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Restructuring
Task Force Meeting Notes - Oct. 24, 2003
Present: Murphy, Bayerl, Kang, Dobey, Hansen, Starks-Martin, Rundquist,
Nunes, Larkin, Spaude, Cogdill
Absent: SubbaNarasimha, Lawrence
Discussion:
Discussed plans for preparing a draft recommendation after
we are done with listening to presentations. The committee will aim
for a report
consisting of one page each addressing organization of academic support
services, colleges, and academic affairs. If the committee is meant
to include recommendations for timelines, and if the recommendations
include
reassignment of faculty, there would have to be a mid-February deadline
to account for time to inform faculty of changes to comply with the
IFO contract. If the recommendations included hiring, deadlines would
have
to be even sooner.
Website - E. Kang said people are waiting for it to be up. D. Murphy
reported that Sara Grachek will probably get to it next week.
More and more people are saying they don’t like idea
of a mega-college.
T. Hansen stated he has visited with most of the departments
and areas in science and engineering; most people don’t think a
mega-college would work. The idea that has the most merit in his discussions
is David DeGroote’s idea. We need a structure in which programs
can flourish and eventually become autonomous.
S. Bayerl stated that Frank Loncorich is concerned about being
moved under the enrollment management umbrella; he feels his office is
better aligned with records & registration, and that his area needs
more direct contact with administration.
G. Starks-Martin reported that the Math Skills Center feels
there is support for having all the academic support services aligned
with an academic department, except for Write Place. There is confusion
about the role of some services like the Math Skills Center. FTEs are
important to departments, and this makes a difference in how departments
view organizational structure.
There has been discussion that Mortimer has somewhat recanted
about his recommendations. D. Nunes stated he has heard nothing to that
effect, but will ask the Provost. The restructuring recommendations were
from the Ghosh/ Mortimer report, not from NCHEMS. In general we shouldn’t
think those recommendations are gold-plated. Nobody’s making the
case that we should make a college of arts & sciences. While it has
been suggested that those recommendations are boilerplate, perhaps it
reflects a more nationally accepted standard, and perhaps it’s
our task to see how well this fits our situation.
R. Dobey commented on the e-mail he sent out regarding Winona
State University’s investigation of a restructuring/reorganization.
Their timeline is a year rather than two months. They have money set
aside for the research, and they’re having opportunities for people
to go to other facilities to get ideas.
Lin Holder presented:
Dr. Holder distributed a list of the duties she’s
had under five different VPs/Provost, and clarified that we should remember
to separate
people from positions. Structures should be based on what is best for
the university, not about who is in certain positions.
In answering the question about critical issues in the area of academic
support services, she pointed out that they are fragmented now; they
are divided between Academic Affairs and Student Life and Development.
Supplemental instruction services are particularly fragmented; there
is no coordinated process or organized way for students to have easy
access to them. We know we want a good first year experience. There is
discussion about having a full program, with a whole dorm of first year
experience students, next year. There are also some small academic units
that don’t fit into any college, such as Military Science and College
Transitions 150. She has some responsibility for some of those, and provides
some budget, but it’s not a coherent organizational structure.
The fifth area of concern is that we don’t have enough administrators;
we would see that if we looked at the structure of other universities.
We have only 35 excluded managers for a student body of 16,000. {Comment:
D. Nunes referred to charts included in the NCHEMS report showing where
SCSU fits in comparison to other comparably sized universities in terms
of percentage of faculty to students, and percentage of administrators
to students.}
Dr. Holder referred to the facilities plan report that was based on
campus discussion about the remodeling of Centennial Hall. There were
two points of view about academic support services, but there were some
issues not covered by those models. Her position was changed to Associate
VP before she came to it, because at that time there was a clear need
to provide a ‘go to’ person. There was only one Associate
VP. Over time, the structure has changed so that we now have four Associate
VP’s, and now it’s not so clear what the Associate VP for
Academic Affairs should be. There has been a loss of focus and clarity
about who the second in command is. The Deans have clear primacy in their
colleges, but it’s more difficult for the Provost without a clear
second in command. In the consultant report she sees a reflection that
maybe we need to get back to that. She distributed a chart of proposed
structure, in which there is an Associate or Vice Provost instead of
four Associate VP’s. Potentially there are seven areas under the
Associate Provost directly. {Clarification: those areas don’t currently
report to Dr. Holder structurally.}{Question: the Advising Center appears
in Dr. Holder’s list of current responsibilities, but Dr. Saffari
has a different perspective, and so do Steve Klepetar and Julie Bresnahan-Stark.
Dr.Holder does function as supervisor (structurally) over Julie Bresnahan-Stark
and the other professional advisors.} If there is a Vice Provost who
oversees all the areas, there’s a chance for problems to surface
and be resolved before they go to the Provost.
Questions/comments:
What is included in tutorial services? There is
a model called supplemental instruction, which includes learning communities.
Tutorial services are
usually one on one. Lots of departments have their own tutoring. Departments
are instrumental in selecting tutors - this has to involve faculty.
- What
about tutorial services in athletic areas? Should they be split off?
Dr. Holder would rather see a comprehensive supplemental
instruction model that includes athletics.
- Would it be an umbrella
for the training of tutors? Possibly - at one time we had something
like that.
- We could recommend an organizational change where there
would be a position for tutorial services, but we’d have to be
careful about dual reporting.
- There’s a great interest for the
Write Place to be collaborative with other areas.
- We could involve
the tutorial services we have now and reestablish a comprehensive
tutoring program for tutoring among lots of different departments.
- Dr.
Holder: It’s not always clear if services such as
GLBT and Student Disability Services have enough academic content to
be properly placed in Academic Affairs.
- Tutoring is different from what
the Math Skills Center does. The Math Skills Center tries to help
students deal with whatever problems
are holding them back and to get them to the right place for the right
help.
- First Year Experience now has a curriculum component. If new
curriculum is developed it needs an academic home.
- Isn’t First Year Experience an academic program? It should
be. Student Life and Development is trying to get it going, but Dr. Holder
doesn’t think it will be successful unless it has an academic
component.
- Faculty feel that those faculty who are running student instructional
service centers should be in the department that the discipline is
in. It seems they do better when directors are well rooted in an academic
discipline. Faculty need to be in a community of peers. The boundary
between academics and student services is becoming blurred. It may
be
a false dichotomy that a program would have to go in one or the other.
- One thing we’re hearing about general education is that
there’s no one place to go, no coherence, no mission organization.
- The Mortimer/Ghosh report has ideas of a large Liberal Arts & Science
College. What are your thoughts on that? Dr. Holder feels that a University
College model would work better for us. Fully one-third of our students
come in undecided - that’s 800 students (our largest segment) who
don’t know what they want to do. Even among the students who think
they know, only one of four graduates in the major they first thought
they wanted. One way to serve them may be to have a University College.
This may include joint appointments, for instance in English and the
University College. This would afford students a solid home for first
year experience, it would have resources and the structure needed to
support it. It would need faculty who are committed to teaching of first
and second year experience. Solid faculty who don’t want to get
their Ph.D.’s might have a home in such a college.
- Dr. Holder:
There may be some value to pulling together some of the professional
programs. As far as a large college of arts & sciences
or a large professional college, one way of moderating the effect of
a large college would be to break it down into schools. For example in
Fine Arts and Humanities, there could be a School of the Arts, a School
of Letters, and a School of Communications, each with an Assistant or
Associate Dean to help the dean with supervision. As far as a college
or Dean of General Education, that wouldn’t work unless that Dean
is given resources.
- What are your thoughts on combining all of the liberal
arts & sciences
into one college? It may solve some of general ed problems, but it
makes a gigantic administrative burden.
- Do you envision that incoming
students who are undecided would
enroll in the University College? Yes. It could be that all new students
begin there and as soon as they know where they want to go, they would
in essence transfer to that college. They do something similar at the
U of M, but they do not share faculty between the colleges. Academic
support services are all in the general college. The U of M model is
too big to be a model for us. Everyone needs to know who can make decisions.
Attachments:
- Areas of Responsibility
- Response to the Task Force on Restructuring
- Proposed Organizational
Chart
Areas of responsibility: Assoc. V.P. curriculum/academic programs.
These
are in no particular order.
- Monitoring the curriculum process. Designated to be administrative
signer of all curriculum proposals which come to us from the FA, approximately
300-400 per year. Weekly curriculum bulletin. MnSCU system office liaison
for academic programs. Monitoring of articulation agreements.
- Program
review and accreditation oversight.
- Serve on Administrative Meet
and Confer team.
- Advising Center. Faculty director, 75% time plus
28 extra duty days. Four .25 faculty positions. Administrative director
technically reports
here, but functionally to Enrollment Management, although her salary
is in our budget. Same with the six professional advisors.
- Placement
testing. Math testing; faculty coordinator. No developed program
exists for all students. DGS students now being tested upon entrance,
CCC director coordinating.
- Room scheduling. Large classrooms, rooms
for classes after depts. have made their schedules. Working on implementing
computerized scheduling.
- Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence.
Faculty director, 40% time plus 10 extra duty days.
- Academic programs
not belonging to a college; reading, orientation, military science.
International courses should probably be moved to this
area since they don’t really have a departmental home.
- Division
of General Studies. MSUSAAF 50% time director.
- Undergraduate Bulletin,
print and online. Print bulletin is published every other year.
- Student issues: Academic probation, suspension, overloads for students
not admitted to a major, waivers of academic policies, consortium agreements,
retroactive withdrawals or adds, residency, student complaints. Assistant
handles first round waivers and I am the appeals step. This is the
other 50% of DGS director’s job. I handle about 600 student cases
a year myself.
- Represent Academic Affairs on enrollment management
committee.
- Immediate supervision of 3 clerical workers and two staff
directors; timesheets, vacation/sick leave slips, annual evaluations.
- Loose oversight of academic success support units: The Write Place,
Academic Learning Center and Math Skills Center, Speech Anxiety Reduction
program.
- Designated to hear grievances; have heard several at Step I
and Step II. Typically one to three a year.
- Backup to the v.p./provost;
represent Academic Affairs at various functions, attend meetings
in place of the v.p./provost, make decisions
and sign off on routine matters in the absence of the v.p./provost,
hold non-routine decisions for the v.p./provost or involve other administrators
in case of a critical situation.
- Special projects as assigned. Examples:
Semester conversion coordinator, fall workshop planning, implementation
of computerized room scheduling.
- Oversight of Anoka-Ramsey Community
College Community College Connections program. MSUAASF coordinator.
- Represent Academic Affairs on CIRT (Crisis Intervention and Response
Team).
- And the infamous - “other duties as assigned.”
RESPONSE TO THE TASK FORCE ON RESTRUCTURING
Please note: This is an informal analysis prepared by me and does not
reflect any official or unofficial proposal or any predetermined decision
on the part of administration. It reflects my thinking alone. It has
been shared with the Provost and this committee. Lin Holder.
CRITICAL ISSUES IN MY AREA RELATED TO ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE:
- Academic support services are fragmented, divided between Student
Life and Academic Affairs. There is little coordination across organizational
lines. Each service does the best it can under the conditions and organizational
model in which it exists. Budgets are an afterthought, and frequently
marginal or inadequate.
- Supplemental instruction and tutorial services
are minimal and isolated from one another. No coordinated training,
oversight or access plan exists.
- Initial experiments with a First
Year Experience program have been problematic, due in part to organizational
issues.
- Academic units (those offering credit-bearing courses) without
a college “home” are not well-structured, divided between
Academic Affairs and Student Life. Some which do exist in colleges
and departments
might be better organized together in a student academic services unit.
- Some Academic Affairs administrators, including Deans and Associate
Deans, are spread thin, performing multiple functions. Do all current
functions need to be continued, or are there areas which could be discontinued
or reconfigured?
POSSIBLE CONFIGURATION OF A CENTER FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS:
Model in Consultants’ report:
Assoc. V.P. of Academic Support (a new or reconfigured position) supervises
a unit made up of the following:
- Assistant VP for Enrollment Management
- Admissions
- Financial Aid
- Records and Registration
- Advising Center
- Transitional Services [not specified in consultants’ report,
but broadly described as career counseling, learning center programs
and tutorial services.]
- Career Services
- Write Place
- Math Skills Center
- Tutorial Services [loosely includes Athletes
for Success, Minority Academic Support Center]
- Community College Connections
- Academic Learning Center
- [Not mentioned: Division of General Studies]
Model in Facilities Plan: (Based on widespread campus discussion several
years ago - not a creation of facilities planners.)
- Center for Student Success:
- Write Place [remains connected to English
Dept.]
- Math Skills Center [remains connected to Math Dept.]
- Minority
Academic Support Center [currently part of Student Life]
- Athletes
for Success [currently part of Student Life]
- Intensive English
Center [remains connected to English Dept.]
- GLBT Services [currently
part of Student Life]
- Honors
- Advising Center
- Career Services [currently part of Student Life]
- General Studies
- Student Disability Services [recently added to
this plan]
Oversight of
this center is not specified in the report.
Additional Considerations/Issues:
Some blurring of reporting lines, authority and functions has occurred
as changes have been made in Academic Affairs positions. Until recent
years, there was one Associate VP for Academic Affairs and several
Assistant VP’s. As the Associate VP job description states,
“This position exists to provide leadership, supervision
and organization in all areas of the curriculum and academic programs.
The Associate Vice
President provides primary support to the Vice President for Academic
Affairs and takes full responsibility for all areas delegated by
him/her, including acting in his/her stead when appropriate.”
Now that the Academic VP is also the Provost and there are several Associate
VP’s, this leadership and full responsibility function has been
softened. I believe the Provost and the university would be strengthened
by returning to this function, perhaps by creating the position of Vice
Provost or Associate Provost.
Since an Associate VP for Enrollment Management is already in place,
two possibilities for modification might be considered. First, the position
of Associate VP for Academic Support, or another Assoc. VP position could
be strengthened to the level of a Vice or Associate Provost, through
whom it would then be appropriate for an Associate VP to report. Second,
the Assistant VP position mentioned in the consultants’ model could
be retained as an Assoc. VP, perhaps with some additional responsibilities.
There are several areas now reporting to or the responsibility of the
Academic Affairs Office which neither model addresses. These include
student academic waivers and appeals (approximately 1,200-1,500 cases
per year,) oversight of the curriculum process (approximately 300-400
proposals a year,) the undergraduate catalog, the Faculty Center for
Teaching Excellence, and Assessment. These need to be eliminated or assigned
to one of these positions.
Another area which has emerged in the last two years as having a definite
need and function is a testing/multipurpose computer lab which would
be located in Centennial with the Student Success Center. Informal oversight
of this process has resided in the Assoc. VP for Curriculum under the
CCC program, the Math placement testing program, and the Division of
General Studies. Coordination of the testing center as used for DGS has
been the responsibility of the Director of the CCC program, but a wider-use
center would need at least a part-time testing coordinator/director of
testing.
While some of these responsibilities could certainly be transferred
to other administrators, the complexity of the budgetary situation makes
it unlikely we could create a new position. There are now four Associate
VP and two Assistant VP positions in Academic Affairs. Another position
of Assistant VP for Institutional Research has been put on indefinite
hold. Several of these positions, including the previously mentioned
issues regarding the Assoc. VP for Curriculum, are somewhat problematic.
The current Assoc. V.P. for Planning is normally on campus only part
of the year and has focused on special projects during his time on campus.
It is essentially a 66% position. The consultants’ report describes
this position as Associate VP for Planning, Allocation and Management,
which would definitely need to be full time. This position could also
logically be reconfigured to be a Vice Provost. The current position
of Assistant VP for Faculty Relations is not mentioned in the consultants’ report.
The consultants recommend making the Graduate Dean also responsible for
Sponsored Programs and moving Summer Session to the Dean of Extended
Education. This would reduce the Assistant VP positions by one.
For these reasons, a configuration which keeps the Enrollment Management
position at the Associate VP level and strengthens one of the Associate
VP positions to a Vice Provost might ultimately serve the university
best, with a restructuring of the Associate VP for Planning and the Assistant
VP for Faculty Relations into some new configuration of responsibilities.
The position of Associate Vice President for International Studies would
remain as is. This approach would reduce the Assoc./Asst. VP ranks from
5.66 to 4, with one Vice Provost, three Associate VP’s and no Assistant
VP’s. The structure might look something like the attached organizational
chart.
Areas not covered in the organizational chart:
- Curriculum oversight
- Assessment
- Honors (currently in the Grad. School)
- Undergraduate Bulletin
- Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence
- Student academic policies
oversight
- Student complaints against faculty
- Grade appeals
- Probation/suspension
- Waivers of academic policies and requirements
- Tuition refunds
for academic and personal reasons
- Special requests (academic
forgiveness, evaluation of prior experience, miscellaneous unusual
circumstances
Proposed Organizational Chart
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