Dear Colleagues,
As you may know, the strategic planning process, initiated in 2021, provided a number of opportunities for thoughtful conversations. Through our campus community’s participation, we gained great insight and generated an extensive list of initiatives that will allow us to meet the challenges we are facing. Year-two implementation of the operational sustainability initiative, one of the priorities within the Thrive theme, focuses on developing an understanding of how to create a sustainable future and operational framework for our university.
As a next step in this work, the University is now undertaking a comprehensive process designed to review our academic offerings, operations, and administrative services. The academic analysis and administrative review will be carried out over the next eight months, and will ensure we are stewarding our resources most effectively to support our mission and the success of our students. Ultimately, our findings will also help us respond to longstanding external challenges to higher education.
We will have the privilege of co-leading the academic analysis and administrative review process and will be supported by a cross-functional Steering Team composed of faculty and staff who will be asked to participate based on their functional duties and roles within the institution. The members of the Steering Team will receive progress updates and review initial findings, applying their rich institutional knowledge to advise the process and provide essential context.
We will be partnering with rpk GROUP to help us understand how we are called to steward our resources in order to live out our mission in this time and place. We chose rpk GROUP because of their proven track record of designing and successfully supporting universities with nimble, strategic frameworks for maximizing impact and institutional growth.
The operational sustainability process will consist of two core areas: academic analysis and administrative review.
Academic Analysis
- Develop a framework through which we can better understand the entire portfolio of academic offerings at the University.
- Develop a data-informed and transparent approach for monitoring and evaluating academic offerings on an annual basis.
- Review the mix of programs in our academic portfolio, as well as identify opportunities to manage course offerings to ensure resources are aligned to support student needs
- An important element of this work will be the shift from focusing only on how we spend money to asking and answering the question: “Are we serving students and fulfilling our mission best with the resources we have?”
Administrative Review
- The administrative review will focus on services within institutional administrative or operational functions as well as within academic administration.
- Focus on how the University can improve current levels of service and address existing service “pain points.”
- Develop a comprehensive set of recommendations to move toward a more sustainable business model that invests in our students, faculty, and staff.
The academic analysis and administrative review project will take place during the fall semester and will be completed, with recommendations sent to the President early next calendar year. Updates on the project will be provided to the campus community through meetings with campus stakeholders, as well as a webpage that will provide monthly updates. The webpage will also provide a question/feedback form for all faculty and staff. Those materials are in development and will be shared in August.
Our community is about to embark on many conversations to discern our calling to be a place which prepares students to lead and serve in the church and society. We hope the entire community will engage in this dialogue, so that Valparaiso University can be what God and our neighbors need us to be. We look forward to working with you.
