Chair Talk # 3 October 2015

Quality Matters

A feature of recent discussions of the changing face of higher education, both nationally and here at the UA, has been the relative absence of a focus on quality. An exception on our campus is the Teaching Quality Task Force, which is now moving towards systematic campus-wide discussion. The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) is including quality metrics in its latest strategic plan, and the upcoming ABOR meeting in November, to be held at the UA, will include a breakfast discussion of quality in our interactions with students.

ABOR’s interest in quality is but one reason why it is important for us to think hard about quality in all aspects of university life. Although ABOR’s metrics will be generic, as they must apply to all three state universities, here at the UA we need to define quality in ways that capture our range and aspirations more specifically.

The ABOR breakfast provides a spur to address the issue of quality right now, leading us to suggest the following plan:  to create a set of Quality Brainstorming Groups, charged with coming up with ideas within a month. These ideas will then be put before the faculty for quick reaction before they are finalized. If it were easy to define and measure quality it would have been done already. Hence we don’t expect these groups to solve the problem outright. We do expect them to take a fresh look and to come up with ideas we could live with. We have two goals: first, to incorporate these ideas about quality into our activities at the UA, and second, to bring our approach to quality to the ongoing ABOR discussion.

We are now soliciting volunteers for Quality Brainstorming Groups, and we seek people from all areas of the university. We expect these Groups to adhere to the well-known script:  live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpus.

Quality looms large in much of the feedback we receive, so now is your chance to help by volunteering – by the end of next week, based on the response we get, we will quickly put together working groups of 8-12 people. The Groups we envision:

Quality in Instructional Activities                           

Quality in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity

Quality in Student Support

Quality in Administrative Support

Quality in Human Resources

Express your interest in one or more of these Groups by emailing me with a copy to Jane Cherry at the Faculty Center (jcherry@email.arizona.edu).  This is really important, so please consider joining the effort.
Lynn Nadel   (nadel@u.arizona.edu)