The last two years here at Southern Polytechnic have been characterized by extensive information gathering and discussion of the issues. The 2000-01 year will be the Year of Decisions. Our success will require improved communications, clearer responsibility, specific accountability, and consequences.
Our highest priorities for this year are
We’re going to put Southern Polytechnic on the map. The effort will take everyone’s help, involvement, and support. We will be informed, strategic, and decisive. And each issue that confronts us now? We’ll solve it.
I’d like to address these goals individually, as much as they can be isolated. Obviously, the three goals are closely interconnected, and success in each of them depends on success in all of them.
Visibility
We could argue that the most critical goal is visibility, because, when we are successful at getting the University better known, then we can expect enrollment and resources to increase. The relationship is so obvious that it could go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, because it is so important to this University.
Increased visibility is absolutely necessary for increasing enrollment.
Students can’t decide to come here if they don’t know about us. (To which my nieces would say, "Well, duh!")
We’re going to put ourselves on the map this year. I may be more fed up than any of you of hearing, after two years here, comments like, "Southern Polytechnic is the best-kept secret in the University System of Georgia" and "Southern Polytechnic? Where is that?"
As I’ve said before, we will know that we’ve been successful at increasing the visibility of this University when people use the location of the campus to give directions to the Big Chicken.
A Visibility Plan is being created for the upcoming year. This plan will include:
A key element of the visibility issue is that we must have a common definition of "who we are" and that we all communicate that same message, internally and externally, consistently and often. Here is the sentence, which I’ve called a context statement and that I’ve used with several on-campus groups and a number of off-campus ones. This context statement may benefit from some additional wordsmithing, but this is the basic idea:
Everyone is part of this effort – not just the faculty, academic departments, and staff, but everyone: those who work with space, on facilities, in classrooms and labs, for maintenance, on grounds, with computer systems…everyone who is responsible for any part of the environment in which teaching and learning happen at this University.
We are in the communication and technology business. I’d like to add a note of clarification about the final point in the context statement: the non-science, non-engineering, non-technology disciplines have a special role at this University. The arts, humanities, architecture, management, and social sciences at Southern Polytechnic have a special mission in improving communications and understanding about managing, applying, and using technology in the world around us. Yes, the business world needs people who are technologically literate, but the ability to communicate clearly about technology may be even more important.
You’ve all heard me say that, here at Southern Polytechnic, we use technology to teach about technology. We’re very good at this. In fact, let me say it differently: We use technology to communicate about technology. We need to apply those same communication skills to our work together for this University, including both internal and external communications.
We need to be sending a consistent message that this is Southern Polytechnic
State University. I’ve learned not to correct alumni when they say "Southern
Tech" (after all, that is the name of the school they attended), but we
need to be consistent in the way in which we talk about this University.
Starting right now, any staff member, faculty member, or administrator
who says "Southern Tech" owes me a quarter. And when Mr. Patrick McCord,
our new Vice President for Business and Finance, is here full time, on
September 1, he will be responsible for ensuring that the signage on campus
consistently reinforces the correct name of this University.
Enrollment
The existing Enrollment Plan focuses primarily on issues of visibility (marketing). Dr. Ron Koger, Vice President for Student and Enrollment Services, will be revising that plan immediately to include information and recommendations about retention produced by an ad hoc task force that has been working for the past year. This retention task force was led by Ms. Barbara Anderson, Director of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment, and the task force’s work draws on data collected from our students over the last several years. Dr. Koger will be working with Ms. Anderson on the revised enrollment plan, and he will be accountable for completing the plan, with appropriate consultation, and implementing it. Ultimately, our goal is to grow to 5000 students. (As Chancellor Portch observed last spring when he spent a day on campus, "There’s nothing wrong with Southern Polytechnic that another 500 students and $10 million in endowment wouldn’t fix.")
A new Women Students Initiative will commence in the next few weeks. Ms. Anderson will co-chair the project with me, and we will focus on increasing the number and percentage of women enrolled at Southern Polytechnic. Everyone who is interested in contributing to this project is invited to participate.
The Academic Plan was given to Dr. Sotiropoulos last Friday (August 11); it is final except for a discussion with the new Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Board of Regents, Dr. Dan Papp. (The plan can be accessed on the Internet at URL: http://www.spsu.edu/irpa/Academic_plan_Aug00.html). The Office of Academic Affairs will be responsible for leadership in implementation of the Academic Plan, which will play a key role in supporting our enrollment growth and potentially increasing visibility as well. Key points in the Academic Plan include the following:
What’s new:
The University will be engaged in increasing external resources, under the leadership and with the accountability of Dr. Sotiropoulos. He will be involving the academic deans in fund-raising, along a variety of other activities, including the following:
Summary
This year, we will focus on our priority goals of increasing visibility, enrollment, and resources.
To accomplish these goals, our tools -- our behavior -- will change so that we communicate more clearly, develop a common understanding of responsibility (linked with authority), have specific accountability, and link consequences directly.
We’re going to put Southern Polytechnic on the map. The effort will take everyone’s help, involvement, and support. We will be informed, strategic, and decisive.
We are undergoing a significant amount of change. An example of one area that is helping the rest of us see how to cope with change is the Computer Science Department. The department has been dealing with the pressures of increased enrollment, the constraint in University resources that affects all of us, the challenge of making use of opportunities to increase visibility, and, on top of these, the issues associated with what is arguably the fastest-changing academic discipline at this University. The department is currently engaged in internal discussions about how best to work together in this environment of change, and I want to commend and thank the Computer Science Department for its leadership in this area.
You’re all familiar with the saying that "not to decide is to decide." The dangers of indecision are great, and the University cannot risk them. We will make decisions this year. We will make some mistakes, but we’ll respond and assess them quickly, we’ll learn what we can, and we will never make the same mistake twice.
I’d like to close with a final quote, from Thomas J. Watson:
Linking responsibility, accountability, and consequences will be a key part of our effort as we address our three priority issues – increasing visibility, enrollment, and resources. You can all hold me accountable, as does Chancellor Portch, for keeping the leadership of this University focused on our priorities, for positive visibility, for relationships with external constituencies, including the legislature and the Board of Regents, and for putting Southern Polytechnic State University on national map of higher education.
Our goals are to increase visibility, enrollment, and resources.
And our behaviors around decision-making are clear communication, well understood responsibility, specific accountability, and consequences.
I look forward to working together with all of you and keeping us all focused on our goals during this year of decision-making.
And if we run into a problem along the way, what will we do?
Solve it.