Green River College begins college program prioritization

Green River College is seeking input from faculty, staff, students and the community for its new program prioritization process.

The process will help the college improve its programs as well as save money as it faces a potential $4 million to $5 million budget deficit, said Derek Brandes, Green River’s vice president of instruction.

The college has launched a website, grprioritization.org, to keep the community informed about its next steps. Green River has hosted two forums about the task and plans to have more.

The action the college will use is loosely based upon the research and recommendations from “Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services” by Robert C. Dickeson.

“I think there will be other factors when it comes down to budget,” Brandes said. “This is just one tool.”

As in the Dickeson model, Green River will divide the functions of the college into three pillars for evaluation — instructional services, student services and institutional support, Brandes said.

The College Council, which is made up of representatives from various constituent groups on campus, will name a steering committee to oversee the prioritization process. The council will also appoint pillar committees, one for each pillar.

Using rubrics, each committee will divide its programs into quintiles, with 20 percent of the programs falling into each quintile. Quintile one will have the highest ranking programs and quintile five the lowest ranking.

“It is the quintiles that people have a hard time with because you are grouping them in rank,” Brandes said. “In higher education, the culture is that everyone is equal and we wouldn’t grade students that way.”

Leslie Kessler, Instructional Council chairwoman, shared faculty concerns with the new process during the college’s Sept. 17 board meeting, including comparing programs.

Brandes said quintiles will be used as one part of the evaluation process.

“Just because something is in one doesn’t mean it is automatically going to get more money,” he said. “Just because something is in quintile five doesn’t mean it is automatically going to get completely cut.”

The evaluation process isn’t just about making cuts, Brandes said.

“Although people focus on the cut part, a big part of it is how you allocate things to the things that you are doing really to help growth and a sustainable budget picture,” he said.

When Washington State University went through a similar prioritization process, Brandes said, the result was reallocating funds to the School of Communications.

“They decided to put more investments in that (communications) and elevated it to a college within WSU,” he said. “Two other colleges they decided to combine and right size. Instead of two deans they had one dean. Instead of two fundraising staffs they merged to one staff.”

Brandes said he hopes Green River can find similar solutions.

“Are there opportunities for efficiency?” he said. “I think they are all around us. I am hoping that through collaboration as a campus community we are going to start seeing those. … Our objective is to strengthen the entire college not just specific programs and services unlike across the board cuts. We want to make sure the good things that we’re doing are fully functioning and operational. … My hope is that a lot of the gaps will be filled by the efficiencies and the ideas for revenue generation.”

Another concern faculty presented at the board meeting was the short time frame for the evaluation process.

The pillar committees are expected to finish their review of the programs by March so their findings can be turned over to a budget committee, which will make recommendations regarding efficiency and the quintiles.

“It is just a function of having to do the budget for the next year,” Brandes said of the quick turnaround. “If you have to make cuts that involve employees you have to give proper notice. We know we have to do something this year.”