The Board of Regents gave President Schmidly a stamp of approval on May 29 for his second year at UNM.
The regents formulated a progress report, which was then evaluated by vice presidents, provosts and directors. The goals provided by the regents included efforts towards accountability, academics and research.
In the progress report, "clear and effective communication," "improvement of faculty and staff morale" and a "performance-based budget" received a rating of only "some progress."
Despite the low rating of progress in these goals, a letter from Regents' President Raymond Sanchez to Schmidly said that many other important objectives were accomplished. According to Sanchez, these include enrollment management, development of UNM's Rio Rancho campus and the University's re-accreditation.
"Despite many ups and downs over the past year, (Schmidly's) diligent leadership has, in the end, kept UNM on a steady course," Sanchez said in the letter.
Doug Fields, president of the Faculty Senate, said the evaluation method and progress report are not a fair indication of Schmidly's progress. The report was compiled in a color-coded document that showed Schmidly's progress over the year.
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Goals that Schmidly achieved were color-coded blue, those that showed good progress were green, yellow showed some progress and red represented initiatives that were still pending. Some items were labeled orange, which meant they were pending due to the pause and hold Schmidly implemented last fall.
"I think that these color codes are fairly useless, because these are all very complicated issues," Fields said. "I'd like to hear exactly how he did these things, and for the future, something a little bit more detailed would be nice."
Fields also said an evaluation process that received input not just from supervisors but also from department chairs, faculty, provosts, deans and students would be ideal. This evaluation process is similar to the one used for deans.
Schmidly said he would not be responsible for developing a 360-degree evaluation that would incorporate input from positions above and below his.
"A 360-degree evaluation is up to the regents," Schmidly said. "It's not my prerogative to make an evaluation system for myself."
Schmidly said he was pleased to receive the letter of support from the regents, but he still has many goals to work on.
"We had some real challenging financial issues this past year and had challenges in involving the right governance groups at UNM in decision making," he said. "We're not going to make those mistakes again next year."
Sanchez said Schmidly had a successful year regardless of the economic crisis.
"Despite an economically-challenging year, (Schmidly) managed to end the year with 80 percent of the major milestones either being completed or showing good progress," Sanchez said.
Schmidly said he makes a list of important goals for each school year called "adelante objectives." He said one of last year's adelante objectives aimed at 'adopt(ing) new student enrollment standards and an enrollment management plan' helped UNM move forward.
"I think the most important thing we did last year was get the Division of Enrollment Management off the ground and provide students better enrollment management services," Schmidly said.
Sanchez said Schmidly is focusing on adelante objectives for next year that include "improving communications and engagement with faculty."
Fields said he hopes to see improvement in all areas of leadership and upper administration at UNM.
"(Communication) is something we've been trying to get this administration to do for a while and some progress has been made - I'll give them a yellow light on that," Fields said. "However, I think there are still decisions being made without discussions."
Schmidly said he will also focus his objectives on student advisement and student access to computers.
Schmidly said he will meet with faculty, staff, deans and the student body president before presenting his adelante objectives in late August.
