Vision

Mission

• Instruction – that fosters creative and critical thinking for individuals in their professional and personal lives;
• Research – that contributes to the discovery of knowledge and understanding of human development and family relationships; and
• Application – of knowledge that is responsive to and informed by constituent’s needs.

Core Values

Excellence – We seek excellence in all our endeavors, and we are committed to continuous improvement.

Intellectual Freedom - We believe in ethical and scholarly questioning in an environment that respects the rights of all to freely pursue knowledge.

Integrity - We are committed to the principles of truth and honesty, and we will be equitable, ethical, and professional.

Service – We believe that serving others is a noble and worthy endeavor.

Diversity - We respect others and value diversity of opinion, freedom of expression, and other ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Stewardship of Resources - We are dedicated to the efficient and effective use of resources. We accept the responsibility of the public’s trust and are accountable for our actions.

Collaboration - We value collaborative partnerships with students, colleagues, professionals in the field and civic/community leaders. We value the bridging of research, theory, and application to address key issues relating to individual and relationship competence.

Goals, Critical Success Factors, Objectives, Strategies and Assessments

Goal One. To create a learning environment for Human Development and Family Science students that encourages excellence, prepares for professional careers, enriches personal growth, fosters discovery of knowledge, and promotes leadership development.

Critical Success Factors:

• Increase number of OSU-Tulsa majors from 100 to 165 within the next 5 years
• Student diversity more closely reflects the high school population of Oklahoma
• Strive for a department retention rate of 85% for freshman and graduation rate of 70%
• Increase transfer student graduation rate by 5%
• Identify optimal undergraduate enrollment for each program
• Increase pool of qualified, completed graduate applications by 50%
• Increase graduate enrollment by 20%
• Retain recognized accreditations from the commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education, and National Association for the Education of Young Children/National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education national program accreditation
• Service-learning opportunities established in each discipline
• Increase number of undergraduate research projects by 20%
• Assess, develop and implement a graduate program for OSU-Tulsa campus

Objectives:

• Determine for each academic program the optimum numbers that can be served for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students.
• Admit the optimum number of top candidates as appropriate for each program.
• Monitor progress of students.
• Increase department resources to develop recruitment materials that increase our competitiveness with other undergraduate and graduate programs.

• Percent of optimum enrollment achieved.

• Utilize enrollment management plan above to examine recruitment and retention need for students to achieve this objective.
• Work with Human Environmental Sciences, Academic Programs and Services office to help explore avenues to increase diversity.
• Increase contact with McNair Scholars and invite for recruiting events.
• Survey minority students to assess how we are perceived and suggestions for improvement in recruitment and retention.
• Identify high schools that feed OSU-Tulsa and work to increase awareness of Human Development and Family Science programs.
• Maintain and increase our articulation agreements with feeder community colleges.
• Identify the current paths our minority students take to reach the department. Widen these paths and add additional paths that are likely to bring success.
• Work with College of Human Environmental Sciences to identify strong students who can assist freshmen and sophomore students as they transition to college.

• Departmental diversity in relation to Oklahoma high school population.
• Retention rates of students.
• Numbers of minority students.
• Number of matriculation agreements.

• Develop a recruitment plan that includes well-organized and professionally prepared printed materials (web and printed handouts).
• Improve the pipeline from the undergraduate to the graduate programs.
• Establish a “Marriage and Family Therapy graduate preparation” course for junior and senior level courses where top students are invited to enroll.
• Increase the number of undergraduates participating in research by 10% as well as the quality of participation in research by undergraduate students.
• Work with faculty members to develop a recruitment event for Human Development and Family Science.
• Focus recruitment on attracting freshmen with higher ACT (moving from 23 to 24) and transfer students entering with GPAs of 2.45 or above.
• Make recruiting and retention a priority.
• Increase the number of students admitted with GRE scores above our department minimum by 10%.
• Increase freshman scholars by 1 per year.
• Increase number of resident tenure track faculty positions on OSU-Tulsa campus to a minimum of three in next 5 years, thus decreasing reliance on adjunct faculty.

• Retention rate.
• Graduation rate.
• ACT and GPA rates of incoming freshman and transfer students.
• GRE scores of accepted graduate students.
• Number of completed applications for graduate programs.
• Number of graduate students in department.
• Number of graduate students from undergraduate programs.
• Graduate student enrollment yield (enrolled/admitted).
• Development of pre-Marriage and Family Therapy course.
• Increase in freshman scholars.
• Number of faculty hired.

• Increase research mentorship with faculty to increase student funding.
• Develop a scholarship to support at least 2 undergraduate students per year in research with a faculty member.
• Explore development of an “endowed graduate research fund” to support graduate students working on faculty and department research.
• Expand the number of scholarships for undergraduate students.
• Expand the number of scholarships for graduate students.
• Work actively with College Development Officer to identify, cultivate, and solicit donors for scholarship/fellowship gifts.
• Disseminate information related to external support from professional and industry groups.

• Percentage of scholarships given.
• Amount of scholarship funds available for the department.
• Level of scholarship endowment.

• Integrate policy and research throughout undergraduate and graduate curriculum.
• Increase undergraduate research activity.
• Increase graduate students’ participation in research and number of refereed research presentations.
• Complete a zero based curriculum review of Doctoral curriculum to maintain high expectations for excellence in instruction.
• Complete a zero based curriculum review of master’s curriculum to maintain high expectations for excellence in instruction.
• Develop advising plans for undergraduates to help focus their electives and optimize their educational experience.
• Work with employers to increase effective service learning and internship opportunities.
• Solidify current relationships with agencies through a more consistent placement of Child and Family Services students.
• Increase paid internships for Child and Family Services majors by 10%.
• Develop model Early Childhood Education classroom to enhance methods courses and integration with Child Development Laboratory.
• Develop Early Childhood Education resource room to enhance resources and training in developmental “best practices” in Early Childhood Education.

• Number of research presentations.
• Students participating on faculty research.
• Curriculum reviews.
• Advising plans.
• Internship data.
• Senior Exit survey.

• Complete renovation of Center for Family Services facilities.
• Renovation of Child Development Laboratory facilities.
• Work with college to develop a plan to attain a Human Development and Family Science Observation and Assessment Research Laboratory.
• Update facilities to attain graduate seminar room.
• Facilitate Children’s Institute building at OSU-Tulsa.
• Enhance graduate assistants’ office spaces.
• Enhance visibility and appearance of department office to increase the functioning and to create a student-friendly environment.
• Develop Human Development and Family Science Observation and Assessment Research Laboratory.

• Renovated spaces.
• Updated facilities.

Goal Two. To develop a learning environment for College of Human Environmental Sciences’ faculty and staff that fosters creativity and problem solving through discovery, dissemination and application of knowledge

Critical Success Factors:

• Maintain current faculty and staff lines
• Increase faculty lines by a minimum of 5 positions. Work to ensure a diverse applicant pool
• Increase staff lines by a minimum of 2 positions
• Maintain and expand staff lines while emphasizing diversity
• Train new faculty and staff to assure they are effective and efficient and well grounded in the department community
• Provide development opportunities over the life of faculty and staff
• Faculty sabbaticals
• Increase research publications in refereed outlets
• Increase external funding from diverse funding sources
• Increase participation in multidisciplinary research
• 2/2 course faculty teaching loads
• Decrease faculty student ration form 1:43 to 1:25

Objectives:

• Secure additional tenure track positions.
• Recruit child & family methodologist.
• Recruit faculty in the content area of children family policy for Stillwater campus.
• Recruit faculty in content areas of gerontology and/or non-normative expertise.
• Recruit and retain faculty in early childhood education, family science, and human development.
• Fill open and vacated positions.
• Identify funding for faculty with primarily teaching responsibilities.
• Provide competitive salaries, benefits, and start-up funds.
• Identify and cultivate donors to identify securing funding for additional endowed professorships.

• Salary equity/parity with peer programs.
• Number of faculty lines.
• Faculty expertise.
• Turnover rate of faculty and staff.

• Develop 2/2 course teaching load for all faculty with research programs.
• Work with college in helping to increase technical assistance in grant writing and grant preparation to increase efficiency of process.
• Increase computer hardware and software to support faculty research.
• Identify avenue for statistical needs of faculty to be met, particularly with Structural Equation Modeling techniques (e.g. recruit methodologist).
• Develop mechanism by which faculty share research.
• Reward faculty research excellence.
• Increase number of refereed publications to average of 2 per faculty per year.
• Increase number of faculty and teaching faculty to attain better faculty/student ratio.

• Teaching loads.
• Percent increase of useable computers.
• Faculty expertise in Structural Equation Modeling.
• Faculty and student awareness of research.
• Faculty refereed publications.
• Faculty student rations.

• 2/2 course teaching load.
• Work with university to identify ways to decrease Monday/Wednesday/Friday offerings and increase 1 and 2 day per week classes to provide greater blocks of reflective research time for faculty.
• Work with college to identify plan to fund an academic advisor to help with student schedules and enrollment logistics utilizing student advising fee to focus faculty time toward research.

• Teaching loads.
• Improved faculty teaching schedules.
• Research blocks.
• Faculty publications.

• Develop a plan for faculty sabbaticals within department and ways to cover sabbatical.
• Minimum of one Human Development and Family Science faculty who participates in sabbatical.
• Identify ways to help mentor associate professors to full professors.
• Identify ways to help renew faculty over their career to boost their productivity and skill development (e.g. parallel to college faculty scholars program for new faculty).
• Staff will each identify one training per year to increase effectiveness and meet demands of workload.
• Provide travel funds for faculty for professional development needs.
• Look for ways to provide retooling for faculty as needed.
• Encourage staff development and training.

• Number of sabbaticals.
• Develop plan for mentoring faculty.
• Participation in faculty and staff trainings.
• Increased percent of travel funds.

• Increase the level of external funding by each faculty member.
• Every faculty member involved in grant development.
• Leverage internal and seed grants into larger grant proposals.
• Develop research proposals that generate indirect costs.
• Create a plan for development of research center/institute for relationship competence to increase partnership with external entities and increase focused research.
• Develop plan to increase training on grant writing.
• Increase resources for statistical and methodological support.

• Number of proposals submitted.
• Number of faculty involved in grant submissions.
• Level of external funding and indirect costs generated.
• Level of funding by faculty member.
• Development of relationship competence center/institute.
• Grant writing professional training.
• Collaboration and/or faculty line of research methodologist.

• Periodically review and refine department specific operating policies and procedures.
• Evaluate the allocation of resources in department.
• Annually consider all department statistics to evaluate the success of the administrative structure in accomplishing the department mission.
• Utilize assessment data during department meetings to be responsive to needs.
• Increased vigilance on part of administration to create better efficiencies in functions and streamlining procedures to eliminate duplication of effort.

• Performance based statistics for department.
• Documentation of departmental operating policies and procedures available to faculty and staff members.
• Use of student assessment data.

Goal Three. To generate resources in support of the department mission through sponsored programs, fundraising, and engagement with the broader community.

Critical Success Factors:

• All faculty will seek external funds to support their scholarship programs
• Create a marketing/communications plan
• Increase the participation of former and current students in Human Development and Family Science activities and events
• Improve the communication in the department regarding accomplishments of students, faculty, and staff
• Enhance the image of the department
• Seek a 10% growth in the dollar amounts of scholarships across all program areas contributed by alumni and program friends
• Seek funding for renovation of Child Development Laboratory and development of a model teaching classroom
• Seek funding and develop Early Childhood Education resource room
• Seek funding for Institute/Center on Relationship Competence

Objectives:

• Work with college to develop an organized system for department to track and maintain contact with graduates (e.g. database with alum contact information).
• Train staff to utilize this system.
• Engage alums in department events.

• Number of graduates for whom the department has accurate contact information.
• Number of contacts with alumni.

• Disseminate research findings for practitioners in the field to utilize.
• Increase dissemination of research to legislative process. Each year applicable research will be shared with legislators.
• Contact the principals of at least 5 new schools to increase the collaboration of research and practice with Early Childhood Education faculty.
• Increase the collaboration with Early Childhood Education teachers and principals for program improvement.
• Develop and foster one professional school relationship for Early Childhood Education program.
• Develop a plan to disseminate and integrate student and faculty research to public.
• Develop one new community-based program with an evaluation component funded utilizing department expertise.
• Continue to collaborate and submit funding proposal with Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.
• Establish meetings with Department of Human Services to explore additional research opportunities.

• Number of contacts with public schools.
• Number of presentations to practitioners with faculty research.
• Number of contacts with legislators informing them of research.
• Development of new community program.
• Contacts with Department of Human Services for research collaboration.
• Contacts with Oklahoma Marriage Initiative staff.

• Utilize the expertise of the development office in the college to develop a research endowment.
• Identify and prioritize research initiatives.
• Identify and cultivate contacts to help establish connections with potential supporters.

• Number of contacts.
• Development of plan.
• Endowment dollars allocated to the research endowment.

• Develop 10-15 members to serve on newly established Human Development and Family Science advisory board.
• Select a chair person of the advisory board.
• Identify role and goals for advisory board in helping to attain mission, vision, and goals of department

• Advisory Board members.
• Meetings of newly formed Human Development and Family Science advisory committee.

• Work with college to develop web page.
• Solicit updated information on faculty research for web page.
• Highlight student, staff, and faculty accomplishments.
• Establish internship and career opportunities on web.
• Promote web page to recruit students.
• Develop mechanism for consistent review to update information on web to assure accuracy and currency of information.
• Disseminate faculty and student research on web page.

• Web page developments.
• Contacts on web.
• Promotion of web in recruitment materials.

• Maintain accreditation with Marriage and Family Therapy and Child Development Laboratory for instructional labs.
• Develop Human Development and Family Science Observation and Assessment Research Lab to facilitate observational coding research.
• Increase partnership with community to enhance lab.
• Develop and maintain brochures and publication on web regarding services.
• Develop Early Childhood Education Model classroom and teach methods courses within this room.

• Accreditation.
• Increased funds generated.
• Number of contacts and partnerships.
• Grants.
• Web page developments.
• Lab space.

Goal Four. To strengthen community engagement for the enhancement and economic impact.

Critical Success Factors:

• Increase the amount of teacher development for Tulsa Public Schools Academy by 15% to increase their ability to maintain and enhance job.
• Develop professional school relationship with 2 public schools that are on the “needs improvement” list for early childhood education.
• Provide a minimum of 1 training per year at a tier II level for child care work force for their employability.
• Develop avenues to disseminate research and expertise to practitioners.
• Develop Early Childhood Education Resource room to help in the training of early childhood educators.
• Work on federal initiative around building families and marriage with a strong economic component.
• Through work with Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, 10 communities will participate in public deliberations and show evidence of deliberative habit, frame local issues for deliberation in public forums, engage community leaders in mentoring and/or develop a cadre of local leaders to identify community problems.
• Through work with Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, there will be a 10% increase in ethnic/cultural diversity of participants in the family resilience programs.
• Through work with Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, 300 families with young children will report enhanced parent knowledge.

Objectives:

• Deliver 1-2 Tier II training per year for child care workers to meet employment continuing credit demand.
• Assess need for expansion of professional development for child care workers in Stillwater or Oklahoma City.
• Develop one new workforce development.
• Increase participation in the Tulsa Public Schools professional development conference.

• Number of practitioners receiving workforce development.
• Number of faculty and alums engaged in workforce development.
• Number of work force developments offered.

• Identify areas of research collaboration with the Department of Human Services. Engage in at least 3 new research projects with the Department of Human Services.
• Work to identify partners to collaborate with the institute/center on individual and relationship competence.
• Examine and determine plan for collaboration of Marriage and Family Therapy program with Singapore to develop degree and/or certificate program.
• Examine and develop research partnerships with OSU Osteopathic College, NSCI, and Gerontology Institute.

• New collaboration projects with the Department of Human Services.
• Partners for institute/center and number of contacts.
• Singapore Marriage and Family Therapy program.
• Collaboration with Osteopathic college, NSCI department, and Gerontology Institute.

• Increase faculty research application to economic development.
• Increase the application of department research to Oklahoma economic development.
• Work on 1 federal initiative around building families and marriage with a strong economic component.
• Increase skills in cost benefit research.

• Application of research to Oklahoma economic development.
• Faculty training in cost benefit analysis.

• Foster community development through linking leadership and economic development.
• Develop and implement a sustainable plan for the Oklahoma Partnership for Public Deliberation.
• Provide in-service training for county Family and Consumer Science extension educators on effectively serving diverse audiences.
• Develop or adapt 25% of family resiliency educational materials and resources for Spanish Speaking populations.
• Assess family resiliency materials, programs, and outreach approaches.
• Design one new family resiliency educational program component per year.
• Develop, update, and distribute family resiliency educational materials to effectively address critical issues facing children and families.
• Provide public deliberations for Oklahoma Citizens to address critical community issues.

• Programs in public deliberation.
• Public deliberation forums.
• Healthy Families programs.
• Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Services reports.