Challenge 5

Promoting a culture of continuous improvement throughout the institution is a vital ingredient to achieving the University’s vision of excellence.

To meet this challenge, President Bruininks, in 2002, launched the Enhanced Service and Productivity Initiative. The initiative encompassed four goals:

This office is charged with promoting a culture of service and operational improvement with the goal of facilitating transformation of the University through cultural, operational, and financial change.

OSCI now serves as a catalyst for sustainable im-provement, fosters a culture of continuous im-provement, and collaborates with University units to identify and achieve sustainable improvements. The office regularly highlights improvements through its Web site, e.g., a recent article high-lighted a time- and paper-saving system for faculty activity reports in the College of Human Ecology.

Currently, OSCI is working with the Office of In-formation Technology to develop an enterprise-wide project management technology system. This system will give University leaders critical over-sight information and provide a tool for units to manage their improvement work.

The University’s strategic positioning process has reinforced this goal for continuous improvement throughout the institution. The administrative strategic planning task force made recommendations for a coherent institutional focus and a fundamental transformation of administrative operations and cultural expectations across the University.

The purpose of the task force’s recommendations, subsequently incorporated into President Bruininks’s recommendation to the Board of Regents, is to strengthen the University’s ability to provide excellent service and achieve cost savings to better support the academic enterprise.

Creating an organization with outstanding customer service requires fostering a culture that supports transformational change. At the University, the support for this change takes the form of empowering individual units to assess and adjust their service practices.

The University’s progress toward its goal for a culture of customer service is evidenced by improvements made in several service areas, described below.

In 2004-05, the University responded to requests from 58 other colleges and universities across the country about One Stop and hosted site visits from 11 other institutions.

On-Line Financial Aid: A new system for interactive financial aid award notification allows students to create their own aid package on-line and view it in real time. In addition to providing a valued service to students, this system has reduced manual processing and updating time by 70 percent and produced an annual estimated savings of $200,000 annually.

Course Evaluation: Similarly, the University strives to improve services to its faculty and staff. An online evaluation project provides users with faster and improved course-related feedback from their students.

The project is moving student evaluations of teaching from a paper-based to a Web-based format, reducing labor and providing units with faster and more readily usable information. The faculty and their units, in turn, use the improved information provided by this tool to improve their teaching and service to students.

In the Academic Health Center, work is under way to develop a more streamlined online system to meet the specialized needs of those academic units.

Transportation: The University has also capitalized on opportunities to better serve students’ transportation needs. Incentives created for the University community to use alternative transportation have earned the Twin Cities campus the distinction in 2005 as one of the Best Workplaces for Commuters by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Transportation.

Over the past five years, the University’s UPass and MetroPass discount programs have led to a 114 percent increase in transit participation. Other benefits resulted in the elimination of 220 tons of carbon monoxide emissions each year, and 50,000 reduced vehicle miles and 2,000 fewer gallons of gas consumed each day.

Future Action: The administrative strategic planning task force’s report and President Bruininks’s recommendations to the Board of Regents identified several key opportunities for creating a system-wide culture of customer service excellence.

Among the recommendations are to focus administrative support on serving students, faculty, and academic units. This includes strengthening the understanding of the people served in order to allow administrative and support units to provide excellent services in alignment with their needs.

President Bruininks has appointed special task forces to plan the implementation of the administrative recommendations, along with the identification of required resources and measures of progress.

The University is home to one of the country’s largest libraries, some of the world’s most sophisticated research laboratories, and hundreds of classrooms, offices, and public spaces. The University is committed to discovering new and better ways to manage its resources so that the institution becomes even stronger over time.

In its efforts toward continuous improvement, the University has capitalized on opportunities for improved efficiency and resource use. Gains in efficiency have occurred while maintaining or improving quality.

Sustainability: Progress in this area has come, in part, by collaborative efforts between and among University units to identify and realize sustainable improvements. The Board of Regents communicated its commitment to this goal when, in July 2004, it adopted a new sustainability and energy efficiency policy (download PDF) for the University.

he policy calls for continuous efforts towards integrating environmental, social, and economic goals to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Facilities Management: The structurally re-engineered operations of the Office of Facilities Management realized a savings in 2004 of over $5.6 million while still maintaining its high level of service. The office identified over 150 specific improvement opportunities, which will drive future efforts. The office is working closely with service providers and customers to ensure that the right services are provided at required quality levels. In addition, maintenance and operations services will be re-engineered to further control costs, optimize productivity, and enhance service.

One Stop Access to University Facilities: A University task force recently completed its work to create a “one-stop” office that will attract conferences, meetings, programs, and event business to the Twin Cities campus in order to improve service and generate revenue for University services and venues. Conservative estimates suggest that the new office (Conference and Events Center Office) will increase revenues by $1.2 million per year by 2010. The new office is scheduled to open in late 2005.

One-Stop Asset Management: Through adjustments made to asset management practices, the Office of Asset Management increased revenue in the temporary investment pool (TIP) by over $7.4 million in 2003-04 without increasing exposure to risk.

Vendor Management: Over $2.4 million in technology and telecommunications savings will be realized over the next four years through active management of vendors and contract renegotiations.

Extension Restructuring: The University’s Extension Service re-engineered itself from 87 county offices to 18 regional centers enabling it to meet a $7.2 million budget reduction in 2004 without sacrificing service and quality. (link to compact PDF)

Future Actions: The University intends to continue identifying opportunities for resource efficiency and savings. Part of this effort will be to develop institutional outcomes for the Board of Regents’ sustainability and energy efficiency policy to measure progress.

Other opportunities will be identified through the implementation of the University-wide strategic positioning initiative. Current estimates suggest that streamlining the academic programs and administrative operations through the initiative may save as much as $25 million.

For example, $5-7 million will be saved as academic programs and curricula are consolidated. Other savings will come from revamping University operations, such as conserving energy and consolidating purchases. Savings from the initiative will be redirected to servicing students, increasing financial aid, and strengthening academic support.

Transforming business practices is the third way in which the University is fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

The Department of Audits evaluates practices and advises alternative methods concerning finance, operations, technology, regulations, or risk to reputation. The department has been recognized as an industry leader; it received a 2003 “Commitment to Quality Improvement Award” from the Institute of Internal Auditors, one of 12 recipients worldwide.

Similarly, the Office of Institutional Compliance serves to educate and ensure that business and research practices meet ethical and legal standards of conduct.

Business Practice Improvement: The Office of Service and Continuous Improvement is a team of internal consultants providing service to units and the University as a whole in the areas of opportunity identification, knowledge dissemination, culture building, project consulting, strategic communication support, and metrics and management system support.

In addition, the Center for Human Resource Development in the Office of Human Resources, provides training and consulting on process improvement, service principles, and other good business practices.

Energy Conservation: Conservation measures at the University have allowed total energy consumption to be reduced by about 15 percent since 1991. These measures have helped the University manage an overall net increase in space, despite substantial growth in high-energy consuming equipment and new and more sophisticated space that requires higher energy consumption.

Leveraging the Web: The Web has been a significant tool for improving business practices. For example, early, late, and changed grades are now entered via the Internet. This improvement eliminated a two- to three-day processing time and increased security, flexibility, convenience, and accuracy. The change saves the University over $200,000 annually.

Another business practice innovation involves maximizing portal technology usage. For example, to train personnel as well as comply with new fed-eral rules stemming from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the University trained nearly 19,000 staff, students, and volunteers within eight weeks. Ninety-five percent of the training was conducted on-line in different formats depending on the course content. Also, Boynton Health Service now uses portal technology to track all Academic Health Center student immunizations required by health systems accreditation and state laws.

In addition, through the University’s electronic grants management system , faculty and staff are able to fill out, file, and retrieve their annual report of external professional activities (REPA) form electronically in accordance with University policies on code of conduct, outside consulting, service activities, and conflict of interest. This online system also enables effective monitoring and follow-up, as needed, on compliance issues.

University-wide Web Template: A Web Integration Group was formed in 2003 to create common University Web templates, which over 300 units have already put into use. The templates are a free service that has saved participating units an average of $50,000, guaranteed the use of best practices in Web design, and allowed units to automatically comply with important policies, such as disability access. Furthermore, people who come to the University's many Web sites now need to learn only one user interface, and the University brand is presented consistently.

Future Actions: The administrative strategic planning task force’s report and President Bruininks’s recommendations to the Board of Regents identified several key opportunities (download PDF) to transform University business practices.

A culture of continuous improvement requires monitoring the effectiveness of key service and support areas. Continuous improvement also requires efforts to understand the needs of those being served. The University collects this type of information and uses it to better serve its internal and external constituencies.

One way the University monitors its service is through surveying stakeholders. Faculty and staff attitudes are one such measurement. In the most recent assessment, the University commissioned the Pulse Survey, which was conducted in 2004 in partnership with the Human Resources Research Institute of the Carlson School of Management.

Surveys are also used to measure student satisfaction through tools such as the student experience survey, the senior exit survey, admitted applicants survey (download PDF) , freshman transfer survey, orientation evaluations, housing and residential life survey (download PDF), first-year experience survey (download PDF), and the student fees survey. In addition, students are surveyed annually to assess their satisfaction with technology services. (See page Challenge 7 for details.)

Facilities Condition Needs Index : The Facilities Condition Needs Index (FCNI) compares a facility’s deficiencies in timely maintenance against its estimated replacement value. The FCNI allows the University to compare its facilities’ condition to that of other institutions and to compare facilities across the campus.

A comprehensive analysis in 2003 assigned the Twin Cities campus an initial composite FCNI of 0.40, indicating an estimated 40 percent of the replacement value of facilities will need attention over the next 10 years. These findings demonstrate that, with a majority of buildings over 30 years old, the University has a critical need for investment in maintenance and upgrades of its physical resources.

In response, the University is focused on renovating existing buildings, maximizing the useful life of existing facilities, leveraging capital costs to reduce operating costs, improving space use, considering life-cycle costs in building construction, and maximizing Higher Education Asset Preservation and Renovation (HEAPR) funds appropriated by the state legislature .

Since the University of Minnesota’s inception 154 years ago, citizens, the state legislature, the federal government, the Board of Regents, alumni, students, parents, employers, and many others have held the University accountable for fulfilling its fundamental land-grant mission of teaching, research, and public engagement. The University’s original charter places this accountability role clearly with the Board of Regents:

Over the years, the ways in which the University has demonstrated its accountability and its progress in meeting mission-related goals have been many – legislative reports and testimony, financial reports, accreditation reviews, and collegiate and unit annual reports to their constituencies.

In 2000, the Regents asked University administration to review three institutional reports – the institutional measures (produced annually in the 1990s to measure progress on selected University goals), the unit compact plans, and the annual academic plan and report – to determine the feasibility of providing a single, consolidated report each year rather than three individual reports.

Subsequently, the Board approved the creation of the University Plan, Performance, and Accountability Report. In its resolution (download PDF), the Board noted its “[accountability] to the public for accomplishing the mission” and that the report should be the principal documentation of that accountability.

Each year, an early draft of the report is presented to the Educational Planning and Policy Committee of the Board of Regents for review and comment at its December meeting. Based on these comments – and the analysis of substantial additional data and performance measures received during December and January – the University administration then prepares a final report for submission to the Regents and the Minnesota Legislature in February.

The printed publication is complemented by the University’s “Accountable to U” Web site. In addition, the strategic planning task force on metrics and measurement is expected to recommend other ways in which the University can assess its performance and communicate the results.

The University Plan, Performance, and Accountability Report provides an overview of the University and its academic priorities, accountability measures for each campus, and University-wide measures related to public engagement, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and finances.

The report highlights the annual update and analysis of key institutional data, showing actual rankings and performance of the University and its appropriate peer group institutions. When specific comparative data are not available, the report focuses on current performance vs. past performance and/or institutional goals. In addition, the report includes an executive summary and scorecard on key institutional performance measures.

In presenting these measures, the report offers guidance in interpreting information. First, the reader is encouraged to not place undue emphasis on comparing individual institutions or on year-to-year shifts in rank or percentage change. The report stresses that each university has its own distinct mission, history, size, areas of excellence and emphasis, strategic objectives, breadth of offerings, state mandates, student and faculty quality, and other factors that make it unique and distinct.

However, it is instructive to analyze longer-term trends and observe how the University is performing relative to the top universities as a group. From this analysis and observation it is possible to identify areas where University performance can be strengthened or improved. Driving continuous improvement is the ultimate goal of the annual accountability report.

The 2005 Legislature provided initial funding to establish a statewide accountability initiative (link to PDF). The University, along with other Minnesota post-secondary institutions, is assisting the Minnesota Office of Higher Education “to develop and implement a process to measure and report [by January 2006] on the effectiveness of postsecondary institutions.”

The agency plans to develop a statewide higher education accountability system to provide information to students, taxpayers and policymakers on the effectiveness of the higher education sector in meeting state goals.

University of Minnesota Key Performance Measures

1: Academic Quality Reputation rankings

Sponsored funding
National Academy members
Faculty awards
Degrees conferred
Post-doctoral appointees
National Research Council rankings
Library resources

2: Student Quality and Experience Selectivity (high school rank, test scores)

Diversity
Retention, graduation, time-to-degree rates
Student satisfaction
Tuition and fees

3: Public Engagement – Access & Outreach

Technology commercialization
Council on Public Engagement results
University Extension results
State economic and social impact
Citizen satisfaction

4: Human Resources

Faculty and staff: salary, compensation, diversity, retention
Employee satisfaction survey

5: Campus Facilities and Environment

Facilities Condition
Index Capital project oversight
Residential living
Campus safety: alcohol, drug, crime data

6: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Sustainability

Enhanced Service and Productivity Initiatives results
Information technology expenditures and customer satisfaction
Technology-Enhanced Learning initiatives results
Energy conservation trends

7: Finances

Revenues and expenditures
Debt management
Key ratios
Return on invested assets
Endowment
Annual giving

The primary audiences for the University Plan, Performance, and Accountability Report are the University’s Board of Regents and the Minnesota Legislature. However, there are many other groups and individuals who have expressed interest in the report and its findings. These include:

The communications plan’s key features for reaching these constituencies include the following: