Restructuring Task Force Meeting Notes - Oct. 27, 2003

Present: Spaude, Larkin, Nunes, Lawrence, Hansen, Rundquist, Dobey, Starks-Martin, Murphy, Cogdill

Absent: Kang, Subba, Bayerl

Joane McKay presented:

Introduction

The College of Education at St. Cloud State University continually demonstrates the dedication, competence and creativity needed to meet the challenges that face higher education. External conditions have presented challenges that stress our resources and restrict our ability to respond with continued assurances of quality and optimal service. Perhaps no college has greater challenges in the 21st century than the COE as it strives to meet huge teacher shortages, changing demographics in the public schools, constant reporting requirements from all phases of government - both federal and state, and the on-going need for partnerships with the public schools. At the same time, we continue to forge new relationships with our membership in the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER), the Renaissance Group, American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). Furthermore, we are fully accredited through NCATE and the Minnesota Board of Teaching. I am providing the Task Force three documents to give further information about our work: (a) Dean’s Report, 2003; (b) Stories of Our Excellence, 2003; and (c) College of Education, Organizational Chart 2003/2004.

Background

My remarks today are couched in the context of the change literature and the input from the departments in the College of Education. In addition, I believe it is important for you to know that the COE operates yearly with two to three goals that are taken from our Strategic Plan that you will find on page 5 of the Stories of our Excellence. This plan completed in March, 2001 is constantly evolving but serves as a link to the University’s Strategic Plan with what the authors called “a goodness of fit with the university strategic planning themes.”

Margaret Wheatley in Leadership and the New Science has a chapter titled, “Change, Stability and Renewal: The Paradoxes of Self-Organizing Systems” and in it tells the delightful story of children at play on a swing frame where they will swing so hard that they finally loop over the top. Consider the image and then think about Wheatley’s conclusion: “It seems the very experiences these children seek out are ones we avoid: disequilibrium, novelty, loss of control, surprise.” (p. 75). I applaud the Task Force for its willingness to look at the multiple perspectives that are being brought before you and I am very pleased to present the College of Education’s response to your task.

Before I do that, however, I would like to call to your attention another MnSCU university’s process. I have just returned from an NCATE/BOT Accreditation visit at Winona State University where the campus is undertaking a year-long study designed around the question, “In the face of ever shrinking state resources for public higher education, how will this university (Winona) distinguish itself so it can continue to provide quality education vital to society?” It is quite a different approach and I would suggest one worthy of your study. For example, the President is investing nearly $475,000 in the faculty/staff/administration committees to go to other campuses to study and to observe what they are doing in four major areas:

• Program Excellence/Quality
• Services and Student Support
• Business/Community Partnerships
• Philanthropy

They are engaged in leadership retreats, planning meetings on campus, study groups, stakeholder’s input, and looking at what they call “the best of class” with the overall goal of a vision for a New University. All of this is being done in a systematic and planned way over a year’s time with a written summary no later than September 6, 2004, to President Darrell W. Krueger. I would suggest this process is worthy of examination in light of an October 6, 2003 memo that asks this Task Force to have its work completed by mid-November, 2003.

Major Questions

In the October 16, 2003, meeting of the Dean’s Advisory Council minutes from the COE, the Department Chairs were asked to provide input on two questions:

1. What in the organizational structure does not work for the COE today?
2. What are your suggestions for a more efficient structure to serve the students, faculty, and staff in the COE?

My remarks this morning, then, are based on the input from those Departments who supplied input and reflect my synthesis as the Dean of the College of Education.

Principles That Guide the COE Discussions

Recently, the DAC of the COE agreed upon some guiding principles that would be used for prioritizing our staffing requests. The four principles are: 1) quality access to students; 2) accreditation/assessment; 3) diversity; 4) emerging needs.

In addition, we recognize that several truths remain constant:

• State financial support for public higher education is in a long-term downward trend.
• We cut just over _____million dollars from our operating budget, raised tuition 15% this year and will probably do so again next year; these actions
• barely keep us afloat.
• There is a high demand for our college (we are the 12th largest producer of teachers in this country and we are producing educational leaders to fill the gap left by the retirement of 85% of school administrators in Minnesota by 2005.)
• Our College has continued to serve the public good - the people of Minnesota and the region-with strong academic programs since the founding of this university.
• Our College is consistently recognized as an educational leader and was recently awarded a five million dollar Teacher Quality Enhancement grant from the Department of Education. This grant is one of four in the nation and the largest ever received at St. Cloud State University.
• Our College has a history of taking calculated risks in serving students and the public schools of Minnesota, the region and the nation.
• The College of Education has as its mission to “prepare transformative professional educators; educators who are prepared to facilitate the transformation of learners into life-long learners, critical and creative thinkers, and effective citizens in a democratic society.”

Restructuring Perspectives from the College of Education

University-Wide Perspectives:

1. With the evolution of technology, it may be time to re-examine the structure of the Center for Information Media as part of Learning Resources and Technology Services. Perhaps the idea all Learning Resources and Technology Services as teaching faculty is a concept that has outlived its usefulness. The LR and TS would be truly a service unit and Center for Information Media faculty would be in the academic unit that is the College of Education.
2. There are continuing issues about resources garnered from Continuing Studies that comes from the faculty of the College of Education but the return to the college needs to be addressed in a more equitable manner. For example, when a course is delivered in North Branch, is it a Continuing Education course or is it an on-load course in the College of Education? This is a structure that needs to be reviewed.
3. It is important to maintain the structural integrity of the College. Many social forces exist both locally and nationally that challenge the role of teacher education. Maintaining the COE as a strong, independent entity in order that the centrality of pedagogy in teacher preparation is reflected in the administrative structure is paramount.
4. University-wide restructuring as a cost-saving measure will lead to the probability that services to students may be reduced even more.
5. The existing governance (i.e. the dean in a separate College of Education) is essential. The accreditation depends on the very specific knowledge and commitment in an institution of our size. Accreditation (NCATE, CACREP, and other accrediting agencies) would be jeopardized by a structure that subsumes the COE.
6. A mega-liberal arts college offering all of the General Education classes may destroy the integrity of general education by not providing students access to diversity of experience, perspective and critical analysis afforded them by the present multi-college distribution of General Education classes. We can provide evidence of this by suggesting specific models where this has happened.
7. Student success depends upon smaller, more focused environments that are less alienating for already disenfranchised students attending large institutions. One of the findings of Robert D. Putnam in Bowling Alone, (2000) was the need for all of us to become “reconnected with our friends and neighbors” (p. 414). “These reconnections, “ maintains Putnam, “do not happen by designing larger and larger units.” Specifically, we believe that moving academic advising out of Multicultural Student Services, moving sexual assault advocacy out of the Women’s Center, and merging Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Services with the Women’s Center will be detrimental to the well-being of students in all colleges. These types of changes would further marginalize already marginalized students.

College-wide Perspectives

1. Restructuring could lead to a refinement of departments that would be more in line with the licensure issues of the State of Minnesota. Departments that now have majors need to become more independent in their roles and have control of their majors. For example, Child and Family Studies suggested that there is a K-3 portion of Early Education licensure and this may be more appropriate in CFS than in Teacher Development where it is currently housed. Child and Family Studies also suggested that Marriage and Family Therapy is currently in Educational Leadership and Community Psychology and may want to be more closely aligned with the Parent Education license and the family and parenting classes housed in Child and Family Studies.
2. Clinical experiences and student teaching are a very large and time-consuming aspect in the college. The Office of Clinical Experiences is key to the many partnerships in the schools and needs more autonomy in its work. The Office of Clinical Experiences is in line with national thinking on clinical experiences and needs more refinement as we learn to collaborate with one another.
3. The Human Relations Department needs to be maintained in the College of Education. It is the department that assists our students in their development of awareness of issues of oppression and social justice especially as those issues impact schools and students.
4. A Center for Graduate Studies should be added within the COE. This could be directed by a graduate faculty member from any department and could also include a liaison from every department. The purpose of this unit would be to oversee the graduate programs in the COE and provide greater interdisciplinary collaboration and broader perspective and options for graduate students in education while aligning core courses.
5. As data becomes more imperative to the work we do, we may need to think of realigning the SPARC office, Special Projects and Applied Research Office, to something more current such as an “Office of Grants, Research Support and Data Management.”

Conclusion

These are exciting times in higher education. Thank you for your willingness to undertake this task on behalf of the University and thank you for your willingness to listen to the College of Education perspective. I am ready for your questions.

Questions:

• What do you think about adding professional studies into The College of Education?
  We need another college. We have no centralized college for nursing or allied health. I think we’re behind.
• In regard to the problem you mentioned with the funding flow for Continuing Studies courses taught by COE faculty, can you give us an idea of the scale?
  When John Burgeson first became dean, he’d simply ask a faculty member if they’d like to teach a course. I would find out only after it was already happening. The problem was that Continuing Studies got the money. I can go to John with a need to get money for fixed term faculty, but our college still gets no money back.
• There have been two opposing perspectives in media about teachers - that there’s a shortage of teachers, and that there’s a surplus of teachers. What can you tell us about that?
  We are producing too many elementary teachers; that has been a fact for a long time. We have consistently taken resources away from elementary education to realign resources with areas where they’re needed. We have asked for enrollment management in elementary education, but we’re not getting it. There was a waiting list for elementary education students, and we’ve been pressured to keep enrollment high to help solve the enrollment problem.

Kristi Tornquist presented:

Dr. Tornquist thanked the committee for inviting her to present her views. She distributed copies of the LR&TS annual report. She came to SCSU in 1997 and inherited a tradition of service, innovation, and partnerships. Luther Brown is to be credited with the concept of a merged library and media services. Later, under John Berling, computing, web, and network services were added to the scope of Learning Resources; all of the service aspects are built on a strong foundation of instruction including instructional design, technology training and courses through the Center for Information Media. MnSCU IT changes have also had an impact on SCSU’s technology structure. Dr. Tornquist referred to the organizational chart, and explained the LR&TS organization. One strength of the organization is that the boundaries between areas are fluid. We have a history of development of partnerships; a lot of funding comes from partnership sources, such as Central Minnesota Library Exchange (through MDE) which supports regional interlibrary loan, the Central Minnesota Distance Learning Network (through HESO) which supports regional ITV and telecommunications, CMERDC (a partnership of school districts) for equipment repair, LiteSpan (telecommunications between here and Brainerd), Minnesota Digital Library, and MnSCU IT and library resources (network infrastructure, library collections, WebCT, and Internet2). We also host some offices for MnSCU like MnLink (library automation) and their course management software person. We have internal partnerships with areas such as the Center for Information Systems, the Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence, Student Government (Technology Fee), University Communications, and the COE (CIM).

It is necessary to consider of LR&TS’ instructional and service components to respond to the consultants’ report and the committee’s questions. From the instructional side, the consultants’ proposed changes to the COE would not be terribly disruptive to the current shared model. CIM could continue its partnerships with a College of Education and Professional Studies in the same way it does with the current COE. Also on the instructional side we are very interested in the concept of infusing information and technology literacy into the curriculum, perhaps as part of a first-year experience. Students as well as faculty have asked for information and technology literacy to be offered; we need to make sure there’s a structure that allows us to do that.

On the support side, we target one technician per 100 faculty and staff. If the sizes of the colleges change, we may need to move technicians around, but this is not insurmountable. If colleges become supersized we want to make sure we’re not moving the decision making too far away; if the deans are making technology decisions, it may be harder to get their attention on these matters if their areas of responsibility are expanded. Indeed there is a concern for the workload of the deans, but the fact that they are stretched too thin may be a resource problem and not an organizational issue. Even if we develop a perfect organizational structure, it will be impacted by the strengths and weaknesses of its employees, the ability of the organization to establish priorities, and the amount of resources available.

The LR&TS faculty and staff provided the following comments and suggestions:

• The faculty believe in the merger of technology and library services.
• The faculty believe that the CIM/LR&TS relationship works.
• They suggest that duplicative departments make library purchasing more complicated.
• They suggest we find ways to improve the coordination of faculty development efforts (FCTE)
• They suggest we continue to improve the coordination with CIS and clarify roles in developing areas like web, training, database, and HelpDesk services. Merging CIS with LR&TS is a possibility.
• They suggest we continue to improve the coordination of campus-wide initiatives.
• They suggest we continue to improve the coordination of campus-wide grants.
• They suggest we make information and technology literacy a priority.
• They ask that SCSU’s emphasis on e-learning be clarified. In particular, they ask that goals for the campus be formulated and that curricular issues be addressed.

Questions:

Would it be better if CIM were located in only one college?
LR&TS faculty strongly support CIM remaining in this joint role (in which faculty have service and teaching assignments). Having practitioners in the classroom is important for the strength of the program. With the breadth of the expertise needed in the courses we offer, it would be difficult to hire people to teach all the courses if they were not sharing roles. The expertise that comes with having faculty in the College of Education is also important.

Has any thought been given to making LR&TS something other than it is, having the person in charge be a VP or Associate VP as opposed to a Dean? What are your thoughts?

I have looked at other structures on other campuses. MnSCU’s central office has a long history of concentrating more on the administrative side of computing than on the academic side. The way we are organized, with a Dean on the academic side, forces the issue of including the academic component. Because I sit at the table with deans, discussions about the academic side of computing take place. If it were a VP position, discussions might focus more on business issues and less on teaching and learning concerns. MnSCU handles the business side of technology for us. Aligning this way makes sense for us, but the reporting structure could be organized differently and still work.

Can you address the merger of CIS with the work in LR&TS?
In the past, we had regional centers for administrative computing, and employees held joint appointments between MnSCU and SCSU. In the late 1990s, those people got split into being either MnSCU or SCSU employees. Duties became more defined. Technology continued to infuse more and more across campus, and CIS and LR&TS had more in common. Although Rubin Stenseng and I report to different vice presidents, we decided that the organizational structure didn’t matter; we needed to make decisions for the benefit of the whole campus. Rubin Stenseng and I have been committed to making it work no matter what way the organizational structure has been. In other words the organizational structure doesn’t necessarily mirror the way it’s been done? Yes, although it doesn’t particularly detract from what we are doing either.

Can you address the organization within Academic Affairs and Student Life?
Having the Provost stretched too thin isn’t in our best interest. I’m hesitant to try to comment on the organization of Student Life and Development since this is not my area of expertise. SCSU has a distributed technology model. A structure that would allow for more centralization of technology decisions, with the Provost dictating how we do things, could be more cost effective, but we would lose much in the area of flexibility of our teaching and learning. I get nervous when technology is only considered from a business perspective; it should be connected with academics.

Comments:

• Is it within our mission to restructure within an area? We don’t think so. We shouldn’t be focusing on organization within a college.
• Need to focus on what we can focus on and do well.
• It’s been interesting that talking about university restructuring seems to have opened it up for discussion about restructuring within colleges.
• T. Hansen related that a prospective student from Wisconsin had told him that SCSU had been her dream college for over a year. She wanted to know if students beginning college are “supposed to” get their general education courses out of the way.
• Where does this come from? Perhaps from parents. Anyone coming from 2-year school has that perspective.
• The MN Transfer Curriculum doesn’t allow upper division general education courses. This is one reason we haven’t embraced it. It’s attached to a funding bill and we’re not going to be able to ignore it. We have a number of courses offered for general ed that aren’t allowed in the MN Transfer Curriculum.
• I thought I heard Lin Holder talk about a School of Arts, Literature, and Communications. Is this something new? It has been discussed.
• Are colleges eager to have the Center for Information Media in their area? The Dean of the College of Education thought it should be in education, the dean of LRTS thought it should be where it is. D. Nunes clarified that CIM is a group of faculty in LRTS that offers an academic program. It is tied to education, though there are some tracks that aren’t, such as the human resources track. This is our only area that works under two deans.
• Did the Dean of Learning Resources ever report to the Dean of Education? No, it was thought to have always been two deans.
• R. Dobey mentioned that Athletics is another area that has dual reporting, and it does present a structural issue. It is structurally cumbersome when people in split positions are up for renewal. The coaches report to different supervisors - Morris Kurtz and Joane McKay. Because they are doing 75% coaching in an academic setting, it is difficult for them to meet the other academic criteria. The fit of different responsibilities is not very “neat”.

We have a number of faculty directors and reference librarians - faculty who are not primarily teaching faculty. We have not been sophisticated in handling the issue of reporting on the five contractual areas. The evaluation is to focus on whatever is called the primary assignment, not necessarily teaching.