Subsérie - President’s Advisory Committee on Campus Review

The President’s Advisory Committee on Campus Review (PACCR) subseries contains fifteen files connected to the committee. Materials are arranged by subjects and date predominantly from 1980 to 1990. It includes outlying data from 1973 and retrospective letters from 2008 and 2009. Subject matter highlighted include correspondence within PACCR, talks on Campus Reviews, an article titled “Systematic Reviews of University Programs and Units”, workload information and PACCR Reports. This subseries contains document types such as correspondence, index cards, reports, minutes of meetings, notes, articles, compiled data, and a binder of research data. Also see Archives accession 2012-27-6 “Submissions to the Millennium Project” and 2012-27-7 “Three Minicareers” for Harris’ personal reflections on his activities with PACCR.
The President’s Advisory Committee on Campus Review (PACCR), briefly named President’s Advisory Committee on Academic Review (PACAR), was a steering committee intended to organize reviews of academic and service units. President Horowitz appointed WE Harris as Chairman of the Committee in 1980, subsequent to his retirement from the Department of Chemistry. The steering committee members were: Dr F Enns, Dr H Kreisel, WH Jopling and Dr W Harris. The committee’s initial responsibility was to plan how to conduct reviews and determine the review process. PACCR’s goal was to find areas of improvement and create a plan that would implement bettering changes through the university. It was a committee with little authority but managed to review units through a process of volunteering, negotiations or arrangement. Each unit under review formed a Unit Review Committee (URC) to keep dialogue with PACCR and to perform the self study. Each URC was made up of four members; two external to the university from the discipline being reviewed, one internal member from a related discipline and one internal member from the university. The final review was composed of a self study report, nominations of reviewers and an on-site review by a review team, a confidential reviewers report, URC’s response to this report and follow up documentation. PACCR summarized the findings and proposed changes and subsequently met with the head of the unit and Dean of the department for discussion. After the follow up, the committee would meet and provide the President with its confidential report. Overall, the PACCR performed reviews on 127 units, ending in 1990 with the tenth annual review.