KU's Strategic Plan: Inititiative 2001

PEW Roundtable Summary Report

To: David E. Shulenburger, Provost
May 30, 1997

What a privilege and pleasure it was to be the facilitator for the university of Kansas Roundtable. I thought my site visit was fun, but the round tables with you, Bob, and your fine colleagues reminded me of just how energizing and powerful collective conversation can be. I thank you for sharing this experience with me. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with a summary of what I heard during our two roundtables as well as some thoughts about next steps.

The discussion at KU's March 4-5 roundtable revolved around the central question: What are KU's values and how should we deal with change in light of this value set? This dinner and day-long session were dedicated to taking an environmental scan of the university. Participants shared their individual stories about their experiences, and the group clearly shared a collective sense of personal and professional satisfaction. In my notes I discovered the following quotes, which I believe provide a good overview of the group's sense of their university community:

'These are exciting times that hold possibilities for new directions and new freedoms.'

'I always look forward to walking up the hill.'

'There is a pent-up momentum here with the possibility of the University going in new directions.'

'I don't ever want to leave this place. It has unbelievably good faculty, equally good facilities, bright students, and a fine administrative team.'

'There's a feeling of potential here.'

Words like "freedom," "excitement," "potential," "momentum," and "possibility" dominated this first roundtable. Interspersed with this mostly positive perspective were concerns about personal and collective time management, technology, a professorial with a "missing middle," the relationship with the state, shifts in disciplinary fields, and the "changing face of Lawrence-the definition of being student-centered."

One striking feature of this roundtable was the group's ability to put an issue on the table, explore it, and then push on to discussion of solutions. While everyone agreed that there are important KU values and traditions that need to be articulated and preserved, people clearly want to move ahead rather than look over their shoulders. When asked, "How can you deal with change and preserve your traditions?" they responded with the following list of ten objectives:

1. Articulate and clearly define KU's collective values and vision;
2. Strengthen and expand KU's sense of community;
3. Define what "competencies" (for students, faculty, administrators, staff) are needed to cope with changing times;
4. Correlate decision-making "structures" (policies, procedures, etc.) with values and vision;
5. Define responsibilities;
6. Make way for new approaches to maximize individual and collective learning;
7. Determine how to use technology better as both an administrative and a learning tool;
8. Preserve the campus - "sense of place";
9. Communicate beyond the KU community;
10. Go somewhere with this conversation.

The March roundtable paved the way for the more focused discussion we had at the second roundtable on April 21. At the beginning of the second roundtable, the participants worked in small groups to articulate a set of KU values that each group then shared with the full roundtable. Based on this feedback, I would summarize the value statement in the following way:

KU is a place where people "come up the hill" to learn and discover together. It is a campus where the community shares diverse perspectives, draws insights from the educational experience and transfers them to nearby and far-flung communities, and explores systems and goals to facilitate learning and discovery. To support this special place, the community is dedicated to fostering a sense of collective trust, responsibility toward maintaining the beauty of the campus, respect for people of diverse backgrounds, and an enjoyment of the Jayhawk spirit. KU maintains its commitment to its graduates and members of its wider community in Lawrence and the State of Kansas through ongoing communications and continuing education programs.

Clearly, the full discussion put more flesh on the above summary. For example, participants expressed the need to preserve the traditions of a liberal arts education, the libraries, residential living, collegiality, a focus on public service, and a commitment to "excellence with frugality-the true KANSAS value." This conversation resulted in the development of four questions to be explored casually over lunch and collectively in the afternoon: Where are we not "walking our talk"? How do we organize a discussion about future design? How do we learn what we need to understand about technology and as one participant added, "to take it in?" How do we communicate who we are?

The early afternoon's discussion focused on how to enhance KU as a place of learning and discovery, and how technology can serve the University's commitment to an on-campus residential experience. It was determined that a major asset for KU is its campus and that the university community needs to look at how this sense of place can be enhanced so that it provides an even greater context for collaboration in learning. Technology may support this effort by allowing the permeability to move beyond the campus into other communities. It may also provide opportunities for people on the campus to be even more learning-centered by redistributing workload. The group agreed that while there are strong pockets on the campus where "we are walking our talk," there is also room for improvement, and a focus on the definition of being "student-" or "learning-centered" with emphasis on campus collaboration and technology to provide a way for getting beyond the tacking stages.

The roundtable spent much of the afternoon on April 21 looking at how to "move ahead." The question posed was: What will happen after April 21, 1997? There was unanimous agreement that participants in the roundtable wanted to be an integral part of determining the University's strategic direction. In fact, the participants felt that the process itself may be as important as the resulting plan of action. The following five steps for providing strategic direction emerged from the discussion:

1. Provide context and practical implications: be clear about who we are in terms of our mission and values and have good information and data to give us our current bearings.
2. Define our strategic direction ("Vision"). Be clear about where we're going and the choices we have to make to get there.
3. Determine our strategic actions: Be clear about how we're going to attain our goals within the context of our values.
4. Implement strategies: Move ahead with an action plan, time frame, and measuring devices and take small enough steps to insure success but large enough steps to warrant visibility and community celebration.
5. Communicate at every stage: Keep all internal and critical external communities involved (where appropriate) and informed at all times.

In sum, my sense is that this is a group of people who are ready to move ahead! My site visit might provide an opportunity to reconvene the group for a two-hour meeting to revisit next steps and participants' roles in the strategic planning effort for the University of Kansas. You and I can discuss this in more detail in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I hope this letter captures at least some of the spirit of your roundtable experience at KU. If you or your colleagues find disparities between this summary and your own sense of the roundtable's achievements, please feel free to get in touch with me. Once again, I consider myself privileged to have been the facilitator for your roundtable and I thank you for the warm and kind hospitality I received while I was in Lawrence. I know that any discussion about change is difficult and indeed sometimes frightening for a community to embrace, but I believe that the group with which I met demonstrated KU's capacity to take on that challenge and to do so with genuine warmth and determination at the same time. Please share with your colleagues my very best wishes for the summertime. I will be in touch.

Cordially,
Ann J. Duffield
Facilitator
University of Kansas Roundtable