Provost Dr. John Jasinski recently appeared on EAB’s Office Hours podcast. In the episode “How MSU Saved Millions Without Cutting Faculty or Programs,” Jasinski and Paul Gunther, EAB’s senior strategic leader, discuss Missouri State’s academic realignment process.
The podcast touches on several elements of realignment and budget reduction, including Jasinski’s reflections on the following topics:
On Missouri State’s Approach to Budget Reduction
“Our guiding principles were really to focus on student learning and student success at the forefront. [We focused] on academic administration as well as colleges and departments. And when I went out early on, I made sure I said: ‘We’re going to start with — in terms of looking at budgets — academic administration.’ We wanted to make sure we were data-informed and… clear about the tough task at hand.”
On the Goals of Academic Realignment
“You said [that] sometimes colleagues might conflate academic realignment and budget reductions. And in fact, coming in early, as I reflect, I think people heard ‘Cut budget, academic realignment,’ [and thought,] ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to blow up the system.’… We tried not to conflate those because we knew we had to cut [the] budget, but we felt like… we had such strengths that if we could kind of reconfigure the system — realign the system — we could actually raise the academic profile.”
On Institutional Teamwork
“You make a decision and it impacts everybody else throughout the structure, right? The… registrar’s office, enrollment management, marketing/communication, finance, facilities, university advancement, [the] general counsel’s office, human resources, IT services. I mean I can go on and on and on… And the impacts in those offices… You know that you made some decision that’s really changing their workload, and they’re just delivering through and through. So I just can’t be thankful enough — cannot say, ‘Thank you,’ enough — to all those involved because it truly, truly was an institutional effort. You have to have the lead and support of the President [and] the Board of Governors. And at the end of the day, it’s really about the culture of focusing on student success, academic excellence, our public affairs mission and being ingrained in what we do.”
More About Raising the Academic Profile
In addition to the insights that appear on the full episode, Jasinski had the following to share about Missouri State’s focus on raising the academic profile:
“In crafting academic affairs as Missouri State’s strategic enterprise, we’re reallocating and investing in academics. We’re focused on raising our academic profile as we re-conceptualize colleges, schools and departments. We have new and collaborative programming in hospitality and tourism, and our agriculture programming is focused on farm-to-fork — addressing food, forage and natural resources. We are a destination campus for the arts. We’re elevating strong programs like criminology and criminal justice and defense and strategic studies.
“Through our transformation efforts, we hope to be a trendsetter in protecting and investing in the arts, social sciences and humanities. Further, we have exciting new developments within our arts programs. Our business portfolio expanded with economics joining the fold, and we invested in merchandising and fashion design and technology and construction development. We are the state’s leader in producing educators, and we opened a Center for Rural Education. We developed a new School of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences and combined interdisciplinary efforts across Esports. STEM is so very critical, and we have major investments in our STEM-based infrastructure.”