INSTITUTIONAL PORTFOLIO.

Institutional and Educational Goals

In 1988 Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties William Plater developed, with broad campus participation, a campus plan for this urban public university entitled IUPUI Development Plan: 1988-2000 . This document, some 130 pages in length, was comprehensive in its scope and has served as a blueprint for much of the development of campus academic and administrative infrastructure and support services in the years since 1988.

Nevertheless, when the NCA team visited in November 1992, the reviewers wrote in their report, "The vision itself has not yet crystallized into a single statement of purposes that can be broadly promulgated and used to define the institution to its various constituencies."

In July 1992 IUPUI had hired its first Vice Chancellor for Planning and Institutional Improvement, Trudy Banta, and its first Director of Information Management and Institutional Research, Victor Borden. High on the list of priorities for these new professionals was the development of what the NCA team recommended in its report: "an institution-wide mission and a set of purposes consistent with that mission."

A planning process involving the Chancellor"s Staff was initiated in Fall 1992 and soon broadened to include the Council of Deans; members of the Faculty, Staff, and Administrative Councils; and student government representatives. Members of the community-based IUPUI Board of Advisors also took part in the discussion. During Fall 1994 and Winter 1995 drafts of IUPUI"s Vision, Mission , Values, Goals, and Implementation Strategies were circulated to all faculty and representative staff and students via email, revised, and adopted. This document was updated from time to time and culminated in a version dated May 23, 1997(PDF) .

In 1999 the Future Group was appointed by Chancellor Bepko to assess the potential impact of Indiana "s new community college initiative on IUPUI. Subsequently IUPUI"s entire planning document was revised, with the same kind of participation and review as occurred in the 1992-95 process.

Dissemination of Mission and Goals

The new Vision, Mission , Values, Goals, and Implementation Strategies (PDF) statement was endorsed by the Faculty Council in April 2002 and approved by the IU Board of Trustees in June 2002. It appears on IUPUI"s main campus Web site and on many unit Web sites. The vision and mission also are included in the online Bulletin . Many of the documents about IUPUI that are disseminated within the community, including the annual IUPUI Performance Report, contain references to the vision and mission as do public addresses given by the chancellor and his staff.

The IUPUI vision and mission are aligned with Indiana University "s Strategic Directions document and annually each vice chancellor, dean, and director aligns her/his unit plans with those of the campus. Reports of progress on these plans, along with budgetary information, are available on the Web. The unit progress reports are aggregated to produce a campus performance report that is published and distributed to some 6000 community stakeholders each spring. Under Vic Borden"s leadership, IUPUI is conducting path-breaking work on composite indicators of institutional effectivenessthat appear in the campus performance report as they are agreed upon by stakeholders. Following the current NCA review we plan to keep the IUPUI Institutional Portfolio up to date so that it becomes a campus performance report that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In 1996 we began to ask faculty in the first biennial Faculty Satisfaction Survey how satisfied they were with "the clarity of objectives and plans for the next few years at IUPUI." The percentage of faculty saying "satisfied" or "very satisfied" was 46 percent in 1996, 49 percent in 1998, and 50 percent in 2000. While 46 percent was above the national average the last time we saw a comparable statistic, we are not satisfied with the 50 percent figure and are working to improve it by distributing a brochure based on our mission/vision statement to faculty, staff, students, and community stakeholders. By disseminating the brochure, sending the mission document to stakeholders via email, and making presentations at meetings of standing committees, we also plan to improve the comparable figure of 38 percent satisfied or very satisfied with the clarity of objectives and plans that was derived from the last survey of IUPUI staff in 1999.

Decision-Making Processes

IUPUI"s Statement of Values (PDF) ?a part of the Vision, Mission , Values, Goals, and Implementation Strategies document?contains an affirmation of the institution"s "support for open inquiry and dissemination of findings." The Chancellor and his staff meet monthly with the academic deans to discuss policy issues and implementation strategies. The Faculty Council also meets monthly and considers policies and procedures related to academic programs and faculty welfare. The Staff Council meets monthly to discuss issues related to the welfare of IUPUI staff. Student concerns are addressed through the Undergraduate Student Assembly and Graduate Student Organization.

Indiana University is the managing partner for IUPUI. Thus all operating policies are those of IU. Like all eight IU campuses, IUPUI is governed by the Indiana University Board of Trustees and its chief executive officer, Myles Brand . IUPUI Chancellor Gerald L. Bepko is also a vice president of Indiana University . IUPUI has an active community Board of Advisors that meets bi-monthly, but this group does not exercise managerial responsibilities.

Commitment to Excellence

As our special emphasis self-study on teaching and learning makes clear, the first and foremost element of IUPUI"s tripartite mission is "to provide for its constituents excellence in teaching and learning." Our approaches to this component of our mission are discussed in the essays on Criteria Two, Three, Four, and Five, and are analyzed in detail in the special emphasis self-study on learning and teaching. The Teaching and Learning portion of the IUPUI Institutional Portfolio Web site includes additional examples and information on campus work to ensure Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

The second element of IUPUI"s mission is to provide "excellence in research, scholarship, and creative activity." Efforts on behalf of this aspect of our mission are discussed in the essays on Criteria Two, Three, Four, and Five, with additional information available in the Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity portion of this Web site and through the Office of Research and Graduate Education.

The third element of IUPUI"s mission is to provide "excellence in civic engagement." Work in this area is also discussed in the essays on the remaining criteria and analyzed extensively in the special emphasis self-study on civic engagement.

IUPU Columbus is located about 60 miles south of Indianapolis on a campus that is academically and administratively supported by IUPUI. IUPUC has a community Advisory Board that meets five times each year. As with the IUPUI Board of Advisors, the IUPUC Advisory Board does not exercise managerial or decision-making responsibilities but exists to offer advice and to share opinions that represent the views of constituents in Columbus and the counties that surround it.

The IUPUC plan and the process that created it parallel the IUPUI planning process. A series of meetings, focused on creating a vision, mission, and values statement consistent with efforts of IUPUI and Indiana University , was held in Spring 1992. The meetings included department heads and faculty representatives. The resulting statement was written, taken to the Faculty Council for approval, and implemented.

The geographic distance from Indianapolis and identity of IUPUC also influence the mission, vision, and programs of IUPUC. In 1999, the Community Education Coalition (CEC), a body that includes leaders of area businesses and industry, IUPU Columbus, Purdue University School of Technology, Ivy Tech State College, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation, and WorkOne (formerly Workforce Development), was created. The result was a seminal change in the educational landscape in Bartholomew and surrounding counties. In 2000, a "Vision for 2005 and Beyond as part of the Community Education Coalition" was written by the IUPUC dean and his staff to serve as a guide for future planning.

Since IUPU Columbus is part of the overall planning undertaken by IUPUI, IUPUC is included in IUPUI progress and performance reports.

Most IUPUC faculty have their academic homes in Indianapolis and follow the IUPUI advancement process while meeting standard IU criteria for promotion and tenure. In Spring 2001, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education approved several new degree programs for IUPUC, including the Bachelor of Science in Business and the MBA. These two programs are site-specific; therefore, the business faculty delivering the related courses will have site-specific tenure.

The mission of IUPU Columbus focuses on teaching and learning, civic engagement and scholarship and research with, however, a greater emphasis on teaching and learning and less emphasis on research, particularly bench research.

Strengths and Challenges

Strengths include:

• one university? Indiana University ?as the managing partner for IUPUI.
  
• a strong tradition of shared governance.
• influential community advisory boards for the campus as well as individual schools and departments that assist in evaluating academic programs and services and keep IUPUI connected to its constituents.
• efforts of Vice Chancellor for External Affairs Cheryl Sullivan and her staff to coordinate the messages conveyed by departments and schools in their marketing and recruitment publications.

Challenges include:

• bringing together within a single mission 21 relatively autonomous schools, many of which identify themselves as units of the parent institution rather than IUPUI.
• the continuing tensions inherent in "core campus" schools in which faculty in Indianapolis and Bloomington are considered one and yet function on campuses with different missions and different expectations of faculty. There are salary differences for faculty on the two campuses. In 2001, for instance, IU Bloomington received special funding from the Trustees to boost faculty salaries, while in Indianapolis this special funding was earmarked instead for hiring full-time lecturers. These salary disparities and differential workload expectations pose particular problems for schools like Nursing and Social Work, for which IUPUI is the core research campus.
• overcoming the perception that IUPUI does not always receive appropriate attention from the Indiana University Trustees, particularly in terms of resources for faculty salaries, academic programs, and student services.