Programs and Services
The Programs and Services unit administers WICHE’s three Student Exchange Programs and numerous other initiatives. A major new project overseen by Programs and Services is the State Scholars Initiative (SSI). In the fall of 2005, WICHE competed for and won the federal contract to oversee SSI, a national program that taps business leaders to motivate high school students to complete a rigorous course of study, one that will help them succeed in college and their careers. The SSI course of study includes: four years of English, three years of math (algebra I and II and geometry), three years of science (biology, chemistry and physics), three and a half years of social studies (U.S. history, world history, geography, economics or government), and two years of a language other than English. WICHE issued a national request for proposals and added eight new states to the SSI network, which now totals 22: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. WICHE assists the state business-education partnerships, each of which receives up to $300,000 during a two-year period to implement SSI programs in at least four school districts; local business-education partnerships work directly with students in those districts. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education funds the project.
Rising tuition and fees mean that students and their families are paying a greater share of postsecondary education costs today. WICHE’s three Student Exchange Programs help students to deal with rising costs and states to deal with increasing enrollments. The programs provide students in the West with opportunities to attend out-of-state institutions in the region at reduced costs; enable states to share educational resources; and allow higher education institutions to more effectively manage their enrollments. Last year, more than 21,000 students and their families saved over $106 million in reduced tuition costs by participating in just one of our programs, the Western Undergraduate Exchange. Here’s a debriefing on all three programs:
-
The Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) enrolled more than 20,000 students in public two- and four-year institutions in the West last year, allowing out-of-state students to pay 150 percent of the resident tuition rate, saving themselves and their families $106 million in tuition costs in 2005-06. One hundred and twenty-nine campuses have opened their doors to WUE students; colleges and universities can tailor the program to their individual campus needs. All 15 WICHE states participate; California students were recently granted full reciprocity under WUE, since more California institutions are receiving students from other WICHE states. Last year, WICHE completed a study of WUE student out-of-state migration patterns to better understand how this regional exchange affects student access and success, as well as states’ diverse higher education and economic needs. The results are published in a report titled “Student Migration: Relief Valve for State Enrollment and Demographic Pressures”
.
-
The Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP) helps students in 12 WICHE states to participate in 14 professional education programs in other Western states. In 2005-06, 677 students took advantage of this program. Each state determines the fields and the number of students it will support (programs are available in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, optometry, podiatry, osteopathic medicine, physician assistant, graduate nursing, graduate library studies, pharmacy, public health, and architecture).
-
The Western Regional Graduate Program (WRGP) enables students to enroll in some 175 distinctive graduate programs and pay resident tuition. Some three dozen institutions in 14 WICHE states (all but California) participate. New programs are added to WRGP every two years; a nomination round was completed this spring and 34 new programs were added, including: early childhood education, University of Alaska, Anchorage; cancer biology, University of Arizona; interdisciplinary telecommunications and M.B.A. dual degree, University of Colorado; intercultural youth and family development, University of Montana; educational linguistics, University of New Mexico; applied physics professional science master's, Oregon State University; materials engineering and science, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; neonatal nurse practitioner, University of Utah; interdisciplinary resource management, Central Washington University, and master’s in social work, University of Wyoming.
One of the future faces of student exchange is NEON (Northwest Educational Outreach Network), which focuses on learning at a distance, particularly in high-demand professions. A collaboration between WICHE and the Northwest Academic Forum (NWAF, see below), NEON is a 10-state group of institutions and state policymakers which fosters regional resource sharing and promotes innovative and collaborative efforts among its member institutions. WICHE developed NEON with a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Degree or certificate programs, each involving multiple institutions, are being expanded or created in three disciplines: nursing (Ph.D.), global supply chain management, and library media (graduate certificates). The WICHE Internet Course Exchange (WICHE ICE) is another outcome of the NEON project; it seeks to create discipline-based partnerships to lower the barriers to students seeking to enroll in courses from member institutions.
Staff is also sharing the academic collaboration strategies developed through the NEON project with another new collaborative effort in the West: NEXus (Nursing Education Xchange). Also funded by FIPSE, NEXus is creating a partnership among four colleges and schools of nursing to allow students to enroll in electronically delivered doctoral nursing courses offered by participating institutions. The consortium is based at the Western Institute of Nursing, and the pilot project partners are: Oregon Health & Science University, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Utah. Staff members have created a database and website to support NEON and NEXus institutions (and others in the future) as they participate in collaborative academic programs and course exchanges.
Last year, WICHE explored the need to establish rural mental health training initiatives, such as regional exchange programs or collaborative training ventures between states and institutions. WICHE’s Student Exchange and Mental Health programs conducted a survey of higher education institutions in the West to learn more about existing programs that prepare rural mental health professionals, as well as to identify programs that may be interested in expanding their outreach. They are currently working with seven Western universities – Boise State University, Colorado State University, University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Nevada Reno, the University of North Dakota, the University of Utah, and the University of Wyoming – to create the Western Consortium for Rural Social Work Education, in order to increase the number of M.S.W. and Ph.D.-prepared social workers who are committed to working in rural communities or as faculty members preparing students to serve rural clients. There is a shortage of doctorate-level social workers to serve as faculty to educate the workforce, particularly in rural states and states that do not have Ph.D. programs in this discipline. The participating institutions will recruit and retain doctoral candidates who will enroll in the online technology-enhanced doctorate offered by the University of Utah. Additionally, an online course exchange will enable the participating institutions to share courses focused on social work practice in rural and frontier areas. The participating M.S.W. and Ph.D. programs will expand their enrollments by offering these online courses. They will jointly offer a graduate certificate in rural social work practice to enhance the professional training of current practitioners. One of the program’s main benefits: Practitioners will be able to remain in the workforce and in their communities while they build their skill set, an especially important factor for those in rural areas.
To help states pinpoint these and other workforce training and education needs, Programs and Services produces a series of Workforce Briefs each year, detailing workforce projections in each of our 15 member states, with an emphasis on the health professions and other fields covered in PSEP.
Closing the educational achievement gap for historically underrepresented students was the focus of our work with the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, which expanded its Equity Scorecard project to more institutions last year. Developed by Estela Mara Bensimon, professor of higher education and the director of the CUE, the project helps institutions to better understand how they are improving the educational success of racial and ethnic minority students (and where they are not successful) and then assists teams of faculty members and administrators to develop strategies for addressing deficiencies. CUE received a planning grant to support expansion of the Equity Scorecard project beyond California to other institutions in the West. WICHE worked with CUE on a demonstration project at two institutions in Colorado – Fort Lewis College in Durango and Metropolitan State College of Denver – to develop comprehensive plans to enhance the educational experiences and outcomes of underrepresented minority students at those campuses.
Helping colleges and universities control costs is the focus of two Programs and Service projects. WICHE collaborates with the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) on the Master Property Program (MPP), which leverages better property insurance rates for institutions. MPP provides comprehensive property coverage related to higher education needs and enhances institutions’ risk management and asset protection strategies. Its engineering and loss-control services are tailored to member institutions’ requirements, as well as to the group as a whole. The program has generated some $23 million in savings for participating institutions and affords its members the opportunity to earn dividends based on annual loss ratios. Members currently include 46 institutions (71 campuses) with total insured values of $47 billion. The University and Community College System of Nevada, the first system in the WICHE region to participate in MPP, saved nearly a million dollars during each of the past two years.
Programs and Services also works to build college, university, and other educational organizations’ participation in the American TelEdCommunications Alliance (ATAlliance), a national initiative created in 2001 by WICHE and the three other regional higher education organizations (the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, the New England Board of Higher Education, and the Southern Regional Education Board) along with MiCTA, a national nonprofit technology association based in Michigan. The ATAlliance brings schools, colleges, and state education agencies together to improve services while offering a best-pricing model, providing improved purchasing options and access to cutting-edge technologies and telecommunications via competitively bid contracts. The ATAlliance is expanding its services to include to voice-over-Internet (VoIP) service, in addition to products related to e-learning course management, voice, video, wireless, computer hardware and software, power and energy management programs, library equipment and office supplies.
Programs and Services provides staff support to the 10-state Northwest Academic Forum (NWAF), a regional consortium that fosters interstate and interinstitutional cooperation and advocates technology-based solutions to higher education access issues. Thirty-one master’s and doctoral-level institutions and 10 states participate in the forum; they are represented by their provosts, vice presidents of academic affairs, and state academic officers. Since 1984, the forum has addressed regional higher education issues and fostered new initiatives aimed at resource sharing, helping to create WCET (the Western Consortium for Educational Telecommunications), the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, and NorthWestNet. The forum’s 2006 annual meeting, at Montana State University, Bozeman, on April 28-29, focused on strategies to elevate higher education’s role in achieving academic excellence, internationalizing higher education, and enhancing economic development in the Northwest.