Faculty members expressed their worries regarding the new Proposed Metrics for Degree Program during their Faculty Senate meeting where the Provost and Senior V.P. for Academic Affairs Thomas Chambers explained more about the program and its plans to increase the university’s revenue.
According to Chambers, one of the program’s goals is to identify programs with a higher contribution margin percentage and invest Loyola’s resources into recruiting for those programs, which Chambers believes will increase revenue. For the programs that do not rate well in this process, the Standing Committee on Academic Programs will review the programs again and see what other than numbers should be considered.
“SCAP will ask, ‘how would you grow your program?’ This review process seeks to increase enrollment in all of our programs and thereby increase overall revenue,” Chambers said.
With this explanation, faculty members, including Justin Nystrom, chair of the history department, felt more assured about the metrics plan and began to agree that the program was necessary. Nystrom stated that at the heart of this program is the intention to increase revenue to make necessary investments in raises that keep up with the cost of living and maintenance to prevent situations like the hot water event from last year from occurring again.
“I felt that the program review was probably necessary going into this—some sort of program review—because we can’t make good decisions without good data,” Nystrom said. “We actually have made poor decisions in the absence of good data in the past.”
However, Nystrom added his concerns about the possibility of programs being cut because of these new reviews.
“Hopefully this program review will not lead to any sort of cuts because faculty and staff at Loyola have been working incredibly hard for years without pay raises to keep the idea and mission of Loyola afloat,” he said.
Nystrom also acknowledges that the review process is only one part of the plan to increase revenue, and what is done with the data collected will be much more valuable to the progress.
“My big question in all of it will be how we go about working with the data that these program review metrics yield. Having seen it up close, I can tell you that this is not easy work,” Nystrom said. “The metrics alone are like a thermometer telling us the temperature. What we do with that knowledge will be more defining.”
Chambers additionally expressed his gratitude for the transparency and cooperation from the faculty during this process, especially after their initial concerns.
“I want to thank the faculty on SCAP and in the Senate for using shared governance to shape metrics and a process that will improve our university,” Chambers said.
