Coleman taps Iowa's creativity in setting and reaching objectives

Mary Sue Coleman

fyi: The Next Horizon is certainly an impressive document, but it requires a real commitment of staff time and money to produce these reports. Is the whole strategic planning effort worth the time and money?

Coleman: I believe it is, very much so. It’s pretty clear that any large, complex organization has to plan to move forward. And planning is difficult for any large organization, regardless of whether it’s in the public sector or the private sector. It’s difficult because the people at the top see the organization differently than the people in various units. The people at the top are supposed to do the steering, but they’re not the ones closest to the work. Strategic planning, when it’s working right, gives an organization more opportunities for dialogue.

fyi: So, are we having the dialogue?

Coleman: Yes! We are! We’ve found that if we decide where we want to be and put the overall goals and objectives out in front, people will come up with novel ways to get us there. It’s a wonderful opportunity for creativity to bubble up. That’s what we have to be looking for. No matter what happens, no matter how much money we’ve got to spend, we’ve got to use our resources in the best possible way.

One of the great advantages that a university has in this process is its intellectual environment. People are here together, face to face, working every day on understanding interesting issues and solving problems. It’s what we do. And that’s our strategic advantage. If we can turn that powerful collective skill and wisdom on planning our future, we are unbeatable.

fyi: Is there one place where you see that process working well now?

Coleman: Many places, but we were especially deliberate in our discussions about undergraduate and graduate education. We want to make the focus broader than just what happens in the classroom. We know graduate students want more career advice in graduate school. We do a very good job of developing their skills and understanding within their disciplines, but we need to broaden it a little, make them more aware of career opportunities they may not have thought of, prepare them a little bit better for what they will face in the job market and in their lives.

fyi: This sounds much like the argument academics and administrators have made for years that this is not a vocational school, that what we offer in a liberal arts education is training for all of life, it’s not job-specific.

Coleman: It’s not an entirely new message, no, but we are focusing it differently. The University has an obligation to educate its students in the broadest possible way. That means making sure that they have available the kinds of experiences that they can fall back on when they are out in the "real" world. We must continue to work hard to provide a culturally diverse environment here. We have to make it easier for them to volunteer in the community, to do something for the larger society. And we can help students think about how to manage a career, from finding an internship to thinking about how to prepare themselves for the second job and for the third. We should make certain that we give our students the best tools possible for better handling the curves and surprises that life doles out. That goes beyond the traditional philosophy of liberal arts education.

fyi: Let’s talk about the targeted indicators report. What are you most proud of in that report?

Coleman: We’ve done very well in moving up the percentage of credit hours that are being taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty (chart 1). When we compare ourselves nationally with our peers, we do extremely well. That makes me proud. In fact, in almost every category in undergraduate education we are close to having achieved our objectives. The exception is the graduation rate. It remains a concern. I believe we will move up—it’s a slower process than we would have hoped—but we’re learning.

fyi: Any surprises?

Coleman: I was surprised at how quickly we achieved some goals. Some were very difficult, such as the election of UI faculty to certain specific national academies. We had languished for a number of years, having 10 or 12 members. Now, on the surface, it seems impossible to expect to influence elections to outside organizations, especially these prestigious ones. But because it was a goal, we looked at it more closely. No one gets elected to these academies unless they are very, very good, of course. But also, no one gets elected unless they are nominated. So, we worked hard to make certain that our best faculty got nominated. In three years, we doubled our representation on these academies (chart 2). What it shows us is that if we focus on a few areas that we believe will help the institution, and give them our attention, we can make dramatic progress. There are plenty of other examples, such as increasing development opportunities for our staff (chart 3). This one means a lot to me, because our workforce is our most valuable commodity. We’re helping people get new skills and put themselves in a position to be more helpful to the University.

fyi: So are the numbers good everywhere?

Coleman: No. There are places where we’re not making the progress we’ve set for ourselves. In some cases, we may have been unrealistic in setting our goals. In others, we have to ask, if we really understand how to get to the goal, do we need to look at things differently? The graduation rate, for example. I asked the provost to establish a task force to look closely at the situation to see what we don’t understand. And there are other places where we need to look at what the numbers really mean. For example, the reports to the ombudsperson’s office. At first blush, you might think we’d want these numbers to go down. Fewer complaints should be a good thing, more reports a bad thing. But is it that simple? The ombuds-person’s office is a kind of safety valve. Fewer reports could mean that people are not comfortable complaining, even when something is wrong. It’s possible that we actually want to increase these numbers. We’re still trying to understand how to interpret some of these results.

fyi: So how do the Regents respond to the targeted indicators report?

Coleman: They like it. You know, the University sets its own goals and objectives. The Regents don’t impose them on us. But they are very interested in seeing how well we meet the objectives we’ve set for ourselves. Our folks did a superb job preparing the reports, which not only lay out the numbers, but tell stories of individual successes, with real people. We can be proud of these reports and of the progress they represent.

Article by Charles S. Drum