After speaking with a number of faculty and hearing faculty members express themselves very eloquently on the floor of the Faculty Senate, I have to conclude that faculty morale is the lowest I've seen it in my twenty years at the institution.
Sure, there are a number of factors external to MSU that might have an impact on the general mood on campus, but most of the faculty who have taken the time to speak me with me have expressed concerns about the large number of initiatives under way at the present time.
For example, at a recent Senate meeting, it became apparent that there is a great deal of uncertainly about the exact status of faculty evaluation and PBSI for 2008 (and it's late October). At the Senate Executive Council meeting last week, the Provost urged the Senate to adopt a standard teaching evaluation instrument (for this semester) since such ongoing evaluations are important for the SACS study. I stated in that meeting, as I have stated at other times, that I was dismayed that we dropped the IDEA form before creating or otherwise designating a replacement. I continue to be disturbed that the IDEA form was dropped simply by administrative fiat and without meaningful input from the faculty. (Technically, the Evaluation Committee of the Faculty Senate should approve the adoption or discontinuance of a student evaluation instrument.)
And this pattern of administrative fiat is continuing. For example, currently there are ad hoc committees addressing faculty workload and faculty evaluation. These processes are the responsibility of the Faculty Senate, yet these initiatives have been initiated outside of the Faculty Senate governance structure. General education revision, which is specifically listed in the Constitution of the Faculty Senate as being under control of that body, is being conducted independent of the Faculty Senate. Although the Senate insisted upon the formation of the General Education Advisory Council (made up of representatives from each department on campus), there is continued conflict about who will ultimately ratify a new general education framework (even though it is usual practice across the country to put such matters to a faculty vote). And there is talk about changing tenure and promotion standards and processes.
And then there's the curriculum audit process . . . . While I actually do think the basic process was a good idea, the wholesale reorganization of large parts of the university is not justified by the report. To choose just one example, the B.A. program in English was marked for "enhancement." But why, then, does the report recommend combining English and parts of Communication into one gigantic department that would be virtually impossible to administer--especially given the major differences in teaching strategies and research agendas in these already-diverse departments? And I know many of you are facing similar sorts of recommendations that simply are not justified by the audit, and you are deeply concerned about how these changes will affect you and your colleagues and your students.
No wonder faculty feel powerless. Why shouldn't we? If you're like me, you're struggling to keep up with the heavy teaching load at MSU and trying to do some meaningful research and service on the side. But meanwhile just about every significant process involving faculty--faculty evaluation, general education, the evaluation of the curriculum, and on and on--is up in the air. What is even more frustrating is that no clear answers seem to be coming from the administration. I have tried to get a fairly simple answer to the question posed by the faculty member below, but no answers seem to be forthcoming.
I would love to hear from more of you. If you think I am way off base here, please let me know. If others agree, please let me know that, too. If I'm going to represent you, I need to know where you stand.
Ron
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9 comments:
Yep, that covers me. Everything is changing at once: faculty evaluation, faculty workload, gen ed, and the administrative structure of most departments. And, as noted here, most of these changes are being imposed from above, with either token faculty input or a deliberate avoidance of the regular faculty channels.
Seems like a pretty accurate assessment to me.
You are definitely not off base. I agree with much of what you say.
What thought has been given on the effect adding a new college, some new schools, and new administrators will have on our relationship with the General Assembly? I'm concerned that legislators will conclude that if we can afford such major additions, we can afford further cuts. (Also, just how are your fellow Regents going to react?)
As for the general education reform ratification question, I agree there should be a vote (a vote, by the way, where the status quo is one of the options). If there is no vote, then any "consensus" claimed by the administration will be seen by many as phony.
On the other hand, asking that the faculty initiate all proposals to change tenure, promotion, etc -- we'd either have breakdowns or not get much done.
I'll probably have more to say later.
Yes, you summed it up. What I believe is the hardest to deal with is in the Curriculum Audit the deans have not been on board with the faculty to deal with many of the issues that being audited. The faculty are feeling the stress without honesty or participation of the deans who have not been addressing their units. Faculty are falling out of the process due to too much stress and pressure to do their work under these conditions. There is no support. The Provost has said in many of the dept meetings that we are being pushed out of our comfort zones. What is happening is that many are being pushed out of the whole process without support. Yes, morale is pretty low. Most of us in my unit teach a 4/4 load and with all the service work on top of not knowing where you will end up is more than stressful. There is little energy left to be creative and look for good solutions. It is hard to think of good solutions when you are stressed out, overloaded and feeling powerless over administrative choices.
I don't think you are way off base but some of my colleagues are taking advantage of the situation to complain more than usual. Allow me to explain. It seems that only a certain percent of the faculty are doing most of the service load. The same productive, busy and responsible faculty members seem to be on all the committees, working on gen-ed, and are working on the audit report.
MSU is a pretty productive place in most regards and there are very little wasted resources. There is a portion of the faculty that is not doing any of the service work yet they are still complaining about it. Some faculty members are dead wood that never do anything productive in regard to service or for their program. It is like the old saying, if you want to get something done find the busiest person to do it. Now with all the extra work being thrust upon faculty, it is the same busy people doing all the extra work. There are a lot of faculty members across campus that don't lift a finger for service work because it doesn't count toward tenure or promotion and it cuts into their research or time they want to spend at home.
Thus, this extensive service load that the administration is pushing on the faculty is only being done by the same percent of faculty. Everyone is still complaining. Everyone is feeling the heat because the most productive people can't cover it all. Either work isn't getting done or some of the people who never do service actually have to do something for a change. Some of them are complaining the most. It is human nature and everyone has a reason to complain. Morale goes down.
It was said in the hallway recently that if a faculty member is too stupid to get themselves off those committees they deserve all the extra work. Your faculty senate is looked at by the majority in my department as a do nothing body that is a waste of time and is only good to put on the resume for tenure. Why would anyone want to waste their time with service when it doesn't count? All the extra work that is being generated by the administration is service work. Why would anyone want to do it?
It does, indeed, seem a Perfect Storm of things occurring simultaneously, which leads to a sense of bewilderment and the fact that making a decision regarding, say, department restructuring is all the more difficult because we don't know what large-scale Gen Ed changes might occur, etc etc. The fact that the Senate (and, by extension, all of us) should play a larger, or at least more decisive, part in all of this than is occuring is also alarming.
The problem isn’t just that there are administrative fiats; the problem is that these fiats often come from a place of profound ignorance, particularly in regards to the Faculty Senate and Senate-appointed committees. If the Provost herself does not know that current members of the Promotion committee are not members of the Faculty Senate (and hence not readily available to meet with her after a Thursday Senate meeting), and if a select few of her assistants (some of whom have worked at MSU for years) are unaware of the fact that members of University curriculum committees are not necessarily Senators, and that those various committees are not one giant curricular committee composed of the same people, then how can that office effectively oversee the reorganization of Senate-appointed committee structures? Although it could be said that anyone who does not have the wherewithal to recognize and understand a box is thinking outside of it, I would hate to think that we’ve sunk so low as to consider misinformation innovation.
Lest you think that I’m just nit-picking over honest mistakes and slips of the tongue, consider the role of the University General Education subcommittee in general education reform. Back before the FGEAC was formed, I asked the then director of Graduate and Undergraduate programs, who was working closely with the Provost, why the standing committee on gen ed would not be actively involved in the reform effort. At that time, I was told that the “old” committee was tied to the “old” program. Now that we were making a “new” program, we needed a “new” committee that can meet the challenges of the reformed curriculum. Although this oft-repeated argument sounds good, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There’s nothing in the description or charter of the standing committee that intimately ties it to one program. Members who are elected to the committee are only under an obligation to apply our current rules. They are not bound by a blood oath to defend a dying program until its last breath. Due to administrative fiat, though, the committee appointed by the Senate to oversee gen ed has been put on the sidelines while an arbitrarily selected group of individuals on some murky “steering committee” have been given the power to oversee the entire reform effort, including the Senate’s appointed committee for gen ed reform. One of the Steering Committee’s “innovative” decisions has been to make the same committee that was shut out of the initial discussions work hard to come up with a streamlined process for course approval that will meet the administration’s imposed deadline for reform. Apparently, that Senate-appointed University committee couldn’t be trusted with conceptual work, but it can be called upon to perform grunt labor at the Provost’s whim.
Thank you Ron for your courageous and articulate post.
Since the popular trend in universities right now seems to be using a business model applied to the academic setting, those employing such models would do well to consider that one of the basic rules of a business model is to delegate both responsibility and authority. In the current climate here at MSU, lots of responsibility has been delegated but no authority or true participative decision making has been delegated to those "doing" the work. This practice of delegation without authority is (in my opnion) a tragic flaw as the people "doing" the work are highly intelligent, gifted, articulate, and accomplished individuals who have been discounted in the process. I am one of these folks, and I definitely feel dis-enfranchised by the process and the academic leadership of the provost and the deans. My chair has been supportive and sane during the curriculum audit process but above her, the leadership has been dismal.
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