Institutional Change

Iowa State University is committed to helping students, faculty, and staff become learners throughout their lifetime. In addition to traditional learning opportunities, Iowa State seeks to provide a campus environment that provides students, faculty, and staff with a rich array of extracurricular opportunities to learn, lead, and enjoy life. This section of the self-study highlights several examples of institutional change, which represent efforts to adapt to changing societal needs and to enhance institutional efforts to better prepare students, faculty, and staff to be lifelong learners.

Iowa State President Gregory Geoffroy in August 2002 established six significant academic initiatives. Evaluated by a faculty committee in a competitive process from a pool of 31 pre-proposals, these projects were chosen for their potential to respond to and anticipate critical needs in Iowa and the country, and enhance Iowa State’s stature among peer land-grant schools. In addition to developing world-class research components, each of the initiatives will strengthen or create graduate academic programs, contribute to Iowa State’s technology transfer, and/or support economic development in the state. The initiatives are listed below.

• Bioeconomy Initiative
• Center for Integrated Animal Genomics
• Human Computer Interaction
• Information Infrastructure Institute
• Institute for Combinatorial Discovery
• Institute for Food Safety and Security

Two recent efforts stand as examples of the broad range of academic initiatives on campus. The first, the Center for American Intercultural Studies, exemplifies how centers facilitate interdisciplinary programs and seek to generate visibility and critical mass for scholarly endeavors. Established in June 2005, this center provides oversight of programs in U.S. Latino/a, African American, American Indian, and Asian American Studies offered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Its special charge is to support interactions between ethnic and cultural groups in America and the broader global community through teaching and research. By developing its curriculum and sponsoring events that enhance the University’s commitment to diversity, the Center will encourage the participation of students and faculty in an educational process that is truly multicultural and help to bring issues of race, ethnicity and social power into the mainstream of the University’s academic life. In giving high visibility to intellectual and social issues of American ethnic groups as well as by sponsoring intercultural events at the University, the Center provides a dedicated place to develop cross-cultural understanding and contributes its part to creating a campus environment congenial to diversity.

A second example is Human Computer Interaction (HCI), a Presidential initiative listed above and one of the University’s fastest-growing graduate programs. Highly interdisciplinary, this emerging field seeks to have broad impact in multiple areas of society. The HCI graduate major reflects a broad recognition both in academia and industry that the need exists to specifically train researchers to meet the challenges faced by a rapidly evolving area of technological progress.

Perhaps the strongest example of how Iowa State engages in institutional change to enhance knowledge and promote a life of learning is its efforts in curricular change. Below are four initiatives that represent how the institution enacts curricular change. A common theme among the initiatives is a focus on student learning.

ISUComm
As indicated in other sections of the self-study, ISUComm will continue its primary emphasis on written communication as the cornerstone of communication practice, but will also address the integrated nature of written, oral, visual, and electronic (WOVE) communication and the contribution of WOVE expertise to successful academic, professional, and civic lives.

Diversity and International Perspective
In Fall 2001, the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee (FSCC) appointed the Ad Hoc Diversity and International Perspectives Evaluation Subcommittee to evaluate the Diversity and International Perspectives course requirements and their implementation. In April 2004, the FSCC endorsed most of the recommendations presented by the evaluation subcommittee in an October 2002 report and recommended changes to the U.S. Diversity and International Perspectives requirements. Both sets of recommendations emphasized the need for clear articulation of goals and the development of student learning outcomes assessment in courses used to fulfill the requirements.

For example, the FSCC recommended adopting expected learning outcomes from the completion of the U.S. Diversity and International Perspectives requirements, requiring departments to explain how a proposed course or experience will help students achieve at least two of the listed learning outcomes, and requiring that departments proposing a course or experience explain how learning outcomes will be assessed. The FSCC determined that this change aligned with the “Policies and Procedures for Student Outcomes Assessment” approved by the Faculty Senate on May 10, 1991. The Faculty Senate approved the recommendations in Fall 2005.

Design Curriculum
The College of Design hosted a forum in August 2003 to review and receive the Foundation Task Force Report, “Envisioning Beginning Design Education.” The report proposed a revised undergraduate core experience for first-year design students: “Design as Innovation.” Highly and purposefully integrated, the core would be required by all students before matriculation into a professional design degree program. The report included a vision statement that focused on educational innovation, a statement on learning from the Design Education forum, well defined values and benefits of a new Beginning Design Education Program, a set of design and general education ability-based learning outcomes, and a first-year curriculum.

The Core Design Program, first offered in 2004/05, is an integrated course of study for all first year students in the College of Design. Initial responses to the program were very positive, including the Collegiate Program Report released in Spring 2005 and prepared by six external reviewers from ISU's peer institutions. Current efforts to assess the Core Design Program are grounded in critical evaluation of student work. This evaluation is based on multiple measures to assess learning outcomes including three surveys organized by the College of Design, portfolio and essay reviews for applicants to professional programs, and evaluation by external examiners and jurors at final reviews. The curriculum is constantly being reviewed and improved by the Core Design Program Board.

Graduate Nutrition Degrees
Iowa State’s graduate program in nutrition is one of the finest, most respected in the U.S. Many factors contribute to the program’s reputation, including its ability to respond to changing needs. To that end, a recently submitted proposal seeks to restructure the program to establish an interdepartmental program in Nutrition Sciences. Restructuring to develop an interdepartmental program would create a unique opportunity to combine the breadth of expertise and resources relating to nutrition available on campus. In addition to being one of the nation’s largest nutrition programs, Iowa State has many nutrition-related centers that would make the proposed program unlike any other. The centers include the Center for Designing Foods to Improve Nutrition (CDFIN), Plant Sciences Institute, National Animal Disease Center, National Swine Research Center, NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center, Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory Business Incubator, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Center for Research on Dietary Botanical Supplements. The program will be submitted to the Board of Regents in the near future.

College of Human Sciences
On February 2, 2004, President Gregory Geoffroy accepted the recommendation of Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Benjamin J. Allen that the university develop a plan to combine the College of Education and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences to create “important strategic advantages for faculty and students” and to generate administrative savings to be reinvested in the academic work of the new college.

With input from 12 work groups, a steering committee studied the issues involved in reorganization and further refined the proposal to combine the colleges. The faculties of the two colleges approved the final proposal by a wide margin in early November 2004, and the Faculty Senate added its endorsement in early December. The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, added their unanimous endorsement on December 16, 2004. The colleges were officially combined as the College of Human Sciences on July 1, 2005.

This academic reorganization is a strong example of efforts to reduce administrative costs and enhance academic offerings. Savings from the reorganization will be used to improve academic facilities and programs and to hire new faculty. More details regarding the process can be found at http://www.provost.iastate.edu/educfcs/.

Iowa State adapts to changing needs and involves multiple constituents in its reorganization processes. In an effort to ensure that academic reorganization efforts align with the institutional mission and governance, the Faculty Senate and university administration approved a Policy for Academic Reorganization in January 2004. The policy indicates that the reorganization of academic units (departments or colleges) is an academic activity that is part of University governance shared by faculty and administration. Reorganizations are carried out through a three-step process of discussion, planning, and review that involves faculty in affected units, department chairs and/or deans, the Provost, Faculty Senate, the President, and the Board of Regents.

Department/Program Reorganization
In addition to reorganizing colleges, Iowa State recently reorganized several academic departments jointly administered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Agriculture. In 2002, the University reorganized the biological sciences into four new departments (biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology; ecology, evolution and organismal biology; genetics, development and cell biology; and natural resources ecology and management). The reorganization sought to place faculty members into groupings that would enhance both teaching and research excellence (see http://www.las.iastate.edu/newnews/bioreorg.shtml for more information). During the effort, faculty members were involved on a number of issues including developing a strategic plan/mission statement, governance of the new departments, space and resource allocation, and the biology undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Faculty also considered improvement of interdepartmental majors administration.

Another example of adapting the structure of academic departments to enhance the acquisition, discovery, and application of knowledge is the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Program (IGS), which offers flexibility in a nontraditional alternative to conventional graduate programs. Rather than focusing on a single discipline or field of study, IGS emphasizes synthesis through interdisciplinary learning, centered on issues and concerns identified by individual students.

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research lists 79 centers and institutes that have been approved or recognized by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa. These initiatives play key roles in supporting the diverse academic missions of Iowa State, such as facilitating interdisciplinary research programs, generating visibility and critical mass for scholarly endeavors, enhancing the ability to respond to new opportunities for external funding, and providing a unified front for extension services.

This sector of the University is recognized as the most responsive to the changing academic landscape, as reflected in the Iowa State University Task Force on Centers and Institutes April 2004 report to the Provost. The report considered several issues, including the role of Iowa State’s centers and, the process of creating and eliminating centers and institutes, and the mechanisms for evaluating effectiveness. The Task Force identified five attributes of a successful institute or center at Iowa State.

1. Exhibits national or international excellence and prominence.
2. Provides opportunities that traditional campus units cannot provide.
3. Has a clear mission that is directly tied to ISU’s mission.
4. Has effective leadership and governance.
5. Creates clear benefits that greatly exceed ISU’s costs.

In addition, the Task Force identified several challenges resulting from significant growth in the importance of centers and institutes on campus within the last 10 years. First, assessing relative costs and benefits of specific centers is difficult due to the wide variety of centers, a lack of transparency in operations and an inadequate system for accounting, reporting, review, and fund distribution. Second, mechanisms for recovering and awarding indirect costs do not necessarily reward excellence in centers and can even create disincentives. Third, the reporting structures and review procedures for many centers are not well defined and are sometimes at odds with other structures in the University. The Task Force asserted that if these university-wide structural problems were addressed, Iowa State would be able to identify its strongest and weakest centers and better promote excellence. Innovative and efficient centers will be crucial as Iowa State strives to continue its role as an academic leader.