Academic Affairs

Presented by
Irene Herold, Dean of Mason Library
Robert Madden, Special Collections Librarian
Lucy Jones, College Archivist

Mason Library is pleased to present to the College community for your information and comment the mission of the Keene State College Archives. The first sentence is intended to define the functions of the archive and the archive’s intended patrons. The second sentence places the mission within the context of the college, specifying the topics of the records of enduring value and the scope of the holdings by listing all incarnations of the College.

College Archives have three main functions, one of preservation, another of maintaining information, and finally providing access to the information of the institution. While providing access to information is a familiar function of libraries, preservation and maintenance may not be. Preservation refers to the physical condition of what is placed in the Archive. Preservation would be re-housing fragile materials and capturing information produced on materials or in formats that will deteriorate over time so they will be available for the future. Maintaining refers to the organization and development of the collection. Maintaining in this context involves the creation of records management procedures to ensure that the history of the college is routinely captured and placed where future generations can access the information.

New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation (NHHEAF) Network Educational Foundation awarded to Mason Library and Franklin Pierce University’s Library a twelve-month joint grant for the creation and implementation of records management at the respective institutions. The grant-funded archivist, Lucy Jones, commenced her work in January. As she works to establish records management protocols for Keene State College, Mason Library is simultaneously developing supporting documents of policy and procedure to formally establish the College Archives. This mission statement is just the first official step in this process.

Keene State College Archives Mission:

The College Archives preserves, maintains, and provides access to institutional records of enduring value as a resource for Keene State College students, staff and faculty, alumni, researchers, and the interested public. In support of the mission of Keene State College, the College Archives is committed to providing access to information about the College’s origins, goals, and programs, including its former incarnations as Keene Normal School and Keene Teachers College.

Tags: academic excellence, academic priorities, access, accountability, alumni by irene // 3 Comments »

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities has published its list of the top-ten policy issues that will be facing higher education in 2008. Here they are:

1. Affordability
2. States’ Fiscal Forecasts
3. College Preparation
4. Accountability
5. Campus Security
6. Immigration
7. 2008 Presidential Election
8. Affirmative Action
9. Re-tooling State Financial Aid Programs
10. Economic Development

During the last few months, we’ve spent considerable time at Keene State College on all of these (although AASCU has something different in mind with Number 7). We’ve spent a huge amount of time on issues of affordability, accountability, campus safety and economic development. We have had some amazing discussions and changed many things.

What intrigued me as I read the list is just how profoundly the national landscape for higher education is having an impact on what’s happening at Keene State College. We are certainly not alone in facing the issues confronting higher education. But we have tended to take them on at our own pace and in our own fashion. Barbara Brittingham, Director of the NEASC Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, once suggested to me that this was part of the “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire/New England tradition. I think there is truth in this.

So, what’s happening? I think we have come to a point where we have a president, campus leadership, and faculty and staff who have realized that we have a place in the national dialogue around higher education. We are beginning to embrace the national issues because we want to have a voice in the debate. And we should. We have strong leaders in many of AASCU’s Top Ten, and much to contribute.

It’s great to travel to conferences and hear people say, “I understand that great things are happening at Keene.” On several occasions, faculty and staff from my previous institution have emailed me to let me know how impressed they were with a KSC presentation they attended at a conference.

We’ve got people listening, and now we need to use our voice. We should be knowledgeable about the issues confronting higher education, we should embrace them, and we should respond locally and globally. 

Tags: aascu, access, accountability, assessment, policy by enetzhammer // No Comments »

NEASC (www.neasc.org) had a daylong event in Boston on Tuesday to more or less do a reality check about public disclosure, assessment, institutional effectiveness and, oh yes, accountability. The meeting was equal parts helpful and frustrating. My frustration was with my colleagues who still can’t get beyond what they see as the unfairness of the accountability movement. It’s here, it’s been here, it will be here. (And I don’t think for a second that any leadership changes in D.C. will have a dramatic impact on all this.) We simply must play in this world, and no amount of complaining is going to change that. I’ve vented, and now I’ll move on.

People on campus have asked me about my bulldozer push into the world of assessment. I should note first and foremost that I advocate for assessment because I think it is the right thing to do. I have seen departments and programs reinvented in miraculous ways when the faculty came together and embraced assessment. I think we have a responsibility to measure what our students are learning and how effective all of our units are in meeting the outcomes we set for ourselves.

The external forces are huge here, too. There is nothing inherently wrong in the people who fund us (legislators, taxpayers, parents and students, themselves) holding us accountable. Without a doubt, much of the work on accountability in higher education has failed to consider the goals and processes of higher ed. But the goals are not insidious.

If I’m pushing for better assessment on our campus, it’s because I think it’s the right thing for us. If I’m pushing particularly hard, it’s because of the external forces at play. The Secretary of Education is applying huge pressure for colleges to get their act together around assessment. But in the end, it’s not just politics, it’s pragmatism. Our NEASC visit is right around the corner. We’re fast coming up on the self-study. We need to demonstrate that we have a command of institutional effectiveness and that we are making improvements based on the information we’re collecting. And so we shall.

I think we actually have a solid infrastructure in place. As we’ve prepared for the 4-credit conversion, we’ve revised all of our programs and made them assessment ready. Awesome! We’ve been doing a fair amount already. Much of what we need to do is better coordinating of work we do and institutionalizing these processes. And, of course, people are in very different places around this.

Which brings me to the helpful piece of the NEASC meeting. Demonstration of institutional effectiveness is still largely driven by the institution itself with the guidance of the regional accrediting body (in our case, NEASC). The meeting on Tuesday gave us better guidance and some options. I will write about the Voluntary System of Accountability being promoted by AASCU and NASULGC, but I’m impressed with how the VSA helps us to frame and control the debate. The current report is worth a read (http://www.nasulgc.org/vsa-8-31-06.pdf).

So, we don’t have a choice. That really doesn’t matter because it’s the right thing for Keene State College, and this is the right time.

Tags: academic priorities, accountability, assessment by enetzhammer // 1 Comment »