Executive Leadership Team
- No stable coordination in post-secondary education
- Multiple Priorities
- Declining enrollment
- Devaluing higher education
- Expense versus investment mindset
- Imposter syndrome/morale
Directors and Administrators
- Competition – community colleges
- Demographics
- Lack of trust/transparency/morale
- Leadership instability/Lack of focus/Clear institutional direction
- Value of higher education
- To many academic programs (will add but not delete); (resistance to change)
Faculty Group 1
- BOT is disconnected from our mission
- Budget
- Faculty and admin. not on same page/ all stakeholders’ interests aren’t in alignment
- High workload across faculty, staff and admin.
- Low retention (faculty and staff ratio to students)
Academic Deans
- Very low staffing levels
- Three academic calendars
- Climate change
- Demographic cliff
- Student(s) focus/lack there of
- Reputational challenge
Faculty Senate Leadership
- Underfunding / defunding of higher education
- Anti-higher ed political climate – especially local and nationwide
- Athletic funding/increasing costs
- Ambitious and temporarily leaders – Short-term thinking mindset
- Faculty attrition and failure to replace tenure lines with other tenure lines
Community Diversity Leadership
- Disconnected / isolated
- Racism / lack of diversity
- Drugs., alcohol, depression, anxiety
- Lack of diverse faculty / and losing those that are there because of the environment
- Better salaries
- Better benefits
- Embedded white supremacy mindset and inherent structural modalities
- Environment of surrounding city
Community Forum
- Enrollment
- Entrenchment – including administration
- Athletics
- Uncertainty
- No Spokane strategy
- Funding, alumni, business, internships, investment
Staff Group
- Faculty/staff turnover *especially POC* / burnout
- Aging infrastructure
- budget/resources/bandwidth
- Student needs-housing and food insecurity
- Value of higher education and degree
Athletics Staff
- Enrollment
- Competitive salaries /turnovers all around
- Aging infrastructure
- University fiscal process / cost to do business (Unions)
- Missing opportunities for recruitment
Student Leaders
- Money
- Retention of students of color
- Off campus / online students not paying certain fees
- Burnout (student and staff)
- Lack of safety and/or real support
- Market diversity/ it’s not true
Internal Diversity Leadership
- Political polarization
- Financial support
- Transparency
- Unclear priorities / too many agendas that are in conflict
- Disconnected students/lack of support
- Lack of trust
Department Chairs
- Competition from other universities
- National enrollment trends / Demographics of future students
- Ability to recruit and retain strong faculty
- Inability of students to take semester or quarter classes (calendar) / double calendar
- Fear of change / lack of nimbleness
Faculty Group 2
- Athletics – Football in particular
- Enrollment decline
- Outside competition – our response/lack there of
- Overlapping programs
- Competing against each other (*Online vs in-person)
- Lack of structure and incentive for interdisciplinary collaboration
- Fear of change
- Problematic chairs and directors / lack if stability in leadership
- Mutual erosion of trust between senior faculty and upper administration
- Lack of commitment to raise retention
- Lack of identity
- Increase the number of programs at local institutions
- Infighting
Union Leadership
- Low enrollment
- Competition
- Perceived value of degree
- High turnover – loss of institutional knowledge
- Regional economy
- Pandemic hangover
- Catalyst – we built it and they didn’t come
Alumni Association Board
- Rising cost of living/tuition
- Devaluing of higher education
- Declining enrollment
- Funding changes
- Political polarization
