As I ended my planning for my little company (see last post), I found myself thinking about SIUC. What does SIU want to be when it grows up, what are they planning to do and how do they communicate it to the employees, public and lawmakers?
If I was put in charge, my goal would be to extract about 10 to 20% more results out of my highly qualified, but mostly underpaid staff. How to do that you ask? I would go do a study of other universities that were well run and copy/steal their ideas? You know, standard best practices stuff.
It looks like the big plans for SIUC is to build a mess of buildings. That is it. I'm willing to bet that there is not path to success to be found through this method when you study other successful universities. It has to be about getting the people to have better results for the same money. It isn't about the buildings, it is about the people.
A very large problem that SIUC seems to have is that there is no message that makes sense. Building more buildings doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole Saluki Way, Southern at 150 seems to have no message for the workers or citizens that makes them think it is anything but a management boondoggle. We all know that the money for these long range plans is not there and will not be there unless the results of the current workers gets much better.
I have other thoughts, but that is enough for now.
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