How to help UND LEADS: Add to Activity Inventory

By using the new tool, campus community members can convey how they’re contributing to the work of UND LEADS

By Ryan Zerr

Two years ago this month, the “launch” event for the UND LEADS Strategic Plan was held. Since then, our collective efforts have turned the plan from concept into reality in many different ways.

And with the launch of the LEADS Activity Inventory last November, we now have a tool that can give a bird’s-eye view of our progress.

For instance, as of Jan. 1, 148 items have been added to the activity inventory.  These items are all associated with one or more LEADS Core Values, and through these associations, we can identify which areas of the plan are well represented within the inventory items.

The “L” and “S” in LEADS currently take the prize, with 30% and 27% of items, respectively, associated with the Learning and Service Core Values.  Meanwhile, the “E,” “A,” and “D” balance each other well, with each falling in the 13% to 16% range.

Does this mean implementation’s progress is falling behind in these three key areas?  Not necessarily.  For one, the conclusions we can draw from the Activity Inventory are dependent on the information that has been submitted.  It may simply be that examples of activities associated with Equity, Affinity and Discovery are occurring but not yet reported.

Another potential explanation concerns the nature of items within the inventory. Each submission counts as a single item within the above statistics. A small number of highly-impactful initiatives in one area may have an outsized influence on our campus-wide work.

To gain insight into this latter point, the Activity Inventory also identifies each activity’s home using a three-tier system. An initiative originating at the division level represents activity coordinated across a broad institutional unit – such as Academic Affairs or Student Affairs. The lowest level corresponds to academic departments or other types of individual offices across campus. Between these two are units such as colleges, UIT and HR.

Through this lens, it’s possible to determine that just under half of the current list of activities originates at the middle level. The department level is home to nearly 40%, with divisions coordinating the remaining 12%.

We might conclude a couple of things from this. On one hand, the counts noted above for activities associated with the Core Values appear to be skewed toward items that are likely of a somewhat smaller scale. These smaller-scale items happen to skew toward “L” and “S” connections, and thus there’s some evidence to suggest that the overall impacts of the current inventory of activities is more evenly distributed across the Core Values than might be suggested through the statistics noted above.

Another conclusion, also positive in nature, is that department-level units are engaging in LEADS work at an encouraging rate. This represents a consistency throughout the lifetime of the plan, which was developed through a process with broad engagement and participation.

Seeing evidence of continued broad-scale commitment to LEADS as part of implementation provides a signal that our collective investment in the plan’s success has not changed over time.

More insights will be in store as the work of LEADS implementation continues. And as we continue that work, celebrating it through the simple process of adding it to the Activity Inventory will help bring it the attention it deserves.

The LEADS webpage provides information on how the submission process works – which is both simple and quick. Please use this tool to help tell the story of your contributions to the work of UND LEADS.

About the author:

Professor of Mathematics Ryan Zerr is associate vice president for Strategy & Implementation at UND.

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>> Questions or comments about the UND LEADS Strategic Plan? Your thoughts are welcome! Please contact Mike Wozniak, coordinator of Leadership & Programming, and/or Ryan Zerr, associate vice president for Strategy & Implementation, the co-chairs of the UND LEADS Implementation Committee. You also may offer your thoughts by visiting the UND LEADS Strategic Plan home page and clicking on the “Provide your feedback” link.

Thank you for your support of the UND LEADS Strategic Plan!