Strategic Resource Allocation Update for EWU Faculty and Staff

SRA update, emailed to faculty and staff on March 9, from  Jonathan Anderson, provost, and Mary Voves, vice president of Business and Finance, co-champions, SRA:

Dear campus colleagues,

As we enter Phase III of the SRA process, we’d like to provide you with an overview of expectations and upcoming milestones. We are appreciative of all those who have engaged with the SRA process — those who’ve attended the town halls, provided feedback, submitted questions, and those who are serving on the Facilitation Team and task forces.

Current Task Force Work

The Academic Programs and University Services task forces have been convened and are meeting regularly. Current tasks include drafting a template for academic programs and university services, as well as identifying the catalog of data that will be used to complete the templates. Once the templates have been drafted, the campus community will have the opportunity to provide feedback before they are finalized for distribution. Please note that also during that time, the task forces will test the template with three programs of various sizes to ensure the questions adequately capture the necessary qualitative and quantitative data needed to evaluate an academic program or university service prior to finalizing.

Upcoming Key Milestones for Phase III:

All dates are subject to change. Announcements will be made via Inside EWU and posted on the SRA website.

• Template Feedback (Mar. 20-24): A template is the standard document that chairs and directors will use to provide qualitative and quantitative data about their academic programs and university services. All faculty and staff will be able to submit feedback for review by the task forces.
• Templates Distributed to Departments (Apr. 17): The final templates, one for Academic Programs and one for University Services, will be posted on the SRA website to view. Templates will be distributed only to individuals who will be responsible for completing them.
• Effort Tracking & Allocation (TBD): The Facilitation Team is working on the process of identifying and allocating effort (a percent estimate of how much time is spent working on a program or in a service area). These percentages will help determine the appropriate allocation of labor cost at the program and service level. Potential tools may include pulling workload data and effort surveys (online forms and spreadsheets).

Information is being communicated regularly to the campus, including opportunities for feedback, milestones, and other updates via the following:

• Inside EWU: Announcements posted for upcoming town hall dates, campus feedback opportunities, key dates, etc. Inside EWU updates are emailed to campus regularly as well as available online 24/7.
• SRA Website: Location for latest updates, knowledge base articles, task force work, timeline adjustments, town hall links and session recordings
• Executive Leadership Update: Delivered to faculty and staff inboxes the last Wednesday of each month and includes an SRA process update.
• Faculty Senate: The Faculty Senate has requested an SRA update be included in each administrative report prior to meetings.
• *Individuals are also able to submit questions or comments at any time via the SRA website and via email at sra@ewu.edu.

Again, thank you for your time and effort to make this process a success.

In gratitude,

Jonathan Anderson, Provost & Mary Voves, VP of Business and Finance

Co-Champions, Strategic Resource Allocation