In 2016, in response to a
variety of mounting challenges that threatened the continuing ability of the
State System to provide all Pennsylvanians with affordable, career-relevant
educational pathways into sustaining careers, the Board of Governors initiated
a top-to bottom review of everything we do. We learned a lot from the review
and the Board immediately reacted to it by focusing the System’s priorities on
student success, leveraging our collective strengths, and initiating an ongoing
and fundamental restructuring of the Chancellor’s Office.
The Board also launched an
extensively consultative process that produced a new vision for our future –
one in which we won’t simply survive but thrive as we continue our
historic mission by becoming a “sharing system.”
In my inauguration address, I
spoke of a sharing system—one where our 14 universities work closely together
to expand the breadth and quality of the educational opportunities they offer
our students, improve our students’ experiences, respond to changing employer
needs, and, crucially, maintain student affordability.
In a sharing system we work closely together to:
- allow our students
easier access to programs across the System.
- double-down on retaining
and graduating students.
- expand educational
programs that meet workforce demand and provide pathways for adult and
returning students.
- remain as the high-quality, affordable higher education option for every Pennsylvanian.
The Board has endorsed this
vision of a sharing system as a means of achieving the System’s three
priorities, and instructed me to engage a fully consultative process to develop
a detailed implementation plan. Kicked off by unprecedented levels of
collaboration among university leaders, the planning process that is now
unfolding will focus attention in in six areas.
- Modernizing our academic
and operational infrastructures so they leverage our combined operating
scale and enable agile and cost-effective expansion in the quality and
breadth of affordable, career-relevant educational opportunities and
student supports.
- Retooling budgeting,
investment, and performance management practices so we allocate resources
strategically, transparently, and accountably in pursuit of well-defined
university and system goals.
- Supporting continuous
improvement by investing in our employees’ success and strengthening our organizational
cultures.
- Strengthening our
governance, ensuring it is inclusive, responsible, transparent, and
accountable, while at the same time enhancing communications and advocacy
efforts. These efforts not only are essential in stimulating investment in
the system and its universities, but also in strengthening the public’s
trust in and understanding of the role our universities play in improving
the economic, social, and cultural well-being and health of the people of
this Commonwealth.
- Working creatively in
partnership with the state and the business and education communities to
address critical structural, financial, and public policy issues and to
improve pathways that enable life-long learning and connect people to and
support them in building sustaining careers.
- Restructuring
the Chancellor’s Office so that it effectively supports the transformative
efforts envisaged above.
In the near term, expect us to:
- convene expert task
groups that are charged to recommend how to redesign key areas of our work
– educationally, operationally, and with respect of the supports we offer
our students;
- form a steering
committee providing guidance to and integrating the work of task groups
and advising myself and the Board on the direction, priorities, and policy
and funding actions required to drive the System Redesign; and
- strengthen channels for communicating about the progress of our System Redesign and to gather input.
This is an exciting time to be a part of the State System,
and I look forward to working with everyone as we seek to learn from our great
past and present so that we may build an even greater future.
