Structuring Your College for CQI

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Structuring Your College for CQI

• Dr. Pam Washington, Dean
• Dr. Gary Steward, Associate Dean
• College of Liberal Arts
• University of Central Oklahoma

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What are some of the difficulties you have
encountered while working on college level
continuous improvement initiatives?
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Have CQI initiatives in your college been
successful?
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Why Most Academic Colleges Cant Maintain CQI

• Department and program silos
• Lack of faculty buy-in
• Individual faculty and department demands
• Lack of resources
• Poor data management
• Top down initiatives
• No one in-charge of CQI

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Why Most Academic Colleges Cant Maintain CQI

• Managing university initiatives creates
  dissonance with department desires (competing
  interests)
• Alignment is not a top down or a bottom up issue
• CQI initiatives focus on instituting processes
  not on creating new structures to support the
  processes.

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How do you navigate the path of CQI?

• Create appropriate structures to support CQI
  processes

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Crisis

• 2001-02 Faculty Enhancement Day, generated
  concern about quality of student writing and
  communicative skills.
• There was a strong sentiment among many faculty
  that there were notable deficiencies in student
  skill sets.

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Crisis

• Second the 2001 National Survey of Student
  Engagement (NSSE) results revealed serious
  deficiencies
• Interpretation of the results was complicated
  because the data was not disaggregated to the
  colleges.

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Understanding the Crises

• The NSSE data caused faculty cognitive
  dissonance
• On the one hand, there was a significant stream
  of faculty discontent with student skills.
• On the other hand, there was a significant
  resistance to the NSSE data that culminated in
  the mantra, Those arent our students
• The number of respondents isnt high enough to
  be a good sample
• Our students probably didnt understand some of
  the questions and just filled in a circle

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Redesign of the LA Assessment Committee

• Characteristics of the new LA Assessment Team
• Remains static through time
• Multiple discipline representatives
• Clear, frequent, deadlines
• Action oriented
• Public reporting function
• Clear rewards

• Characteristics of the old LA Assessment
  Committee
• Dissolved annually
• Lone discipline representative
• No deadlines
• Discussion oriented
• Hidden or no reporting function
• No rewards

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Create Effective Feedback Loops

• The CQI literature is replete with information
  related to the importance of feedback loops
• Multiple loops
• Variety of delivery methods
• Multiple layers of information
• Critical impact

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Embedding Feedback Loops into the Structure of
the College

• Points of Feedback to faculty
• College-wide meetings were held specifically to
  provide assessment feedback to faculty.
• A Facts at a Glance sheet was created.
• Comments are embedded in Performance appraisals
• Feedback from the dean to department chairs and
  ACIC members regarding the annual assessment
  report and strategic plan.

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Characteristics of Action Plans

• Faculty driven (grassroots)
• Simplicity preferred to complexity
• Nurtured alignment with college and university
  initiatives and goals
• Measurable objectives
• Forge consensus related to acceptable levels of
  performance
• Multiple layers of action plans

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Post Script What We Have Learned

• Positive incentives
• Find and empower champions to help promote
  continuous improvement
• CQI requires shared responsibility.
• Quality must be interpreted within the context of
  an organizations resources.
• Crises is not necessary cause for
  self-evaluation.
• Intentionality is critical.