Task Force on Restructuring Meeting Notes
October 15, 2003
Present: Larkin, Lawrence, SubbaNarasimha, Kang, Hansen, Dobey, Spaude,
Bayerl, Nunes, Cogdill, Rundquist, Murphy
Absent: Starks-Martin
Dennis Nunes presented:
Dr. Nunes explained that he would focus on issues related to the School
of Graduate Studies unit. His affiliation with the unit goes back to
1986. There was a Dean of Graduate and Continuing Studies then, and the
office was also affiliated with sponsored programs and summer sessions.
There was an external review in 1987; at that time there was a request
to better focus the energies of the graduate school, as the units working
together were very different in terms of their roles. It was suggested
that Continuing Studies should be made separate, but a decision was made
that Sponsored Programs be moved to a stand-alone basis and Continuing
Studies remain with the Graduate Studies unit. There was a Director of
Continuing Studies; in 1993 this position became the Associate Dean of
Continuing Studies. In 1997 Continuing Studies separated from Graduate
Studies and John Burgeson became Dean. In 2002 the unit acquired the
Honors program. An organizational chart showing the current structure
was distributed.
The current structure works quite well. This fall the graduate “head
count” is up about 12.4%, and credits are up 17%. Current Graduate
School initiatives include enhancing the quality of graduate education,
developing approximately 2 new programs a year, and possibly expanding
toward the Twin Cities. SCSU’s School of Graduate Studies has had
the greatest growth in graduate education of all MnSCU universities in
the last 5 years.
SCSU also has the most productive Summer Session in MnSCU. The program
is provided about $2 million, and the goal is to bring in about $3.5
million to give back to the university budget. It is working well from
an administration standpoint, and SCSU’s budgeting model is being
adopted regionally and nationally.
The Honors program has become part of Graduate Studies relatively recently,
and Dr. Nunes feels it is too early to fully evaluate how that program
is working with the Graduate School structure.
Disadvantages of the current structure include that the Graduate School
has a very heavy work load and somewhat unrelated functions are assigned
to the unit; in some ways they don’t complement each other. Summer
Session is largely unrelated to graduate school. Summer Session is labor
intensive. Summer Session came to the unit in the 70’s when it
was largely teachers coming back; now it embraces all 5 colleges, and
mirrors the work being done during the academic year.
Other organizational considerations - college configuration. The current
structure works well in terms of the success of the components in the
unit. However, the Ghosh/Mortimer(*) Option 3 is appealing in that it
has an Arts & Science College, Business and Education, and a School
of Professional Studies. Areas of growth in masters level graduate education
are mostly in professional areas and having a college of professional
studies would make sense and provide fertile ground for new programs.
It would not have profound effects in terms of the Honors program.
According to information about peer institutions from Mortimer & Jones,
of 25 peer institutions, apparently over half are structured with combined
Graduate Studies and Research in some way. There are some concerns: our
level of sponsored activity is relatively small, and we probably have
less faculty research than other peer institutions. The current structure
somewhat isolates sponsored programs from the mainstream of academic
decision making. This structure would work only under two conditions:
1) if Research combines with Graduate Studies, Summer Sessions would
have to move to another area - probably Continuing Studies, and 2) if
Sponsored Programs/Research were to be combined with Graduate studies,
there is concern that research would be lost - we need something such
as a Vice President of Research, which would raise the profile of research.
It is not unusual for top tier schools to have this kind of designation.
Question to Dennis Nunes:
Are there benefits for the Graduate Studies
program in the structure of Option 3? There would be some modest advantage
from a combined College
of Liberal Arts & Science. There would be more benefit from a College
of Professional Studies; areas like Health Sciences are areas that
are ripe for development.
Richard Rothaus presented:
Dr. Rothaus has some statistics and comparisons with other universities
and will send these to the co-chairs. Sponsored Programs at most universities
are organized in four ways: 1) Assistant Vice President and Associate
Vice President, 2) Vice President for Research, 3) Dean of Graduate Studies
and Research integrated, 4) Sponsored Programs separated out as a separate
foundation, but for legal reasons we can’t do that.
Most people don’t have a good grasp of all they do. The office
coordinates short-term and long-term internal grants and contractual
research grants. Sponsored Programs monitors assurances related to human
subjects research, fiscal assurances, and assurances related to academic
misconduct. They try to watch what funding opportunities are available
and notify faculty. This is not a difficult task but it requires a full
knowledge of the departments and faculty. Administratively, grants come
to the university, not to the individual - this is true for all kinds
of grants. $4-$5 million comes through the office per year. It is a 2.75
person office plus a full-time secretary and a full-time grants accountant
in the business office.
The critical issues are related to leadership and processing issues.
Leadership is needed to keep research and scholarly and creative activity
on the table, since budgets, workload issues and retention issues are
what typically take up more administrative time. There is a huge amount
of paperwork and a lot of processing involved in the grants; a lot of
time is spent dealing with process issues, and leadership is needed to
keep processes from stalling.
Grants and contracts are time-sensitive. The office needs a high level
of access where signatures and approval can be gotten quickly. In short,
whoever has this job needs to be able to walk into the Provost’s
office and say “excuse me, but I need this approved and signed
today.” We try to avoid this, but there is an inevitability about
the last-minute nature of the work.
The level of access to the Provost is critical. Anything that would
put more layers in between that level of access would be a problem. There
are concerns with putting Sponsored Programs in Graduate Studies. There
are no cost savings to be gained. If we had a Dean of Graduate Studies
and Research, it would be too big a job. There are numerous federal rules
and compliance issues to deal with. Protocols and institutional review
of research involving human subjects changes all the time. There are
numerous assurances we have to complete concerning academic misconduct
policies, auditing policies, employment issues and a bunch of federal
regulations to constantly watch out for. Most of this happens quietly
behind the scenes without most people being bothered by it, and we think
that is the way it should be; but it is a lot of work. How, for example,
would a person in such a combined position have the time to peruse the
latest details of OMB circular 110A and the literature related to it?
This is a concern. Most institutions that use that model have an Associate
Dean for Research; it’s a Ph.D. position and it wouldn’t
work if it weren’t. Thus there wouldn’t be a cost-savings.
There isn’t any real confidence that it’s a structure that
would help in any way. In other places where this structure exists, they
are doing substantially less than we are. A structural change should
look toward how Sponsored Programs would be enabled to do more.
Questions to Richard Rothaus:
Would the combination of Sponsored Programs
with Graduate Studies raise the profile of the university? It’s
more important that there be a single voice whose sole charge is to deal
with grants, etc. MnSCU
rules say that every kind of grant must be signed by the provost. We
have asked in past years for the AVP to be given signature authority
and it has been denied. If there is a restructuring, this issue should
be part of it. It’s not so complicated and surely some threshold
can be devised - VP or AVP can sign for anything up to $200,000 or
something like that. But we will need MnSCU to help/agree to this;
otherwise, even if the structure were changed to have a Vice President
of Research, everything would still need to be signed by the Provost.
Nobody likes to sign things without knowing what is in them, and that
erodes the Provost’s time.
Would structure have anything to do with the visibility of the unit?
Indirect costs are perceived as a problem; we are lacking a formula that
designates where indirect costs go. We have a draft formula ready and
are trying to get this taken care of as soon as possible. This will return
indirects in part to those who generate them. This isn’t a structural
issue per se, but is something that still needs fixing. There is a natural
tension we should expect here, and we will never have a situation where
everyone is happy. No one likes to pay indirects, every University takes
them.
What about the organizational structure would help you get the $10-$15
million a year we should be at? It’s not about structure, it’s
about work load. 100-120 applications per year go out. 15% of our faculty
is active in grants; that’s right on target for an institution
of our size. Most of our faculty have a 4/4 teaching load. With such
a load it is just not possible to receive and complete big grants of
the sort we should be getting.
Are there positive things happening for the growth of Sponsored Programs
with a structural change of the colleges? Some - there is some natural
crossover that doesn’t happen now because currently people working
on the same kinds of things are in different colleges. There is a great
deal of fear that in a college that large, the Dean would not be able
to understand and create grants for faculty. The Dean would have to know
the faculty, would have to understand the ramifications if a grant were
received. For example, how would the Dean know a discipline well enough
to recognize a truly prestigious and important grant opportunity and
know enough about it to decide whether large amounts of reassigned time
were appropriate?
Rothaus e-mail comment to Nunes and Larkin later that day:
I needed
to think a bit, because I hadn’t thought of the scenario
VP of Graduate Studies and Research, AVP of Research, but had been brooding
about a Dean/Associate Dean scenario as proposed a few years back (I
am sure this came through in my comments).
A VP of Graduate Studies and Research, AVP or Research might elevate
the research and scholarly and creative activity priorities/stature on
campus. I don’t think I said that.
I’m a bit worried about the signature/authority issue in 2 ways.
(1) If things have to get approval by Dean, AVP, VP, and Provost then
we have added a layer to the process and I don’t like it. If, however,
the approval is Dean, AVP, VP, with the Provost only needed on the big,
unusual or controversial items, then we haven’t increased layers.
There are some (even many) issues the Provost has to deal with because
of his signature authority that I think are too small for him to have
to worry about - if a VP could do that, it might be good for the whole
university. (2) Part of my authority comes from being one step from the
Provost. People know that if it can’t be worked out with me, then
it has to go to the Provost and that sometimes makes things go faster,
because many people don’t want to take issues to the Provost (for
both the right and the wrong reasons). Will being one step from the VP
carry the same stature?
In sum, I think:
Dean of Graduate Studies and Research with Associate/Assistant Dean of
Research = step very far backwards. VP of Graduate Studies and Research
with AVP of Research = something well worth considering.
Discussion:
It was noted that our list of people to meet with the committee
did not include anybody from the Strategic Planning Committee, and
we will
contact Judy Kilborn. The committee will invite Provost Spitzer to
give us his concerns/views about the organization of the Academic
Affairs office.
Andrew Larkin plans to distribute notes of each meeting after the next
meeting so there’s time for corrections to be made. Sharon Cogdill
clarified that the list serv she set up was meant to be for the committee.
Andrew Larkin suggested putting any discussion from the campus community
on the discuss list. The committee would like to make the memo from Provost
Spitzer available to the campus community. Andrew Larkin with talk with
Sara Grachek about getting information on the web site.
(*)ADDENDUM:
Last spring's consultants' report, the Ghosh-Mortimer memo, is at
http://www.stcloudstate.edu/documents/organization/default.asp
It includes links to organization tables.
It includes links to organization tab
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