In June 2024, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) began an ambitious effort to create the first-ever Academic Master Plan (AMP) at Youngstown State University (YSU). Lack of communication is often noted as a top reason people feel dissatisfied at work. Therefore, communication is an opportunity to increase job satisfaction, improve engagement, and decrease work-related anxiety. To improve the OAA’s communication, we needed to understand the needs of our faculty members, staff, and students.
The process (see Appendix A) began in Summer 2024 with an all-day retreat that brought together approximately 50 support staff to explore how their areas contribute to student success. As the plan progressed, we conducted a series of surveys in early Fall 2024 to identify key priorities from faculty and academic support staff.
Recognizing the need for direct engagement, we met individually with all 20 academic departments—not once, but twice. In Fall 2024, we held face-to-face meetings open to all faculty within each department to ensure their voices were heard. These meetings were designed to capture both pain points and pride points for each department, allowing us to categorize faculty needs as readily achievable goals or longer-term objectives (which later formed the foundation of our goals and action steps).
The first draft of the Academic Master Plan (AMP) emerged from this extensive collaboration. We then shared this working template at multiple town hall meetings, where we saw enthusiastic faculty participation. The feedback we received was invaluable—so much so that we completely redesigned the AMP’s format and structure to ensure it better reflected the collective insights and priorities of our academic community.
During the winter break of 2024, we turned our attention to the Academic Program Enhancement and Effectiveness Initiative (APEEI) process. The APEEI framework—which includes Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and Detailed Analysis (DA) —reflects a comprehensive approach to evaluating and advancing our academic offerings. Our goal with APEEI is to ensure that every program aligns with best practices, institutional goals, and external standards, such as Ohio Revised Codes regarding low-enrolled and duplicative courses and programs (ORC 3345.35).
On the quantitative side, we committed to transparency in how programs are assessed. Realizing there was still ambiguity surrounding the process, we again scheduled individual time to meet with each department to discuss the quantitative data. A Gray Associates representative and multiple members from OAA administration, deans, and chairs met virtually in meetings open to all faculty members from each department to get any final comments and questions regarding what data are used, how they are used, and how they factor into our analysis. The Gray data platform offers chairs and deans access to historical and projected data, providing insight into how market viability, economic trends, and institutional priorities influence decision-making.
In addition, YSU’s IT department played a crucial role in developing Power BI, a real-time data system to which chairs and program directors now have access. This tool integrates key data points, such as 14-day enrollment reports, which play an important role in the state-mandated reporting of low-enrolled courses and programs. Power BI ensures that faculty program coordinators and directors have the same information used by chairs, deans, and OAA for program analysis. Finally, the specific state mandate regarding low-enrolled and duplicative courses and programs (ORC 3345.35) was shared with all academic senators in session and by email in October for full transparency. This mandate outlines the importance of all of us being good stewards of the State of Ohio to ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible.
During Spring 2025, we tackled the qualitative portion of APEEI. Through collaborative discussions that consisted of individual virtual department meetings open to all faculty members, the purpose of the qualitative program statements was reimagined as “program pitches” that would detail the uniqueness of each academic program. After this initial meeting regarding the qualitative statements, each program was asked to review and revise their goals, pitch statements, and action steps (GPAs) with the understanding that these GPAs would play a significant role in determining how resources, promotion, and tenure decisions would be made at the university.
Sections
Following these informative interactions with faculty and staff, the outline of the AMP took shape as two sections: one that is relatively static outlining policies and guidelines and a second, more dynamic section, that contains not only the qualitative GPAs for each of our academic programs but also those for the OAA. The academic program sections were developed by the faculty members, chair, and deans for each program. The opinions and suggestions provided at the meetings with the faculty, the town halls, and the surveys informed the OAA section. This process was extremely enlightening and has generated tremendous excitement and enthusiasm within the OAA. We are focused on our role in charting a clear path so that faculty can accomplish the tremendous goals they have set for their individual programs.