University Leadership Council (Ulc)

UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP COUNCIL (ULC) Minutes September 24, 2012

Attendance: Nivine Megahed, Christine Quinn, Deb New, Tom Bergmann, Terry Jo Smith, Mike Graham, Bobbi Biringer, Steve Neer, Kathy Walsh, Tracy Costello, Brisbane Rouzan, McCeil Johnson, John Bergholz, Marty Mickey, G. Maxx Shawlee, David SanFilippo, Sarah Brick, Joselyn Zivin, Deveda Francois, Stephen Thompson, Juliet Kasl, Amy LeFager, Gale Stam, Tim Collins, Kimberly Michaelson, Tom Erhardt, Alison Hilsabeck, Kathleen Gorski, Holly Battaglia, Lauren Heidbrink, Lori Markuson, Julie Bechtold, Traci Dennard, Mark Burnette, Tim Skoning.

Agenda/Minutes: The agenda for the meeting was approved. The August minutes were approved by consensus.

Update Reports: President Megahed reported that this year as we are working on our strategic plan, we should be thinking of the key distinctive priorities that help us become a distinctive university. She stated that we have to make sure that our processes, our policies and systems align with each other and that technology supports those.

Dr. Megahed talked of how we are trying to build a culture that is empowering of people; that is about accountability; that is about using data to make decisions and becoming more disciplined about that. We have made great progress, but these are things we are going to hear throughout the year because they are very important to us as we pursue our commitment to our students to create that unparalled experience as we pursue our distinction and our research agenda; as we pursue our commitment to community both internal and external parties; as we pursue our commitment to building technology that integrates and helps us do our work better and serve our students better; as we pursue our programs and make them more competitive and ensure that they are meeting the needs of our students that when they go out there, they are perceived as stronger individuals than any of our other institutions. President Megahed asked employees to embrace our vision and what we are trying to accomplish.

VP of Finance Marty Mickey shared the financial results through August from the operating fund for two months ending August 31 which reflect the effects of the summer term. On the revenue side, we exceeded our budget by about $200,000. We have revenue through August of $10.3 million dollars compared to a budget of 10.1 so we are about $200,000 favorable on that line. On the expense line we were favorable by about $400,000. We came in at $8.2 million dollars as compared to a budget of $8.6 million. As a result, we are starting out in the fall term being up about $600,000 in the net bottom line. In the summer term, we benefitted from our new students being up by about 177 or about 37% and that more than offset the continuing student decline of about 8%. Marty stated that in summer we saw a great strength in NCE for new students. We had a robust partnership class that came in this summer with 180 ALSU students compared to about 72 last year. It shows potential for future in the summer.

In the fall term, we have had some slippage in this past week. We are currently looking at about 1,030 in new students compared to a budget of 1201, which is down about 14%. On the continuing students, we are down by about 132 students or 4% compared to budget. The slippage that we have seen with new students during the fall term is primarily in CAS and CMB. CAS we have new students of 393 compared to a budget of 518. We are down about 24% or 125. And CMB new students of 131 compared to a budget of 200.

With respect to the winter term, the applications are coming in very well. We have had year over year increases in applications each week for the past four weeks. We are setting ourselves up good for the winter term. .

President Megahed stated that from a cultural perspective that we work hard to ensure that across the institution people are all pulling in the same direction in terms of how we serve students. We probably have done about 95% well as we should have; it is the 5% that makes the difference between missing the budget by $200,000 and $1 million. We are talking to advising about how to more efficiently and effectively get to students quicker because we find if students have to wait too long, they walk out and that is not acceptable.

Dr. Megahed also related situations we hear of where a student comes into a class during the drop/add week and the faculty member says it is too late to come into the course because they have missed too much, they are going to fail this course and they better drop the class. We have seen cases such as this in which the student drops all the courses because the faculty does not want to catch them up even though they are in drop/add week. We want to communicate across the institution that is not how we want to serve our students. Not only does it impact revenue, but it just is not the way we want to serve students. We want to continue to communicate to everyone the value and importance of treating students well and doing the right thing by them.

Provost Christine Quinn shared that the Board of Trustees at their last meeting reviewed the on-line quality policy which exemplifies our commitment to quality, as well as, our commitment to use technology in different types of ways to promoted student learning and the work-load policy draft, which was created by the task force last year. It is a great stepping stone for us and we will be piloting that policy this year because we know there needs to be some infrastructure behind that so it is ready for full implementation next fall.

Dr. Quinn reported that we had one additional distinguished professor of practice approved and that was Dr. Jim Schott who is part of our Florida team. He is a distinguished professor of practice in Educational Leadership and Community Outreach.

This is a new area of distinction for us for individuals that come to us with a strong track record and bring that network of relationships as well as an opportunity for us to work with the relationships and the distinction that goes along with that. I announced Carlos Azcoitia last month and now we have two distinguished professors of practice. The distinguished professor of practice is a position that is non-tenured track and they are on one year renewable contracts.

We had a great HLC visit. Some of the strengths from AQIP were:

 Impressed by the strong leadership and the ability of leadership to make hard decisions  Making great progress in terms of our vision for assessment, processes and improvement. Our vision is how we might leverage our learning to management system to actually parallel with learning outcomes and how we will collect evidence to achieve those learning outcomes  Commended us on culture of transparency as well as using data to make decisions.  Commended us on being an institution of caring employees.

Some opportunities from AQIP were:

 Continue to implement assessment vision  Continue to use data to be informed in terms of what our students want and how do we create distinction using that data  Continue to improve and document processes  Continue to support faculty development, to support quality and engaged teaching and scholarship  Encouraged us to use the AQIP language more consistently  Encouraged us to celebrate our success

Tim Collins initiated reflection from the ULC regarding meeting with the HLC and felt that it was powerful because he was able to reflect on the ULC’s accomplishments. Some other thoughts were:

 We were able to share good things, but also were able to share things that needed improvement. It was nice to see how over time so many things have improved, how communication and the connecting of departments are starting to improve.  When we have a real project to work on, ULC works very well. We have to look at how we spend our time effectively. Also, how other groups at the University might be able to use this council on particular projects where they need interdisciplinary feedback.  ULC is only meeting where we can consistently hear all voices from across the institution. There was a tremendous energy that came from the AQIP visit where a shift could be felt within the University.  It makes a huge difference when you are doing work and you can see all the different outcomes from that work. The project made a huge difference and could not have happened except for this group doing it.  The visit was during the first week of school at all the campuses and despite all the dynamics that go with the first week of school, we made sure that we were effectively responsive at the meeting.  This body was a real meeting of cultures. From the beginning (three years), I have seen different cultures come together and begin to appreciate each other in different ways. ULC is helping us avoid past patterns that were not necessarily serving us well is something referred to as ‘ping-pong’. In this negative cycle, things tended to bounce back and forth. This group was able to get beyond that type of behavior and I felt that this was a big break-through in terms of new work ways.  ULC was a model for working with together. All of the work groups that worked on the policies all had a shared governance model and they were specifically set up so they would work by consensus, which is how we work. Everyone had a place at the table and a specific role.  ULC is the precursor to us moving toward a shared governance and a broader context.

Following discussion, Nivine stated that this year, the best way to use ULC in a productive manner is using the diverse perspectives across the University that are present to help provide guidance to some of our key issues. ULC will provide input as to how various issues impact the University and the University can be involved in the shared success of that initiative.

Nivine stated the best way to leverage ULC was to have ULC provide input to strategic priorities for the institution. Terry Jo talked about a facilitation approach on how to make sure that input is meaningful. Nivine agrees on incorporating that design in and working with so we work to develop people to help us facilitate some of the discussions.

Outreach Discussion: Tom Ehrhardt presented some slides outline the University’s outreach efforts. He stated there is an official team of 10 people dedicated to outreach, but an unofficial team of several hundred, which is the institution. He stated that we define outreach as building awareness and on reputation for NLU within our communities and industries and also generating leads that turn into students.

One goals this year in outreach include a focus on military, community colleges and high schools and a multi-cultural and corporate entities. We want to leverage our partnerships and the benefit we can get out of those partnerships. We have more dedicated marketing and communication support around outreach this year. We are also working with the inside enrollment team to make sure we are working with the different types of leads we bring in to make sure the leads are optimized, ultimately converting those leads as well as we can.

Tom then asked for ULC’s input on how we can partner the collective inside connections and thoughts of the institution. First, he asked how we can create a culture or mindset on how to contribute ideas for outreach.

Some of the thoughts that were advanced included the following:  Each one, reach one.  Wear a t-shirt, talk to a colleague, talk to a friend, etc. to get the name out.  National Louis reusable bags to generate questions.  Each department knows what programs are offered at NLU by giving out programs sheets.  An ‘App’ for phones (content is the key).  Faculty should promote their specialty and the programs they teach in and degrees that are offered.  We should consider linking faculty profiles to the various programs they teach.  Putting students first.  Focus on alumni and talk about how faculty members impacted their lives, long standing relationships alumni have with faculty.  Put more emphasis on adult learners.  Social media (LinkedIn, etc.)  Empowering people and connecting what we do with their needs.  Faculty and recruiters going out to fairs, events, colleges, etc.  Creating the elevator speech.  We need to be more global.

Next, the committee looked at the question of what specifics might help shape how certain functional departments might be able to assist in outreach?

Some of the thoughts that came out of that discussion were the following:  Centralized contacts or partnerships  Document who we have connections with. Are particular programs more marketable to corporate community and if so, then what departments need to be involved?  Who develops leads?  Build competency at the enterprise level  Identify what partnerships best serve our needs to align with our audience and get the awareness level out.  Help adjuncts understand outreach.  Everyone is an ambassador for the University.  Link Alumni Association with mentor opportunities, panel discussions, etc.  Think about ways to share with each other what our programs are. Think about ways to integrate outreach into classes.  Education and communication and creating awareness for outreach.

The Meeting adjourned at 11:57 a.m.

Next meeting: October 23, 2012 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Chicago Campus–Board Room).

Respectfully submitted, Juliet Kasl