Background

Many people contributed to creating the organizational space for this system of academic program review in the Lane Community College structure, but the work was centered in the Department Planning Workgroup. It was established in spring 2014 to address and explore issues and opportunities for improving department/program-level planning at Lane. After conducting a college-wide survey, the workgroup explored a variety of resources, research and references, and quickly came to support the development of a Program Review structure at Lane, and started a pilot process with two volunteer academic units. In October 2014, accreditors recommended that Lane fully adopt a comprehensive program review process, giving reinforcement to the direction of the Department Planning Workgroup.

As the workgroup continued into winter term 2015, it recognized the need to define in sufficient detail a structure for academic program review that is faculty-led and provides clear definition of decision-making authority and structures. It was also clear that separate structures were needed to be put in place for non-academic programs. In addition, the interface between strategic planning and program review needed to be defined, so that program review in each academic unit was informed by the strategic and financial directions of the college, and in turn, each self-study would provide important feedback about these strategic and financial directions to improve and refine them.

A subgroup of the workgroup was formed to synthesize what had been discussed in the workgroup over many months. From this input, the subgroup created the final agreements in early April in key documents and first initial steps. Initial steps of implementation were necessary, because while faculty members in the subgroup believed their colleagues would agree to participate, this was not a unanimous belief. This skepticism was encouraged by the difficulty of getting buy-in and participation from many faculty members on existing councils. To meet this challenge, with the consent of the Faculty Council Co-Chairs, an initial Academic Program Review Oversight Committee (APROC) chair was selected – Anne McGrail, English faculty member, who in 2001 was a founding editor of the Community College Moment, Editor and Steering Team member of the college's accreditation self-study in 2004 and the Year 1 report in 2011, and co-wrote a large Title III grant and was its activity director for faculty development on the grant from 2008-2013. Jennifer Steele, who chaired the Department Planning Workgroup and was a subgroup member, was recognized by the subgroup as the staff support for the APROC. In addition, a number of disciplines were identified as ready to begin a self-study by fall 2015 or in active discussion of the possibility, so that there was concrete assurance how the process would take off.

Departmental Planning Workgroup members: Joseph Colton, Barb Delansky, Dawn DeWolf, Dennis Gilbert, Maurice Hamington, Jennifer Hayward, Lida Herburger, Christina Howard, Brian Kelly, Kerry Levett, Cathy Lindsley, Rosa Lopez, Anna Kate Malliris, Siskanna Naynaha, Dave Oatman, Russ Pierson, Ce Rosenow, Bill Schuetz, Jennifer Steele, Kate Sullivan, Craig Taylor, Kathy Thomas, Sarah Ulerick, Molloy Wilson