ASSESSING THE POTENTIAL FOR CHANGE 57 The scoring is a 1, 2, 3, or NA for each policy as follows: 1 = Question can be answered in the affirmative without equivocation. Policy/practice is well understood and regularly adhered to. 2 = Partially true. May be a formal policy but is not uniformly adhered to. May be a standard practice but is not codified. Parties within the College may have different answers to the question. 3 = Policy/practice is virtually absent, sporadic, non-uniform, and not well understood. N/A = Not applicable. This rating should be used sparingly. After gathering the feedback, look at what you collect from each individual first. You might observe several instances where one or more people marked a 3 and there also might be a single moment where one person marked a 1. These answers tell you a policy or practice is in place and is followed by someone, but others are completely unaware. Discrepancies in your office could be due to the compartmentalized nature of some of the positions in the dean’s office or there is limited internal communication on the availability of the policies that results in this pattern. If you make the logical extension of finding 3’s paired with 1’s, faculty, staff, and unit administrators may also be unaware of the policies already in place, and it would behoove your office to better communicate with the college’s employees. The second step in this self-assessment is to talk through the scores with all the participants around a table and discuss how the varied scores should be combined into a single number for that policy. It is not just an average of the scores received; you are trying to understand if the policy or practice exists, and to what extent the lack of knowledge of its existence/use is due to the narrowness of its use which could still be scored a 1 or if in fact the policy should be known or applied better than it actually is which should be scored a 2. An example of how a policy may be in place but unfamiliar to many comes from Bret’s office in the response to the standard, “Are there procedures for establishing, reviewing, and eliminating centers, institutes, and similar interdisciplinary entities?” When his staff conducted the self-assessment, there was a comprehensive policy in place and was followed, but it was only known by people in centers or already in contact with the dean’s office about proposing one. Although other staff members in the office not associated with centers were unaware of the policy, this score was kept as a 1 and it was noted that communication about its existence should be improved. There will be some items or areas where everyone scores the policy a 3 and multiple scores of missing policies in the same area will reveal a deficit of attention by your office. You should make note of the areas that score lower than other areas and use those as part of assessing your office in the next section of this chapter. When the staff