BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY Presented at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges Joint Session with the Councils on

BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY

Presented at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges

Joint Session with the Councils on Academic Affairs and Business Affairs, and Student Affairs

November 15, 2004 – 3:30 to 4:45 p.m.

James E. Morley, Jr., PresidentNational Association of College and University Business Officers

J. Douglas Toma, Associate ProfessorInstitute of Higher Education, University of Georgia

Copyright 2004, NACUBO

You are responsible for leading some of the most complex organizations in the world


If you have all the answers on how to do this—leave now!


Building Organizational Capacity (BOC) is a project of

NACUBO, designed to help those campus leaders who have

problems to solve, plans to implement, and on-going operations to sustain and

improve.


BOC provides a set of conceptual and practical tools that colleges and

universities can use to craft systematic and comprehensive

responses to institutional challenges.


The underlying premise of BOC is eight elements that define what

leaders at every level must continuously and consistently

consider.



CONCEPTUAL MODEL (BOC AS A WAY OF THINKING)

• The eight elements “cover the waterfront” reflecting all of the functions and stakeholders involved in a successful initiative.

• When institutions or units consider the eight BOC elements simultaneously in planning and implementation, they increase the likelihood that an initiative will be effective and lasting, surviving transitions in executive leadership.



• Functions and approaches more naturally align when institutions or units recognize the connections between and among the eight elements.

• BOC helps campus leaders balance the “what” and the “how,” bridging the academic and the administrative sides of the institution.

A Project of the National Association of College and University Business Officers


Why do a case study on Virginia Tech’s Math Emporium?


The Math Emporium represents the realization of a critical

academic organizational capacity for Virginia Tech.


An effective approach to teaching math to large numbers of undergraduate students in a computer learning environment

can be transferable to other public research universities and

create sector-wide capacity.


The Math Emporium represents a project that required close and

continuous engagement of campus leadership at many levels.


We believe the case illustrates the substantial success of senior leaders

following a “BOC-like” strategy to achieve significant organizational

capacity.



BOC Case Study

VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTEAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Blacksburg, Virginia


THE SETTING: VIRGINIA TECH

• VT is the largest university in the commonwealth, enrolling approximately 21,000 undergraduate students and 6,000 graduate students in eight colleges and its graduate school.

• U.S. News and World Report ranks Virginia Tech’s undergraduate program at 32 among national public universities and its engineering program is in the top 25.

• Virginia Tech has consistently ranked in the top 50 research institutions in the nation. Current annual research expenditures are $232 million.


THE INITIATIVE: THE MATH EMPORIUM

• The Math Emporium opened in Fall 1997 in a former department store a few blocks off-campus.

• It is an open, 60,000-square-foot facility with 550 Apple iMac workstations arranged in hexagonal pods spaced widely across the laboratory floor.

• The Emporium is open around-the-clock during the academic year, with shortened hours during the summer.

• Some 4,500 students per year use the Math Emporium as “their principal math experience,” and another 3,000 use it for some portion of their academic program.



• In the mid-1990s, Virginia Tech confronted: resource constraints with declines in state funding concerns about the quality of undergraduate teaching on the campus,

including in mathematics (and particularly in calculus) increased enrollment and a dearth of capacity to offer a full schedule

of mathematics classes.

So, the timing was right for a bold initiative at Virginia Tech.



• In the context of several rounds of budget cuts and increases in enrollment: the CIO and mathematics chair continued a longstanding conversation about using

technology to support entry-level courses.

the provost and EVP considered how best to solve the overall budget problem while moving forward with the vision and goals of enhancing technology and strengthening undergraduate learning.

• The two sides converged with the realization that Tech could use a vacant department store to instantaneously build what became the Math Emporium.

• They could quickly build to scale with state moniesand operate by “taxing” various deans.



• A course fully taught at the Math Emporium meets only once, for an orientation.

• After that, the course is a sequence of weekly lesson-practice-quiz cycles with periodic exams -- all delivered over the Web. Student proceed at their own pace.

• In a typical course, there are five tests and a final examination, which are graded instantaneously.

• Before actually taking a quiz or test for credit, Math Emporium faculty

encourage students to solve test problems with instantaneous feedback.



• At the Emporium, students have access to:

80 hours per week of office hours a walk-in tutoring lab online course materials, including videos a course advisor a fully detailed course schedule the testing system

• Faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate mathematics students staff the floor of the Math Emporium, providing just-in-time, one-on-one help – a real benefit for those students for whom mathematics causes anxiety.



• The Math Emporium has lowered costs – from $91 to $27 per credit hour for the linear algebra course, for instance.

• It has also opened up classroom space on campus for other courses.

• The Sloan Foundation reports that moving a two-credit linear algebra course taken by 2,000 first-year students in engineering, science, and mathematics produced $130,000 in annual cost reductions, including factoring in compensation for Emporium academic staff.


VIRGINIA TECH AS ILLUSTRATIONOF BOC PRINCIPLES

• Virginia Tech framed their initiative holistically, viewing the institution as an overall system.

• The college acted systematically and cross-functionally, particularly in aligning academic interests and administrative functions through close cooperation.

• Tech enhanced capacity significantly, teaching more students more effectively with fewer resources.

• The Math Emporium approach is transferable.


EIGHT INTERRELATED ELEMENTS

• Mission, Vision, and Goals (fundamental purposes and significant aspirations)

• Governance (who makes what decision; exercising authority)

• Structure (organizing and aligning people and activities)

• Policies and Practices (rules, formal and informal)

• Processes (means to realize goals)

• Systems (supporting information to inform processes)

• Infrastructure (human, physical, and financial support assets)

• Culture (essential personality; norms, values, beliefs)



VIRGINIA TECHMISSION, VISION, AND GOALS

• As a research university, the Virginia Tech mission is familiar: research, teaching, and service.

• The Math Emporium enables faculty to focus on the research that will allow VT to reach its vision of becoming a top 30 research university.

• It also serves the goals of integrating technology and improving undergraduate teaching.

• The Emporium contributes to addressing significant financial pressures due to reductions in state funding, an important goal at Tech.


VIRGINIA TECHGOVERNANCE

• There was no formal planning committee for establishing the Emporium, but there was coordination and integration in planning due to close cooperation, with the arts and sciences dean and mathematics department chair working closely with the provost and EVP.

• Faculty governance is integral to the Emporium, specifically control over the curriculum. This type of initiative could not have realistically been handed down from the central administration.

• An interesting governance question related to the Emporium is

whether the lack of a formal oversight structure has proved to be a limitation.


VIRGINIA TECHSTRUCTURE

• The Emporium consciously “flies under the radar,” taking full advantage of its off-campus location within a decentralized university to operate independently.

• A unit like the Emporium does not fit into typical structures, such as course scheduling (self-paced learning) or how it is financed (leased space).

• The Emporium increasingly relies upon non-tenure track full-time instructors and graduate assistants.

• The unit is so large that it perhaps could not be significantly changed even if the institution wanted to modify it.


VIRGINIA TECHPOLICIES AND PRACTICES

• Virginia Tech launched the Emporium over only a few months, so working through problems and developing operating rules on-the-fly and establishing rules only as needed became standard practice and integral to the culture of the place.

• Policies and practices for students are well defined.

• Does a mature organization need more rules? Are there sufficient formal protections for the instructors who provide so much of the work at the Emporium, for instance?


VIRGINIA TECHPROCESSES

• There are set processes for working with students on-the-floor and for interacting with the central administration through the EVP.

• The informal approach to operational processes again has advantages and disadvantages.

Developing processes only as needed contributes to the agility of the organization and can create a pleasing culture for academic workers.

But processes such as evaluation and assessment require attention. For instance, there is no formal process for adding, reworking, or eliminating courses. Similarly, faculty evaluation processes are limited.


VIRGINIA TECHSYSTEMS

• Those who run the Emporium and those who work with the EVP have different ideas about how the Emporium contributes to (or takes from) the bottom line.

• Clear systems surrounding budgeting benefit efforts such as the Emporium.

• It may be that financial and budgeting systems may need

to be more adaptable – or perhaps there is too much flexibility.


VIRGINIA TECHINFRASTRUCTURE

• If the Math Emporium is illustrative of one of the elements more than the others, it is infrastructure (in addition to mission, vision, and goals, which is always central).

• The Emporium addresses problems related to shortages in human, physical (including technological), and financial resources in a manner that advanced the mission, vision, and goals of the institution and conformed to its culture.

VT had the right people in the right places; partnership among several actors committed to the idea.

The effort demonstrates that physical infrastructure can drive significant institutional change.

Virginia Tech created a financial infrastructure that would support the Emporium as it developed.


VIRGINIA TECHCULTURE

• Would the Emporium have worked on a campus not dominated by the applied sciences and technologically savvy? There are economies of scale questions and also issues of faculty culture to consider.

• Virginia Tech is, as a research university, able to accommodate (and even tolerate) an academic unit operating relatively autonomously.

• Tech has a history of being entrepreneurial, as with their successful research park, and was not afraid to innovate and potentially fail.




• BOC is grounded in the intellectual traditions of strategic management and organizational change, integrating and synthesizing them.

• BOC draws on case studies showcasing a variety of initiatives across the full range of American higher education institutions


PRACTICAL TOOLS(OR A WAY TO DECIDE AND ACT)

• The cases illustrate the holistic and systematic thinking required to lead successful initiatives with sustained results.

• BOC offers a common vocabulary to facilitate conversations between functional areas of institutions and between institutions of different types.


PRACTICAL TOOLS(OR A WAY TO DECIDE AND ACT)

• We will develop a national network of BOC users through:

A SungardSCT Internet infrastructure

NACUBO Institutes bringing together working groups from different campuses charged with solving a real problem using BOC.


BOC TO DATE

• Enthusiastic and growing endorsement by higher education leaders and major higher education associations.

• Conceptual framework of eight critical organizational characteristics developed and vetted through four pilot cases: The College of New Jersey, Virginia Tech, LaGrange College, Seminole Community College


BOC TO DATE

• Major federal support awarded by the Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE).

• Proposal to FIPSE for second application.

• Three presentations to campus presidents and chief academic and business officers—American Council on Education, Council of Independent Colleges, and National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges--Fall 2004.


BOC TO DATE

• Steering Committee: chaired by former Syracuse Chancellor Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw; October 26 meeting

• Editorial Board: chaired by Marvin Lazerson, Professor and former Dean and Provost, the University of Pennsylvania

• Research Team: nine faculty from higher education administration programs nationally


BOC NEXT STEPS

• The research team is developing six more cases during Spring, 2005.

• These will be published in a manual exploring the conceptual bases and practical uses of the BOC approach.

• We will continue to introduce our approach to presidents, senior administrators, and others through presentations, articles, and other means.

• We will launch our Web site: www.buildingorganizationcapacity.org


Documents

BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY Presented at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges Joint Session with the Councils on