Restructuring Task Force Meeting Notes - Nov. 3, 2003

First a few comments:

1. The idea of a mega-college is almost completely out of consideration (even with the provost), as is the idea of rostering faculty in a general college. 
2. 'We are not considering splitting, merging, or abolishing departments nor laying off faculty.
3. We would prefer that you focus your attention on the issues before us:
   1. Whether to add a new college for profession studies and/or health sciences
   2. How to make most effective the academic support services and other student support services
   3. How the provost's office can be most effectively organized to accomplish the responsibilities of a provost

Thank you for the many comments and suggestions from throughout the university.

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

Absent: Lawrence

Dennis Nunes has compiled organizational charts of 25 other institutions.  Sharon Cogdill will scan the documents and distribute to committee members.  Dennis Nunes also distributed the Mortimer/Jones tables on "FTE Students Relative to FTE Faculty," and "FTE Students Relative to FTE Administrators" from Fall 1999.  Nunes said he believes chairs are not administrators at any of the other institutions; this affects how we interpret the chart.  Suellen Rundquist said the North Central report also mentions how sparse we are in terms of numbers of administrators.  Dennis Nunes clarified that chairs are usually not a part of the faculty unit. 

Discussed timeline and strategy for writing the task force's recommendation.  Suggestions included that each member spend time reviewing the material that's been distributed; that we devote an hour and half to each of the three major questions; and that we work off a list of discussion items so as to limit the discussion to those topics. 

Would Criminal Justice fit into a college of professional programs?  What do we mean by “school”? It can be called whatever we want; it's an agreement between the President and faculty.   It could be within a college.  We have a school of graduate studies.  Centers are mentioned in the contract; are most centers inside of colleges?  CJS used to be a center, and so did Ethnic Studies.

What are the pros and cons of a college of Liberal Arts & Sciences? 

Pros: 

• It would bring the majority of general ed programs within the same academic unit. 
• It would promote faculty collaboration. 
• It would afford a better coordination of general ed classes; it would be something to take ownership of general ed. 
• May reduce the number of administrators. 
• May make it easier to form and administer first year academic experience.

Cons: 

• No one has heard any support for this. 
• It would be bureaucratic and inefficient. 
• It would represent a new layer of administrators between faculty and their dean.  It would be dysfunctional because the chief administrator would be ignorant of most of programs under him/her, it would breed distrust. 
• It would create bureaucracy because there would have to be at least three Associate Deans.  There are universities that have a school of liberal arts and sciences; it's fairly common. 
• It could have an effect on faculty morale, especially for junior faculty, by removing them one step from their dean. 
• It could potentially be an administrative nightmare. 
• Because of the role chairpersons have here, Associate Deans would have to play a major role. 
• An administrative problem is the number of direct reports - we would have to have 6 or 8 Associate Deans. 
• We have unique differences. The Associate Dean model gives complete authority to Associate Deans; this wouldn't work under our contractual model.

Carolyn Williams presented :

The overwhelming majority of COSS departments say no to restructuring.  What kind of university do we want to be?  What kind of structure will we need?  A rule of thumb is that structure follows function.  Dr. DeGroote has described reasons his college doesn't want a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and COSS agrees with some of those reasons.  Do we want to be only a teaching university or one with responsibility to various publics?  Now we are set up as a comprehensive research university.  Central Minnesota is one of the fastest growing corridors in the state; there is plenty of room for expanding masters' degree programs.  How can we be better, and will restructuring do this? Dr. Williams shared a list of universities we compare ourselves with.  Five years ago we were near the top of tier 3 and aiming for next tier for a comprehensive university.  Now we're in the lower part of tier 3.  Those are the questions she's posing based on other universities she's been at.  We need to know these things in order to decide structure.

Dr. Williams shared feedback from Department Chairs in COSS.  They are satisfied with the current structure, and see no possible benefits of restructuring.  There is concern that potential restructuring represents change in environment.  Faculty feel alienated from the decision making process.  They feel there should be an ongoing college meeting or survey to faculty regarding restructuring.  There is confusion about the motivation for this call for restructuring - what are the goals?  If faculty were told what the goals were, they may be able to suggest other ways the university could meet those goals besides restructuring.  Faculty are being asked to comment on the process rather than on the outcome of discussion.  If given various schemes to consider, they could provide feedback.  Some faculty remember the time when there was a large college of arts & sciences, and were led to the conclusion that it was an unsuccessful structure - why do we want to return to a system that didn't work in the past?  It would mean more bureaucracy, less mentoring of new faculty.

The nature of what faculty do varies according to discipline, but the current structure has enough similarity between disciplines to manage a reasonable comparison.  They like the dean to faculty ratio, and feel there would be less access to the dean in a larger college.  There are concerns about whether departments could be rewarded or penalized in terms of faculty lines and allocation decisions in a new restructuring.  Would they have to compete against a larger pool of departments?    How can more layers of bureaucracy be helpful to students?  The current system has a manageable load for deans.  They see no problems with the current structure, and don't see how combining colleges would facilitate students better. There is concern that input from faculty will not be taken seriously. 

Questions/comments:

• What are your thoughts about having more colleges instead of a mega-college? What if there were six or seven colleges, since the issue is concern about merging?
  The college hasn't discussed that.  CJS said no to restructuring, but at some point in time they were thinking of becoming a school.
• Does CJS mean college when they say school? 
  No.  They mean a school within the College of Social Sciences.
• Did COSS discuss the issues of support services and tutoring?
  No, we only discussed restructuring.  We have fairly well defined tutoring programs in some departments in COSS, and it has been working well.  Our departments all have methodologies and pedagogies that differ.  A lot of our departments (Economics, Geography, Social Work, and Criminal Justice) have national reputations for their teaching styles. 
• What are your thoughts on general education?  How is SCSU doing?  What are some ways to make it better? 
  I think that was a question surveyed; they said no (in regard to a college of general education) because it would add more adjuncts, fewer people with PhDs.  It might make the resource problem worse and cause a two- or three-tier system among the faculty on campus.
• Do you hear about problems with general education? 
  Not really; we have a lot of students who are undecided.  But that's the nature of our university, we have lots of older students, our demographics are changing.  It's a little unusual to have so many undecided students.
• Are there problems with offering general ed courses? 
  If we get our probationary lines, I think we'll have enough people teaching. 
• Are there problems right now? 
  We do have some problems - we don't have enough probationary people in some areas, and some departments are not able to offer all of their major courses.
• What are growth areas? 
  Economics is growing by leaps and bounds - they have a national reputation because of their class sizes.  Land Surveying, Psychology and Social Work are others, and CJS has expanded into a masters' program; they're getting ready to offer courses in Bemidji and some other places.
• We heard criticism of our procedures in your presentation - was Eungmin Kang present at the meeting? 
  No, this was a meeting of department chairs.
• There seem to be so many diversity efforts on campus, with no coordination - can you talk about that? 
  That's something that should be done - it's a position that should be created.  Several positions like that have recently been advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education .  I've just returned from an American Council of Higher Ed meeting in Atlanta, and I noticed that there are a lot of people who have that title - it's usually called something like Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity,  Vice President for Institutional Diversity, or Assistant to the President and Director of Institutional Diversity.
• What is the usual relationship between that position and the Affirmative Action Office? 
  Usually that VP would be over the Affirmative Action office.

Discussion :

There were some grumbles before we provided web site, but now people have a way to provide feedback.

Maybe there should be an all-college meeting on the topic.

This whole institution has been so concerned with the process; we've tried our best to make sure this process was open.  In the past it was not open, decisions were decreed; we have made this process as open as we could make it.  The whole university has all the information that the committee has. There's a presumption of a diabolical scheme - all our information is out there for everyone to read; the Provost's charge, and the goals, are there.  Is there a need for us to send another e-mail reminding people that the information is there? We should make another effort to tell people they are welcome to be involved. 

Could we have access to the number of tenure track lines in each college?  Yes, that info is available in the Provost's office.  Dennis Nunes will get that.  If we're talking about breaking colleges down rather than combining, we should know that.  It should be by departments as well as by colleges. 

Echoing Carolyn Williams' comments, if we could all get enough faculty lines, we'd be OK.  If we did, would there still be a need for restructuring?  We'd still have the general ed problems, retention issues, and the support services problems. 

If we have consensus that someone needs to be responsible for general education, then the question is what is the best way to do that?  What does “general college” mean?  The concept of a general college is a solution; we should really name the problem.  It may be that fragmenting general education is a way that we've worked out to protect the majors and minors.  So it's a question of coordinating it, how we could deliver the core courses more efficiently than we do now, and how we coordinate and provide resources for academic support services.  General education does not equal core.  The general education program could use a coherent mission, but not at the expense of majors and minors.  The problem may not be that general education is fragmented; it may be that the core is not funded.   Support and coherence go together; if support is there, coherence will follow.  Even if we had more faculty, we still would need a general ed coordinator across colleges.  That's being done now; it comes down to a choice about whether we'll meet the needs of students in their first two years, or those in the final years.  Just funding courses for the first two years isn't going to solve our problems.  Some departments are devoting lots of resources to general eds, and their majors are in jeopardy. 

Is the lab course requirement a severe burden in sciences?  No.  Racial issues is a university requirement, but there are lots of choices for lab requirements. 

We're being drawn into the quicksand of general ed.  Maybe we need to commit some major energy into general education; something is not working as well as it should.  We need to come to grips with some things outside of our purview about general ed.  There seems to be no ownership of general ed in our structure.  There's the possibility of a council to head general education instead of a person.

General ed is taking lots of resources; what goes into general ed takes away from majors and minors.  How can we restructure the courses in such as way as to solve that?  We need to look at economies of scale in some of the general eds; there's the possibility of web-based presentations, etc. 

The institution needs to look at how loads are determined - this becomes divisive within departments and between departments in colleges.