One of our favorite writers, Stephen Pelletier, tackles committees for Trusteeship magazine. This is what your boards are reading:

As governing boards have become more sophisticated and polished in their oversight of colleges and universities, they have also become more intentional in the way they organize themselves to meet their missions. Some boards have evolved entirely new structures. Even within the parameters of fairly traditional constructs, many boards have made important tweaks. But when it comes to committee structures, there is no one-size-fits-all approach: Boards organize themselves distinctly to best fit their needs and those of the institution. And that may be precisely the key to success. ...

“It’s not so much a focus on committees as it is a focus on where committees ought to be focused,” says Thomas C. Longin, [SCUP president, who is] an AGB senior fellow and a former vice president for programs and research at AGB, who also served as provost at Ithaca College. “It’s about getting a strategic orientation to committee work.”

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"The corporation acted on its own."

The YaleNUSCollege is a collaborative effort of Yale University and the National University of Singapore. An issue of governance has arisen late in planning for this new campus. We’ll flip the first two paragraphs of Whose Yale College, by Elizabeth Redden of Inside Higher Ed, because we think that makes the issues clearer.

Below, you can read or skim this excellent and important article from Planning for Higher Education. Please do share this URL with any faculty colleagues you know who might understand the value of this for their campus.

The authors are faculty at the University of North Texas who reviewed peer institutions for faculty senate missions, analyzed them, and engaged their faculty in a process resulting in a faculty senate mission statement.

Here, you can also access an interactive beta SCUP semantic analysis of the document, where you can explore its facts, summaries, and key terms in a customizable fashion.

That analysis tells us that the following are the top ten "facts" in this article:

A session here at the Council of Independent Colleges' conference for presidents opened with the sort of joke that goes over well in a room full of top administrators: "How many faculty members does it take to change a light bulb?"

The punchline: "Change?"

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Scott Carlson, writing from the presidents' conference of the Council of Independent Colleges, shares from a presentation that was focused on good relations with faculty, and the importance of getting faculty support, especially in tough times. Some of the presidential advice:

• Be brutally honest about the challenges, but don't paint a situation as hopeless—and never overpromise.
• Encourage faculty members to interact with the business-affairs staff and decision makers on the board of trustees—not just at board meetings, but also in informal situations.
• When sacrifices pay off with new or renewed resources, be sure to share those resources with those who gave up something for the organization. "Conspiracy theorists will say, You're just using the crisis to pull things from us that you felt you couldn't do" in good times, he said. ...

The key lessons, Mr. Anderson said, were that crisis can drive change on a campus, but it can also present two risks: "The first is that we can get into a food fight over process, and we lose our focus on the real issue of how we are going to make reductions and reallocations," he said. The policy document from the 1970s helped with that problem in this case.

"The second thing is, How do you preserve the fabric of the community and avoid the board taking charge or the administration taking charge?" he said. That threat can alter the very spirit of the higher-education enterprise, he said.

UVA president Teresa Sullivan has an advisory group that many consider unusual for a university campus, but which sounds remarkably SCUP-like. Its existence and its functioning is, we hope, being studied so that other institutions can learn whether this kind of group is beneficial, and in what ways.

The 13-member crew, whose membership is weighted toward those with some business or finance acumen, is charged to serve as an informal advisory group to Teresa A. Sullivan, the university’s recently minted president. But Sullivan says the committee is also designed to bring transparency to the institution’s often-mystifying budgeting process, connecting the university’s administrators with a diverse pool of faculty.

“It seemed to me a shame these two groups of smart people hadn’t sat down with each other before,” she says.

Unlike a standard faculty budget task force, the advisory committee isn’t necessarily engaged with a particular issue, such as where the university should cut or invest. Instead, it is grappling with more fundamental high-level questions, such as whether the university operates with sufficient liquidity – or cash on hand – to pay its bills should there be another huge economic plummet.

Another point of distinction for the budget committee is its make-up. Like most university-wide committees, the group includes professors across a range of disciplines. At the same time, Sullivan clearly sought a number of faculty with business orientations, and committee members were charged to "draw on on their own expertise in financial matters to provide advice."

While Sullivan says she wasn’t looking for a brain trust to tap for input on specific policy questions, she notes that she won’t “rule out the idea that as we make budgetary decisions I will consult this group.”

Moreover, Sullivan may well be inclined to turn to this committee for ideas, rather than using outside groups that offer such services for a fee, sometimes inviting faculty criticism. "President Sullivan said that she would certainly go to this internal group for advice before resorting to the outside as a general matter," Carol Wood, a university spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. "Sometimes," she added, "there are issues of such technical complexity that you still need the right expert."

The University of Oregon is engaging in a big-stakes transformation that challenges assumptions about what is a public and what is a private institution.From this page, you can download an executive summary, or the entire white paper, "Preserving Our Public Mission Through a New Partnership With the State." Selected paragraphs:

Many states across America, including Oregon, are struggling with the current higher education paradox—a broad consensus, fueled by the lessons of our own history, that postsecondary opportunity is critical to our collective prosperity, but challenged to sustain the investments needed in public higher education to support such prosperity. As a result of this paradox, state policies have been adopted across the United States that have fundamentally restructured public higher education systems as states and their public institutions negotiate a new balance of autonomy and accountability ... .

In Oregon, there is growing consensus that the state must move aggressively to enact real reform that supports our collective goal to help more Oregonians earn college degrees—reform that fundamentally changes the state’s role so that each institution is better able to fulfill its public mission through increased autonomy and greater accountability to meet the state’s needs ... .

At the University of Oregon, discussions about how we can better serve the state, and enhance our capacity to meet our public responsibility are well under way and include faculty members, students, staff members, alumni, and other stakeholders. We hold a collective view, joined by the University of Oregon Foundation and the University of Oregon Alumni Association Board of Directors, that the University of Oregon must continue to meet its responsibilities as a public university despite the funding environment that makes it difficult to do so. However, to accomplish this goal we need fundamental change to the governance and funding structure of our public university system. The university’s future is fundamentally predicated on our ability to enhance our capacity to provide greater educational opportunities through increased flexibility, autonomy, and stable funding support from the state ... .

If you operate a campus in South Carolina, and your institution has raised its tuition more than the national average, then that state's Budget & Control Board has put your capital projects on hold and forbidden new ones. Is this essentially toothless and symbolic, or does it really matter?

The University of South Carolina’s Columbia campus, where tuition was increased 6.9 percent this year, is not affected by the moratorium. Nor is S.C. State University, which increased its tuition 5.2 percent.

But many of the state’s other schools, including Clemson University, The Citadel, the College of Charleston, all of the regional campuses in USC’s system and several technical schools, will be under the moratorium. Figures included in the packet of information board members used to make their decision included an average tuition increase of 9 percent at the Medical University of South Carolina, but that school has many different tuition rates for its wide range of programs and it was not clear whether the university would be subject to the moratorium.

Budget board members carved out several exceptions to the moratorium. Projects that have already been fully approved can continue. Deferred maintenance projects can go forward. Others that deal with health and safety — projects that, say, install fire alarms or fire sprinkler systems — are also exempted from the moratorium. And projects that are paid for with private money are not covered by the moratorium. 

Must-read: Get it while it's hot.

The Institute for Effective Governance of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has published a new, 20-page guide for trustees on how to strategically consider cost-cutting measures. Planners need to download and read this free PDF document so they know what it is their boards may be reading and learning from. This is a really a nice, compact overview of many planning issues which interrelate and should be integrated.

BE EMPOWERED. Remember that trustees are fiduciaries. Students, parents, stakeholders, and—for public universities—taxpayers depend on your vigi- lance and firmness. Trustees mustn’t be pressured by the invocation of “board discipline” or “board unity” into voting against their principles or conscience. It is not an act of courage to raise tuition. Trustees should be willing to close or consolidate programs, when appropriate. They should demand approval authority for significant expenditures, insisting on information in the planning stages and in time for rigorous review.

Beware of building and maintenance projects broken into multiple small units, masking large expenditures beneath seemingly routine activity. Think long and hard before entering into a contract—as some boards have—with a search firm that provides liberal expense allowances, and compensation that might approach the first-year salary of the CEO.

So, how well do you know your CFO? A recent survey by NACUBO, reported on in Inside Higher Ed by Jack Stripling, finds that they are mostly white and male and a lot have MBAs. They consider not having enough money and "the belief that you are infinitely available" as their two most vexing problems. About one-third say that coping with deans is a problem.

“The tough part for us is we have to be the people willing to say no,” [Bob] Keasler said.

As the survey suggests, deans are the administrators who are often on the receiving end of that tough news. But that’s as it should be, Keasler said.

“It’s a dean’s job to lobby for his area, and that’s one of the things I tell new people in this business is to expect that and to be glad when you have a dean who’s passionate about what they do and passionate about their programs,” he said. “If you don’t have one like that, then worry. They might not be much trouble, but that’s not a good sign.”

Donald M. Norris is a prolific SCUP author who is the recipient of SCUP's Distinguished Service Award. Linda Bar is a current member of SCUP's Board of Directors and Senior Vice Chancellor, Academic & Student Affairs, Minnesota State Colleges & Universities System Office. Even as we conducted this interview, Linda was preparing to take on a new, national role with the Gates Foundation.

I conducted an email interview about the SCUP-45 workshop they are presenting all day on Saturday, July 10, in Minneapolis, Re-Imagining Higher Education, Post-Recession. Space is still available. Here's the interview, after merging responses and editing:

Terry Calhoun: In May I was pleased to be able attend your Second National Symposium on Action Analytics, which focused on using analytics to improve student access, affordability, and success and to achieve financial sustainability, post-recession.

Is your workshop on reimagining higher education, mostly about analytics and planning?

Don Norris/Linda Baer: Analytics are necessary, but not sufficient, to reimagining higher education, post-recession.  The new generation of action analytics enables institutional leaders to align strategies, actions, outcomes, and responsibilities as never before.  It supports the alignment of the processes of planning, execution of strategy, and capacity building necessary to achieve breakthrough strategies.  

But the real challenges are how to deal with elevated expectations and diminished resources over the next few years. We need to redirect institutional planning processes and change initiatives to go beyond efficiency measures to achieving fresh innovation and enhance academic and administrative productivity.

Calhoun: Why is reimagination and reinvention necessary? Is this recession different than earlier ones?

Norris/Baer: Yes. The data from SHEEO demonstrate that the deficits facing states will be deeper than previous recessions, will last longer, and that there will be no bouncing back to normal like after the recessions of the past 30 years. The new normal will be diminished state appropriates, on average about 20% down over the next three years. This will require institutions not just to muddle through, but to reimagine themselves for the new normal.

Calhoun: How long will this take? Is their real urgency and a short time frame?

Norris/Baer: There is no magic date, but many observors feel that if higher education hasn’t established genuine financial sustainability through reinvention by 2020, we will have missed our chance to shape our future. Others will do it for us.

This is a multi-year campaign not a single quick fix in response to mid-year budget cuts. It begins with establishing the need for establishing a sustainable vision for 2020 – financially, programmatically, organizational, and politically.  We expect that institutions will need to use the 2010-2013 period to launch processes of reimagination and reinvention, then progressively redirect their energies so that by 2020 they have leveraged innovations, achieved greater levels of academic and administrative productivity, fresh revenues, and an appreciation for the value propositions required in the new normal.  This is a tall order, but we cannot escape the implications of the times.

Calhoun: Who's doing this right, right now? Anyone?

Norris/Baer:  On most campuses, leadership understands the dire nature of these challenges, but their import has not penetrated into the faculty and junior staff, many of whom expect the traditional post-recession rebound.  Just this week, Jim Duderstadt was talking at the Woodrow Wilson Institute of International Scholars about the necessary reinvention of research universities in response to these times.

Our workshop will offer up many examples of existing initiatives that can be redirected and accelerated to achieve this ends.  But most institutions have focused on incremental change, achieving efficiencies, and similar measures that were adequate for 2007, but fall way short of today and tomorrow’s needs.  And many institutions have muddled through the past two years, cutting opportunistically, eliminating innovation, hoping for the best, and continuing to increase tuition to close the gap between resources and needs. This is not sustainable.

Calhoun:  SCUP workshops are developed to provide takeaway tools and practices. What will attendees take home from your workshop?

Norris/Baer: The workshop assesses what many leading institutions are doing, and suggests a full set of processes and initiatives that build on those practices and go much farther in exploring academic and learning innovations, administrative innovations, revenues innovations and enhancements, and tools and structures to ensure innovation.  We also offer a working paper developed by Dr. Richard Byyny, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Colorado and Donald Norris on “Principles for Change in Response to the Financial Crisis in Higher Education.” We give people a new vision set, perspective set, tool set, skill set, process set, and culture set for dealing with these challenges.

Calhoun: Engagement and interaction is also a big feature of SCUP workshop[s. How does yours engage participants?

Norris/Baer: In the workshop we will divide up into breakout groups for R1 public universities, comprehensive public universities, community colleges, and private institutions.  Each group is given a specific scenario requiring reimagination over a three- year period and execution/capacity building over a longer period.  Then we spend two hours working through the processes, initiatives, tools and approaches that would be needed to bring such an approach to the different settings and reporting on results to the group.  We will also discuss the analytics and process support mechanism necessary for these efforts.

Calhoun: I understand from the symposium that you also have a great place on line to continue the conversation?

Norris/Baer:  Yes, the Action Analytics Community of Practice/Public Forum on Action Analytics will have a Wiki dedicated to “Reimagining Higher Education Post Recession”, where resources will be posted and ongoing conversations engaged on regarding these issues. 

Calhoun: The classic question: Who should join you at this workshop?

Norris/Baer:  If you are from an R1 university, comprehensive university, community college or private colleges and university and want to find out how to redirect your existing planning and budgeting processes and academic innovations to deal with the challenge of reimagining your institution for 2020, this is the workshop for you.  

Calhoun: Don, Linda, thank you for your time. I know you are both terribly busy, and that Linda's headed to a new position with national exposure. Best of luck with that, Linda, and I'll see you both in Minneapolis!

Find out more about this workshop and get registered soon before it fills up: Re-Imagining Higher Education, Post-Recession.