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What conclusions can be drawn from the narrative of the four previous sections? Are there any basic remedies as well as recommendations for the future? This section attempts to integrate the discussions in the four previous sections. First it must be noted that the university faces five inter-related challenges that must be met before it can become a model for the optimum acquisition and enhancement of resources. These five challenges are enumerated and described below.

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Cal Poly Pomona is a university that prides itself on its polytechnic tradition and strong teaching tradition. What is unique and different about a degree from Cal Poly Pomona? Should Cal Poly Pomona grow, and if yes, then what does it want to become? These questions relate to a common shared vision, and our research indicates that there are many competing answers to all of them. Group discussions would be productive in creating more sharing of answers. The broadly shared vision should be unbounded but related to the California Master Plan for Higher Education

Cal Poly Pomona’s lack of shared vision pervades and inhibits much planning, allocation, curriculum development, and assessment. Cal Poly Pomona will not become the preeminent comprehensive polytechnic university we strive to be until the vision is shared and the identity becomes a reality.

It is an accepted axiom that planning is followed by the allocation of funding to carry out the plan, which is followed by an assessment of the success of the completed plan. Following this axiom, Cal Poly Pomona must develop a planning model that it is comfortable with. Once this has been accomplished, campus plans may be considered by the various budget committees, funded, and the outcomes assessed. The already vigorous academic debate on the subject can be devoted to designing a plan that permits latitude for diverse programs, academic freedom, and flexibility to meet changing environmental factors, as well as promoting stability.

Various colleges take extra steps to recruit faculty with the right ‘polytechnic’ attitude. The College of Engineering’s standard position description includes a requirement of five years’ relevant industrial and research experience. Other Colleges, such as Environmental Design and Business Administration, encourage their faculty to consult off campus. Currently there is a push for all departments and Colleges to form university industrial partnerships. Whether these partnerships are between a leading irrigation material supplier and the Landscape Irrigation Center in the College of Agriculture or an active relationship between the Department of Chemistry and the painting industry, it takes special faculty to form these partnerships. The university should recognize and develop faculty of this type.

The budget reinforces the feeling of lack of respect on the part of faculty. As the budget gets tighter, the university relies more than ever on adjunct faculty. Full-time adjunct faculty have a high teaching load and teach at lower cost per course credit than tenure track faculty. However, it should be noted that the adjunct faculty are well prepared; many have terminal degrees, contribute to the design of the curriculum, serve on major departmental committees, and add rather than detract from the quality of the educational program at Cal Poly Pomona.

The problems of staff and students have been well defined in Theme One. Respondents from both categories expressed attitudes of low sense of appreciation and poor treatment on at least some occasions. Fair, kind, just, appropriate, appreciative treatment of all personnel and students is a must.

Many faculty and administrators point to the relatively recent formation of budget committees at the university and academic affairs level as signs of positive change in the resource area. The process is still the same, in some ways; for instance, Deans and Directors ask for augmentations to their existing budget allocations. They justify most of these augmentations based on a current crisis and short-term plans that can not be solved with current allocations and/or certain health and safety needs that must, by law, be corrected. The Division Budget Advisory and Planning Committee then combines these needs into a Division request that is submitted to the University Budget Advisory Committee. The UBAC then ranks and prioritizes the requests and recommends new allocations. These allocations are based on baseline budgets along with augmentations for the current crisis and this year’s requests. This scenario seems to be more of a cosmetic change, not systemic. Systemic change would require that priorities based on long-term planning be used in the allocation process

There are other examples of cosmetic change. Enrollment management used to look at the global needs of the university. As noted earlier, if one had capped just three programs (CS, CIS, and ECE) at their current capacity instead of admitting all who applied, then the university’s enrollment growth would be flat. Enrollment management has inter-mixed university capacity and program capacity.

The CSU Trustees have given the President responsibility. He has delegated some of this responsibility to the Vice Presidents, Deans, and Directors. The President has power based partially on his control of the budget. The President is given respect commensurate with the office he holds. The faculty, through the Academic Senate and as individual teacher/scholars, have different measures of power, respect, and responsibility. The Academic Senate is responsible for the academic policy of the university, while the administration is responsible for the fiscal integrity of the university. Shared governance implies distributed power. At Cal Poly Pomona the shared governance dialogue of the ‘90s has resulted in a tremendous potential for consultative management, but we need further clarification of the distinction between power and responsibility, and identification of who plays what roles.

Is the university optimally acquiring, managing and enhancing its resources? Cal Poly Pomona can improve its management of resources by a combination of planning and vision, which will be facilitated by a greater understanding of roles. These questions are important, because, sometime in the not too distant future, Cal Poly Pomona will approach its limiting size. The increasing demand for the land available to the university, the increasing demand for parking, the increasing demand for access to the campus by faculty, staff and students as well as other growth-limiting factors will constrain Cal Poly Pomona’s final form and size. When that limiting point is reached, what will be the size and the diversity of the programs offered by Cal Poly Pomona? Without the answer to this one question, it is impossible to optimally manage and enhance resources, and this answer lies in planning, based on the ideas developed here, which are the distillation of the common wisdom of the community and the scholarly literature.