The Group Norms and Processes Dimension: University Innovation Alliance

• In Event: Collaborative Engagement in Higher Education Reform Networks: Applying a Framework to Understand Network Dynamics

Abstract

The University Innovation Alliance (UIA) is a national coalition of 11 public research universities committed to increasing the number and diversity of college graduates in the United States. The UIA’s original goal was to increase the number of graduates across the campuses by 68,000 by 2025. It is now well on its way to reach over 100,000 by 2023. The premise is that higher education needs to do a better job of graduating students across the socioeconomic spectrum, particularly low-income students, first-generation students, and students of color. The network’s work is done through sharing an scaling innovative ideas, and diffusing learning from the scale projects across all of higher education.

While all aspects of the Collaborative Dynamics Framework are relevant to the creation and successful functioning of the UIA, the presenter will focus on the “Group Norms and Processes” dimension. In particular, the sub-themes of congruity, interaction, and improvement are pivotal to the smooth functioning of the UIA. The UIA formed organically due to the senior leaders of the universities having a shared commitment to improving the campus experience for underserved students. A group of leaders met during a national meeting and began discussing the challenges underserved students faced and what as institutions they were doing to mitigate those roadblocks. As the conversations continued and the group got smaller, key shared principles, values, and direction emerged. These shared beliefs are key to the work of the UIA as well as the core principle that the work is best done in a collaborative fashion. As noted above, the UIA sets alliance wide goals and members rely on each other to reach them. While the core principles are what unite the institutions, the work is structured around the understanding that the UIA involves 11 different institutions with different priorities, campus cultures, and needs. Working to understand which student success initiatives are scalable, the network focuses on how members differ and how this may impact the success of an initiative.

Beyond foundational beliefs and principles, the UIA is successful largely due to well-thought-out structures and mechanisms to do the work. The UIA has regularly structured times where the disparate campuses and staff get together. Whether that is a bi-monthly video conference call, in-person meetings several times a year, or monthly project updates, they have structured and planned times to communicate and conduct business. They also have structured reports for their scale projects which ensure the learning is captured and disseminated across the institutions. Tied to this, the UIA has created specific data definitions and shared metrics to use across the campuses to ensure all identify data in the same way and report the same information. These are just a few examples of how the UIA has created various group norms and processes to aid their work. The speaker in this section will expand and elaborate on these examples as well as share resources that participants can take back to their work.

Author

• Renata Opoczynski, Michigan State University