So why a blog?

Effective and informative communication is a challenge faced by many of us.  As the provost of PSU, although I find myself hearing, learning, and reflecting on many issues internal and externally, I also recognize that there are times when faculty, staff and students at PSU must wonder: What is the work that is taking place? How can I find out more? How can I be involved? How can I share my views? What does the provost think about an issue?

I have created this blog out of a desire to do more than communicate through attending meetings, writing emails, reporting at Faculty Senate, or sharing information on the provost’s webpage or the PSU Currently.  I am under no illusion that a blog serves all communication needs, but it has some unique features.  Not only will it be a way to make public some information and thoughts I have on issues, but it creates a venue for hearing other perspectives, asking and responding to questions, and learning new ideas.

I am looking forward to some lively information sharing and exchanges through this tool.

Regards,

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Another step in moving forward on reTHINK PSU

Last week (July 21, 2014) Vice Provost Sukhwant Jhaj and I attended the kick-off meeting in Washington DC for a Gates Foundation grant that PSU has received from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) and the Urban Serving Universities (USU).  You can read about the work PSU will be engaged in related to this grant at https://www.aplu.org/page.aspx?pid=3003&srctid=1&erid=2084940

This effort is one of the first significant investments the Gates Foundation is making in universities.  Much of their (Gates Foundation) focus and funding thus far has been at the K-12 and community college levels.  At the meeting in DC, a Gates Foundation representative commented on how they now realize how important the entire educational ecosystem is; that investing in universities is an important part of that.  Of course, we all know that is true, but to have external recognition of that from an influential (and well endowed) foundation was validating for us. 

PSU was awarded one of the 7 grants because we are seen as a leader among urban serving universities in our goals to advance student success and student completion—creating access for students, making it affordable, and helping them complete their degrees.  These are the foundational goals of reTHINK PSU (http://www.rethink.pdx.edu/).  It is exciting to know that the work we have articulated in creating pathways for success for students from community colleges and creating flexible degrees that serve a range of students is seen by others as one of the important directions for the future of higher education.

Having said this, these grants do not just land at our feet and the competition for this award was fierce.  Sukhwant Jhaj and Hans VanDerSchaafer did a great job in writing a proposal that made the case for why PSU needed to be one of the 7 universities in the country that the Gates Foundation should invest in their inaugural effort to support universities.  We imagine that the work ahead of us will not always be easy.  My guess is we will run into challenges and divergent views on how to accomplish things, and we will need to make decisions at times without all the information we would like to have.  But, it is important that PSU be a leader in these efforts and influence the paths of others.

I will be writing more about this effort in upcoming blogs and welcome your thoughts on this topic and our work, now or at anytime.

 

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Performance Based Budgeting (PBB)

FY 15 marks the first year that PSU is using Performance Based Budgeting (PBB).  The groundwork of PBB was created years ago with the Financial Futures Taskforce (for a history of PBB at PSU see http://www.pdx.edu/budget/history-of-performance-based-budgeting-0).

PBB moves us away from the incremental budgeting model of the past. Although that model served PSU well for many years, it was not able to fully support the dynamic nature of the growth and declines we were seeing both in terms of enrollment and stat funding.  To compensate for its shortcoming, PSU also developed a self-support model that ran in tandem with incremental budgeting.  And in recent years, we layered on to all of this the need to reduce budgets; making it even hard to distinguish what budget model was being used when and where.  I have probably over implied this, but given this is a blog post I am giving myself permission to do so.

As its name implies in PBB, performance and budget are linked.  But, at PSU that does not mean that every unit is a tub on its bottom—it does not mean that every unit performs the same.  In its simplest form, PBB for PSU schools/colleges can be explained as the relationship between 2 components: a revenue requirement and an expenditure budget (the expenditure budgets and performance requirements for all OAA units is available at (http://www.pdx.edu/budget/sites/www.pdx.edu.budget/files/Town%20Hall%20-%205-27-14_with%20video.pdf  (slide 43) ). This past spring we created a short, 9 minute animated video on how PBB works for our schools/colleges in OAA (http://www.youtube.com/v/Vdt30w5Yu8w ).

You can consider the video the OAA PBB primer.  It covers the most rudimentary elements and principles of PBB at PSU.  Over the course of this year I will post a series of issue briefs on PBB.  These will be short, 2 page documents designed to explain some of the ways PBB works (or does not work) and to dispel some of the myths and address concerns the model raises.  The one I will post soon is how PBB supports interdiicpilainry collaboration.  And, although I have yet to start writing  the second PBB issue brief, I already have a working title: “Getting over the loss of self – support and moving forward with PBB as an entrepreneurial tool”—or something like that.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments as we implement PBB. 

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Reducing Student Textbook Costs

Reducing Student Costs: Textbooks and Course Materials

One of the goals of reTHINK PSU is to reduce what it costs students to get a degree.  I am guessing it is not news to anyone that around the country, the cost of textbooks and other course materials have become a major contributing factor to the financial barriers faced by students.  Students at PSU are not immune to this. The College Board estimated the 2013-14 cost for textbooks and supplies for the average undergraduate to be $1207.

We at PSU think it is important to address textbook affordability as one more piece of the puzzle of reducing the cost of a degree.  Through the urging and leadership of our Library Dean, Marilyn Moody, and in collaboration with the Faculty Senate and ASPSU, we will be creating a task force in the fall to determine how PSU can lower course material costs for PSU students.

We know there are many questions as we open up the textbook/course materials cost can of worms: Can we really reduce costs when so much of the cost of published material is out of our hands?  What role will faculty need to play?  Will this be an effort to tell faculty what books/resources they can and cannot assign for their courses? Are open source materials any good? What are the technical and policy barriers to reducing textbook cost? And, I am sure there are other concerns and questions.

Our task force will be jointly appointed by the Provost, Faculty Senate and ASPSU to make sure we have all perspectives represented.  We plan to launch the task force this fall.  We will provide regular updates and a variety of ways for you to share your ideas and comments. 

Thank you and I welcome any comments or suggestions.

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