Making progress
Report details IP2 initiatives, achievements

June 25, 2010

A recently-released progress report on the second integrated plan highlights initiatives and accomplishments from the second year of the four-year plan but also speaks to a sense of engagement throughout the university, according to the provost and vice-president academic.

In a recent address to Council about the report, Brett Fairbairn commented that “besides making progress on the goals in the plan, our implementation process, which is commitment-leader driven, is creating a new spirit of innovation and of working together right across campus.”

That sentiment was reiterated by Pauline Melis in an interview with On Campus News. The assistant provost of institutional planning and assessment said the report, although not a comprehensive list of all ongoing work, documents “an impressive array of activity in colleges and units” between May 1 last year and April 30, 2010. It also provides a measure of progress toward the 2012 statements written into the plan, all of which begin, “By 2012, we know we will be on track if …” Each is measured toward its goal on a scale of zero to 100 per cent complete.

“Of necessity, the report provides early impressions of where we’re headed” in each of the 20 commitment areas, said Melis. She added that little progress may be indicated for some initiatives which “are just going to take time to develop and mature. It’s hard to imagine all of them will be completed by 2012 so if some are taking more time than others, that makes sense.”

In fact, some commitments will carry over into the university’s third integrated plan, which Melis and the Institutional Planning and Assessment office are already considering. And that process is taking into account the experience of the first two plans.

“What we’ve learned through two plans is that we’re an ambitious lot,” she said. “We have lots of ideas but we have to ask what’s reasonable for a university of this size to accomplish in four years.” She added that the first plan was 68 printed pages long and the second was 28 pages. Her goal for plan three is eight.

The other difference between the first and second plan “is that so many colleges and units can see themselves in the second. We have been a lot more collaborative, and it’s got people excited.”

The entire progress report, in summary or full version, along with a message from the provost, can be found at the Institutional Planning and Assessment website – www.usask.ca/ip