Leadership and committment

This past week the 17 members of the Dakota State Planning Council spent an entire day at a lodge near Howard, SD planning and thinking seriously about directions for DSU. We discussed our own leadership interactions and the needs for additional leadership education on the campus. This discussion also lead us to a point of determining 4 priority areas for the next year that will address our accreditation process (AQIP) and also our strategic plan. I will post more to my blog later about the four priority areas.

We also made a committment to more specifically define the continuous improvement process we want to incorporate into our decision making for the university. A recent review of our many activities on campus indicated that we needed to be clearer about the processes we use to define our priorities, set goals and accomplish tasks. Once we have outlined this process we will begin to apply it to the newly established priority areas for the year.

In addition, we had a chance to discuss our current budget situation and think about how this will be presented to the campus at our opening session for all faculty and staff on Aug. 24th.

Another part of our "retreat" was the examination of data from the National Survey of Student Engagement that DSU participates in every two years or so. Our data does give DSU some areas to be very proud of and some areas that we need to address. I have to point out that on the measures of student engagement DSU achieves a positive ranking relative to the other 5 regental institutions in SD on more areas than any of the other 5. We surpass national norms or score well in areas the are associated with collaborative learning opportunities and a supportive campus. Our areas of challenge (and our focus) center on academic challenge. As we examined this area we did realize that many of the questions that measure academic challenge are not so relevant to DSU due to the movement to more electronic means of communicating and learning. The Survey clearly is lagging behind the processes of learning that many institutions are adopting.

In 2007 we established our new Strategic Plan with 7 areas of focus. At the retreat we examined data relevant to our progress on these 7 areas. On many of the 7 we have made good or exceptional progres and on others we need to reevaluate the goals and the work we are doing to accomplish the targets we set. At the all university opening session in a week I will present this data to the campus and then post it here to my blog. (keep checking)

At the end of the retreat we discussed three additional areas of concern or focus. These were technology, athletics and leadership. We learned that there are many improvements to our technology infrastructure that students will experience this fall. We will also focus on a reevaluation of the directions and values that we established during the implementation of our WMCI (Wireless Mobile Computing Initiative) with the probable establishment of a Technology Committee to look at processes and new directions. Athletics is an area of focus this year and we examined data regarding student numbers, scholarship needs, recruiting practices and our committments to providing student athletes a supportive environment. Lastly, we looked at our own membership and determined that some additional members including a student member might positively impact our work together.

This was an extraordinarily candid and productive meeting and has clearly made me even more excited to start this new academic year. Many might not understand how much energy, hard work and thought go into making DSU an institution that is continually and fervently striving to be better and to provide students the extraordinary learning environment that is our goal.

As always comments and questions are welcomed here on the blog or in person.