SOEST Progress Report (2019)

The 2019 SOEST One Year Progress Report, provides the following ideas for a departmental dashboard. In the case of SOEST, it might be useful to have individual dashboards for each department, plus a college-level dashboard to track aggregate numbers.

On Faculty and staff positions

From the one year review:

Like every public university and college in the nation, UH Manoa and SOEST are in worse shape today than one year ago, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic recession. Already, SOEST has had 10 staff positions and 9 faculty positions indiscriminately swept by the Legislature (because they happened to be vacant at the time – even if only just vacated or about to be filled). In addition, UH has “centralized” all Colleges cash reserves ($1.5M in our case). We've had further retirements of faculty and staff, but all positions are frozen and no recruiting/replacements are permitted.

One simple widget could track the total number of faculty and staff positions in SOEST. It might also be useful to see these numbers in relation to extramural funding.

On undergraduate majors

From the one year review:

Thanks to a “bumper crop” of freshman, our numbers of fall undergraduate majors are up 14% on last year!

A widget could display the total number of undergraduate majors each AY.

On national recognition

From the one year review:

Our faculty and students continue to make us proud with their national recognition: Dr. Bo Qiu has been notified that he will receive the 2021 Henry Stommel Research Medal, the highest award that the American Meteorological Society can bestow upon an oceanographer. Led by students from the Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering, a UH team placed first nationally in the Department of Energyʻs Marine Energy Collegiate Competition, with the winning design and presentation of a floating/drifting wave energy converter feeding power via a docking station to an underwater vehicle.

A widget could provide access to the awards and recognition of faculty, staff, and students on an annual basis. This is a non-numeric widget, the actual number per year is not useful. But SOEST receives enough awards and honors on a yearly basis that access to information about awards and honors would be important to understand the "state" of the department.

On mentoring

The one year review indicates that mentoring and reviews need improvement:

"Departments do not have a consistent set of standards about ... review of progress for graduate students", "Post-docs need ... consistent mentoring that is not only focused on 1 advisor", and "Pre-tenure faculty need more consistent mentoring...".

While the one year review indicates that changes have been made in an effort to address this problem, they have not (yet) put in place assessment mechanisms to see if these three groups (graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty) actually feel like they are receiving adequate mentoring.

One way to address this is a short, annual, confidential questionnaire distributed to each group, which asks questions designed to assess the quality, availability, and impact of mentoring. The aggregate results of this dashboard could be displayed as a way to see if mentoring is adequate, or at least improving over time.

On gender inequity and the workplace environment

The one year review states:

Of all the interviews run by the visiting committee, none was more striking than the meeting with the Women in SOEST (WiS) group, who had provided a document – signed by more than 70 individuals – listing concerns regarding gender inequity and the workplace environment at SOEST.

Again, steps have been taken to change the environment as well as the formation of focus groups, a Search Advocate workshop, and reaching out to a Marine Sciences BIPOC group.

If these activities could result in a yearly confidential questionnaire, with aggregate results available through a widget, then a dashboard could provide visibility into the success of initiatives to address the workplace environment.

On budget and budget policies

The one year review states:

The Department of Oceanography believes the SOEST budget and budget policies should all be available online in one accessible place to assure transparency.

A dashboard could be part of the way that the desired transparency could be achieved.