Q3tagcloud

Oct. 30 Town Hall Meeting

Question 3: What is it about the culture of WSU that hinders our making progress?

• Support for individual excellence can work to the detriment of work toward a more common goal (department / college / university / community).
• Rewarding structure not aligned with collective work.
• Regulations and policies, many of which are created by WSU and inhibits entrepreneurial work.
• Reward structure (i.e. tenure and promotion) reinforces conservatism, risk taking/failure is punished.
• Lack of cohesion.
• Community ownership but not community support.
• Maybe too much of our identity is tied to athletics. Athletics makes us known, but...
• Marketing issues, you don't read about all the great stuff we do.
• Need to celebrate our successes.
• We are reactionary instead of being proactive.
• We don't know what's going on outside our own area.
• Bureaucracy gets in the way.
• Lack of communication - silos.
• Not adapting to the changes in the student body.
• Lack of state fundidng and support.
• Board of Regents may be too traditional.
• Commuter school attitude.
• Negative attitude toward risk taking.
• Lack of a strategic plan.
• Hierarchical communication structure.
• Risk aversion.
• The tenure system encourages things to stay the way they are. Those who have the say were successful in that system.
• Silos prevent the best system.
• Very risk averse.
• Lack of faculty governances.
• Resistance to change.
• Low level of support staff/faculty.
• Service mentality lacking in ORA, Graduate school, and other administrative units.
• Lack of space, infrastructure issues.
• Academic calendar is not set 2-3 years out which is a best practice at other institutions.
• Work load is too high to innovate, faculty exceptions are too high.
• Tuition is too low.
• Tendency to compare ourselves with others hinders us.
• Look at things through eyes of higher education in general - that things have to be a carbon way.
• Students who have internships no longer focus on grades.
• Communication internally and externally about how awesome we really are.
• We under-rate ourselves. We don't set expectations high enough.
• Barriers or red tape. An unwritten culture that hinders our growth.
• Policies that don't encourage cross department communication.
• Subversion process that eliminates faculty governance, especially in college of engineering.
• Young faculty seem risk averse.
• Slow paced culture.
• Feeling of lack of control for your own future.
• Lack of incentives for quality performance.
• Parking.
• Fear of taking a risk.
• Money - innovative for less.
• Lack of business mentality.
• Making students our #1 priority.
• Our priorities are too short focused to think long term.
• We are not getting more money, we are not getting more new hires. We need to think about what is not working and stop it so we can focus on what is important.
• Bureaucracy can hinder getting things done.
• Micromanaging.
• State funding, dwindling support. May need to look at other avenues for funding.
• KBOR more traditional in their thinking. May not be as receptive to change that would positively impact all regents institutions.
• Tend to look at why we can't work, or see obstacles first, have to push for how to make things work. Example: want to share staff across departments, but will take a year of red tape.
• Fear of change, unwilling to take a chance to get out of our comfort zone.
• Bureaucracy - too many signatures required in getting things completed or approved.
• "Not my job" syndrome. Not knowing who to go to. Departments not knowing what other departments do.
• Lack of a written process - standard operating procedures.
• Doing more with less.
• Don't value marketing well, need to be more visible.
• Lack of transparency of the decision-making process when changes need to be made.
• Do we have an identity crisis? Agree to brag on ourselves.
• We are behind the curve regarding intellectual property, not tapping into the creative work that faculty and students are doing.
• Students are not as prepared for higher education challenges compared to two or more decades ago.
• Bureaucracy of our system for approving purchases, hiring, etc.
• Lack of communication/support amongst divisions or departments.
• Too much focus on personal short term priorities. Less focus on institution long term priorities.
• Too much focus on who gets credit or blame for success or failure.
• Lack of communication.
• Fragmented, different students, different needs.
• Silos.
• Not adapting to changing student body.
• Stagnation. Keep students engaged as well as staff.
• Bureaucracy.
• Working in silos.
• Inefficiencies.
• Bureaucracy - hiring process, travel process, purchasing process, making rules for things that may happen.
• Obsession with assessment which is understandable but time consuming.
• Hierarchy of who one can talk to. The political process of bringing a new idea to fruition.
• The attitude that each man is in it for himself.
• Too many silos and not enough unity among the different colleges.
• Losing sight of the big picture and who are our customers - students.
• Closed-minded faculty.
• Our perception of campus.
• We have a hard time agreeing on a direction we want to grow together.
• We don't grow anyway - institutionalized.
• We are too difficult to get enrolled in. Too many hoops to get enrolled and too many hoops to jump through. Admissions and enrollment as an example.
• Don't talk with each other. Students feel like they are kicked around.
• Commuter school attitude.
• Risk taking atmosphere missing.
• Resources, complacency, inferiority complex with the university and the community.
• We are a fall-back school because we act like a fall-back school.
• No infrastructure for a better product.
• People don't know about us outside of the state.
• Reluctance to challenge students.
• Low expectations overall - related to lack of identity.
• We see ourselves as a Wichita college, have not been willing to define ourselves beyond that.
• Hierarchical communication structure.
• You can't talk to your boss's boss. You have to go through the chain of command and silos persist, and significant communication is lost.
• Cooperative culture doesn't want to "break the rules" - just get the job done. Would have to be a rebel to do what is needed to excel as faculty.
• Value conflict of cooperation/collegiality/rules over innovative/flexible.
• Territorialism
• Afraid of change - we've always done it that way attitude.
• Bureaucracy.
• Working in silos.
• Duplication of work and processes.
• Process to eliminate people if not producing quality work.

» Return to Town Hall Meetings home page