Legislature(2011 - 2012)BELTZ 105 (TSBldg)
03/19/2012 08:00 AM Senate EDUCATION
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| University of Alaska Presentation by President Patrick Gamble | |
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ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
SENATE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
March 19, 2012
8:05 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Kevin Meyer, Co-Chair
Senator Joe Thomas, Co-Chair
Senator Bettye Davis, Vice Chair
Senator Hollis French
Senator Gary Stevens
MEMBERS ABSENT
All members present
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
University of Alaska presentation: President Pat Gamble
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
PATRICK GAMBLE, President
University of Alaska System
Fairbanks, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Delivered the University of Alaska
Presentation.
ACTION NARRATIVE
8:05:52 AM
CO-CHAIR KEVIN MEYER called the Senate Education Standing
Committee meeting to order at 8:05 a.m. Present at the call to
order were Senators French, Stevens, Davis, Co-Chair Thomas and
Co-Chair Meyer.
^University of Alaska Presentation by President Patrick Gamble
University of Alaska Presentation by President Patrick Gamble
8:06:19 AM
CO-CHAIR MEYER announced that the business before the committee
was to hear a presentation on the University of Alaska by
President Patrick Gamble. He is a retired four-star general and
has been with the University for a couple of years following a
distinguished nine-year service as president and CEO of the
Alaska Railroad. He asked President Gamble to talk about where
the University is headed, his goals and missions.
8:07:47 AM
PATRICK GAMBLE, President, University of Alaska System,
Fairbanks, Alaska, said rather than giving a large opening
monologue he would touch on a couple of questions the committee
gave him. He said he wanted to set the stage for the Strategic
Direction Initiative (SDI) that has been going on for about
eight or nine months.
He related that when he came before the joint Education
committees last year he sensed a "continuous drumbeat that
something needed work." He said the number of testimonies heard
in that meeting was really an eye-opener in terms of a lot of
education issues in general and the associated teacher issues
that went hand in hand with the student issues.
MR. GAMBLE said when he got there, the University had a
strategic plan that was supposed to run through 2009 that has
not been updated. So, one of the first places he, as a new guy
started was changing the SDI, because it was out of date. As he
got further along and began talking with faculty, he realized
that updating an entire university system strategic plan was a
good sized job and also sends fear through a lot of people,
because he was not an educator.
8:10:53 AM
MR. GAMBLE said he realized that being a dictator or running the
University like the military or a corporation wasn't going to
work, because the idea of governance is based on the
participation of a number of interested groups, all the way from
the faculty through the state through the students, themselves;
and these groups exist at each of the three separate accredited
universities. He had to try to build consensus among all the
groups in terms of making any changes. The term "direction"
became his operative work. Having a five year goal presupposed
failure if they weren't met, and he believed that education is a
journey Pre-K through grade 20; one part begets another. He
elaborated that you move forward as your university system
develops, as the demand develops and workforce need become more
apparent. You have to meet the requirements of those who are
putting demands on you within the fiscal and physical capability
to meet them.
What he noticed most is that the outdated strategic plan talked
about growing the university system and for 10 to 12 years, that
is what happened. Every single year the legislature allowed the
university to grow by funding the growth areas and culturally, a
number of faculty and staff knew nothing other than growth. Then
the economy started going down, and the nation was shifting from
input for growth to measuring outputs. In the university system
that meant shifting to figuring out how many graduates there
were and if they were being hired. People were looking for a
return on the investments they were making not just growing to
meet demand.
8:15:53 AM
He said the SDI was shifted to make the college experience a
journey of continuous improvement, more like a business that
measures the customers' needs and improves its services. It
envisioned making the University an attractive experience where
students are helped in getting through. For instance, the Neiman
Marcus model makes its name on service and they get repeat
customers from it. The University wants repeat customers, too,
he said and removing obstacles to efficient graduation cycles is
all part of output services that need to be improved. He said he
wanted to raise the level of education across the board from 30
percent to the 63 percent people are saying Alaska will need by
2016.
8:17:41 AM
MR. GAMBLE said the University is in a huge information
gathering phase right now and is in the midst of holding 80
listening sessions throughout the state in which they are asking
questions written by the faculty, staff and students for
themselves - details of "the good, bad and the ugly." When that
is done, they will stack up the answers in categories like
transfer of credits or partnerships with businesses or other
universities. Within each one of the categories, comments will
be arranged from the most to the least and then the volatility
factor will be added. Within all the individual comments, they
will look for common threads, themes, denominators, that are
repeated over and over again.
8:20:03 AM
When all the information is categorized and collated, the
information will be framed into issue statements and problem
statements. Then they will ask the same people to devise
strategies that will the fix the problems and change the
direction. But, Mr. Gamble, emphasized that they want to make
sure to keep doing the things well that are already being done
well.
8:22:03 AM
SENATOR STEVENS commented that one of the most valuable things
that has occurred in the last four or five years has been a
better connection between the legislature and the University.
When he first got here 12 years ago, there was no connection
other than through the Finance Committee.
He said the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) program is off
to a slow start, which is understandable for the brand new
program, but it seems that it could have an enormous impact on
the University. He asked Mr. Gamble how he was preparing to deal
with a lot more students attending the UA system.
8:23:08 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that the data is quite incomplete now. For
the first year, probably many people already had plans for their
kids and elected not to change them. He was interested in what
the second and third year data would show. He was surprised by
the small number of eligible students overall for the
scholarships and it caught their attention the most. But
everyone agreed to not overreact to the first year. Fourth year
courses need to be added and teachers need to be trained who can
teach those fourth year courses.
8:25:31 AM
He said they can bring a lot more students in, but if the
attrition rate stays as high as it is, a lot more students are
going to go out, too. That must be fixed and that is the whole
purpose of SDI. Not all freshmen students are going to be first
year freshmen coming right out of high school; about 1,000 a
year elect to come into college for their freshman year.
8:26:32 AM
SENATOR DAVIS asked him to compare the APS with the existing
program. Students tell her they want"needs-based" scholarships
and asked what the University is going to do about that. Many
could graduate earlier (in less than six years) if they didn't
have to work as much.
SENATOR DAVIS also said she keeps hearing about his "P20 system"
and wanted to know how that fits in with the APS program.
8:27:49 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that he was trying to be more flexible with
scholarships. Right now, the number of students who receive
scholarships and don't complete college is a bothersome number.
Most scholarships go to a student whose only performance has
been in high school, but the governor's program adds a
considerable amount of money and instead of adding on to the
same program, they have the potential to free up dollars that
were formerly for scholarships for high school students and look
at some alternative ways of helping students who are already
successful in college. For example, a C student who had no hope
of getting a scholarship, but made through his first year in
college, he envisioned rewarding that student for having made it
through the first semester and actually giving them tuition
forgiveness or a scholarship at that point. If they make it
through the second year (the first two are the critical years in
college in terms of attrition), tuition could be forgiven again;
the cost of a credit hour could be also be reduced in the third
and fourth years. So, from a business-like point of view, the
return on investment in the first two years of education is
poor; but if you get through the first two years, the return on
investment for the second two years of a four-year program is
good.
MR. GAMBLE said they are looking at some innovative things like
charging more tuition for the first and second years with the
agreement that if you are successful, some of it is forgiven and
the cost of years three and four are bought down with tuition
reductions. Instead of just rewarding what was done in high
school, performance in college would be rewarded as well, and
then dangling a carrot out there in the future saying, "You're
really doing good now."
8:30:27 AM
He didn't know how that would overall affect the ability to pay,
because the concept is completely different from than anything
they have done before. They are trying to give every student who
can walk in the door the opportunity to have financial
assistance; and it's a combination of needs-based but then the
student has to perform at the same time. If they didn't get that
scholarship in high school, they will be given a second chance
in college.
8:31:02 AM
SENATOR DAVIS asked if that was part of the discussions they are
having with people throughout the state.
MR. GAMBLE answered in a general sense, like he is talking to
them. There is a lot enthusiasm among the number crunchers that
this broadens the opportunity for a lot more students. The
secret is to include "all our students."
8:32:12 AM
CO-CHAIR MEYER said one of the dilemmas they are having with the
scholarship program is that it initially came out as a strictly
merit scholarship program, which everyone agreed with, because
it raised academic standards in high schools so that kids are
better prepared for college. Then needs-based was added and he
struggles with wondering if they are really helping students by
giving them scholarships if they are not adequately prepared
academically for college. If a student can't do the course work,
it makes him feel like a failure and it sets the University
back, because the student either needs more remedial work or he
drops out, which doesn't look good for the numbers. Alaska
doesn't have a community college; so if you want to go to
college here you have to go right out of high school. Could that
be part of the reason for the attrition rate?
8:33:46 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that there are two issues: one is if you
give scholarships you raise expectations, and if they can't meet
those expectations, that's a crushing defeat for a young student
and the University is losing money. He said SKI is trying to
help students make it through college despite some setbacks. If
that is done year after year and nothing is changed, then that
is truly a waste. He was trying to figure out how to do both:
offer the needs-based student the advantages that they have to
have to be successful as well as provide the incentive he just
talked about to get a student through the first two years and
then get them on through graduation.
8:35:08 AM
SENATOR FRENCH asked what the statistics are regarding a needs-
based scholarship recipient's performance.
MR. GAMBLE answered that was one of the great "black holes" that
they have to fill. With the focus on inputs for so many years,
they don't have any output information. They can say how many
students graduated, but they have no idea how many didn't and
why. They don't have any idea why teachers didn't get hired or
why they left. Getting that data is part of what they are going
to be doing.
8:36:19 AM
MR. GAMBLE said the community campuses are an important
component, because they are the most flexible element of our
system. Currently, every student coming into the system is
required to take a placement test. Then it will stack them at
whatever level they are at. Placement used to be optional; you
didn't have to go in at that level if you had decided you were
going to study harder and take a harder course. But then you
might not make it through. Now they are mandating that students
go in at the placement test level. If it's a remedial level,
that's where you go. That at least reduces the portion of the
students who think they are better than they are and find out
that they are not.
8:37:40 AM
He said a lot of data had been coming out of universities for
three or four years throughout the U.S. on outputs, because
other schools are ahead of Alaska in their budget cuts have
implemented things that UA is only talking about now. So, he is
beginning to see their data and figuring out what might be
applicable to the UA system. He said it's clear that there is
only so much you can do if a student is not prepared to enter
college. So, the idea that preparation has to be worked through
the education continuum without any great big gaps is really
important.
MR. GAMBLE remarked that he has this crazy idea about
accountability, that if the public schools had to pay the
university for every developmental class they had to teach
because of a student not being at the appropriate level when
they graduate from high school, they would see the problem in
high school probably get fixed pretty quickly. Right now college
hires the instructors, has the classes and pays that bill. The
high school could say the same about coming out of junior high
unprepared for high school work. But right now they don't even
have data on the high school graduates when they come to
college, so they are working that problem, too.
8:40:01 AM
Ultimately, he said, so much depends on preparation, and the
senior year is the third critical year in the three they are
looking at. You have the first two years in college and you've
got your senior in high school, and that is the year the student
needs to be on their game. They need to be loaded down and
working as hard as they have ever worked so that the gap between
that level of effort and the level of effort they are going to
have to put in as a freshman is reduced. He said that gap just
has to be fixed and he wasn't sure the university could do that
one.
MR. GAMBLE said that he had met with the Anchorage School
District and the Board of Regents and has a meeting in June with
the State School Board to talk about such things.
8:41:11 AM
SENATOR THOMAS agreed that there is a education continuum and he
had the greatest confidence that Mr. Gamble would work some of
the issues out. But his experience in working with various
departments is that all we already have all the research in the
world, but most of it's done outside the state of Alaska. Big
organizations made up of educators study these things and they
know what needs to be done. Yet when they sit here, they are
growing the Department of Corrections at the expense of
Education, because they are not addressing known issues.
He said plenty of people know what could and should be done, and
this applies to other departments, as well, but there seems to
be a reluctance to analyze already existing data. The DNR and
DOL, for instance, with the oil issue, were woefully incapable
of analyzing the data and didn't even ask for money to do it.
And then they didn't share the report until someone found it
out.
SENATOR THOMAS said if you just demand that people come up with
the suggested changes, people would flock to his office with
probably more information than he needs. University people tell
him that all the time. He also thought that the University
should grow in some areas like research and let others go.
8:44:31 AM
MR. GAMBLE said he was talking about "program review," a term of
art. He related that when he first started working at the
University he asked for a list of all its programs. About four
months later, he had a big stack of 600-plus programs dropped on
his desk. He is talking about courses and the University has
about 550. In the days when UA was all things to all people,
that was fine, until budget constraints showed up. Programs that
don't generate a return because of lack of enrollment need to be
pruned and UAF and UAS have already stepped way out in doing
those reviews.
8:46:50 AM
MR. GAMBLE said that advising and counseling was poorly done at
the UA. It's the biggest item in their budget this year and it's
probably one of the single most important things they lack doing
well right now. The idea people have of counseling or advising
is very different than the very broad and comprehensive type of
advising that is needed to get students through college. He said
students are out there making decisions on their own and they
don't have anyone to go to that can really stay with them all
the way through their experience. The idea is to intervene when
a student is having a problem, not count their loss the next
semester when they don't show up again, which is how it's done
now. An advisor should be more like a path finder or a
navigator; taking that student in and staying with him. He tells
them what courses will transfer and which ones they have to
catch up on. That kind of advising reduces the debt load on the
students as well as the cost per graduate to the University.
MR. GAMBLE elaborated that this type of advising is very
sophisticated; it's not an academic advisor like you get when
you are a junior or a senior engineering major. This is
concierge, personal shopper, friend, confidant, all wrapped up
into one using a sophisticated computer program that looks for
key words in a students database. The students actually talks
socially to their file and if they use words like "family
problems" or "homesick," the advisor is alerted and intervenes
with the student at that point.
He said that UAA had been testing this on 400-plus students for
a year, and it has resulted in a significant improvement and he
hoped it would make a big difference (maybe 10 percent) in
future completion figures.
8:49:37 AM
MR. GAMBLE said the way credit transfers are done had to be
changed. The issue is not that credits don't transfer, but that
students make assumptions about what they can take with a lack
of advising. They find out after the fact that they were wrong,
and then they try to petition and find out that it's not
petition-able. Then it becomes a complaint and the complaint is
that the credits didn't transfer. Another example was a student
applies for work experience credit during the summer; the answer
comes back in four weeks after the semester started that the
credits didn't transfer. With a good advising program, that goes
away.
He said they have found that most of UA courses do transfer
quite nicely, particularly in the first two years. But the
feeling is that, especially in the first two years, core courses
ought to basically transfer laterally and vertically through the
entire system. All three major academic units (MAU) are working
to refine that.
MR. GAMBLE said only a couple hundred student come from outside
and it used to be that about 52 percent of college eligible kids
went outside and now that 52 percent are staying in the state.
The statistics for going outside have actually flip-flopped.
Most of the recruiting from outside is done at the higher level.
8:52:54 AM
MR. GAMBLE addressed Division I sports saying it's a very
complicated issue. He had a handout from the UAF athletic
director summarizing what is involved. First, you have to be
invited to be in Division I sports, and you have to pay a fee to
get in (about $1.4 million); you have to have facility and coach
standards (a majority of the UA athletics would have to
elevated). UA is one of the small categories of universities
that are allowed to participate in both Division I and II even
though it's a Division II school. Not everybody can do that. To
go to Division I, the coaches would have to be paid a lot more,
new facilities would probably have to be built or arrangements
made, but most importantly, UA would have to be invited in by a
conference, first. One of the problems up here would be that all
those conference teams would have to travel to Alaska, which
would add quite a bit to their costs.
8:54:28 AM
SENATOR STEVENS said he was just at the UCLA Anderson School of
Business and faculty there were complaining that they had a lot
of outstanding Chinese students, but they couldn't get their
"green card" and couldn't stay. In this instance the US is
educating some of the finest students in the world and they
can't stay in the country. He asked if that was happening at in
Alaska.
8:55:00 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that he knew foreign students were in our
athletic programs; he did not know whether they actually had to
leave the country.
8:55:40 AM
CO-CHAIR MEYER said he was convinced that the outside college
his daughter went to was attracted to her because she paid non-
resident tuition. Because so many tourists come to Alaska
because they love the mystique, he was wondering if that trend
could be reversed using the Alaska mystique.
8:56:47 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that approximately 1,500 college eligible
high school graduates go to school outside; about 2,000 of them
stay and about 200 are recruited from outside. When he is
visiting undergraduate students, he always hears one of the big
pluses of going to the UA system is if you are in a degree
program, the opportunity for an undergraduate to actually put
their hands on research is far higher than in Lower 48
universities where you normally sit in a lecture room and read.
If more outside students knew about that, more would come up
here. He added that research at UAF is "internationally cutting
edge stuff."
8:58:45 AM
SENATOR DAVIS asked what they are doing with the community
college system.
8:59:41 AM
MR. GAMBLE answered that the community campus system is
essential for Bush students. Some of the schools there can't
even qualify for the scholarship program, either needs-based or
merit-based. The core course work needs to be lined up in the
community campuses so that it automatically flows right into a
degree, with the help of good advising.
He explained that the reason they aren't community colleges is
because only three communities contribute cash to the college
system: Kenai and Kodiak get dollars from the community and
Prince William Sound Community College is a separately
accredited school. Going back to community colleges means that
every one of those communities would have to contribute to the
campus and that is the why it didn't work before.
9:02:09 AM
SENATOR DAVIS commented that the community college issue should
be part of the discussion in both rural and urban areas.
9:03:12 AM
MR. GAMBLE said that E-Learning is everywhere now, and 30
percent of the kids in the dorms at UAF are taking courses
online along with going to classes. This again is where kids
need advising. He said you can get most of a four-year nursing
degree out in the Bush and then come into Anchorage for three-
week clinicals for exposure to real patients. He said the issue
now is really bandwidth.
CO-CHAIR MEYER thanked President Gamble for the presentation.
9:06:10 AM
There being no further business to come before the committee,
Co-Chair Meyer adjourned the Senate Education Committee meeting
at 9:06 a.m.
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