Posted: July 13th, 2016

xamine information from a broad range of sources including higher education.

The Problem:
McHenry University is a 120 year-old comprehensive private university offering undergraduate and graduate programs on two separate campuses.  The graduate campus, led by a Board of Regents, is located in the metro region serving mainly non-traditional adult students. The graduate campus has 3 Schools—the School of Education, School of Health Science, and School of Business. The University’s Board of Regents recently publicized its intention to propose that all graduate school deans begin using data driven decision making processes for monitoring and improving their schools and programs within each school. This new approach is expected to begin the next fiscal year—11 months from now.  The president is on board with the idea and appointed you to coordinate the process by developing a professional development plan and supervising each of the three deans through the task of incorporating the procedure in each of their schools. Programs directors in each school are aware that they will need to incorporate this procedural change into their practices. There are already signs of resistance bubbling up among the more seasoned directors who have in demonstrated lack of self-control and effectively shutting down meetings the past.

Question #1:
Review the literature on data driven decision making.  Examine information from a broad range of sources including higher education.  Also do a comprehensive literature review on leadership and how leaders bring about change in their organizations and deal with resistance to change including disruptive behaviors.

Question#2:
Using the research from Question #1 prepare a professional development plan to assist the deans in learning to use and coach others in data driven decision making. As a leader you will also need to design an implementation plan to bring about this change in the way administrators and program directors make decisions and how you will deal with those who may resist the change through failing to keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check.

Question #3:
Generate an assessment plan to assist you in determining the effectiveness of the plan developed in Question #2. What is your theory of effectiveness? Identify the data that you’ll need to measure your theory of effectiveness, design an instrument to collect your data, and establish a means by which you will ascertain the reliability and validity of your instrument.