Friday Focus: Valuing the institution

Oct. 27, 2023

— By Dan White, chancellor

How do we measure success? When I look at UAF’s inspiring vision statement, excellence through transformative experiences, I have the answer (or at least the goal.) We are successful when our students, investors, grantors, donors, and community members have transformative experiences. What is less clear is how to measure this success.

The Board of Regents and President Pitney have been working together and with university leaders on what goals and metrics should look like systemwide. That process has caused me to think a lot about how we measure transformative experiences.

A lot of discussion in this process has focused on transactional metrics. In some respects, the best metric is the one that can be measured easily, compared to other “like” institutions, and has some explanatory value. These transactional metrics are easily measured and tracked by national organizations, allowing us to compare ourselves to others with numbers measuring admissions rate, retention rate, graduation rate, number of students getting jobs in their field, lifetime earning potential, percent of market demand met by graduates in a given field, etc. These metrics all have value. For our students and employers, these are critical.

That said, and not to take away anything from these metrics, how do we measure our value to a community, a state, a society in ways that capture other, less transactional values? We are the least densely populated state in the U.S., have campuses inaccessible by road, are a research intensive university and a community and technical college, we don’t have many “like” institutions to compare ourselves to. These traditional metrics don’t capture everything UAF has to offer.

For example, when 900 elementary and middle school students filled our gym to watch a collegiate volleyball game a week ago, we had a positive impact on 900 young lives in Fairbanks – a number not directly captured in our retention rate. Or, after the Nanook hockey team follows a game in the Carlson Center with a “skate with the Nanooks” event, our athletes are on the ice with young people who want an opportunity to skate around with some awesome athletes. When I watch the kids (and some parents) getting a picture on the ice with their favorite player, it is moving. You can’t easily measure that. It is not a transactional metric. It is a value metric measured in a young kid's heart, in their confidence in school, or in a parent's joy in seeing their kid affirmed by the reaction of the player.

Being a kid can be hard. Affirmation by a role model, even in small ways, is powerful. UAF’s impact on our community, whether it’s through athletics, KUAC, the Summer Music Academy, or so many of our other immeasurable but critical programs, is transformational.

It is probably why one of Coca Cola’s most popular commercials ever was the Mean Joe Greene scene in the tunnel in the Steelers’ stadium in Pittsburgh. It was designed to sell Coca-Cola, but advertisers knew then and now that the feeling one gets from that scene is real and elicits an emotional reaction. Being a part of something bigger is a human desire that connects us all. When the Nanook athletes out-shoot, outrun, out-ski, out-dunk, out-spike or or out-skate their competition, I see our Nanook fans leaving the event walking a little taller.

But how do we measure these intangible impacts? I am not sure yet, but I know that just because these impacts aren’t measured doesn’t make them any less important. Much of UAF’s physical impact is an autograph or a picture or a memory. The mark we make in the hearts of people is truly transformational.

Transformative experiences is what we do.

Friday Focus is written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every week.