Responses to the CPR Visiting Team and the Commission

Response to the CPR Visiting Team Recommendations. The University is grateful to the members of the WASC CPR team for their encouraging report from the October 4-6, 2006, visit. The team made the following eight comments in its informal exit interview at the conclusion of the visit and in its formal Report to the Commission:

1. The meeting with members of the Board of Trustees was instructive and encouraging. They are to be applauded and encouraged in their efforts at self-assessment and capacity building.
2. The institution’s efforts to build an infrastructure supporting meaningful programs, institutional, and student assessment are to be commended. They have rightly recognized the need to determine how they might inter-relate the various strands of assessment, and better align program review and student learning assessment with professional or specialty accreditation where appropriate.
3. Under the capable leadership of the president and his cabinet, the institution has focused more comprehensively on strategic planning. This institution is encouraged to give specific attention to how this planning can be synchronized and aligned with its budgeting process.
4. A large number of recommendations are proposed by PLNU in their CPR report. It is recommended that this considerable list be rank ordered, and perhaps synthesized, or re-categorized so that the institution can get its “planning hands” around these thoughtful suggestions.
5. With the inception of new graduate programs delivered from off-site venues, the institution is facing the expected challenge of integrating these programs into its strategic planning and organizational structure. It is recommended that PLNU continue and intensify its efforts to build the organizational infrastructure to support these fast-growing programs.
6. Though the University has a clear policy on academic freedom in the Faculty Handbook, a survey indicated that many faculty members were unaware of this statement and some are not clear to what extent they may pursue their chosen field of scholarship when it is potentially controversial. No specific problems have arisen or were found by the visiting team, but the University would be wise to help faculty explore the meaning of academic freedom in the context of its mission and vision.
7. It is clear to the team that faculty and staff focus their educational and support efforts on students in a multi-dimensional way based on the institution’s mission and values. It was particularly exciting to hear about the range of co-curricular programs developed by the Student Development staff. The PLNU faculty and staff are challenged to jointly consider how they might connect more explicitly the student learning inside and outside the classroom.
8. In regard to PLNU’s diversity efforts, the team was impressed by the plan of the General Education Committee to imbed important diversity-related outcomes into a substantial number of redesigned core courses. It is suggested that the faculty consider reviewing the student learning outcomes associated with these courses from the perspective of teach-shape-send paradigm to identify how might these courses incorporate the “to send” value into the learning experiences.

In response to these findings and recommendations, we point out that the University has already made progress in some areas and can point to viable solutions planned to address each one. The following section speaks to each of the eight items listed above.

• Board Development. The President and the Board of Trustees are committed to on-going development activities. In fact, this has been a hallmark of both the President’s approach to leadership issues and the Board’s unanimous agreement to pursue many worthwhile activities in this regard. As recently as the semi-annual Board meeting March 1-2, 2007, Dr. Paul R. Corts, president of the Council on Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), met with trustees and Administrative Cabinet in a two-day intensive workshop on Board development. These sessions highlighted the first four-year cycle of active development training begun by the President and Board leadership. The annual March workshop serves as the preparation for the next cycle of Board assessment and planning for continuing development efforts directed by the Board Development Committee (see Point Loma Nazarene University Bylaws for committee descriptions).

• Assessment, Program Review, and Specialty Accreditations. These topics are precisely the focus of two reflective essays included in the EER report (see Assessment and Program Review), and they include recommendations to the President.

• Strategic Planning and the Budget. Five years ago, the University began a process of updating its Mission Statement and establishing a Vision Statement with a cycle of two year goals toward the Vision. As a result, the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) and the Administrative Cabinet focused their work more directly on prioritization of goals and resources toward Mission and Vision fulfillment. We further improved the process by extending the goal cycle to three years, aligning that goal cycle with the University's three-year budget planning window, and by facilitating the re-composition of the SPC to include all members of the Administrative Cabinet. With the Cabinet’s role as the Board-defined budget committee for the University, this new committee alignment brings a broader base of discussion and direct input for setting budget priorities, making decisions, and monitoring progress within the respective units.
  
  Additionally, the President named Task Teams for each of the 2007-2009 SPC goals. The Administrative Cabinet has made budget sources available to support initiatives that are emerging from the work of the Task Teams and the SPC. This process has supported our efforts to enhance the University's vision.

• Managing the CPR Recommendations to the President. As is evident in the previous section on recommendations from the CPR visiting team report, the University made impressive progress in a few months in both managing and addressing very specifically the recommendations to come forward from the CPR report (see the Preface to the EER Report as well as the report of the Recommendations Sub-committee). This process continues to receive attention from the Administrative Cabinet and the Strategic Planning Committee.

• Support for New Graduate Programs. Recognizing the importance of building and maintaining an adequate infrastructure and coordination of efforts, the Provost named a Vice Provost for Graduate Studies on February 1, 2007. In the brief time since that announcement, the Vice Provost can report an impressive list of actions. These include streamlining administrative functions and entering into important strategic discussions about the future design and efficiency of graduate programs, such as moving from a complex model of over 200 start and stop dates to two calendars; significant progress toward a single per-unit tuition charge for graduate and credential courses in the School of Education, uniform fees, and templates for discount rates; significant updates for the graduate academic catalog including revisions in admissions, financial, and academic policies; strategic discussions around the topics of promoting scholarly activity, Mission and Core Values, adjunct faculty development, post-baccalaureate unified transcripts, performance assessment, administrative structure and strategic planning; and financial analyses prepared in cooperation with the Chief Financial Officer for new program developments which in turn has facilitated the work on a strategic plan for the graduate programs, including a resource and staffing plan.

• Academic Freedom. In the March 21, 2007, meeting of the University faculty, the Provost and Chief Academic Officer presented a white paper (as recommended in the CPR report). One of the main topics of this presentation was a re-statement of the University's policy on academic freedom as found in the current Faculty Handbook. In his remarks, the Provost called for a continuing dialog on this issue. The Provost has made a review of the Faculty Handbook a priority for the next two academic years. As part of this process, the academic freedom statement will be reviewed with the Academic Council, as part of at least two faculty meetings over that time, and with the Academic Affairs Subcommittee of the Board of Trustees. The goal is to make sure that the policy accurately states Point Loma's commitments and that those are clearly understood by all stakeholders.

• Student Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom. In its March 1-2, 2007, meeting and following the announcement of the retirement of the Vice President for Student Development, the Board of Trustees elected, upon the recommendation of the President, a new Vice President for Student Development. The Vice President is an active member of the Steering Committee and a strong advocate of the connections between learning inside and outside the classroom. She has also been active in the assessment of the activities in co-curricular units as well as in the administration of National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the NSO Preface summer reading program.  Those in a direct reporting relationship to the Vice President have begun monthly meetings with the Provost's Council to discuss shared student-related concerns and develop closer academic-co-curricular partnerships.

• “To Send” and Diversity Issues Embedded in General Education. The General Education Task Force has worked throughout the 2006-2007 academic year on an examination of the general education structure, on assessment of general education outcomes, and on the identification of the key aspects of an educated graduate of Point Loma. In January of 2007, the Provost took on the leadership of the General Education Task Force because of its centrality to the academic mission of the University and to balance the workload of the Vice Provost for Professional Development. The preliminary discussions about intended outcomes have focused heavily on the PLNU mission and core values, especially diversity. There has been consistent focus on how our students respond to issues of diversity (some of this was the basis for a faculty-wide discussion in the November 2006 faculty meeting). In the coming year, the Task Force will clarify intended general education goals and present a draft proposal of those goals to the faculty. Once a consensus understanding is reached, the Task Force will move to evaluating the various sources within the curriculum where those goals are supported.

Response to the Commission’s Letter of February 27, 2007. In addition to the above-mentioned responses to the visiting team’s recommendations, the University has taken steps to respond to the Commission’s letter signed by the WASC President and Executive Director.

The Commission endorsed the team’s recommendations and highlighted issues for the University to address in the EER report under the headings of “Setting Priorities,” “Improving Retention and Graduation Rates,” “Reviewing Graduate Programs,” and “Deepening and Extending Assessment.” The following section speaks to each of these issues.

• Setting Priorities. As stated in the Preface to this EER report, the University can show that each of the 83 recommendations has been addressed in some way. More importantly, a Recommendations Sub-committee worked with the President and the Steering Committee to refine this large list and to establish specific priorities. In order to integrate, align, and support these priorities, the President has referred these items to the Strategic Planning Committee for their attention, as well as to the  Administrative Cabinet who also serve as the University’s budget committee. This will help to ensure that possibility of developing specific strategies for these priorities as well as appropriate funding in the annual budget cycle. We identify priorities in both the CPR report and the EER report and recast them in more general terms in the final integrative essay of this report (CFR's 4.1 and 4.2).

• Improving Retention and Graduation Rates. While it is clear from the data that the retention and graduation rates at Point Loma Nazarene University have seen a dramatic increase in recent years, the Commission called for a more favorable report when compared with “best performers” of a similar institutional type. It also suggested analysis of disaggregated data by program and student characteristics. In response to this, we note that preliminary work has begun on identification of both a peer group of institutions and an aspirant group. This work will be finalized by the administration with input from faculty leadership (primarily the Academic Council) in the fall of 2007. The Diversity Committee began an examination of disaggregated data on retention, academic performance, and graduation rates broken down by race/ethnicity, gender, and denominational background. Preliminary administrative conversations have begun about the appropriate committee structure to best review this significant information and then share results with relevant units within the University (CFR's 2.10, 4.1, 4.3 and 4.5).

• Reviewing Graduate Programs. While the Commission acknowledges that the University has established “so effectively” assessment efforts for the undergraduate program, this comment reminds us to focus “not only on the infrastructure of these programs, as the team recommended, but also on the educational effectiveness efforts” making them “equally robust…” While it is true that the University in recent years has focused heavily on solutions related to infrastructure and organization, assessment has continued in graduate studies though perhaps not in a parallel pattern when compared to the work of the Assessment Committee in undergraduate programs. Indeed, this may well be due to the nature of graduate studies and their link to specialty accreditation and outside agencies, such as the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), California Board of Registered Nursing (CBRN), the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). At least in these cases, the graduate programs are bound to adhere to assessment standards as dictated by those associations. Although University graduate programs can demonstrate efforts at assessing individual students as a regular feature, as seen in a summary of assessment at the graduate studies level, few have developed mature protocols with data results over time that would enhance program quality through resulting improvements these programs (CFR's 4.4 and 4.5).

• Deepening Assessment. The concern here is for the University to deepen assessment efforts, “particularly in assessing the performance of graduates in writing, critical thinking, appreciation of diversity, and commitment to service.” In addition, the Commission letter calls for assessment “to involve and integrate assessment of the University’s rich array of co-curricular programs.” The University acknowledges in the EER report the need to deepen assessment efforts in co-curricular programs in the reflective essay in Theme Two: To Shape and includes this in the final recommendations to the President (CFR's 2.11, 4.4 and 4.5).