Cabinet will now review the data and recommendations that we have supplied to them. Given the complexity and sheer amount of data that this project generated, it may be necessary for CoC to return to Cabinet in June to follow up with them and offer any further clarification and/or insight.

Beyond following up with Cabinet, the work of the CoC is essentially done. Cabinet will now decide on any changes regarding committees at KSC and will communicate those decisions to the college community directly.

What’s next? The CoC is now carefully reviewing the survey responses, synthesizing all the data, and moving toward preparing recommendations for the cabinet and summarizing our findings for the campus in May.

Again, we are extremely grateful to all committee chairs who responded to our survey. This will help give us a more accurate picture of our shared governance processes and how best to improve the work of committees at KSC.

Your participation in this process is greatly appreciated.

About a dozen committee chairs have agreed to complete a pilot of the survey before the rest of the chairs receive it. The pilot will be sent out on Friday, March 9. If any changes are suggested based on responses to the pilot, we will make those changes before sending the survey out to approximately 100 chairs on March 19.

Once the CoC has reviewed all the responses to the survey, we will post a summary/snapshot of what emerges from the survey for the KSC community to see.

Another way the College is looking to reduce workload is by reviewing its committees. The Committee on Committees is charged to: review current committee structure and recommend action (consolidation, dissolution, membership, charge, review) to the President’s Cabinet to achieve greater organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

The Committee on Committees was formed by the cabinet in response to a NEASC comment regarding our shared-governance tradition, which was considered to be “substantial” and its consultative process to be “many layered” and “cumbersome”. Members of the Committee include: Russ Cobb, Kathryn Dodge (Chair), Susie Ericson-West, Kim Schmidl-Gagne, Laura Seraichick, Karen Stanish, Paul Striffolino.

Their overall approach is to align KSC committee practices with outside best practices – attributes of successful committees. The CoC is committed to a transparent process with opportunities for campus input.

They are currently completing an inventory campus committee structure and documenting best practices for successful committees. They intend to determine alignment of current practice on campus with best practices and make recommendation(s) to Cabinet in June.

In addition, in response to the Staff Councils, the Cabinet and I have agreed to consider the impact of efficiencies in one department on another, a reduction of redundancies and the possibility of providing incentives for collaboration. We will keep you informed as we move forward.

President Helen Giles-Gee
February 10, 2012