Attendees:
Committee members: Brian Boyle, Phil Woolwine, Cassie Phillips, Janet Wainwright, Duane Kelley, Jim Dooley, Roger Hoesterey, Ann Forest Burns, Doug Sutherland, Bob Alverts, Maureen Frisch, Dana Rasmussen
Faculty: Dean Bruce Bare, Bob Edmonds, Steve West, Gordon Bradley
Staff: Tom Mentele, Sarah Westbrook, Cecilia Paul, Michelle Trudeau
UW Media Relations: Sandra Hines

Introductions:
Brian Boyle briefly overviewed the agenda and then we went around the room for introductions. The minutes from the prior meeting were approved by motion.

UW Relations and Communications:
Cecilia Paul and Sandra Hines gave a brief overview on the way the media and press releases work at the University of Washington. Cecilia began by saying that she welcomes help and input from outside partners. She has been focusing primarily on redesigning and revamping the College website, and she will send the link to the visiting committee for suggestions. A major website goal is to align closely with the University campaign look and feel.

Sandra Hines then gave a brief overview of UW Relations. There are currently three offices; athletics, medicine, and her area, which covers the rest of campus. These offices publish everywhere from journals to National Public Radio. She observed that the trend for science coverage has dramatically declined since 1990, going from roughly 90 science sections to only a dozen or so.

Jim Dooley then asked about the role of communications and input from outside sources about joint private-UW projects. Cecilia responded that she is interested and to email ideas to her, bearing in mind communication deadlines. Bob Alverts commented that on the Visiting Committee alone there is a tremendous wealth of science information that would align with the College, and that there should be collaboration between the two parties for media stories, and to get the word out about the College. Brian further agreed with this, stating that cross promotions such as Jim suggested should be valuable.

Janet Wainwright observed that she thinks the College is too humble in promoting itself. In order to get the College recognized more it needs to boast of its many achievements. Tom then followed up by adding that President Emmert had stated that we are not good at telling our own story as a University.

Northwest Environmental Forum Update:
Brian Boyle gave a brief update on the Saving Washington’s Working Forest Forum, which will convene again later this year on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving weekend. The report of the Forum can be found on the CFR website. He also mentioned the $1 million Legislative appropriation through Washington DNR to the College, which can be found at:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/2005-06/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Passed%20Legislature/6090-S.PL.pdf

(See page 102, line 23 for the specific language.)

College Update:
Dean Bruce Bare spoke briefly about progression planning, in other words, the strategy for both replacement of capabilities as retirements occur and for adding new organizational capabilities. His main priorities are to hire new faculty and revise the strategic plan and the research vision. He is also trying to further work on the recruitment of new students, which has been down, but has shown some promising increases as students have examined the new curriculum. The curriculum advances opportunities for first year enrollments and transfers as well.

CFR Directions Committee Survey:
Associate Dean Steve West presented the current operating agenda from the College of Forest Resources Strategic Planning Retreat. At this retreat the three year goals were updated, and a Steering Committee was formed that will function until the end of the fall retreat. The three year goals (2002-05) that are being examined are as follows:

1) Attract and retain the highest quality staff, students and faculty
2) Build and upgrade facilities and laboratories, especially Merrill Hall and the Environmental Forum, consistent with sustainable building practices.
3) Develop and maintain dynamic, creative leadership throughout the College
4) Strengthen open communication, respect, accountability and sustainability of our organizational culture
5) Broaden and increase financial support
6) Implement and nurture the new undergraduate curricula and other science-based sustainability programs

The greatest area of achievement in these goals is implementing and nurturing the new undergraduate curricula. In addition to this, there was a college wide survey completed on May 9th that encompassed both positive and negative issues occurring at the College. This is in the committee packet. The responses from the survey were then sent to focus groups, who will in turn give goals for the college to work on. Steve is now asking the committee to serve as a focus group.

Steve invited members of the visiting committee to attend the all-College meeting on June 3rd to hear and participate in goals and ideas development. He asked the committee to now contemplate the following areas:
College culture
Leadership
Outreach
Development
Outcome Assessment

It was hoped that the committee members would create 1-2 draft goals and associated one year objectives, which would in turn be presented at the All College Meeting.

At this point the discussion turned to direct feedback, starting with Ann Forest Burns, CFRAA President, who brought up the importance of student satisfaction. This issue had been brought up at a previous CFRAA meeting, and Ann stated that in terms of goals, it should be students satisfaction, for they can “vote with their feet,” that is, they can decide to go elsewhere if their goals are not being met by the College.

Cassie Phillips then commented that she thought the 2002-05 goals were good ones and inline with the restarting of the College after a rocky period. She further commented that the College could be great, and that is the perfect place to have a top Forestry School. She then said that the problem is that the College is disassociated, and that it really needs to reconnect and reach out. If this were the case the College would be in a position of turning students away.

In response to this Janet Wainwright stated that the major problem is a lack of passion on behalf of the College, and that in order to be a successful top college this is needed.

Bruce Bare brought up two areas of concern – first, there are tremendous pressures to consolidate forestry into something bigger, and second, the curriculum is currently an experiment. That is, we don’t know if it will succeed, and there needs to be a way to monitor this.

Jim Dooley then responded that we need to make measurable progress at being the number one school, with some sort of numeric way of measuring our success.

Ann further commented that the students are the leaders now, and we need to listen to them in order to find out what needs to happen and what trends to follow. As a follow up Roger Hoesterey added that the number one goal of the College needs to be educating more students to give back to the community. He also argued that redoing Anderson Hall should be more important than concentrating on redoing Pack Forest. It’s time for the 2005 and beyond goals document to be focused on students instead of the institution.

Duane Kelley explained that the $60 million Arboretum Master Plan has now been adopted by the City of Seattle and UW, and is a way for the College to “toot its own horn” and to gain recognition. College goals should include the Master Plan explicitly.

Cassie asked if there was standardized data available on the College, e.g., number of grads that the committee could consider.

Doug Sutherland then commented that as a College we can’t lose track of benchmarking goals, and not to lose sight of what we have accomplished. He also stressed that the College goals need a longer horizon than three years, to correspond with the horizon of undergrad and graduate students, and proposed a minimum of six years, 2005-11.

At this point Gordon Bradley stated that we need to not get too caught up in goals and objectives, but rather to use the committee to share their own perspectives. Bob Alverts then followed up that the handout should be used as good background only, and then we should reframe from there.

Tom then posed the question; if it were perfect what would it mean to you?

Roger stated that there are four areas needed to be a world class institution of science and research, which are:
Student Education
Research
Field Applications
Community Dialogue

Bruce then commented that President Emmert is trying to give UW a new vision, which is as follows
Creating Futures
Transforming Lives
Change the World

At this point the discussion concluded, and the committee was asked to take time to think about goals and objectives that could be submitted to Steve West before the June 3 meeting. Brian stated that he would pass on the committee’s recommendations to Steve, based on this discussion. (This was sent to the committee and Steve May 26.) Steve stressed that the College committee would be working through the summer on this and would submit its work to the visiting committee for feedback at its next meeting, before the faculty met in mid-September. The next visiting committee meeting was then proposed to be held on the morning of September 9th, which is also the date for Cassie Phillips’ campaign committee. This will be confirmed at a later date.

3:30 adjourn.