LO's, Outcome Measures

TO:

FROM:

DATE: October 18, 2016

SUBJECT: Module Three Assignment: Needs Assessment Interview

Our group conducted a needs assessment interview with the manager of Learning and Talent Development for Central Washington University. The university has an ongoing program for providing and improving training and development offered to a variety of employees. There are several areas currently in initial stages of deployment. Responding to employee and outside agency feedback of concerns regarding the skills and training of supervisors, resulted in switching from an outside company providing training to CWU staff providing training. Responding to customer feedback, the new customer service training program, the Wildcat Way, is being deployed this academic year. The chosen organization provided some real examples of our topics from Chapter Three.

Company and Contact for Needs Assessment Interview

Central Washington University – Central Learning Academy

Leah Valverde, Manager of Learning and Talent Development

400 E University Way

Bouillon 140

Ellensburg, WA 98926

[email protected]

509-963-2207

Mission of Central Learning Academy

“Central Learning Academy empowers staff and faculty by providing professional development and consultation to  fulfill compliance standards, broaden skills and knowledge, enhance job effectiveness, increase opportunities  for career advancement, and  contribute  to the mission and strategic goals of the university.”

Leah mentioned that the Central Learning Academy helps employees succeed, hire, manage, train, develop, and exit. This is part of the employee life cycle.

Mission of Central Washington University

“The mission of Central Washington University is to prepare students for enlightened, responsible, and productive lives; to produce research, scholarship, and creative expression in the public interest; and to serve as a resource to the region and the state through effective stewardship of university resources.

Qualified faculty and staff create a community that encourages and supports the emotional, personal, and professional growth of students from a variety of backgrounds. The university works with community colleges to establish centers throughout the state and employs technology to extend the reach of its educational programs. 

The university community values teaching as the vehicle to inspire intellectual depth and breadth, to encourage lifelong learning, and to enhance the opportunities of its students. The faculty develop and strengthen bachelor's and master's degree programs in the arts, sciences, and humanities; in teacher education; in business; in the social services; and in technological specializations. A strong liberal arts foundation; applied emphases; opportunities for

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Module Three Assignment: Needs Assessment Interview

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Mission of Central Washington University – (Continued)

undergraduate research, creative expression, and international study; and close working relationships between students and faculty are hallmarks of the undergraduate experience. Graduate programs develop partnerships between faculty and students to extend scholarship to important areas of research and practice.”

Values of Central Learning Academy

Central Learning Academy (CLA) is preparing people for current and future work, by making them better at their current jobs and preparing them for any future opportunities that may come. CLA ties into the overall value and mission of the university with the some of the training it offers such as classes on treating people with dignity and respect, relating to diversity and inclusivity.

Values of Central Washington University

“Central Washington University exists to advance society through the essential activities of teaching, discovery, and service. While no one of these core elements is meaningful in isolation from the others, CWU finds it necessary to prioritize its efforts in relation to its mission, vision, values, goals, and resources. In order to maximize the value of each of the elements of its mission, CWU emphasizes the integration of scholarship, teaching, and public service.

As a public comprehensive university, CWU strives to create an engaging learning environment and therefore places its highest priority on teaching, learning, and student success. The faculty is comprised of scholar-teachers working in the interests of their students, their disciplines, and the region. CWU encourages individualized programs of student success and promotes undergraduate and graduate student-faculty partnerships that are actively engaged in discovery, creative expression, and engaged learning.

As a community dedicated to the principles of academic freedom, CWU must be an environment that promotes reasoned, civil, and enlightened discourse and creative expression without fear of reprisal, ridicule, or exclusion. CWU’s educational environment must empower each person with the freedom to explore, to evaluate, and to learn.

CWU must also strive to serve its region by addressing pressing economic and social issues. As a comprehensive university, CWU must use its intellectual capacity not only to contribute to disciplinary literatures, but also to assist area business, social, and government leaders in strengthening and diversifying the area’s economic base, to help create a sustainable natural environment, and to address critical social issues.

CWU is also a place where people gather to live and to work. It must therefore be a place that enables people to grow and to prosper. In keeping with the academic values of shared governance and reasoned dialog, the university must be open, transparent, and empowering.

It follows, then, that CWU is committed to the following shared values:

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Values of Central Washington University – (Continued) Student success: CWU believes that student success is best achieved by providing supportive learning and living environments that encourage intellectual inquiry, exploration, and application. CWU believes that learning is best achieved in small classroom or group settings with ample opportunities for individualized instruction, mentoring, advising, and programming.

Access: CWU believes in providing educational opportunities to as many qualified students as possible. CWU believes that restrictions of place, time, and finances can be overcome through the effective use of partnership with community colleges and by effective and efficient use of learning, communication, and social technologies.

Engagement: CWU believes that learning, research, and creative expression are enhanced by engagement with external partners. CWU believes that as a publicly-funded institution, it has a responsibility to help address the social and economic challenges faced by our communities.

Inclusiveness: CWU believes that diversity of peoples, cultures, and ideas is essential to learning, discovery, and creative expression. CWU believes that all faculty, staff, and students must be and must feel physically, professionally, and emotionally safe in order to fully engage in and benefit from the university experience.

Shared governance: CWU believes that shared governance is most effective when information systems and decision-making processes are both robust and transparent. CWU believes that communication channels should be open and two-way and that faculty, staff, and students should be empowered to participate in the governance systems.

Facilities: CWU believes that state-of-the-art, safe, and attractive facilities enhance the working and learning environments of faculty, staff, and students. CWU also believes that state-of-the-art technologies provide leverage for the efforts of faculty, staff, and students. Safety: CWU believes it has a responsibility to providing a working and learning environment that is both physically and emotionally safe. CWU believes this responsibility extends to the off-campus environment of its full-time, residential students.”

Goals for Central Learning Academy

Central Learning Academy’s goal is preparing employees for current and future work and providing them with opportunities.

Central Learning Academy strives to improve communications providing expectations of required training without policing. Compliance training completion is a currently collected metric. The goal is to have the completion rate for mandatory training increase without negative consequences or supervisor reminders to the employees, but instead be self-directed by the employee.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of Central Learning Academy and Central Washington University

Strengths	Weaknesses
People in the organization that care about providing learning opportunities to employees to help better themselves (supervisors send employees)	Complexity of the audiences
Senior level support for professional development (university funds training)	Complexity of training topics
Higher Ed institutions are inherently value learning (culture of valuing continuing learning)	CLA Online can be overwhelming
Access to resources (Talented and skilled staff to provide training, teaching tools are part of the university, such as classrooms)	Not enough time spend customizing and categorizing what is already available to meet the needs of different areas
Using technology to track compliance and training records
On demand/self-driven professional development available to most staff through CLA Online

Training currently offered by Central Learning Academy and its effectiveness

Generic training is offered for compliance type training such as Treating People with Dignity and Respect and Emergency Preparedness. It is available in person and online. This is most effective for reaching the diverse employee pool with their varied needs and schedules. Adding the online component years ago, increased compliance.

Professional development is now offered on demand with the CLA Online software. It contains videos, courses, full textbooks, mentor and training paths for some certifications. CLA Online has topics that range from technical, business and leadership topics. It is available to most staff and CWU has a high user rate compared to benchmarks of what is the norm within our peers and other businesses. The CLA Online is in its third year and metrics show it as being increasingly effective.

CLA has many types of trainings. There are instructor led courses, webinars, online, blended, outside provided, and CLA provided options.

Central Washington University also allows department and employee selected trainings onsite through the Tuition Waiver program for employees and offsite at funding authorities’ discretion. These are harder to rate for effectiveness, but many CWU employees have obtained their degrees using the online waiver program.

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Ongoing performance issues with employees

Employees understanding expectations is our biggest challenge, having people really understand and take ownership of their responsibilities for their job.

Accountability for expectations is not as strong as desired. For instance, everyone on a search committee is informed that CWU wants a diverse pool of applicants. Our student population increased from 10% diverse to 30% diverse in the past ten years. Our staff diversity and hiring has not changed.

Recently addressed performance issues responded to with training were supervisor training improvements and a customer service excellence program.

Types of training that are valuable for the employee

Central Washington University has almost all of the training types that it needs, it is now a matter of making them accessible to the people.

Some employees have jobs associated with accreditations and outside organizations and meeting the requirements for those agencies is valuable in keeping those jobs and any attached funding.

The tuition waiver program is a higher cost per employee, but being self-driven may be seen as more valuable by the employee.

The CLA Online program is robust and cost effective for majority of employees, also available without travel expenses or as much time away from the job.

Pressure points of Central Washington University (CWU)

A recent pressure point of CWU was an accreditation agency that required renewed training and tracking of employee compliance with training for FERPA guidelines for completion by 12/31/2016. The CLA Online was put out first to support the required class with three in person, instructor led courses scheduled initially. After metrics are collected, they will assess if more in person classes are needed to meet the deadline.

Executive leadership and accreditation requests to increase the diversity of our staff. The search committees are now required to obtain diversity metrics on their applicant pool before moving to the interview stage. Ellensburg is not a very diverse population in general. There are current efforts to post on more diverse websites and get Central’s name out to more diverse organizations and recruitment events. The search committees are needing more purposeful training on how to increase the diversity of their pools in a search. Increasing that diversity allows them to move forward with filling the position faster while also fulfilling the goals of the university for striving for diversity in our staff.