coe-staff: Calendar updates

[Randy Kamphaus]

Dear Faculty and Staff,

In addition to pursuing our university priorities of academic and research excellence, inclusion and equity, and student access and experience (https://provost.uoregon.edu/strategicframework), we will also be engaged in some activities that are episodic, occurring only every five, ten, or more years.  In the interest of helping all of us schedule our work optimally, I want to make you aware of some of these less typical duties that will require our collective and coordinated action, namely; national accreditation of our educator preparation programs, academic planning, and budget alignment.  Even if you are not directly involved in some of these activities, you will be sought for your counsel. 

National Accreditation

Our work associated with the Council on Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP; http://www.caepnet.org) process will be extensive this academic year.  Many of you - academic program coordinators, department heads, associated deans, and several staff members - have already been engaged in preliminary work with Keith Hollenbeck and Julie Wren for the prior two years.  Preparation of the CAEP self-assessment and report is due by the end of this academic year, which will require significant effort.  This work will continue to be directed by Julie Wren.  In addition, we have the university accreditation process for the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (http://www.nwccu.org/Directory%20of%20Inst/Alpha%20Cluster/s_u.html) as overlay to the work of CAEP.

Academic Planning

Setting academic priorities will also occur this year.  We have to both create our own priorities that reflect the unique strengths and the challenges faced by our college, and simultaneously ensure alignment with those of the university.  Our reason for planning is singular, and is the same as for our university; to identify our core purpose for existence as a higher education institution and align all of our activities - academic instruction, research, and management of our physical spaces and fiscal resources - are aligned with this purpose.  I will provide an overview of this process at our October 14th faculty and staff meeting.  I also appreciate the leadership of this effort by Beth Stormshak and our entire faculty advisory committee.

Fiscal Operations

Our limited academic income has been challenging for years, which now requires considerably more stewardship as we enter a new era of increased accountability.  As many of you are aware, new systems of fiscal responsibility, financial analysis, financial projection, and personnel planning are already in place or under development.  Our financial staff and department heads have been working on these activities all summer, and will continue to spend considerable time on budgetary work until next year's budget is due in March. 

I will be happy to answer any questions about these or other ad hoc activities.   

Until Friday,

Randy 

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