center of the question. That is a great leap forward.