The success of academic institutions in today’s changing environments requires processes aimed at continuously improving the university undertakings. The Continuous Improvement Educational Initiative (CIEI) is a campus wide three year effort. The CIEI envisions the development of a new outcomes based academic environment to help ensure that students will receive the best education possible.  It recognizes that learning is a complex process and that student learning is the responsibility of all academic stakeholders. This long term effort entails assessing not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and professional performance. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations, those derived from the institution's vision and mission, from faculty intentions in programs and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Thus understood, CIEI is not a task for small groups of experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider, better-informed attention to student learning by all parties with a stake in its improvement. One important result of this process is to be prepared for the Middle States Association reaccreditation visit in 2005.

A coalition of stakeholders including faculty from all four faculties, students, key recruiting organizations and administrators have accepted the challenge and have joined forces to promote high educational expectations for our Mayaguez Campus. They will devote a great deal of time and energy in analyzing the academic environment to determine why changes should be made, what changes should be made,  who should make them, and where they should be made. On our Campus, the push to improve educational performance will be a visible and primary goal of our leadership; improving the quality of undergraduate education is central to the UPRM’s planning, budgeting, and personnel decisions. Information about our academic outcomes is seen as an integral part of decision making, and enthusiastically sought.

Individually and collectively, all those involved in the development of this initiative believe that at the end the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez will have a road map that will lead to vast improvement in all our academic endeavors. The point is to monitor progress toward intended goals in a spirit of continuous improvement. The CIEI expects to establish a collaborative working relationship with each faculty in an effort to lead and manage continuous improvement regarding education at all levels of our Campus.  The relationship will assist in supporting the different faculties in fostering a student centered learning environment, increasing student and stakeholder satisfaction, and guiding  education in its pursuit of becoming a high performance system.

We have a unique opportunity to join forces in designing and implementing a continuous improvement educational process in our campus.