Originally posted March 14, 2016, on LindaSuskie.com
On April 17, 2016, I’m doing a pre-conference workshop at AGB’s National Conference on Trusteeship on “Creating and Using Dashboards to Monitor and Improve Institutional Performance.”
The most important question about dashboards is what your board should be tracking. I see two broad categories. The first is your institution’s health and well-being. Boards should be tracking answers to the following questions:
- Is your college community safe and healthy?
- Do you have enough resources: financial, human, capital, and technological?
- Do you have the right resources: financial, human, capital, and technological?
- Are your revenue sources sufficiently diverse?
- Is your college financially healthy?
The second broad category is how well your institution is keeping its promises—implicit as well as explicit—to its students and their families, your region, and taxpayers and others who support it. Boards should be tracking answers to the following questions:
- Are your students learning what your promise?
- Do your students succeed?
- How well does your college help students learn, develop, and succeed?
- Does your college contribute to economic development and to the public good?
- Is your college achieving what you promise in your mission and goals?
- Do you put your money where your mouth is—investing in keeping your promises?
- How efficiently do you deploy your resources?