2 What activities and professional development opportunities for faculty, other staff, and other constituents have the institution committed to or already established in order to achieve broad-based understanding of quality principles and tools?

Kent State University has created many opportunities for faculty, staff, and student development. Among these are

• The Leadership Academy : Internal Planning Conference is an annual forum in which the president, vice presidents, deans, and non-academic administrators participate in an all-day mission-related issues and awareness session.
• Kent State University is a participant in the AAHE/Pew Charitable Trusts project "Public Communication through Institutional Portfolios: Quality Assurance at Urban Public Comprehensive Universities."
• Kent State University was a participant in the University of Pennsylvania , Institute for Research on Higher Education, Wharton/IRHE Pilot Program on Managing Higher Education (1996-1997). This project provided external feedback to university leaders (provost, deans, chairs) about communication, processes, and outcomes.
• Kent State University participated in the 2000 Ashville Institute. Kent State ’s team is redefining goals for the Liberal Education Requirements to be written in such a way that they are measurable and included on all Basic Data Sheets.
• Advanced Connections training on Total Quality Service was provided for all Enrollment Management and Student Affairs employees.

3 What structures, systems, and resources does the institution have now or plan to create to sustain continual improvement and accountability both to internal and external audiences? What portions of your institution (e.g., a school or department) are already experienced with systematic quality improvement principles and tools?

About half of the University’s departments have been involved in Total Quality Service programs. Business and Finance, Human Resources, Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, and the College of Business Administration have been involved using Baldrige criteria.

• In an effort to evaluate the quality of and to improve student educational outcomes and academic program effectiveness, an Advisory Committee for Academic Assessment now works with the Office of Academic Assessment in planning and supporting implementation of academic evaluation across the university. This office continues to coordinate assessment of general education and the majors, and to collaborate in research related to improvement of academic outcomes.
• The Information Services division has structured two offices to form the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support to facilitate institutional improvement efforts.
• The Division of Business and Finance used process review teams in the areas of aesthetics enhancement; custodial; energy management; grounds; maintenance; occupational health, safety, and fire safety; office practices and procedures. This division-wide effort included establishing a mission, vision, values, and beliefs statements for the entire division. The effort included introductory and on-going design team project component training in process redesign, survey design, interviewing, data gathering, data analysis, and problem-solving techniques. There was extensive customer involvement through interview and survey quality input channels as well as customers functioning as design team members throughout the process along with their suppliers. There was on-going feedback on results as well as a final project reporting process from team members to the vice president.
• The colleges of Business Administration, Education, and Nursing have extensive experience in mandated assessment and accountability as part of their program accreditations. The College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business Administration , and School of Music have mandated outcomes assessment as a requirement for graduation.
• The Division of Human Resources has established an Operations Effectiveness Council. That division also produces the Leadership Academy, an annual Internal Planning Conference, that keeps administrative leaders informed about key local, state, and national issues affecting higher education; strategic directions for the university; and training opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. Another aspect of the Leadership Academy is a year-long program.
• The Human Resources Division supports a web page that lists topics about which other areas of the university can get inside consultants. These topics include process redesign, change management, measuring organizational effectiveness, and business process review, among others.
• The university has an ongoing Faculty Professional Development Center with functioning committees. The Center was a joint effort by the administration and the AAUP faculty union to provide professional develop opportunities for faculty members.
• A Residence Halls Quality Team was created to provide input on improving conditions and procedures for residential student living.
• The Student Quality Advisory Committee created the "Listening Post" program to facilitate open communication among students, administrators, and staff; to effectively respond to student issues; and to gather appropriate information for assessing university on-going projects.
• The Department of Management and Information Systems has gone through a detailed TQM initiative with considerable improvements in delivery of courses as indicated by student evaluations before and after. The department also maintains a customer service center and it periodically evaluates quality questionnaires on the service provided by that center and the department office staff.
• The Executive MBA Advisory Board was established "To provide a structured continuous improvement process to enhance the learning experience for Kent EMBA students."
• The Center for Information Systems uses corporate information managers to advise on curriculum quality and content.
• An Operations Effectiveness Council (OEC) exists to ensure that cross-divisional plans and implementation occurs at the operational level of the University. The OEC discusses the implementation and communication of various committee reports, strategic initiatives, current divisional initiatives that have University-wide impact, and identify issues in which the university might be able to enhance its operations. The OEC advises the Executive Officers on the critical linkages that maximize administrative implementation efforts.

4 What evidence would you present to an outsider to demonstrate that your institution has seriously and openly discussed systematic quality improvement and understands what it is?

There are many documents, minutes of meetings, and existing committees that attest to the efforts to incorporate continuous improvement into the services and programs provided for students and other stakeholders at Kent State University . A sampling of these includes:

• Several web pages have been created to provide information to all university stakeholders and to increase communication. Some of these topics and their University Resource Locators (URL) include:


• Cultural Self-Study Recommendations
  •  http://dept.kent.edu/ksucultural_survey
• Strategic Plan
  • http://dept.kent.edu/ksustrategic_plan
• Dialogue
  • http://dept.kent.edu/vph/dialogue.htm
• Distinguished Staff Recognition Program
  • http://hrd.kent.edu/distinguished/index.html
• Organizational Effectiveness
  • http://www.rpie.kent.edu
  
  
• The University Requirements Curriculum Committee completes a review of the Liberal Education Requirements program every five years and recommends changes, which are then implemented. This year will see the first comprehensive review for the Writing-Intensive Course program. Regular assessment of learning outcomes for LER courses has also been initiated with several pilot test administrations.
• The Honors program is measured using the "Sixteen Characteristics of a Fully-Developed Honors Program," promulgated by the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC). This year a site visit by two evaluators credentialed by NCHC will be conducted.
• Faculty and staff presented at state and national conferences about Kent State ’s continuous improvement efforts.

5 Which other institutions or organizations practicing continuous quality improvement has your institution talked with, visited, or partnered with? Which of these contacts was most valuable, and why? In what organizations or structures (e.g., CQC, ASQ, CQIN) do you hold membership that will assist your institution and its personnel in increasing understanding of quality principles and tools?

Since 1992, Kent State University has worked with the following:

• Membership in Academic Partners Benchmarking Program of the American Accounting Association.
• Harvey Bluestein from ACT IV Consulting provided a full-day training workshop on Process Redesign and quality principles in July 2000 for the Committee on Administrative Efficiency in the Business and Finance Division.
• Noah Midamba surveyed 20 institutions and reported on the status of TQS in higher education institutions in the nation. The most extensive contacts were with the University of Wisconsin at Madison , where dialog and a consultant was brought to Kent to assist in our TQS project.
• Membership in American Association of Colleges and Schools of Business.
• John A. Rienstra, Manager of Total Quality from Allstate Insurance Company consulted with the Department of Management and Information Systems and the Division of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, gave a convocation on TQM, taught credit courses at KSU in the area of total quality management, and provided training to the Student Quality Advisory Committee.
• Centennial Commission was created to solicit input from about 100 external stakeholders; a report that provided more external focus was prepared.

6 What performance measures has your institution already established or planned? Have you used scorecards, report cards, dashboards, or other systems to publicize concrete performance results? To what degree are your data- and information-gathering, disseminating, interpreting, and evaluating systems sufficient to assess honestly its efforts in quality improvement, and to improve those efforts? How does your institution gather and publish information on its quality improvement efforts and successes for its staff, students, and other constituents and stakeholders?

There are several measures used by the university to assess its effectiveness. Most of these are gathered and used internally (I) while a few are not only gathered but are made available to external audiences (E).

• The Ohio Board of Regents effort to create a Governors Report Card for the higher education system in Ohio includes three members from Kent State University: Michael Schwartz, former president; Nancy A. Scott, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs; and Terry Kuhn, vice provost and dean for undergraduate studies. (E)
• Student Evaluation of Instruction is conducted in every class, every semester. Feedback is given to faculty members and to promotion, tenure, and merit committees. (I)
• Cultural Self-Study assessed the "climate" and "morale" of all members of the university community. Report issued to University community and recommendations to address problems have been made by a widely representative committee. (I)
• Doctoral program reviews were initiated by the Ohio Board of Regents to eliminate duplicative and over-productive programs in the state. Decisions were made to eliminate some and curtail other doctoral programs at Kent State University and at other institutions across the State. Internal assessment of graduate programs continues. (E)

7 How free is your institution's immediate agenda (in the next three years) from issues that would distract it from the commitments required to advance a strong quality initiative? Have you addressed concerns identified by your last NCA evaluation(s)? What issues that you face will naturally fit into or complement your next quality improvement undertakings. If you have suggested wording for "Special Clauses" capturing previous Commission concerns that should formally be included in your AQIP Agreement for Partnership, suggest them here.

The AQIP agenda comes fortuitously at the apex of KSU’s Strategic Planning and Mission definition process, and while Kent State University is assisting with the creation of the Governor’s Report Card for Higher Education in Ohio. At the same time, it needn’t be said that institutions are never "free." Kent State is implementing recommendations from the Cultural Self-Study, union negotiations will occur, construction will continue, new initiatives and priorities are constantly emerging, and so on. It is clear, though, that Kent State has a variety of initiatives in place and in its recent history that provide a foundation to complement such a process. Our challenge will be to make this effort institution wide with student learning as its focus.

Self-Assessment. Partnering with AQIP requires that an institution has first completed a self-assessment using quality principles that gives it insight into its strengths and opportunities for improving its systems, processes, and abilities for continuous improvement. AQIP does not require that all institutions self-assess themselves following a prescribed format or methodology, but it does believe that self-assessment is a necessary prerequisite for participation in subsequent AQIP processes. The following questions ask you to describe how you did (or plan to do) a self-assessment.

8 What self-assessment using a quality format or quality principles has your institution done within the past two years? (If none, what concrete plans do you have for doing such a self-assessment within the coming year? By what date do you plan on having received the final feedback you expect from this self-assessment?)

The following list identifies quality assessment efforts that have occurred within the past two years.

• College of Business Administration American Association of Colleges and Schools of Business accreditation used a Baldrige model.
• The Student Satisfaction Survey was conducted in 1996 and again in 1999. National norms were provided by Noel and Levitz for comparison.
• The ACT Survey of Academic Advising was conducted in 1995 and 2000.
• Every three years all KSU freshmen participate in the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Survey done by Alexander Astin at UCLA. The results show how our freshmen compare to a national sample on attitudes, political leanings, and values.
• Enrollment Management and Student Affairs offices participated in an evaluation process that benchmarked our student service programs against NASPA standards.
• Currently participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement, an effort to assess student experiences in higher education.

9 What was the scope of your self-assessment? Were all departments (units, divisions, etc.) comprehensively included, or did you focus on certain organization segments? If so, why?

The program accreditations mentioned above were individual unit efforts at the department and college level. The colleges of Arts & Sciences and Fine & Professional Arts have been minimally involved. The following studies were university-wide.

• Cultural Self-Study.
• Student Evaluation of Instruction.
• Student Satisfaction Inventory.
• ACT Survey of Academic Advising.
• National Survey of Student Engagement.

Committees have been formed and have reviewed the results of these studies, and strategies to address problems have been identified, and in many cases, implemented.

10 Has your institution investigated, applied to, or participated in national, state, or local quality award programs? In other quality programs like the Pacesetter or Trailblazer Award Programs (see www.cqin.org for information)? In an ISO 9000 audit? (If you have completed a formal, external self-assessment, sharing with AQIP at this time a copy of your application and the feedback report you received would be extremely useful. You will also be expected to share your self-assessment findings with peers later in the Collaborative Goal-Setting Workshop.)

As indicated in the documentation submitted and on Page 4 of 15, Kent State University received the Governor’s Excellence in Workers’ Compensation Award in 2000, in recognition of our safety record. This was achieved partly because of safety awareness training provided by Manhattan Consultants of Painesville, Ohio.

Kent State University is committed to applying for the Ohio Award for Excellence in the next cycle (due date in late Spring 2001). Several faculty members have been involved in ISO9000 audits. Kent State University was a founding member of the Ohio Award for Excellence.

11 If you plan to complete a self-assessment using some methodology other than a formal quality program (e.g., work with an external consultant), describe your plans and timetable as concretely as possible? What sort of artifacts or documents will be produced or available as a result of this self-assessment?

In addition to our response to question 10, above, the university intends to continue ongoing efforts and to mold them to the principles of Continuous Quality Improvement.

12 Overall, how useful did you find your self-assessment process in helping you discover where your strengths and opportunities for improvement lie? What surprised you most? What would you do differently the next time you perform a comprehensive quality self-assessment?

Self-assessment processes have been very useful in improving the learning environment and services provided for Kent State University students. For instance, there has been improvement because of attention given to issues identified by the Student Satisfaction Survey and the ACT Survey of Academic Advising completed in 1995 and 1999; however, much remains to be done. In the Business and Finance area, significant cost savings have been achieved. In Student Affairs, improved services for students have been achieved. Committees have been established to assure attention to important areas.

There have been many efforts: Kent State University will require a holistic institutional approach to continuous improvement, and in order to achieve this, tasks will need to be organized into manageable assignments to achieve the cultural change and commitment needed at the institutional level.

In addition to your responses to each of these questions, we would also like you to name a formal representative of your institution with AQIP, someone other than your CEO who is centrally involved in your quality initiative. Although we intend to continue to communicate closely with your CEO and other members of your leadership, having someone we can call or email regarding details of your relationship with AQIP will be make our operations more efficient.

            Terry Kuhn, Vice Provost and Dean                                                                                

Name of institutional representative

            Undergraduate Studies — Kent State University                                                          

Office address

            Kent OH 44242-0001                                                                                                        

City, State, Zip

            330-672-9292                                                                                                                     

Office phone(s) and extension(s):

            330-672-9296                                              tkuhn@kent.edu                                         

Office fax:                                                                   Email address: