To: Department Chairpersons and Program Directors
From: Bette Midgarden
Vice President for Academic Affairs
Date: August 25, 2008
Re: Academic Planning and Reporting process
The planning and budgeting procedures at Minnesota State University Moorhead have been significantly revised in the past several years. This memo explains the procedures for department reporting and planning. All documents needed to complete the reports described in this memo are available at www.mnstate.edu/acadaff/Departments/academicplanning-reporting.htm
All departments and programs will complete the new “Department Work Plan” planning and reporting process. This is an annual process and will replace the biennial reporting process that had been in place.
However, departments will continue to write a six-year self-study report and have an external visit as they are due, according to the current schedule. Programs that are scheduled to conduct a six-year self-study report this year will write their self-study document and identify an external reviewer, as specified in the “Six-Year Program Review Guidelines.”
The new planning and reporting process is designed to inform Academic Affairs Council summer planning and to streamline the planning and reporting processes for departments. By reporting annually on assessment, departments will be better able to use their assessment data to make programmatic decisions that will improve student learning. Since the accompanying Department Work Plan Form brings together all the data needed by the Deans, the number of information requests to departments will decrease. Finally, the new planning and reporting system will better link department planning and requests with assessment and university planning and budgeting.