President David Schmidly has a to-do list for the 2009 school year.
In Schmidly’s Monday-morning message Aug. 17, he outlined five major goals for the University this semester: leadership accountability, student success, fundraising, the Rio Rancho campus, and communication between the president and the Board of Regents. The full list has 13 goals, which the UNM Board of Regents approved at their Aug. 11 meeting.
In his campus-wide e-mail, Schmidly briefly described the emphasis he would place on leadership accountability.
“We must continue to develop an organizational and leadership infrastructure at UNM that creates and reinforces a culture of accountability, continuous process improvement and transparency, with measurement and results-driven performance,” Schmidly said.
Faculty Senate President Doug Fields said the president and the Senate have been collaborating on a “Shared Governance Decision Matrix,” which would help to balance governance between the faculty and the administration.
Fields said Schmidly’s emphasis on communication and accountability is a step in the right direction.
“I think that these goals (Schmidly) has laid out represent an opportunity into a time where there is more trust between the faculty and the administration,” Fields said.
In February, the UNM faculty voted no confidence in President Schmidly and two other University administrators, former Regents President Jamie Koch and Executive Vice President for Finance Administration David Harris.
Schmidly’s other goals incorporate accountability and collaboration to develop student success.
In the Monday-morning message, Schmidly said the University would focus on retention and graduation.
“A primary focus will be to establish an integrated system of services to prepare, recruit, enroll, develop, retain and graduate both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of New Mexico, with special focus on the recruitment of high-achieving students and national merit scholars,” he said.
Richard Holder, deputy provost of academic affairs, said the plan is the first step in focusing system accountability on student success.
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“We’re in the earlier stages of trying to implement that (system),” he said. “We certainly agree with the notion that that’s an area that needs to be worked on, and it falls on us to work on it.”
Holder said the first priority is an advisement system that increases recruitment and retention numbers.
“As far as a detailed list of what we plan to do, the only thing I can say for sure is that we have placed revamping our system of advising on a very high priority,” he said. “We think if we can get our advising system working as well as we can that it can really make a difference as far as retention and graduation rates.”
Fields said an upcoming audit, which the faculty asked for in February, will investigate whether Schmidly’s plan is carried out.
“The faculty asked for an audit and the way that audit is done — who is in charge of the audit and who has access to that information before it gets published — is going to determine whether the rust between the faculty and the president and the Board of Regents improves or declines,” Fields said. “I think that is a very, very important thing.”
