2019-2020 Phase One Proposals:
New Initiatives
Strategic financial counseling
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $62,058
Expected Revenue After One Year: $28,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $30,596
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $32,459
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Each term, some number of students are confronted with a harsh reality: nothing in life is ever free, and diminishing investment in higher education only makes it less affordable to obtain a degree. This fact is quickly understood when an outstanding account balance bars any student from course registration. While most holds are immediately lifted after a student extinguishes his entire balance, some students must use other forms of relief such as a payment plan to remain enrolled. For obvious reasons, this office undertakes a vigorous effort to handle outstanding account balances and to collect delinquent accounts. Even with our existing effort and aggressive balancing of duties and priorities, the state of ABS’ posture is mostly reactive as it relates to serving students due to the paucity of resources relative to the customer service we provide.
The university’s current accounts receivable balance is well above twenty-four million dollars; and in the last three months, this office served approximately 2,000 students. Students call, email, and make regular appointments with ABS’ staff to arrange payment plans, obtain refunds, and understand how tuition, fees, and other charges are applied to their accounts. The burden in serving students is growing at an insurmountable pace as other duties and reporting are cast aside, which impairs the university’s ability to make financially-informed decisions. Additional resources would cause a dramatic improvement in reversing that reactive posture.
An extra accountant can proactively detect students that may soon run afoul of institutional policies and counsel them before ABS’ staff take extraordinary efforts to ameliorate the student. Since most new students learned next to nothing about personal finance and how so many variables affect how much they will pay each quarter, an energetic, student-focused accountant will relieve ABS’ other administrative burdens, increase student retention, and result in fewer interruptions in ABS’ work pace. Without those additional resources, ABS will struggle to make timely payments to vendors, potentially pay more interest during cash deficits, and experience an erosion in satisfactory customer service, which ultimately may harm student retention.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
We will measure student retention each quarter since an accounts receivable hold can be the harbinger of future enrollment. The number of days from the time an account becomes delinquent and when we assign it to collections will decrease. We will be in a better position to draw from other data to detect which accounts can be rapidly extinguished by communicating with past and present students and also develop a bevy of reports to inform strategic decision-making. Currently, we do not have available to us any form of robust reporting on important variables and cannot readily determine aging and average days delinquent among other variables that are commonly measured and used across similar organizations. Moreover, additional resources would allow the organization to prioritize delinquent accounts and therefore improve the organization’s cash flow by working with students and other customers that possess the means to pay immediately.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Additional resources would improve student retention by reflecting a sincere attitude of customer service and assistance. Early detection of students that may soon encounter of a registration hold may result in fewer students foregoing future enrollment at the university. Instead students can focus on their academic careers and other ancillary responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with academic progress. Moreover, a dedicated effort to collect delinquent accounts will improve the affordability of an education at Western Oregon University for current and future students as increases to marginal cash flow defray the burden of uncollectible accounts in tuition rate-setting.
MSSP Advisor/Instructor
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success
Expected Ongoing Costs: $$69,264-$78,644 (includes OPE/benefits)
Expected Revenue After One Year: $52,800
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $(depends on tuition)
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $(depends on tuition)
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Currently Multicultural Student Services & Programs has a total of 3 professional staff and one classified staff. We have 369 students in our various programs and each student is assigned to one staff member for advising. We expect that we will be over 400 for the next academic year. All new incoming freshmen in our scholarship programs are required to take a student success class (ICS 104) with us their first year at WOU. We have had students request something similar for transfer students, but we have not had the capacity to offer this as of yet. All students are only required to meet with their advisor one time per academic year to check in and review their academic plan on file as well as address any other concerns (financial need, housing, personal challenges, etc.). This was cut down from once a term to once a year due to the rise in student participants and our staff not being able to accommodate the growing number of program participants. Currently each professional staff member has approximately 123 advisees in addition to teaching duties, overseeing designated programs, supervising student staff coordinators of various programs and being available for follow up appointments or student requested appointments. We also provided support to the WCS (Wolf Connection System) Program that requires we follow up with students in our program when a professor or other staff member on campus submits a concern regarding the student’s attendance or performance in class. The goal with this program is to catch students when they are most vulnerable of academic failure and provide interventions in time to support their success at WOU. These cases often take multiple contacts and follow up.
This past year, we had an increase of students that accepted the Diversity Commitment Scholarship (causing an increase in our Diversity Scholars Program) and we expect those numbers to continue if not grow. This upcoming year, we assisted in getting the application for the Bilingual Teacher Scholars integrated into Academic Works, which will make it more accessible for students to apply. In turn, we expect to see an increase in applicants as well as recipients. This will also increase our Conexiones Program (a collaborative partnership with the College of Education to provide support to the Bilingual Teacher Scholarship recipients). We have also seen an increase in our On-Track Program, a program designed to support our students who do not already fall into one of our scholarship programs.
As we move forward towards the goal of becoming an HSI, we will continue to see an increase in student participants. We will want to continue to be able to provide the services that has proven to be effective up until now. Without this position, we will have to limit the number of students we serve and/or eliminate the student support classes we offer so that our programs and program participants do not suffer.
Note: A portion of this position’s responsibility will be to teach the ICS 104 class our students are required to take. This class is a one credit class offered each term and the students take it for the three terms of their first year on campus. This class has the potential of generating a minimum of $528 per student (based on 19-20 tuition) and we expect between 90-110 students taking this class next year. We would also like to expand this opportunity to our new transfer students as well. This could add up to an additional 20 students taking this 1 credit class for 1-3 terms as well.
Possible revenue: $47,520 - $58,080+.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The addition of this position will allow us to meet the current demands of the support programs we currently offer our students and will allow us to increase the availability of advisors as well as increase the number of student support classes we offer to accommodate the growing number of freshmen and be able to provide similar support to our new incoming transfer students. Over the past 15 years, our program participants (majority who are low income and come from historically underrepresented backgrounds) have had a higher retention rate and graduation rate than our institutional average.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Retaining students is more cost effective than recruiting new students. Our programs have a mission to recruit, retain and graduate specific student populations that statistically are more likely to not attend college or when they do, not graduate.
Also, this position specifically is an income generating position as the student participants pay for tuition for the classes we offer.
Educational Stipend for MCR Mentors
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success
Expected Ongoing Costs: $51,648
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
The Multicultural Representatives (MCR’s) Program was created in 2006. Since then, it has evolved to meet the various needs of our program as well as the students we serve. Since 2015, the MCR’s have served as Peer Mentors for our new incoming Freshmen and transfer students. Their duties include:
- Attend a 2-day training prior to the beginning of Fall Term.
- Serve as Peer Mentors for the new incoming freshmen and transfer students that are part of our various department programs (Diversity Scholars, Bilingual Teacher Scholars/Conexiones, On Track). Each Mentor can have up to 5 Mentees.
- Plan and implement the Cultural Connections Program (a week-long program that happens in conjunction with New Student Week and targets low-income, first generation, historically underrepresented/underserved populations.
- Plan and implement the quarterly Gathering and a quarterly Socials for all MCR Mentors and Mentees. (Both of these are done once each term/three times a year)
- Attend Quarterly Mentor Meetings and submit bi-weekly reports of their interaction and progress with their Mentees.
- Support the Admissions Office when they are in need of bilingual and diverse student representatives to serve as hosts, tour guides and panelist for various events and programs.
With the growth of our programs each year, it has been extremely valuable to have upperclassman, that can identify with the challenges and needs of the students we serve, helping make sure our new incoming students have the support that could be the key to their success as students at WOU.
This year there was one common application put out for students to apply to be a Peer Mentor, PLUS Team Member, Summer Bridge Peer Leader, RA, or Ambassador. We understood the concept of creating a common application for these leadership opportunities to make it easier for students to apply for these opportunities. When I heard of this idea, I thought it made sense that we would include the MCR’s in this, but quickly realized that there was one difference. The MCR’s are the ONLY student group on campus that does the kind of recruitment and retention work that they do and do not get paid. For the past 5 years we have benefited from the generosity and deep desire to “give back” that our students have. And although I am proud to have such amazing students in our programs, I strongly believe that this has now become an issue of equity. We as a campus cannot continue to benefit from the effort of these students and their generosity without providing equal compensation.
Breakdown of total Cost: $185/mo. X 9 mo. = $1666 X 30 Mentors = $49,950 + Student OPE = $51,648
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
All of the programs in our office have continued to grow over the past 5 years and our retention and graduation rates have consistently been higher than our institutional average. The MCR program and the MCR Mentors are a large contributing factor. We anticipate that our programs will continue to grow and the need for the MCR Mentors will be even greater.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Retaining students is more cost effective than recruiting new students. Our programs have a mission to recruit, retain and graduate specific student populations that statistically are more likely to not attend college or when they do, not graduate. The MCR Mentors directly impact the retention of these students.
Multimedia Producer Position
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $70,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
View this proposal with paragraph breaks and formatting for readability: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qvLQXdkXDuj1zUpDg22eGmKLcH_Hlv7lL9DTlV-6cm8/edit?usp=sharing
This proposal is to create a full-time multimedia producer position in the Strategic Communications and Marketing (MarCom) office, which would be responsible for marketing-focused photography and videography for WOU’s enrollment materials, website, social media accounts, advertising efforts, and more. WOU has invested in marketing through creating centralized MarCom and a marketing director position and other departments have created positions with marketing duties, which has increased the demand for multimedia content.
Strong multimedia content is critical to attracting prospective students. We’re competing for their attention with other colleges, major brands, streaming services, video games, celebrities, etc. Currently, we can’t compete with the quality and quantity of content from many competitors. While we have tried to fill some of this gap with student workers, it’s not sustainable or fair to consistently rely on students to create professional content.
Current Capacity
Digital Production Services in University Computing Solutions covers athletics events (required by NCAA), lectures, events, and other long-form content, which they use for 24/7 programming of a local television channel they manage.
Q-Loop supports the College of Education and their academic objectives. They have a different focus than WOU’s external marketing needs.
MarCom has a student videographer, but it is a consistent challenge to find students with the technical and storytelling skills necessary for marketing content.
MarCom cut its photography service due to increased demand in other areas, which has left campus without event coverage, professional headshots, etc.
How this Position Addresses Multimedia Needs
This position would increase MarCom’s volume of storytelling (e.g. video profiles on faculty and research, student interviews, looks at departments and programs), which could be repurposed for departmental use.
With thanks to UCS, MarCom has a photo database. This person would handle the time-consuming task of properly tagging and editing all images so they are searchable and available to campus.
MarCom doesn’t have the variety and quality of photos needed for enrollment materials and marketing efforts. This position would grow our photo stock at a better volume-for-cost than outsourcing to vendors.
This person would supervise our student videographer(s) and help them develop professional skills.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The measurable impact of this proposal will be an increase in prospective students signing up for more information about campus, an increase in applications, and an increase in students registering for classes and showing up.
We would track social media and website analytics to see how people are responding to the photos and images developed by the multimedia producer. We would be able to track views, clicks, website navigation from this content, and more to understand what’s pulling people in. With that information, we could continue to refine our content to be more engaging to prospective and current students, which would allow us to be more agile and data-driven in our marketing, enrollment and retention efforts.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution: This position would help us create more and better quality multimedia content that would speak to and represent our LatinX population. It would help us demonstrate to prospective LatinX students that WOU is a welcoming and inclusive campus through multimedia showing events, services and programs many of our LatinX students create, enjoy and use.
Growing enrollment: This is outlined in question 3; specifically that we would focus on how the content this person would create brings in interest, application, and enrolled students. Photography and videography is a critical element to successful enrollment efforts and this position would support existing enrollment and retention efforts throughout campus.
Improving retention: MarCom wants to do what it can to help students feel like they’re a part of campus and represented in how we talk about WOU on our channels. A multimedia producer would significantly increase the bandwidth for MarCom to cover events, clubs, programs, and more. Particularly extending into smaller and more niche opportunities around campus. We would be able to create content to help students see what they can get involved with if they choose to stay here and the resources available to them. Plus, MarCom would be able to create more content that better represents WOU’s student body.
Provide Sustainable Funding for Q-Loop Productions
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $26,000
Expected Ongoing Costs: $30,000/year
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Western Oregon University should provide a sustainable source of funding for Q-Loop Productions in order to allow Q-Loop to continue providing high quality video content to academic departments on campus while providing students with: professional growth opportunities, skill and resume building, and opportunities in leadership. Q-Loop Productions also needs to finish their upgrade to a 4k ecosystem, and to expand to another editing bay in order to optimize our workflow and maintain relevancy with the current standards.
Background:
Q-Loop Productions is a student developed and led video production and photography team that serves the Western Oregon University College of Education. Our goal is to create engaging academic-related content for faculty and staff. It is currently staffed by a team of six undergraduates and one graduate assistant. The governance of Q-Loop is comprised of an Undergraduate Director and the Graduate assistant. Both the Director and GA receive oversight from an Advisory Board comprised of a chair, one faculty member representative from each academic division in the College of Education, and a representative from the Office of the Dean. The Dean of the College of Education also provides limited oversight and guidance.
Website: https://wou.edu/qloop/
Mission Statement: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SVrWhXI2_4SUSGlA4t_MBPRzwCsclzlhN2PJtC7LLAU
State of Q-Loop FY2019: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Md7IsOnQC05V81-4G91Fa7JCdqB6y2UQ/view?usp=sharing
NOTE: The revenue is estimated based off of the theoretical possibility of taking outside projects from organizations related to WOU that align with our mission and goals, and approved by Q-Loop’s internal governance, General Counsel, and any other relevant parties. The revenue would depend on the number of projects accepted, and the scope of the projects. Other possible revenue streams could include: grant work, fees for MI public participation in community education events, or other ideas not yet explored. The proposed costs are also flexible. While Q-Loop would prefer to have both one-time and ongoing costs funded, we would accept one or the other, as both are critical to our future.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Q-Loop has, and will continue to, provide a high-impact learning environment while providing a highly requested service for the College. Q-Loop has demonstrated this impact during the past year, and is hoping and working to increase it’s presence in the coming years though cross-college partnerships, community education events, and more opportunities for students to learn the skills they need to succeed in their desired careers. If Q-Loop is unable to find a more sustainable source of funding, however, it will be unable to continue to provide services for the University.
The State of The Loop document (provided in question 2) showcases the ability for Q-Loop to make a tangible difference in the lives of students on campus while providing a valuable service for faculty members within the College of Education. Over the course of the last fiscal year, we completed 21 projects for faculty in the COE. These projects ranged from showcase videos to celebrations of WOU’s culture and rich history.
One fact not mentioned in the State of The Loop was the volunteers who worked with us. During the previous year, we had over 500 work hours of volunteer labor from approximately 30 different students on our projects. This brought the total number of hours of student involvement up to 2,900 hours, or an average of 80 hours per person involved.
On top of that, we are currently in the process of discussing options to expand our services to other academic areas on campus. While these conversations are still in the early stages of discussion, we will be unable to even consider providing these services if we are unable to sustain our funding. If we expand, we will also need to have a more complete arsenal of cameras and other equipment to facilitate the increased workload.
Finally, Q-Loop is currently planning to host community education nights that will be open to members of both the Western community, and the wider Monmouth-Independence community. Our goal with this is to provide educational workshops on topics ranging from photography to low budget videography and podcasting. A Facebook poll that we put up in the Independence and Monmouth Community Chat Group to gauge interest received close to 100 responses and demonstrates a demand for these kind of workshop sessions. These sessions will also provide our students with the opportunity to teach the skills they are learning, allowing them to continue to grow a deeper understanding of the subject matter through the process of teaching.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Q-Loop has shown to be attractive to students here at WOU. One of our team members stated that Q-Loop is what cemented their decision to attend WOU. With the proper advertising, could be an incredible asset to WOU’s PR strategy. It also provides a unique alternative to Art School for those interested in careers within the entertainment industry. The opportunity to work in, and especially to run a video/media production house is a rare opportunity for college students and can be used to attract those interested in media production.
Another thing that Q-Loop excels at is keeping its members at Western. Q-Loop prides itself on its ability to provide money to students who might otherwise struggle to make it through college; while also providing the opportunity for students to grow in fields that interest them. The money we pay our team directly helps make school more affordable, while providing a high impact professional environment for students. As stated before, Art School is expensive, and Q-Loop provides an alternative for those who may not be privileged enough to afford it, especially when combined with Western’s focus into becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution. Q-Loop also provides opportunities for those who have an interest in media production but might not be willing to explore it as a career.
Canvas Learning Management System
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $$100,000-120,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
This UBAC proposal is for funding for the adoption of a new Learning Management (LMS) System, Canvas. Our current system, Moodle, has reached a point of failure at our current scale and cannot support continued growth in online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced programming. Replacing our LMS is both a critical need and a strategic investment in WOU’s future.
The LMS Review Team did extensive research to evaluate Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, and D2L. The team evaluated software functionality, technical specifications, user interface, and salient features of each LMS. The four LMS vendors were invited to WOU to demo their products in Fall 2019. The team also conducted campuswide surveys on LMS use at WOU and vendor demo surveys. From this research, the LMS Review Team recommended that we pilot Canvas with the intention to adopt it as our new LMS . This recommendation was unanimously approved by UTAC. Adoption of Canvas addresses and/or solves all of the Moodle issues listed below.
Moodle is distributed on an as-is basis with no support offered beyond online documentation and user forums, leaving problems up to our small support team to identify, troubleshoot and fix. Moodle has many serious problems that sometimes lead to loss of student work and instructor content. These issues are often acknowledged by the Moodle development team but go unresolved for months or even years. Many of these issues have caused major problems for online courses at WOU. Moodle also has smaller bugs and quirks which come up frequently and add to the workload and frustration of instructors and students. These include roles and gradebook data intermittently displaying incorrectly, confusing backup options leading to frustration and occasional content loss, and confusing and unintuitive quiz review and gradebook options that often result in student frustration.
The LMS Review Team conducted faculty and student surveys. From these surveys, the top dislikes were: customizing pages can be tedious; the quiz question bank takes a lot of practice to use well; Moodle is sometimes slow loading pages with assignments; it is disorganized, clunky, with no standardization of common class functions (e.g., syllabus); quizzes and gradebook are difficult to set up; courses must be migrated to a new Moodle every other year; it is difficult to give feedback on discussions, and many others.
Depending on the study, 56-94% of college students are currently using mobile apps and smartphones to complete online college coursework. Moodle is difficult to use in a mobile browser and important content that should be displayed on the right side is unintuitively dropped to the bottom of every page. Canvas, on the other hand, has two separate, dedicated mobile apps for instructors and students which were designed from the ground up rather than simply by compressing the LMS to fit on a mobile screen.
Canvas has many benefits, including: it is the national LMS leader; has many adopters in Oregon, including Chemeketa Community College, providing a smooth transfer transition to WOU; has a clean, consistent, and professional appearance to minimize cognitive load; has a simple, intuitive user interface; includes graphic analytics reporting, includes integrated learning outcomes to improve retention and assist struggling students; has strong features to support accessibility, including an Accessibility Checker Tool; simplifies integration of video and audio; has an easy markup process, speed grading, and a built-in media recorder; does automatic updates without downtime; backs up content at the course level; can leverage the automation plugins that we used in Moodle; automates course design by linking calendars, dates, syllabi, start and stop dates, and exams/quizzes; and includes features to strongly support FERPA compliance.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The primary measurable impact would be increased enrollment and retention of students in online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced courses. We also anticipate that Canvas will support an increase in online programs and degree pathways because it is significantly easier to design and create new courses in Canvas.
Based on faculty and student feedback surveys, there is frustration and dissatisfaction with Moodle in areas of reliability and ease of use and design. So, we expect to see a reduction in faculty and student frustration and dissatisfaction after implementing Canvas. Another measurable impact will be increased productivity and satisfaction of faculty, students, and staff. These impacts could be measured through direct feedback to LMS support staff, reduction in the number and severity of support requests, as well as faculty and student surveys. Another potential measurable impact would be an increase in the number of transfer students from local institutions also using Canvas.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
HSI
Title 5 funding prioritizes focus on expanding distance education technologies. Adopting Canvas will position us to leverage these funds more effectively and expediently.
One study reveals that “Professors in any classroom setting, but particularly in one with Hispanic students, will be able to improve course grades by incorporating e-learning tools into the course design. Hispanic students, because of language and cultural barriers, will greatly benefit from course design enriched with e-learning tools, because these tools will result in improved student self-efficacy...Improved performance in the classroom will lead to better retention rates for Hispanic students.” https://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no3/johnson_0913.htm. Canvas will better support integration of e-learning tools into course design because it is easier to adopt and use.
Online courses, programs, and degree pathways give all students greater flexibility, allowing students to succeed in school while maintaining their commitments to family and jobs.
Enrollment
Investing in the Canvas LMS would support many goals articulated in the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan, which states, “The creation of intentional and meaningful policies and procedures that support an increase in the number of “flexible format” (e.g., hybrid, offsite, and online) courses and programs offered, the quality of those offerings, and improved support of the students in those sections, will create increased interest and a sustainable market share in those offerings.”
Canvas will provide a more robust and intuitive platform for: an online pathway through General Education, creation of online or hybrid “laboratory” courses, increasing the number of online sections for courses that experienced high demand the prior term, creating training and support for students enrolled in online / alternative courses to improve retention and academic performance, increasing resources to support online, hybrid and technology enhanced courses through improved infrastructure and professional development, and exploring new online program opportunities. All of these activities would have the potential to increase enrollment and improve retention.
Retention
The Canvas LMS would reduce the cognitive load for students, remove barriers for instructor involvement in online courses by providing a more intuitive and user friendly system, and provide custom-designed mobile apps that facilitate accessing and keeping up in online courses.
Research indicates that primarily face-to-face students who take online classes have lower success rates, and WOU instructors have reported seeing this phenomenon in their courses. A more robust LMS infrastructure would support the creation of tools and resources to help face-to-face students adapt to the online environment.
Because of its ease-of-use, Canvas will also support the creation of new hybrid courses, which is the focus of WOU’s new Salem campus. The flexibility of online and hybrid learning allows students to stay in school while fulfilling their obligations to jobs and family.
Affordability
Canvas would support the growth and development of online programs, and online courses/programs save students the cost of transportation to and from campus and provide students with increased flexibility to earn money by working part- or full-time.
OpenStax course shells available in Canvas Commons could be used to adopt Open Educational Resources that save students money by eliminating the need for expensive textbooks. https://openstax.org/blog/openstax-books-are-now-available-canvas-course-shells
Budget Request for Second Year of Organizational Leadership Program
Submitted On: January 12 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $215,000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $250,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $300,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $350,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I am requesting a budget increase for the 2020-2021 academic year for the Master's Degree in Organizational Leadership program.
The Master of Arts (MA) in Organizational Leadership (OL) provides opportunities for students to develop leadership skills that can be applied to business, government, nonprofit, or educational settings. The program includes instruction in organizational planning, leadership principles, communication, creativity and innovation, team building, conflict resolution and mediation, communication and other critical management skills and competencies. Students will not only grow as professionals through action-based learning, but they also make a positive impact on their communities and workplaces through a practical application of cumulative skills.
The 2019-2020 budget of $150,000 for the Organizational Leadership program has been used to cover the following costs:
1. compensation for faculty teaching courses in the program.
2. services and supplies related to program management.
3. support continuing faculty development.
4. half of the cost of an Office Specialist 1 (other half is covered by the WOU Salem initiative).
5. compensation the program coordinator.
Several factors drive the need for a budget increase for the Organizational Leadership program in the 2020-2021 academic year. First and foremost, the program will be offering twice as many courses in the 2020-2021 academic year as compared to the 2019-2020 academic year. During the 2019-2020 academic year, the OL program offered 3 classes per term, enough to keep all students enrolled at full-time status. In the 2020-2021 academic year, the OL program will offer 6 courses per year. Three of the courses will support existing students in their ability to graduate in a timely fashion while the other three courses will be targeted to new students entering the program. A second factor necessitating the need for a budget increase is the real versus projected costs of faculty compensation. In our original budget model, faculty compensation was projected using an estimate for the replacement cost of faculty from the regular unit (e.g., $4500). In reality, the OL program is often paying faculty directly from the our budget index, meaning the OL program is responsible for both salary and Other Personnel Expenses (OPE) resulting in significantly greater costs to the program than the budgeted $4500 per course.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The primary impact of this proposal will be the retention and graduation of the students in the Organizational Leadership program.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Student success in the program will allow WOU to retain current students and grow enrollment in the program; the two primary budget priorities this proposal is targeting. During the fall 2019 and winter 2020 terms, Master's level OL classes have averaged 18 students per class and generated nearly $120,000 in tuition. We have more students enrolling during spring term so we anticipate the tuition revenue to substantially exceed the costs associated with the program.
Permanent Funding for Bilingual Advocate Outreach Coordinator at Abby's House
Submitted On: January 12 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $62,454.00
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
In order to provide quality, culturally-relevant, trauma-informed service to the WOU Community we need to permanently fund the Bilingual Advocate Outreach Coordinator position at Abby’s House. This position was created through a grant, which will end September 30, 2020. Without the grant we will be unable to sustain this position at Abby’s House. Additionally, this position also provides supervision for the students who run the WOU Food Pantry (FTE is currently .7 Bilingual Advocate and .3 Food Pantry Supervision). This role is the only professional staff position on campus with Food Pantry in their FTE.
Having a second confidential advocate is vital to the success of our work at Abby’s House. Students need options in terms of who they are comfortable speaking with, and in making the position bilingual we have expanded our ability to reach students in an intentional and forward-thinking way. The second confidential advocate is also integral to Abby’s House in avoiding burnout and compassion fatigue. If we are not able to secure funding for this position we will be back to only one confidential option for students, and no colleague for that advocate to de-brief with; this is far from best practice. In this type of work professional support and collaboration is key. It is better for students and better for WOU to have two confidential advocates.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Since hiring this position in April 2019, the Bilingual Advocate Outreach Coordinator (BAOC) has made measurable positive impact on our campus. On the Food Pantry side of things, our BAOC helped to develop and launch a Voucher Program, in which students have a private conversation about their food security needs and walk away with a gift card for Waremart or Dining Services. Through this program 38 students received a voucher; additionally, as a result of the voucher conversation 27 students got assistance filling out SNAP applications. On the Abby’s House side, the BAOC has provided confidential, direct service to 13 students. This includes safety planning, letters of support, supporting students through the Conduct process, and assisting students in reaching law enforcement and other off campus resources. Since they started in April, the BAOC has facilitated 19 Outreach Programs across campus and in total has reached 829 individuals in the WOU community.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Becoming an HIS:
This position is already written as bilingual (English and Spanish). As we reach for the goal of becoming an HIS, having bilingual, bicultural staff only grows in importance. Offering culturally-relevant support to our students in need will make them feel welcome, and important to our community.
Increasing Retention:
We know that young people who experience violence are at higher risk for dropping out of school. Maintaining the Bilingual Advocate Outreach Coordinator position gives us twice the chance to support students through their trauma, making their success at WOU much more likely. The BAOC does a variety of outreach across campus to raise awareness about Abby’s House and Food Pantry resources. This position is also in the process of assessing barriers to service for traditionally underserved students. As we get to know our community’s needs we can better support our students through whatever challenges they may face.
Campus Logic for Financial Aid
Submitted On: January 10 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $50,000-60,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Third party contract with Campus Logic for financial aid verification and award letter processing.
The Financial Aid Office faces obstacles every year that impact our ability to effectively process and award students in a timely fashion. The obstacles come in maintaining trained staff, keeping up with increasing regulatory burdens, and system updates just to name a few. The obstacles can create student challenges such as, low student engagement, enrollment loss, paper intensive processes, a less than preferred student experience, incomplete forms, and high call volumes.
Contracting with Campus Logic will provide an early response to students, a mobile friendly platform, data metrics to allow for data-driven decision making, and will provide the financial aid office with regulatory updates to systems, forms and student award letters that are ready to go when the year begins.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The primary measurable impact of this proposal will not only be in the improved student experience but in office efficiencies provided with the Campus Logic system. Currently, over 500 colleges and universities use their system which help offices "weather" employment fluctuations, thus the office doesn’t lose momentum during the hiring and training of new staff when turnover occurs.
In Campus Logic’s mobile platform, students can complete verification and submit documentation on the go from their phone, tablet or computer by electronically and securely transmitting their signed forms (which may contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) protected under the Higher Education Act) and can submit pictures of required documentation thus saving students the time and frustration of mailing, faxing or hand delivering items.
The current verification process is a manual, paper-driven system, where financial aid counselors can each review up to 10-20 student files per day. Using Campus Logics system, electronic forms and documents are securely pulled into our system and onto the student’s account in our document imaging system, providing a seamless transmittal of data. The completed records are reviewed for accuracy by the counseling team and then processed, allowing for up to 100+ records reviewed per counselor, per day. More electronic processes mean less misplacement of paper forms and less requirements of matching documents with a student record. Campus Logic also continues to notify students if they have not completed the verification process, sending email reminders letting them know, thus reducing staff time required to keep this up.
Additionally, easy navigation through a mobile platform makes students happier with our processes, allowing for fewer touch points in the process, fewer interactions to complete the process of being awarded makes for a better customer service experience with financial aid and the institution on a larger scale.
Campus Logic also provides early response in the process since they take care of the front-end work of setting up the new year regulatory requirements for verification, changes to the required documentation, and award letter formats and updates all of which must be in place when the year begins. These updates, processes, and documentation can take 3-4 weeks to implement all of which happen at a very busy time of year which can delay the rollout of early award offers.
In conferring with other institutions who use Campus Logic, they are able to be efficient and timely in file processing. Institutions report they are able to stay within 1-2 weeks processing turn around time as compared with our current 6-8 weeks processing turn time.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
This budget proposal relates to several budgetary priorities but specifically Student Success and Accountability.
1. Student Success – in conferring with other institutions who use Campus Logic’s system, they have been able to streamline and improve university processes that ultimately support student achievement. Specifically, other universities are able to reduce their processing time to be within 1-2 weeks turn-around as compared with our current 6-8 weeks turn time. A reduced processing time translates into more students enrolling and improved retention. Prior year estimates show that 30% of all FAFSA applicants who were selected for verification review and who applied to WOU, never completed the required process, thus possibly leaving WOU during the first year.
2. Accountability – we have a budgetary obligation to enhance and support campus communication systems. Bolstering the financial aid office systems which support over 78% of all enrolled students, not only helps retain current year students through the myriad of processes but is also good for recruiting purposes when we can tell students and parents that we have a fast, easy, and accessible financial aid process.
Instructional Designer Position in Academic Innovation
Submitted On: January 10 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $$6000
Expected Ongoing Costs: $$89324
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
This proposal is based on the findings of 1) the 2018 Center of Educational Excellence report and 2) the 2019 Library and Academic Technology Steering Committee report, both of which recommend two Instructional Designer positions for Academic Innovation. Both reports were written before WOU was approved to purchase the Vick building and build a new Salem Campus. This exciting growth area for hybrid course development will increase our collective need for instructional design expertise on campus. In addition to supporting this emerging need, a second instructional designer would also assist with online and technology-enhanced course development for the broader WOU campus.
Goals:
*Support curricular innovation and accountability for online,hybrid, and technology-enhanced courses and programs.
*Expand online and hybrid offerings by increasing faculty development support for innovative curricular design and delivery efforts.
*Ensure competitive, high quality online programs and courses that meet educational standards and support our strategic planning goals related academic excellence.
*Support innovative programs focused on student success (e.g., the Apple Partnership).
*Provide faculty support and professional development to engage in open, equitable, and accessible pedagogical models, including the use of Open Educational Resources
This proposal aligns with many of our strategic objectives for Student Success, Academic Excellence, and Sustainability and Stewardship.
Based on CUPA salary data provided by Human Resources, a base salary of $47,694 - $53,000 would be appropriate. With OPE, the total maximum ongoing cost for compensation could be up to $89324.
Startup costs would be for search expenses and a new workstation, possibly up to $6000.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Faculty will report that they are better supported in their efforts to create high-quality online,hybrid, and technology-enhanced course content
The number of online courses and degree pathways will increase
The number of faculty using Open Educational Resources in their online courses will increase
Enrollment in online courses and programs will increase
Retention in online courses and programs will increase
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
1 - making WOU a Hispanic Serving Institution
With increased staffing, the Academic Innovation unit will be able to achieve our strategic plan direction to “increase faculty development support to implement culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum.” Also, an instructional designer can influence a faculty member’s choice of course materials and can steer instructors toward OER instead of expensive commercial textbooks. While studies indicate all students who use OER perform just as well or better than students in courses that use traditional textbooks, non-White students’ grades “improved at a higher rate than their [White] counterparts and the DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal) rates decreased dramatically for the [non-White] population.”
2 - growing enrollment (i.e., attracting new students)
Increased staffing would allow the Academic Innovation Unit to more effectively support the following aspects of the Strategic Enrollment Plan, which states, “The creation of intentional and meaningful policies and procedures that support an increase in the number of “flexible format” (e.g., hybrid, offsite, and online) courses and programs offered, the quality of those offerings, and improved support of the students in those sections, will create increased interest and a sustainable market share in those offerings.”
*Provide an online pathway through General Education
*Examine how to offer online or hybrid “laboratory” courses
*Increase the number of online sections for courses that experience high demand the prior term
*Create training and support for students enrolled in online / alternative courses
*Increase resources to support online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced courses through improved infrastructure and professional development
*Explore new online program opportunities
3 - improving retention (i.e., keeping the students we already have);
*Provide professional development support for faculty to implement high impact practices in their courses
*Partner with the Office of Disability Services to provide professional development and support for universal design in course design
4 - making WOU the most affordable public university in Oregon.
*The Library is implementing a program (funding recommended by UBAC last year) to support faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources and other freely available materials to replace expensive textbooks. This program provides faculty with a stipend to support and encourage the adoption of OER, but we currently lack the staff resources to provide curriculum development and course redesign support for those who engage in this process. This position would allow us to increase support for OER adoption, which will help make WOU the most affordable public university in Oregon.
*This position would support the growth and development of online programs, and online courses/programs save students the cost of transportation to and from campus and provide students with increased flexibility to earn money by working part- or full-time.
Campus Sustainability Director
Submitted On: January 10 2020
Budget Priorities: Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $55000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $TBD
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $TBD
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $TBD
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
This "Campus Sustainability Director" position that we propose will provide technical expertise and visionary leadership in creating and delivering unique sustainability-centered programming for WOU.
This position will be housed in the Provost’s Office, but about 40% of the work will be to engage with students through projects that will be for the campus and for the surrounding communities and through formal classes. The majority—60%--of the work will be to work with various offices in order to (re)think through the processes and devise sustainable practices that will have lesser impacts on the natural environment and also deliver cost-savings for the university.
Thus, working closely with engaged faculty and academic leadership, the Sustainability Director will guide the unique and forward-looking integration of sustainability concepts and themes throughout the curriculum and the institutional culture. The Director will develop connections at the interface of traditional academic work and co-curricular opportunities; collaborate to provide faculty development opportunities; and will also actively engage with student learning.
Beyond the academic elements of the work, the Director will lead and energize individuals, offices, and departments around shared sustainability objectives and activities, promote a culture of collaboration, and coordinate the reporting of key internal and external metrics. This work involves strengthening programming across functional areas of the university. These partnerships are critical requirements in order to ensure that necessary data is gathered and shared regarding college progress towards stated sustainability goals.
The Director will also work to secure additional programmatic grant support, and lead or co-lead execution of approved grants. All segments of the campus will see the Director as a resource to be included in or consulted on any matter related to sustainability. The Director will leverage existing networks and further cultivate connections with constituencies beyond the College—cities, counties, businesses, and nonprofits. Guiding these activities are natural connections between the social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability and the university’s mission.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
There are at least four outcomes that can be easily measured:
1. How much has the university been able to reduce its negative impacts on the natural environment?
2. How much has the university realized as cost savings thanks to the sustainable practices?
3. How much new money was secured through grants for sustainability-related activities and projects?
4. What is the impact on student engagement and success?
The scope is vast.
It should be noted that the impact on student engagement and success will not be merely through traditional academic work. The metric will focus on thesis and research work on sustainability on campus and in the community; service and experiential learning in sustainability; work presented and published through AES and PURE. Student success will be enhanced via greater opportunities for students to do on and off campus paid and unpaid internships, jobs, and other projects with community partners.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
There is no doubt that the Campus Sustainability Director’s work will lead to tangible and measurable increase in student success and engagement, which fits in with the President’s budgetary priorities on academic excellence.
The efficiencies gained will significantly contribute to cost-savings, along with new grants that the Director brings in, are absolutely consistent with the President’s budgetary priority of making WOU the most affordable public university in Oregon.
This proposal is also well-aligned with the Strategic Plan, in particular—in the context of budgetary priorities--with “Embed sustainability as a fundamental value” and “Diversify and expand revenue sources.” The Campus Sustainability Director will implement what we have stated in the Mission/Vision/Values: "Leadership in service of the public good; action to improve the health of our planet; responsibility for preserving and enhancing the natural,structural, financial, intellectual and human resources entrusted to us."
Centralizing Transfer Course Articulation Services
Submitted On: January 10 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $7,000.00
Expected Ongoing Costs: $67,271.00
Expected Revenue After One Year: $Unknown
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $Unknown
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $Unknown
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
We propose to:
Centralize evaluation of transfer student academic transcripts in the Transfer Pathways office so that the needs and concerns of transfer students can be in the forefront.
Purchase an enhancement to our Transfer Evaluation System (TES) that will allow students and faculty to request course articulations electronically and directly.
This proposal advances key elements of WOU’s strategic plan:
1.2.2 Provide intentional and effective transfer paths to graduation.
1.4.4 Strengthen commitment to diversity and equity by enhancing support and academic services for students.
4.3.5 Strengthen and expand community college partnerships to promote educational attainment.
Funds are requested for:
(1) modest, one-time start-up funds establishing Transfer Pathways as a functional unit within Academic Affairs and relocate staff to an appropriate space with appropriate equipment. Expected one-time cost of $7,000.00.
(2) 1.0 FTE Administrative Program Assistant (job title: Transcript Evaluator) whose primary responsibilities are to:
Research, evaluate and articulate new and existing courses using guidelines set by academic units
Manage select components of the Transfer Evaluation System (TES) to facilitate communication and decision making among stakeholders
Manage Banner transfer tables until we transition to the Transfer Evaluation System (TES)
Using TES, route permanent course articulation requests to Division Chairs for approval
Provide administrative support to the Transfer Pathways director and service to transfer students when the director is in the field
Expected ongoing cost of $62,714 (salary & OPE)
(3) Purchase of a TES enhancement that will put students and faculty in the driver’s seat to electronically and directly request course articulations using the workflow in TES. Expected ongoing cost of $4,557.00 with an annual increase of 4% each year.
Last year more than 70% of WOU undergraduate students transferred credits. We expect that trend to continue given the increased diversity of our students, and Oregon’s emphasis on accelerated learning in high school and free community college.
The new Transfer Pathways office that has jump-started:
the establishment of Degree Partnership Programs with key community colleges,
adoption of the Transfer Evaluation System (TES) to facilitate research and review of transfer credits,
review and articulation of large numbers of general education courses from Oregon’s community colleges, and collaboration between WOU’s faculty and community college faculty
But students still face significant challenges in having transfer credits articulated, partly because responsibility for this is spread among multiple offices (i.e., Admissions, Registrar) where the work is but one part of a staff person’s larger responsibilities. Given this, it is time to centralize the articulation of transfer credits.
Benefits:
This investment would:
Locate transfer articulation within the unit that manages the TES system, works with community colleges and their faculty, and is the node of activity for transfer processes
Reduce the burden on staff in the Registrar’s Office and Admissions so that their efforts can be redeployed to high value activities that align with those offices’ missions and roles
Accelerate a reduction in the use of paper forms needing multiple signatures
Reduce the reactive and repetitive work of student-level exceptions.
Associate articulations with appropriate time frames to reduce residency-related, repeated credit and pre-requisite issues for students, each of which may interfere with timely graduation.
Reduce duplication of effort when articulations need to be reconfigured to work in Degree Tracks or when student level exceptions need to be noted and corrected manually when the student changes major
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
In the short term, we expect measurable impact on transfer student reports of their experiences. In summer 2019 a task-force convened to advise the Transfer Pathways office in the development of a transfer student experience survey. The following people contributed to the survey design and a larger transfer conversation on campus.
Debi Brannan - Psychology faculty
Sue Monahan - Associate Provost, Academic Programs
Amy Clark - University Registrar
Lori Palmer - Admissions
Robert Hoffman - Financial Aid
Jennifer Koshnick - Student Enrichment Program
Susan Griffin - IDS Program Coordinator
Melissa Hinzman - Student Success and Advising
Gabbi Boyle - Student Success and Advising
Administered annually, the survey will provide baseline data on transfer experiences, including barriers; allowing us to target areas for improvement, and facilitate the assessment of our work with transfer students. The survey will gather baseline data in winter or spring of 2020.
We will analyze data on satisfaction questions to assess changes in the transfer student experience over time, and expect to see improvements in student satisfaction over time.
Questions include:
How satisfied are you with these parts of your WOU experience?
How your transfer credits applied to your WOU degree requirements
The petition and appeals process for courses you think should meet degree requirements
The petition and appeals process for courses you think should meet General Education requirements
Academic advising you received at TSOAR (Transfer Orientation)
Academic advising you received from your academic program (major) at WOU
How often has this happened to you?
A faculty/staff member went above and beyond to help you solve a problem
You were not able to register for a class because the prerequisite course was taken somewhere other than WOU
You unnecessarily repeated a course because WOU did not apply your transfer credit to degree requirements
You received conflicting information from different people or offices at WOU
We expect that an improved experience would have a positive, long-term impact on transfer student recruitment, retention and graduation. That can be assessed in the longer term looking at application numbers, yield rates, retention rates and graduation rates for transfer students.
In the short term, however, in the year after the investment, we would measure the success of the effort based on the transfer survey.
We have worked extensively with the office of the Registrar and Admissions in development of this proposal. Those offices support this initiative, noting that transfer student retention, persistence and success at graduation will be enhanced by the addition of a dedicated transcript evaluator who is integrated into the Transfer Pathways Office and has the needed bandwidth to proactively manage our transfer articulations.
This is a request for a new position. The Registrar and Admissions Offices have identified ways in which this change will enable their staff to focus on high priority tasks that are currently stalled. The support of this proposal by these offices points to how this change can contribute WOU more effectively serving all students.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
This proposal aligns with the following budgetary priorities: affordability, enrollment growth, and improved retention rates.
Affordability - by maximizing the use of transfer credits for degree completion, a college education becomes more attainable and increases affordability because students are not unnecessarily repeating coursework. In addition, this allows students to build on the pre transfer momentum they have created and enter the workforce more quickly.
Enrollment Growth - Reliable, accurate articulation tables and a seamless transfer transition are key to WOU becoming a transfer destination of choice. This proposal creates an environment and institutional culture that allows WOU to be nimble enough to adapt to the changing student demographics and needs in our state by providing students the information they need, when they need it. This system creates an environment in which the Transfer Pathways office can be a proactive advocate for transfer student needs by transitioning from a reactive system to a proactive system that benefits all students.
Improved retention rates - The centralization of transfer articulations will improve retention rates because it allows WOU to provide current and prospective students with the information they need to make an informed choice prior to transferring a course. It will also enable WOU to better manage student expectations through the entire transfer process. Most importantly, this proposal no longer requires students to be their own primary advocate. Instead, the newly envisioned university system will advocate for all students through the policies and procedures that allow students to focus on their academics.
Eliminating matriculation fees for specific group of students
Submitted On: January 09 2020
Budget Priorities: Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success
Expected Ongoing Costs: $20,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Students whose FAFSA makes them eligible to receive Pell grants, Oregon Opportunity and WOU Supplemental Fund--for maximum amounts in 2 of these grants--should have their matriculation fee waived ($365). Though the amount of the matriculation fee might seem negligible considering the overall cost of education, for students in difficult financial situations, the fee can be a significant barrier; and the smallest obstacle can become an insurmountable barrier when students are having financial difficulties.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Ease the financial burden on students who are already in difficult financial situation.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Waiving the matriculation fee will ease the financial burden on specific students--hence improve affordability and maybe improve retention since financial difficulties are frequently the reason students become discouraged and leave the university.
Student Research & Scholarship Travel Fund
Submitted On: January 09 2020
Budget Priorities: Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $20,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Currently, WOU has no consistent or university-wide approach to fund student travel to attend or present at academic, scholarly, or research conferences or meetings. Funding happens locally at a departmental or divisional basis, often using diverse sources: University Foundation grants, Department or Division funds, or Dean’s budgetary support for travel to specific events. Currently, there is no clear, consistent, accessible, or equitable university-wide approach for students to apply for and receive funding to support research experiences and scholarly and academic development. Instead, funding depends on localized support with limited awareness, communication, and information about funding processes and priorities.
This proposal will provide a central, university-wide pool of funds where any student, sponsored by a staff or faculty member, regardless of department, program, or division, can apply for support. PURE Board members, who represent diverse fields, will review funding applications on a quarterly basis.
Annual funding of $20,000 would be 100% dedicated to supporting student travel. PURE Board members will help review applications; administrative work and support will be integrated into the PURE Director’s workflow with support from CiP Interns and/or student workers; PURE would absorb minimal supply and resource costs.
Annually, the $20,000 would be divided as below. If funding of larger or smaller amounts occurred, the segments would retain the same split for a period of three years—after those three years, the PURE Board could reassess if the funding areas were meeting the areas of greatest need.
Local or Regional
$5,000 for small, $100–250 grants to attend in-state or regional conference (no presentation required).
$5,000 for $250–500 grants for instate or regional poster or conference presentations (presentations or poster required).
National
$10,000 for $500–1,000 grants for regional or national conference or poster presentations (presentations or posters required).
This approach offers funding to students at the start, middle, and end of their research arcs. Thus applications to attend local or regional conferences would be useful for first- and second-year students; presenting locally or regionally would be viable for second to fourth year students; regional and national conference presentation funding is designed to help cover higher levels of expense that accompany travel, access, and admission to research, scholarly, and disciplinary events. The funding ranges are meant to provide maximum support while enabling students to travel to more expensive events, such as conferences across the country or in expensive locations like Chicago or New York.
Grants could be used to pay for:
• Travel
• Room
• Conference registration fee
• Professional organization membership fee necessary to attend a conference or meeting
• Material costs for printing posters or other presentation related material
• Publication fees related to printing of conference proceedings
Funding Process:
• All applicants would need brief letter of application, minimal budget, and faculty or staff letter of support.
• Only one award allowed per student each academic year. Students could reapply in the following year or years.
• PURE Board would ensure distribution across diverse disciplines over the academic year.
• Funding distribution would be spread across all three quarters (30% each) as well as 10% for summer as different fields convene at different times. Unused funds would roll forward into the next quarter.
• Applications would be reviewed by 2 board members: one from the field or related field and one who is not. If case of disagreement, a third board member would review. Reviews would be developed from existing CUR rubrics and modified for WOU.
• Funds would be distributed upon confirmation of attendance by sponsoring faculty member and board approval.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The primary measurable impact is to track the number of attendees and presenters who go to diverse academic, scholarly, and research conferences and meetings within the state, region, or country. We will work with multiple groups on campus in order to promote awareness of this.
A secondary impact is to track recipients’ retention and academic success at WOU.
A tertiary impact is to encourage applicants to present at Academic Excellence Showcase either before or after students travel to a conference or event.
PURE will track the longitudinal relationship between funding recipients and engagement with AES and other PURE-related activities that promote undergraduate research experiences on campus. Ideally, PURE would collaborate with the library and departmental leads to track student success in presentations and publications, but–at this point–that’s putting the cart before the horse.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
The Budgetary Priority indicated for this proposal is to increase student retention.
Simply stated, we would longitudinally track retention of funding recipients over a period of five to seven years.
More generally, this is based on the premise that by providing exposure to academic research and scholarship early in students’ careers, as well as providing support for research travel and presentations, students will have the opportunity to be more engaged with their faculty sponsors, their content areas, peers who are also traveling to or presenting at conferences, as well as the potential to connect with a larger scholarly community. Supporting students’ ability to network with peers, potential to create and join community, as well as accomplish something significant early in their academic career, all provide positive motivators and reasons to stay at WOU. If students know they can strive, have support for those efforts, and belong to a larger community with these same goals, this could provide more connections, and thus reasons, for students to remain at WOU.
Improving Campus Climate: Train the Trainers for Bystander Intervention
Submitted On: January 09 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $11250
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Our goal is to create a training program that equips students, staff, and faculty to more effectively engage in interventions when they see or experience hostile communication in the workplace or classroom. We are seeking funding for a cohort of five employees to attend a train-the-trainer bystander intervention program. This model will allow us to 1)create a self-sustaining bystander intervention training program capable of growing and responding to our specific campus needs; 2)create a network of people who are trained to engage in everyday interventions that have the potential to create immediate, positive impacts on our campus climate; and 3)create a more welcoming and inclusive environment that is deserving of our increasingly diverse students and employees.
WOU’s climate is an ongoing issue that has proven difficult to address. A recent survey conducted through ASWOU, campus climate surveys, and informal surveys done through organizations like SafeZone consistently show that folks experience hostility based on their perceived identities and/or due to workplace power imbalances, and these experiences make learning and working significantly more difficult, if not impossible. These bad behaviors often continue because of the difficulty of speaking out, often with perceptions of job security or grades on the line.
Those of us who regularly attend trainings on inclusivity and social justice tend to see the same faces in the room. For example, a recent SafeZone training was comprised of people already adept at making the learning environment safer for LGBTQ+ students. However, several members expressed fear of talking about these issues in meetings due to the overt hostility they face in those environments. Organizations like SafeZone and MSSP may never reach those overtly hostile faculty and staff members through voluntary trainings, and thus they continue to engage in these bad behaviors and make places less inviting.
Our current reporting processes rely on people who have experienced bias to speak out, to do so in real time, to fill out reporting forms with identifying information, and, often, to do so across differences of social and economic standing, across power differentials such as tenure status or hierarchies in job titles. Many times, advocates want to intervene, but we hear that they simply don’t feel they have the skills to do so effectively and safely. Bystander intervention training can give us the tools to be more effective as we work toward inclusion.
This training program attempts to create a wedge in this cycle, equipping motivated people to learn how to intervene in those hostile spaces. We are hopeful that if properly trained, faculty and staff can create a network of people who can make interventions that invite people into a learning environment around their actions and beliefs to create an environment where people feel empowered to create a more informed, inclusive, and welcoming environment for people to work and learn.
We also know these programs work. Creating an inclusive community space can promote student, faculty, and staff retention rates, which cuts down on the cost of recruiting and onboarding training programs. Research consistently shows that students who feel included in the lessons are more likely to be successful in the classroom and are more likely to graduate. When universities retain diverse students and employees, the process of recruiting future students and employees from those same groups is significantly easier.
As this network grows, this program would also provide WOU with trainers who could attend meetings with victims to help de-escalate conflict in ways that encourage empathy. While no workplace is perfect, seeing people intervene effectively spreads the message that people here do care and are working toward an environment of justice and inclusion.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The most immediate measurable impact of the proposal will be a small cadre of trainers including both faculty and staff. Following this, we anticipate being able to track the number of individuals taking part in training activities and the relative interest in such activities. Data collected on participation might include home unit (i.e. location in the organizational chart), HR designation (i.e. classified staff, unclassified staff, faculty), and years of service. As part of proposal assumes that trainers would be engaging in outreach to all units, but especially academic divisions, we can also explore variations across campus in interest among units by recording the number of academic units requesting to schedule events versus number of academic units to whom trainers must request a scheduled event (and the amount of follow-up communications before an event is scheduled), participation in voluntary or required by supervisor training, and participation in initial or follow-up training. Finally, we can use evaluative response data (likert scale responses to evaluative questions about participant perceptions of the training) combined with market research data (number of participants encouraged to take part by friends and colleagues, number of personnel aware of the opportunity) to gauge whether or not interest increases over time.
The above are direct measurements of impact, although we are more interested in indirect measurements, we also recognize that these are harder to address. Indirect measurements of impact might include increases in the number of faculty and staff with one or more aspects of identity that increase WOU diversity. Similarly, we hope to see improved retention of students from underrepresented groups. If the university intends to use climate surveys in the future, we also expect to see some improvement on these surveys. Last year ASWOU also conducted a survey of climate perceptions by students; were they to repeat this exercise we would hope to see improvements. Depending on availability we could also track the number of student complaints submitted via the bias report form.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
This proposal will help achieve WOU become an HSI, increase retention, and improve affordability.
To become an HSI, we must learn how to actually serve students of color, not just enroll them. Creating a group of faculty leaders who are knowledgeable about how to deal with microaggressions and who can confront racism or other bigoted behaviors will improve the student experience for all students, but particularly for Latinx students and other students of color. Ideally, by training trainers who will them disseminate information to faculty and staff broadly, we will lead a cultural shift in how we interact with each other and with students.
Addressing campus climate now will help to ensure that our rising numbers of students, faculty and staff from nondominant groups see WOU as a place that is deserving of their contributions to our classrooms and our institution.
This proposal will increase retention by decreasing the number of negative incidents that students face that might lead them to drop out or transfer away from WOU. Data collected by ASWOU and stories provided by students in an AES session on microaggressions demonstrates that faculty and staff perform non-inclusive behaviors that negatively impact the students’ experiences and may lead to students feeling unwelcome at WOU. Students who experience microaggressions and other problematic behavior from faculty and staff do not experience the sense of belonging in college that leads to college retention and completion. By training a small group of faculty and staff to be interveners in tough situations, and by spreading positive models of communication, we can decrease the number and severity of instances in which students feel unwelcome or poorly treated.
This proposal will also increase affordability by decreasing attrition of faculty and staff. There have been notable departures of faculty and staff in recent years, particularly Melinda Shimizu and Weiwei Zhang, who have explicitly cited poor treatment by colleagues in the form of microaggressions and campus climate as one of their reasons to leave WOU. Data collected in recent HR surveys and presented at a variety of campus outlets has shown that coworker tension is a common complaint amongst both faculty and staff, and is cited as a possible reason for leaving WOU. It costs a significant amount of money to search for and hire new faculty and staff, so there are potential cost savings by engaging in this sort of professional development training. Faculty leaving also negatively impacts students in the program, particularly if the faculty member is an integral part of a small program, or serves as an advisor to students, so retaining faculty is essential for both affordability and student retention.
A recent Inside Higher Ed article describes the importance of mentorship and ally training to retain diverse faculty, which of course helps to recruit and retain diverse students. This proposal will help faculty and staff learn how to actually be allies to diverse faculty, staff, and students, by engaging in best practices around bystander intervention and prevention of bias-based incidents.
iDance Mobile Code Lab
Submitted On: January 09 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $13,500
Expected Ongoing Costs: $1,200
Expected Revenue After One Year: $1200
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $1500
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $2000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Finding ways to spark interest in groups not immediately drawn to coding has been a challenge in an economy that consistently lacks candidates and diversity for positions that require coding skills. Women and minorities are consistently underrepresented in these areas and several initiatives have emerged to attract both of those groups, with mixed results. In this proposal, we present one such initiative, iLumiDance & Coding, which attempts to pique the interest and increase confidence of students in coding, by combining it with a fun and physical activity: dance. While not a combination that immediately comes to mind, teaching dance and coding together is a powerful way to create authentic cross-disciplinary connections and spark the interest of learners who might otherwise be reluctant in either domain. Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the ties between dance and coding are numerous and authentic. Coding is a language, just as the construction of visual and kinetic images are a “language” in dance choreography. The word choreography literally means “dance-writing” from the Greek words for dance and writing. In the most basic sense, coding is a set of instructions given to a computer for execution. Dance choreography parallels coding in that it provides instructions for the human body, a “computer” that is self-aware. Beyond just providing instructions, dance choreography and coding share many concepts that cross both disciplines. Both choreography and coding are, at their core, sequences of primitive instructions that are executed in a linear order. They both utilize repetition, whether in an “ABA” ternary form or a “for loop.” They also have conditional statements that help them respond to dynamic situations or states. For example, the choreography may instruct one dancer to execute a solo movement sequence until within a foot of a second dancer, after the music reaches a certain point both dancers lock arms and revolve around a central point or swing your partner round and round. The moonwalk made popular by the late Michael Jackson, provides an excellent mirror to the use of “if- then” statements in coding. The choreography may instruct the dancer to moonwalk until reaching the edge of the performance space, then execute a 540◦ clockwise spin and continue to moonwalk in the opposite direction. Finally, in both coding and choreography we create “functions” by naming sets of instructions or dance moves (waltz, polka, electric slide) which can then be called time and again, without having to recreate the instructions from scratch.
We used student surveys of attitudes toward coding and a variety of statistical approaches to analyze our initiative. Each analysis showed a positive effect on student comfort level with coding. These results are useful for both educators and researchers since they contribute to a deeper understanding of how to increase interest in coding, which we hope will lead to an increase in representation.
With foundation support, we are just $13,500 shy of the $49,720 necessary to purchase and retrofit a 2020 Ford cargo van that will become our mobile dance & coding lab. The iDance Mobile Code Lab will enable WOU (in partnership with 11 of Oregon’s 13 regional STEM Hubs and Apple Inc.) to deliver our proprietary arts-based coding programs to k-12 students throughout Oregon. Furthermore, the iDance Mobile Code Lab will provide WOU students with high impact cross-disciplinary learning opportunities for undergraduate research. Finally, it will provide service learning opportunities for first year seminar students enrolled in FYS 207 Illuminating the Code of Dance and in FYS 207 Drone Dancing. From the campus to the community, WOU “STEAMs” ahead with the iDance Mobile Code Lab by increasing educational opportunities for all Oregonians and especially those from underrepresented communities.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Number of Hispanic k-12 students served: ~4,000
Number of total Oregon k-12 students served: ~10,000
Number of total Washington k-12 students served: ~ 1,000
Number of WOU undergraduates participating in high impact and innovative (dance & coding) research projects: ~150
Number of WOU Hispanic undergraduates participating in high impact and innovative (dance & coding) research projects: ~50
Number of WOU undergraduate employment hours as a result of k-12 dance & coding service projects: ~6
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Number of Hispanic k-12 students served - Hispanic Servicing Institution and Enrollment growth
Number of total Oregon k-12 students served - Enrollment growth
Number of total Washington k-12 students served - Enrollment growth
Number of WOU undergraduate student high...projects - Increase Retention
Number of WOU Hispanic undergraduate... projects - Hispanic Servicing Institution growth and Increase Retention
Number of WOU undergraduate employment opportunities - Increase Retention, Affordability
Equipment for STEM Undergraduate Research Experiences
Submitted On: January 08 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $100,000
Expected Ongoing Costs: $2,000 annually
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
We propose one-time purchase of scientific research equipment plus small amount of annual, ongoing funding for consumables and maintenance for a newly created research laboratory in the Natural Sciences (NS) Building. This laboratory, housed in NS 015, is the first space in the NS Building dedicated to student research. It is also the first campus location to be purposefully planned for multiple faculty to engage in collaborative research with undergraduate WOU students beyond class-based research. It is accessible to all biology faculty and any student with faculty mentorship.
Currently, use of the facility is limited due to lack of equipment and supplies. Funds from the NS Remodel project were used to create this space; however, no funds were available to purchase much-needed equipment, furniture, or consumables. Examples of equipment necessary for students to conduct research include: a Nanodrop to quantitatively measure micro amounts of solutions ($15,600, Thermo Scientific); an inverted compound microscope with phase-contrast and fluorescence ($6,000, Leica); two dissecting microscopes with cameras and fiber optic lights ($3,100 each, Zeiss); two compound microscopes with cameras ($4,000 each, Leica); two research-grade computers with monitors ($5,000 each, Dell); analytical balance ($2,000, OHAUS); consumables, and yearly maintenance (a more extensive list will be provided in Phase II). An alternative funding model is to charge lab fees for mentored research. However, placing the burden of funding on the students would limit access for students with fewer financial resources.
There is ample evidence in the scientific literature that students who experience hands-on research as part of their undergraduate experience, particularly with faculty mentors, are more likely to graduate, and these experiences most benefit underserved minority students (Kuh, 2008). Accordingly, the biology faculty has worked continuously to promote undergraduate research. In the past three years, roughly 10 - 15% of biology majors have participated in mentored, independent research. However, our goal of increasing participation in mentored research cannot be achieved without investment in resources that will enable us to effectively use the new laboratory space. Outside of the new facility, students engaged in mentored research usually work in small, inadequate faculty back-office labs that can generally accommodate only one student at a time. The “back-office” model limits the quality and capacity for student research because these labs are not accessible for all students, and students can typically only work when a faculty member is present, because students must pass through the private faculty office to reach the lab. In contrast, the new laboratory can accommodate several students at once, be accessed independently by students, is a more engaging place to conduct research, and enables collaboration among students and faculty. Also, students can work on projects when their schedules allow, which makes undergraduate research more feasible for students juggling heavy STEM class schedules, work, and family obligations.
Our goal is to make the new laboratory functional for shared research, and comparable to laboratories found at larger research universities. Interactions within this new research space will resemble the experiences students can expect in graduate and professional schools, and better prepare them for the highly collaborative nature of today’s workforce. It will help us model for our students that science doesn’t happen in a vacuum; input from colleagues is helpful and sometimes crucial. Finally, it will enable faculty to conduct high quality, collaborative research that will make us more competitive for external, transdisciplinary research grants to further enhance the research experiences of our students.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Outcome 1: Make undergraduate research at WOU more accessible and sustainable for biology students.
Rationale: There is wide support in scientific literature that high-impact practices, such as mentored independent research, help with retention of STEM students, particularly underserved minorities, first-generation students, and low-income students (Kuh, 2008).
Tracking: Recent data over the last three academic years suggest that we are experiencing sustained participation in mentored research, as indicated by students earning BI 406 credit and presenting at Academic Excellence Showcase (AES) and off-campus.
2016-2017: 18 students completed BI 406 credits, mentored by 8 biology faculty;
Of these, 9 students gave 7 AES presentations, and 4 gave off-campus presentations.
2017-2018, 11 students completed BI 406 credits, mentored by 7 biology faculty.
Of these, 9 students gave 6 AES presentations and one off-campus presentation.
2018-2019, 21 students completed BI 406 credits, mentored by 9 biology faculty.
Of these, 8 students gave 5 AES presentations, 3 presented off-campus and 2 peer-reviewed publications from biology included undergraduate authors.
We will track the number of students completing BI 406, the number of students engaged in other types of mentored independent research with Biology faculty including undergraduate volunteers participating in summer and other term-break projects, the number of students who have taken several terms of BI 406 and want to continue research without paying for credits (especially if they have maxed out the number of BI 406 credits they can count towards their degree), and CiP interns.
We will also track the number of presentations and publications by WOU students mentored by biology faculty. This includes AES presentations, presentations at local, regional, and national meetings, and publications with undergraduate authors in PURE Insights and external peer reviewed publications.
Our goal is to increase these numbers over the next 3 - 5 years so that a higher percentage of biology majors graduate with mentored, independent research experience. We anticipate an increase in collaborative projects that occur within networks of faculty and research students.
Outcome 2: Increase retention of Biology majors.
Rationale: Tracking retention of students from our required BI 210 series for biology majors into the 300-level core courses, allows tracking of students who may or may not yet be involved in research. We anticipate that knowledge of mentored research experience on campus may keep them at WOU. Anecdotally, many of us have conversations with advisees who want to do their first two years of biology here at WOU, and then transfer to OSU or PSU where they expect more opportunities for research exist. Creating a culture of authentic research experience in biology at WOU, including the potential for presentation and publication, will change the mindset of students to understand that they can get this type of experience on our campus.
Tracking: We will track number of biology majors that are retained between taking BI 210 series and 300-level core/BI-upper-division elective courses. Data from 2017-2018 indicates that Biology has 153 majors and 33 graduates, higher than any other department in the NSM Division. We see this as an opportunity to increase our graduation rate in Biology.
Additionally, access to research may also help with retention in other STEM fields on campus since some undergraduate students who work with biology faculty on mentored independent research are not biology majors. Most typically these are chemistry majors; however we foresee that they could also be students majoring in related fields such as earth and physical science, mathematics, computer science, psychology, and anthropology. Thus, there will be benefits to campus retention beyond biology.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Our proposal aligns most closely to the Budget Priority of improving retention, but also potentially growing enrollment. Investment in research equipment, supplies, and maintenance allows us as Biology faculty to extend research opportunities to more of our undergraduate students. High-impact practices such as independent research have been shown to increase retention of undergraduates, especially those that are underserved minority, first-generation, or low-income (Kuh, 2008).
A functional, accessible, collaborative research space in Biology would be unique on campus and could be used in marketing and recruitment materials. In addition, this equipped research space would make WOU faculty more competitive for external grant funding, as an important part of grant proposals is whether we have the necessary infrastructure to complete proposed experiments.
This investment would align well with our campus strategic plan as well. Institutional Priority I is Student Success, and specifically this proposal addresses 1.1 Cultivate academic success. A functional, accessible, collaborative research space will provide a campus environment that enhances learning, supports academic achievement, and prepares our students for career, professional, and graduate school. Institutional priority II is Academic Excellence. This proposal will provide functionality to help retain science faculty, but more so creates opportunities for undergraduate high-impact activities, support for undergraduate research experience, presentation and publication, and enhanced communication and collaboration, all priorities under II.5 Identify and support activities, programs and practices that promote excellence in all academic programs.
References:
Kuh, GD (2008). “High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter.” Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Assistant Director of Admissions for Campus Visitations
Submitted On: January 07 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship
Expected Ongoing Costs: $50,000-$54,000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $80,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $160,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $800,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
With the pending opening of the Welcome Center, WOU needs to maximize this new student-facing tool with a staff member who is dedicated to providing outstanding visit experiences. Currently, the staff member who oversees the tour guides (ambassadors) is also off campus a great deal for recruiting. Additionally, the Admissions staff rotates visitor duties each weekday, which interferes with their normal tasks and doesn’t allow them to focus on creating a great experience for each and every visitor.
We know that Generation Z, our current and incoming students, value having memorable experiences in person. We also know that the differentiators WOU has touted in the past (small class sizes, know your professors) are no longer unique as a marketing tool. Having the ability to stand out with an AWESOME visit experience is what will increase WOU’s memorability, recruitment and enrollment in a demonstrable way, all delivered from our brand new Welcome Center. Just during fall term 2020, as we’ve added the $1,000 Campus Visit Award, we’ve increased campus visitors by 800. More visitors means more staff time coordinating the various groups. These hundreds of visitors can be easily converted with the right person, programming and marketing in place to convince them WOU is the right university for them. This position would work closely with MarCom to create a plan for ways to make visitors’ time at WOU an EXPERIENCE, not just a tour.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
There are many opportunities we could take advantage of with this dedicated experience manager:
•Studies show students who visit a campus are twice as likely to enroll. We are below where we’d like to be for annual visitors, and we’d be able to serve more visitors with a dedicated staff person, increasing our enrollment.
•We could remove or amend our current cap of hosting two school groups per day as well as increase our popular Saturday visits to every week.
•Centralized and standardized collection of visitor data (then addition to our CRM tool) as well as institutional data used for future decision-making on Admissions priorities.
•Academics-specific programming would be easier to coordinate (visitor sitting in on a class or getting to talk with a professor in their projected major field).
•We could people having a less-than-ideal experience, which might result from an overburdened Admissions counselor, a day when ambassadors may call in sick, tour groups so large visitors couldn’t here, etc. Visitors who have a poor experience might discourage other from coming to campus, whereas those who have a great experience are likely to tell others how great WOU is.
•Additional opportunities to coordinate memorable events for Spanish-speaking families and the visit events catering to them.
•Advantageous coordination with our Conference Services coordinator, University Housing, Campus Dining, Athletics (camps) and other departments that bring visitors to campus and serve them while they are here.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Any opportunity we have to bring more visitors to campus and then “wow” them with a memorable experience will yield more students who eventually matriculate to WOU. This means more tuition income, more state funding (based on increased graduates), more residents for our housing programs, and, ideally, more graduate students who stay on at WOU after earning their bachelor’s degrees.
Compliance and Professional Development Training Learning Management System
Submitted On: January 07 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $62,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
A Learning Management System (LMS) offering compliance and safety courses, as well as a variety of professional development options geared toward the needs of a university, will support our employees’ knowledge base and therefore benefit our students. The web-based training will provide opportunities for employees to increase their awareness and knowledge of mandatory compliance issues that are unique to higher education. Additionally, employees will have an opportunity, in consultation with their supervisors, to set a professional development plan. All of this will advance our employees and support the mission of the university.
The Learning Management System we are proposing is a software application which provides framework that handles all aspects of the learning process: administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, creating and delivering training programs to learners.
The LMS will act as a foundation by giving employees easy, straightforward access to the training and information they need to do their jobs effectively, acquire new skills and competencies, complete mandatory compliance training, and grow their careers. This system would not take the place of current or future face-to-face training sessions on campus, but would complement them. Offering a variety of teaching methods would provide alternatives for learning. Ultimately, this will help Western achieve our strategic goals, avoid risk by limiting liability, and drive better performance.
At present, Western does not have adequate compliance training and employee tracking. An LMS would allow us to drive mandatory compliance training to either all employees or groups of position-specific employees including reminders if training is not completed or is to be repeated regularly using a pro-active approach. Pre-designed compliance content would include Title IX, Mandatory Reporter, FERPA, Bias, Harassment, Discrimination, Diversity, and more. A learning platform with the right company will ensure that Western will stay ahead of rapidly changing policies and laws with automatic updates on any new and relevant legal changes.
Purchasing an LMS would reduce administration costs by developing and retaining our current employees through professional development rather than allocating money to recruit and train new employees. An LMS would also save the university money by purchasing a platform with pre-designed courses. The cost of a learning platform is cheaper than hiring an Instructional Designer to build the courses and UCS to build and maintain the program.
Human Resources and supervisors could also track learning activities for individual employees, departments, divisions, colleges, or the entire university.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Student Success: An LMS helps to provide a campus environment that enhances learning and the development of our employees. Investing in our employees’ professional development and promoting greater understanding in their roles and responsibilities will increase engagement and productivity. We would also provide consistent messages regarding compliance policies, procedures, laws, and safety standards that affect our interactions with students and other staff members.
Academic Excellence: An LMS would place value on training and development and assist us in reducing turnover and improving employee performance. Employees would appreciate the University’s support in their development, while expanding their knowledge base and confidence through professional development opportunities. This, in turn, would promote quality service to our students to achieve academic excellence.
Community Engagement: Promote a better understanding of diversity on our campus and surrounding community by providing training programs encompassing topics such as diversity and cultural competency. This will support our institutional HSI and Cultural Competency priorities. In addition, we could offer supervisor and leadership training, various certifications, office technology, safety, and other professional development courses that would help to advance the careers of our current employees. Providing educational opportunities for our faculty/staff in these areas would improve our institutional climate and reputation.
Accountability: An LMS would provide consistent, current communication and reduce risk to the University regarding compliance issues such as FERPA, Title IV, Mandatory Reporting, Safety, Bullying, Workplace Harassment, etc.
Sustainability and Stewardship: A Learning Management System would be a more modern form of technology supporting campus-wide training efforts, compliance training, tracking employee learning and development, and reporting. In addition, it could help improve the satisfaction and productivity of faculty and staff by investing in the development and consistent communication of important topics, best practices, and learning objectives.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Growing Enrollment, Improving Retention
There are many reasons why a student may choose one university over another for their education: cost, quality of academic programs, location, appearance… but the reason they stay at WOU is due to the staff and faculty they deal with after they arrive on campus. If our employees are being trained consistently, with a focus on developing their own knowledge, skills, and abilities, they will better be able to provide for the needs of our students. Our employees will be knowledgeable, engaged, and efficient, while promoting quality service, inclusion, and fulfillment to our students. By providing mandatory diversity training, our employees will be better equipped with skills to support our priority of being an HSI. The quality of students’ interactions with us every day may greatly influence their decision to stay or leave.
Anatomage Virtual Dissection Tables
Submitted On: January 03 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $160,000.00
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I am proposing the purchase of two (2) virtual cadaver dissection tables for the Human Anatomy and Physiology program at WOU. Virtual dissection tables are digital screens that allow for life-sized anatomical visualizations taken from scans of actual cadavers. With the touch of a finger, an individual can dissect the body and move through layers of tissue to see the structures inside, expand the size of a body section to study its detail, and turn the body part – or even the whole body – to study structures from all angles.
We currently use actual human cadavers in our program and I do not envision that virtual dissection tables would fully replace the use of human cadavers. Instead, they would augment our use of cadavers. The benefits would be:
• Students would have access to cadaver study outside of scheduled class time. Currently, cadaver viewing must be with a supervisor present (contractual obligation) meaning that it is difficult for students to study with the cadavers on their own time. The virtual cadaver tables would eliminate this ‘roadblock’ toward student mastery of course material.
• Virtual cadaver tables would allow for the study of cadavers to occur across the entire year. We have no guarantee each year that we will be able to receive a cadaver for 15 months from donor programs (e.g., OHSU body donation program). Thus, during a year when we are only able to have actual cadavers for 12 months, the cadavers are not available for use in the classroom during the dissection period (~ 3 months).
• Virtual cadaver tables would allow for students who have a strong, adverse reaction to an actual cadaver (e.g., recent death in family / cultural beliefs concerning human remains / allergic response to chemicals / pregnancy) to have a similar learning opportunity as working with actual cadavers. Currently we rely on figures from textbooks for such situations, which is a non-equivalent alternative.
• Virtual cadaver tables allow for the presentation of accurate human anatomy. With actual cadavers, pathologies present often result in organs / structures not appearing as they should (e.g., gallbladder removed) or mistakes during dissection result in missing / disconnected structures (e.g., cut blood vessels). Showing the actual anatomy on a virtual dissection table and then showing a pathology present in an actual cadaver presents a great learning opportunity.
• Virtual cadaver tables will have a positive environmental impact on campus. When working with actual cadavers, student must wear protective gear including gloves. Currently, we utilize thousands of disposable gloves each year. Virtual cadaver tables will significantly reduce our need for disposable gloves.
The Anatomage Virtual Dissection Table (www.anatomage.com), developed at Stanford University, is the current market leader in virtual dissection tables. Each table costs approximately $80,000 and comes equipped with four unique cadavers to dissect / view (2 males / 2 females). We are asking for two (2) virtual dissection tables because during each academic year we concurrently teach a traditional and trailer sequence for Human Anatomy and Physiology, which means at any given time there are two active laboratories with each requiring the use of a cadaver table for the study of separate systems.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
I firmly believe that the effective use of human cadavers in the classroom, both virtual and actual, is a critical component to the understanding of the human body. These tables would impact a large number of undergraduate students. Approximately 200 students register each year in the Human Anatomy and Physiology sequence (BI 234 – 236) with an additional 20 students registering in the upper division advanced sequence (BI 334 – 336) and an additional 40 – 60 students registered in our introductory sequence (BI 134 / 135). In terms of measurable impacts, I envision the following:
1. These tables will allow students the opportunity to master human anatomy. The study of human anatomy requires time outside of the classroom due to the nature of the material (large volume of structures to learn) as well as accurate renditions of the body (two-dimensional drawings do not fully reflect the location and relationship among body parts; they are often simplified and lack depth).
2. These tables should assist in the retention of our current students (equating to improved performance on practical quizzes / exams in the classroom) but will also further enhance WOU’s status as a destination campus for students interested in the pre-professional students (equating to more students attending WOU). Digital cadaver table use is becoming quite common in universities and medical schools across the United States, including Oregon where the University of Oregon, Oregon State University (Cascades branch), Linn Benton Community College, and Western University of Health Sciences are all currently using virtual cadaver tables as part of their Human Anatomy and Physiology coursework. The purchase of these tables now will allow WOU to be on the technological forefront of their usage in the classroom.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
This proposal aligns with several of the budgetary priorities set forth by Western Oregon University. Specifically it aligns with:
1. Enrollment Growth: With the acquisition of these dissection tables, WOU would be on the short list of Oregon programs having these tables thus allowing the tables to serve as a recruitment tool. For example, we currently have ~ 15 high school groups annually visit (~ 350 students) for cadaver tours and the inclusion of these tables would further enhance WOU as an appealing option to these students for undergraduate study, particularly for those interested in pre-professional studies (e.g., pre-nursing). In addition, digital dissection tables are the technological future for anatomical studies. The skills students gain from working with such technologies will prepare students to become innovative and confident leaders in their professions, differentiating our university from our competitors in terms of attracting students as well as potential financial support from donors and through political avenues.
2. Student Retention: The dissection tables will provide increased opportunities for student engagement, which should translate into a better learning environment that will help student success, reducing course repeats and keeping students on track to graduate in a timely manner.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Office
Submitted On: January 03 2020
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $5000.00
Expected Ongoing Costs: $125,000.00
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Siloed efforts towards diversity and justice work are not sufficient to achieve the goals of the institution. In an increasingly diverse environment these issues are as important and complex as any other function of the university for which it has representative Vice Presidents and other appropriate staffing. This need is reflected in the data from the most recent Campus Climate Survey of WOU faculty and staff.
Faculty and Staff respondents that agree or strongly agree indicate the following:
80.5% indicate administrative leadership should be required to participate in mandatory diversity training.
75% indicate that staff members should be required to participate in diversity training.
75.3% indicate faculty should be required to participate in mandatory diversity training.
Only through maintaining a dedicated office can we make significant efforts towards diversity and inclusion. We feel that a university that is truly dedicated to diversity and inclusion needs to put resources towards efforts to build and sustain a diverse campus culture and community. Through the creation of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Office, WOU’s priorities will be further reflected in the institutional structure.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Increased retention and recruitment of diverse students, staff, and faculty.
Access to HSI-Status federal grant monies ($$ coming to WOU).
Access to state supports (financial and political) for fulfilling HB2864.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Budgetary Priority #1: Helping WOU become an HSI
A JEDI Office will aid in the process of attaining and maintaining HSI status with organized, intentional, and culturally appropriate support. By weaving JEDI work into the foundation of the university’s culture, it will centrally locate the mission of the institute for inclusive education.
Budgetary Priority #2: Growing enrollment
A JEDI office will help keep Western Oregon University apace with the growing population of diverse student, faculty, and staff. Intentional collaboration with campus partners will ensure WOU increases enrollment of students by showing a variety of resources and services that fit their needs.
Budgetary Priority #3: Improving retention
A JEDI office will help allocate resources and funding towards recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, staff, and students.
The Center for Leadership and Creativity (Salem)
Submitted On: January 03 2020
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $12,500
Expected Ongoing Costs: $10,000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $4000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $20,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $50,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I am proposing the creation and launch of a Center for Leadership and Creativity (CLC) at Western Oregon University’s new Salem location, the Vick building. If approved, The CLC would begin providing services in the fall of 2020.
What will the CLC do?
The CLC will provide professional development services to working adults in Salem; specifically targeting the areas of leadership and creativity. Initially, these professional development services will be delivered primarily through workshops and seminars delivered by qualified WOU faculty and staff. As WOU develops the capacity in the area of extended programs, successful completion of a series of these workshops could be used as course credit towards certificate(s) in leadership and/or creativity. Additionally, in the future, the CLC will provide consultation services to organizations to facilitate the development of their employees’ leadership and creative capacities.
Why is the CLC needed?
A survey of human resource managers across a variety of industries found that “Companies face an urgent need to develop leaders at all levels—from bringing younger leaders online faster to developing leaders globally to keeping senior leaders relevant and engaged longer” (Global Human Capital Trends, 2014). Additionally, data from the Leadership Development Factbook® (2012) suggests the industry of leadership development represents a $14 billion marketplace. For example, high-impact companies in the United States spend more than $3,500 per person each year to develop mid-level leaders and over $10,000 to develop senior leaders. Companies that wish to remain competitive will invest in the development of their employees.
Similarly, the Bloomberg Job Skills report (Levy & Rodkin, 2019) found that both leadership and creative problem-solving were both the most important and yet hardest to find competencies when organizations were hiring employees. The Western Oregon University Center for Leadership and Creativity would enable Oregon employers to fill the “gap” between these highly desired yet difficult to find competencies by delivering workshops targeting the development of leadership and creative capacity. Additionally, employees who develop their leadership and creative capacities through the WOU CLC will be significantly more likely to find more satisfying, engaging, and lucrative employment.
The Center for Leadership and Creativity would help WOU achieve the following strategic initiatives:
II.4.1 Promote academic array that provides distinctive, high-quality programs.
II.4.3 Promote high-quality, diverse and innovative models of program delivery that enhance both undergraduate and graduate student access and achievement.
II.4.4 Promote interdisciplinary courses and degree programs that support collaborative and multidimensional educational experiences and pathways.
III.3.1 Expand activities and partnership with local and regional organizations.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
If successful, the Center for Leadership and Creativity (CLC) will generate several positive impacts. The primary impact of the CLC will be to generate a new stream of revenue for the university in the form of both workshop fees and tuition once we are able to offer the workshops for credit. A secondary impact of the CLC will be to generate positive exposure for a variety Western Oregon University programs that may lead to increased enrollment.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Both outcomes described previously, revenue generation from workshop fees and positive exposure for Western Oregon University, are directly related to enrollment growth. First, people paying for CLC workshops will be directly paying WOU for educational services, a form of enrollment. Second, if workshop attendees have positive experiences in the workshops, they will be more likely to enroll in other workshops and/or academic programs provided by WOU. Additionally, workshop attendees having positive experiences at WOU will create a strong word-of-mouth campaign that will bolster recruitment efforts and result in enrollment growth.
Experiential Learning Strategic Initiatives
Submitted On: December 20 2019
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected One-Time Costs: $15,000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $7,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $n/a
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $n/a
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
The Experiential Learning Strategic Action Team is in its second year of implementing strategic experiential learning initiatives. Last year, UBAC funded $12,000 for professional development of faculty, to increase expertise and interest in EL. Five faculty and staff attended an EL conference and are currently planning workshops and townhalls to share their learning. Four of the attendees have submitted an IRB proposal to study the benefit of EL in the classroom. The culminating goal for this year is to define EL on the WOU campus. After that, the campus community can move forward to design an EL environment at WOU.
To support the continued professional development of faculty and staff advancing EL at WOU, we are proposing the following:
1. Continue professional development, such as conference and workshop participation $10,000.00
2. Stipends for faculty and staff who participate in an EL summer training institute to develop EL courses and programs up to $5,000.00 for $500.00 stipends for each participant.
3. Hosting a regional mini conference on experiential learning at WOU, summer of 2021. There is a vacuum in the availability of EL training in Western states. WOU could start to establish itself as a leader in EL in the West.
a. We will Invite faculty from the National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE), Experiential Education Academy, to offer three workshops that help faculty and staff complete their EL curriculum. Cost will be covered by conference fees
b. Support for the development of the conference, $2,000.00 for a student conference planning intern.
c. The conference would be open to anyone inside and outside WOU, and would charge around $200 per person. Attendees would additionally stay in the conference facilities at WOU, generating additional income for WOU.
Proposal request $15,000
Potential revenue of a mini conference with 35 participants, $200/ea = $7,000 + revenue from food and lodging.
Proposed timeline for ELSAT:
▪ Showcases and input gathering - Spring ‘20
▪ WOU defines EL for campus
▪ Authorize a task force to write white paper and create a program, ’21
▪ Faculty staff attend conference and EL leadership workshop fall ’20, winter ‘21
▪ Program operating in time for Integrative Learning ULO Capstone ‘22
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
This proposal takes us closer to accomplishing the initiatives listed in the strategic plan, Forward Together. The ELSAT plan lists professional development as central to advancing EL on campus. The funding for this proposal will provide training for campus at minimal cost.
Once WOU has developed its definition for EL (anticipated May 2020) the community will be poised to develop a design for an EL environment at WOU. With continued professional development and community input, a team will be ready to write an EL White Paper for campus by Winter ’22.
Better trained faculty and staff will provide a greater learning experience for students. ELSAT is preparing to conduct a study of the benefits of integrating EL into the curriculum; with more training greater improvement will be reported on survey measures.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Increased Enrollment
Hands-on and career readiness focus will appeal to first generation and low income students (and their parents), who also are interested in a enrolling in a liberal arts institution, increasing enrollment.
Increased Retention
High impact experiences like EL is highly correlated with retention, as students find experience meaningful and develop greater sense of belonging at the institution.
Affordability
As a result of Integrating EL into required courses that count towards graduation, students have an accessible and affordable way to participate in EL
Career Readiness Program
Submitted On: December 20 2019
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $40,000/yr
Expected Revenue After One Year: $10,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $50,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $80,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
WOU has a high percentage of first-generation students and students from underrepresented minority groups. These percentages are likely to grow as WOU attains its goal of becoming a HSI. URM students tend to have lower career readiness than legacy students, due to lower social and cultural capital. They rely on the university to provide them with readiness for the world post college. Evidence shows WOU students lack preparedness; for one, they participate less in internship and other experiential learning practices than the national average (NSSE 2017). We can no longer leave career readiness to chance - first generation students are less likely to reach out to self-help services; they need career readiness to be more integrated with curriculum and be systematically encouraged to participate.
The goal of the proposed program is to make career readiness more integrated into the curriculum and the student experience. We are proposing the development of a Career Readiness Program that amplifies current practices of preparation, engagement, experience, and employment. The program will:
1. Expand the availability of current career development courses offered by SLCD, Career Exploration, Internship Preparation, and Career Readiness. We propose a larger scale program that can serve academic programs that currently do not have these types of offerings, via a hybrid course design. We are looking at scaffolding the courses to align with a four/five-year college/career plan.
To enhance the integration of academics and experiential learning, SLCD’s current Alternative Break program would also be part of a course to allow affordability via financial aid.
2. Increase employer and alumni engagement to 1) increase opportunities for experience and work opportunities; 2) enhance our partnership/sponsor program that helps fund internship and AB grants, making those more affordable to students; 3) increase student engagement, allowing students to build social and cultural capital via more offerings of job shadowing, industry tours, and increased participation in career fairs, career connect events, and information sessions.
3. Enhance student employment by 1) pivoting current SE into HIP via WOU GROW; 2) developing a freshman work program that designates a % of SE funds for incoming students, and encourages enrollment at WOU.
In order to accomplish this vision, we are requesting the following reconfiguration of our staff and a slight augmentation:
1. Create Assistant Director of Career Readiness Role: Pivot role of current Career Development (CDC) Coordinator to Assistant Director of Career Readiness. To give this role more room to teach career readiness courses, create more employer and student engagement, and work on partnership/sponsor program, the external federal work study program, will be mostly transitioned to the role of Program Assistant. The work study program is funded by federal Job Location Development funds (JLD). JLD is also intended to pay for efforts in increasing local student employment. The AD role will spend less time on clerical aspects of employer relations, such as invoicing and logistics, and more on job development.
2. Extend current .49 fte Program Assistant role, to full-time fte, partly using the federal JLD funds. In addition to current role, PA will take over external work study coordination, and invoicing and logistics for recruiting and employer engagement events. This role will handle all financial transactions for the office.
3. Add two undergraduate Teaching Assistant roles: In order to offer the larger, hybrid courses for up to 100 students, additional help will be needed.
JLD funds amount to 10% Federal Work Student funds: in WOU’s case $29,904. They currently pay 27.30% of CDC’s salary, and 9.62% of Director’s salary. Additional funding for department would amount to around $40,000/year.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Students who have a sense of purpose with their education, regardless of having a specific career selected, are more likely to persist through to graduation. Our career readiness program helps students develop identity, goals, purpose, confidence, access and wellness.
Our students need greater preparation and access to pivotal experiential learning, such as research, internships, study abroad and service learning. We aim to help students and academic departments with education and greater support for student participation in EL, on and off campus. We aim to help students translate what they’ve learned at WOU into what makes them a great candidate for their career or grad school of choice.
When parents and students consider a college, they want to know if their child can find a job on campus, if they’ll be prepared for transitioning out of college, and if their sacrifices and effort will be worth it. The parent session on this topic at SOAR is always full. Being able to present parents and prospective students with a program that addresses their concerns, would be a major selling point for WOU and increase enrollment.
• Student participation in EL will increase, as measured on NSSE survey
• Student participation in career readiness classes and events will increase
• First year student employment on campus will increase
• Enrollment and retention will increase
• Job location development will increase
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
• Helping WOU become a Hispanic Serving Institution;
o Given the high percentage of LatinX students who are first generation college students, the benefits of gaining social and cultural capital would be attractive to this population. They might be especially interested and might strongly benefit from working on campus their first year, rather than traveling to employment off campus.
• Growing enrollment (i.e., attracting new students);
o Promoting WOU as an institution that has a program for student employment and career readiness will appeal to parents and prospective students
• Improving retention (i.e., keeping the students we already have);
o Students who have a sense of purpose with their education, regardless of having a specific career choice, are more likely to persist through to graduation. Our career readiness program helps students develop identity, goals, purpose, confidence, access and wellness.
• Making WOU the most affordable public university in Oregon.
o The cost of EL can be prohibitive to low-income students. Offering grants for internship and EL participation addresses that concern. Providing credit options so students can use financial aid for participating in EL such as AB, would help.
AI/Chatbot Services
Submitted On: December 19 2019
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Accountability
Expected Ongoing Costs: $Approx. $18,000 annually
Expected Revenue After One Year: $$80,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $$160,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $$160,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
In order to recruit new students and retain current students, the university would benefit from the services of a chatbot -- an artificial intelligence-based customers service representative that can answer all manner of prospective student or current student (or even community member)questions 24 hours a day or direct them to the proper person. Chatbots are initially "loaded" with basic information and then "learn" more about the university and the types of questions people ask over time, allowing them to be more helpful and appear more human. The ideal outcome is that people who ask questions of the chatbot will get the answers they need in a timely manner without even realizing they are not talking to a live human. A chatbot would expand our ability to meet the round-the-clock needs of Generation Z students, which is what they expect. They also expect immediate answers.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
A chatbot relieves the pain point and frustration of not being able to get the help one needs when one needs it. This will lead to higher satisfaction (hence retention) among current students and provide helpful information to prospective students (hence recruitment). Also, using artificial intelligence would bring WOU up to par with comparitor institutions.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Prospective and current students (including Latinx students) who receive helpful and timely customer service while navigating college are more likely to be recruited, enrolled and retained. If 10 students are recruited or retained in the first year, that's approximately $80,000 in full-time tuition alone. After the chatbot learns more about WOU, the goal would be at least 20 additional students recruited or retained each year, for about $160,000 per year.
Increasing accessibility to financial aid
Submitted On: December 19 2019
Budget Priorities: HSI, Increase Retention
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $0
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Right now our financial aid office is set up to assist typical four year students whose families are familiar with the system and/or who have the privilege of being able to take time off during the work week. To facilitate our campus becoming a hispanic serving institution and to increase the enrollment of non traditional students, I believe that we need to look at the current system and to make big changes to better serve a diverse population.
The financial aid system does not support students who are struggling to navigate the system and the lack of support increases for students and their families for whom English is a second language and/or those who lack the privilege of being able to take time off to come to campus. Furthermore, the system fails to support non traditional transfer students who may already have a large number of credits. I am proposing changes that will specifically serve full time working adult learners, first time college students, hispanic students, and non traditional students.
Changes:
~ The financial aid office staggers when staff works to facilitate students and their families accessing advice outside of banker hours. This portion of my proposal would not require any additional funds as current staff would adjust when they work instead of adding additional staff to address the need. I propose staff flexing their hours to allow the financial aid office to be open 5 Saturdays and 5 evenings a term. This system would work by having one staff member come in late so they could work evening hours that day or not working on one weekday during a week and working on Saturday instead. This means the only additional costs to Western would be for heating and electricity on those days. These changes would allow first generation (hispanic and other ethnicities), families with limited resources and restrictive work hours and nontraditional students and their families similar access to financial aid staff as traditional college students.
~ Language support: My son is a sophomore here at Western and I went to some of the new student events with him. At those events there were bilingual staff on hand to speak with students and their families about financial aid. At one event, I sat at a table with a Spanish speaking father and daughter who were conversing in Spanish about their fears regarding how financial aid will pay for school. The daughter was the first person in their family to go beyond high school. They quietly whispered about fear over paying for college, if costs changed each term, and other logistical questions. When the event ended, they were standing in a long line waiting for one of the bilingual financial aid folks. I saw the need for bilingual staff again when meeting with a hispanic student. She was concerned about financial aid and wanted to know if they had someone who spoke Spanish everyday, so her father could take the day off of work to go with her. That is when I called and found out no one in the office spoke Spanish. If our institution wants to be hispanic serving, we should consider supporting bilingual families through either bilingual staff or the ability to make an appointment that has interpretation services provided
~ Acknowledgement of the uniqueness of non traditional students. Many of the non traditional students who come through our program have far more credits than required for their degree. Possible causes are a student taking classes over a ten year period, credits from a different major, or credits from an international institution. These students should be classified differently than those who fail to make academic progress. Ideally the financial aid office should contact them when they hit the credits required for their degree and then work with the student to complete their degree.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Increased retention of non traditional students, increased respect for and retention of our hispanic population and a change in how the financial aid office is viewed. Many students currently walk away from financial aid feeling disrespected or as if their problems are not important. I personally have experienced how the system struggles as both a non traditional student and as a faculty member attempting to support my students.
This is a long example, but I think it really hits the mark on how the system needs to be redesigned to serve a wider variety of students. A student was struggling to fill our paperwork from financial aid and she asked if I could meet with her Saturday after class to read the paperwork. The student worked full time as a preschool teacher, was the first female in her family to finish high school, obtain a two year college degree, and after her brother was going to be the second person in her family to get a four year degree. She is just the kind of student we want to recruit! We sat together and I helped her complete the paperwork. At her request, Monday morning, I took her paperwork to be submitted to the financial aid office. The person at the desk refused to take the paperwork from me because I was not authorized to receive information on the student. I explained to her that I did not want any information, I simply wanted to turn the paperwork in. I was told it could not be accepted because I am not authorized. I asked how the student was supposed to turn the paperwork in and I was told she should mail it in. I was very persistent and eventually the paperwork was accepted. However, think about how this student would have struggled if they had to do everything by themselves.
I think a survey on student climate regarding the financial aid office could also measure the impact. I do not think initial use of the services would be a good measure, because students would need time to understand how the system has changed and how access is increased.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
It will increase student retention and it will increase access to services for our hispanic and non traditional population. These changes would mostly be implemented with no additional cost, the exception would be if a student needed an interpreter for a language other than Spanish.
I believe these changes are about respecting and honoring our students and their diverse personal and cultural backgrounds.
WOU proposal
Submitted On: December 10 2019
Budget Priorities: HSI, Grow Enrollment, Increase Retention, Improve Affordability
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Making it cheaper to live on campus or to make it cheaper for those who want to buy out a double room
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Students will have academic success and not worry about having to pay for where they live, school food, books. One less problem to worry about
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
They relate because you're asking about academic excellence, improving affordability, and other things
Put water in the dorm halls
Submitted On: October 29 2019
Budget Priorities: Grow Enrollment
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success
Expected One-Time Costs: $1000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I think there should be water bottle fill up stations on each dorm floor because everyone is dehydrated and its not practical to go down to the first floor every time you get thirsty. This results in students buying more plastic water bottles as well as drinking more sugary drinks in place of water as it's more easily accessed.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Students will drink more water. This is good for health both physically and mentally.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
If students drink water they won't be depressed so they won't drop out so WOU gets more tuition money.
Efficiencies
Part-time Graphic Designer: Academic/faculty support focus
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: Other
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship, Academic Excellence, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $2,500
Expected Ongoing Costs: $18,600
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I'm requesting a half-time graphic designer to offer support to faculty and staff, and help meet the growing needs of campus. We currently have one full-time graphic designer and one director/graphic designer (graphic design requests necessitate the need for shared director/graphic design duties) and one full-time web designer.
Current staffing in the MarCom office does not allow for assistance to faculty or staff for preparation of WOU-branded, professional conference/event materials, such as posters, handouts, PowerPoint or Slide Deck presentations. Combined with the expansion of WOU’s academic interests, eg: WOU:Salem and the proposed campus/community Health Center, there is much more we could do to enhance our level of professionalism and national reputation in our publication and outreach opportunities.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The measurable impact of this proposal would take time to determine. A positive response or "first impression" would ideally lead an increase in prospective students or our colleagues/peers requesting more information about campus. Peer-to-peer recognition is an often deferred goal in our office, largely because it is not an area we are able to assist with.
Faculty and staff will be better supported in their efforts to create high-quality presentations, which will communicate our level of competency and professionalism to external audiences. The quality and consistency of our brand would complement our recruitment efforts across undergraduate, graduate, athletic, advancement and other university publications.
Referring to the current strategic plan, I believe this position could help meet several university goals. Values to the community: "connections extending beyond the classroom, across campus and into our local and global communities"; Academic Excellence: " 3.2 Support and enhance effective marketing and consistent branding, 3.3 Utilize web presence, social media and other forms of media to expand the university’s visibility, 3.4 Enhance public awareness of community events and the scholarly and creative works of students, faculty and staff to help showcase the university’s unique accomplishments in all program areas".
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
This position would provide professional design support for faculty in their public interactions with peers, administrators and various audiences.
Regarding HSI: this position could give us the ability to better serve the LatinX population, creating more publications to directly serve that audience. For retention needs, this position would allow MarCom to meet the growing demand for publications to support current students, beyond our major focus on potential students and recruitment efforts. Potentially, this position would enable us to the bandwidth to create more publications for admissions (undergraduate, graduate and international) - once faculty/academic needs have been met. With new programs coming online (approved and in planning stages), having this position in place would help us hit the ground running as these new programs come into fruition.
Add of Administrative Support to Title IX & Affirmative Action Functions
Submitted On: January 13 2020
Budget Priorities: Make an Existing Process Easier to Use, Improve a Campus Process
Strategic Plan Priorities: Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $$500
Expected Ongoing Costs: $$70000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
The Title IX Coordinator and Affirmative Action Officer duties have functioned without administrative support for a number of years. As such, the needed infrastructure is not available to support the day-to-day, monthly, and annual tasks of these offices being completed in a timely or robust manner. Student Affairs and Athletics—elements of the University’s Title IX obligations—have developed infrastructure to support their specific responsibilities under Title IX, but the Coordinator’s function has not had the bandwidth to move beyond basic support to these areas and the support of diversity, inclusion and equity work across campus.
With the added responsibility ensuring the climate survey was administered and then shared with various shared governance and other stakeholder groups on campus, it is apparent that both the Title IX Coordinator and the Affirmative Action Officer responsibilities need to be taken more seriously. Administrative support of these required compliance functions is necessary.
This request resonates with the companion request of compliance and professional development training learning management software (LMS). As a stopgap measure to spark this important work, Human Resources used salary savings to hire a temporary employee to construct both a Title IX webpage and climate survey webpage to make survey available to the university community. This work will slow considerably at such time as the one-time salary savings is exhausted. With the administrative support, these campus resources could be updated appropriately with changes in the law, regulations or processes, in addition to tracking the information as it comes in through these websites.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Better communication and availability of Title IX and Affirmative Action information to employees and students.
Added ability for employees to submit concerns and complaints and receive responses in a timely manner.
A safer and more knowledgeable campus community for all employees and students.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
By adding the administrative support position to enhance the Title IX Coordinator’s responsiveness and discharge of compliance obligations, the ability of the Title IX Coordinator, the Affirmative Action Officer and Human Resources Office to support the equity, diversity, inclusion and social justice efforts of the University will be expanded. Because of the added availability of information, coordination of response to concerns and complaints, and the timeliness of both, attracting students, retaining students, moving to an HSI and keeping costs low for our students are all covered.
Alumni Welcome Kiosk @ the Welcome Center
Submitted On: January 10 2020
Budget Priorities: Save Employees Time, Make an Existing Process Easier to Use, Improve a Campus Process
Strategic Plan Priorities: Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship, Accountability
Expected One-Time Costs: $2,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
We want a user friendly electronic alumni kiosk in the lobby at the Welcome Center. The idea is that when alumni and families come to campus during non-work hours, or even during work hours and there is no one staffing the alumni office, they can use the kiosk to submit their information and ask their questions. The kiosk could be an iPad or some type of smart program that has automated questions alumni and visitors would answer with a button push or simple entry. The responses would be sent directly to the alumni email account and the alumni staff would connect with the visitors upon their return to the office. The money would be used to buy the kiosk and the technology needed to operate it.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The primary measurable impact would be to have the ability to collect visitor information and provide a welcome environment for all guests. By doing this we would be able to build our alumni database, connect with more alumni and visitors, have the ability to "meet" visitors even when no human is present, and receive questions from our alums and visitors. People would provide their current contact information and this would help us continue to update our database and find out what alumni are interested in.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
By increasing the number of alumni in our database and increasing the amount of correct addresses we have, the more people we have in the pool to ask for money during the campaign and beyond. An electronic kiosk would save employees time through collecting information electronically, improve efficiency in the data we have and collecting interest of our alumni and donors, and would improve visibility of the university and alumni. By adding more alumni contacts to the database, we will have more people to make donations and increase giving which leads to increased scholarships and student retention and affordability.
Improving planning and management of summer session
Submitted On: January 09 2020
Budget Priorities: ProcessImproved
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship, Accountability
Expected Revenue After One Year: $80,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $100,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $120,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
As the university faces a significant operating deficit, we need to examine all activities to find ways to do things more effectively and efficiently. Summer session generates net revenues, but the return on investment is modest and limited by current practices. We studied data on revenues, enrollments and pay for summer 2019, and identified adjustments to current practice that we project will increase our return on investment while ensuring that students have the classes they need.
We have established the following objectives for Summer 2020:
-Establish and work within firm college-level budgets for summer instruction
-Itemize and budget realistically for pay for summer courses
-Standardize processes across colleges
-Create incentives for colleges and divisions to manage summer offerings more efficiently
Should this proposal advance to the second round, we can provide an overview of findings related to summer 2019 and detail on how these objectives can be achieved.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
-Decrease the proportion of sections that operate at a net loss to the university
-Increase average and, especially, median section size
-Increase net revenues
-Increase return on investment in summer offerings
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Making WOU the most affordable public university in Oregon: A key component of affordability is efficient operations. This proposal strives to increase the efficiency of our summer programs so that as many, if not more, students can be served with fewer, but more wisely invested, resources. (WOU's enrollments are down, and we do expect to spend less on summer instruction in 2020 than we did in 2019.)
General Education Capacity Building
Submitted On: January 08 2020
Budget Priorities: Make an Existing Process Easier to Use, Improve a Campus Process
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Sustainability and Stewardship
Expected Ongoing Costs: $110000.00
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
The General Education program launched in Fall 2019 but does not yet have a well established budget or infrastructure. Personnel are the General Education Director (.67 FTE) and the First Year Seminar (FYS) Coordinator (.33 FTE). Both positions have one month of summer salary to support SOAR and other essential program activities like transfer evaluations, planning FYS schedules and strategizing outreach. Through Academic Affairs, we have a services and supplies budget of $5,000 and a similar travel budget sufficient for two personnel to attend a conference annually. Budget growth is needed to maintain the program, particularly personnel needs and FYS course support. We also need capacity for assessment and professional development needs.
Our program requires the addition of a program assistant. A part-time staff position could manage operational details like website updates, assisting students with early stages of petition review and helping to manage the structural details of assessment like Institutional Research requests and survey dissemination and collection. Some faculty have expressed concerns about review of assessment surveys by another faculty member (the General Education Director and First Year Seminar Coordinator are both faculty positions). Having a staff member complete this activity could alleviate those concerns. The General Education program also lacks the bandwidth to collaborate with Marcom to develop high quality promotional materials and a staff position could take that activity on as well.
The emphasis of the Director position should be placed on curricular aspects of the program. These include review and reporting on curricular issues (such as development of an online pathway and collaboration with departments to assist with articulation agreements, including Major Transfer Maps), managing planning and reporting of program assessment, including PLC organization and reporting, reporting to University Council, the Board of Trustees and Accreditation agencies, coordinating complicated petitions and articulation agreement reviews with the General Education Committee and the Registrar’s office, and seeking external funding to support General Education innovation.
Contracting with The Research Institute (TRI) to support program assessment is a strategy that we could consider with an expanded budget. In addition to addressing some of the misconceptions around assessment, TRI staff can also implement surveys and focus groups to help us understand how and why programs and faculty are choosing to participate (or not) in General Education offerings.
The First Year Seminar courses are housed entirely within the General Education program. Many of our FYS instructors are seeking to innovate with field trips, guest lectures and other special opportunities. FYS course fees do not align with equity and affordability goals. Based on the number and types of FYS courses requesting support and the kinds of activities for which support is requested, we want to establish a dedicated budget and process to support special or unique FYS activities with financial costs attached.
The learning community pilot project integrates foundational skills instruction with specific content learning to provide deeper integration of content, skills, and disciplinary expertise. Learning communities by their nature promote further development of community when students work together in multiple classes that have been intentionally linked. Learning communities can also foster inclusion and improve outcomes when targeted toward addressing developmental education. We have implemented one successful learning community, with two others faltering with low enrollment. Professional development support in the General Education budget will allow us to engage in a workshop strategy modeled on the success of the Summer online teaching institutes.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
We anticipate greater efficiency in General Education processes and increased visibility of the program. We will address student petition requests more efficiently. We will more effectively maintain the General Education website with more frequently updated promotional and informational materials. We will operationalize assessment collection and reporting in a consistent, transparent and predictable way. The staff position would also support the needs of FYS instructors who require assistance with setting up field trips and other activities. Currently, we rely on instructors to manage these details themselves with the assistance of Provost’s office staff who are already stretched thin. A General Education staff member could help to fill in these gaps.
We will engage in expanded exploration of new opportunities like online pathways, international articulation agreements and grant-writing and promotional and fundraising opportunities. Contracting with TRI to engage in broader program assessment and research will allow us to improve our efficiency and engage more faculty and staff into General Education opportunities. For example, we currently have several departments that are not taking part in FYS programming. If we knew more about the reasons faculty and staff have for opting out of teaching FYS, we could address those strategically and bring more of campus into the FYS teaching roster. The TRI Center for Evaluation Technology and Research staff have expertise in exploring and answering these kinds of questions.
A dedicated budget for FYS instruction will allow a target number of FYS instructors to propose reasonable (within $500, which is equivalent to about $20 per student) support to conduct a field trip, bring a speaker, or engage in an innovative activity like printing posters for a poster session. FYS instructional support would be limited to consumables or unique opportunity costs like motor pool rentals and speaker support that could not be reasonably provided with permanent University equipment (e.g. funds could not be used for computer hardware or laboratory equipment). An FYS budget request process would also be transparent; faculty would know what to expect when planning an FYS. Based upon FYS proposals submitted over the past two years and course requests made for topics that have thus far been scheduled and offered, we anticipate about 20% of FYS (approximately 15) courses annually will request a maximum budget of $500 and another 20% annually will request funding within $100 for a total of $9,000. And additional $500 to $1000 should support printing and copying costs.
We’ve used our S&S and travel budgets to support FYS this year. Attendance at national conferences is a valuable mechanism by which our program can stay current with trends in General Education and promote and publicize the good work we are doing. A temporary suspension in these activities this year because our overall budget was insufficient is reasonable, but a long term lack of support for travel is a problem. Our actual service and supply needs are being subsidized by the Biology and Geography Departments (personnel computers, printing, copying), Student Success and Advising (office space, and infrastructure, printing), and the Provost’s office (printing, copying). The General Education program needs a budget line and the associated infrastructure, particularly related to computing and printing.
With professional development support, we anticipate that we could initially foster approximately 3 learning communities per term, engaging 18 faculty in forming 9 communities. We would target communities including an FYS or Foundations course. We can examine retention and assessment outcomes to the same classes in non-community settings. We also anticipate that this will act as a seed project to apply for NEH and NSF grants in the future.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
The budgetary priorities of Increased retention and Affordability will be met by increasing efficiency of operations in the General Education program. With staff support, students would have access to more timely reviews of their petition requests and greater access to the people who can help them with those requests. We would more quickly and efficiently provide the registrar’s office with requests for permanent transfer articulations, smoothing the way for transfer students. During Winter term, the General Education office received an average of 4-6 requests per day and upwards of 30 requests per week. Week 7 alone saw over 50 queries for information or petitions submitted. Many of these requests are straightforward, but it still takes time to communicate and process them. When students can quickly get petitions approved, or gain a clear answer and suggested pathway forward when a request must be declined, they are more likely to remain at WOU. Transfer students who know to expect a thorough review of their transcripts and a reasonable articulation of General Education coursework are more likely to select and remain at WOU. All of our students have a more affordable education when we can help them find the best way to put credits where they should count while still meeting the requirements appropriately so that they have the opportunity to be successful in the way we intended them to be. Right now, the Director is the only person managing petition review and implementation and there is no plan in place or person available to step in should they be suddenly rendered unavailable.
If we can more effectively update our website, work with Marcom to produce and disseminate promotional materials (with a reasonable S&S budget), we can better communicate with incoming students to help them select WOU and then make the best use of their General Education coursework. Similarly, by using these materials to communicate with faculty advisors, we can ensure better fidelity of advising and implementation of the program across campus.
By streamlining and coordinating the assessment process more effectively, we can better serve students. If we can collect the data more efficiently because the operational details are in the hands of a person with the time and bandwidth to deal with those details effectively, we are more likely to get good evidence without making mistakes. Engaging with TRI-CETR staff may also provide us with the opportunity to explore questions related to how to most effectively engage campus partners (faculty and staff) in General Education programming and explore questions related to impacts of General Education programming on the recruitment, retention and success of students.
We would anticipate seeing more innovative FYS opportunities emerge as a result of support along with the attendant impact on students which could be observed via the General Education assessment process. We are building a baseline of data to examine student success and retention, and will be able to look at how increasing the ability of our FYS instructors to engage in such opportunities impact students.
By offering professional development to support the development of learning communities, we anticipate increased retention. Because the same cohort of students will be taking both of these courses together they will be able to take their experience from each class to augment their learning in both contexts. Community building influences the likelihood that students will persist, and a learning community is an efficient way for them to begin meeting General Education requirements.
Finally, by allowing the General Education Director to focus on opportunities like building online pathways and articulation agreements and to explore granting and fundraising opportunities, we can continue to effectively evolve the program to best serve students.
Support to Faculty Schedulers: Professional Development in Data and Analysis Strategies
Submitted On: January 06 2020
Budget Priorities: ProcessImproved
Strategic Plan Priorities: Accountability
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
Course scheduling strategy is both an art and a science. When faculty members are placed in the position of scheduling for departments and divisions, there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the majority of faculty members possess no training in scheduling strategy or data management, which means that innovation is next to impossible.
Schedulers are told to use data to make decisions, yet they are not given the theoretical and practical training to do so strategically and transparently. On-campus professional data and analysis training does not exist for schedulers, and there is no clear expert with whom schedulers can consult, problem solve, and/or strategize. Ultimately, this proposal highlights the need for our campus culture to acknowledge the complexity inherent in scheduling and to value efficient and innovative scheduling.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Data-informed decision-making is a priority for WOU: usage data will become accessible to faculty, analysis and strategic scheduling will be demystified, and pathways will be cleared for students from term one to graduation.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Strategic scheduling is one more step in the right direction. Strategic scheduling will not only help to improve financial strains, student frustrations, and time to degree completion; demystification of the scheduling process will improve our ability to see things for what they are and to more clearly imagine what's possible.
Water Bottle/Fountain Station on Floors 2-4 Heritage Hall
Submitted On: November 05 2019
Budget Priorities: ProcessEasier, ProcessImproved
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Community Engagement, Sustainability and Stewardship
Expected One-Time Costs: $3,434.70
Expected Ongoing Costs: $566.55
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
There is only one water bottle filling station with a drinking fountain connection, and it is on the first floor. There are water fountains on all the floors, but they are rusty, dirty, and quite frankly no one trusts the water because it tastes odd. Personally, I live on the fourth floor, and having to go all the way to the first floor to fill up a gallon of drinking water just for it to quickly be drank, it isn't worth the trip. This then discourages residents to go down and be able to retrieve water for themselves, resorting them to drink something else they might have which isn't water. This then leads to dehydration and unhealthy habits. But the idea to put a water bottle filling station with a water fountain connection, basically the same as the one on the first floor, on every floor will make it an easier way of obtaining and filling up water bottles.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
Easier access to fill up water bottles and easy drinking water on every floor.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
Once the filling stations are installed, there will be that cost of $3,434.70. Then there will be the cost to maintain the stations with filters and other maintenance issues that may occur after installation, and that estimate is $566.55 a year.
Western Oregon University
Submitted On: October 28 2019
Budget Priorities: Improve a Campus Process
Strategic Plan Priorities: Student Success, Academic Excellence
Expected Ongoing Costs: $4,000,000
Expected Revenue After One Year: $1,000,000
Expected Revenue After Three Years: $1,000,000
Expected Revenue After Five Years: $1,000,000
Make a claim or argument for your case, articulating evidence of the need.
I believe the campus could use more money for students to improve their academic skills, students that are first generation, students with disabilities, and military students. The money can be useful to students that are in need to better themselves with an education.
What will be the primary measurable impact of this proposal?
The college will have a better education system to offer to students diversified students.
Explain how the outcomes listed in #3 relate to the Budgetary Priorities. Please be specific.
The money is needed to have better the education quality of the university and to help students economically and to eventually graduate.
400 Bad Request
400 Bad Request
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