Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
Search This Blog
NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .
Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:
ascbloggie@gmail.com
Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
This Blog is a free and independent information source. Contributions and comments are welcome. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com WARNING AND DISCLAIMER !!!! This blog is entirely non-official!! People may express opinion here, exercising freedom of speech and association.
Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
How to Contribute
The Blog is now under new management, a consortium of ASC faculty who pooled their longevity bonuses to purchase it from its original owners. Your comments are still welcome but look for some changes. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com. Your contributions might include new posts, images, comments to existing articles/posts, concerns about process and substance at UT's College of Arts & Sciences. This blog is entirely non-official, for which you can be thankful, unless you enjoy reading self-serving bureaucratic propaganda, and is intended as a discussion and commentary forum for UT A&S faculty and community.
Another Claim and Disclaimer
A blog is a blog is a blog. Information, comments and opinions found here don't represent official views, instead they represent truthful and sincere ones. If you want the official line on things go elsewhere. This is a discussion and comment page. You may even read things here that you disagree with, and then, maybe not.
ASCBloggie
Google News for "University of Toledo"
Google News for "Higher Education Ohio"
Blog Archive
Links
44 comments:
New colleges formed a couple of years back are being sensibly collapsed back into the fold. The new bureaucrat/deans cost too much money for doubtful effects.
Not all of them, NSM is staying as is, some form of YouCollege will remain as will the Honors College
I too have heard about everyone from the old Arts and Sciences being reunited into one big happy family. The problem is we were never one big happy family. Some got resources and others did not. Some of us tend to look back on the old Arts and Sciences as some gilded age. It wasn't. In a smaller college gaining access to the dean is much easier and I believe makes the dean more responsive. When we were a part of Arts and Sciences some had access; some did not. Our department, Communication, usually saw the Dean once a year when he/she pretended to care about what we had to say. They would come to a department meeting; dutifully take copious notes; and, then depart with very little every happening. Also, given the way administration works, how much in the way of savings will there really be? Change for the sake of change is silly.
Many colleagues from LLSS and NSM have no interest in rejoining with COCA especially due to Tucker and other unproductive complaining faculty from that college.
Not to worry at least from those in NSM as that college has been way to successful plus eliminated the foreign language requirement - never going back to former A&S!
Will someone please turn off the damn oldies station blaring on the third floor of U. Hall and get on with the business of advancing the university instead of refighting and relitigating ancient, unproductive, irrelevant battles concerning the now-defunct CAS.
The biggest problem with the splitting of A&S was that the money was just split down the middle and half given to each "new" college. This obviously caused a lot of initial problems for LLSS, since it was by far the bigger of the two. This also pretty much showed that the division was punitive and spur of the moment, because any normal idiot would have realized that you don't divide the funding that way unless you want to punish the larger new college and simply issuing a fiat in which you forbid the usage of "A&S" anymore wasn't really a solution, unless you were king. And it's good to be king.
Anonymous 4:36 PM Remind me why English-speaking faculty and students on Mount NSM can persist in their splendid isolation from the rest of our multicultural campus in this age of globalization without feeling an urgent need to appreciate and promote foreign language fluency? The NSM College now actively discourages its intellectual obligation to promote foreign language proficiency as part of its degree requirements. Do you think you are doing your students a favor? When A&S College is rebuilt, you will be a part of it. Otherwise you will in the long term lose your humanity, and in the short term even more of your common sense.
Isolation? What other colleges at UT, besides LLSS, have a foreign language requirement?? Business, Engineering, Health Sciences certainly do not. How many peer institutions to UT, MAC schools and mid sized public universities in the midwest have a foreign language requirement?? Yes there are strong reasons to have the requirement but many colleges (including top academic schools), programs and graduates are succeeding fine without one.
And the poster is dreaming if they think A&S will ever be rebuilt or NSM is part of any college reorganization. Dreaming.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Arts and Science was broken up for all the wrong reasons. The result however has been a blessing in disguise. We have more access to our Dean, our Dean is more responsive, our Dean understands our discipline better, and the Dean is more in tune with the various departments.
It would be huge loss to go back. It won't happen. It shouldn't happen.
Get over it.
There are faculty in LLSS that would readily advocate for a substitution between additional math or a foreign language requirement.
Anonymous 11:21, Your dean is on the chopping block. 30% of the current ravenous population of deans and administrators on the main campus hired by Jacobs Inc. to punish tenured professors will be history in four months. They will become feral critters and Cajuns will hunt them down and toss them in a steaming jambalaya. Meanwhile A&S College will rise from the ashes and prosper again under one megadean who will take a pay cut: "As is once was, so shall it be again." This is Biblical. Stand in the way and you will burn in Hell (and down their EVERYONE sweats out eternity becoming fluent in ALL the foreign languages ever spoken on Earth beginning with Arabic and ending with Zulu). Then they -- and you -- will start over again.
Arts and Science is gone. Accept it. Move on. There are more important issues and opportunities ahead. The storm is over. Its moved on to Akron. Let's mourn those we lost, and work together to build a better future for our students, our community, and ourselves.
The future looks bright. We have a President who sees her role as a fund raiser, not a budget cutter. We should all support her. She talks about education, research, and community involvement--all of the things the last administration ignored or worse. The time has come to bury our dead and look ahead to the future.
Bury our dead? Agree, But we still have Zombie Deans shuffling around moaning, "Brains, brainnnnns, brains.'
Anonymous 2:12 I don't know which tribe you hail from but in the civilized world the victorious survivors of an egregious wrong will first turn their energies to righting the wrong before moving ahead. They rebuild. A&S College, a success story until its mindless destruction by Jacobs Inc., shall thus be rebuilt for practical and symbolic reasons.
Many faculty from the former A&S have no interest in a re-merger, a message they should communicate to the new President, as I am sure the three Deans are doing. Those looking to remove the 3 new Colleges and their Deans should think more clearly about the alternative: 20+ Departments in a College all looking for attention and resources from a new Dean from outside UT, I say be careful for what you wish for. The few vocal supporters for reforming A&S are only interested in a means to get back at Jacobs, while not considering the impact such a move would have on their colleges and the faculty and students within them, most of whom are thriving under the new colleges. If the new President is truly focused on building community partnerships, engaging alumni and attracting donors, efforts by the new Colleges in these areas should be recognized as a strength whereas reforming A&S provides none.
Well, I’m saddened to see that greed has become a top priority on the third floor of U. Hall. (“Chief of staff added as Gaber continues to reshape cabinet,” The Blade, 8/30/2015)
$205,000 for a chief of staff, truly a new breed of fat cat at UT these days? When did 2800 Bancroft become 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and in need of an H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to direct traffic in and out of the president’s office?
And a half billion dollars to an executive vice president to administer what is probably the smallest university-owned teaching hospital in the country, a facility that among other things has no inpatient pediatrics unit, does not deliver babies, does not operate an air ambulance service, has only a very modest organ transplant program and regional outpatient clinic operation, and these days rarely wins any national patient-care awards.
Gawh, he even makes more than UT’s head football coach. Holy NCAA!
Doesn’t the new president realize the optics of these obscene salary jumps that she and the trustees have blithely approved? Doesn’t she understand that thousands of Toledoans and northwest Ohioans are still struggling paycheck to paycheck six years after the 2009 economic meltdown? Are we to believe that UT awash in money these days and can afford these mega salary increases?
How unfair and morally bankrupt for UT to suddenly find dollars to enrich administrators already making very comfortable salaries who do not teach or do research while offering non-existent to puny raises to those at the low end of the pay scale, those who mop the floors in U. Hall, clean the restrooms in the Student Union, cut the grass in front of the Law Center, and insert lines and tubes in UT Medical Center patients—people who do the university’s real work and fulfill its mission.
Or to those who have been bundled off to outsourcing companies and to students who sink deeper into debt to pay for a UT education.
In the end, if the new president is a rainmaker and brings in big cash via good relationships with government officials, grants from donor organizations, and mega donations from alumni; improves student retention and graduation rates; and advances UT’s national academic reputation, then yes, she and her administration will have earned their colossal salaries and perks.
In the meantime, however, Gordon Gekko is alive and well and has taken up residence at 2800 Bancroft.
8:20 AM very well said.
Not saying that the position is a necessity, but googling up the title will show how many other universities maintain a chief of staff - I was surprised to see that many do. Time will tell if the endemic Jacobs-era bloat will be trimmed elsewhere, but summoning up G. Gecko one month into the new president's tenure is over-reaction. If you question the need for the position, ask rather than indulge in cheap anonymous shots. The overriding problem of the Jacobs regime - aside from hubris - was a lack of dialogue. Let's work to change that now that we have a president who seems to listen.
Deans!? The only dean that ever liked me died. The rest? Pah!
The new deans won't like being relegated to the status of mere mortals. Look for some elaborate self-justifications.
Current Deans have already been relegated to the status of mere mortals as they have basically no authority or control over many key issues including most importantly faculty hiring and budgets. They simply are gatekeepers in keeping the doors open day to day. That has been the case for several years and increasingly has not changed much over the last year and currently. Faculty have to come to realize and understand that all the Deans have very little true power or ability to drive change in their Colleges for upper administration oversees all the important and significant business and directs Deans what they can and cannot do.
We see. They were only following orders.
Let's game out the reorganization:
Collapse the Social Justice and Human Service College and send social work and school psychology over to the Health Sciences College. Higher education administration and counselor education go the College of Education. Legal specialties heads over to the College of Adult and Life Long Learning. Criminal justice goes to a newly reformed College of Arts and Sciences (comprised of LLSS, COCA and NSM). NSM disciplines frown as they must again be put under the yoke of the dreaded foreign language requirement. A change in college rules to allow an extra math for a language substitution buys their silence. However, exiting from this college will be psychology. They go to the Health Sciences College. Economics goes the College of Business (where they get big big pay raises). Also, streaming from the College of Arts and Sciences will be a significant number of criminal justice majors who decide that a foreign language/extra math requirement makes a business degree look very appealing. Criminal justice faculty smile about the smaller class sizes.
The Honors College and You College are shuttered. You College goes to Adult and Lifelong Learning. Honors College disappears and is transported through a portal to Akron.
This plan saves 5 dean spots and likely several deanlets. Deanlets are assumed because if you have a dean, you must have at least a couple of deanlets. The former deans and deanlets get to return to the classroom and this solves some of the faculty shortage (at least for a few years). The new/old College of Arts and Sciences would have 3 deanlets to assist their dean. All regular staff stay on because we have already cut them to the bone in previous reorganizations.
Of course, if we really want to get aggressive, we can put the education programs and criminal justice programs over in the business college given privatization trends in those fields.
Anonymous 10:32. Brilliant! Plus you are tapped as Consigliere (President whisperer) to advise Dr. Gaber and hasten the retirement of this onerous blog.
Good try.
1. Shut down YouCollege and don't admit any freshmen with less than an 18 ACT.
2, Shut down the college of Social Justice and Human Service. Move Counselor Education, Higher Education and School Psychology to the College of Education and move Criminal Justice, Legal Specialties and Social Work to Languages, Literature and Social Sciences.
Saves two deans and gets rid of unprepared students in YouCollege that are dragging the U down. Tell them to go to Owens for a year.
Add an assistant dean to Education and LLSS.
Why do I even bother reading this? Most poster here don't give damn about UT, our students, other faculty and staff, or the community. All they seem to care about is re-fighting lost battles. A+S is gone. The majority of us are very happy with the current structure, which by the by the way is working quite well.
Limit enrollment to students with an ACT > 18? We should embrace those students, provide appropriate remediation and support, and get them up to speed to succeed. That's what a great metropolitan research university does. It embraces its community and serves its needs.
One final parting thought. If you continually spend your energies fighting the ghosts of Jacobs then ultimately Jacobs will have won.
No way UT is going to close down YouCollege and see 700+ students leave and go to Owens, that would represent an immediate 3-4% drop in undergraduate enrollment (plus UT would need to drop its open enrollment policy). YouCollege can be reformed/restructured into a new model and with better leadership, resources and more staff, work to serve those students so they can succeed as freshmen and move into majors after 1st year.
And in response to the previous post, Honors College is also not going anywhere as the millions invested and several hundred students is too much of a commitment made by UT, like YouCollege the Honor College needs better leadership, staff and resources and closer working relation with the other colleges in order to be more successful.
VP for Enrollment Services and Learning Ventures resigned yesterday effectively immediately, so far no official news on why or replacement
It *would* be nice to revert to the old definition of a college as a collection of departments instead of whatever random entity just got the label slapped on it. Then Honors becomes a "program" the way it used to be when Dave Hoch and then Tom Barden made it an attractive destination for good students.
The number of colleges at UT will be reduced, that's for sure, by as many as 6 or even 8. How that will be done is what's in question. In some cases, it will be simply a matter of renaming them. But count on some colleges be combined.
Here's an idea worth considering! "College of Arts and Sciences"
Or, we could provocative and use what has become a dirty word: humanities. We could have the College of Social Sciences, Art, and Humanities, and leave the other sciences behind. If they don't want to be interdisciplinary and global, then they can remain monolingual and isolated in their labs. If they don't want to think about the ethics of what they do, they don't need to take philosophy. No need to talk about the beauty and intricate design of cells or crystals; no need to talk about the economics or politics of scientific discoveries. NSM can concentrate on entrepreneurship, patents, and subsidizing their departments on their own.
Someone explain to me what was so great about the College of Arts and Sciences?
I've been in an Arts and Sciences department since the days Dean Cave. I don't remember the good old days being so good. I remember a parade of incompetent, lying, backstabbing deans since Cave retired (McNall was the exception).
I remember a series of top-down authoritarians. I remember having virtually no access to the deans. I remember dean who were out of touch with their departments at best, or more commonly deans showing complete apathy and disdain for some departments.
Yes this new structure was forced upon us by an evil, petty tyrant, but it is working. Survey the faculty (all of the faculty). I'm sure the current structure would prevail by 3:1 margin over re-forming the old A & S.
NSM
Law
Medicine
Engineering
Social Sciences, Arts, Communication et al
Business
Pharmacy
Human Services
Education
Health Sciences
Nursing
At a minimum looks like 10 or 11 Colleges with current ALT, YouCollege and Honors College turned into programs led by Directors and "housed" within existing academic college. Given that UT, unlike many state universities, already has four traditional "professional" schools (Law, Engineering, Medicine, Business), getting number of Colleges down to as low as 8 is not an easy task.
The Kantian logic for structuring a highly successful Arts and Sciences College (that comprises Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences Departments, programs and centers) is proven economical and efficient:
http://krieger.jhu.edu/
To Anonymous 7:12 Your personality conflicts with specific deans following the success of Dean Cave seem petty and irrelevant. An Arts and Sciences College led by a wise dean who does not tolerate fools, and has earned the respect and support of tenured faculty and the university president can, with the help of a few dedicated associate deans, accomplish lofty academic goals of the college without alienating the majority of the remaining campus stakeholders (students, alumni, staff and the community).
To Anon 9:56: You may be right about what a "wise dean" can do, but Arts and Sciences has not had one of those deans in over thirty years. I have little faith in us finding such a special person. It takes a very special person to successfully lead such a large, diverse, and complex college. Just look at the last three deans A & S had. Can you honestly say that any of them were remotely qualified, or did a remotely acceptable job? Interestingly of the last three deans, we had a scientist, a social scientist, and artist. By any objective standard they each failed.
It is much easier to find a highly qualified scientist/mathematician to run NSM, an artist to run the College of Arts and Communication, and social scientist/linguist to run LLSS.
The problem is that many posters are describing the roles, responsibilities, authority and independence of a Dean position that has not existed here at UT for at least a decade with centralized control of colleges by the upper administration (a trend also occurring nationwide). Experience and personality may also play an important role in how a Dean functions today, but make no mistake there is no clear indication that anything is going to change here that will clearly empower Deans, current and future ones. Until I see clear evidence that all Deans are given the ability and freedom to run their colleges, with staff and faculty, including budgets, personal matters, strategic planning, recruitment, etc. I hold out little hope that any Dean of any College is going to be successful in advancing that College and having the support of their faculty.
Instead of arguing ad nauseam about academic management structure, I think faculty would be better served trying to figure out how to make their programs attractive to more students. Remember, tenure guarantees a job, not a paycheck. If there are no students, there'll be no money for salaries and, actually, no need for faculty.
I agree strongly with anonymous 2:04p as our focus should be on improving programs, providing best education for our students, and efforts towards recruitment, retention and graduation and not on the whether we personally like or dislike a Dean ("they did nothing for me/us") and college structure, which again has little impact on students, they do not care or even know about colleges as their aim is to complete their degree. How can we as faculty help them as without majors and students in our courses we all will suffer (and are already impacted). Does anyone here actually believe the college structure or who is Dean will advance the need for faculty hires and other resources at the department level, at a time when budget and declining enrollment are going to be the major factor in deciding allocation of funds for new faculty hires and other resources into colleges, departments and programs? Time to start focusing out time and energy, including posts and discussions here on this blog, on those issues and potential solutions - of which Deans and college structure are not. The Titanic is sinking folks and you are debating moving the deck chairs around and who is in charge.
To Anonymous 2:04 PM/6:36 AM Thanks for sharing your opinion about how lack of structure and chain of command (and responsibility) in our public institution of higher education can help expedite the productive learning experience of our students while accomplishing our primary stated mission (academic excellence).
It’s been a rough week for UT, with the institution garnering newspaper headlines for all the wrong reasons. (UT enrolls 301 fewer students,” The Blade, Sept. 9, 2015 and “UT goes unranked again in magazine,” The Blade, Sept. 11, 2015)
As the new administration begins at UT, the university depressingly finds itself once again failing to meet projected enrollment goals for another school year, facing an apparent budget shortfall, and again unable to crack U.S News and World Report’s rankings of top universities.
How many presidents, vice presidents, provosts, assistant associate provosts and other assorted administrative hangers-on over the years have confidently and boldly stated that they had the plans, the strategies to solve the two issues, only later having to parrot a bunch of lame excuses for being unable to stop the downward slide? How many times have we watched these two issues unfold?
Frankly, it’s so many that it is not even newsworthy any more.
I suppose it was necessary for the vice president for enrollment management and online education to be offered up as a sacrificial lamb. But UT’s chronic enrollment problems and unexceptional national reputation were years in the making and will take years to correct.
UT’s most recent “branding” strategies directed by the Division of External Affairs—-highlighted by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for billboards in baseball stadiums and basketball arenas and fancy loges to entertain university friends--were mind-bogglingly ineffective if enrollment numbers are used as the assessment tool. Perhaps the use of an outside consultant to develop an enrollment strategy will yield better future results, as the new president indicated she plans to do.
The new president’s immediate, short-term problem is now to address the budget shortfall. Will she call the provost and tell him to halt some new faculty searches? Or will there be another round of employee layoffs, with the cuts, as always, coming from the bottom, from the non-academic staff? Some hapless custodians, clerks and groundkeepers with families, house payments, and medical bills will be blindfolded, given a smoke, and lined up in front of human resources’ layoff firing squad.
Of course, the new president will talk about how UT is a family, a community, and that everybody shares in the pain. But don’t look for any admirable gestures that might involve high-level university administrators and faculty members imposing austerity on themselves and giving up some of their lavish perks and comfortable salaries that frankly are at odds with UT’s mission of providing affordable learning opportunities.
As they say in the PR business, those are lousy optics for the new president and her new administration.
Lord spare us from more outside consultants!
The problem with the rankings and the last administration's branding was that once students got here, we were immediately found out. Students could not get classes in many majors. There were no faculty to teach them and nobody to advise them. We have gutted core low cost academic programs while chasing very expensive STEM programs. Where we did not gut the lower cost programs, we focused on lowering the cost to the point where quality suffered. We let entire programs wither away to nothing. Look at the mess in LLSS. You have a PhD program in history that has hardly any faculty to teach it. In political science, the last administration let 4 faculty members retire without replacement and they have lost their masters in public administration program. Good heavens. That is even a direct school to work applied job training program that connects the university to the city. Isn't that what Columbus and Washington wanted us to be doing? You can fool people for a brief period but reality always has a nasty habit of intruding.
Bloggie speaks. Regarding number of deans/colleges, a reliable bureacratic maxim is that busy work expands to fill the available space. So take one college, divide it in twain or into LSSer parts, and new the deans will huff and puff and otherwise justify their existences, bureaucratically expand, generate reports and events, but will in the end do no more real work than did the original unit. An example: in one organization that Bloggie observed, a travel audit function expanded from a part time employee at 20 hours a week to a full time director with assistants that produced an annual report showing how the department had saved the organization something like $60K. The report did not mention that it cost the organization well over a half million to achieve this "efficiency. "
Post a Comment