As I recently shared with a Provost who had just been named the next institutional President, “You’ve got the tiger by the tail now!” But seriously, congratulations on working your way into the role of the IE Director for your institution (especially you Alison!). So, what do you do now?
Don’t re-invent the wheel. Look. Watch. Learn. Listen. Especially if you are coming in from the outside. IE is about making things better at the institution, but that is often consumed by ensuring compliance with accreditation standards. If you are doing the first part correctly, the second part is simple. The thing I would most suggest you remember here is that there are hundreds of correct ways to do this work. Changes to make your IE processes work better are good. Changes to make your IE processes work about the same, just through a different mechanism that you are more familiar with will aggravate those you serve. Changes to improve your processes should happen quickly and decisively. Changes to make it more the way you want it with minimal gains in functionality should be made slowly…unless you are coming up on a reaffirmation and the processes are fundamentally broken. In that case, set everybody’s hair on fire (figuratively) and invent away.
Develop allies. Find those faculty and staff with a legitimate interest in and dedication to the continuous improvement mindset. Find the Directors across the institution that think this way. Cultivate those relationships and have meaningful discussions about the institutional processes around IE. Listen to what they like and what they don’t like then build a plan to replace parts of the wheel to make it work better, rather than re-inventing right out of the gate. When the ideas for change come from your allies rather than from you, they will be an easier sell to the masses.
Never lose sight of the big picture. Individual processes within the IE universe will consume your time. Don’t let those individual processes become individual buckets. Student learning outcomes. Student achievement. Strategic plan. Service Review. Program review. These are not separate buckets, but all go into one IE bucket and everybody should be playing together in the sandbox. If you don’t see them all in the same bucket, reach out to me and we can talk through it.
Simplify complicated processes. In my experience, when faculty are left to their own devices to design the system to assess student attainment of learning outcomes they will develop a very complicated and convoluted data collection protocol. After executing said protocol, they will be suffering from assessment fatigue and you won’t get a meaningful reflection on the data. Without that, you are unlikely to get a meaningful change seeking improvement in student learning. The same goes for other IE processes. Simple and efficient processes early in the cycle will result in better results at the end of the cycle.
At Southeastern Accreditation Consultants, we’re ready to collaborate and support your IE journey. We bring best practices, proven strategies, and experienced process review to the table. We offer individualized services to best meet your needs during the adventure to come. Contact us to get started.