WSU programs get back in the game – Higher standards help business college turn the corner

Bottom of the ninth. Two out. Two strikes. Grizzled, hard-throwing Don Parker on the mound. Rookie Len Jessup at the plate.

It was the summer of 2002, and the side from the Washington State University College of Business and Economics was in big trouble.

Bert Caldwell
The Spokesman-Review

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=052304&ID=s1521814&cat=section.business

The school was close to losing its accreditation by the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Years of shrinking budgets and interim leadership had set the program adrift. The college, which offered twice as many
majors as its peer institutions, had lost focus. The budget was in the red.

Losing accreditation would have been an acknowledgment the college no longer aspired to excellence.

Jessup had taken over as dean June 1, and immediately had to cut the budget by 3 percent. But the former assistant director of the college’s accounting, information systems and business law programs says he, like most of the faculty, was unaware how extensive the college’s problems were. Few had seen a blunt 16-point critique prepared in 2000 by the association’s accreditation team. The college, it said, was doing a poor job of measuring faculty scholarship. Standards were fuzzy, and casually enforced. There was no way to assure students were receiving a quality education.

Parker, dean emeritus of the business school at Oregon State University, chaired the three-person accreditation team. For two years, he says, leadership at the WSU business school denied there was a problem, instead suggesting the team was being unreasonable. In the meantime, the clock was ticking toward expiration of the three-year period the college had to make the necessary changes.

When Jessup and associate deans Eric Spangenberg and M. Chris Paxson took over, the attitude changed. They rallied the scattered faculty members who remained on campus during the 2002 summer, and prepared a point-by-point action plan explaining how the college would comply with association’s requirements. In late August, they presented the memo to a startled faculty. Jessup says that if Parker had not been present to draw the dire baseball analogy, the faculty might not have understood the situation’s gravity.

Although skeptics remained, Spangenberg says the meeting crystallized for many what they had sensed on their own; a lack of direction.

So majors were cut from 19 to 10. The grade-point average required for graduation was increased. Faculty standards were raised, and penalties and incentives were implemented to encourage compliance. Denial of tenure to a few professors drove home how serious the leadership was about reform.

“We changed everything you can think of,” Jessup says.

Their efforts were backed by WSU President V. Lane Rawlins, Provost Robert Bates and the faculty senate, which approved the changes — overwhelmingly. But 18 months is not much time to turn around an academic institution, and Spangenberg recalls he was not sure the accreditation team’s deadline would be met despite a six-month extension. “That first year was overwhelming,” he says.

Paxson says the curriculum and ways of teaching had stagnated. But as standards were raised, and measures of performance improved, so did outcomes. “You always feel better about what you are doing when you know the quality is improving,” she says.

WSU’s urban campuses in Spokane, Vancouver and the Tri-Cities have readily adapted to the changes, Paxson adds.

Jessup says initial resistance has given way to enthusiasm about the changes at every level, from undergraduate students to university administration. To raise the campus profile of the school, housed in the otherwise nondescript Todd Hall, a banner was hung above Terrell Mall when accreditation was awarded last month. A multimedia Gallery of Excellence was created over either end of a foyer that houses a popular snack bar.

“We tend not to celebrate excellence,” Jessup laments.

But various publications that rank individual programs like hospitality, entrepreneurship, and international business have noticed. Jessup says information systems may be next.

The higher standards have already attracted new faculty from institutions like Cornell University, the top-ranked hospitality school, and Babson College, a leader in entrepreneurship. Enrollment has increased despite the higher grade requirements. There are 2,200 business majors in Pullman, 500 more at the urban campuses, and 200 graduate students. About 3,000 non-business majors take some courses. Some students must be turned away. And Jessup says he is already concerned about how the school will control growth in its distance-learning programs.

He says alumni and donors are taking notice. Major gifts have picked up, and he has met with potential donors who previously had little time for the college. “People are confident of us and are willing to invest in us,” he says.

Although other Inland Northwest business schools are also accredited, Parker says the bar was higher for WSU because the college offers so many programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels. “WSU has decided to play in the big leagues,” he says.

Parker, who has performed dozens of reviews over the last 20 years, could remember few schools as challenged as WSU. “I have never seen one make such a dramatic turnaround,” he says. “I think it was a real team effort, including the faculty.”

The new leaders say accreditation is just the start. They want to benchmark best practices at the Top 25 business schools, and adopt those appropriate for Pullman. They want to show other institutions and other colleges within WSU what they have accomplished. Jessup says entrepreneurship, for example, will be infused into other academic programs around the campus.

Traumatic as the accreditation process may have been, Jessup says college faculty and staff have collectively become more ambitious.

“It showed people just how much we can do,” he says.

Adds Spangenberg: “We’re not done yet.”