Portland State University UUPP Faculty Committee Minutes

November 23, 1998 Present: Bob Everhart, Kathi Ketcheson, Maria Talbott, Jackie Temple, Jerry Recktenwald, Carol Morgaine, Michael Flower, Judy Patton, Michael Reardon, Donna Kiykioglu, Devorah Liebermann, and Juliette Stoering. Absent: James Strathman, Wally Pfeiffer. Background and Context for the Urban Universities Portfolio Project (UUPP) Michael Reardon described the background and context of the UUPP. Urban 13 schools have existed in relation to established taxonomies (e.g., Carnegie Classifications) of higher education. The Urban 13 have a commonality as urban institutions, but some fit into and have an allegiance with the established taxonomies. Despite the differences and competing allegiances within the group, the Urban 13 have expressed a major interest in defining the “urban institution” as a way to identify these schools in relation to a variety of institutions in higher education. Two external factors have fueled the ongoing discussion. First, rankings of higher education institutions (e.g., U.S. News and World Reports) have generated concern because the elements used to create the rankings reflect a bias in favor of residential universities and liberal arts colleges. Second, regional accreditation processes have generated concern because they take exhaustive effort, yet seem to serve little purpose or produce useful results beyond maintaining accreditation. As a result, the Urban 13 have developed two projects. The first is the Urban Statistical Portrait Project. It is an effort to collect consistent and comparative data to share within the Urban 13 (and, more recently, also within the Metropolitan Universities Group). This is an ancillary project, but it overlaps with the UUPP. The second is the Portfolios Project (UUPP). AAHE and the Pew Foundation participated in the discussion of how to better articulate the success and mission of urban universities. From these discussions, academic officers from a few of the schools developed the proposal, with IUPUI leading the effort. The UUPP is inchoate. From its inception, project participants have wrestled with questions such as: What are the overarching goals of the project? What will the end product be? How much should the institutional portfolios share in common and how much should they be tailored to each school? Although these questions will continue to be discussed, the best possible outcomes of the project would be to clarify the role these schools play in higher education and decide what is the best way to define and describe their role to their multiple publics. The multiple publics include internal and external audiences. Internal audiences include (prospective and present) faculty, students, and parents of students. External audiences include business and industry, local agencies (especially employers of students), and government. The product of the project should speak to multiple groups in a way that lets each understand and interact with PSU. Our audiences should have a sense of our goals and how we evaluate them. The institutional portfolio should be supported by data and information, but should amount to more than a factbook. We need to find out from our audiences what they want to know about PSU and how they want to know it. The project process is dynamic and developing. Each institution has the opportunity to shape it to be what it wants. Project participants could wrestle indefinitely about the issues, but at PSU we need to chart our own course and work it into the collective agenda as it forms. The PSU portfolio should make the case that we engage in purposeful interaction with the region. Many research and educational activities are already underway. The portfolio should also present PSU’s interaction in various roles in American higher education, especially in curricular reform, as a benefit and contribution. In addition to its descriptive role, the portfolio can also serve as an agent of change. For example, the state system has moved to a performance indicators process. The indicators currently in place are based on traditional institutional measures. The Portfolio Project could demonstrate more effective ways to set performance indicators. The Faculty Committee briefly discussed what the portfolio web site might look like. Although it is too early to decide on specific content, the Committee seemed amenable to the notion of a tiered web site. The first layer would be a descriptive narrative supported by other layers of information and links to data such as the PSU Factbook. In addition, the portfolio should probably have multiple entry points because the various audiences may have different information needs. Faculty Survey of Institutional Issues Michael distributed a preliminary draft of a faculty survey. The survey has been designed to tap into faculty attitudes to a wide variety of issues. The survey responds in part to a request for a faculty values study. It relates to the portfolio project because the faculty is part of PSU’s internal audience. The details of how it will be distributed have not yet been decided, but the end of winter quarter is the tentative administration date. Members of the faculty committee should review the draft and send their feedback to Michael in the next few weeks. In particular, the committee should attend not only to the phrasing of the questions but also to topics that the survey does not cover and should. Future Directions of the Project Kathi Ketcheson distributed a summary of the mission and learning goals that the urban universities had agreed upon at the Chicago meeting. The four mission goals are lifelong learning, diversity, scholarship, and urban outreach and involvement. Within the mission goals are four learning goals. These are communication (including writing, speaking, graphics, etc.), critical thinking, diversity and pluralism, and citizenship and engagement. The schools have leeway in the development of institutional portfolios, but the portfolios should connect in some way to these broader goals. For the national meeting in January each institution must document one learning initiative that reflects the common and individual campus goals. The intent is that this activity will serve as a prototype for how we might proceed with documentation for the Portfolio. PSU will document the community partnership program because it is a well-developed initiative that reflects the common goals. Kathi will pull the documentation together, present it to the committee, and, if acceptable, bring it to the January meeting. Committee members are encouraged to bring their ideas or leads on documentation to Kathi. Other Business Kathi announced that the web site for the project (not the actual portfolio) is under construction and should be completed soon. She will inform the committee of the address for the site as soon as it is ready. Bob Everhart suggested that the committee meet before the national meeting at the end of January, then again in February and March. The meetings for next Winter Term are scheduled for January 13, February 10, and March 10 from 12:00 to 2:00 PM.