Leadership and Quality

Leadership Emphases
Winona State University positions itself among the leaders in quality higher education. Along with the guiding Seven Principles, the WSU community emphasizes and encourages leadership and exploration into new territory for delivering higher education programs and methods of evaluation, and incorporating them into traditional, proven tactics for establishing, strengthening and maintaining high quality.

WSU builds its main mission to create a teaching-learning community with a wide variety of programs, projects and events. The faculty and staff engage in building leadership emphases to support the goals of WSU. These activities include:

Adopting core values and principles

Participating in continuous quality enhancement initiatives

Developing and implementing a Quality Process Model assessment plan

Aligning with system-wide strategic initiatives

Planning for long-range goals and opportunities

Adopting core values and principles

Core values and principles represent the heart and soul of a community or an institution, and tend to be a complex, intertwined array of philosophy, values, beliefs, work ethic, and operating procedures that provide a cohesive network toward a shared vision. The WSU Mission recognizes and honors diversity of many perceptions and insights to create the "big picture," a comprehensive panorama of a common vision.

A collaboratively organized learning-centered community such as WSU incorporates strong, agreed-upon guiding principles and values that practice shared governance and team building across diverse groups for continual performance improvement. This builds the trust and respect necessary to unify leadership. It creates "win-win" situations allowing conscientious and competent goal-setting, effective problem solving, and beneficial programs which propel WSU forward in its quality quest.

Faculty Professional Development Plans exemplify the concern with establishing and maintaining quality and ethical code for teaching. As a WSU/IFO contract requirement, PDPs reinforce the philosophical as well as the pragmatic foundation supporting the ethical code for quality teaching by focusing on professional competence, teaching abilities, and support of student growth and development. Professional development further includes scholarly activity and service to the university and the greater community.

Core values and principles extend beyond the human resources in quality issues. WSU pursues technology resources and funding resources to support programs that enhance classroom teaching and learning. The commitment to educational quality flows through the entire WSU community, each department and service striving to be receptive, caring and celebrative of the finished product: student success.

Participating in continuous quality enhancement initiatives

A new charge to the WSU Strategic Planning Committee in 1988 produced tangible evidence to quality enhancement initiatives. Faculty and staff workshops and seminars on assessment-related topics gave rise to a new committee for Outcomes, Processes and Indicators which began work on a document that outlined the expectations for all students, faculty, staff and administrators. That document, called simply, Expectations, gained endorsement by all constituencies of the WSU community.

The committee on Outcomes, Processes and Indicators then developed a quality enhancement model for measuring effectiveness of learning while the Long Range Planning Committee got busy on producing a "whole system approach" to academic quality. That approach encompassed the educational outcomes as well as the processes involved in student education.

That Long Range Plan was accepted by all constituencies in 1992 and almost immediately the OPI committee began formulating a set of indicators to measure the progress toward achieving the goals outlined in that Long Range Plan.

These indicators were reviewed by a faculty committee that developed the WSU Academic Quality Assurance and Assessment Plan identifying more than 250 indicators of educational quality in three distinct types: input, process, and outcome.

After identifying major indicators or "key" issues in quality education, the committee used this abbreviated list as the basis for the North Central Association (NCA) Assessment Plan. The plan was accepted with praise from the NCA reviewers.

Developing and implementing a Quality Process Model assessment plan

The Quality Process Model developed by WSU ties together the Mission Statement, Long Range Plan and the Academic Quality Assurance and Assessment Plan. The goal of the WSU Assessment Plan states simply "to improve the quality of education for students." (This assessment plan aligns with the WSU NCA Assessment Plan which aims primarily at external audiences and has received approval from NCA.)

Measuring quality in higher education traditionally focuses on "inputs and outcomes." More recently, the measurement of "value-added" effect has been included to take into account the changes in student learning that result from the teaching/learning process itself.

The WSU Quality Process Model attempts to consider every phase of the teaching/learning process including variables in three areas: input, process, and output:

input includes students, staff and administration, and resources;

process includes curriculum management, instruction, student development, and learning communities;l outcome reflects student success and student satisfaction.

The QPM integrates a system-based model conceptually related to the "plan-do-check-act" format. The model identifies key goals and university-wide indicators as tools for measurement. Additionally, it incorporates a feedback loop to measure the longer-term impact of WSU on employers and graduates. That impact should be felt in the feedback loop with tangible evidence of improvement areas such as alumni contributions, employer feedback, and number of student "legacy" applications (son or daughter or sibling of a WSU graduate).

New assessment initiatives (from MnSCU or elsewhere) will be reviewed in relation to the NCA plan. That plan will be revised pending the formation of new ideas, new initiatives, new data and new technologies to keep the plan as comprehensive as possible without sacrificing the format, utility or communicability. The plan should reduce duplication of assessment efforts throughout the university while providing a framework for forward progress.

Aligning with system-wide strategic initiatives

As part of the Minnesota State College and University System, WSU must respond to system-wide strategic initiatives. The Chancellor of MnSCU outlined these areas:

Academic accountability to appropriate constituencies including students, legislators, taxpayers and accreditation organizations.

Skill-based transfer to ease student mobility between institutions and within programs between two-year and four-year colleges in liberal arts, career education and general education.

Career education to include general and technical competencies for a lifetime of careers, not just a "first job" but from job training through masters programs, embracing K-12, school-to-work, and job skills development.

Electronic education to ensure that electronic education becomes a core element of MnSCU, used to enhance teaching and learning while connecting students, schools, colleges and universities, business and communities.

Program and service alignment to align MnSCU programs and services with the needs of communities and businesses.

MnSCU/K-12 Partnership to strengthen the partnership between MnSCU and K-12 education by pursuing s system-wide effort to improve outreach to K-12, to enhance teacher education, and two ensure students successful transitions from high school to college.

Planning for long-range goals and opportunities

In addition to MnSCU system-wide strategic initiatives, WSU must identify and report on three to five goals and corresponding indicators toward the WSU Mission. These goals are:

Student Success: WSU graduates will possess the knowledge, skills, competencies required for proficient performance in career choices and an appreciation for lifelong learning.

Student Satisfaction: WSU students and alumni will report a high level of satisfaction with their experience at WSU.

General Education: All WSU students will receive a solid foundation in general education.

Faculty and Staff Development: WSU will develop the human resources to accomplish the goals of the university.

Partnership Development: WSU graduates will meet or exceed the educational expectations of businesses who employ them and communities in which they live.

Technology: WSU will strive toward a seamless integration of technology into academic objectives at every level of instruction.

Development and implementation of these goals will begin with the formation of a Teams Council consisting of relevant WSU groups that will further examine each goal, evaluate existing indicators, analyze existing data, and develop specific strategic plans for maintenance or improvement.