West Coast University

The 2000's are part of what has been aptly called "the age of accountability". Chief clerks and chief executive officers alike can expect to be held accountable for their actions.

So it comes as no surprise that higher education is coming under close scrutiny by all sorts of agencies and individuals. The failures of undergraduate education were widely reported in the press last year. And since the lifelong learning concept has made adult education the fastest growing segment of academia for more than three decade, we can expect a flurry of similar reports decrying that expansion and citing its excesses.

As a pioneer in the field, West Coast University now has a unique 98-year history of education expressly designed for the working adult. How have the institution and its programs evolved during this period? How well have we met and are we meeting our goals, the needs of our students and the demands of the community?

To assess our performance and evaluate our effectiveness, we have recently created task forces to answer two very different questions: 1.Are we doing the right thing? 2. Are we doing it right?

The first group's charter is to profile the adult learner, identify his/her educational needs, and examine effective means of addressing them. The MENTAL (Meeting the Educational Needs of the Adult Learner) Committee membership includes representatives from a variety of the university's internal and external constituencies. It is chaired by Dr. Russell O'Neill, an esteemed engineering educator. WCU trustee and former Dean of the UCLA School of Engineering.

The second task force is a strictly internal one, chaired by our Provost, Dr. Bertram Bussell, with broad membership from the university's faculty and administration. The DO-OR-DIE (Defining Outcomes and Optimizing Research to Determine Institutional Effectiveness) Committee will serve as the focus for enhanced university research activity, and will design and develop additional procedures and measures to assess WCU's academic and institutional efficacy.

We will be hearing about both of these task forces throughout the academic year, and certain that we all will benefit from their work.