Integrated planning for universities require a series of projects for quality improvement processes. Still, project management is new in academia.
Planning for higher education is far more than running higher learning on a day-to-day basis. Universities must engage in integrated planning for infrastructure, academic assessment, retention management, accreditation and financial projects to continue improving the institution.
However, quality improvement in education requires successful project management, a discipline that looked like a silo for engineers or MBAs. “We’re educators, not managers,” some academics would say.
Chanelle Austin, Winifred Browne, Barbara Haas, Everett Kenyatta and Sarah Zulueta, from Drexel University, USA, have studied project management, an issue in education that they claim has been “seemingly overlooked.”
“Historically, faculty are more focus on research and teaching and find project governance would require a refocus from their main passions and priorities of research and teaching, yet this conflicts with the structure of managing projects. Project Management may be viewed as “too corporate” of a way to make decisions, yet this is changing within higher education due to the need to be more effective.”
Many times, faculties who face the task of undertaking a new project are great academics, teachers or researchers, but face a dilemma on improving a process through a successful project.
According to the Autonomous University of Hidalgo State, in Mexico,
“A project is a set of activities to undertake in a given timing, with a combination of human, physical and financial resources, with defined costs to produce a change in an institution, by completing certain established goals.”
In summary, projects:
Educause recommends to define clearly what you want to accomplish with a school management project, identifying organizational issues and problems, and dream big about solving them.
The initial phase of a project, is where manypeople have an issue, as they fail to set Smart Goals from the beginning. That is:
Let’s take an example:
My goal is to “Improve student retention”
It isn’t smart at all. First, because it’s not specific enough, it doesn't seat a benchmark to measure anything, and fails to set realistic and timely goals. Hence, it’s not attainable the way it’s written.
Let's take another example:
Our goal is to “Improve student retention rates by 5% for undergraduate students in the Arts and Sciences Faculties between 2016 and 2020.”
It looks smarter. However, remember to start small, by addressing immediate needs and growing incrementally.
One of the most common problems we find in many institutions is the lack of good data records and historical data as the baseline to start a project for accreditation, class management or academic planning.
Like any thorough research project, be sure to find the right data and prepare it for its integration in any enterprise planning software. This can take time, but it’s crucial to begin on the right foot.
A project is usually a very schematic process with a series of deliverables over time.
Source: Autonomous University of Hidalgo State, Mexico.
This also means that you have to find the right support and resources for each step of the way. Educause recommends that higher learning institutions clearly determine what services are required for project management, making sure they concentrate on the needs you identify such as:
On the other hand, reexamine your effectiveness regularly, to celebrate accomplishments, provide motivation to continue, consider lessons learned and revise your plan.
Brian Croxall, contributor for the Chronicle of Higher Education, says that “Not every project should be begun started."
"When you are beginning work on something, you want to determine if it’s a good use of your resources, what problem the project is trying to solve, and whether or not the project is the best way to fix it. I think that this is particularly hard in universities because we tend to originate our own projects rather than having them brought to us."
Therefore, you should ask some questions. Is the project:
In Chile, for instance, the National Education Council (CNED) says that one of the most common ways of running total quality management in Chilean colleges is through improvement teams assigned for a particular project. However, these shouldn’t work on their own.
Brian Clark, senior director of digital media communications at the Rhode Island School of Design, tells University Business that he has to manage dozens of digital projects that involve many “siloed” stakeholders. He recommends project managers in universities to “listen to a broad range of voices from across campus” before prioritizing, while also keeping an eye on quality.
On the other hand, Educause calls to carefully and thoroughly generate a critical mass of support.
The academics from Drexel, for instance, value that higher learning "offers a unique experience in building collaboration as there sometimes seems to be a divide between faculty and staff, differing priorities between departments, and, at least at Drexel, the impression of a lack of shared governance.”
“There is more to higher education than the department one works for. Making a conscious effort to work across functions building the trust and respect of colleagues throughout the University to understand how various parties might be affected by an initiative/project is important to the success and implementation of further project management.”
What challenges do you find in project management within your university?