ITU Response to
WSCUC Order to Show Cause
Monday, October 28, 2019
ITU’s Operational Functionality is Strong and Reflects Improvements
ITU’s primary mission is to deliver top-notch Silicon Valley industry relevant training to our students. This core function will continue, improve and expand even during this transition period.
Feedback from students this past Sunday (Oct 20, 2019 in a school-wide Town Hall meeting with ITU’s new board and executive leadership), included comments of mistreatment from our staff, slow response times, incomprehensible red tape.
Moving forward, the entire staff and management is committed to have a “Student Service” centered mentality. As EVP and CFO, Dr. Cory has articulated for us all, ITU’s goal is to become the “Best Loved University in the Silicon Valley!”
Toward that end and to ensure the current staff at ITU is completely adequate in covering all key student-facing departments. We have consolidated head count to have staff in the following positions:
Front Desk – 3 people
Admissions – 4 people
ISO – 3 people
Registrar – 2 people
Student Advising and Internships – 1 person
Alumni Connection – 1 person
Library Services – 1 person
Operations
Finance – 3 people (1 to join in another month)
HR (Contract) – 1 part-time person for now (seeking to outsource)
IT – 4 people
Media – 1 person
Marketing – 2 people
Academic Departments
Department Chairs:
Computer Science/Software Engineering – 1
Electrical and Computer Engineering – 1
Business Administration & Engineering Management – 1
Digital Arts – 1
Interdisciplinary Sciences – 1
Core Faculty – 1 per department and more as requested by Chairs
Adjunct Faculty – any course offering in progress now continues. There will be no interruption to courses and faculty for the Spring offerings due to financial changes.
Special Services
Project Management – 1 person
Director of Online Service & ALO – 1 person
Compliance Director – 1 person – this is a new position for ITU
ITU Board Liaison – 1person
It should be noted that to ensure all functional operations of ITU work smoothly as an integrated institution of learning, complying with all legal, regulatory, immigration and accreditation mandates, executive management has added two new positions of Project Manager, as well as Compliance Director, a position cutting through all departments to access detailed data, and reporting directly to the executives and board. The Registrar position is now filled by an educational veteran with over 20 years experience as Registrar. Our Registrar has now implemented a new processing culture requiring all student requests, barring exceptions, to be processed no later than 48 hours once the request is received. Our Finance department has also committed to the 48 hour turnaround. These commitments have measurably improved the functionality of ITU’s operations, despite the reduction of staff, and reflects ITU’s commitment to return to a Student Service Centered culture immediately.
Academically, the entire organization returns to using ITU’s proprietary software, the EMS, which has built within it, Institutional, Program level and Course learning assessments, that ensures that ITU’s educational excellence has been and continues to be built on data and facts.
Towards that end, the Computer Science/Computer Engineering curriculum will be updated by Spring 2020, to reflect the most recent changes in the Silicon Valley Industry to include course offerings in the newest standards of implementation in Artificial Intelligence, and with heavy emphasis in Cybersecurity. Engineering Management’s course offerings will also be freshly updated to industry standards. Perhaps most notably, ITU’s Interdisciplinary Science and Business Management degree concentrations will include a new anchor required course in the area of consilience, specifically introducing the latest scientific breakthroughs in evolutionary brain development that now allows for the first time in history for the social “soft” sciences to have natural “hard” science underpinnings, allowing for predictive modeling in the soft science disciplines.
In terms of ITU’s current leadership, the Board’s choice of executive officer is based on factual data. The current CEO/President has in fact, been the only President/CEO that has ever run ITU with consistent year end positive cash balances. Factually, no other person thus far has run the university well, in the areas where ITU is presently weakest.
Thus, with our newly formed Board, proven executive management team, and operational departments already showing improvements to university function — all reflecting the vision of our Founder Shu-Park Chan — ITU will indeed return to financial stability, educational excellence and growth.