Academic Affairs - CDSJ - Assessment Report - 1/04

Moving Forward

The Community, Diversity, and Social Justice initiative is predicated on the assumption that meaningful change is characterized by a cyclical change process that includes assessment, broad dissemination of results, development of change strategies, action, and reassessment.

This assessment report includes a substantial amount of data for the next step: engaging those in Academic Affairs in interpreting the assessment data and developing change strategies. We do not pretend that this assessment is comprehensive, in itself. It complements data from other sources (e.g., the annual Affirmative Action Plan from the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, the Diverse Democracy Study), and various Schools and Colleges may decide to follow it up with additional assessment. Still, it provides something that the University, to the best of our knowledge, has never had: a comprehensive survey of the perceptions of workers, across all job classifications, of the state of their everyday work environment and their understandings of University goals and values. Further, it provides a representative sampling of student perceptions of the learning environment and learning outcomes.

The next step is for the members (or representative members) of Academic Affairs to review this assessment report and, from these data:

Identify those areas where change initiatives need to be developed and carried out;

Identify benchmarks where change is needed;

Develop specific, practicable action plans that will be implemented in the next year to two years; and

Identify evaluation criteria and a process that will be used to determine the degree of success.

While this process is easy to describe, it is obviously not so easy to enact, as is true with most planning of any consequence that involves a complex organization. Still, addressing the issues raised in this report is not an add-on to other activities since the issues posed in this report are integrally related to many issues that Academic Affairs is already facing:

What workforce profile do we want to have in five years?
How do we create policies and encourage management practices that enhance worker productivity and mutual respect?
How do we enhance students' learning and their overall experience while at the University?
What goals will drive the transition that UMass is now undergoing?

Such questions clearly involve weighing priorities and values and open discussion in a range of forums. For example, some findings may point to action across Academic Affairs, some to action within Schools and Colleges, some to actions across the University, and some to action in consort with relevant Faculty Senate Committees.

We call upon the senior academic leadership to lead this planning effort. With the press of many other demands, it would be all too easy for this report to be filed for later action. It is in the University's best interests not to let that happen. In this time of change, if we, in Academic Affairs and the University at large, attend to these data and other relevant data regarding diversity, social justice, and community, then we have the opportunity of creating a more inclusive, equitable learning and working environment for everyone at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This is a goal that workers in Academic Affairs at UMass, across all job classifications, have strongly endorsed. We should celebrate this affirmation and act upon it.