Over the last year, our former Whitehead College has been refashioned into the new School of Business and School of Education. We took this step to provide these important programs with new focus, direction, and leadership. As part of the planning process, the University engaged KPMG Consulting to work with a Steering Committee to identify issues and propose a plan for establishing appropriate structures, processes, and support for adult learning programs at Redlands.

As part of its work, the Committee achieved consensus around some important points, including relative strengths and weaknesses of the adult learning programs. Most notably, they acknowledged that service levels for students were often below expectations. This in turn affects the programs' success in meeting the needs of their students.

The Committee's work also highlighted the importance of the adult learning programs' revenue in the University's financial health; at the same time, it acknowledged the importance of evaluating the programs using broader performance measures than enrollments alone. They also established an understanding of adult students' expectations and service requirements as different from those of traditional residential undergraduates.

The Committee's work has been presented to Phil Glotzbach, Phil Doolittle and me. We three are in agreement that the report presents an accurate view of our adult learning programs, and we are committed to implementing the recommendations for the reorganization of these programs and the guiding principals for change that it contains. First among them is a recommendation that we charter a new project, the Adult Learning Focus Initiative (ALFI), to coordinate a number of changes associated with improving the services and administration in our adult programs.

The ALFI Program Office will be managed by Phil Doolittle. He will ensure that the project receives necessary resources and administrative attention. The Leadership Group will again include me, Phil Glotzbach, and Phil Doolittle. We will meet regularly with project leadership to address issues that cannot be resolved within the project structure. However, we expect to find such issues very rarely if at all.

Our new Deans of Education and Business, Bill Stanley and Pat Meyers, will co-chair an Advisory Group to consider proposals with University-wide implications and to help manage and support their implementation. The Deans will also be key players in the design and implementation of services to our largest cohorts of adult learners in the Schools of Education and Business.

However, the Adult Learning Focus Initiative is not limited in scope to these two schools. We serve working adults in a number of other programs, and we want to ensure through this process that they are all served well. Accordingly, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Nancy Carrick, will be actively involved in these discussions as well.

Kathy Behrens, formerly of KPMG, will work with us as the Program Manager. She will be responsible for preparing work plans, leading the project working groups, and reporting to our Leadership Group on project issues and status. We will provide staff support for the working groups (e.g., meeting scheduling, data collection, analysis, documentation) through the Program Office. In addition, we expect to supply help with research into Datatel capabilities, testing, documentation of procedures, training and other work associated with the redesign of systems and services.

The final report of Phase I, including the work of the Steering Committee, includes a discussion of the current state of adult learning programs at Redlands, recommendations (including goals for the adult learning program reorganization and guiding principles for change), and next steps. If you would like to receive a copy of the report, you may email a request to phillip_doolittle@redlands.edu and we will send it to you.This initiative will be critical to our mission of supporting the adult learner at Redlands. With our new deans now on campus, we are poised to begin in earnest the work of creating the processes, organization, and services to support our adult learning programs in ways that reflect our expectations for the University as a whole.