August 19, 2013

The purpose of the President’s Special Task Force is to review and assess administrative and academic programs at the University. A “program” is defined as any unit that uses resources (e.g., people, dollars, equipment) and provides “a produce or service that has a specific target audience and has a particular set of closely-related goals, outputs, and outcomes associated with it”   (see http://www.brocku.ca/program-review/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/informationsession20130816.pdf). Members in roles such as Chair or Director will be asked to identify and then submit a report on each academic program (e.g., each degree program within a Department or Centre), as well as department/centre administrative offices. On the basis of these reports, Task Force members plan to sort these programs into a series of hierarchical categories (e.g., top 20%, next 20%).  At the top of this hierarchy will be programs that the Task Force judges to be worthy of enriched funding; at the bottom the Task Force will place those programs that it has identified as candidates for reduction in funding, phasing out, or consolidation. .....