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Clark Atlanta University
Strategic Planning Process
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Focus Groups
Overview of Faculty Focus Groups
Overall Conclusion
Overall, faculty were very open to the focus groups and appreciated being included in the strategic planning process. Faculty participated in a robust dialogue about the future of CAU. They embraced the new mission and were very open with their perspectives regarding that issues that were probed. Although there was a little negativity about the past events at CAU, most of the conversation was forward thinking and directly related to the key issues at hand.
Key Findings
- Core Values – The core values faculty discussed were global engagement, diversity, respect, creativity, integrity, and mentoring. Although these values were discussed with respect to the new mission, faculty did not seem to be able to focus the suggested core values under the new mission.
- Advancing The Mission – Faculty embraced the new mission and felt that it was important for the university to embrace the new mission too. The major discussion centered on rewarding behavior and performance that was in line with the mission, while providing consequences for faculty who did not.
- Who Should CAU Be? – Faculty believed that CAU should be a research university that provides a globalized interdisciplinary education, which includes growing the graduate programs dramatically. In addition, faculty believed that CAU should be a top end HBCU that is focused on teaching and research, is technologically driven, provides a quality education, has a safe environment, and provides a greater variety of classes (i.e. night and online classes).
- Optimum Size – Faculty believe that the school should be no larger than 5,000 students and comparable to other competitive schools. This includes growing the graduate programs and keeping the faculty to student ratio at about 20:1.
- Who Are We and Who Should We Become? – Overall, faculty believed that CAU is currently an “unmerged” institution that has lacked good executive leadership. They believed that CAU needs to improve its image, increase funding to attract better students, provide a safe learning environment, provide more focus on graduate programs, and become more research focused.
- SWOT Analysis – Overall, faculty believed that we need to improve our weaknesses, like the need for a safer campus, offer a more wide variety of courses, and that we need to stop depending on being tuition driven because the quality of students has gotten really low. But, that we could benefit from improving the university’s image, use more marketing, and take advantage of the radio and TV facilities that we have available.
- Strengths – Diverse, alumni commitment and affection for CAU, majority of faculty care about students.
- Weaknesses – Lack of online technologies, don’t offer a variety of class times, not cohesive, faculty don’t get paid enough, lack of consistent quality leadership, too dependent on non-qualified student (i.e. tuition driven).
- Opportunities – Need to have more flexible course offerings, strengthen our image/distinct identity, more advertising, better use radio and TV programming, take advantage of the cultural significance of the city.
- Threats – Strong competition, people don’t believe that there is a need for HBCUs, safety.
Faculty Core Values - Focus Group Raw Notes
February 2, 2010
- What should be the core values of Clark Atlanta University?
- Global Engagement – Engage in global activities, focus, see the connection from our lives with people in other global communities, should view ourselves as global citizen, be more conscious about linking global activities with normal university activities, facilitator of global activities, instill global citizenship into students.
- Measurement – Research generated, public service, interaction, curriculum should reflect global perspectives, create global partnerships, program in other countries, and study abroad programs.
- Diversity – Diverse community of learners, of thought, of presentation, of culture, diverse world view, diverse perspectives, sexuality (?), religion, actors in the university, how things are administered, heterogeneous.
- Respect - Diverse community of learners
- Creativity – Need to be creative to be a high research institution, different types of partnership.
- Integrity – Honesty, transparent, professionalism, academic standards, ethics
- Mentoring – Take an active role in student development,
- How do we advance the Mission and Vision of the university?
- Reward those who carry out the mission and provide consequences for those who don’t carry out the
- Put resources behind the mission oriented activities – Must commit resources
- Maintaining and advancement of resource commitments
- Sustaining the commitment to the resources
- Deploy resources for the specific purpose of the mission and vision
- Professionalism at all levels helps to achieve mission
- Recognition of performing individuals – Treat non-performing individuals differently
- Reward for high research activity – higher quality, creativity should be rewarded
- Train or orient everyone on the mission and vision
- Who do we intend to become?
- Clear articulation of what you expect from students
- Policy or a statement about dressing,
- A student that has quality students –
- Place value on student conduct and decorum
- No more anything goes from students
- Professionalism from faculty and demand that from our majors
- Top end of the HBCUs
- Teaching 1st and research 2nd
- Interdisciplinary
- Best HBCU in international business
- Top globalized university
- Need to be a quality institution
- A safe campus – increase staff and security
- More technologically driven university
- More online classes
- What is the optimum size to carry out the mission?
- On accord with competitive schools from a faculty to student ratio
- About 5000 students
- Optimum number of student
- 20:1 student to faculty ratio
- We need to grow the graduate programs
- Who are we now? Who do we want to become? How do we support our mission and the major functions of the university?
- Who are we now – unmerge university, split personality, not fully integrated, mainly a teaching university, saying a we are research university, but we are really a teach university, don’t have a research culture
- Who do we want to become – need to increase graduate programs to increase research focus, lower teaching loads, give CAU more visibility, reposition ourselves to be a more viable undergraduate/graduate program, need to increase publicity to attract better quality students, building research programs, capacity and faculty in order to increase research, need more scholarship monies, need to improve the school’s image...no more battle of the bands, higher quality, pride need to socialize students to perform at a high level, need to have standards and enforce them.
- What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to Clark Atlanta University?
- Strengths – diverse, alumni commitment and affection for CAU, majority of faculty care about students
- Weaknesses – lack of online technologies, no night time UG offerings, don’t offer enough diversity of class times, not cohesive, faculty don’t get paid enough, lack of vision, administration is not committed to HBCU values, cost too much, complacent and complaining, lack of consistent quality leadership (too many Presidents and Provost in the last 10 years), current leadership does not respect previous commitments, lack of leadership from the board, too many responsibilities, too dependent on non-qualified student (i.e. tuition driven).
- Opportunity – Online education, seek out people who are looking for more education in economic times, need to have a more flexible course offerings, strengthen our image/distinct identity, more advertising, marketing, better use radio and TV programming, take advantage of the cultural significance of the city.
- Threat – Strong competition, people don’t believe that there is a need for HBCUs, safety
Questions for Strategic Planning Focus Groups
- What should our core values be?
- How do we advance the Mission and Vision of the university?
- Who do we intend to become?
- What is the optimum size to carry out the Mission of the university?
- Who are we now? Who do we want to be? How do we support who we are?
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