Thank you for your thoughtful suggestions. We will review submissions regularly; while we may not be able to answer each and every question asked, answers to common questions will be posted on our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Your suggestions and the responses from Budget Initiative Stewards, Vice President for Academic Affairs Stuart Sigman and Vice President of Business and Finance Sue Evans will be posted here. As we receive more input from the community, we will group together similar suggestions. We welcome your feedback on how our system is working and how best we may keep you informed. Please note that due to the sensitive nature of these issues, the webmaster will be editing the suggestions so that no specific person or position will be named. We will strive to maintain accuracy in the postings.
Create a more customer centric view of operations. Reduce the customer leg work and paperwork making it easier for the customer to get what they need! This would help with retention. View operations as processes that fulfill customer goals rather than each “silo” being focused on their own operational goal.
Using what we teach.
I highly recommend the Matrix works leadership course and believe the Naropa Leadership Team could benefit from this training.
Cut in hours. Perhaps consider cutting everyone’s hours by some amount that would make it possible to retain employees rather than experience layoffs.
Direct phone lines for all faculty.
Increase operational efficiency and customer satisfaction by providing direct phone lines or extensions for each faculty member and publish a faculty directory on the web site that includes a telephone number, and e-mail address.
Make buildings more efficient.
Can there be a student volunteer organization (probably from the Environmental Majors) that focuses on winterizing the windows and doors of the buildings of Naropa? And/Or a committee that looks for donations of weather stripping, double pane windows, insulation blown into walls and possibly, giving people jobs installing it along with solar? Also light tubes where we can install them? This would cut down on energy costs over the long and short term, create a learning experience, create jobs and job experience.
Need to provide more resource to the library! Move it into one floor or Admin building so that it can expand. Its space is quite limited and it is unable to grow, which it must.
Reorganize student affairs on a new model. Employ just a couple of full time staff. Have multiple GA's and a lot of work study who run all programs, advise organizations, do most everything. I know of a university of 14,000 who has 3 staff in student activities, 4 G.A's and 30 work study. The staff advises the student staff, sets the vision, and provide serious leadership development for the students. The students learn valuable skills that can be put on a resume.
Make three colleges: 1) "College of Psychology, Religion, and Philosophy" which brings together Undergrad Psychology, Religious Studies, and Traditional Eastern Arts. 2) "College of Arts and Humanities" which brings together WRI (BA & MFA), INTD, PAX, PFAR (BFA & MFA), Music, Visual Arts and NCC 3) "Graduate School of Psychology" which includes MACP, TCP, and Somatic.
Reorganize Positions. The departments that are healthy, function well, have good student enrollment, and good customer satisfaction should be considered the Naropa best practice and should not be put under departments that are not doing so well. Move the registrar under the Assistant Dean of Business and Academic Support. Move Financial Aid under the Dean of Admissions. Move Tuition Cashier under V.P. Business and Finance. Move Institutional research under Assistant Dean of Instruction and Curriculum.
Naropa must do what it does best, and aim to do it better than anyone else. All of this should be done in the spirit of healthy competition that does nothing more than benefit all involved. If there is to be a decrease in funding across the board, the school should seemingly further specialize and offer the most unique and fine tuned contemplative learning experience the West has to offer via a very specialized faculty that is small but incredibly potent in whatever material is being presented. If there is a decrease in class variety or total number of teachers because of funding a few superlative teachers, then that is exactly the type of surgicality that is perhaps needed. Naropa also cannot compete in terms of diversity of subjects presented, nor in terms of research and academia when there exists such behemoths as Columbia and Harvard, UVa...but Naropa could again specialize even further, focus on its highest gifts and attributes and bring them out even to a higher degree then ever before. In this fashion, Naropa would perhaps become even more harmonious in its ambitions, maintain an educational experience that is incomparable to any university in the country, and from that vantage point, become a financially more prosperous and stable school all from the foundation of offering an educational experience that cannot be found in any university in the United States.
Reorganize departments. Combine all Psych depts (three grad, distance, plus undergrad). Combine all the Arts (Dance, Music, Visual Arts, Performance [BFA and MFA]). Combine Religious Studies with Traditional Eastern Arts. Combine all writing depts (Writing and Poetics, Summer, Distance, Writing Center). Combine Peace Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies. Combine Contemplative Education and Environmental Studies.
Follow TCP Dept's lead. The TCP department runs very well with three different concentrations and one person overseeing the entire department. Rather than getting rid of smaller programs, form sections of programs that can have one central figurehead overseeing the entire department and then certain people overseeing the concentrations of each sub-department.
Cultivate Women Studies minor. Please don't get rid of the Women's Studies minor. Naropa really needs to cultivate that program.
Rethink core courses. The courses in the Core Curriculum and core faculty who teach those courses should merge into existing depts: Diversity and Humanities into INTD, Contemplative Seminars into REL, Civic Engagement into PAX and Writing Seminars into W&P.
Merge all writing affiliated departments: W&P, SWP and NWC.
Make efficient use of existing resources and trade wasted resources for resources we need: 1. Audit to determine if all current committees on campus are truly needed. Name expectations, deadlines, deliverables and don't have meetings that don't deliver. Raise performance productivity and get rid of waste in human capital. 2. Close the school over breaks and allow staff to telecommute. Stop opening buildings so that two or three people can sit in their office on a computer during these breaks with AC/heat and electric running. Redirect savings to value-adding areas such as the student campus experience.
TA postions. Offer TA positions to students in their final year of their graduate studies.
Academic plan. Match the reality of the curricular arc to the academic plan. Some of this means a re-imagining of program administration and organization of what we deliver. Naropa must work to maintain its educational programs—That's our mission.
Faculty advising. Phase in faculty advising over the next three semesters to produce a financial efficiency passed on in faculty salaries. Advising should be more aligned with first-year student success, which in turn impacts how we imagine Student Affairs.
Faculty reading group. The faculty needs an academic plan "reading group." If Naropa values the contemplative, whether we're talking about pedagogy or practice, we need to mean it by what we do and how we conduct ourselves.
Faculty salaries. It must be top priority that faculty salaries increase steeply and steadily.
Layoffs. It is my experience there are a few areas that can afford this painful option.
Consolidate the part-time academic coordinator positions. This new position would create better parity within AD jobs, and become a legitimate full-time position.
Examine impact on students when considering cuts in staff or in reducing budgets for departments. Re physical on campus resources available to students, we do not have as many selling points as other universities of similar size. Student housing, our food service infrastructure, our library and study areas, as well as health and community exercise are all areas we are lacking. As such, a primary target of evaluation should be streamlining departments whereby redundancy in job performance is eliminated and efficiencies applied, from the top down.
Reduce number of senior staff memebers. Are all the senior staff positions needed?
Improve information technology system.
Eliminate redundancy. There could be both greater savings and greater efficiency by combining & relocating some departments, both academic and administrative, to consolidate similar duties & charges. Should Admissions & Marketing be under the same roof/same director? Should all of our diversity efforts/positions be organized under one office in Academic Affairs? Should academic advising be done by faculty members or administrative support staff? Currently money collection is done both in Business & Finance and SAS, should those positions/duties be consolidated? Could the Contemplative Practice Coordinator position be re-envisioned as a chaplain position which has teaching/supervision duties within the MDiv program in addition to the current duties of the position? Is Alumni Relations more closely aligned to fund raising & therefore Advancement or is the charge centered around creating support & community for our alumni & therefore more closely aligned to Student Affairs?
Combine some academic departments. Create a "Fine Arts" dept by combining Music, Performance, Visual Arts and Writing. Create a Humanities dept (Religion, Peace Studies, Traditional Eastern Arts, Inter-disc?). This could create cost-efficiencies with administrative duties and also give us more flexibility in the classes and degrees we offer. What sorts of collaborations & new research could faculty engage in through such pairings?
Grad Psych/MDiv Courses. Are there courses that can be taught in larger classes across depts. and disciplines - followed up with smaller discipline specific discussion groups? Research methodologies (cuts across all programs, separated grad/undergrad) family systems, some counseling skills courses (all Grad Psych & MDiv) many Grad Psych courses required for licensure meditation diversity (split by grad/undergrad, but most grad progs have some diversity awareness requirement) group assessment, group building, mediation training (MA Environmental Leadership, some of the Grad Psych, MDiv).
Have better technology to help us become more efficient with what we're doing.
Become a sustainable residential community of faculty, staff and students. The initial investment will be expensive and time consuming, but we can become a sustainable community, living and working together, combining our energy toward a shared goal of education and contemplation, enjoying so many more resources with each other, and exploring deeper relationships and building ties of community and family. Our cohesion will bring us a greater abundance of students wishing to share in our collective wisdom, and we will become an ideal for other educational institutions seeking a sustainable model.
Expand Naropa's low-residency offerings. The way that Naropa offers online education is highly effective, personally transformative and academically sound. There is a strong demand for online education, and with MarCom support, this is an area to develop.
Consolidate low-residency programs under one department to gain one AD, perhaps one advisor, one admissions coordinator.
MAR 500e, Authentic Leadership, is an excellent resource to provide good training to staff and faculty, to work with change and employees in efficient, healthy, affirming ways.
Cut faculty and staff salaries above $60K by some percentage (5%, 8%, etc.).
Rent out Naropa facilities. We could rent our spaces out to community groups during breaks or in the evenings.
Go electronic wherever possible to save money and trees.
