Official Charge to the Task Force
Issued October 2016
This group is charged both with closely examining the Carnegie Mellon University experience, and with developing near-term and long-term recommendations to enhance that experience and ensure student success. Some steps may be taken as soon as this summer, and the Task Force will submit a full progress report to the President by the end of 2016. The Task Force should be attentive to what drives our excellence and achievement, as well as the risks associated with the hard-charging environment and stress culture common at highly-selective universities. Though the initial focus of the Task Force’s work will be on the student experience, it will also review key issues facing faculty and staff as appropriate. Recommendations should reflect our shared aspiration to become a national model for a community that helps all its members to flourish.The Task Force will consider the following as a set of steps to guide their work:
1. Work with Institutional Research and Analysis and other campus offices to capture existing information on student and alumni perceptions of the CMU experience, including satisfaction and persistence data;
2. Conduct focus groups with current undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, faculty, staff, and parents to inform their understanding of current strengths and areas of concern within the global campus community;
3. Review research on best practices and benchmark CMU against relevant peer institutions, with special focus on those institutions that provide a supportive environment for high-achieving students to thrive;
4. Make recommendations which enhance the CMU experience and identify the associated stakeholders on a rolling basis, so that ideas which mature quickly can be implemented without delay from those which may take more time to develop; and
5. Create a community engagement plan that includes a web portal and set of opportunities for in-person engagement with student, faculty, staff, and alumni for the fall semester of 2016.