WSU Vancouver Launches Strategic Reviews to Strengthen Academic and Administrative Excellence

As higher education has developed its response to changes in the external environment, institutions have begun the important work of reviewing their academic portfolios. One goal of this project is to develop a data-informed and transparent approach for monitoring and evaluating WSU Vancouver’s academic offerings on an annual basis, with an emphasis on optimizing efficiencies throughout the academic portfolio. The Academic Portfolio Review is intended to help determine where program investments can be made and reallocations can occur, and the Academic Resources Review investigates how to maintain high-quality instruction that leads to student success. Both analyses will be conducted simultaneously for this project.

The Administrative Services Review supports WSU Vancouver in improving current levels of service, enhancing administrative services as appropriate and addressing existing service ‘pain points.’ This portion of the project will focus on services within both institutional administrative functions and academic administrative functions. Systematically reviewing administrative services will allow WSU Vancouver to pursue good stewardship of its resources and move towards a sustainable business model that continually invests in students, faculty and staff.

WSU Vancouver is conducting this project to build capacity at all levels of the institution to operate more strategically. WSU Vancouver must carefully consider how to allocate and use its existing resources. This project will help WSU Vancouver ensure good stewardship of resources, advance the objectives of its strategic plan and set the campus up to continue fulfilling its mission for years to come.

WSU Vancouver selected rpk GROUP to assist with this project. rpk has worked with similar institutions nationwide, including WSU Tri-Cities, helping them to evaluate and reshape their portfolios and identify resources for reinvestment. rpk GROUP will collaborate with a team that represents an intersection of academic and finance team members and leverages the expertise of personnel from across campus. The team is led by Interim Chancellor Sandra Haynes; Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Research and Graduate Education Christine Portfors; and Vice Chancellor for Finance, Operations and Enrollment Jenny Chambers Taube. As the project develops additional stakeholders (i.e., academic directors and faculty) will be invited to participate.

Program elimination is not the focus of this project. The project will provide a framework and tools to allow stakeholders to understand the entire academic portfolio, including student success across programs and how programs contribute to WSU Vancouver’s financial health. Any decisions regarding the academic portfolio will follow WSU Vancouver’s established governance procedures.

We anticipate that the total project will take approximately six months to complete, with a target end date of December 2025.

Updates to this project will be provided to the WSU Vancouver community in a variety of ways, including this website, emails and meetings such as townhalls. A feedback form is available throughout the project. Questions regarding the project and its progress may also be directed to either Mike Daly or Samantha Bradley.

WSU Vancouver has embarked on these reviews to make sure we are investing our resources in ways that best serve our students, faculty, staff and broader community. This work is about stewardship—demonstrating that we are using public resources responsibly—and about alignment, ensuring our efforts reflect student interests and faculty expertise.

The APRR provides a framework for understanding trends in our academic offerings, so we can make thoughtful, date-informed decisions about how to strengthen our programs. The ASR complements this by helping us look at administrative services and identify opportunities to improve.

It’s important to note that no outcomes are predetermined. These processes are designed to give us insight, not impose answers. What we learn together will guide conversations across campus, with the shared goal of building a stronger, more sustainable future for WSU Vancouver.

rpk GROUP’s role is to provide us with tools, data, and recommendations. Implementation decisions will rest with us—the WSU Vancouver community. This ensures that any changes we make are grounded in our values, our mission, and our shared vision for the future.

Examples of rpk GROUP’s work with other higher education institutions are available at: https://rpkgroup.com/what-we-do/.

The APRR framework uses WSU Vancouver’s institutional data for three academic years (2022-2025) at the department level, including information about student participation in courses and academic programs, faculty instructional activity, and finances to structure directional recommendations for WSU Vancouver. WSU Vancouver’s Academic Directors are reviewing the APRR framework, examining the supporting data, and participating in workshops to support implementation of the framework throughout the institution. Additional quantitative and qualitative data relevant to both the APRR and ASR are being provided by WSU Vancouver and incorporated into the final findings.

rpk GROUP’s collaboration with WSU Vancouver will include efforts to clarify the connection between WSU Vancouver’s mission, its market, and financial margins. Examining this relationship supports consideration of factors such as program or service size, impact, into the institution’s approach to allocating resources and investing in campus services and programs.

This project concentrates on WSU Vancouver, specifically highlighting the faculty, courses, and academic programs available at the Vancouver campus. While WSU Vancouver is an integral part of OneWSU, the primary emphasis of this work is on campus-specific elements. Broader context from the overall WSU system will be incorporated as needed to provide additional perspective.

Yes. Both faculty and student surveys will remain anonymous, and results will be shared in an aggregate form. Those findings will be provided to WSU Vancouver leadership, and we are committed to sharing them back with the community in a transparent way. Our goal is to ensure that the insights gathered inform open, constructive conversations about next steps.

To maintain robust academic portfolios that appeal to, retain, and graduate students, institutions should implement best practices in defining and systematically monitoring agreed upon student enrollment and graduation numbers for academic programs by degree level and/or other department-level thresholds. Additionally, institutions often establish clear guidelines and expectations for programs that do not meet these predetermined benchmarks. As WSU Vancouver advances with the APRR framework’s directional recommendations, it is encouraged to consider adopting proactive measures that annually identify when programs are achieving or not achieving any established thresholds and the appropriate next steps.

The initial APRR framework developed from this work will serve as a tool for WSU Vancouver to assess its recent trends. This process aligns WSU Vancouver’s available resources with current trends. As additional years of data are available, WSU Vancouver should consider how it incorporates those into the APRR framework.

The initial APRR framework will establish a foundation of core academic data trends. This framework is intended to serve as a resource for WSU Vancouver to ask questions regarding its academic offerings and departments. Responses to these questions should incorporate relevant context and qualitative data gathered from the campus community.

This project is centered on WSU Vancouver, encompassing its faculty, students, and academic programs. The primary emphasis is on campus-specific data elements, supplemented by relevant context from WSU as appropriate.

For example, there are classes offered at WSU Vancouver that also have students enrolled from other WSU campuses. There are also WSU Vancouver faculty that teach courses for other WSU campuses. The APRR process design works with Academic Directors to discuss these scenarios and other scenarios to fully capture both faculty and student activity.

The ASR survey is a key conduit for collecting information from a broad group of individuals at WSU Vancouver. The WSU Vancouver campus community is encouraged to be as transparent as possible in responding to the ASR through the survey.

Understanding the various contributions that faculty make to WSU Vancouver – both in terms of teaching and release time for assigned administrative duties is a core component of the APRR framework.

The quantitative measures of research that will be available in the APRR framework will be at the department level and focus on the number of grants awarded and total research expenditures for each academic year.

Given WSU Vancouver’s current capacity for generating the data required for the APRR, the project is leveraging the efforts of individuals in the WSU Institutional Research Office. Paths to replicating the APRR with data for future academic years should be prioritized by WSU Vancouver. The APRR process utilizes Academic Directors and the Academic Leadership Council as conduits to WSU Vancouver faculty. WSU Vancouver is encouraged to view the initial version of the APRR as a tool for framing more substantial campus conversations.

This project focuses on the WSU Vancouver campus and its unique strengths and opportunities, and the data generated from the work done for the WSU Tri Cities campus several years ago will be different in many ways. However, data and graphs from that project will be shared for illustrative purposes following WSUV’s townhall.

The Administrative Services Review is a systematic qualitative review focused on improving current levels of service, enhancing administrative services as appropriate and addressing existing service ‘pain points.’ In some cases, quantitative data may be used to understand qualitative data more fully. The ASR will create a foundation for WSU Vancouver to consider and establish quantitative metrics that will allow for on-going awareness of its administrative functions.

The scope of both the APRR and the ASR are limited to WSU Vancouver. WSU Vancouver’s continued consideration and awareness of how it engages with and impacts its region is encouraged.

As the final reports for the both the APRR and ASR are made available to WSU Vancouver, its leaders will engage the campus community in the recommendations and potential paths forward for implementation.