Update for the week of April 18:
Although we took two weeks off from the CU-VSU Weekly Transformation updates, it has been a somewhat eventful time.
Maybe the biggest update was the news that the mascot and colors will remain more or less the same under a new VSU branding plan. You can read more about the plan for athletics in a weekly update from March 24 by Deana Tyson and Maurice Ouimet.
The Student Support sub-team of academic operations proposed a new model for advising which is under consideration across the VSU campuses. The model proposes adding staff advisors to formalize the roles played by student support personnel on CUs campus and as a complement to faculty advising (which remains unchanged except for recommendations that the number of assigned advisees be limited to 40). The plan is a “high-level concept” that is being considered as a first step in creating the VSU plan for student support and success. You can learn more about the plan for advising in a weekly update from April 13 by Kelley Beckwith.
The General Education sub-team has proposed a new model for the VSU Connections General Education Program. The model is being reviewed on the campuses and will be a subject of a future update.
The 5-school academic organization model was selected by the Faculty Federation for consideration and has also been endorsed by the Faculty Assembly and its counterparts on the other campuses.
We are waiting news of the VSU Presidential Search in which four candidates visited campus in a whirlwind tour that everyone judged to be too short. UPDATE for the UPDATE: We have a new VSU president!
Update for the week of March 14:
We hear a lot about the transformation being a “chicken and egg” problem. Sometimes we hear that we shouldn’t have worked on anything until something else was done first. It often becomes self-evidently true through the process. Other times the discussion is more circular: we can’t complete something until we have another piece complete and that piece can’t be completed without the first thing. These last two weeks had the feeling of a lot of people just taking steps forward, starting somewhere, and seeing where whole chicken and egg process takes us.
This is a link to the folder where all of the update materials are archived.
The biggest move forward was the submission of academic programs’ information to be used by enrollment advisors to recruit students for Fall 2023. That was for a March 1 deadline. The next step will be to begin the review of new programs for adoption in the catalog. Some programs “green-lit” in the summer optimization process are awaiting instructions on how to submit their proposals for review this spring. Most are waiting for time during the summer to complete necessary close-up designs before they can be reviewed.
The big reveal was a new set of models for academic organization. You can review the latest models here. It now includes two proposed models. You can get an introduction to the models here. The process of creating the models was discussed by Provost Atkins in a meeting with the Faculty Assembly on March 1. That discussion was continued in that week’s transformation weekly update meeting; you can watch a recording here.
Discussions of academic governance and the processes for program review are ongoing. Additionally, a schedule of review to take place this spring is being mapped out. In addition to review of programs and a request to endorse the new academic model, faculty will likely be asked to review the work of the Advising subgroup of the Academic Student Experience sub-team, and they will be asked to review a new model for the General Education Program. Both are expected to be presented to faculty and discussed at the weekly update in the coming weeks.
We did learn that the Presidential search is moving apace. We can expect (very brief) campus visits from at least 2 but as many as 5 candidates in late March.
Finally, last week’s weekly update featured discussion of work to institutionalize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the transformation process; you can watch a recording here. Director of the NVU Center for Teaching and Learning, Dr. Jae Basiliere joined the weekly update to discuss those matters and the proposed VSCS Diversity Statement. You can read more about it here.
Since I discovered a problem with the viewability of last issue’s post, here are the two big updates that were covered in the last issue:
On February 17 we were joined by VTC President Pat Moulton to discuss the Workplace Readiness initiatives in the transformation. This is a summary of her presentation and discussion. You can watch a recording of the meeting here.
On February 24, we received an update about the plans for the VSU General Education Program from Phil Whitman. This is a summary of the presentation. You can watch a recording of the meeting here.
