Rodney D. Smith

Hampton University Strengthens Its Culture of Quality With TracDat

"The ultimate beneficiaries are our students, who will benefit from a more coordinated, uniform approach to teaching and evaluation."

DR. RODNEY D. SMITH, VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

Accountability permeates Hampton University's culture – from the code of conduct and dress every student follows to the university's long history of assessment and strategic planning geared to continuously improving every facet of campus life.

In 2008, at the directive of President William R. Harvey, an internal committee chaired by Administrative Vice President Dr. Rodney D. Smith drafted a plan for a more sustainable institutional assessment system. An internal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis revealed that despite annual planning and outcomes reporting, the University needed better ways of assessing how outcomes were achieved, and of developing continuous improvement plans.

"We have conducted assessment and planning for decades, but our process was not automated," explained Dr. Smith. Everything was in hard copy reports and turning these into a single report for planners was time-consuming.

The University needed a solution that enabled comprehensive data capture and allowed users to manipulate, organize and update data to support a far wider range of assessment, planning, improvement and reporting activities.

Strategic planning is another area where TracDat boosts productivity and adds value. "With the reports in TracDat now, we can review them, the report writers can make corrections immediately, and what used to take up to six hours now takes, at maximum, 30 minutes."

The University also enters tactical plans into TracDat so all goals, actions, critical dates and other data are available and may be tied to outcomes, completion dates and other KPIs. "Now we can report on them every six months instead of annually," Smith said. "For non-academic areas, it provides an easy-to-use management tool for tracking progress toward specific objectives," he said. "We can monitor our progress at set intervals and quickly adjust action plans, anticipated outcomes and measurable criteria, showing continuous improvement."