August 8, 2017

Dear campus colleagues:

We write on behalf of the Academic Program and Administrative Services Prioritization (APASP) Task Force to invite you to review new lists of APASP Units of Analysis. We also wish to alert you to a final opportunity for corrections to the new lists of Units of Analysis and remind you of the deadline for input on other components of the APASP process. The deadline for all corrections and input is 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 10, 2017. Please use the APASP online feedback form to submit your corrections and input. Any corrections and/or input submitted after 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 10, 2017 may not be included in the Task Force’s working documents and/or process.

Units of Analysis

At the beginning of July, the Task Force posted draft lists of Units of Analysis (UOA) and asked for campus feedback. The UOA define which Academic Programs and which Administrative Services will be evaluated in the APASP process. Since then, the Task Force has analyzed and responded to more than one hundred points of campus feedback about UOA. In response to comments received, we developed the following guidelines for whether to combine certain academic programs into one unit or leave them separate:

  • A certificate that uses a sampling of classes from an associate degree will be evaluated with that associate degree.

  • A minor that uses a sampling of classes from a bachelor degree will be evaluated with that bachelor degree.

  • A master that use a sampling of classes from a PhD program will be evaluated with that PhD program.

  • Other certificate, minor and master, and doctoral programs will be separate units of analysis.

The new lists of units show which programs will be evaluated as a single UOA. One aspect of defining the UOA that is particularly challenging is how we ultimately tie our centralized data to programs/UOA. We greatly appreciated the number of academic and administrative programs that participated in the Pilot Review. Scoring the Pilots helped the Task Force focus on how to clarify meaningful data that we can assign to programs. The challenge is to determine at what level centralized data can be generated. We would appreciate academic program leaders looking closely at the newly posted UOA list and thinking about whether your programs are best understood as we have listed them.

Similarly, for Administrative Services we worked with sector heads to determine the most appropriate and meaningful units of analysis. We have sought to include every unit of service but not to be too fine-grained in our UOA such that the functioning group is lost. Again, we learned from the Pilots that how closely we analyze a unit can impact our ability to see the bigger picture of the role and function of administrative services. We are seeking a balance. Along these lines, in the past week, the Task Force decided to roll all administrative staff/units that support academic programs into the academic program report instead of requiring separate administrative service reports for these service areas. We believe this approach will help us focus on functions and that more relevant comparisons will be possible this way. Please use the APASP online feedback form to let us know what you think about this change by 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 10.

Deadline for corrections and input on components of APASP process

Corrections on UOAs will be considered until 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 10, 2017. Please use the APASP online feedback form to let us know if we’ve missed something or categorized your Academic Program or Administrative Service incorrectly.

The final deadline for campus input on APASP Ranking Categories, Rubrics & Weights and Criteria & Metrics is also 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 10. Please submit feedback using the APASP online feedback form. Current versions of these documents are posted on the APASP website.

The Task Force wishes to thank the members of the campus community who provide feedback on the Units of Analysis and on other aspects of the APASP process.

Sincerely,

Christine Fiore
Professor of Psychology
APASP Task Force member

Andrew Ware
Professor and Chair of Physics and Astronomy
Chair of Computer Science
APASP Task Force member