Hub of Mediocrity: Inviting the Playground into Our Classrooms

This is my latest Roundtable briefing and commentary. I am afraid it is highly critical and I apologize to my colleagues on the Roundtable who have worked so hard to produce a document that meets both the approval of the Arts & Sciences Council members and the expectations of the Administration that funded it and has closely supervised and encouraged its progress to this point. I offer my comments as constructive criticism.

The A&S College Extended Roundtable Implementation Committee (RTIC) met for three hours on the morning of Wednesday, December 2nd in the old BOT conference room, where we discussed the merits of the “Progress Report Circulation Draft.” This document was distributed to all A&S Council members via Email on December 1st. Members in attendance included: N. McClelland, L. Anderson-Huang, C. Beatty-Medina, C. Gilbert, D. Nemeth, D. Stierman, L. Rouillard, B. Pryor, J. Benjamin, D. Tucker, P. Lindquist, M. Denham, C. Habrecht, J. Barlow, R. Heberle.

Dean McClelland opened the meeting with an enthusiastic endorsement of the document, at one point calling it “worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.” She added that the document nevertheless might be improved by strategically inserting some more “key” or “power” words (those used currently in A&S College transformational discourse statewide in Ohio): “integrative,” “innovative,” “communicative,” and -- most important --”efficiencies.” My word search of the entire document however failed to discover anywhere the phrase “aspire to academic excellence.” This seemed strange to me since Dean McClelland in previous meetings had stressed that the final Roundtable Implementation Report would recommend a list of “action items” that could with confidence lock-in our future trajectory toward a “top-tier” ranking among A&S Colleges nationwide.

Ensuing discussion around the table revealed that the five themes comprising the “Progress Report” synthesis (curriculum, scholarship, teaching/learning modalities, graduate study, and space) had so far resulted in a draft document that emphasized in large part implementing transformational change in the A&S College by systematically improving the lower division undergraduate learning experience, thereby measurably improving retention rates of at-risk students. I have asked repeatedly to our group why UT is interested in recruiting and then retaining (at great cost in dollars and reputation) academically-unmotivated students rather than recruiting on-record high-performing academically-motivated students? Are we after a top-tier quantity ranking or top-tier quality ranking? These questions have so far gone unanswered.

Details of the transformational plan outlined in the Report further reveal that a perfect storm of 1) extreme student centeredness, 2) collaborative learning technologies, and 3) unspecified but ominous “efficiencies” are converging on the A&S College that will flood its classrooms with casual and entertaining educational activities, many featuring hand-held electronic devices. Question: Will this flood meanwhile serve to sweep our remaining tenured professoriate, long dedicated to preserving a disciplined regime of academic excellence in the A&S College, from the center of the undergraduate classroom experience, to its periphery, and eventually out the door?

This Roundtable Implementation Report in its present incarnation seems satisfied to aspire to achieve only academic mediocrity for our College of Arts and Sciences. Many of its recommendations involving the undergraduate leaning experience appear to be inviting the playground into our classrooms. If so, this initiative seems counter-productive and especially unfair to the expectations of the academically-motivated A&S College student high-achievers we have recruited. We have in fact promised them an excellent liberal arts education and satisfying academic experience on this campus.

The floodgates are already opening up: the discipline problems and anti-academic attitudes that have already trashed the academic aspirations of our urban public primary and secondary schools are apparently soon to be invited, accommodated and formally implemented into our own A&S College curriculum, scholarship, teaching/learning modalities, space and graduate studies . The huge internal contradiction and false claim in this Roundtable Report is that it claims to be taking the High Road to Top-Tier Ranking while it is obviously mapping out instead in this Roundtable Implementation Report a Low Road to Mediocrity -- or worse.

roundtable meeting

Hey folks: It would behoove you all to read the proposed "final" report of the roundtable. A & S chair Brian Patrick has circulated it via e-mail. Hopefully the good Dr. Tinkle can get the whole thing up on the blog. If you have not been a participant nor really cared what those folks were up to it is time to care. There are things in the report that affect all of us. The time to ignore what these "colleagues" are doing has passed. There are major changes proposed for general education and the way it is taught. They wish to teach all of us how to teach because we have obviously just not been doing it correctly. If students fail it is because we don't understand them. Once again, it will be our fault. I suppose I'll have to start doing wakeup calls and bed checks. E-mails asking, "Have you done your homework?" will be necessary. Integrative studies has become the new password. Read it; it's important.

The Matrix

Since first posting my 15 Roundtable implementation recommendations some of my colleagues have asked me questions about them. The two most frequently asked questions are: 1) “To what extent do your 15 recommendations address the five significant issues or themes (space, scholarship, teaching modalities, graduate education and curriculum)?” and 2) “Are your 15 recommendations ranked according to their importance or urgency?” These questions have inspired me to provide a “Matrix of Significance and Agreement” and I provide its image above. I constructed the Matrix by assigning the five issues on one axis and my 15 recommendations on the other, after which I symbolized the importance of their relationship if implemented as Significant (S) or Moderate (M). The predominance of the “S” symbol on the Matrix reveals that each recommendation on this short list of 15 is indeed Significant. Letter symbols (ABCDE) on the Matrix represent the five issues and number symbols (1- 15), my recommendations. I have rearranged the 15 recommendations on the Matrix to reflect what I now perceive of as an “urgency” ranking. I invite further discussion. Email me at David.Nemeth@utoledo.edu if you like, or phone 4049.

FIVE ISSUES

A. Space
B. Scholarship
C. Teaching modalities
D. Graduate Education
E. Curriculum

FIFTEEN IMPLEMENTATION RECOMMENDATIONS

1 Transform the main campus to a 12/7/365 activity schedule
2 Emphatically commit to excellence in education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels
3 Hire more tenure-track professors
4 End “Open Admissions” at UT as this policy is incompatible with A&S College “top tier” ranking aspirations
5 Abolish the administrative position of “Chair of Department” in the A&S College and replace it with “Head of Department;” the Department Personnel Committees will evaluate and reward the performance of their Department Heads in teaching, research and service using the annual ARPA and merit processes
6 Return the Center for Teaching Excellence to its original mission and administrative structure
7 Increase campus-wide support of sabbaticals for teaching as well as research
8 Immediately commence a nation-wide search for a new Dean of Arts & Sciences
9 Reopen our Faculty Club to again serve the main campus academic community as the physical and symbolic intellectual center of their informal educational activities
10 Design and build several “nationality” classrooms (see, for example, “Cathedral of Learning” nationality classrooms at University of Pittsburg)
11 Allocate A&S College space at all scales intelligently toward the constant enhancement of its teaching, research and service excellence
12 Allocate additional and sufficient resources to Carlson Library staffing, and to book purchases and on-site accessibility to hard-copy books, with emphasis on holdings in the liberal arts
13 Strengthen commitment to shared governance and faculty control of the curriculum
14 Revisit the UT “Directions” strategic planning document and especially aspects of educational planning that impact negatively on the A&S College and its traditional liberal arts curriculum
15 Assess the costs and benefits, as well as the ethical aspects, of expensive new classroom teaching and learning technologies (given multiple scenarios of instructional needs and priorities across a faculty-controlled A&S College curriculum)

memo to dean

Your Deanship:

Please read Jim Nemeth's suggestions below. They are timely, accurate and to the point.

One other suggestion: If you can't stand the heat, don't be the chief chef.

My List of Recommended "Action Items"

Five draft issue-oriented Roundtable Implementation reports (“Thematic Reports”) are now being redrafted by five implementation task force group leaders. These latest drafts will be synthesized into a single draft report. The full Roundtable Implementation Committee will again convene (on December 2) to discuss the single draft report.

The group leaders presently redrafting the five thematic reports are:

A. Space ~ Lawrence Anderson (Use of space)
B. Scholarship ~ Charlene Gilbert (Definitions of scholarship)
C. Teaching modalities ~ Ben Pryor (Teaching, learning and advising modalities)
D. Graduate Education ~ Jim Benjamin (Strengthen graduate education)
E. Curriculum ~ Renee Heberle (Curriculum addressed to evolving learning
needs)

The overall objective of a final Roundtable Implementation Report is to recommend "action items" that when approved will function to “raise UT to a first-tier level” and thereby “raise the profile, stature and visibility” of the College of Arts and Sciences as the vital “hub” of UT academic activities.

I recommend to you below my personal list of fifteen action items. As faculty members in the A&S College we are each qualified to participate actively in the Roundtable implementation exercise by presenting and promoting our own list of recommendations. I feel qualified to do so because of knowledge and insights gained while participating in Roundtable Implementation Committee activities after September 29, 2009: I served on two of the five “discussion and writing” teams listed above (“scholarship” and “teaching” modalities”) and also participated in two meetings of the full Roundtable Implementation Committee. In addition, I have long-term research interests in higher education trends. I have studied widely and in depth on the complex challenges, transformations and opportunities taking place in state public institutions of higher education, in Arts & Science colleges, and in liberal arts education. My historical perspective on the advent of the Roundtable initiative at the University of Toledo has been shaped by both objective and personal observations and experiences during 20 years of educational service on this campus. I have also acquired classroom experience as teaching assistant, part-time teacher, lecturer, and “full-time visiting professor” in public and private colleges and universities in three different states, in addition to five years teaching experience overseas. I have also taught a college-level course in a prison classroom.

I am now dedicated to my chosen career of teaching, research and service as a senior faculty member of the Arts and Sciences College of the University of Toledo, and to promoting academic excellence across this campus. Here is my list of recommended implementation “action items” in response to the Roundtable challenge:

1 Transform the main campus to a 12/7/365 activity schedule
2 Emphatically commit to excellence in education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels
3 Hire more tenure-track professors
4 End “Open Admissions” at UT as this policy is incompatible with A&S College “top tier” ranking aspirations
5 Abolish the administrative position of “Chair of Department” in the A&S College and replace it with “Head of Department;” the Department Personnel Committees will evaluate and reward the performance of their Department Heads in teaching, research and service using the annual ARPA and merit processes
6 Return the Center for Teaching Excellence to its original mission and administrative structure
7 Increase campus-wide support of sabbaticals for teaching as well as research
8 Immediately commence a nation-wide search for a new Dean of Arts & Sciences
9 Reopen our Faculty Club to again serve the main campus academic community as the physical and symbolic intellectual center of their informal educational activities
10 Design and build several “nationality” classrooms (see, for example, “Cathedral of Learning” nationality classrooms at University of Pittsburg)
11 Allocate A&S College space at all scales intelligently toward the constant enhancement of its teaching, research and service excellence
12 Allocate additional and sufficient resources to Carlson Library staffing, and to book purchases and on-site accessibility to hard-copy books, with emphasis on holdings in the liberal arts
13 Strengthen commitment to shared governance and faculty control of the curriculum
14 Revisit the UT “Directions” strategic planning document and especially aspects of educational planning that impact negatively on the A&S College and its traditional liberal arts curriculum
15 Assess the costs and benefits, as well as the ethical aspects, of expensive new classroom teaching and learning technologies (given multiple scenarios of instructional needs and priorities across a faculty-controlled A&S College curriculum)

A & S Meeting

According to reports the meeting was a fairly calm exchange of ideas about such items as the Confucius Institute and assessment of big shots. Dr. Tinkle is very much in favor of our assessment of the cast of characters that runs this institution. It is my understanding that a suggestion was made that the Council assess our new permanent, stay here forever dean. While some demured saying she would only be with us for another year, Dr. Tinkle doesn't believe that for a second. In fact he clasifies it under wishful thinking. That said, there really are two important reasons for assessing her nibs.

1. It is a real move toward faculty governance. If the Council can establish a schedule for evaluating the dean, then over time instead of arguing about it, it just happens. It becomes a part of the landscape. Any new candidates for the position can be notified that this happens every two years. Live with it.

2. The data will belong to the Council. This will not be something that the administration will have a hand in. They can't grab it and refuse to show it to anybody.

The ball is now in the Council's court. Go for it.

Dean's Letter

By now most of you have been able to read the Provost's effusive letter praising our present interim (sorry) permanent dean. While the letter explains she probably won't stay past next year there are no promises to that effect. There is likewise no promise of an actual search for a dean. Given the tone of the letter, I would not hold my breath waiting for a search. Also given the tone of the letter, one might think that on the eigth day Dr. McClelland created the college of Arts and Sciences as well as a global economy. This is difficult for us mere mortals to actually determine because we never really get to evaluate the gods. Dr. White has provided an excellent critique of the letter and I would ask all to thoroughly read it. Just one last point before I depart. What exactly got put on hold because her title was interim? What has not taken place (besides a real search) that would have taken place with a dean? If her leadership has been that effective, why does the title matter? (Perhaps an intended slap at A & S Council?)Inquiring minds wish to know.