Fall 2014: Prioritization reports now available to all UAA faculty and staff

UAA staff and faculty may now view the prioritization reports by logging in at https://teams.uaa.alaska.edu/program-prioritization. The reports will be released to the general public Wednesday, Aug. 13. Please read the following message from Vice Chancellor Bill Spindle and Provost Elisha "Bear" Baker for more information regarding the prioritization process.

"Dear Colleagues:

Over the past 15 months, faculty and staff across all units and disciplines at UAA contributed to the prioritization effort. This process took a great deal of time and energy from many of you, and for that, we'd like to thank you. We'd also like to thank you for providing your honest and thoughtful feedback throughout the process. We set out to better understand our alignment with the needs of Alaska, our students, staff and faculty. The process has provided numerous examples of how we can improve as an institution and how we can come together as colleagues to help make informed, thoughtful change happen at UAA.

The Academic Task Force (AcTF) and the Support Task Force (STF) have provided full reports of their work, each including an executive summary, an overview of the groups' methodology, the results of their deliberations, the lessons learned, as well as the final prioritization category assignments for the respective programs or functions. Today we are releasing these reports, along with the evaluation templates, to our internal community only, with scheduled release of the reports to the media and the general public on Wednesday morning. Out of respect for our internal community, we wanted to give our faculty and staff a chance to read the prioritization reports in advance of the public. We ask that you, too, respect your colleagues by keeping the reports and templates within our internal community until Wednesday.

Both the AcTF and the STF made note of some key findings from their processes, and we'd like to encourage you to read the executive summaries of both reports before jumping to the prioritization categories. The final reports from each task force are similar, though each task force created a parallel and unique approach to the process. For example, the STF used quintiles with a forced and equal distribution for the functions; the AcTF used five categories with a minimum distribution of 15 percent in each category, with 25 percent of programs left to distribute as most appropriate.

As you read through the report and find your program's or function's placement in one of the five categories, please keep in mind that a category is not a score or a grade. Mere placement in a category does not solely indicate the intrinsic worth of an individual program or function. What this categorization reflects is a program's or function's alignment with our mission as represented by the template and available data. It's also important to note that while some programs and functions will be happy about the results of prioritization, others will not; we'd like to encourage each of you to be supportive and collegial with one another.

Though there will not be an appeal process, we may ask for further information or clarification as we more closely examine the functions and programs in categories 4 and 5 over the next few months. Cabinet will then make final recommendations for changes and implementation by late winter. A more detailed timeline will be released by the end of August or beginning of September.

When we began the prioritization process, UAA was not facing an immediate budget shortfall. Circumstances have changed, as has our financial picture, but the fundamental reason for undertaking prioritization at UAA has not changed: we must be a self-reflective university that aligns its programs and functions with our mission and the needs of the state, and we must continue to do this work in the future. We do know that in order to more effectively fund programs and functions of high priority and alignment, reallocation will need to take place. The reinvestment of any funds will likely not be immediate, and will still be allocated through our annual Planning and Budget Advisory Council (PBAC) process.

After reading the reports and templates you may have questions or you may wish to provide some feedback regarding the reports. We have set up an email account (prioritization@uaa.alaska.edu) to direct your questions and/or feedback. The members of the AcTF and the STF should not be considered resources for questions, nor should they be targets for expressing displeasure. We are proud of the difficult work each task force undertook, and they've done an incredible job maintaining an institutional perspective throughout this process.

Though prioritization has been difficult for some at UAA, we know it will make us a stronger, more nimble and responsive university in the face of dwindling resources. Our faculty, staff and students are doing incredible work, and we hope that in reading the reports you'll also find an amazing sense of pride in what we've been able to accomplish and will continue to accomplish in the coming years.

The full AcTF and STF reports can be viewed by entering your UA password and username on the following site: https://teams.uaa.alaska.edu/program-prioritization. Also available on SharePoint are the program and function templates that were submitted to the task forces for review. Thank you, again, for the work all of you did as part of phase 1 in the prioritization process. We'd like to invite you to continue to check the prioritization web page (www.uaa.alaska.edu/program-prioritization) for updates and next steps."

August Archive