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Brad MacIssac
Assistant Vice-President, Planning & Analysis and Registrar at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology
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Bill Muirhead
Associate Provost, Academic and IT at the University of Ontario
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Wednesday, Oct 29, 2014 9:45 AM - 11:15 AM
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Can you give us a brief overview of your integrated university plan and how SEM played a role in it?
Muirhead: Beginning in 2013, there was a recognition across the university that we needed to more formally understand, evaluate, implement, and make decisions around data and around SEM. At UOIT, SEM is an all-encompassing term that addresses the management and allocation of resources, strategies and future academic missions based on enrollment characteristics among and between faculty, students, and the different units at the institution. The university established a committee that has included deans and senior administrators that touched upon every aspect of business operations, from the academic operation and service orientation to the recruitment and general operations of faculties and university functions. There was an emphasis of what could be considered first principles in our strategic plan. I refer to it sometimes as ‘the committee of everything.’
When we brought this group together, data became much more readily available and shared – it became not only available, but available in a way that the institutional committee could interrupt, interact, and make decisions based upon the data. At times decisions have being made in the absence of data, which is problematic when significant fiscal resources are based upon enrollment revenue, which so many of us do. SEM helps alleviate this limitation.
How long did you spend planning for this integrated model?
Muirhead: >We began to talk about this three or four years ago. We recognized that there would be a time that SEM decisions would have to play a bigger role in our decision making – we would have to make decisions based on the funds originating from students within our institution. We spent a lot of time talking about what our institution’s SEM model would be, how we would define growth or lack of growth. Over the first few years, the university grew quickly, but we recognized that it was only the first phase of a generational build for any postsecondary institution. Last year, we formally sat down and started to define terms and goals and lay the ground work for this committee.
Can you comment on the implementation of the ‘committee of everything?’ Was it unwieldy at any point?
MacIsaac: It was SEM, so I loved it the whole way through! Honestly, the pros of having the senior executives together was that they could discuss issues that probably affected more than one department, and in different ways. I’ll admit it was very hard to make some of those controversial decisions as part of a large committee, getting everyone on the same page. Sometimes tasks and issues needed to be broken down into smaller chunks in order to get things down.
Speaking from a Canadian institutional point of view, how applicable will your session be to your colleagues at U.S. and other foreign institutions be?
Muirhead: This is a topic du jour regardless of whether you are in Canada, the US, or anywhere else for that matter. There are particular drivers from the state or national level that may be different from individual institutional institution to another, but the general drivers for SEM are found everywhere. SEM and the requirement for resource allocation based on decisions based upon enrollment and the composition of the student body should be a key concern for every institution. There are some institutions that have significant funding outside of enrollment income but I don’t know of any postsecondary institution that would say that they have more funds than they need. SEM plays a large role in deciding the best way to use institutional resources. We are facing a generation of unprecedented challenges. We have to go back to the late 70s throughout North America to find a time as economically challenging as it has been for universities within the last 5 years.
Were there any immediate benefits?
MacIsaac: Last year we set this planning model up, and this year we are implementing. What comes to mind immediately for me is that this model has given us a forum to have serious discussion on the hard topics rather than letting everyone just go off and do their own thing. All the senior officials dealing with public and institutional constraints now have a forum to speak and address more difficult issues.
Muirhead: I would add that it is not only a forum for discussion, but also presents an opportunity to share what everyone is doing individually across the institution. Often I find that there are aspirations across the university in terms of the directions people want to go, not just in terms of resource allocation, but aspirations academically in terms of the future. I believe that thinking in terms of SEM more readily accommodates these discussions. One of the other beneficial aspects has been the development of a culture of data. SEM really encourages evidence-based decision making in many aspects of university planning. Gathering and interpreting data has a significant benefit of how universities should or could operate, which in turn produces outcomes that universities make to society including; new knowledge, educated students, and community service.
What do you expect attendees to learn from your session?
Muirhead: The notion of what steps we have taken as an institution in order to plan more effectively. In many ways, how we have implemented this in terms of the structure of this institution is something that should be a benefit to any institution.