Importance of Infrastructure

Infrastructure…Oxford Dictionary defines infrastructure as “the basic physical and organization structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or an enterprise”. What does infrastructure have to do with health professions education?

With the important and time-consuming work needed to:

• transition from master’s to doctoral degree occupational therapy education,

• adhere to the increasing calls for accountability to state legislatures, specialized accrediting bodies, institutional accreditors, etc.,

• adeptly manage the various roles of faculty member: (yes, teaching, scholarship and service…but often includes recruitment, fund raising, clinical practice, etc.),

• for some of us, trying to remain optimistic, efficient and resilient,

we need infrastructure more than ever before.

There are “official infrastructure systems” in the academy, including schools, colleges, departments, committees, faculty senate, and many others. These official systems are codified in bylaws and statutes. They prescribe boundaries that facilitate our work. They mandate what types of faculty/staff must be a part of the work. Anyone who has been a member of a bylaws or policy committee knows that writing these official documents is tedious and words are judiciously chosen. They are important.

Often, departments do not have the formal or official infrastructures to provide such organization and boundaries to facilitate work that must be completed…such as curriculum, assessment, admissions, etc. Thus, it is good practice for a chair or program director to create the departmental/programmatic infrastructure to be productive. Often, this means the infrastructure is not codified, but created as part of the departmental or programmatic culture.

For example, chairs and vice-chairs should gather input from their respective faculty on what task forces or committees faculty wish to lead or be a member. From that input, assignments of faculty are made to “get the work done”. In departments with less than 10 faculty, I often notice that there is a lack of infrastructure. The culture is everyone does everything OR the chair does everything. There is no clear understanding of who is responsible for particular work/tasks. There is no cohesive explanation about the processes used to review or change curriculum, or how syllabi are reviewed prior to each semester, or how assessment data is collected to inform change. In the age of increasing calls for accountability, I believe we must “formalize” our “informal” work.

Regardless of how many or how few faculty members are in a department, annual appointments should be made for the:

1. Oversight of curriculum;

2. Oversight of assessment activities.

When reports are due to ACOTE, or it’s time for your self study or any other accountability call, these committees or task forces (or whatever label fits your organization culture) are readily available. Advantages:

• Faculty can report such work on their annual activity reports for annual appraisals;

• Faculty have input on what they like. When people enjoy their work, they tend to be more engaged, creative and productive!

• Faculty become increasingly socialized to the work in the academy. For example, assessment should not be the work of one person…it is the work of all.

• The work is conducted with agendas, meeting minutes, and evidentiary documents.

• Such committees / task forces can focus on work and bring motions to the departmental meetings whereby those motions become the decisions of the full department faculty.

If you need assistance in determining what type of infrastructure your program needs, send me and email at bcoppard@mail.com It is amazing how infrastructure can synergize work that needs to be done. Likewise, it is frustrating to see how lack of infrastructure can perpetuate the status quo, squelch creativity and paralyze the nimbleness required in higher education today.

© Brenda M. Coppard, 2018