The following email letter was sent to P. Gilkey on 12 May 2004 by Gretchen Schuette (President Chemeketa Community College). It is posted with permission

Subject: Charge for Excellence in Delivery and Productivity
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 12:28:26 -0700
From Gretchen Schuette: gschuette@chemeketa.edu

Dear Presidents and Provosts:

As chair of the Excellence in Delivery and Productivity work group, I would like to recapture here the charge to presidents and provosts that I gave as part of my work group report during the meeting of the State Board of Higher Education in La Grande.

You will recall I prefaced that charge-to report progress to the work group by June 11-with comments about my own learned wariness of providing interim reports, such as we have dared to provide in the open and inclusive ongoing process of the workgroup. Among the lessons that could be derived are both wariness of appearing to be at a point of final recommendation-prematurely bringing on the critics-and also wariness of appearing to be "done" by documentation of a first or second step in the work toward a still distant goal-prematurely encouraging resting on laurels.

As campus leaders, you have pledged to take a more active, public, and collaborative role in opening the doors of the universities to prepared Oregonians. I wish you well as you fulfill the charge to work with your faculties and staff-and with partners-to take on and be held accountable for overall OUS participation in statewide and student-centered progress to "more better faster."

I also stated in the board meeting in La Grande that I would try to make clearer the strategy the work group had been trying to use. It is this: we have been broadly seeking leadership to develop support for new ways of working together for the good of Oregonians; certainly, we have been seeking the leadership of the presidents and provosts of each university to work with the faculty and staff of their respective campuses to effect the coming together as a university system, along with other colleagues in education and state government, to fulfill Governor Kulongoski's charge to OUS.

Further, with the clarification of the role of the State Board of Higher Education and of the role of the new chancellor's office, presented at the board meeting in La Grande, the charge identified below to presidents and provosts comes with the support and understanding of that board, as stated at Friday's meeting and in subsequent conversation.

I hope the charge below is received as evidence of my shared commitment to a chancellor's office that is focused on service to the board's role in high level policy, strategy, and accountability for educational outcomes and is also received as evidence of my shared commitment to, and belief in, the ability of the presidents and the provosts, acting together, to be the bodies that directly address student access, community college articulation and partnerships, and cooperation among universities, as mandated in the re-organization documents.

I conferred with Jon Yunker on our trip back to Salem, and we agreed that clarifying the charge and the timelines under which we are working-in writing-would be helpful. I hope it is helpful, and I look forward to hearing of progress on these matters that are so important to the people of Oregon. As I also mentioned in La Grande, I will be out of the country from May 22 to June 4, so it may be helpful to work with Dave McDonald and whomever else is on point in the new structure, Susan Weeks and others reporting to her, as I understand it, so that they can assist you in preparing ways for me to get up to speed on my return, assuring an agenda for the June 11 meeting that will showcase the results of your work.

The Charge:

It has always been clear that campus-based leadership would be required to get from here to there, so to speak; the work group that has previously been engaged in trying to encourage that campus-based work and to shepherd the MBF progress with and on behalf of OUS instead will now look forward to receiving reports of that collective campus-based work and that collaboration with other sectors, now more obviously led by the presidents and provosts of the campuses and whatever additional leadership you enlist.

The State Board can then receive an assessment, undertaken by the board members who make up the Excellence in Delivery and Productivity workgroup, of the work led by provosts and presidents. Those work group board members can bring forward to the whole board, for policy alignment and accountability purposes, their perspective on the progress reported.

Governor Kulongoski has asked for this MBF work to be a priority and to move at a brisk pace, so we will endeavor to move forward together in the time frame outlined when the new board members were first asked to join the team. Considering the difficulties of scheduling, it may be prudent to work now to set a meeting of representatives from the presidents and the provosts with me, to occur subsequent to the June 11 work group meeting but before June 25, so that we may have a scheduled time to address any next steps that remain unattended to after the work group meeting on June 11. My assistant, Jeannie Odle, (503) 399-6591, can share possible times that work with my schedule.

I appreciate the messages I received in La Grande from the gathering of presidents and gathering of provosts that occurred there. I heard loud and clear that there is a desire to take on this work and to support my role as a board member, so I look forward to our continued progress. I would be happy to talk with anyone about my own evaluation of where we are on each of the seven elements, but we did cover the updates pretty well at the work group meeting Thursday. Dave McDonald and Connie Green of CCWD would be the best contacts for summaries of the overall work to date. I

n the phone call I received from Governor Kulongoski on Friday and in a one-on-one meeting today, he reiterated his support for the challenges I face in leading this part of his agenda. I am deeply grateful for that support. Clearly, the foundational work we have undertaken must be completed at a pace that respects the distance we have to travel to build a platform such as those built or under construction in other states, a pace that respects the immediate needs of Oregonians to enjoy the kind of student-centered, statewide post-secondary platform they deserve and on which our economic health depends. I look forward to helping in any way I can, and I will stand with you to champion the vision.

With great regard, Gretchen

So that you can more easily pick up on the collaborative efforts, here are the key contacts currently sustaining the work of the MoreBetterFaster work group: