Long-term positioning and integration assessment

Dear Texas Woman’s Colleagues,

Welcome to spring semester 2021 on a bright, wintery day! I hope this email finds you well as we boldly go into a new year and new semester. At this time of the year, many of us assess our lives and make resolutions for the future. I would like to embark on an institutional parallel here at the start of 2021.

Ahead of us, we have our ten-year SACS accreditation in 2023. We continue moving through budget cuts and a changing enrollment landscape. Through our five-year institutional strategic plan, we have opportunities to 1) make our processes more efficient, 2) develop strategies to better leverage our locations in Dallas and Houston, and 3) expand our innovative academic programs initiative, to name just a few.

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline,” Jim Collins writes in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t. “You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.”

So, from now through the end of February, we have engaged external consultants to gather and analyze data—the “brutal facts”—including interviews with many of you. Their assessment report will help us identify potential blind spots so we can proactively face the future and position the university for long-term greatness—to realize our vision: ...as the premier public university for a woman-focused education and leadership development, graduating thriving global citizens who have a strong sense of community, health, prosperity, and purpose.

We have engaged Academic Strategy Partners, LLC (ASP) to help with this project. This group has a wealth of experience working with academic institutions to assess everything from program priorities to operations. Their knowledge of the intimate details of other universities as a backdrop in their assessment of Texas Woman’s has great comparative value.

The project will:

• Review and examine a variety of Texas Woman’s policies, practices, processes, and structures, giving us an outside-in look at our operations with an eye toward improving efficiency and effectiveness;
• Interview several dozen members of the faculty and staff to gain insights into the university’s values and culture; and
• Provide a set of recommendations to the university for institutional consideration through our established entities of shared governance (ASP is not authorized to take any actions on its own).

Should the consultants call on you to be part of the process, I hope you will engage fully with them. In the end, their assessment will only be as useful as the accuracy of the data you provide. Again, we will follow the usual channels of shared governance in making decisions or acting on any recommendations made in their assessment.

While we embrace a culture of evidence—one that ensures that decisions now and in the future will be data-driven, I also want to stay true to our ethos of compassion and #campuswithaheart.

Finally, thank you, over this past year and always, for staying fluid and flexible in this ever-changing world. I look forward to representing you with lawmakers during this legislative session in Austin. Your many efforts, integrity, and ethic of service make it easy to tout Texas Woman’s University—its mission and its contributions to the state, nation, and world. Let us boldly go in 2021 with data, strategy, and a pioneering spirit.

With Texas Woman’s pride,

Carine M. Feyten, Ph.D.
Chancellor and President

Page last updated 1:39 PM, January 11, 2021