Restructuring Task Force Meeting Notes - Oct. 29, 2003

Present: SubbaNarasimha, Cogdill, Lawrence, Larkin, Rundquist, Hansen, Dobey, Kang, Bayerl, Spaude, Starks-Martin, Murphy

Absent: Nunes

Judy Kilborn presented:

Judy Kilborn is presenting as the Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee. Strategic planning is establishing the university’s priority goals. Some issues that the task force has been discussing have come through in strategic planning, such as general education, first year experience, DGS, academic support units, and advising. The Strategic Planning Committee is concerned about accountability and appropriate reporting lines. In all three of the suggested reorganization plans we’ve seen, tutoring, advising and other academic support services come under academic advising, and the Strategic Planning Committee supports that. The restructuring discussions appear to be going around general education and first year experience. We’re concerned about the relationship between general education and the MN transfer curriculum. SCSU is largely ignoring it, but MnSCU has made it clear that it will be the accepted norm. We seem to be furthest out in terms of compliance. There is also a disconnect between general education and study abroad - general education doesn’t respond well to credits taken abroad. It might be better if someone was in charge of general education. We are up for reaccredidation in 2007. Currently there’s no assessment that looks at general education; a person in charge of general education might also be in charge of coordination of assessment efforts. One major issue is the need for good data. We don’t have a unit that does institutional research any more. It used to fit under academic affairs; it would be useful if we had some sort of unit like that.

There is a concern in strategic planning about the balance between general education and upper level classes. If there was a College of General Education, resources would follow that - we’re talking about unavailability of courses, and maintaining that students come to the university for the majors and minors we offer, not for our General Education program. Again there is the need for accountability, and having clear lines of reporting in place.

In terms of assessment, we’re not asking for an assessment office, but for some coordination element. There’s been some discussion about the key goal of technology being set in a college - some issues that come up are system wide, and there are gaps between MnSCU’s security policy and ours. There’s been some thought that we may need to have a system of oversight that is cross organizational rather than in one unit.

A primary concern is whether the priority strategic goals established during strategic planning would be supported in any reorganization - do resources follow organization? Another concern is maintaining balance between the major/minor programs and what we deliver in general education.

Questions/Comments:

• The issue of resources following organization has been heard in other places. If we were to adopt Option 2 or Option 3, how would that impact resources?
  We haven’t had enough time to process that. If we’re just moving things around for efficiency, it’s a moot point as far as resources go. Large programs within colleges may be a concern in terms of resources. This issue was on the table during our last talks about restructuring, and our restructuring didn’t solve our problems at that time. We need to think about whether restructuring will put our resources where we need them in order to achieve balance.
• The task force has talked about many things you’ve raised. We’ve talked about a large college of arts and sciences. We’ve talked about lines of reporting. There’s been concern that if someone takes over general education, then general education might then take precedence over majors and minors. We’ve talked about where in the organization general education should be. Assessment should be central for that, also coherence. There’s been no strong wave of support for a college of arts & sciences. Reservations we’ve had about a college of arts & sciences are that it would put so much of the core in one place that it might overwhelm them.
• Kilborn: One academic oversight concern is that some academic support units have no training, no supervision of tutors. We should be enabling coordination of what’s already there. The Strategic Planning Committee feels that if academic support units were closely tied with a discipline, they should remain there. The Academic Learning Center may be an exception because it supports more general education issues. We are putting some students out there who don’t know how to tutor. First Year Experience should have academic oversight. We’re talking about delivering services as primary, and rearranging resources for that purpose.
• Kilborn: Strategic Planning has been concerned about DGS as an orphan. In the past, whenever we needed more students, we’ve brought in under-prepared students through the DGS program without sufficient academic support. It’s important to keep academic skills and support first. DGS is not an enrollment management issue; it should be under academic purview. DGS is an orphan because it doesn’t report to any department in terms of curriculum. It needs an intermediary who is close to the departments. We’re dealing with high-risk students to begin with, and they of course have social issues, but academic preparedness should be paramount.
• You’ve talked about accountability and clear lines of reporting - are there specific departments or centers that need that?
  DGS, ALC - they’re under Student Life and Development even though they deliver curriculum - FYE, tutoring (this is more complicated because sometimes tutoring is housed in a department, but sometimes it has no academic home). There’s no academic oversight in these areas. Where curriculum is delivered, the people who are reported to should be academic. There are currently disconnects in those regards.
• Enrollment management is one thing, student success is another, but they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s one thing to work on issues we have in common like retention, and enrollment management can help. Until recently we did have things like DGS being used to “top off the tank”. But now we hear about retention in terms of what we’re delivering.
  Kilborn: There are two models for writing centers - one puts the writing center within an academic program run by faculty with PhDs. Another puts the writing center under student services, staffed by someone who doesn’t have a terminal degree. The first model is appropriate for an academic support unit. The intent is to house the program within the appropriate academic unit, supervised by someone with appropriate academic credentials. We are looking at academic accountability for academic programs. They shouldn’t be under the purview of someone whose main issue is enrollment management. Academic support units should have academic accountability.

Roland Specht-Jarvis presented:

Dr Specht-Jarvis asked the committee to consider whether the ground is prepared for discussion about restructuring. When you go into restructuring, the first question is ‘who suggested this?’ Does it come from student government? Are they saying there are problems with getting classes? Have faculty stepped forward to say things aren’t working? Or have administrators said that something needs to be changed? We need to know who owns this process.

Then we could go into candidates for restructuring. Of course colleges offer themselves. The reason for restructuring before was because the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences could not reach out to so many faculty. Our current structure was the answer to having too many faculty in one college.

There are several ways we could do it - we could go back to the arts & sciences model we had 20 years ago. With this model, there is a lot of concern that whoever is chosen as Dean of Arts & Sciences could not fairly represent all the disciplines. The process has to be owned by faculty. This doesn’t seem a strong option.

The next option of adding one college more seems more practical. It would merge Nursing, Communication Disorders and some of the professional programs in one college, and would give them good representation by the dean. It would enable us to address areas we didn’t have before - it would be a response to a trend that is already there.

Other options with more colleges would have to have 9 or 10 deans to represent all the areas; this is not a cost-saving choice.

If we look at reorganizing areas other than colleges, then we should move the VP of Administrative Affairs under the auspices of the Provost. We have a VP we call the Provost who has no powers of a Provost. Now budget decisions are made by the VP of Administrative Affairs, who reports directly to the President.

Initiatives and programs that might need a home right now include First Year Experience (which is an attempt at offering students programming that keeps them here). If we had smaller classes of better-prepared students, we could have a better orientation program. A new mediation program needs to be put into the structure. Others are the Counseling Center, and the general studies situation with questions about whether it should report to a dean or have responsibility to a number of deans. We should be guided by the principles “be sure the existing deans and VP’s are making the decisions that they can be expected to make” and “be sure that the current organizational chart is the problem, not people.” It would be helpful to assure that existing stakeholders act ethically. The stresses involved in a restructuring need to be balanced against the benefits - what is the opportunity cost for doing this? This is not a corporate entity; a university can’t make sweeping decisions that change things overnight. We need buy-in.

Questions:

• What do you think a First Year Experience program should be?
  When I first heard about it, it had to do with faculty creating programs for students - being the directors, etc. On the VP level there was interest in doing something in Student Life. The existence of that track has in a way stalled the academic track of doing it because of the problems we’ve run into with the residential one. The addition of the student life piece pretty much ended the current attempt at implementation; it needs to be revived. It’s a good idea to have hall directors etc. involved, but not necessarily as cohort directors. Faculty need to be involved side by side with residential life employees.
• We were given a sheet of administrative costs for each college and information about how large each college was. Is COFAH the largest now?
  Yes.
• Yet COFAH’s administrative costs are second from the lowest - is that fair?
  It reflects good management, but it also reflects a severe level of under-funding in some areas. That is what I’d hoped would be at the heart of the restructuring.
• Do you feel overwhelmed at the number of PDP’s, PDR’s etc. that you have to do each year? Yes, but we have responded to that volume. It comes at the price of not doing the development piece, so there is an opportunity cost.
• Would dividing the colleges make things better or worse?
  It depends on many aspects, among them the readiness of the VP of Advancement. It would be better if fund-raising could be within each college, not centralized as it is now. We are currently not getting what we could out of the advancement system because we’re not using the colleges to help in that process. If the gift you bring to campus will be owned by a central office, the interest level won’t be there.
• What do you think about having a VP for Sponsored Programs and Graduate Studies?
  The sponsored program piece is not where it should be because an Assistant VP without a real future there can’t be as involved as needed. As a revenue stream, it should be as important as advancement - it’s an important money making device.
• We’ve heard over and over that programs that have academic purposes are scattered all over campus - general education, DGS, etc. There might be a way in which there’s a balance between general education and majors/minors by scattering them, but should we organize it?
  As soon as you organize it, it takes on its own logic. New ideas should be able to exist but should not necessarily have representation. Let interest carry it. If you organize it, you get into struggles about resources. We shouldn’t dedicate resources to something that isn’t of extraordinary value to students’ education. Don’t do it if it’s done for your own purposes.
• What recommendation do you have for the Counseling Center?
  Faculty should be supervised by deans, and they should have peer review. This is something that faculty should resolve; it’s not a top down thing. The university will neither hinder nor further the cause till someone asks for it to be fixed.
• We’ve been told we shouldn’t be recommending any rearrangement in departments, so can you explain your comment about faculty feeling threatened?
  Some people have a strong reaction to a change in their environment, in their reporting structure, etc. You could ask those faculty by means of a survey or something. It is not threatening, but some people feel that way at any rate. There is really nothing at stake in terms of a faculty member’s career, but perhaps there might be in terms of professional development.
• If COFAH had some minor changes, what would you like to see?
  We have a lack of commitment to certain classes that we’ve decided every student should have (core). We should hire full time faculty to teach those after years of patching it up. I would hope that on the President’s, VPs’ and Deans’ level, more transparency would exist so the FA, faculty, students and other administrators could see who was really doing what and for what reasons.

Discussion:

• Where are champions for the suggested restructuring concept? Haven’t heard any; it’s a concern. We got the idea of the college restructuring, but we also have the concept of reorganizing the academic support services. It seems unlikely that we’ll end up with a big change simply because there doesn’t seem to be very much support for it.
• There’s concern that the administration already has a plan in mind. The point that faculty should own it is important - we should keep that in mind as we work toward a recommendation. We need to remember that faculty own the curriculum.
• R. Dobey asked Cory Lawrence if he has talked to other students about this issue. Cory said one thing students have asked is why students aren’t on the list of people who have a stake in the changes proposed. It would be helpful if a student representative could give the students’ perspective to the committee. Cory pointed out that the student government has a vote of no confidence in the Strategic Planning Committee - it’s a plan that students feel is shabby at best. Subba suggested we have a student rep come to talk to committee. It was agreed to add one more time, Wed. Nov.5 at 7:30 a.m. for Cory, or someone else from student government, to present to the committee.
• Is anything broken; do we need to fix it? The issue about student centers does need to be fixed. College restructuring wasn’t our complete task. The whole core, general education, is a big problem. There’s no money for core classes, but departments are under pressure to provide seats. Every student has to have 40 credits of general ed. If the budget gets cut, there’s a struggle about what programs get the money. Reorganizing won’t solve those things - that’s a budget problem. But we have to decide where the limited funds should go - to the core or to the majors.
• When you bring in the graduate issue, you have small classes, even though they are weighted. Reaccredidation may force changes.
• Did we hear that 41% of our resources go to general ed? We do have more lower division students than upper division students. We need to decide priorities. We haven’t decided that; no program is getting enough money.
• There is the concept of competencies instead of core. This has some problems. Our problems in general education may be linked to the failure of secondary schools to prepare students. Literary experts would say it’s the culture rather than the schools.
• Are people talking about a10-year administrative plan? This was discussed at University Council. Jane Spaude will provide copies.

Business:

It will be very helpful to have the web site - by putting a lot of ideas out there, people can see others’ opinions. It will show the general campus atmosphere about restructuring. Another approach would be to use the discuss list, but that’s not anonymous. What about communicating the responses that come to the committee? Those responses should be put on the system so they’re out there for everybody. In the meantime, Sharon could take the responses that came to roundtable, take off the names, and put them out on the discuss list.