Process Responsibilities and Decision Making | Academic Program Review

Process, Responsibilities and Decision Making

Outline of the Academic Program Review Process, Responsibilities and Decision Making through the Implementation Phase

PRC – The Program Review Committee consists of the permanent faculty leads in the academic program/department and other faculty colleagues they choose. The PRC will, among other responsibilities, create the program Self Study, and create opportunities for widespread and quality feedback from all stakeholders in the success of the program.

APROC – The Academic Program Review Oversight Committee is a new faculty formation staffed by and affiliated with the Faculty Council. Following any founding appointments, its membership will be formally appointed by the Faculty Council and will include faculty representatives on the variety of academic councils and groups with faculty representation at the college. In addition, it will include three classified staff members involved with career/workforce outlook planning, instructional technology, and academic advising. They bring expertise and signal and ensure commitment to robust stakeholder participation by classified staff.

The APROC initiates the formal beginning of the program review process for the program/discipline and has responsibility for seeing that resources are provided to the PRCs, and monitoring the progress of the PRCs, and raising issues of PRCs failing to get resources or their failing to perform in a timely way and' based on any such problems, initiating joint intervention by the PRC, APROC, and AMT (Administration/Management Team). The APROC chair and the ASA VP will engage in the timely development of guidelines for lead faculty support (e.g. release time). The scheduling will be guided by requests by faculty on behalf of department/discipline units, urgent requests to include department/units by administration, and considerations of representing academic units across the college and the value that model program reviews can play. The APROC also facilitates the creation and maintenance of the collection of Program Review Guidelines/Standards and Resources provided to the PRCs. Among the resources to support completion of the review process, maintained by the APROC, is a peer faculty network that can provide support to colleagues. The Faculty Council designates the APROC chair, who also serves as the liaison to the Faculty Council and IRAP.

IRAP – Institutional Research and Planning provides a centralized, institutional home for regular, routine staff support for academic program review. IRAP facilitates the collection, distribution, and archiving program review documents, and is a budgetary home for stipends and other forms of compensation that are allotted for program review. IRAP does not house or function as a leader of program review, the APROC liaison provides IRAP with timely, transparent understanding of the current status of program review. Support by staff within IRAP will be determined by the need for support for this crucial but limited role.

IEC – Institutional Effectiveness Committee provides the PRC through IRAP the following IEC provided data:

the college's strategic directions and goals and relevant associated documents

BO – Budget Office provides the PRC through IRAP the following BO provided data:

financial plans and a current best assessment of the financial conditions of the college for the next five years

D – The division Dean provides the PRC through IRAP with division level data regarding

workloads over the previous decade and any current projections of constraints expected over the next five years
courses and sections given throughout the division and comparator divisions
financial analysis of the division
division-level list of strategic directions and constraints set by the division
division-level list of constraints set by the administration on the division or parts of it

PRC provides the AMT and the APROC with

a list of one to three PRC issues for in-depth examination in the self-study.

AMT subsequently provides the PRC (copy to APROC)

up to two AMT issues for in-depth examination in the self-study, and
existing data that drives and frames the motivation for this in-depth examination.

The APROC subsequently provides the PRC

up to one APROC issue for in-depth examination in the self-study, and
existing data that drives and frames the motivation for this in-depth examination.

The PRC invites recommendations and suggestions for peer reviewers, and from these and its own professional connections and expertise selects an External Peer Review Committee along with a summary of expected expertise and disclosure of professional collaboration or friendships. It would be prudent for the PRC to make this selection from a wider list in case some members cannot participate. Given that the choice of peer reviewers has financial implications, the PRC and AMT must agree on expenses beyond established guidelines. The APROC chair and the ASA VP will develop guidelines for such expenses in collaboration with the current PRC chairs in fall 2015. Such guidelines may include models for distant collaboration where appropriate.

IC– The Invitation Committee consisting of the VP (or designee), the PRC chair (or designee) and the APROC liaison (or designee) craft a joint request to a Committee of External Peer Reviewers, the EPRC selected by the PRC to provide high quality feedback concerning the Self-Study with explicit reference to expected in-depth examination of the specific identified issues. If any IC party doubts the ability of the chosen Peer Reviewers to do an adequate job, the letter may request that if the reviewers do not believe they can do an adequate job within the time constraints that they contact the IC about engaging additional support or reviewers.

PRC completes its self-study, which includes preferred strategic options and recommendations for the next substantial period (up to eight years)

informed by the up to five explicit issues of in-depth study identified previously
informed by, and critically responding to, the list of college strategic directions and plans, and long term financial plans and financial assessments provided by the IEC
informed by the data provided by the VP, D, IEC, and APROC, all of which will be combined into a separate data document (without synthesis) by the APROC for distribution to the EPRC
informed by professional standards of the program faculty and discipline professional standards
informed by strategic directions and the concrete situation of the program

The EPRC will receive the Self-Study having been invited by the IC to visit the campus to meet all parties in a standard protocol developed jointly by the VP, APROC, and PRC, which includes time for in-depth conversations with the PRC and VP and time for exit interviews with other parties directly related to the Self-Study.

The EPRC writes and issues its External Peer Review Report informed by the Self-Study, including the explicit issues for in-depth examination.

Within a short time, the APROC may complete any Amendments, including factual clarifications to the Self-Study, based on the External Peer Review Report. The AMT may also do the same. Based on all the feedback, the PRC will produce a final Amendment. The Amendments and External Peer Review Report added to the Self-Study and IRAP data report will form the Complete Program Review Document, which will be archived by the Program, Division, APROC, and VP.

Following the completion of this report, the VP-designee and PRC chair will convene an Implementation Steering Team for preparing implementation plans. The PRC will take primary responsibility for summarizing strategic options for moving the program forward that represented a consensus of the Self-Study and the External Peer Review; and the VP-designated members and the PRC-designated members will jointly summarize initial viable financial options and potentially removable barriers based on the initial data provided for the Program Review and the consensus program review recommendations. This will form the initial report of the Implementation Steering Team. Following this, the team will periodically meet to facilitate implementation of the recommendations coming from the Program Review. The meetings and progress in implementation will be regularly reported by the Steering Team to IRAP and the APROC.

The joint expectation shall be that lack of resources, baring major changes in demand for the program, is the main challenge the IST will need to deal with and that questions of recommendation merit have been adequately settled through the earlier program review progress. To the extent that resource issues are not an issue, implementation is expected to proceed quickly as is feasible. To the extent that resource issues exist, but are local in nature, the team is expected to raise the issues locally among stakeholders, including any relevant Steering Teams, to set priorities for distributing resources and make plans for removing resource barriers.

To the extent that resource challenges are global, the team will raise these issues to the IEC as concrete matters for which there needs to be strategic college priorities set and college financial plans created, which are adequate to deal with these areas of program implementation. Creating such viable strategic priorities and financial plans for implementing the results of Program Review will be the responsibility of the IEC and/or other appropriate bodies. With the clarification or modification of strategic priorities, goals, approach or funding, the feasibility of implementing recommendations may change. In such cases, the IST will have responsibility to consider implementation progress under these new conditions.

The APROC will create and maintain ongoing summaries of the implementation efforts initiated through the Program Review Process. These summaries will be made in consultation with the IST and will be shared with IRAP, where they will be archived. The APROC may initiate intervention by the VP and PRC if the above processes or the IST process breaks down.

A collaborative assessment of the program review experience will be made by all participants in fall 2016 after the next cohort of PRCs have been identified to begin in that fall.