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Mechanical
Engineering Department Risk Management Assessment
(Risk
Assessment initiated in Fall 2006 as part of our Continuous Improvement
Process)
Opening Note:
The Mechanical
Engineering Department at Ohio University is very strong by almost every
measure.
Although
our departmental culture has been questioned as a result of the discovery of
numerous cases of plagiarism in MS thesis documents, we are proud of how our
students, faculty and staff have worked and continue to work together to
achieve our program objectives.
In the spirit
of continuous improvement described in our departmental statement of purpose,
in the Fall of 2006 we initiated a "risk assessment" process to
take an honest look at all aspects of our program. As the process proceeds we will
evaluate our department's responses to the risks faced by all engineering
departments, and if we find areas of concern we will honestly admit them and
will implement improvement processes to make our good department even better.
We plan to publish
and present the results of this process, and encourage other departments to
follow a similar risk assessment procedure.
Status:
ME
faculty, staff, and the ME Student Advisory Board were led through a "Departmental Risk Assessment" by
Terry Russell and the ME Industrial Advisory Board on Friday September 15,
2006. Terry discussed the process
and gave an overview presentation on Risk Assessment and Risk Management.
We broke into three groups to focus our efforts on identifying the potential
risks (anything that could go wrong to keep our program from meeting its
objectives) in
(1) the
undergraduate program and accreditation,
(2)
graduate and research programs, and
(3) departmental administration and operation.
For
reference we considered the ME Dept. Statement Of
Purpose and the ME program
objectives.
Participants
wrote their concerns on post it notes and they were organized into affinity
groups.
After the
initial meeting the responses were compiled into a spreadsheet that was sent
to all faculty and staff and the student and industrial advisory boards for
additions and corrections (September 2006).
A faculty
committee (led by Carole Womeldorf and Khairul Alam and with input
from board member Suzanne Tkach) worked to
rearrange the list with logical pairings (combining things mentioned by more than
one of the three groups), and created this Spreadsheet
of risks for a Mechanical Engineering Department. (October 2006)
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Note that items in this spreadsheet are just possible risks for any
engineering department and do not indicate that our department has a current
problem in these risk areas.
The
faculty committee then turned their efforts towards developing risk rating
sheets for each risk category in the spreadsheet (for example safety,
advising, student academic performance...).
We
decided to rate each category individually then prioritize the action plans
after all risk ratings were completed.
The definitions of the ratings and the process were reviewed at the
10/4/06 faculty mtg:
1. SEV =
severity or level of impact, i.e. how important is this item or category
(1=low, 2=medium, 3=high)
2. OCC =
likelihood or probability of occurrence that this risk will cause a
problem. This area is a
combination of whether or not the conditions exist for it to happen, and
whether or not we have a sufficient process in place to deal with it to keep
it from being a problem. (1=low, 2=medium, 3=high)
3. Rank = SEV*OCC: 6-9=high = risk management plan needed, 3-5=medium=monitor the
situation, 1-2=low=no current action required
The summary
of results for all risk ratings highlights those categories for which at
least 1/3 of the raters thought that a risk management plans was needed.
After additional faculty discussion focused on
prioritization and the most efficient ways to integrate the risk management
process into our normal departmental operations, a RMP_2007
summary sheet was compiled and the plans within it were agreed to at the
5/2/07 faculty meeting.
This plan will be submitted to the ME advisory board in
Spring 2007 for review and comment, then the department will
a) implement changes,
b) assess their impact,
c) communicate the actions and impacts, and
d) continue the risk management
approach as part of our overall departmental assessment and continuous
improvement process.
Closing Notes:
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There are good examples
of risk management on the University level, but not many examples of
engineering department risk assessment.
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This process is a department-specific response to questions about our
departmental culture. It
complements other activities on the college and university level [Academic
Honesty Committee, RCENT workshops, etc.] by taking a step back and looking
at potential risks in our program, searching for root causes, and trying to
prioritize our responses as we continue our goal of continuous improvement as
stated in our ME department statement of purpose.
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We will do our best not to create new processes and bureaucracy (we
can expand our assessment and continuous improvement process to include
graduate education issues, administrative issues, other performance related
issues, and build activities into our weekly faculty meetings and year-end
faculty program review meetings), but we do need to assure
"accountability" to the recommendations that emerge from the risk
management process.
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This process is one step toward a shared understanding of
"departmental integrity" and the continued promotion of a
"culture of integrity“
a. Working definition of departmental
integrity: having a clear and proper mission and purpose, using it to guide
our decisions, working within our capabilities to fulfill our mission and
purpose, and conducting all actions and interactions with honesty, integrity
and professionalism.
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