As you are aware, in 2017, Boulder embarked on Academic Futures. One of the primary recommendations from our institutional stakeholders related to improving the experiences for our faculty and students as they relate to our online and distance educational offerings. More specifically, our community has told us the want educational excellence regardless of modality.
Thanks in large part to the work done by our Academic Futures/Financial Futures working group, we have determined much of the road map regarding how to establish that single entity where our faculty and students, both on campus and beyond, and can engage with online pedagogy. We now are at a place where we must determine how to get from our current state of operations to our future state. As you know, making this transition will involve not only building a coherent online organization on campus, but it will also require a thoughtful and comprehensive treatment of those elements of Continuing Education that will remain once all of the online activities transition to the new organization on campus.
Two working groups have been convened to make recommendations on what will be required to achieve the desired future states of our campus online activities and continuing education. Those working group have not been tasked to attend to the very important operational, HR, and budgetary details that will be required to achieve the future state. The important foundational details will be worked out by an Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) that we are asking you to lead.
To that end, we are charging you and the IWG to work with the provost and COO to:
- make recommendations on the personnel, programmatic, budgetary, and administrative changes that must occur to smoothly and effectively make the transition from our current state to the desired future states of our campus online and Continuing Education activities.
- Specifically, we are charging the working group to:
- conduct a comprehensive analysis of the current organizational, programmatic, and financial/budget structures of our online and continuing education activities;
- make recommendations for the design and development of the necessary physical, programmatic, personnel, and budget and finance changes that are best suited to support our transition from our current to the future state (both online and CE);
- Among the areas to be considered may include, but are not limited to:
- Incentives, budget structures, and financial sustainability
- IT infrastructure
- Administrative support
- Human resources
- Faculty and student support
- Marketing
Finally, as the Chair of this infrastructure working group, it is our expectation that you will work with the chairs of the other working groups on a Working Group Executive Committee. This Executive Committee will be charged to work with the Provost and COO to ensure alignment of the efforts of the Online, Continuing Education, and Infrastructure Working Groups.
We are requesting your report and recommendations by no later than December 2, 2019.