Goals for 2013-14

Posted on: October 25th, 2013 by jpeliss No Comments

When I first started blogging about the Faculty Convocation, I promised to outline for you my goals for Academic Affairs for 2013-14, and here they are:

1)  Despite a mid-course correction to our undergraduate recruitment plan, we exceeded the goal of freshmen we wanted to enroll this fall. Now, I have challenged our team to ensure that we achieve academic success with the largest Freshman class in our history. We added academic advising staff, more first-year seminars, expanded on campus work study resources, as well as adding 15 full-time faculty to teach Core and science courses for these students. But as I spoke of last year, one of the most powerful elements of undergraduate student retention and success is engagement with the faculty. I value your time given to our undergraduates not only as teachers, but also as advisors and mentors—it really does make a difference in student persistence toward graduation.

2)  As we focus on the success of students who are just beginning their Loyola education, we will be giving greater attention to the needs of the seniors who are about to graduate, also. During the last year, we reorganized our university Career Development Center and services, adding additional staff, creating a more integrated relationship to the College and schools, and developed a more intentional approach to career discernment and planning by our students. Now as we work to make that new model successful for our students, we must do a better job of collecting outcomes data to know how our students are doing—as they graduate, six months later, and years after commencement. We must have better assessment data for our own purposes, but also so we may continue to demonstrate to external agencies and employers that we are being effective with helping our students achieve career goals. To aid in this effort, I am creating a new position of Academic Corporate Engagement that will coordinate the Lakeside campuses connections to businesses and nonprofits, expanding the number of businesses that will provide internships and jobs for our students, and developing deep relationships with many companies for whom Loyola can be a provider of education for their employees, in particular adults seeking bachelor’s degree completion and graduate education.

3)  Positioning ourselves for the future also involves analyzing the opportunities for new programs of study. In each of your departments and schools this is an on-going part of your curricular development. It has lead to new online programs—we now have 4 undergraduate degrees for adults and 21 graduate programs. We have witnessed the launch of such new programs as the MA in Healthcare Mission Leadership and the Intercontinental MBA.

4)  I’m pleased to say that we have made good progress in recent months on another new initiative. Under the leadership of Dean Sam Attoh, faculty from six different fields have been examining the feasibility of a new set of programs in Engineering. I am encouraged by the progress and enthusiasm for such a new initiative. We will be asking our academic shared governance structure to review the proposals from this group, with an eye toward establishing an Institute of Engineering Science by 2015, with new interdisciplinary majors that would evolve over several years. It is too soon to say that this will lead to a school of Engineering, but such programs would enhance our positioning in the sciences, business, and environmental sustainability.

5)  You began a year in which technology and system changes characterized the new landscape for your work. Sakai is our new Learning Management System, IDEA is our new Teacher Course Evaluation program, and Outlook is our new email and calendaring system. (And yes, I know that many of you are still waiting for your last two years of archives. Trust me, having just received access to my archive of 60,000 emails, it might be better to have lost these forever.) We are working, also, on implementing a faculty performance appraisal system that will be better attuned to how the work of the faculty has evolved in recent years and how the paradigm of the academy now emphasizes teaching and learning, research that impacts society, and contributions to the university mission and the public good. A proposal for a contemporary system of faculty evaluations was given this summer to the Faculty Council and the University Senate for review. I am hopeful that we will achieve consensus on this new system before the next round of evaluations are underway.

So, we have much in the way of new and ambitious goals for the coming year which also will see us begin to develop the next strategic plan and develop the assurance and quality case for our reaccreditation.

Earlier this year, the Deans began a strategic discussion of the key differentiators of their schools and programs that set us apart from our competitors. They focused on the elements of education, experiential learning, and the outcomes of our graduates which demonstrate that we prepare students for extraordinary lives and that lead to meaningful contributions to one’s community and society. To achieve distinctiveness we must hone our programs and continue to recruit a faculty that is committed to this mission. Renewed emphasis on the distinctiveness of the Loyola education and our commitment to justice will characterize our work in the coming year and I invite all of you to be part of this effort.

For now, thank you for what you do every day for our students and for the university.

John Pelissero

 

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