October 9, 2024
Dear faculty and staff,
In March 2024, we announced that Washington State University would be performing reviews
of both academic and administrative units university-wide.
It’s been well documented that Washington State University has
grown substantially over the past decades in terms of student
enrollment, number of undergraduate and graduate degree programs,
funded research, and number of physical campuses. Much of this
growth has been entrepreneurial in nature — especially following
the establishment of formal multiple campus locations in Vancouver,
Spokane, and Tri‑Cities in 1989.
While most new academic programs over the past decade have been
funded directly by the legislature, historically, significant
growth in new initiatives and personnel occurred whenever a
particular entity “had the funds.” When extrapolated over
three decades, this organic growth has resulted in several redundant
functions at the campus and college level as well as extensive
growth in undergraduate and graduate programs across the
WSU system.
Over the past 35 years, there have been several initiatives
that have worked to clarify roles and responsibilities and to
propose structures and methodologies to minimize redundancies
for many of the individual entities within the WSU system. Given
the post-COVID world of public higher education and our current
budgeting constraints, it is time for WSU to move forward with a
system-wide review of programs and processes to ensure we are
managing financial resources as effectively as possible.
For the 2024–25 academic year, system leadership will evaluate
critical areas that were identified during the faculty listening
sessions with the WSU Regents last spring: our administrative
structure and academic programs.
Initiating a comprehensive review
The three separate parts of this review will be led as follows:
Optimization of administrative procedures, processes,
and structures will be led by Executive Vice President of Finance
and Administration Leslie Brunelli.
The work is already underway, beginning with a
Process Reimagine and Redesign of WSU’s Human Resource Services (HRS) operations.
Over the course of the next several months, we will assess the HRS
organizational structure and processes to increase responsiveness
and improve the faculty, staff, and student experience.
This engagement will be complete in Spring 2025 and will inform
the approach to additional administrative reviews. Our expectation
is to first evaluate the finance and administration units throughout
2025, but we recognize that current operational needs limit our
capacity to conduct these reviews. Nevertheless, it is critical to
examine how administrative work has evolved to support the WSU mission
in the context of limited resources.
All administrative reviews will be informed by peer benchmarking
and best practices to resolve redundancies, mitigate risk, identify
process improvements, and align support structures with our strategic
plan initiatives. During these engagements, leaders, partners, and
colleagues from around the system will be asked to provide input in
the review process.
The Academic Affairs Program Optimization (AAPO) process
will be led by Provost and Executive Vice President Chris Riley-Tillman.
With the higher education industry currently re-evaluating its
enterprise and opportunities for evolution, Provost Riley-Tillman
felt it was imperative to initiate the AAPO process this semester
to ensure WSU’s mission as a land-grant, R1 research institution
is aligned with our operations. Through data-informed decision-making,
the provost’s office will use the optimization process to support
high-quality educational and research programs, improve WSU’s overall
financial health by stabilizing the operating budget, and continue
to fulfill our institutional mission. The primary goal of the AAPO is
to ensure that departments, schools, and colleges reporting to the
provost and executive vice president have identified college and unit
priorities that can be evaluated annually with agreed-upon outcome
indicators. This process will include a substantive engagement
strategy with faculty to create an environment that is built upon
trust, transparency, and equity to ensure that future annual
evaluations are defensible.
It is anticipated that the AAPO will be supported by system
strategic planning, annual financial planning, federal and state
governmental processes, and other critical institutional planning
activities to increase comprehensive, integrated planning system-wide.
At the college and unit level, the evaluation stemming from the AAPO
will be used by the provost’s office to carefully evaluate each unit’s
alignment with the determined priorities and efficiencies of outcome
indicators, determine modifications or closures, and support
institutional funding decisions to ensure informed growth and
stability.
The Health Sciences Academic Affairs Program Optimization
process will be led by WSU Spokane Chancellor and Executive
Vice President of Health Sciences Daryll DeWald.
Washington State University’s Health Sciences programs prepare
the state’s future generations of physicians, nurses, pharmacists,
and other health professionals. The Spokane campus is the system
headquarters for the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and
Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences, which is led by the executive
vice president for health sciences. Over the last decade, the
campus has grown dramatically in enrollment, the number of health
sciences-based degree programs (including a new MD program),
increased basic and applied research, and the instructional and
research square footage managed by leadership. The three programs
the campus supports have evolved over many years, which has
resulted in duplicative services offered across the academic units
and at other campuses.
While the Spokane campus has grown overall, the colleges and
central support budgets have been reduced along with those of all
WSU units, resulting in structural budget deficits and challenges
associated with supporting programs across the state. It is possible
that a combination of central support in a shared services model may
result in significant efficiencies for the Spokane campus and other
campuses supporting health sciences programs. However, this will be
complex for the health sciences as many professional programs have
stringent accreditation requirements that often require specialized
structures and services. To examine possible ways to optimize our
degree offerings and the structures supporting the health sciences,
we will engage an external consulting firm to provide recommendations
on the organization and support delivery of the Spokane campus and
our statewide health science programmatic delivery.
In closing
While we are initiating this review this academic year, the full
scope of the project is expected to span several years to allow for
the level of cooperation, understanding, and support this work
requires.
Thank you in advance for your engagement in this process. We
will continue to keep you updated as the review progresses, and we
look forward to finding ways to better support the work you do on
behalf of our students and the state.
Sincerely,
Kirk H. Schulz
System President
T. Chris Riley-Tillman
Provost and Executive Vice President
Leslie Brunelli
Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration
Chief Financial Officer
Daryll DeWald
WSU Spokane Chancellor
Executive Vice President, Health Sciences
