Limitations that may make it more difficult to achieve
the Vision and Strategy
(from the August 2005 Department Head’s Retreat on Priority Setting)
Internal environment (Infrastructure):
- Lack of infrastructure and recognition for cross/interdisciplinary approaches in teaching and research
- Need to foster cross university course utilization between Manhattan and Salina without it becoming a “turf” issue.
- A willingness to give up something “traditional” in order to start something new.
- Lack of a unit dedicated to promote faculty expertise and achievements.
- Lack of information for cross-department/cross-functional collaboration
- Unwillingness to reprioritize.
- May not be willing to take a risk because we do not have critical masses in all departments.
- Bureaucratic impeachments to entrepreneurialism.
- Land-grant mission has changed; academic bigotry- who is more important or that some disciplines are more elitists than others.
- Lack of clarity of expectations.
- Need even more collaboration between department units.
- No campus-wide discussions on program reduction and enhancement.
- No organized dual career.
Internal environment (Resources):
- Access to journals through the library.
- Academic resources/funding at library are in need of increase.
- Money and resources i.e. laboratories, office space, equipment, and classrooms.
- Cost of technology.
- Lack of space and infrastructure.
- Size of some departments such as biochemistry compared to top land-grants. Doing more teaching and not enough time for research.
- Too many small doctoral programs
- Funding.
- We lose good faculty and top notch recruits after a few years.
- Understaffed with faculty
- Increasing ratio of GTA’s &adjuncts; ability to retain outstanding faculty.
- Our grad to undergrad student ratio is low and not always concentrated in research areas. Not enough release time for faculty to do research.
- Low stipends for grad students, lack of tuition waiver compared to Top-10.
- Access to alternative funding difficult at department level.
- KSU not large enough to compete with the big players.
- Difficult to find careers for spouses.
External Environment:
- Ease of travel in and out of Manhattan.
- Ultra conservative political environment causes difficulty in recruitment.
- Over abundance of two year colleges.
- Program duplications throughout Regents and private institutions.
Perceptions:
- Perception of ourselves, understanding land-grant mission.
- Kansas inferiority complex
- Public perception of Kansas.
- Outside perception of KSU.
Other:
- Marketing.
- Communicating our unique attributes to the state.
- Lack of diversity.
- Doctoral programs here are not in the Top-10, although some are evolving.
- At the departmental level we don’t have enough comparative data to usefully benchmark others (Especially Teaching Performance).
- Lack of matrix to measure performance outcomes (student-related).
- Limited tracking of success of students.
- Not all professional organizations rank programs.
- Many of the rankings based on research not teaching.