Prioritization reports rate EMU;

As many as one third of EMU's 208 academic and administrative programs have been rated as "Below Average" under the prioritization process led by President Swartendruber and the 12-member Prioritization Steering Committee.

Over five months after the rating began, the results of the PSC's program ranking were distributed to the program leaders on Monday. University programs were given a percentile ranking in seven different categories, and the programs in the lowest quartile could be in danger.

According to Dean of Seminary and member of the PSC, Dr. Ervin Stutzman, "Every program has the opportunity to give feedback for their specific area in response to the question, 'Does this feedback accurately describe your program?' Then, they can tell us how the opportunities for their program, or any other factors they want to tell us, should effect what recommendations are made."

Stutzman said that he did not know specifically which programs were in danger, though he did say that, "Any program that ranked in the fourth quartile, at the bottom of the ranking, is going to be in more danger; however, we may see some of those programs as being essential to the university."

Stutzman said that certain programs in the fourth quartile ranked low because they haven't been given enough attention or enough resources. At the same time some high-ranked programs may still need to make changes. "We may even put more money into them. . . . They will become flagships for us. In other words they will attract more students or more academic attention from more of a distance, because they will be even stronger than they are," said Stutzman.

The process should also help with tuition. "Tuition is supposed to be less," Stutzman said with a smile. "It will never go down, but it may not go up - as much. Any time the university has an unproductive program, it is costing tuition dollars. Any time you have a program that has few students in it, the other students are paying for it."

Stutzman added that the process of prioritization is continually shifting through input, but departments have until Oct. 10 to report their feedback, and after that, anyone who wants to give feedback has until Oct. 22. Starting this Friday, there will be a web survey online for 10 days, but Stutzman also encouraged students to go to their department and ask to see the individual rating and give feedback directly through the department.

"Every person has the chance to respond, and we are asking the entire department to gather around their program leaders to give feedback," Stutzman said.

Stutzman affirmed that the university would not cut students out of programs. "In almost every case, a student will be able to finish in his or her program major, but we may not advise people to start in that program. That way we can redirect funds to other things that are drawing more students," he said.

All university programs were ranked on a weighted point system based on: mission (20), external and internal demand (20), quality of processes (10), quality of outcomes (10), productivity (10), cost effectiveness (10), and opportunities and other factors (20).

Stutzman said that the best courses are considered those that are closest to the mission and goal of the university. "A program is better if it clings very closely to the mission of the university, and of course we have a mission statement." The other criteria such as demand are also examined; for example, "if we didn't have the financial aid program, we'd all be in big trouble."

Qualifications within a department also carry weight. Stutzman said that some questions that must be answered are, "Is everybody in this major well qualified to teach? Do they have a doctorate? Do they have great experience in their field? If so, they are going to be on the list as having a high quality program."

Additionally, the PSC looked at student ratings, productivity, and program size. "The smaller programs are going to get careful scrutiny," he said.

Although the 124 administrative programs may seem to be an excess compared to the 84 academic programs, they are generally closely related to the academic, such as fundraising, ticket sales, the academic support center, and athletics.

Stutzman said, "We have to ask ourselves, 'Is the sports program a money maker or is it just here to attract certain students; are there more specific ways that we could be making cuts?' The sports programs are going to have a couple of efforts to be looked at."

One of the major areas at which they are looking is the needed repairs for the turf field. "It is going to cost around $600,000 to repair plus another $400,000 endowment. So, the field that we really want is going to cost $1 million. We could spend that money on the field or we could put it in the endowment for sabbaticals for professors; or we could start a whole new program," he said.

"We cannot keep everything that we are doing now and be financially viable," Stutzman said.

The process explained:

Jack Rutt, director of information systems, used a PowerPoint to explain the prioritization process. He began by describing the division of 208 total programs at EMU into 84 academic and 124 administrative categories and explaining how the rating criteria of Mission, Demand, Quality Inputs, Quality Outputs, Productivity and Cost Effectiveness (referred to as MDQPC) had been organized. Two other categories of Opportunities and Other Factors (OO) were included in department reports, but will not be analyzed until after departments have had a chance to provide feedback on their program report results.

After departments submitted their reports, the Prioritization Committee divided into four teams of three persons each to analyze the information according to a scoring rubric. Swartzendruber testified that he had read every single report, but did not participate in rating them.

Both Rutt and Swartzendruber emphasized the tedium of this process. Rutt noted that each team had to analyze about 8,000 questions according to four levels of comparison: exceptional, strong, moderate and weak. Each team was responsible for four pages of criteria, 40 questions for each of the 84 academic programs and 32 questions for the 124 administrative programs. For the sake of fairness, the programs were randomly assigned to the teams with the condition that no member of the team was directly responsible for the programs that team was rating. As far as possible, each team had one faculty, one staff and one administrator.

The teams used Excel formulas to tabulate scores. According to Karen Miller, director of institutional research and effectiveness, members of the PSC were given reliability training before hand and the ratings were evaluated afterward. Even during the process, if members of the team had submitted drastically different scores, they were required to sit down together and talk about it to reduce the discrepancy.

Miller explained the reliability testing as similar to the way grades might be held accountable. It is assumed that two teachers will give a relatively similar number of A's, B's, C's and so forth. As long as the students (or department reports) are assigned randomly, each group should have similar numbers of strong or weak ratings. By comparing the scores groups gave, the committeee could assess whether some groups were being more lenient or harsh in their scoring than others. The testing "found no statistically significant differences overall or between the individual teams on academic or administrative program ratings," said Rutt.

The information is available in-depth on the EMU website for students and faculty, www.emu.edu/psc, as a .pdf file.

On Oct. 31, the PSC will have a university forum and make recommendations about each of the programs. According to the PSC explanation, people who disagree with the recommendations can appeal to President Swartzendruber for two weeks thereafter, with the understanding that, "he will take any appeals to his cabinet to hear their council before finalizing his response."