Restructuring Task Force Meeting Notes - Nov. 5, 2003

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

Absent: Kang, Spaude

On Friday, Nov. 7  Provost Spitzer will meet with us at 2:30, and Semya Hakim at 3:00 (not confirmed).

Cory Lawrence presented for Student Government :

Cory brought and distributed copies of the memo about the student government's vote of no confidence in the Strategic Planning Committee taken last spring.  He sees one thing he can do as student government president to make a difference is trying to get representation on the President's Council, either as a voting or non voting member.  Student government has been talking about the possibility of incorporating the student association, making it a non-profit corporation.  If they did that, they could look at raising revenue to put into scholarships or programs.  The goal would be to create enough revenue to ultimately eliminate fees students have to pay. 

Any type of first year experience should come from the academic units, but be overseen by student life.  Advising is the biggest problem students face prior to getting into a major.  Creation of a general college may help, but there may be difficulty with getting faculty to teach those general classes.

Questions:

• From a student perspective, what's your feeling about students not being able to get classes?  Is it advising or course availability?
  Advising problems come from the fact that general ed advisors don't have any kind of one-to-one relationship with students.  Advisors don't have any training about advising them.
• Have you had any contact with the Advising Center?  They're supposed to focus their energies on the undecided students.  Any feedback?
  Last year we had a proposal that would make it mandatory for students to go to the Advising Center once or twice a semester, but that failed. 
• In terms of course availability, do you think the problem is with courses in general, or general education, or within general education, with core courses?
  Students feel they have to get core classes out of the way before they can do anything else.  It's important for students not to be in a 300 level class before having the writing skills needed to succeed, but the core courses can be spread out a little.  Better advising would help with that. Complaints depend on where students are - upper level students perceive that there are too many lower level courses, and lower level students perceive that there aren't enough. 
• Have you surveyed students about this?
  No, but we have both lower and upper level representatives in student government and that's what we hear.
• Lawrence:  Some students feel they shouldn't have to take MGM courses.  I wonder if students are going to get anything out of a course they are forced to take.
• How do students perceive availability and access to student services? 
  Student services would be able to serve more students if they were in one location.  They're scattered all over; students don't know where they are or even that they exist.  A center would improve accessibility, especially if it were located close to Atwood.
• Have you seen the plans to renovate Centennial Hall?
  Yes, we're only concerned about some areas that shouldn't be lumped together with the other student services - the Women's Center, GLBT, American Indian Center, and Multicultural Student Services.
• Are there two issues - the physical location, and how they're organized?  Organizationally might they still fall under same umbrella?
  They could, but it's important for those areas to keep their autonomy.  It also seems that locating Disability Services on the second floor doesn't make much sense.
• Are there any services missing?
  Not that I can think of, but some services, like the Advising Center and Career Services, need to be improved.
• Where did the idea that faculty don't enjoy teaching 100 and 200 level classes come from?
  I can't say where it came from, but I have some personal experience.  I had the same professor for both a 200 level and a 400 level course, and the methodology of teaching was much different.  I have heard professors say they hate teaching 100 level classes.  It may be hard to get faculty who would only teach 100 or 200 level classes - maybe we could change things so people with master's degrees could teach 100 and 200 level classes.
• What about the problem of students coming and then leaving?  What is your perspective?  Why is it hard to keep students here?
  The numbers show we're having a problem - it could be the lack of emphasis on higher education by the last two governors, tuition increases, the inability to graduate in 4 or 5 years, lack of support, especially for small town and minority kids.  There's a lack of personal relationships, many students are not getting involved.  Cohorts are a great idea.
• On Thursday and Fridays the university is pretty empty - it seems there's a lack of student investment in things that go on besides classes, a lack of connecting to the university in ways other than academics.  Why do you think that is?
  Not sure.
• Which issues you've talked about could be changed by restructuring?
  Creation of College of General Studies would help.  It should improve advising.  Getting first year experience up and going would alleviate some of the retention problems.

Discussion:

How about personal relationship and belonging with those large 100 and 200 level classes?  But how do you solve the problem of resources?  There is evidence that the small classes are the ones that helps retention.  We need to restructure in a way that would increase efficiency so we don't have to go to larger classes.  We may need a combination of some larger and some smaller classes. 

In most of the academic colleges, many faculty do general ed advising; it wouldn't be possible for the Advising Center to advise all of them.  Most general ed advising does occur in the departments, but there is a large range of ability and commitment to advising.  Some faculty have as few as 2 advisees, some have over 160.  Some want to do advising, some don't.  It shouldn't be assumed that everybody should be an advisor.  People do different things well.

Susan Bayerl distributed a list showing intended and admitted majors of new entering undergraduates for Fall 2003 by major.  She pointed out that the information came from students' applications.  It was accurate when they applied for admission, but students may have changed their minds since then.

Dennis Nunes handed out a list of faculty lines in each academic department.

Andy passed out suggestion for beginning to formulate a task force recommendation.  Three problems are identified; maybe health sciences should be a fourth.  The issue of college organizational structure is not addressed directly.

Discussion about proposed suggestion:

This does away with the VP for Administrative Affairs.

Where would financial aids fit in this model?  Budget, finance, and Human Resources would all come under the Provost directly.  With the current structure, the Provost has to go outside of his office to deal with the budget issues. 

It's good that there's an academic place for academic support services that would be more like a normal department, but don't know if we need a Dean of Undergraduate Studies.  Teaching faculty in a department would not be rostered separately for teaching in Undergraduate Studies.  Some areas, like Academic Support Services, would have faculty who would not be rostered in a separate department.  

Where do the Anoka-Ramsey program and Military Science fit?

Where would athletics fit? In health sciences - right now it's a direct line to the president.  That's a common structure. 

Academics is under-represented in Presidents Council.

If Academic Support Services would decide where they want to be, what would be under the undergraduate studies dean - Academic Learning Center, Math Skills Center?  If they feel they'd be best here.

Multicultural Student Services and Student Disability Services provide services that would fall under both student life and academic support services.

Tutoring is important; it should be under undergraduate studies.

Wouldn't having some of the support services in academic units diminish the authority of the undergraduate dean?  It seems essential that there'd be some sort of council, some way to coordinate.  The success of a council doesn't necessarily depend on whether a dean is there.  If a council is comprised of the heads of academic support services, who champions it; who would be chief?  A chair could be elected or appointed. The difficulty with a council is going to be with whether they have policy-making authority.  We need someone at the dean's level because of help with coordination, retention, general ed, but maybe it doesn't have to be a dean.  The Provost would be head of the council.  If not dean's level, then what?  It might be a faculty member or a MSUAASF person.  This whole area has been marginalized; putting it under a dean would be a good idea.

What kind of procedure should we follow in making a recommendation?  Do we have the right issues to decide?  We still have professional studies and health sciences to consider; we should make this #4.  We need a list of professional programs - they might include Communication Disorders, Aviation, Manufacturing Engineering and Electrical Engineering, Environmental and Technology Studies, Nursing, Criminal Justice, Sport Science, portions of Biology (med tech/nuclear medicine, bio tech).  This is just a loosely constructed concept.  We could argue that Education, Social Work, and Business could be included.  It should be called something other than professional programs; it makes the other programs look unprofessional.  Professional studies is usually used to differentiate them from academic studies.  Could we refer to it as schools?  This is not the same concept.  When we look at other universities' organizational structures, we can look to see if there are terms other than ‘professional studies' being used.  How about Mass Communication?  It might be called professional in a similar sense - their graduates go directly into specific lines that exist.  We are setting up a dichotomy between liberal arts & sciences and professional studies - we don't need to do that - it doesn't mean one is better than the other.  There's no clear line between them at this point.  It was just put on table to give some substance to the concept of another college.   We need to discuss whether we're going to recommend if any of these would go into a new college.

Steve Klepetar said advising should not be under enrollment management. This was not an issue a few months ago; why is it now?  The current structure has two reporting lines.  Advising has said they should be under academic affairs, Lin Holder said that too.

Since we've added a 4 th question, is there room for more?  Perhaps student concerns should be included.

Business:

Sharon Cogdill has scanned organization charts; she will send them to Sara Grachek to be included on the web site.

Tony Hansen will be meeting tomorrow meeting with the Engineering Department Chairs.  He will report back on Friday.

Andy Larkin will be meeting with Frankie Condon, has talked with Shahzad Ahmad, and will meet with Owen Zimpel.  Both Steve Klepetar and Nathan Church have said they'd be willing to come back if we had more questions for them.