REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON THE IMPACT OF NEW PROPOSALS ON ACADEMIC PROGRAMS AND CAMPUS RESOURCES February 5, 1982 [Gerald Ray Miller Signature] Gerald Ray Miller, Chairman Dr. David Allan Department of Zoology Dr. Ray Anderson College of Education Ms. Sarah Bonner Undergraduate Student Dr. Marilyn Church Department of Early Childhood- Elementary Education Dr. Rachel Dardis Department of Textiles and Consumer Economics Dr. Dudley Dillard Department of Economics Dr. Robert Dorfman Department of Physics and Institute of Physical Sciences and Technology Dr. Stewart Edelstein Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences Dr. Richard Farrell Department of History Dr. Irwin Goldstein Department of Psychology Dr. Richard Jaquith Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Gerald Ray Miller Department of Chemistry Dr. Keith Morrison Department of Art Dr. Frank Munno Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Mr. Marc Rosendorf Undergraduate Student Mr. Joseph Shanks Graduate Student Dr. Gayle Smith Department of English OVERVIEW The charge to this task force has its origin in a motion passed unanimously in the April 30, 1980, meeting of the Campus Senate which called on the Executive Committee of the Senate to initiate in conjunction with the administration a study of the means for jointly evaluating the impact on the academic program of proposals requiring significant resources, of priorities for academic change, and of means for resource allocation. The full text of the originating motion and the resultant charge to the task force is given in Appendix A. We have concluded that our academic planning, from the departmental level to the campus level, must be improved and that department chairmen and other unit directors should be given more responsibility to develop and strengthen their programs. We call for a clear mission statement for the campus, against which both new proposals and existing programs will be measured. We recom- mend that the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs take the lead, not only for long-range planning (2 to 5 years) for the campus, but also for insuring that such planning takes place in all the academic units of the campus. We believe that consideration of new proposals and their resource requirements must be integrated with a review of both the program quality and the resource requirements of existing academic programs. We recommend that this be done by an Academic Planning Advisory Committee chaired by the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and appointed in con- sultation with the Campus Senate. The advice and recommendations of this Committee on new program proposals will be shared with the Senate PCC Committee, the Graduate Council, and the Campus Senate, as well as with the appropriate levels of academic administration. RELATION TO OTHER REPORTS The subject area of this report overlaps, in part, that of other recent task forces and the Carnegie study of the University (1981). Where appropriate, we refer to the recommendations con- tained in the Final Report of the Chancellor's Task Force for Academic Resources and Allocations, 1976 (hereinafter referred to as Resources & Allocations) and the Report of the Senate- Chancellor Task Force on Academic Decision Making, March 19, 1979 (hereinafter referred to as Academic Decision Making). While our report was being drafted, the Carnegie study of the entire University, The Post-Land Grant University: The University of Mary- land Report, 1981, by Malcolm Moos, was made public. In a number of instances, his recommendations parallel our own, though our studies were conducted independently. We have noted where his conclusions and recommendations are similar to our own, and reference his report as The Post-Land Grant University. 1 MODE OF OPERATION The Task Force was appointed on April 14, 1981 and held its first meeting on May 4, 1981. It began regular weekly meetings in September 1981. We met with each of the provosts, the Dean of the Graduate School, and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs to discuss the issues involved in our charge. We reviewed writ- ten materials from other universities and notes resulting from telephone calls to administrators in other universities. We met a task force to discuss the various issues and to prepare our report. We met with members of the Senate Executive Committee, the Senate General Committee on Educational Affairs, the Graduate Council, and the Senate PCC Committee, in order to review a draft of this report with leaders of the campus community who are not primarily administrators. ANALYSIS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS All new programs and all existing programs have real resource requirements. These resources may include most or all of the following: effort of present faculty members, faculty lines, sup- porting personnel, space, equipment, supplies, library books and journals and computer time. In many cases, existing resources within the sponsoring unit are reallocated to support a new program. Unless there is an increase in the efficiency of the utilization of resources, this is accompanied by a concomitant decrease in or abolition of the support for another activity of the unit. The latter point is usually not publicized and often goes unrecognized. In other cases, new resources must be provided by the division or campus to implement a new program. The practice of the Campus Senate has been to consider all proposals for new programs one at a time, in isolation from one another and independently of their resource requirements. This occurs despite the fact that the campus rarely receives genuinely new resources for a new program. New programs, therefore, are competing not only with other new programs for resources, but also with existing academic programs. In many cases, the resource question on the form used by the Senate Programs, Curriculum, and Course Committee (PCC Committee) has been left blank or answered with "none". In many instances, the true resource requirements of new program proposals have not been fully analyzed prior to Senate approval. The result has been that when questions concerning resources are raised on the Senate floor, often by par- ties who believe their units will lose resources to support the program being discussed, the responses have been general and.. vague. The information necessary for good academic decision making has not been available. Resource questions are more critical now than at earlier stages in the development of our campus. The University under- went a prolonged period of growth from the 50's to the early 70's. During this period of expansion in campus enrollment, 2 additional resources were given to the campus. These resources were allocated to expanding and developing departments and programs. Decision making was relatively easy because new resources were coming to the campus. This is no longer the situation. For nearly a decade, we have been in an era of limited to zero growth in campus resources. That condition is likely to persist through the 80's and 90's. We will, in general, only be able to do something new if we stop doing something we are doing now and reallocate resources. In his study, Moos writes: "University life in the 1980's may not be a zero-sum game, but the overwhelming amount of qualitative growth will probably derive from internal realignments. If universities fail to redesign their interiors, they will lack a defense against the less knowledgeable and sometimes dangerous pruners and slashers from outside." (The Post-Land Grant University, p. xiii). The College Park campus cannot afford to stand pat while it awaits new resources. There is a need for developing a limited number of new programs. There is a need for expanding some of our current programs to satisfy the requirements of society in the 80's and 90's. There is a need for a continuing shift in the emphasis in many or all of our academic programs, shifts which reflect the changes in our disciplines and changes in the world we live in. The health of our University and the growth of excellence on our campus critically depend upon our willingness to deal with the related issues of resources and program quality. Decisions about introducing new programs, shifting the emphasis of current programs, and reallocating resources should be made on the basis of well defined goals and carefully worked- out plans for achieving these goals, not on an ad hoc basis. Planning at the departmental through campus level must be accomplished in the context of a clearly stated and widely accepted mission for the College Park campus and an effective long-range plan for the campus. Recommendation 1: The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should be charged with developing a statement of mission of our campus. The development of the mission statement is an urgently needed first step. The mission statement should be more than a list of programs and services offered by UMCP. It should set out directions and priorities for the continued development of high quality academic programs on the campus and the rationale for these directions and priorities. The mission statement should be developed by the Vice Chancellor and his staff working with Senate leaders, the Senate General Committee On Educational Affairs, the administrative Academic Planning Council, and other members of the academic community. Part of the work of developing a mission statement has been done. An earlier task force itemized some objectives of the campus (Resources & Allocations, p. 7-9), and Moos has provided throughout his report much material 3 which could be utilized in defining our mission (The Post-Land The Grant University, particularly chapters 6-9 and 17-19). mission statement should be widely disseminated for discussion and should be submitted to the Senate for approval. At five year intervals, the Senate Committee on Educational Affairs should review the progress of the academic development of the campus, work with the Vice Chancellor in reviewing and updating the mission statement, and report its analysis and its recommendations on any proposed changes to the Senate. Recommendation 2: The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should be charged with long-range planning (2-5 years) for the campus in accordance with the mission statement. Planning at the campus level and below has varied in depth, effectiveness, and method. While there are some examples of good unit planning, the level and effectiveness of academic planning must be raised consistently if we are to become a better institution during these difficult times in higher education. The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs must take the lead in such planning. A previous task force also strongly recommended that the Vice Chancellor provide leadership for long-range planning (in addition to the usual short-range planning) "...so that these crucial functions receive proper emphasis." (Academic Decision Making, p. 7). The recent formation of an administrative Academic Planning Council composed of the Vice Chancellor and the five provosts is a step in the right direction. The planning at the campus level should serve as a good example for the divisions and other units at College Park. Responsibility for the coordination of planning from the campus level to the departmental level should lie with the Vice Chancellor. Moos echoes our view on the necessity of planning when he says, "The University should increase its planning at the department or school, campus, and university levels. The planning should be strategic, coordinated, and specific." (The Post-Land Grant University p. 262.) Moos defines strategic planning as the conscious choice of specific major initiatives, courses of action, retrenchments, and timetables to accomplish desired results through management of resources and people, knowledge of internal and external conditions, and intelligence about trends, problems and opportunities."(ibid., p. 263.) It is this type of planning which must be at the center of our efforts to improve the academic program of the College Park campus. We need not only goals and plans, but also new mechanisms for dealing with resource questions. Our current mechanisms have not been able to deal effectively with the interrelated areas of academic program development and the allocation of academic resources. Senate consideration of proposals has emphasized a review of the academic merit of the proposed program but has not focused on the campus need for that program, the priority of that need rela- 4 tive to other proposals, or on the resource implications of implementing the proposal for existing academic programs.Some proposals which are approved are, in fact, not implemented. Budgetary requests for new programs have proceeded up the administrative chain of command, sometimes prior to the PCC process, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes after Senate approval. The result has been, in a number of instances, a reliance on across-the-board assessments of operating units for the resources to support a new program. The funding of the MATH 110 requirement of the University Studies Program and the funding of the junior level English composition requirement (ENGL 391 or 393) have been by this method. Across-the-board assessment of resources is the antithesis of good academic decision making. It does not nurture our best programs, it does not adequately take into account a variety of the academic needs of this campus, and it does not force the consideration of a reduction in or elimination of programs which are of low quality or in which demand is low and declining. An earlier task force came to the same conclusion concerning across-the-board cutbacks and recommended changes similar to those embodied in this report (Academic Decision Making, p.10). It is unreasonable to expect our current system, designed to examine the academic merit of proposals, to function in a much broader fashion in the absence of a clear statement of campus mission and campus priorities and in the absence of specific administrative recommendations on priority and on support for such proposals. Recommendation 3: The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should establish an Academic Planning Advisory Committee This committee should composed predominantly of faculty. review and evaluate current and proposed academic programs and their resource requirements as part of its planning function. It should recommend to the Vice Chancellor and to the Chancellor priorities for change in the academic program and in the budget for the academic program of the campus. The objective of this recommendation is an integrated review of programs and budgets using campus-wide standards so that this campus may use its human, space, and financial resources to its best advantage. In the There are sound precedents for this recommendation. early 70's, Ohio University began intensive planning, spurred on by financial and enrollment problems, but kept its budgetary process separate from its planning process. The approach failed, in their view, because the planning process and the budgetary process were carried out in isolation from one another. Budgetary decisions undermined the planning process and the campus community rapidly lost interest in planning when they saw that it had little or no effect on budgets. In 1977, they integrated 5 their approach to planning and budgeting and created the University Planning Advisory Council (UPAC) to advise the Provost and the President. This integrated approach, combined with some obvious care and sensitivity for academic needs and faculty morale, has worked. William Bowen, then Provost and now President of Princeton University, established a Priorities Committee (PC) at the beginning of the 70's, also because of financial pressures. This committee has operated ever since and has been very influential in affecting the decisions Princeton has had to make in the development of its academic programs. It has functioned also as a valuable communication link between the faculty and administration on the campus. The Priorities Committee has a very broad purview, including food service and dormitory rates, a broader perspective than we envision at College Park. Common to both examples is a committee with more faculty members than administrators. Common also are heavy commitments by the committee members to the work of the committee, including weekly meetings and some sub-committee work. In both cases, the administration provides staff support and the membership is rotated slowly so that members can utilize the expertise they gain during their first year on the committee. At each institution, the existing Senates and Councils continue their governance and administrative functions. The establishment of an Academic Planning Advisory Committee would be a new departure for this campus. It would acknowledge openly the fact that programs cost money and require resources. It would say that this administration wants the best advice it can get from the academic community of the College Park campus. It would recognize that planning for the coming five years is vital to the future of our campus and that it is best to ask the difficult questions now, before crises arise. It would require that both the faculty and the administration accept greater faculty participation in the planning of the academic development of our campus. It would, at the same time, require units to recognize that the hiring of some new faculty and the introduction of some new courses would not obligate the campus to approve a new program. In implementing Recommendation 3, the following principles should be observed in setting up the Academic Planning Advisory Committee: A. A majority of the members of the committee should be full-time tenured faculty members who do not hold an administrative position at the level of department chairman or higher. They should be chosen for their judgment, commitment to the campus, scholarship, and teaching accomplishments and should represent a diversity of disciplines, experience, and perspectives. It is vital to the proper functioning of the Committee, and to its success, that the appointments to the Committee represent the broad spectrum of the academic program at College Park. We 6 do not believe, however, that a rigid formula should be applied (e.g., one faculty member per division). division). It is important that faculty members known for their scholarship participate in the work of this Committee because scholarship is what distinguishes a great university from an ordinary university. B. The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should appoint the members of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee. The appointment of all members, except for those who are administrators, should be done in consultation with the Executive Committee of the Senate. The Executive Committee of the Senate may itself provide a candidate or two, but nominations should not be restricted to members of the Senate. C. There should be some administrators on the Academic Planning Advisory Committee. The choice of the administrators should be the Vice Chancellor's. We recommend that the various levels of academic administration be represented. The inclusion of administrators on the Committee has proven beneficial both at Ohio University (eight faculty members and six administrators) and at Princeton (six faculty members, three administrators, four undergraduate students, two graduate students, and one staff member) The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently added four more faculty members to change the composition of their campus Academic Planning Council to nine faculty members and four administrators. The presence of faculty members and administrators on the same committee forces a comprehensive review of issues; both the administrative realities and the needs of teacher-scholars at the operating levels of our academic programs must be confronted. D. The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should chair the Academic Planning Advisory Committee. The practice at the other universities using this approach is for the equivalent of our chancellor or academic vice chancellor to chair the committee. The staff support is provided by what would be in our system an assistant vice chancellor with responsibilities in the area of planning. Effective use of the commit- tee members' time requires good staff support. E. The size of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee should be between twelve and sixteen members. A much larger committee is unwieldy, a much smaller commit- tee would not adequately represent the diversity of needs and responsibilities on our campus. 7 F. In its activities of planning the academic development of the campus, which includes examining proposals for new or expanded programs and recommending resource real- locations for academic programs and supporting academic services, the Committee should operate on the basis of campus-wide standards and the statement of campus mission. It should be the responsibility of the Committee to publicize the standards and criteria used as a basis for making its recommendations and to inform academic units adversely affected by its recommendations. The goal is to have the various levels of the campus work in concert with one another. The Committee has to take the lead but should, in turn, be responsive to the goals and strategies developed by the other levels on the campus. The operation of the Committee should be based on the principles embodied in the mission statement. More detailed criteria will be necessary for the Committee to reach judgments and to make recommendations. Some of these criteria have been detailed and discussed in Resources & Allocations (pp3ff). Other criteria will have to be developed by the Committee during its operation. The Committee should also utilize the material on the academic resource data of the divisions contained in Appendix IV of Resources & Allocations and the Carnegie study. Whenever possible, the Committee should utilize existing information in existing formats rather than requiring the rewriting of previously developed reports, budget justifications, etc. G. The ultimate product of the Committee is advice to the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Chancellor. is the responsibility of the Vice Chancellor and the Chancellor to make the administrative decisions. It was the consensus of the provosts that they could not, a group, be responsible for making the final decisions (if asked) since they had roles as advocates for their divisions. We are not proposing to turn the members of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee into administrators. The administrative responsibilities would continue to lie where they do now. To enhance the Committee's effectiveness, administrators who have occasion to act contrary to the advice of the Committee should normally report the basis for their decisions to the Committee. A good information base on departments, programs, and supporting services is necessary for good planning and resource allocation. We believe that, in addition to the easily quantifiable information on enrollment, weighted credit hours per faculty member, etc., program evaluations should be part of the information base. Such qualitative and interpretive information is critical for the evaluation of quality which is one of the Committee's primary concerns in advancing the academic program of the campus. H. The committee shall include at least one undergraduate and one graduate student. 8 Recommendation 4: The periodic reviews of all academic units and programs should be an integral part of the information base upon which planning and resource allocations are based. These five-year reviews should be conducted on the basis of campus-wide standards and should include a report of off-campus experts in the discipline. It should be routine for the Senate PCC Committee or the Graduate Council to examine the unit's most recent five-year review when considering a new proposal from that unit. In this area as well as in the others, it is important that the process be carried out with discretion and respect for individuals. The Academic Planning Advisory Committee should provide feedback to the departments and programs after their five-year reviews have been considered by the Committee. Other reviews besides such academic program reviews should be made available to the Committee when it deems them necessary for the proper carrying out of its planning function. Good academic planning at the campus level is a necessary condition for the growth in excellence of the College Park campus, but it is not, by itself, sufficient. The departments and other operating units of the campus must plan their own development in accord with the defined mission of the campus. Good planning at the operating unit level is essential for the healthy development of the academic program of the campus. Recommendation 5: Each department, college, school, and division should analyze its programs, set specific goals for improvement, and develop plans for achieving its goals in consonance with the campus mission statement. The key unit in most instances is the department. We must seek to emulate institutions such as the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where the departments and the campus administration take pride in the fact that most of the decisions which affect the quality and direction of the academic program are made at the operating level, the department. It is at the department level where the critical decisions on hiring and promotion generally can and should be made. It is here where the judgment is usually made to replace a faculty member who leaves with someone in a new area or subdiscipline. It is the faculty members in the departments who modernize their courses and curricula and who push graduate scholarship and research into new areas. Self-analysis is never a very comfortable process. But it can, in principle, be done well by members of the department, the people who have a vested interest in the success of the department and its programs and who have the expertise in the discipline. Recent reviews of the department, particularly those which include comments by external reviewers in the same field, can be very useful both to the department and to the levels above the department in goal-setting and in strategic planning. Each unit should develop criteria for resource allocation and should rank their priorities. 9 To be effective, such planning and goal-setting must be accompanied by a greater delegation of authority to department heads and deans, as urged by a previous task force (Academic Decision Making, pp 5-7) and as recommended by Moos: (The Post-Land Grant University, p. 258). The first recommendation of Moos in Chapter 19, "Programs and Priorities," is that "The University should establish a special faculty-administration committee on each campus under the academic vice chancellor, and a University-wide Program Council under the academic vice president, to suggest academic priorities to review programs, and plan for new programs and curtailments." (The Post-Land Grant University, pp 226 ff). We have independently arrived at the same conclusion concerning the desirability of establishing the Academic Planning Advisory Committee under the Vice Chancellor and have made detailed recommendations for its membership and operation. Our interpretation of Moos' recommendation for a University- wide Planning Council is that it is to be a faculty-administrative committee as well. We support such a recommendation and interpretation which would carry the principles embodied in this report to the University system level. We recognize that planning is an imperfect process and that there will be both unforeseen opportunities and difficulties. is for this reason, among others, that we emphasize that planning is a continuous process with opportunities for readjusting goals It will and strategies. No structure can guarantee success. take perceptive and dedicated leadership on the part of those involved to make this or any other system work. CONCOMITANT CHANGES The establishment of the Academic Planning Advisory Commit- tee would introduce a major new committee to the campus and for Some concomitant changes some purposes, one more layer of review. would appear desirable in other campus committees and their operations. Recommendation 6: New program proposals should be sent to the Senate twice each year by the Senate PCC Committee (under- graduate proposals) and by the Graduate Council (graduate proposals). Recommendation 7: The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs should forward the advice and recommendations of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee on each new program proposal to the Senate PCC Committee and the Graduate Council for use in their 10 deliberations. The Vice Chancellor may also include his own recommendations and priorities which may not always coincide with those of the Committee. The normal academic governance structures at Ohio University and at Princeton University were continued after the institution of their planning committees and we believe the Campus Senate and its committee structure should continue their mandated roles in the review of new proposals. We believe that it would be unwise, however, to ignore the changes in the state mandated reviews of new program proposals and our recommended changes in campus planning. The State Board of Higher Education and the Regents of the University have each established deadlines for their consideration of new proposals. The Senate should schedule its twice a year review of the new program proposals to mesh with these new deadlines. With the limited nature of the program changes which can be implemented on this campus, we believe that the campus administration should provide leadership on the issue of new programs. Given the advice and recommendations of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee and any recommendations of the Vice Chancellor, the Senate PCC Committee or the Graduate Council, as appropriate, can consider new programs in a broader context than has been possible with our current review mechanisms. By considering these new programs in groups, rather than one at a time, the PCC Committee or the Graduate Council will face the priority questions as well as the question of academic merit. The Senate PCC Committee and the Graduate Council should continue to make recommendations for program approval and should consider making recommendations for priorities for implementation of these proposals to the Senate. In reaching their decisions, they may utilize the criteria developed by a previous task force (Resources & Allocations, p 3ff), the Senate-approved mission statement, and their own internally: developed considerations. The recommendations and advice provided the PCC Committee and the Graduate Council by the Academic Planning Advisory Committee should be included with the recommendations of the committee to the Senate. The senate should not limit itself to the approval of new program "proposals but should consider, on the basis of its committee reports, recommending priorities for program implementation to the Chancellor. A flow chart for new program proposals from the divisional level to the Chancellor. is shown in Appendix B. The State Board of Higher Education and the Board of Regents. have also established a yearly deadline for receipt of the newly required prospectus which must precede the actual proposal. We believe that these prospectuses should be reviewed by the Acade- mic Planning Advisory Committee which should make its recommen- dations to the Chancellor. The prospectus is essentially a "license" to develop a new program proposal and does not commit the Senate or the campus to approve a subsequent proposal. The flow chart for prospectuses is also given in Appendix B. 11 Recommendation 8. Each division should review its committee structure with a view toward concentrating committee effort on the more meaningful functions. There are a variety of divisional councils and divisional faculty committees (in addition to the divisional PCC committees) which serve an advisory function. Sometimes that function is vague and sometimes, as in the case of the PCC committees, quite specific. Defining specific advisory functions necessary at the divisional level could lead to a more useful and meaningful committee system and less wasted time and effort. The same principle applies to other campus bodies such as the Graduate Council. If our recommendation for an Academic Planning Advisory Committee is adopted and implemented, the Committee would be involved in reviewing all five-year program evaluations. It would then be appropriate for the Graduate Council to re-examine the purpose and function of the simultaneous review of the graduate portion of these same programs by its Committee on Program Review. Recommendation 9. The preceding recommendations are not presumed to be a bar to the consideration, review and approval of program changes, pending the successful carrying out of the above recommendations. The process of program review should be streamlined so as to efficiently review programs, given the goals of program review, in a reasonable time frame. That time frame should be no longer than the current average period of review. It should also be a goal of the review process to reduce the time required for review. CONCLUSION We have proposed a revitalization of the academic planning, evaluation, and resource allocation processes, beginning at the departmental level and continuing through the campus and University system level. Our plan recognizes the contributions which faculty members and other members of the academic community can make to these processes. It also recognizes the nature of the present and future constraints on campus development. The mechanisms proposed will require hard work and the dedicated efforts of those appointed to the various committees. Our challenge is growth in the quality of the academic program of our campus in a time of severely limited growth in resources. We owe our University our best efforts to meet this challenge. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the members of our academic community who met with us and gave us the benefit of their experience and judgment. We also thank those administrators at other universities who shared with us their candid evaluations of the decision-making systems on their own campus, and those who supplied us with copies of written materials describing their planning and allocation mechanisms. 12 APPENDIX A CHARGE TO THE TASK FORCE ON THE IMPACT OF NEW PROPOSALS ON ACADEMIC PROGRAMS AND CAMPUS RESOURCES April 10, 1981 Originating Motion At its April 30, 1980 meeting, the Senate approved the following motion: I move that the Executive Committee of the Senate initiate in conjunction with the Campus Administration' a study of the means for jointly evaluating the impact on the academic program of proposals requiring significant resources, that this joint effort also look at priorities for academic change and for resource allocation and that the effort devised by the Executive Committee in conjunction with the Administration report back to the Senate by the second meeting of the Fall 1981 Semester. (This could be charging the General Committee on Educational Affairs. It could be setting up a joint task force for addressing these issues.) Charge to the Task Force In light of this motion, the Senate Executive Committee charges the Task Force to examine and consider the advisability of the Senate and its committees providing a priority rating of all new programs considered for approval. Specifically, the Task Force should provide a list of items on which the Senate should make a judgment when considering all new programs. Such a list might include separate judgments on the following items: 1. Academic merit of the proposed program 2. General need for the program (e.g., intellectual need, job market, potential enrollment, etc.) 3. Campus priority (e.g., desirable, highly desirable, or necessary). As things presently stand, items 1 and 2 are considered in PCC or the Graduate Council and on the Senate floor. The Task Force should consider whether and where the judgment on Campus priority should be made. Alternatives might be that it be made in committee and on the Senate floor, or that the judgment be left to the Administration within the constraints of a set of criteria and guidelines approved by the Senate, or some intermixing of these approaches. The Task Force should then recommend procedures by which the Senate could provide itself with the necessary information to make rational judgments on those items on which the Task Force feels the Senate should make judgment. For example, if the Senate is to judge campus priorities, a comparative judgment, 2 the Task Force might consider the advisability of periodic reports from the Provosts (written or oral) to the appropriate committee of the Senate. reports might contain the Provost's judgments concerning the academic quality of existing programs, the well-being of these programs with regard to need, enrollment, etc., and the perceived future for these programs. Further, Task Force might require that submissions to PCC include more specificity in the statement of the immediate and future resource needs of the proposed program. The Task Force should also consider the possibility, in the case of programs requiring significant resources, that PCC seek administrative reaction to these needs and the possible approaches to their funding. Should the Task Force recommend that the priority judgment be made by the Administration, it should develop criteria and guidelines by which this judgment should be made. For example, what is the relative importance of student interest, opportunities to build on faculty excellence, manpower needs, high quality leadership, new intellectual thrusts, the level of external grant Such criteria and support, the opportunities for service to the state, etc. guidelines might also be appropriate if the judgment on priority is to be by the Senate. The recommendation of the Task Force should be forwarded to the Executive Committee for action by the Senate in time for the Senate's first meeting in the Fall of 1981 (usually, early October). Flowchart for new program proposals 1. ORIGINATOR 2. DIVISION 3. CHANCELLOR 4. SENATE 5. ACADEMIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMITTEE 6. VICE CHANCELLOR FOR 7. ACADEMIC AFFAIRS 8. SENATE (Simultaneously) SENATE PCC, GRADUATE COUNCIL 9. SENATE 10. CHANCELLOR Flowchart for prospectuses 1. ORIGINATOR 2. DIVISION 3. ACADEMIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMITTEE 4. VICE CHANCELLOR FOR 5. ACADEMIC AFFAIRS 6. CHANCELLOR