May 2005

Middle States Reaccreditation Subcommittees

Miyares Works to Paint a Picture of an Ever-Changing University

By Stefanie Johnson
Special to FYI Online

	Javier Miyares

“UMUC is a unique animal,” said Javier Miyares, vice president for planning and accountability at UMUC. “The planning process here is very dynamic, changing as new opportunities arise. Describing this process, when it is not static, is a challenge. It is like trying to change the tires while the bus is still running.”

For the past year, Miyares has chaired the resource allocation and institutional renewal subcommittee for the Middle States review. The committee was charged with examining the institutional planning process, resulting resource allocation, and subsequent assessment of outcomes.

It isn’t easy to paint a single picture of activities that represents a decade of rapid growth and change at UMUC. Since the last Middle States evaluation, UMUC has changed drastically with the development of online education.

“With all of the changes that have taken place at UMUC over the past 10 years, and all of the new people that have joined the staff, it is human to think that the world begins with you, but there is a UMUC before me that we had to dig up,” said Miyares. “I have been surprised at how much of the current planning is organically rooted in the past. We were fortunate to find some people with institutional memory who could direct us to the necessary documents and resources.”

Finding such people, in a University that straddles three continents and encompasses tens of thousands of faculty, staff, and students, required hundreds of hours of research, largely in the form of interviews.

“We interviewed many people at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level,” said Tatiana Kweder, Miyares’ administrative assistant, who spent hours organizing the mountain of information that the committee accumulated. “Going through the interviews was a really eye-opening process. It was a phenomenal experience to have the opportunity to look at the institution that I work for in such a unique and detailed way.”

Even with all of the technological resources UMUC offers, communication across such a geographically dispersed “campus” requires enormous amounts of patience and persistence, and Miyares estimates that the project has absorbed 20 percent of his time over the past year.

“In maintaining accreditation, it is important that we convey to Middle States that we have taken a very serious look at ourselves,” said Miyares. “That is the essence of the process—that there was serious collective introspection about where we are coming from, where we are, and where we are going.”

The output of the committee’s work is a 17-page document that is now in its fourth and final draft with the steering committee. The committee’s findings have been encouraging.

“This process has confirmed that we are on the right track,” said Miyares. “UMUC follows a planning strategy that is unique among other universities. We are very akin to many businesses. Allocation of resources and decision-making is very centralized, while strategies for implementation take a broad base of feedback into account. This entrepreneurial, business-like approach has allowed us to survive without the level of state aid that other universities receive.”

Miyares speaks from a wealth of experience. Prior to joining UMUC, he served for nine years as associate vice chancellor for finance and administration with the University System of Maryland (USM). Before that, he worked as a researcher for the Maryland Higher Education Commission, in Annapolis, for 14 years. And he has completed all the coursework leading to a PhD in educational measurement and statistics, although he never completed his dissertation.

“UMUC really is such an exciting place to work,” said Miyares. “It is different from any of the other positions that I have had. Every day I come to work and there are new challenges and opportunities, and there is a sense of excitement in that. The people who work here are truly invested in the institution.”

The resource allocation and institutional renewal subcommittee included representatives from stateside and overseas, including Steve Crouch, comptroller for UMUC Asia, and Valerie Mock, director of graduate programs for UMUC Europe. Stateside committee members included Nanette Mack, director of scheduling for the Office of Scheduling, Patricia McKenna, executive assistant in the Graduate School, Tana Bishop, associate dean of the Graduate School, and Jennifer Thompson, assistant dean of the Graduate School.

For more about the Middle States reaccreditation subcommittees, see the earlier stories about Alan Berg, Pamela Monaco, and Art Huseonica.