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Program Prioritization update

September 30, 2015
Academic Task Force co-chairs George Slotsve and Alan Clemens

Academic Task Force co-chairs George Slotsve and Alan Clemens

NIU’s Program Prioritization efforts are picking up speed with the election of new task force co-chairs and launch of the Prioritization Plus data platform.

George Slotsve, associate professor of Economics, and Alan Clemens, instructor in Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations, will co-chair the Academic Task Force, while Matt Streb, professor and chair of Political Science, will join Michelle Pickett, director of the Academic Advising Center, as co-chairs of the Administrative Task Force.

The combined task forces have undergone training in recent weeks, and chose the dual-chair model based on expert recommendations as well as the advice of an outgoing chair faced with personal and professional time conflicts.

“We’re heading into a period of very heavy demands with a number of important decisions yet to be made,” said Michelle Pickett. “I like the co-chair model because it highlights the importance and complexity of the role.”

Administrative Task Force co-chairs Michelle Pickett and Matt Streb

Administrative Task Force co-chairs Michelle Pickett and Matt Streb

Monday also marked the live launch of Prioritization Plus, the web-based data platform loaded with centrally-held data on every program.

“Most data is loaded into the system now and mapped to the appropriate criteria questions,” explained Ruperto Herrera of the initiative’s Data Support Team. “We have some additional financial and budgetary information to load, but basically we’re ready for program authors to access the system and begin work on their program narratives. We’ll notify authors when the final financial information is available in a couple of weeks.

Each author and approver should login to the system soon and change his/her password to avoid being locked out of the system. Additionally, program authors can add additional authors (people helping with their narratives) by accessing a Program Prioritization Author Change Form.

If, after reviewing the institutional data loaded into Prioritization Plus, authors have questions about that data, they should email helpdesk@niu.edu or call 815-753-8100 to submit program-specific questions. Those questions will be quickly routed to the most appropriate member of the Data Support Team for a prompt response.

While more than 250 authors have been trained in the use of Prioritization Plus, additional hands-on and online training workshops are being offered in October. For more details or to register for those sessions, go to http://go.niu.edu/pptraining.