Strategic Pathways: The University of Alaska's path to even higher education.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: EDUCATION

In 2016 the University of Alaska (UA) launched Strategic Pathways, a plan to "maximize value to Alaska through excellent, accessible, and cost-effective higher education." An early draft was published in February 2016, and three years later UA has made significant strides in pursuing its goals.

Progress with Pathways

According to UA President Jim Johnsen. "Many of the decisions resulting from the Strategic Pathways process have been implemented or are in the implementation process." For example, within the UA system there used to be three schools of management, but now there are two; there were several procurement processes that have been streamlined into one; multiple email platforms have been turned into one; and several grants and contracting processes have been simplified to one.

In December 2016, the UA Board of Regents voted to locate the administrative functions of the Alaska College of Education at the University of Alaska Southeast, which now takes on a new leadership role in teacher education for the university system.

Johnsen emphasizes that while a program may be led from one campus, opportunities to participate in that program are still available to students at other locations. "University of Alaska Anchorage [UAA] still has a School of Education, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks [UAF] still has a School of Education, but we felt it was important from a performance and accountability viewpoint to designate one of our campuses as the lead. It's very similar to the structure we have for our nursing programs. Those are led out of UAA, but we still have nursing programs across the system." In this framework, the lead campus collaborates with the other programs and plays a vital role in coordinating and aligning the programs available at all three universities.

According to a Strategic Pathways update presented to the UA Board of Regents in September 2018, initiatives involving engineering, teacher education, management/business, fisheries, and mine training programs have been completed, and initiatives related to health programs, arts and humanities, social and natural sciences, human resources, university relations, institutional research, information technology, finance, and facilities and land management are being implemented. General Education Requirement and academic calendar alignment also are being put in place. Looking forward, process improvements, research administration, eLeaming, risk management, and plans related to athletics and community campuses are ongoing. "We are trying to answer the question: How can we do more for the state with less money?" Johnsen explains. "So we did some structural moves and focused on...