Initiating a system-wide academic and administrative review

October 9, 2024

Dear faculty and staff,

In March 2024, we announced that Washington State University would be performing reviews of both academic and administrative units university-wide.

It's been well documented that Washington State University has grown substantially over the past decades in terms of student enrollment, number of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, funded research, and number of physical campuses. Much of this growth has been entrepreneurial in nature - especially following the establishment of formal multiple campus locations in Vancouver, Spokane, and Tri-Cities in 1989.

While most new academic programs over the past decade have been funded directly by the legislature, historically, significant growth in new initiatives and personnel occurred whenever a particular entity "had the funds." When extrapolated over three decades, this organic growth has resulted in several redundant functions at the campus and college level as well as extensive growth in undergraduate and graduate programs across the WSU system.

Over the past 35 years, there have been several initiatives that have worked to clarify roles and responsibilities and to propose structures and methodologies to minimize redundancies for many of the individual entities within the WSU system. Given the post-COVID world of public higher education and our current budgeting constraints, it is time for WSU to move forward with a system-wide review of programs and processes to ensure we are managing financial resources as effectively as possible.

For the 2024-25 academic year, system leadership will evaluate critical areas that were identified during the faculty listening sessions with the WSU Regents last spring: our administrative structure and academic programs.

Initiating a comprehensive review

The three separate parts of this review will be led as follows:

Optimization of administrative procedures, processes, and structures will be led by Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration Leslie Brunelli.

The work is already underway, beginning with a Process Reimagine and Redesign of WSU's Human Resource Services (HRS) operations. Over the course of the next several months, we will assess the HRS organizational structure and processes to increase responsiveness and improve the faculty, staff, and student experience.

This engagement will be complete in Spring 2025 and will inform the approach to additional administrative reviews. Our expectation is to first evaluate the finance and administration units throughout 2025, but we recognize that current operational needs limit our capacity to conduct these reviews. Nevertheless, it is critical to examine how administrative work has evolved to support the WSU mission in the context of limited resources.

All administrative reviews will be informed by peer benchmarking and best practices to resolve redundancies, mitigate risk, identify process improvements, and align support structures with our strategic plan initiatives. During these engagements, leaders, partners, and colleagues from around the system will be asked to provide input in the review process.

The Academic Affairs Program Optimization (AAPO) process will be led by Provost and Executive Vice President Chris Riley-Tillman.

With the higher education industry currently re-evaluating its enterprise and opportunities for evolution, Provost Riley-Tillman felt it was imperative to initiate the AAPO process this semester to ensure WSU's mission as a land-grant, R1 research institution is aligned with our operations. Through data-informed decision-making, the provost's office will use the optimization process to support high-quality educational and research programs, improve WSU's overall financial health by stabilizing the operating budget, and continue to fulfill our institutional mission. The primary goal of the AAPO is to ensure that departments, schools, and colleges reporting to the provost and executive vice president have identified college and unit priorities that can be evaluated annually with agreed-upon outcome indicators. This process will include a substantive engagement strategy with faculty to create an environment that is built upon trust, transparency, and equity to ensure that future annual evaluations are defensible.

It is anticipated that the AAPO will be supported by system strategic planning, annual financial planning, federal and state governmental processes, and other critical institutional planning activities to increase comprehensive, integrated planning system-wide. At the college and unit level, the evaluation stemming from the AAPO will be used by the provost's office to carefully evaluate each unit's alignment with the determined priorities and efficiencies of outcome indicators, determine modifications or closures, and support institutional funding decisions to ensure informed growth and stability.

The Health Sciences Academic Affairs Program Optimization process will be led by WSU Spokane Chancellor and Executive Vice President of Health Sciences Daryll DeWald.

Washington State University's Health Sciences programs prepare the state's future generations of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals. The Spokane campus is the system headquarters for the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences, which is led by the executive vice president for health sciences. Over the last decade, the campus has grown dramatically in enrollment, the number of health sciences-based degree programs (including a new MD program), increased basic and applied research, and the instructional and research square footage managed by leadership. The three programs the campus supports have evolved over many years, which has resulted in duplicative services offered across the academic units and at other campuses.

While the Spokane campus has grown overall, the colleges and central support budgets have been reduced along with those of all WSU units, resulting in structural budget deficits and challenges associated with supporting programs across the state. It is possible that a combination of central support in a shared services model may result in significant efficiencies for the Spokane campus and other campuses supporting health sciences programs. However, this will be complex for the health sciences as many professional programs have stringent accreditation requirements that often require specialized structures and services. To examine possible ways to optimize our degree offerings and the structures supporting the health sciences, we will engage an external consulting firm to provide recommendations on the organization and support delivery of the Spokane campus and our statewide health science programmatic delivery.

In closing

While we are initiating this review this academic year, the full scope of the project is expected to span several years to allow for the level of cooperation, understanding, and support this work requires.

Thank you in advance for your engagement in this process. We will continue to keep you updated as the review progresses, and we look forward to finding ways to better support the work you do on behalf of our students and the state.

Sincerely,

Kirk H. Schulz
System President

T. Chris Riley-Tillman
Provost and Executive Vice President

Leslie Brunelli
Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration
Chief Financial Officer

Daryll DeWald
WSU Spokane Chancellor
Executive Vice President, Health Sciences

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