Standard V. Administration and Finance
V.8 The school's systematic planning and evaluation process includes review of both its administrative policies and its fiscal policies and financial support. Within applicable institutional policies, faculty, staff, students, and others are involved in the evaluation process. Evaluation is used for ongoing appraisal to make improvements and to plan for the future..
Each year, the School undertakes a number of planning and review processes in order to ensure that it is maintaining progress towards its strategic goals and objectives, its policies are in line with the University’s guidelines, and that it is operating at peak efficiency.
The School submits an annual plan to the Provost in March, reflecting achievements from the prior year and goals for the next. Also on an annual basis, the School prepares a budget for the following fiscal year. These processes permit the Dean, Associate Dean and Director of Administration to review fiscal policies, administrative polices and financial support actions. Then, the Program Chairs and program faculty review program-level financial and administrative policies. For example, all three doctoral programs were comprehensively reviewed between 2009-2011 for academic content, procedures for timely acquisition of the degree, and clarity of administrative policies.
The efficacy of existing policies is assessed, with revisions proposed for the next year. From 2008-2012, the School reviewed and revised the SIS Council Bylaws, the Peer Review of Teaching process, and the Promotion and Tenure guidelines. In many cases, the need for any revisions became clear at monthly faculty meetings or SIS Council meetings. These consistent venues provide feedback from the faculty, staff and students to the Dean and administration. For example, in 2010, the Dean moved responsibility for faculty research travel budgets and expenditures to the Program Chairs. This was done in light of the fact that the Program Chairs are more familiar with the research needs of individual faculty.
Another example would be the budget for financial support of students. The budget amount is determined by the Dean and the Director of Administration: this amount is then distributed to the academic degree programs. The choice of which population of students will receive the funding is determined by the Program Chair or selected faculty members. From 2006-2008, most of the LIS-related financial aid was distributed to MLIS students. From 2009 on, a greater proportion of the funds were allocated to support PhD students in the program. This shift had two objectives: to increase the number of new PhD students in the program, and to be able to utilize existing PhD students as Teaching Fellows, which requires a higher stipend. This provides PhD students with invaluable experience in teaching, better preparing them for future academic positions. The program determined to manage financial support of MLIS students through dedicated gift funds (endowed and alumni gifts) and through the creation of the Partners Program (which offers MLIS students practical experience opportunities and in some cases, tuition remission and a stipend).
The role of advisory groups and student evaluations can be clearly seen in the process to transition the existing MLIS online program to Pitt Online, the University’s platform. The School of Information Sciences approached this move based on changes in the online education market, strong recommendations from its Board of Visitors, and recommendations from an external consulting firm retained to suggest improvements in the offering of such an online learning experience. In 2000, the School began to implement a plan to offer its ALA-accredited MLIS program in the online environment. With this, the School hosted the first online degree program at the University of Pittsburgh. Over the past ten years, this program was enhanced in terms of both content and the delivery system – all of which occurred outside of the fledgling online education movement at the University. In 2010, the School’s Board of Visitors strongly recommended that the administration consider potential future iterations of the online program in light of changes in technology, shifting markets for online degree programs, and efficiencies of scale. Simultaneously, the School was assessing the increased workload involved in offering the online program in the blended teaching format (courses on-campus being recorded for online students). This format had significant implications for faculty time, faculty research productivity, and distribution of IT resources across the iSchool. In particular, this resulted in faculty team-teaching several courses with enrollments exceeding 100 students (a combination of online and on-campus students). The amount of preparation time and effort to create learning experiences that worked concurrently in both on-campus and online environments, coupled with the volume of interactions necessary to support such large enrollments, were taking a toll on faculty who had to also manage research programs and provide services to the University and professional communities.
In response, the iSchool retained the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) to independently evaluate the operation, delivery, and curriculum of the online degree program. After an exhaustive review, the NCHEMS consultant recommended that the current modality of the program (blended classes that include both online and on-campus students) and the delivery system (Panopto) were probably not the most effective and efficient methods to be used in offering an online program, particularly given the University’s more recent development of Pitt Online. The impact on faculty productivity, the dissatisfaction with the delivery method on the part of students, and the costs of maintaining the technology infrastructure were all highlighted in the report from the consultant. The consultants recommended re-envisioning the program in terms of curricular elements and delivery methods. See Appendix PRO 3 for the NCHEMS report which will be available on-site.
In recent years, Pitt has built a core online program offering certificates and degree programs in several disciplines including nursing, business and education. In light of this exceptional delivery system and capacity, and based on extensive conversations with the faculty and SIS Council, it was determined to offer the online MLIS program via this robust University-wide program.
The move to Pitt Online is underway, with core courses being produced utilizing University design and hosting services. The faculty, working with the iSchool’s new Director of Distance Education, eLearning Partnerships and Outreach, is considering the consultants’ recommendations regarding the on-campus element and types of programs to be offered online. Thus, it can be seen that faculty, students, and administrators – as well as outside experts – were significantly involved in this programmatic change. See Appendix PRO 5 (available on-site) for Transition Plan.