1. executive summary innovation impact and...

Continuous Improvement Review Report

November 2014 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

INNOVATION, IMPACT AND ENGAGEMENT The three core themes of the 2013 Standards are consistent with our own strategic approach to business education. Our five-year strategic plans (2007-13 and 2013-18), updated annually, have produced a steady flow of innovative initiatives. Those initiatives have led to new levels of engagement for our key stakeholders while strengthening our teaching, research and service. The list that follows is a representative sample of our major initiatives and outcomes for 2009-2014 as produced by our mission-driven efforts. The list is organized by strategic objective. DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL SKILLS. The Professional Readiness Program (PRP), a strategic priority of the College, offers innovative, hands-on opportunities for our students to advance their soft skills. One example is the massive mentoring program that has connected 1,027 students with more than 500 Wells Fargo professionals in the past two years. Graduating seniors’ assessment of the effectiveness of our curriculum in helping them handle professional challenges increased by 50% from 2006 to 2012 (41% excellent rating to 62% excellent). INTERNATIONALIZING. UNIBusiness student international diversity grew from 3% in 03-04 to 10% in AY 13-14 as we sought to “internationalize” the education we deliver: • Our Fly Free/Cost Neutral Study Abroad programs, relying on an innovative fundraising

campaign that yields free travel points for our students at no cost to the donor, has raised study abroad participation from 9% in 2007 to 19% in 2012 (NSSE survey results).

• Our 2+2 model significantly exceeds conventional transfer partnerships by building support programs that advance our internationalization goal and generate additional revenue: bi-lateral student leader exchanges, faculty exchanges, attractive teaching assignments for UNI faculty in China (7 in summer ’14), etc. This support structure solidifies our 2+2 programs, provides an easily replicable model and brings nearly 30 tuition-paying students each year from a single partner school.

• More than 56% of our faculty has had substantive international teaching experience. During the most recent year, over one-third of faculty members taught overseas, while we hosted 8 visiting faculty members.

DEVELOPING ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF FUNDING. This strategic objective has been a priority in both our 2007-13 and 2013-18 plans. Our strategy has been to generate revenues while enhancing student and faculty educational experiences. Three examples follow: • We offer summer programs customized to the specific interests of our growing network of

CONTINUOUS REVIEW REPORT: SECTION 1 PG. 1

international partners. This past summer 40 MBA students from the University of EAFIT (Colombia), 10 undergraduate students from SDJU (China), and 17 students from Universidade Federal de Goias (Brazil) were among our international enrollees.

• Portable MBA. This program, offered where a sufficient cohort of well-qualified students is identified, generates revenues and allows our faculty to interact with a broad array of local professionals. Currently, we have ongoing programs in Guangzhou, China, and Pella, Iowa.

• Endowed/Named Faculty Positions. Over the past 10 years, we have secured at least one endowed professorship (or a similar named faculty position) each year with the total now at 12.

ENGAGING IN ACADEMIC/PROFESSIONAL COMPETITIONS. Striving for enhanced professional skills, we provided substantial financial support to more than 700 students who have participated in academic and professional competitions since AY 09-10. That investment yielded exceptional performances: • The Iowa Excellence in Economic Development Award in Entrepreneurship was awarded to

the College for our Business Concierge program, designed to provide on-call & on-line business intelligence free to startups and small businesses in Iowa. Since its inception, 825 service requests have assisted in at least 30 new business starts, 20 added products and the creation of 19 new fulltime and 48 contract jobs.

• UNI student entrepreneurs won the Okoboji Case Competition five years in a row, placed 3rd in the nation at the 2013 CEO Startup Simulation Competition, won the state-level New Venture Business Plan Competition in 2010, 2011, and 2012, were named Student Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2011 National CEO Conference, named one of "America's Coolest College Start-Ups,” and named a finalist in Entrepreneur magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2010 contest.

• Our AMA chapter was 1st in the nation in multiple categories in 2011, 2012, 2013. • Our PSE chapter was named the best in the nation in 2011 and 2013. • A Human Resources major earned the highest score in the history of the Society of Human

Resources Management Assurance of Learning exam in 2014. • AAF members earned five awards at the regional 2013 ADDY competition. • Real Estate students placed 1st at the regional 2013 NAIOP University Challenge. MAINTAINING THE COLLEGE’S TRADITIONAL TEACHING ADVANTAGE. This strategic objective feeds a continuous effort to benchmark our students’ performance: • Our graduating seniors scored at the 83d percentile among all participating institutions on the

2012 ETS Major Field Examination in Business. • Our graduating seniors scored at the 75th percentile among all participating institutions on

the 2012 ETS Proficiency Examination in Reading, Writing, Math and Critical Thinking. • Given its traditional significance as a performance measure for the entire College, we

continue to use CPA examination success as a benchmark. Approximately 85% of UNI Accounting students take the exam. Our first time pass rate in 2013 was 100% among MAcc students with UNI undergraduate degrees and one student earned the prestigious Elijah Watt Sells Award for scoring 95.5 or above on all four sections of the CPA exam.

• Finance students continue to pass the CFA® level 1 exam at a rate twice the international average.

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DIFFERENTIATING GRADUATES THROUGH PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS. This strategic priority builds on our traditional CPA and CFA® examination strength: • Since 2007, more UNI students have passed NASBITE’S Certified Global Business

Professional exam than students from any other institution, achieving a pass rate of 85%. • Our students achieved a 55% pass rate on a project management certification program that

was initiated in AY 12-13. • A Six Sigma Green Belt certification was creatively integrated into a summer ’14 study

abroad program. • Embarking on a new initiative targeting the Certified Financial Planner CFP® credential, we

are working closely with the national professional agency to develop the necessary curriculum.

RAISING THE COLLEGE’S RESEARCH PROFILE. In the most recent year, the College invested $543,560 to support research travel, professional development, data base acquisition/access, etc. • As our research expectations increase, so do our merit rewards. For example, we recently

doubled the merit bonus for high quality publications and reduced teaching loads to two and three for tenure-track faculty during their first four years with us.

• We adopted a journals list to establish minimum quality expectations. Eighty three percent of our peer reviewed journal articles published between ‘09 and ‘14 reached journals on our list.

• In the most recent five years, seventy-one percent of faculty members held academic and professional leadership positions.

• Our collective research generated over 17,000 citations. • Faculty-produced textbooks, textbook chapters, and ancillaries reached more than one

million consumers.

ENGAGING IN OUTREACH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACROSS THE STATE. The reputation of our external outreach unit is growing rapidly. Its impact over the past five years is significant. • We served more than 1,273 unique business, community and local government clients in all

99 Iowa counties with an additional 12,800 served online through MyEntre.Net. • Over 250 UNI faculty members and nearly 2,000 UNI students delivered these services. • For every dollar invested by the state, we secured an additional five dollars. • Each year, 20 student businesses operate within our Student Business Incubator and 50

additional student entrepreneurs receive assistance. • UNI’s two incubator/accelerator programs and MyEntre.Net helped start or expand 1,223

ventures creating 2,054 FTE jobs. • MyEntre.Net, through its new Business Concierge service, provided on-demand business and

market information to over 800 businesses. • Faculty members were granted 12 patents, and 27 new license agreements were approved. A

total of 7 license agreements are currently generating income. • Each year, community clients reported approximately 1,500 jobs as a result of our local

economic development technical assistance. • Advance Iowa, the pioneering economic gardening center that enables innovation among

second-stage Iowa companies, served 12 companies in its inaugural year. CONTINUOUS REVIEW REPORT: SECTION 1 PG. 3

2. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS Finding a strict SWOT analysis somewhat limiting, our strategic thinking is driven instead by a set of critical factors simply categorized as External, University, and College. Strategic implications are briefly addressed here, but see Section 4, Strategic Management, for a comprehensive analysis. CRITICAL FACTORS EXTERNAL FACTORS AND THEIR STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

1. Iowa’s agricultural base is undergoing a dramatic transformation even as the entire state moves to a more diverse economy. Potential advantages can accrue if we respond quickly to emerging market demands, particularly in our MIS, finance and real estate programs.

2. Smaller towns are losing population as urban communities grow, thus presenting a threat to UNI given our traditional small community student demographics.

3. State support for higher education continues its downward trend. Between 2001 and 2010, the state appropriations/tuition ratio decreased from 75-25 to approximately 50-50. Despite financial challenges, we have maintained high quality programs, and the Board of Regents’ efforts to reformulate fund distribution across the three Regent universities are favorable to UNI. We now feel comfortable in renewing efforts to raise enrollment.

4. Ongoing financial turmoil and persistent ethical breaches have raised public demand for business school accountability. Those conditions provide an opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our competition given our historic commitment to hard work, high standards and traditional values. Our current strategy is justified.

5. Persistent shortages of qualified business faculty candidates have resulted in a highly competitive market and steadily increasing starting salaries. Although threatened, we have responded with appropriate recruiting strategies.

6. Employers continue to expect employees with strong work values, technical knowledge, and contemporary professional skills (e.g., assertiveness, personal initiative, inter-cultural adaptability, and high tolerance for ambiguity). Those expectations represent an opportunity to emphasize our students’ relatively strong work values and to justify our rigorous academic standards. Concerned that our students’ contemporary professional skills could be a weakness, we instituted our Professional Readiness Program and a host of other professional skill-building programs to address that shortcoming and to achieve a critical point of differentiation with our competitors.

7. Shifting learning practices in this digital and social media environment require in-depth review of curricular content and delivery - the cornerstone of our 2013-18 strategic plan.

8. Competition from lower quality and/or lower cost alternatives in higher education is growing as parents and students become more price conscious and business education moves toward commoditization. Preferences appear to be shifting from quality and rigor toward cost and employability. We are responding to this potential threat with an aggressive market education program to demonstrate that rigor and quality are not inconsistent with employability. We are relying on employer testimonials and placement data to demonstrate that our high quality, rigorous education is prized by employers.

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UNIVERSITY FACTORS

9. UNI, the only Master’s Comprehensive University in the State, may suffer in perceptions of quality when compared with Research I universities, Iowa and Iowa State. Our strategy is to demand more of ourselves while sharpening our public relations message.

10. UNI students, over 90% of whom are Iowa natives, typically come from smaller towns and less-advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. We have responded by developing our PRP program while maintaining our principles of hard work and high standards.

11. The Iowa Board of Regents, as noted above, is transitioning to a new funding formula that favors in-state student enrollments. Iowa State and Iowa have intensified their in-state recruiting. We have responded by strengthening our public relations and recruitment efforts to establish a distinctive brand based on UNI’s historical “students first” niche.

12. UNI’s decentralized decision making model gives each college considerable autonomy and operational control. Our new president is inclined to review that model giving us an opportunity to work towards a model that would favor our high quality programs.

13. Following a recent university-wide evaluation, several academic programs were eliminated. UNIBusiness was not directly affected, but the resultant negative publicity is understood to have contributed to some of our enrollment decline.

INTERNAL COLLEGE FACTORS

14. We are building on our history of exemplary standardized professional examination performance by expanding our array of certification programs, consistent with parent/student emphasis on graduates’ employability.

15. Our students’ work values remain comparatively strong, but we need to further leverage that virtue to better compete with Iowa State and Iowa and to strengthen job placement.

16. The UNIBusiness faculty’s commitment to teaching and student learning provides the rigorous, high quality business education that our students need. Our unshakable attention to student learning differentiates us from our closest competitors.

17. Our pioneering Professional Readiness Program, designed to deliver professional skills to complement our students’ essential business knowledge and strong work values, is rapidly gaining our students’ respect and showing positive results.

18. A large majority of our faculty embraces the College’s balanced teacher-scholar model. Reduced research productivity following tenure continues, however, to be a matter of concern, especially for more senior faculty members.

19. Our Business & Community Services (BCS) division, an umbrella organization for fifteen different centers serving all 99 Iowa counties, is a defining and growing strength.

20. While the College has a history of strong government support for its outreach functions, resources for business and economic development are shrinking. This threat is being successfully addressed by generating alternative sources of funding (e.g., increased emphasis on naming opportunities).

21. UNIBusiness has been aggressive and successful in providing professional development and engagement opportunities for its students both domestically and internationally. Those opportunities offer a strong base for differentiation.

22. Private and corporate financial support has been rising steadily for the past 10 years justifying our strategy of aggressively seeking alternative sources of funding,

A CONTINUOUS REVIEW REPORT: SECTION 2 PG. 5

IMPLICATIONS FOR OFFERING NEW PROGRAMS Recent UNI enrollment trends and market preferences suggest that we should consider new programs only where employability can be readily demonstrated. Thus, clear demand and demonstrable industry support in establishing employability are prerequisites to new program development. The programs discussed below typically satisfy these two conditions and offer additional strategic possibilities.

• The financial management needs of a growing retirement class were identified by our Finance advisory council as a strong market for our graduates. Confirmed by our subsequent analysis, we responded by implementing a new wealth management emphasis in Finance.

• As noted, student/parent concerns about employment opportunities and our history of success with the CPA and CFA®, have encouraged us to successfully add NASBITE’s Certified Global Business Professional (CGBP) designation and to develop a project management certification program. We are also targeting the CFP® (Certified Financial Planner) designation through our wealth management emphasis as well as a certification in Lean Management or Six Sigma as part of our Management major.

• Our strategic need to develop alternative sources of funding, along with our objective to increase faculty engagement with the larger community, led to the Portable MBA concept where we deliver the program to a single cohort of students in an under-served market. We currently offer the program in Pella, Iowa and Guangzhou, China.

• Employers are beginning to demand a significant new skill set from our graduates – the ability to manage and use big data. Our faculty is currently engaged in discussions about how best to expand our attention to this powerful discipline.

OUR PROGRAMS Consistent with the University mission, UNIBusiness focuses on undergraduate education and two selected masters programs. Table 1 provides those programs and our most recent graduate totals.

TABLE 1: PROGRAM GRADUATES ACADEMIC YEAR 2013-2014

Programs & Majors Subtotals TotalsBachelor of Arts in Business 513

Accounting 110Business Teaching 3

Business Economics 24Finance 83

Management 119Management Information Systems 43

Marketing 103Real Estate 28

Master of Accounting 18Master of Business Administration 35

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3. PROGRESS ON CONCERNS FROM PREVIOUS REVIEW In the 2010 maintenance review report, the visiting team unequivocally recommended extension of accreditation for another 5-year cycle. In the spirit of continuous improvement the team also offered specific qualification and assessment suggestions to be addressed prior to the current review. QUALIFICATION.

It is recommended that the college review its current standards and expectations. The hierarchy of intellectual contributions from lowest status to highest status is given as a) academically qualified (AQ), b) research active, c) merit qualifying, and d) bonus qualifying. This is a system that is recognized and supported by the faculty. However, academic qualification needs to be more in conformance with peer institutions. The majority of peer institutions require either one or two peer reviewed articles (PRJ) and other intellectual contributions over a five year period. It is recommended that at least one PRJ as defined by the “research active” status be implemented as soon as possible for the new definition of academically qualified. Currently 83.4% (37/42) of full time faculty (excluding department heads and excluding new Ph.D. hires) have at least one PRJ. A diligent effort from the faculty is expected and is realistic. The faculty are prepared for this transition and recognize the need to change to a higher AQ standard. It is recommended that department heads who teach should be academically qualified in the new definition of AQ as noted above. Developmental activities such as attending conferences are also important. However, department heads serving as active research role models for faculty will be a powerful message as they lead by example. The Department of Finance needs special attention and monitoring to stay in compliance for AQ. Hiring qualified AQ faculty in the Department of Finance is a staffing priority for the College and should remain so.

In response to the Peer Review Team (PRT):

1. Immediately after the PRT visit, our faculty raised the College’s AQ standard to require 2 PRJs (or 1 PRJ and 1 qualified book or book chapter) every 5 years and, to control quality, the PRJs are limited to those on our list of pre-qualified journals. A number of other intellectual contributions and professional engagement activities continue to be required. Using AY 13-14 data, 89% of full time Scholarly Academic faculty (excluding administrators and new Ph.D. hires) meet the higher qualification requirement.

2. With respect to department heads, the College followed the PRT’s suggestion and

required at least 1 qualified PRJ or qualified book or book chapter every 5 years, in addition to other development activities. In AY 13-14 all heads met this requirement.


3. Staffing in Finance remained a high priority and the department recruited vigorously. Since the last review, two non-qualified faculty members (Wyatt/Rappaport) have been replaced by two qualified faculty members (Olsen/Smedema). In AY 13-14, 73% of the Finance faculty were SA, a marked improvement over AY 08-09 when only 49% met our (lower) AQ requirement.

ASSESSMENT.

It is recommended that UNI CBA continue to refine and improve its assessment procedures and processes. The team was impressed with the efforts made on assessment which indicate a commitment to AoL. The Peer Review Team encourages the college to remain diligent in the application of assurance of learning standards. Utilization of assurance of learning feedback to make changes related to curriculum improvements and teaching development should be tracked regularly.

We were very pleased that the PRT observed our commitment to AoL and recognized the strength of our Assurance of Learning program. The PRT complimented the AoL system for its

“… three independent feedback loops targeted to comprehensive continuous improvement. The three elements are the measure, the program and the curriculum. Each feedback loop is reviewed for continuous, measureable, documented improvements. For example, the Program component includes multiple measurement devices at multiple points in the curriculum for the purpose of compiling data from multiple stakeholders including faculty, students and employers.”

Further, “Assessment is widely believed to be the right thing to do as the catalyst for continuous

improvement. The focus on student learning at UNI CBA is impressive.” We understood that our assessment program as a whole was considered robust and not in need of foundational changes. Nonetheless, we advanced our continuous improvement goals by acting on several consultative suggestions offered by team members.

1. Benchmark our End-of-Program (EOP) exam with a standardized exam. The College gave the ETS Major Field Test in Business to all 370 graduating seniors during AY 11-12. Our students ranked at the 83rd percentile of the 480+ institutions and 32,000+ students who had previously taken the exam. The ETS exam is now a regular part of our AoL program. Subsequently we used the ETS Proficiency Profile to examine additional skill areas. Our students scored at the 75th percentile.

2. Decrease the AoL competencies from 10 to a smaller number. The PRT questioned whether the College could maintain a firm commitment to the program if faculty were overwhelmed by its scope. While performing at the 75th percentile, the ETS Proficiency Profile subscore percentiles provided further insight into our students’ relative strengths and weaknesses: Mathematics, 93%; Reading, 73%; Writing 66%; Critical thinking 60%.

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This high variation across competencies further underscored the need to reduce the number of competencies to direct greater attention to those most needing improvement. Subsequently, competencies were decreased to six, with continued alignment to the three mission-critical aspects of our educational intent (cutting-edge business knowledge, exceptional professional skills, and strong work values) while also recognizing the particular weaknesses identified by the ETS testing.

3. Decrease the frequency with which some objectives are measured and consider more use of sampling. The PRT suggested testing smaller groups of students on a regular basis. The College has since used a sampling of graduating seniors as an alternative to the EOP exam that had historically been given every semester to every graduating student.

The evolution of our AoL program has continued and will be discussed further in Section 6.


4. STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION The College has a well-settled process for developing, executing, monitoring and updating its strategic plan. In the most recent visit, the PRT complimented our strategic orientation and our 5-year (2008-13) plan. During academic year 12-13, we embarked again on a comprehensive process to build the 2013-18 plan. (Figure 1 below.) The process engaged our broadest-ever range of internal and external stakeholders, embracing over 100 participants. Beginning with facilitated meetings to define the College’s operational landscape, the output was an extensive list of drivers; the most critical of which were listed in the Situational Analysis (Section 2). FIGURE 1 COMPREHENSIVE 5-YEAR STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS DIAGRAM

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STRATEGIC ANALYSIS AND MISSION While the external picture that emerged from our situational analysis (see pp 4-6) was not entirely favorable, an encouraging pattern was evident: Every stakeholder group, whether internal or external, agreed that our foundational principles have retained their crucial relevance in this turbulent era. Employers who hire UNIBusiness graduates still prize the three ingredients we promise in our mission statement: business knowledge, professional skills, and work values. A drastic change in mission would not be necessary, but bold strategic initiatives would be needed to respond effectively to new realities. Our revised mission is fundamentally unchanged, but it: (1) reflects yet greater emphasis on the three essential ingredients of our educational program, (2) captures the core themes of the 2013 standards, and (3) incorporates a more contemporary language to address the evolved preferences of prospective parents and students. MISSION. UNIBusiness aspires to excellence as measured by exemplary achievement in the three customary dimensions of university performance; teaching (educational intent), research (research intent) and service (outreach and service intent).

EDUCATIONAL INTENT. UNIBusiness delivers an engaging education in a vibrant, supportive environment to students from Iowa and around the world. Our students graduate with a distinct advantage. They offer the unique blend of qualities every employer seeks:

• cutting-edge business knowledge to confront the complexities of the global economy effectively and ethically,

• exceptional professional skills to contribute immediately and confidently, and • strong work values to meet the highest organizational expectations.

Our educational intent is to develop graduates who are ready to build rewarding careers and lead fulfilling lives.

RESEARCH INTENT. Intellectual growth is required for UNIBusiness faculty members to serve our students, community and professional constituencies. Our primary responsibility is to advance disciplinary knowledge. At the same time, our pursuit of teaching excellence and our commitment to the business community compel us to produce scholarship that positively affects pedagogy and practice. Our research intent is to create increasingly rigorous intellectual contributions with impact.

OUTREACH/SERVICE INTENT. UNIBusiness serves the needs of communities and businesses in Iowa and beyond, while providing experiential learning and entrepreneurial opportunities for students. Our service intent is to employ the intellectual strength, practical knowledge and business expertise of faculty members, professional staff and students to advance academic and managerial productivity while enabling economic and entrepreneurial innovation in Iowa.


STRATEGIC POSITIONING. A complete set of 2013-18 goals and year-one initiatives can be found in Appendix 1. For a quick perspective on how initiatives emerged from our strategic analysis, here are three examples of landscape drivers, the responsive action each required, and the specific strategy we developed in each case:

o Changing learning habits (driver) requires us to find new ways to keep our students engaged (response) while retaining the best of the past. To that end, our 2013-18 plan has instigated a comprehensive review of our curriculum and delivery methods (strategy).

o Rising financial pressures (driver) demand that we generate alternative sources of funding (response). A plausible course of action would be to expand our reliable pipeline of tuition-paying international students. To that end we are working to replicate our 2+2 program in China (strategy).

o Shifting public preferences (driver) challenge us to convince prospective parents and students (action) that our commitment to quality and rigor is not incompatible with, but aligns perfectly with their preference for value and employability. We are seeking help from employers to deliver the message in our first ever student recruitment campaign (strategy).

To demonstrate our strategic approach in more detail, we turn now to three critical goals for this next five-year cycle, starting AY 13-14. We demonstrate how these goals emerged from our updated mission and a set of critical drivers. Goal – Climate: Maximize engagement, supportiveness, and vibrancy in the learning

environment. Goal – Curriculum: Continuously improve relevance and engagement and encourage innovation

in both curriculum and delivery. Goal – Connect outreach efforts to academics: Expand direct linkages to academic programs and

expand student experiential learning opportunities. Rationale/Positioning.

We must adjust to the evolving expectations and learning habits of our incoming students. Intense study of our core curriculum is a first step, focusing both on content and innovative teaching methods that engage today’s students. The strengths of our Business & Community Services division outreach programs will provide more opportunities for students to gain significant experiences in their fields of study. Likewise those outreach programs will help in curriculum development, such as our entrepreneurship certificate that engages students both academically and in practice, while increasing student awareness of the relevance of their academic preparation. We must also make sure our programs continue to meet the demands of employers, prepare graduates for entry-level positions (a short-term focus of both students and parents), and help graduates build successful long-term careers as workplace demands continually change.

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND OUTCOMES The College’s annual strategic management process is depicted in Figure 2. FIGURE 2 ANNUAL STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS DIAGRAM


Throughout the year, faculty members and departments are encouraged to propose initiatives to be considered at the annual summer strategic planning session. Input is also solicited from the Dean’s Executive Advisory Board and the Presidents’ Council, comprised of the presidents of all the UNIBusiness student organizations. The Annual Strategy Session is attended by the deans, department heads, faculty senate strategic planning subcommittee, the director of business & community services, and others, as appropriate. This planning group evaluates the proposed initiatives in the context of the mission, and goals of the College. After the Annual Strategy Session, the approved initiatives are announced to the faculty and are posted on the College’s intranet. In the posting, funding sources and responsible parties for the initiatives are identified, and output expectations are defined. Progress in completing the previous year’s initiatives is also reported in the Annual Strategic Management Progress Report and is posted on the College’s intranet. IMPACT OF MISSION-FOCUSED ACTIVITIES. The transition to the 2013 AACSB Standards requires development of impact metrics that assess our mission-focused activities. In that endeavor, UNIBusiness embarked on a process to identify metrics that represent the collective impact of our teaching, research, and outreach activities. The list was developed from input provided by stakeholders as represented in our Executive Advisory Board (employers, alumni, parents, and Iowa citizens), our faculty, and our leadership team. Additional insights came through participation in the inaugural AACSB seminar, Enhancing and Measuring Impact. Appendix 2 provides our initial set of impact metrics. Recognizing that impact assessment is a continuous process and subject to rapid evolution led us to design an Assurance of Impact process, displayed in Figure 3, capable of performing four critical functions:

• Systematically assess the quality of our impact metrics – metric improvement. • Systematically seek improvement in our impact assurance methods – process

improvement. • Identify substantive changes to raise the impact of our teaching, research and outreach –

impact improvement. • Refine our mission to achieve an increasingly precise focus and to provide greater

direction toward the impact we seek. Our Assurance of Impact process (Figure 3) is modeled after our highly effective AoL process.

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FIGURE 3 ASSURANCE OF IMPACT PROCESS DIAGRAM


INNOVATIVE ACTIONS, STRATEGIES, PROGRAMS, AND/OR OUTCOMES. Our Professional Readiness Program was cited in the previous AACSB report as an innovative experiment running parallel to our curriculum and delivering hands-on soft skill training. Now PRP has itself become a platform for innovative experiments. Some examples:

• A massive mentoring program has connected over 1,000 students with more than 500 Wells Fargo professionals. The program has significantly enhanced our relationship with an important corporate partner and created a meaningful development opportunity for young leaders at Wells Fargo.

• In yet another innovative industry partnership, the Monaco-based Stüdnet exclusively piloted its ground-breaking online platform in our PRP as a means of connecting our students to peers around the world to form a global community for learning soft skills from peers and HR specialists.

Innovative curricula and/or programs

• Our innovative Portable MBA has provided access to HSBC in China and produced collaborative investigations with Vermeer Corporation in Pella, Iowa. The MBA-China program is the only US program in China authorized to be delivered autonomously, without a Chinese partner university.

• Our new Wealth Management emphasis responds to an emerging need identified by the Finance Advisory Council and meaningfully engages the Council in our curriculum development process. We are working with the Certified Financial Planner Institute, the premier credentialing agency in the field, to supplement the emphasis with a streamlined path to the CFP© credential. Cooperation between our faculty, the Finance Advisory Council and the CFP Board to develop an academic program demonstrates unusual levels of engagement with stakeholders, as well as responsiveness to expectations.

• The Leadership emphasis in Management provides hands-on skill development with a path to professional certification, both of which are strategic priorities for the College.

Creative funding models to increase student engagement and experiential learning

• Established a scholarship for social engagement supporting over 20 student internships in a wide variety of non-profits and attracted enough donors to fully support the program.

• Supported well over 700 students over five years to attend conferences and competitions. We tied the level of funding to performance and leveraged the students’ numerous awards and remarkable achievements to raise more funds.

• Through the Student Presidents’ Council rallied students around a single social cause in partnership with International Medical Corp (IMC), one of the largest and most successful disaster relief organizations in the world and led by a UNIBusiness alumna. IMC has picked the initiative for replication across US campuses.

Expanded our international reach and internationalization efforts • Our summer study abroad fly-free offer, as explained earlier, has proven very effective in

generating student demand.

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• Equally effective has been our innovative cost neutral program, which covers the cost of living and tuition differential between UNI and any of the locations abroad in which we have a partner school. Alumni response to the campaign has been enthusiastic.

• Our partnership with Shanghai Dianji University (SDJU) is a model for building thriving 2+2 agreements. We have designed a curriculum specifically for Dianji’s UNI-bound students. Prior to arriving here for the second two years of the 2+2, the students will have entered the program at SDJU as freshmen. For the first two years at Dianji, they will have taken a prescribed set of courses, taught increasingly in English, some by our own faculty. They will also have a solid support structure to make sure they are prepared for life in the US, both in and out of the classroom. The support structure extends to UNI where tailored programs are in place to help with the students’ assimilation. This comprehensive arrangement has led to other fulfilling opportunities for students, staff and faculty:

o Short summer programs on the UNI campus for Dianji students who choose not to transfer to UNI,

o UNI faculty members teaching at the Shanghai campus (7 during AY 13-14), o UNI students traveling to Shanghai to conduct workshops on student life in the

U.S. for Dianji’s UNI-bound peers (about 10 each year), and o Visiting faculty from Dianji on the UNI campus (12 over the past five years).

Our model being replicable, we are developing a similar arrangement with Dalian Nationalities University.

• Through a summer partnership with Dalian Nationalities University we bring to Dalian, China students from all our global partner institutions (U.S., Brazil, Colombia, Poland, China, France) to learn and develop necessary global skills. Over 120 students have participated.

• Leveraging our global network of partnerships, we worked with Dianji to host a research conference in Shanghai where faculty members from our partner schools in Brazil, Turkey, US, China, Russia, and Sweden presented their work.

• Our innovative Global Managerial Decision-Making Workshop is open to MBA students from our global partner schools, and offers a combination of academic sessions, business tours and interactive sessions with American executives. Over 50 MBA students from the University of EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia have participated the past two summers.

• Our newly established Diversity Task Force has already launched a number of initiatives to create a more welcoming environment for a diverse set of students, including:

o First Wednesday Lunch to increase opportunities for international and domestic students to socialize.

o A Diversity Case Competition to raise awareness of diversity in the College. The program attracts strong corporate engagement and more than 75 students.

Developed innovative partnerships with internal and external constituencies to build an entrepreneurial culture and expand opportunities for student and faculty to directly engage in economic development across Iowa.

• Collaboration with business, industry, and economic development professionals engaged students and faculty in research addressing: green economy, green workforce, bio-based lubricants from fatty acids, creative technologies for business incubation, native plants


for TPC expansion, a new statistical model for “laborsheds” and microwave technology for grease blending.

• Innovation Incubator’s technical assistance for business formation and technology transfer services have been extended to University Admissions, College of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences and School of Health, Physical Education, and Leisure Studies. As a result the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center and Business and Community Services programs realized an overall 23% participation increase in workshops, academic courses, conferences and other events (1,504 students, 207 faculty/staff and 175 others).

• New partnership with the Center for Communities of the Future to link five Midwest communities/regions into the Global Rural Network. Five states committed to participate.

• Launched the Iowa Economic Gardening pilot project called Advance Iowa to serve Stage-Two entrepreneurial firms. Advance Iowa worked with 10 firms in a variety of industries during its pilot phase and helped create, on average, 5 new jobs after one year of assistance.

• Launched targeted environmental assistance initiatives focusing on heavily regulated industries across the state. Completed 31 on-site industrial reviews and 35 on-site Department of Transportation reviews.

• Launched Online Iowa Environmental Training Program to develop proficient industrial facility managers.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT ACTIONS, STRATEGIES, PROGRAMS, AND/OR OUTCOMES. Improved management processes and curricular content and process.

• Expanded participation in strategic planning and developed new strategic plan. • Established new qualification guidelines, consistent with 2013 AACSB Standards. • Restructured AoL and curriculum management to implement improvement opportunities

identified. • Updated merit review guidelines providing increased reward associated with quality and

PRJ output. • Developed plan for integrating impact into faculty evaluation and established formal

Assurance of Impact management process. • Implemented comprehensive review of the College core in response to 2013-18 strategic

plan. • Engaged a wide variety of stakeholders in development of impact metrics to be used to

assess success of mission-focused activities. • Converted a Marketing emphasis to Advertising & Digital Media to capture the latest in

digital technology use. • Initiated Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM); first year pass rate 54%. • Integrated a Six Sigma Green Belt certification in a summer ’14 study abroad program.

Greater support for faculty research and teaching development

• Implemented a reduced (2 and 3) teaching load for new incoming Ph.Ds. • Implemented faculty-executive lunches. • Held a James Bonilla-led teaching workshop addressing the cultural lenses we bring to

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the classroom. About 40 faculty members attended. Increased the number of monthly research presentations by including work from visiting international faculty members.

• Increased discretionary professional development support from $500 to $750 annually. • Provided over $500,000 in funding in AY 13-14 alone in support of faculty research and

teaching. Stronger internationalization strategy

• Established Global Initiatives Coordinator. • Earned a FIPSE-BRAZIL grant from the Department of Education providing funding to

expand short-term study abroad programs into Brazil. • Implemented a Global Marketing emphasis, building upon an available international

business minor and a certificate in international business, language, and culture. Built the foundation for an entrepreneurial culture across the entire campus

• Expanded entrepreneur training and support for new and existing ventures and for technology transfer. Workshops increased by 22%.

• Hosted an Innovation Day competition with local economic development organizations. Approximately 80 Cedar Valley business leaders mentored contestants. All 5 finalists have started or grown their own companies.

Established stronger relationships with external constituencies throughout Iowa and beyond.

• Expanded MyEntreNet to reach more than 12,800 entrepreneurs and all 99 counties in Iowa, and partnered with Illinois State to expand into central Illinois.

• Partnered with Ames Lab at Iowa State for Virtual Reality Painting Simulator development.

Expanded opportunities for students and faculty to directly engage in economic development and technology transfer projects across Iowa. As an example, inclusion of student and faculty funding in all grants, federal appropriations proposals and special project requests increased student participation in programs supported by grants by 50% and faculty participation by 20%. Launched Get Ready! a new marketing campaign promoting the College. Increased financial resources for the College/BCS

• Total dollars designated to UNIBusiness endowments increased 28% (includes new gifts at $13.5M and earnings) between FY10 and FY14, resulting in nearly 68% increase in dollars available in spending accounts.

• Established 6 new Professorships & Fellowships (5 endowed) • Established 21 additional Program Support Funds (2 endowed) for CFA, Study Abroad,

Student Professional Development, etc. raising over $4.8M. • Added 38 named scholarships (12 endowed) raising over $2.0M. • Fully implemented supplemental tuition, increasing annual operations budget by

approximately $1.7M.


• Specifically for entrepreneurship support, received a $300,000 naming gift from McElroy Trust and a gift of $1.5 million from John Pappajohn.

• Started a new campaign to name building facilities; launched with new funding from UFG naming the College’s main conference room.

Maintained and improved facilities

• Established a team lab with technologies and environment to support student team projects.

• Updated staff lounge, providing an additional multi-functional meeting room. • Updated technologies in all teaching labs and classrooms. • Re-carpeted all classrooms.

INTELLECTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS, IMPACT, AND MISSION ALIGNMENT

Table 2-1, found in the tables section, reveals a substantially large cross-section of faculty members producing intellectual contributions. The table below, a subset of Table 2-1, provides a view of the impact areas (discipline, practice, learning & pedagogical) in which faculty are producing intellectual contributions. This table is based on faculty productivity from AY09-10 through AY13-14.

TABLE 2-1 (SUBSET): INTELLECTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Table 2-1 in the tables section provides a discussion of our intellectual contributions relative to their alignment with our mission, the quality of our portfolio, and the impact of our contributions. We add below only a few accomplishments that we believe are most indicative of the rich variety of our faculty’s impact on discipline, practice and pedagogy, as our mission calls for.

Accounting 30 5 9 56.00%Economics 69 19 42 92.30%Finance 34 1 6 85.30%Management 127 6 45 80.70%Marketing 63 4 20 81.60%

323 35 12267% 7% 25%College

Percent of Faculty

Producing I.C.s

79.60%

Portfolio of Intellectual Contributions

Faculty

Discovery (Discipline) Scholarship

Applied (Practice)

Scholarship

Teaching & Learning

(Pedagogical) Scholarship

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Discipline • An accounting faculty member among the top ten in the database of Accounting Research

Rankings based on number of publications in the top eleven accounting journals. • An MIS scholar on computerized decision aids whose work is cited by more than 4,000

papers. • A Marketing professor whose work was selected as a “classic” in the Journal of Business

Ethics special collection of citation classics, published in 2012 to mark 30 years of the journal’s publication.

Teaching & Learning/Pedagogy

• A study guide and teaching ancillaries for the #1 principles text in Economics, the study guide alone reaching over 500,000 students worldwide.

• Eleven editions of a widely popular text in the legal and social environment of business reaching hundreds of professors and over 200,000 students in America and abroad at undergraduate, graduate, and law school levels.

• A marketing faculty member selected by the Journal of Marketing Education as its top author of the decade (2000-2009).

Practice

• One of the most recognized scholars by practitioners in the area of compensation and benefits.

• A co-authored paper on regression published in "The American Statistician" that prompted SAS to modify its regression procedure.

• An influential website DSSResources.com that receives over 56,000 hits per month from practitioners and academics alike.

The significant recognitions and accomplishments in Table 2-1 would not be possible without a strong support system, in addition to generous financial support (exceeding $500,000 last year). For details, see Management Policies IV.b.iii. – Supporting and Rewarding Faculty Research. FINANCIAL STRATEGIES AND ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES Our strategic planning process requires identification of funding sources and allocation of sufficient resources to all approved initiatives. Each Annual Strategic Management Progress Report indicates the source and amount of funding for every initiative. Appendix 1, Strategic Goals and Initiatives AY 13-14, provides evidence of our financial planning. Support for UNIBusiness operations and initiatives comes from five primary sources: State Appropriations/General Funds. General funds, coming from tuition and state appropriations, represent our largest source of revenue. Over the past eight years, state support to


Board of Regents institutions has decreased, but tuition increases have not replaced the shortfall. As a result, the ratio of appropriations to tuition is approximately 50%/50%. We deploy to the classroom the maximum number of faculty members possible by devoting nearly 90% of our General Funds budget to faculty and staff compensation and by operating with a lean staff and administrative structure. While UNI’s colleges exercise virtually full control over their own budgets, each college’s relative share of General Funds remains substantially constant from year to year. Currently the University has no established redistribution model across colleges. UNIBusiness’ strategic approach has been to argue for redistribution based on demand and quality. We are encouraged by our new president, who is committed to performance-based reallocation and by the performance-based funding formula recently approved by the Board or Regents, which is very favorable to UNI. Supplemental Tuition. In concert with our campaign for an internal redistribution model, we have pursued a complementary strategy seeking alternative sources of funding. In 2008, recognizing that (1) the state’s financial pressures had the potential to undermine UNIBusiness, one of the University’s clear strengths, and (2) establishing a redistribution model would take time, the President and Provost authorized us to submit a proposal for a supplemental tuition charge on UNIBusiness students. A committee of students, faculty and administrators determined that additional funds would be needed. The committee then decided how the program should be structured and where the additional revenues would be invested. The final proposal received unanimous endorsement from both faculty and student representatives and was approved by the Board of Regents, December 2008. Supplemental tuition ($1.7 million in AY13-14) is primarily used to make strategic hires of scholarly engaged and professionally qualified faculty members. Fifteen percent of the revenue goes to financial aid to business students. The remainder supports our Professional Readiness Program. Those expenditures are consistent with our mission and our annual strategic plan. Grants and Contracts. Grants and contracts have been the foundation of our longstanding strategy to finance our outreach unit, Business and Community Services (BCS). Less than two percent of the $7.7M BCS budget is funded through direct state appropriations to the University general fund. The remarkable growth of BCS confirms the success of our funding strategy. (See Appendix 3 for the FY 2014 Economic Development and Tech Transfer Report for an overview of BCS operations as well as BCS’ funding sources1 for the year.) Gifts. In response to budget cuts, we have strategically reduced our dependence on General Funds for faculty research support as well as faculty and student professional development while expanding our efforts to seek gifts in support of strategic initiatives and scholarships. Building on our strategy to secure funds for faculty research and development, seven additional

1 Due to the large revenues and number of personnel involved, BCS budget/staff are not reported in the AACSB Business School Questionnaire since those numbers would misleadingly inflate funds available per faculty member.

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chairs were established between 2000 and 2009. Since the 2009 AACSB review, six additional named faculty positions have been added. Targeted fundraising has also been instrumental in providing operational funds for the student business incubator in the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, endowments for student and faculty international activities, operational funds for the Center for Real Estate Education, and support for a range of activities through the Dean’s Fund for Excellence, including continued support and rewards for faculty research. Generating Revenue. Almost 16% of our outreach unit’s budget is from revenue-generating activities with several BCS units sustained primarily through fee-for-service performance. In 2001, the College expanded its MBA program to Hong Kong primarily to provide an international development opportunity for UNIBusiness faculty members while also generating revenue for the College. The program has succeeded on both counts. Our Portable MBA is currently offering financially successful programs in Pella, Iowa and Guangzhou, China. Likewise, our global outreach programs, such as “Doing Business in the US,” also have generated funds to help sustain our internationalization efforts.


http://www.bcs.uni.edu/jpec/

5. PARTICIPANTS STUDENTS CHANGES IN ENROLLMENT TRENDS. The University’s undergraduate enrollment has declined over the past five years, but as of fall 2014 freshmen and transfer enrollments appear to be rising once again. The trend for UNIBusiness has been similar. The most significant decline in business majors, in finance and real estate, was directly attributable to adverse market conditions but 14-15 data show both majors bouncing back. Management Information Systems and Management have been stable or achieved growth. We are satisfied with the stability and small size of our graduate programs given UNI’s focus on undergraduate education.

TABLE 2. COLLEGE ENROLLMENT SINCE 2009 Our spring 2013 strategic planning established a goal to increase undergraduate enrollment to 2450 (from fall 2013 enrollment of 2,228) by 2017-18, a growth objective in line with university projections where renewed attention to enrollment management is complemented with infusion of substantial new resources. Freshmen and transfer increases for fall 2014 are directly attributable to the renewed enrollment management efforts so our enrollment goal seems attainable. The enrollment decline has blunted the adverse impact of state funding cuts, and since UNI expects to gain from a new performance based budgeting model at the Regents level, the anticipated enrollment growth should be accompanied by increasing resources. CHANGES IN DIVERSITY. Domestic diversity remains a College priority. A minority recruiting/retention coordinator, the first for any UNI college, has been part of the UNIBusiness staff since the early 90s. In the College, first year minority retention rates average 82% compared to a UNI average of 77%. Our six year minority graduation rates average 52% compared to a UNI average of 40%. Despite intensifying competition for minority students among Iowa universities, we have been able to keep enrollment steady over the past decade. As Table 3 shows, the number of UNIBusiness international students has grown 160% since 2003. As a percentage of our overall student body, international enrollment has grown from 3% in 03-04 to 10% in 13-14. Overall diversity in the College has grown from 10% in 03-04 to 18% in 13-14.

Degree Programs

Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

BA 2628 2599 2470 2258 2228 MBA 53 46 55 69 74 MAcc 33 22 31 21 24

TOTAL 2714 2667 2556 2348 2326

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TABLE 3: DOMESTIC MINORITY AND INTERNATIONAL ENROLLMENT SINCE FALL 2000

The growth of our international student body reflects our strategic priority to internationalize the College. One step toward that goal was the development of 2+2 agreements beginning in 2005 with Hohai University in Nanjing, China with students entering UNI in 2006. A similar 2+2 agreement with Shanghai Dianji University was established in 2005 and expanded in 2007 as a full-fledged program approved by the Chinese Education Ministry which allowed Dianji to advertise the program as a separate major. Dianji students at UNI have steadily increased to more than 60. More 2+2 agreements are pending. CHANGES IN SUPPORT SERVICES. The 2007-2013 Strategic Plan included several student support service initiatives including: Centralized Support Services. With an increased focus on professional development, all auxiliary functions in the College designed to support student success were moved to a single spacious and conveniently located area. All College staff associated with academic advising, diversity services, career services, international programs development, study abroad advising, and professional readiness (including the skills lab) were moved into the new space.

The new location allows for private conversations between students and advisers and includes a large reception area and conference room, as well as a room for conducting large-group student advising. Improved staff communication and a more collaborative work environment have accompanied the change.

0.00%

2.00%

4.00%

6.00%

8.00%

10.00%

12.00%

Fall2000

Fall2001

Fall2002

Fall2003

Fall2004

Fall2005

Fall2006

Fall2007

Fall2008

Fall2009

Fall2010

Fall2011

Fall2012

Fall2013

International Domestic Minority


Global Initiatives Coordinator Position. This new position requires teaching international business and coordinating College study abroad initiatives. The coordinator recruits and advises students seeking international experience, supports faculty members interested in developing study abroad programs, seeks opportunities to offer global trade programs, and develops programs that bring international students and business professionals to UNI. Business Living and Learning Community. Living and learning communities are high impact educational experiences that increase retention and engagement. When the first business living and learning community (BLLC), a partnership between the Department of Residence and UNIBusiness, was available for AY 13-14 we were pleased that demand exceeded the 100-person capacity. The RAs in this unit are business majors who plan business-related activities, including opportunities for faculty members to interact with students. The results of this initiative will not be known for a time, but the College will be tracking retention and graduation rates. FACULTY FACULTY MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT. The 2007-2013 strategic plan included a goal to maintain the College’s traditional teaching advantage while raising the College’s research profile. Faculty management policies, including our recruiting and hiring protocols outlined below, were crucial to our success in hiring several new and highly qualified faculty members. The implementation of supplemental tuition for junior, senior, and graduate students in business allowed for growth in the number of full-time faculty from 49 in AY 2008-09 to 58 in 2013-14, seven of whom are funded by supplemental tuition. Recruitment & Hiring. We maintain a strict recruiting and hiring protocol supported by a system that helps manage the process from initial request-to-fill through collection of applications to final approval to hire. (See Management Policies IV.c.i. Faculty Hiring Guide.) The College collectively advertises for positions in the online Chronicle, AACSB website, discipline specific outlets, and diversity oriented publications. Search committees are composed of department faculty members representing all ranks and including gender and ethnic diversity when possible. Students are included in the interview process. Candidates make both teaching and research presentations during interviews. Implementing a 2-3 teaching load for new PhDs in their first four years on tenure track has contributed to our crucial goal of maintaining the College’s teaching advantage by attracting good candidates. Participating/Supporting Criteria. In response to the 2013 standards, we more explicitly defined the requirements for “participating” faculty members by articulating the broad engagement required to qualify. All full-time faculty members, regardless of academic rank or contract type, must annually provide evidence of engagement activities beyond teaching. (See Management Policies IV.a.i. AACSB – Qualification and Participation Guidelines.)

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Part-time faculty members are also encouraged to be more broadly engaged in College activities. To be considered “participating,” they must be involved with College operations beyond the classroom. Expectations for that engagement are defined in the contract with each faculty member. The College deans, in consultation with the assigned department heads, make the participating or supporting determinations and re-evaluate those decisions annually during the merit review process. Department heads are expected to fully inform participating faculty members at the time of hire about how they are expected to be engaged with the College beyond their teaching responsibilities. Mentoring & Development. The College invested $543,560 in AY13-14 alone to support faculty development in teaching and research. Every faculty member has an annual discretionary research and development fund to support his/her teaching and research. Furthermore, various developmental activities, including the following, are programmed and sponsored by the College:

• Friday Research Lunch program. Faculty members present research for feedback from the College.

• Departmental mentoring. All departments use some form of mentoring to support faculty. • Semi-annual teaching seminars. Either an outside speaker or a well-respected business

faculty member is selected to discuss teaching issues. • Executive in Residence. This program allows faculty members to engage with well-

placed executives, including since 2011: CEO, Quanex; CEO, HNI; Vice President/Chief Compliance Officer, American Express US Banking; and Executive VP, Wells Fargo.

Evaluation: Overall evaluation procedures are defined by the Master Agreement. (See Management Policies IV.a.v. Master Agreement Evaluation Procedures). Term and tenure-track faculty members are evaluated by their departmental PAC (Professional Assessment Committee.) (See Management Policies IV.a.iv. for an example of PAC procedures.) They receive letters from the committee and the department head assessing their teaching, research, and service, and tenure-track faculty are apprised of their progress toward tenure. The committee and the department head make continued employment status recommendations to the Dean. All faculty members receive an annual merit pay evaluation. (See Management Policies IV.a.ii. Merit Review Policies and Procedures.) The administrative team, comprised of the dean, associate dean, and the department heads, reviews all full-time faculty members. The department heads notify the faculty of their evaluation scores. Reward Systems: The annual merit review determines faculty raises. The merit component of the raise is contractually limited resulting in modest individual merit raises averaging around $700 annually. Over time, however, a significant salary differential emerges between faculty who regularly qualify for merit and those who do not. Policies are reviewed and updated periodically to ensure rewards are consistent with expectations. For instance, only faculty maintaining qualification earn development money and eligibility for summer teaching. (See Management Policies IV.b.ii. Policy on Maintaining


Qualification.) A bonus point system rewards exceptional research and teaching. Recently the College’s merit review procedures (Management Policies IV.a.ii.) were updated to increase by 50% the reward for a peer-reviewed article appearing in a publication on our journals list. As described in the Management Policies IV.b.iii. Supporting and Rewarding Faculty Research, the College supports and rewards the faculty in a number of significant ways, again seeking to ensure that support and rewards are consistent with expectations. PROFESSIONAL STAFF PROFESSIONAL STAFF MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT. College staff members are classified either Professional and Scientific (P&S) or Merit. P&S personnel help formulate and administer institutional policies and aid in the execution of academic, student and administrative services. P&S personnel, in most instances, have received specialized training and hold appropriate academic degree(s) and/or relevant experience and are certified or registered, as required, with their profession and/or position assignment. Merit staff, unionized under AFSCME, fill clerical and secretarial positions. (See Volume II: II. Staff Vita Summaries.) College academic performance is supported by a staff of 20.35 FTEs engaged in, e.g.: clerical support, budget and administrative management, communications, development, student advising, minority recruiting and retention, information technology, assessment, and professional readiness program management. At Business and Community Services (BCS), the outreach arm of the College, 39 FTEs, including both P&S and Merit, are distributed across a number of units: BCS management, Institute for Decision Making, Iowa Waste Reduction Center, John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, Regional Business Center, Small Business Development Center, and Strategic Marketing Services. (See Appendix 3 for more complete information about the BCS units.) Staff Development: Staff training, across an array of topics, is provided by the University. Topics are constantly changing and are available at http://uni.edu/hrs. Staff orientation sessions explain available resources including access to staff grants supporting additional education. College staff members are encouraged to attend conferences and seminars supporting development in their job function (e.g., College communications and development directors attending an AACSB conference in their field). As with the faculty, the College seeks to “internationalize” its staff, supporting their travel with faculty members to China, Taiwan, Brazil, Russia, India, and Panama in just the past five years. Staff Evaluation. The University Performance Appraisal Program (see Management Policies IV.c.ii. through v.) is designed to annually evaluate individual staff members based on mutually agreed upon performance objectives. The appraisal program assists the staff member and the supervisor in assessing past performance and in developing plans for future action. Objectives relating to both position performance and professional development are established.

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http://uni.edu/hrs

6. LEARNING AND TEACHING

CURRICULA MANAGEMENT & DEVELOPMENT BACHELOR OF ARTS IN BUSINESS. The Bachelor of Arts in Business is built on the 39-hour business core that provides the foundation for the majors: • Principles of Financial Accounting • Principles of Managerial Accounting • Introductory Business Professional

Skills • Business Professional-In-Training • Business Statistics • Introduction to Decision Techniques • Macroeconomics • Microeconomics

• Corporation Finance • Principles of Marketing • Introduction to Information Systems • Legal and Social Environment of

Business • Organizational Management • Operations Management • Business Policy and Strategy

Historically, management and oversight of the core has been shared among: departments that host each course, the curriculum subcommittee of the Faculty Senate, the Learning Assurance Committee (LAC) composed of one faculty member from each

department, and the Learning Assurance Review Committee (LARC) composed of the LAC plus

department heads and deans.

This structure has been effective in meeting our academic goals and was positively noted by the previous AACSB review team. The structure ensured faculty ownership (LAC) of the curriculum and learning assurance program, and administrative accountability (LARC) for the implementation of recommendations that flow from the learning assurance processes. The 2013 standards recognize that AoL efforts not only improve the curriculum but have the potential to enhance teaching as well. The 2013 standards also recognize that changes to the curriculum are influenced by factors in addition to AoL data, thus necessitating stronger overall curriculum management. Together, these considerations constitute one driver in our new curriculum management structure introduced fall 2014. A second driver was the desire to capitalize on improvement opportunities identified through an extensive AY 13-14 core review dictated by the 13-18 strategic plan. The primary opportunity detected in that review was communication improvement between the faculty members teaching courses that support a given program level learning objective, regardless of the faculty members’ departmental affiliations. The new organizational structure, depicted in Figure 4, emerged from discussions regarding these two drivers.


In the center of this new structure is the Core Curriculum Committee (CCC), emerging now as the single entity charged with managing the core curriculum where previously multiple entities carried that role. Reporting to the CCC are five faculty working groups. Each working group is charged with concentrating on the teaching and learning of a particular learning competency. Each working group is chaired by a faculty member who is also a member of the CCC. Another link between each working group and the CCC is the Assessment Specialist who facilitates assessment activities and shares knowledge across the five working groups. Membership in each working group is composed of faculty members representing each of the core courses designated to develop the competency in question. Working groups report activities and progress annually to the CCC. This fluid, matrix arrangement allows faculty members to come together around a learning competency regardless of their departmental affiliations. We hope this arrangement will facilitate learning-objective achievement through cross-departmental, cross-course integration. Figure 5 further describes the AoL process and reveals how the AoL process supports and expects improvements not only to the curriculum, but to the assessment tools and learning assurance program as well. Three distinct feedback loops – curriculum, program, and assessment tools – represent the process by which improvements are made and integrated into the system. Consistent with the 2013 standards, our process also recognizes that teaching enhancements and insights are a significant output from assurance of learning curriculum management efforts. FIGURE 4: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE FOR CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT

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FIGURE 5: ASSURANCE OF LEARNING PROCESS DIAGRAM


BA: Curricular Revisions & Course Enhancements Since Last Review AoL-Driven Curricular Revisions. Since 2009, the Assurance of Learning program for the BA in business has focused on three broad learning objectives and two competencies under each objective. Assessment data were gathered through an End-of-Program exam (EOP), Co-Op (Internship) evaluations of student interns by their employers, and various course embedded assessments. In addition, two standardized assessment exams, the ETS Major Field Test in business (ETS MFT-Business) and the ETS Proficiency Profile (ETS PP) were administered in 2011 and 2012. (A summary of the results for each of the six competencies along with a full description of the BA’s AoL program can be found in Appendix 4.) Integrated Professional Readiness Program (PRP) into Business Core. Assurance of learning data were instrumental in the 2008 development of a pilot program called the Professional Skills Initiative. Course embedded data, End-of-Program data, and EBI survey results were collected as was feedback from successful alumni. These alumni built their careers on the technical knowledge gained through UNIBusiness and the work values our high expectations reinforced. They believed they were initially disadvantaged, however, because they were not as advanced in professional skills as graduates from some other schools.

Given the positive response from students in our pilot, a formal curricular proposal was approved and the curriculum, implemented in fall 2010, now consists of four 1-hour, no-credit, semester-long seminar/workshop-style courses taken over a four-year period. The first two are required of all business majors. Students completing all four are awarded a Certificate in Professional Skill Readiness. Initial results are very positive. According to our graduating senior survey, sixty two percent of our 2012 seniors considered our curriculum “excellent” in helping students conduct themselves in a professional manner compared to 41% reporting “excellent” in 2006. We believe our PRP program and other College-wide efforts have helped to produce these results. We direct significant resources and energy to assessing student response to the PRP workshops, assessing and building skills associated with identified College level learning objectives and competencies, and strengthening our overall skill-development efforts. A writing program allowing level 3 and 4 students to gain a UNIBusiness writing credential is targeted for implementation in AY14-15. Additional programs designed to help students “credential” their skills are under discussion. Strengthened admission requirements. The ETS Major Field Test in business (ETS MFT-Business), given fall 2011 and spring 2012, was useful in assessing our students’ quantitative skills. The lowest average score, 46%, was in Quantitative Business Analysis. On the fall 2012 ETS Proficiency Exam, however, the overall institutional mathematics score put UNIBusiness at the 93rd percentile among 110 institutions. On the other hand, 20% of our graduating seniors were marginal or not proficient for Mathematics Level 1 and only 14% of our students were proficient at Mathematics Level 3; findings supported by anecdotal evidence from faculty members who often have to review basic algebra techniques while also teaching students how to use discipline specific math models.

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In fall 2012, the College partnered with the university on a project to improve the quantitative skills of our incoming students. The University used the ALEKS exam to assess student readiness for math courses and to place students in appropriate math classes. We required completion of the ALEKS exam as a College admission requirement.

At the end of the first year, the value of the ALEKS exam in first-year math course placement was evaluated. For the Calculus course, the number of D, F, and W grades (DFW) decreased from 40+% to 10%. In STAT 1772, a prerequisite to our Business Statistics, only 14% earned a DFW as compared to an historic yearly average of 23% to 28%.

The College is now considering requiring a minimum ALEKS score for admission. Student performance in upper level, math intensive courses such as Operations Management and Corporation Finance will be analyzed to determine if 1) there is a relationship between the ALEKS score and student performance in the courses and 2) if the ALEKS remediation modules are useful in improving student performance in those courses. Integrated a writing requirement into two core courses. While systematic mid-program writing assessments have been a part of the College’s Learning Assurance Program since 2006, two additional writing assessment projects were launched in 2010. From these new assessments, we drew the following conclusions:

1) As many as 10% of incoming students arrive with inadequate foundational skills. 2) Especially in the core courses, students require motivation to practice skills and perform

at their highest levels. 3) Higher levels of proficiency require contextually motivated editing at content and

structural levels, while students in the College are typically editing at only the word and sentence level, often only correcting marked errors in language mechanics.

The ETS Proficiency Profile appears to support the conclusions above as our students performed at only the 66th percentile in writing. Subsequently, to overcome deficiencies noted in 2 and 3 above, in AY 13/14 the College embarked on a writing initiative directed to remediation, motivation, and contextualized writing instruction. Two courses were targeted – Principles of Managerial Accounting (a sophomore level course) and Legal and Social Environment of Business (junior/senior). For both courses, students received a grade on the assignment – the motivation for successful completion. Substantial writing feedback was provided to the student, and the student was allowed to revise the assignment before a final grading – the remediation. Finally, each assignment was designed to meet substantive course objectives and writing expectations based on those objectives – the contextualized writing instruction.


Based on faculty feedback on the first year trial, this writing program will continue into AY 14-15. Continuous improvement changes to the remediation, motivation, and contextualized writing instruction have been carefully developed and were implemented fall 2014. A system is in place to assess the efficacy of these interventions. Externally or Strategically Driven Curricular Revisions Implemented a new Management emphasis in Leadership. Development of this program was motivated in part by the heightened focus on “exceptional professional skills” in the College’s statement of educational intent. The leadership emphasis is designed to build on the PRP program by further developing professional skills. While co-curricular and extra-curricular activities are beneficial to leadership development, they are not sufficient, especially for the mastery of knowledge-intensive skills like thinking, communicating, planning, and leading. Committed to developing students’ skills, the Leadership program is determined to provide students with the knowledge to function effectively in leadership roles and with the dispositions and values that will motivate them to apply their leadership skills. Our “exceptional professional skills” strategic initiative has been strengthened by the College Executive Advisory Board’s support for expanding student professional credential opportunities. The Project Management and Lean or Six Sigma credentials received particular Board endorsement, and our Leadership emphasis, through a required project management course, is preparing students for entry level project management certification. The College reimburses the cost of the exam for any student who passes. A small cadre of students took the exam in year one with a pass rate of 54%. Implemented a new Global Marketing emphasis. Created in part to support the College’s internationalization strategy, the Global Marketing emphasis will enhance our service to the many Iowa companies doing business abroad. Our growing international curriculum allows students to choose an international business minor or a certificate in international business, culture, and language. A faculty expert with extensive global business and student experience led the program development which is directed toward NASBITE’s Certified Global Business Professional credential for which our current pass rate is 85%. Revised a marketing emphasis to Advertising & Digital Media (ADM). Responding to advertising opportunities beyond print and TV, we hired a new faculty member with industry expertise in digital media, including the newest social network platforms, to expand our curriculum. To support the ADM program, an American Advertising Federation chapter was founded, and our AAF team, in its first year, finished third at the District Student Advertising Competition, and earned several special awards Implemented a new finance emphasis in Wealth Management. Based on the advice and assistance of our Finance Advisory Council and reflecting an increasing societal need for expertise in financial planning, our Finance Department developed a new emphasis: Personal

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Wealth Management that became available to students as of fall 2014. In cooperation with the CFP® Board, the curriculum is designed such that students need take only a Financial Plan Development or Capstone course to register for the CFP® certification examination. We intend eventually to develop such a course with CFP® Board approval. MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION. Management and oversight of the MBA program reside with the MBA Program Director while course-specific curricular decisions reside in the host department. All faculty members teaching in the MBA program participate in regular curricular discussions, and curricular changes are recommended at MBA faculty luncheon meetings and submitted for approval through the appropriate department channels. Curricular discussions are informed by assessment results. An assessment specialist facilitates collection, evaluation, and summary of assessment data which is presented to the MBA faculty for review and recommendations. Assessment tools and assessment program changes are implemented as recommended by the MBA faculty through the MBA Program Director and the Assessment Specialist. The MBA program consists of 31 hours of graduate level courses with some prerequisite courses for students without sufficient academic preparation. The MBA courses are as follows: • Cross-Functional Operations • Current Topics for Managers • Financial Management & Markets • Management Information Systems

Concepts • Managerial Accounting • Managerial Economics • Marketing Management

• Research & Analysis for Management Decisions

• Strategic Planning & Organizational Analysis

• Strategic Management of Human Resources

• Business Capstone Experience

MBA: Curricular Revisions & Course Enhancements Since Last Review Between 2009 and 2014 the MBA Learning Assurance Program’s five student learning objectives with multiple dimensions for each objective were each assessed at least twice. A summary of the results of the assessment can be found in Appendix 5 together with a full description of the AoL program. What follows are the AoL driven curricular revisions. Increased professional writing focus across the curriculum. Analysis of assessment data collected prior to 2009-2010 revealed that our MBA students’ primary professional oral and written communication weaknesses involved written language mechanics, style and tone. For this dimension, 34.4% of students did not meet expectations. Additional demographic analysis of the data showed no significant difference in written communication skills between native and non-native speakers of English. As a result, in 2010 a standardized policy on student writing across the MBA curriculum was established, and MBA faculty members were encouraged to include a standardized writing policy in their course syllabi.


A benchmark written communication skills assessment of all incoming students was first introduced in 2010 as part of the MBA Bootcamp Seminars. MBA students who do not meet the written communication skills expectations are referred to the College’s Communication Lab for assistance. Writing and reasoning resources are available to all students online via the College website. In addition, a discussion of communication skills and collaborative writing tools was included in the annual How to Be a Team workshop delivered to students in the Research and Analysis for Managerial Decisions course in Module 1. In addition, individual written assignments were introduced in Strategic Planning & Organizational Analysis along with Managerial Economics. Updated “How to be a Team” workshop to expand focus on contributing effectively to self-managed teams. Assessment data included peer analysis of teamwork skills early in the program and in the Business Capstone Experience as well as teamwork skills information from the MBA Program Evaluation Survey and the EBI MBA Alumni Survey. The MBA faculty reviewed the teamwork assessment data showing that 91.4% of graduating students met the MBA Program requirements. The MBA faculty agreed, however, that the teamwork focus should be on recognizing the challenges MBA students face when working in self-managed teams, as well as providing support to them in navigating self-managed team processes. In the fall of 2012, a discussion of problems that arise in self-managed teams was incorporated in the How to Be a Team workshop delivered in Research and Analysis for Managerial Decisions in Module 1. The Business Capstone was revised to include team coaching for self-managed teams. Increased focus on critical thinking skills in Managerial Accounting. In 2012-2013, direct assessment data indicated that MBA students demonstrated weaknesses in specific competencies related to generating and evaluating alternative solutions to business problems, selecting an optimal alternative, and supporting the choice with arguments (39.5%, 50.0%, and 36.8%, respectively, do not meet expectations.) The MBA faculty responded with a review of all MBA core courses to determine the extent to which students had opportunities to practice those competencies. The review showed that at least 6 out of 9 core courses required students to complete assignments associated with choosing an optimal solution to a business problem from a number of alternate options. The depth of these assignments varied, however, and most of them were part of group projects. The MBA faculty addressed the issue by expanding opportunities for students to apply critical thinking skills in individual work, by allowing students to build experience in applying critical thinking skills throughout the curriculum, and by assessing these skills in courses offered later in the program. As a result, starting in 2013-2014, the focus on critical thinking skills was increased in Managerial Economics with the introduction of an individual Scenario Analysis assignment. Students also received additional opportunities to practice the skills in Managerial Accounting. Increased focus on limitations of tools used in Managerial Accounting analyses. In 2013-2014, the analysis of the standardized rubrics data, anecdotal evidence in Business Capstone and faculty experience in some MBA core courses indicated that MBA students experienced difficulties in recognizing and accounting for inherent limitations in the analytical tools used in examining business problems. To address the issue, beginning in 2014, students in Managerial

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Accounting engaged in a focused discussion of tool limitations followed by mandatory exercises that ask students to evaluate investment opportunities using various accounting measures. The exercises are designed to result in conflicting recommendations thereby encouraging students to recognize some of the limitations in standard analytical tools. MASTER OF ACCOUNTING Curriculum management and oversight of the Master of Accounting program reside in the Accounting Department. The MAcc Assurance of Learning program (Appendix 6) is tightly integrated into the curriculum management process with AoL data being crucial to curriculum decisions. The MAcc Assessment Coordinator collects data, performs analysis, and presents results. The Coordinator works with the MAcc faculty to implement program and assessment changes. The MAcc program consists of 30 hours of graduate level courses, with 12 hours of required accounting courses and 18 hours of electives.

REQUIRED • Financial Accounting Theory and Analysis • Applied Professional Research • Business Law for the Professional Accountant • Advanced Accounting Systems or Management Information Systems Concepts

ELECTIVES: Chosen from graduate courses available in Accounting, Communication, Ethics, International Business, Economics, and Public Policy

MAcc: Curricular Revisions & Course Enhancements Since Last Review Data have been collected over one three-year cycle for each of the MAcc learning objectives. Given the complete restructuring of the MAcc program prior to 2008-2009, major changes have not been recommended from the first round of data collection. Furthermore, admission standards were increased at the time of the program changes and admitted students have been performing exceedingly well. The faculty is generally satisfied with both the trends and levels of student outcomes. Outcomes data to date, however, have led the faculty to implement minor changes in individual courses. (See Appendix 6 for a summary of AoL results and a full description of the MAcc AoL Program.) Restructured research course. Initially, students were performing below expectations on several sub competencies within the research skills objective including: “conclusions follow logically from cited authority” and “analogized logically from existing rules.” The research course structure was then adjusted to provide additional discussion of challenges and common mistakes made by beginning researchers along with changes in exercises, feedback and the documentation of research logic.


CURRICULA AND TEACHING DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES JOINT OR PARTNERSHIP DEGREE PROGRAMS AND TRANSFER CREDIT POLICIES. The College maintains consistent, thorough transfer credit policies for business courses. At least 50% of the business credit hours required for the major must be earned at UNI. The business credits allowable for transfer must be completed at an accredited institution approved by the University. Careful evaluation of transfer course work is conducted by UNIBusiness department heads. University articulation agreements with the Iowa community colleges accept up to 65 semester hours of credit and recognize the AA degree as satisfying the majority of UNI’s Liberal Arts Core. Articulation agreements for several lower division business core courses allow students to complete the first two years of a four year degree at an Iowa community college, transfer to UNI, complete their remaining two years and graduate with a major in business. In addition, the College has established international 2+2 transfer programs with two Chinese Universities, Hohai University in Nanjing and Shanghai Dianji University. Students in these two programs complete their freshmen/sophomore years in China, transfer pre-determined course credit to UNI and spend their final two years completing a business major at UNI. They are then awarded a BA degree from UNI. In addition, students may transfer their junior/senior UNI course work back to their Chinese school and receive a Bachelor’s degree from that institution as well. Each degree is distinct, separate and controlled by the institution awarding the degree. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH QUALITY TEACHING. High quality teaching is nurtured as follows:

• Annual departmental Professional Assessment Committee reviews, complemented with department head reviews, provide extensive feedback to tenure–track faculty.

• Annual merit reviews assess every faculty member’s teaching performance, provide written feedback, and assign rewards, as appropriate.

• Student assessments are an important component in the teaching reviews. • Teaching seminars sponsored by the College are conducted by outstanding teachers from

the College and elsewhere. • Practitioner events, including Lunch-with-Executives and sessions with advisory boards,

encourage relevant and engaging content, connecting theory to practice in the classroom, and aligning the curriculum with practitioner expectations.

• International teaching opportunities, carefully developed and financially supported by the College, encourage our faculty to internationalize courses and develop skills for culturally diverse classrooms. Fifty-six percent of our faculty members have had at least one significant international teaching experience.

• Faculty members receive funding to attend teaching conferences and engage in pedagogical research.

• UNI’s Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning features extensive developmental programming including the Fall Faculty Workshop – an all-day session that in 2014 explored moving from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered teaching paradigm.

• Both the College and the University present Outstanding Teaching Awards.

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• Workshops examine integration of the latest technology into teaching. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT ACTIVITIES FOCUSED ON TEACHING ENHANCEMENT. Assurance of Learning data help identify teaching weaknesses while providing opportunities for pedagogical experimentation. Below are two examples of continuous improvement activities focused on teaching practices, both of which are direct results of our AoL program.

Improving the teaching of critical thinking skills. Introduction to Decision Techniques (DT) blends calculus, linear programming, decision making, and analysis to develop students’ critical and analytical thinking skills. Standardized critical thinking scores show that business students generally perform relatively poorly on critical thinking assessments compared to non-business majors. On the ETS Proficiency Profile given to UNIBusiness graduating seniors, fall 2012, only 6% were found to be proficient in critical thinking skills as compared to general UNI results of 8%. Similarly, scores on the critical thinking portion of our End-of-Program exam varied widely across semesters, from a high of 69% to a low of 30%. The DT course was selected for an experiment on how revised teaching practices may improve students’ critical thinking skills. Pre-test and post-tests were given across sections of the decision techniques course taught by two faculty members. The pre-test was used to identify a baseline understanding of basic critical-thinking skills. An intervention in the form of “Critical Thinking Days” was integrated into the sections taught by one faculty member. Based on the pre-test/post-test results, the “Critical Thinking Days" intervention proved ineffective in broadening students' critical thinking skills. A second experiment incorporated “Critical Thinking Days” into some sections of the course, and a writing assignment was added to those same sections. The writing assignment required students to watch a short video, "Why We Make Bad Decisions" by Dan Gilbert, Harvard University psychology professor. The students then responded to a simple scenario that required use of expected values in decision making. The end-of-semester quiz results in the Critical Thinking Days”/writing exercise sections were significantly better than the pre-test results, and all DT sections now employ the experimental approach. To encourage broader discussion of teaching critical thinking, one of the professors involved in the experiment presented the findings at a College teaching seminar fall 2013. Similarly, our working groups, discussed earlier, allow for transfer of knowledge among faculty members teaching courses sharing the same competency. Thus, our working groups spread successful practices and create continuity in the core. Improving the teaching of student numeracy skills. As previously noted, UNIBusiness students scored at the 95th percentile on the ETS MFT-Business exam on quantitative skills and at the 93rd percentile on the ETS Proficiency Profile on mathematical skills. Despite such positive numbers, the faculty sought to identify weaknesses. A detailed study of the ETS MFT-


Business questions where our students performed below the national average revealed a pattern of problems with questions that did not lend themselves to use of specific formulas and calculators. Responding to this deficiency, professors in Corporation Finance have implemented several teaching enhancements including increasing class discussion on understanding the relative relationships between variables in a formula, having students take short quizzes where calculators are not allowed, and increasing the number of these “numeracy” questions on exams. Student progress will be measured on the fall 2014 ETS MFT-Business examination. SUMMARY The 2013 strategic planning process again identified faculty commitment to teaching and learning as a distinctive strength of the College that directly impacts our students and our state. Our faculty takes great pride in helping students gain the knowledge and skills necessary to build rewarding careers and lead fulfilling lives. We recognize UNI’s unique position in Iowa where we attract many students from rural communities who arrive with limited professional exposure. Thus, the faculty collectively understands that a rigorous and relevant business education can raise our graduates’ capacity to compete with graduates from institutions with national reputations. To achieve that success, our faculty strives to continuously strengthen its teaching; a goal the College supports by encouraging faculty members to engage in a wide variety of professional development activities. To reach its curricular and teaching goals, our faculty has embraced a robust Assurance of Learning system that has produced BA, MBA, and MAcc improvements as well as teaching enhancements. The College has both responded to changing AACSB standards and formally identified opportunities for improvement in the organizational structure of its teaching and learning programs.

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7. ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT EXPERIENTIAL AND ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES OR INITIATIVES SINCE LAST REVIEW Building on a long history of using experiential and active learning strategies, the 2007-2013 Strategic Plan established several goals for which experiential or active learning initiatives were required. The initiatives include:

• Implemented a student-professional mentoring program in cooperation with Wells Fargo connecting 1,000 students with more than 500 Wells Fargo mentors to date.

• Provided unique hands-on workshops and seminars connecting thousands of students to more than 225 young alumni, seasoned professionals and corporate trainers. Workshops included an improvisational role-playing program developed and directed by an award winning theater professor.

• Integrated hands-on diversity training in PRP, “Ouch, Stereotyping Hurts.” • Implemented a skills lab giving students the opportunity to work directly with experts to

improve their writing and oral presentations. • Implemented a new leadership curriculum requiring a service learning experience. • Implemented a global marketing curriculum requiring a study abroad experience. • Reconfigured a lab to support the technology and communication needs of student teams. • Expanded professional credential programs for students – Project Management, Six

Sigma Green Belt, and Certified Financial Planner CFP®. • Hosted two diversity case competitions. • Developed social engagement scholarship to support unpaid internships in non-profits. • Instituted First Wednesday (free) Lunch to encourage international and domestic students

to socialize. • Included financial support for students and faculty in all external Business and

Community Services (BCS) funding requests. In the first year, BCS increased student participation in grant-supported programs by 50% and faculty participation by 20%.

In the 2013-18 strategic plan, student engagement in learning has assumed yet more strategic importance, as evidenced by these additional initiatives:

• Implemented the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to benchmark our student engagement efforts.

• Completed a 2013-14 review of the business core to ensure it continues to support the College’s program-level learning objectives and to cultivate more student engagement opportunities. Two outcomes were: (1) restructuring core curriculum management structure and (2) revising AoL output expectations to include teaching enhancements.


FACULTY QUALIFICATION AND DEPLOYMENT UNIBusiness qualification standards have evolved in line with the 2013 AACSB standards. Our Qualification and Participation Guidelines detail the College’s expectations for each of the four qualification areas (See Management Policies IV.a.i.)

The general requirements for Scholarly Academic (SA) and Instructional Practitioner (IP) status were built on our original AQ and PQ standards. One major change is seen in methods for faculty members to meet the new Practice Academic (PA) and Scholarly Practitioner (SP) qualification requirements.

For both of the new categories, the College uses a Memo of Understanding, approved by the Dean upon consultation with the administrative team, outlining specifically the expectations for the faculty member in or transitioning to the qualification category. Faculty members will be assigned to PA or SA only if the assignment will (a) support our mission and strategic priorities, (b) align with the faculty member’s interests and expertise, and (c) have the potential to yield high impact and quality outcomes. Standard 2 of the 2013 AACSB accreditation standards requires that we move beyond the mere counting of intellectual contributions to “demonstrate what has been changed, accomplished or improved with respect to theory, practice, and/or teaching because of our intellectual contributions.” As such, our policies and procedures must include guidelines that establish the College’s expectations with respect to the quality and impact of intellectual contributions as well as their alignment with our mission. The College has traditionally attended to quality assessment at the Merit Phase of our 2-step evaluation process, where maintenance of qualification constitutes Step 1. Our 2-step approach, integrating maintenance of qualification into the College’s comprehensive faculty evaluation system, was originally featured at an AACSB Best Practices conference and subsequently received endorsement from the AACSB maintenance of accreditation team. In response to the 2013 standards, we are maintaining our 2-step approach but strengthening it by incorporating impact. Failure to maintain qualification triggers a Professional Development Plan, which is generated by the department head in consultation with the faculty member. Retaining eligibility for summer teaching provides a strong incentive for faculty members to successfully complete their development plans and regain qualification. Failure to complete the plan provokes further action including increased teaching and service expectations. Faculty members who do maintain qualification receive a salary boost and are elevated to Step 2 of the evaluation process, where merit considerations (emphasizing quality) are addressed. Quality expectations are outlined in the College’s Merit Guidelines. (Management Policies IV.a.ii. Merit Review Policies and Procedures.) The second major change is the newly developed plan for integrating an impact assessment protocol into Phase 2 of the merit review process. (Management Guidelines IV.a.iii. Incorporating Impact into Evaluation.) The process commenced fall 2013 when a faculty

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committee developed an extensive list of metrics that could be used to assess impact. That was followed by individual submissions from faculty assessing the impact of their own work. A content analysis of those submissions was completed during summer 2014 to augment the initial list provided by the faculty committee and to provide direction for the development of notations to be integrated into the College’s current faculty activity data collection system. The College has also initiated a new Assurance of Impact process (discussed in Section 4 of this report) designed for continuous improvement as our knowledge of impact assessment grows. Table 15-2 shows the deployment of faculty by qualification status. Four additional tables providing more depth about deployment can be found in the Tables section. Specifically tables 15-1 (Faculty Sufficiency and Qualifications Summary) detail deployment relative to: All degrees, Bachelor’s degree, MAcc degree, MBA on-campus, and MBA off-campus.

TABLE 15-2 DEPLOYMENT OF FACULTY BY QUALIFICATION STATUS

SA = 67.47% > 40% SA + PA + SP = 67.71% > 60% SA + PA + SP + IP = 92.44% > 90% PARTICIPATING/SUPPORTING DEPLOYMENT. Overall 92% of our credit hours are taught by participating faculty, an increase from 83.3% in 2009 (See Table 15-1A All Programs). We have used supplemental tuition to exchange adjunct positions for full-time tenure track or term faculty. A review of all 15-1 tables, (A through E) shows that across all disciplines, all programs, all locations, our participating deployment at the College level exceeds 75% and our participating deployment at the discipline level exceeds 60%. QUALIFIED FACULTY DEPLOYMENT. Coverage by Scholarly Academic faculty calculated on the basis of Time-to-Mission has also increased from 68% in 2009 (AQ faculty, 2003 standards) to 72% for AY 13-14 despite the fact that our qualification standards are higher today than they were in 2009. (See Table 15-1A All Programs.) Furthermore, 67.71% of SCHs are generated by scholarly active faculty (SA + PA + SP) and 92.44% of all hours are generated by qualified faculty (SA + PA + SP + IP) as shown in Table 15-2. Of particular note, the portion of scholarly active faculty members in Finance is now at 73%, (Table 15-1A All Programs), a substantial increase since AY 2009 when we reported 49% qualified at the AQ level. Meanwhile the “Other” category has declined from 19% in 2009 to 12%, steadily approaching the desired 10% or less.

SCH % SCH % SCH % SCH % SCH % SCH %BA 25190 67.27% 0 0.00% 60 0.16% 9287 24.80% 2908 7.77% 37445 100%

MBA 890 67.53% 36 2.73% 0 0.00% 392 29.74% 0 0.00% 1,318 100%MAcc 324 87.10% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 48 12.90% 372 100%Totals 26,404 67.47% 36 0.09% 60 0.15% 9,679 24.73% 2,956 7.55% 39,135 100%

Scholarly Academic (SA)

Practice Academic (PA)

Scholarly Practitioner (SP)

Instructional Practitioner (IP)

Other (O) Total


Finance is a relatively small department of only 8 full- and one part-time faculty members so one person’s impact is substantial. While one of our Finance professors does not strictly meet our qualification requirements, his PRJs (3 in the past 5 years) exceed our numerical expectations. He chooses, however, to publish in journals that are not pre-qualified. In Accounting, the percentage of scholarly active (SA + PA + SP) faculty based on time devoted to mission (Table 15-1A All Programs) exceeds the 60% requirement. Two faculty members account for the department’s 14% “Other.” MAcc shows a higher than desired “Other” (16.7% Time-to-Mission, Table 15-1C MAcc Only, and 12.9% SCH, Table 15-2 above), but this reflects a one-year exception in the history of the program. For the four years prior to 2013-14, AQ coverage in the MAcc program had been 100%. The College is attempting to address the issue in Accounting through (1) appropriate developmental support, (2) changed faculty deployments, and (3) active recruiting. First, following our normal procedures, each faculty member needing to regain qualification has produced a Professional Development Plan for moving back to qualified status. Initial indicators are very positive that these two faculty members will regain their qualification status. Second, beginning fall ’15, the next time MAcc classes are taught, only qualified faculty members will be delivering the MAcc program, again giving us a 100% qualified deployment. Finally, with respect to recruiting, in AY 13-14 the Accounting Department hired an additional faculty member, and in AY 14-15 the department is again recruiting. Both hires will increase the department’s overall Scholarly Academic numbers from 63% to 67%. Overall, this analysis reveals appropriate deployment of qualified and participating faculty across all programs and locations and very positive improvements in staffing, particularly in Finance, as compared to numbers reported for our 2009-10 AACSB review. Where deviations from optimal guidelines are observed, the magnitude of the deviation is small and remedies are already in place. In the case of MAcc, the deviation was a single-year exception defying an otherwise perfect history.

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