Portland State University Institutional Portfolio Project Summary

Susan Kahn, Director of the Institutional Portfolio Project and Director of Programs and Planning, Office of Faculty and Senior Staff Development at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis presented the following summary: The "Urban Universities Portfolio Project: Assuring Quality for Multiple Publics" is a national initiative aimed at developing a new medium, the institutional portfolio, for communicating about the work and effectiveness of urban public higher education. The project brings together six leading urban public universities to create institutional portfolios that will describe and document how well the institutions are fulfilling their missions - and do this in a way that speaks to a range of internal and external audiences. The portfolios will have a particular focus on student learning, and on accomplishments and characteristics unique to urban institutions, such as use of the rich learning opportunities afforded by the urban environment, and efforts to adapt offerings to the diverse needs of urban students. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and cosponsored by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), the three-year project has two main emphases: to enhance understanding, among both internal and external stakeholders, of the distinguishing features and missions of urban public comprehensive universities; and to enhance the capacity of these universities to communicate, through the institutional portfolio, about their effectiveness in achieving their missions. Urban public universities are emerging as a growing, increasingly important sector of U.S. higher education, yet they tend to be disadvantaged by traditional rating and ranking methods that compare them with other types of institutions. More fundamentally, their missions and work are often not fully understood by their stakeholders - especially external stakeholders, such as accreditors, state governments, prospective students and their parents, and even the communities they serve. Part of the purpose of this project is to clarify and increase public awareness of the contributions of urban public universities, and to establish benchmarks that will enable these universities to be compared with appropriate peers. The institutional portfolio will document the educational outcomes and results that participating universities produce and the characteristics and practices that foster those outcomes. The portfolio idea comes from multiple sources: the growing use of reflective portfolios to portray the work of both teachers and learners at all levels of education; discussions within and outside higher education about the inadequacy of current methods of documenting institutions' effectiveness; and state and national discussions and policies calling for greater accountability from higher education institutions. The six universities participating in this project will collaborate to produce a template for institutional portfolios that allow universities to reflect on and improve their own practices, and that help the universities' many external audiences understand their work, accomplishments, and effectiveness. The universities will also develop their own portfolios, in both paper and electronic formats. The lead university and fiscal agent for the project is Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). The other participating institutions include the University of Illinois at Chicago, Portland State University in Oregon, California State University-Sacramento, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Georgia State University in Atlanta. A National Advisory Board of distinguished members representing government, business, foundations, and higher education will advise the project about its aims, practices and progress. An Institutional Review Board, comprised of higher education leaders and members of accrediting organizations, will work with the participating institutions on portfolio development and contribute ideas and expertise to the project as a whole. A project leadership team will provide overall direction for the initiative. That team includes Peg Miller, President of AAHE; Barbara Cambridge, Director of AAHE's Teaching Initiatives and Associate Dean of Faculties at IUPUI; William M. Plater, Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of Faculties at IUPUI; Susan Kahn, Director of the project and Director of Programs and Planning, Office of Faculty and Senior Staff Development at IUPUI; and Victor Borden, Director of Information Management and Institutional Research at IUPUI. In addition, each participating campus has its own local project director, who will manage the campus-specific work of the project in close communication with the national leadership team, and an institutional research representative, who will oversee development of the institutional research component of the portfolio.