Implementation strategies in a university setting: Departmental responses to program review recommendations.

Abstract

Colleges and universities are adopting program review to stimulate program improvement. The literature contains rich descriptions on how to conduct a program review process, but little is known about the strategies departments develop to implement program review recommendations. This study examines 36 departments in the Schools of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Speech in a private, mid-western research university and their strategies to implement program review recommendations, the outcomes of those strategies, and how program characteristics, the nature of the program review recommendations, and the program review process itself influence implementation strategies and outcomes. Data were collected through interviews with central administrators, deans and associate deans, and department chairs; and institutional documents and records were examined. Through content analysis and other techniques for analyzing qualitative data, the study identifies these salient characteristics influencing the development of department strategies to implement program review recommendations: department discipline, quality (national ranking); department chair role, agent of change, degree of change, topic of change, resource requirements, match with self-study, response to program review process, decision-making style, communication, autonomy, and self-efficacy. The results from this study suggest four broad strategies how departments within an institution respond to program review recommendations: (1) Let's seize the opportunities and maximize the outcomes; (2) It works, so don't fix it; (3) Reluctantly, let's do administrative bidding; and (4) Let's figure out how to help ourselves. Suggestions for improving the program review process focus on: design of the process, the self-study, sources of information, program review reports, follow-up meetings, the implementation phase, resource allocation, institutional vision, confidentiality, and rewards.