Dear colleague in the WSCUC community:

I hope this is one summer when you are able to make headway on your “I’ll do it over the summer” list, or at least that things are falling into place nicely for the coming academic year.

I’ve just crossed my six-month mark as WSCUC President and my keywords are “learning curve” and “questions”. It’s a privilege to work with and learn from our members, commissioners, and staff. I am eager to find out how WSCUC can be more effective, responsive, efficient, and just plain useful to you.

I am in listening mode and would love to hear from you. For example, we are conducting a pair of focus group calls about the 2019 Academic Resource Conference (ARC) with people from different perches and past degrees of engagement with the conference, while also poring over last year’s evaluation responses, so we can make this the most valuable, relevant, and inspiring ARC yet. I hope to expand our outreach and engagement with the WSCUC membership to gather additional feedback strengthening our work.

That said, I’ve been both a campus citizen (like all of my liaison colleagues on the WSCUC staff) and a regulator at the U.S. Department of Education and now WSCUC. I know it can be hard to be candid with people who make high stakes decisions affecting your institutions. Remember that we are a membership organization with the mission to serve students and improve educational quality, and we need your help to do our best. Please let me or your campus liaison know if you have suggestions for improvement or issues you’d like us to address more actively.

I’m excited to be at WSCUC and deep into both improvement and quality assurance. A recent highlight for me was meeting the next generation of leaders at the first session of the new cohort of our Assessment Leadership Academy. These leaders are already stars at connecting assessment and IR with core commitments of equity, success, and improvement across their institutions.

It’s also an honor to represent WSCUC in such diverse roles as the new Lumina Foundation Quality Credential Task Force, to which I was recently appointed, and as keynote speaker at both the CSU system’s fall Graduation Initiative 2025 Symposium and the annual meeting of the California Association for Institutional Research. I look forward to meeting you and hearing your ideas at WSCUC’s own programs and around the region.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

Jamienne S. Studley, President