Rocket Report of 4/4/08

Yesterday's Rocket Report lead with a story on Tuesday's motion for a vote of no confidence at the April 15 Council meeting. Click the play button twice on the image below to view the video. If it doesn't play, the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZUR_I7xv3U&feature=user.

Between "dismal" and "abysmal"

This week’s “Chronicle of Higher Education” (April 4, p. A15) under the “Money & Management” section ran an article titled “Ohio’s Governor Presses Plan to Overhaul Higher Education” in which President Jacobs is quoted to have said “’What higher education has lacked and continues to fail at is to develop measurements, ... what you can’t measure you can’t fix’.”

Obviously President Jacobs, Provost Haggett, Dean Lee and (sad to say) my own departmental chair are presently in robotic lockstep with Governor Strickland’s business-driven numerical goals and their mis-measures of "success" and "efficiency" in public higher education. It seems that every aspect of the University of Toledo is now being measured except A&S faculty moral -- which on my meter reads somewhere in the red between “dismal” and “abysmal”! Poor faculty morale impacts directly on our students in the classroom (though -- gee whiz -- perhaps not so much in Distance Learning courses).

Although the UT administration has worked very hard over the last decade to shamelessly adopt the “business model” without remorse over collateral damage to more lofty goals and principles, and has meanwhile attempted to drive a thick wedge between A&S faculty and students, the unexpected events of this past two weeks indicates a sudden setback and perhaps a reversal (dare I say “tipping point”) for this administration’s long-term heavy-handed abuse of our faculty and students. The most recent Independent Collegian coverage and editorials suggest that many students are wise to this administration’s word games and subterfuges that have deliberately and deviously attempted to alienate them and their support them from our dedicated faculty. This administration’s drumbeat “student-centeredness” sham was not working fast enough for their timetable of creative destruction, so they had to invent “EXTREME student centeredness” as their desperate stratagem to speed things up! Give me a break!

Our students won’t be easily fooled by these blatherings of administrative blurts and adverts because we have taught them to be critical thinkers. The Administration has seriously underestimated the intelligence and power reserve of A&S students and faculty. When we A&S faculty and our students finally combine our creative forces and turn our full attention as a body of resistance to UT mismanagement and its destructive, dictatorial and abusive practices, we can then attempt to educate and reform these bullies, or throw them out (as we have done before), and to return to our traditional and sacred missions of higher education teaching, learning and service.

the myth of faculty ownership

i encourage everyone to read carefully the bylaws of the board of trustees, to be found at
http://www.utoledo.edu/policies/board_bylaws/index.html
particularly important are sections
3364-1-07 Administration of the University and
3364-1-10 Board bylaws; other rules and regulations
the deans have no policy power whatsoever. the faculty senate constitution has assumed ownership of the curriculum, but there in no indication in the BoT bylaws that such ownership exists; on the contrary, the president has the right to repeal any constitution. under these circumstances and given the administration's disregard of faculty sensibility and expertise in matters of curriculum and the mission of higher education, it seems our only choice is to "just say no". let them spend all their time trying to design "mass customization" curricula, related course syllabi, and, for that matter, teach the classes. no need to go on strike. just continue about our business as if they do not exist. administrators come and go; every year there is some other grandiose scheme- why pay attention?

There is a very thin silver lining to President Jacob's Address.

In my last night's grad class on Persuasion and Propaganda (COMM 6230) we had just finished reading Orwell's 1984, its Newspeak appendix and also Orwell's wonderful "Politics and the English Language" essay. Many of these grad students work for the University and had attended the address. They said Jacob's address was the perfect example of what George Orwell was talking about, and they insisted we watch the streaming video of the address. It was just as they said, even more perhaps, and a wonderful discussion followed .
It worked so well as a discusion example that I just gave my online Persuasion class their final exam/paper: to watch the address on the President's website and analyze in terms of Orwell (they have been assigned the same readings). I think perhaps I should send the President a "thank you" letter. Is this what he means by "extreme student centeredness"--him getting personally involved and setting an example for students?
BAP
Watch out for the New Entity
It might bite

-----Original Message-----
From: Davis, David H.
Sent: Thu 4/3/2008 4:42 PM
To: Anderson, Lawrence S.; Caruso, Michael J.; Creutz, Charles; Davis, David H.; Lipman, Joel A.; Patrick, Brian; Purviance, Susan M.
Subject: Dr. Jacobs' imaginative address
To the Executive Committee:
Even if you attended the presentation, you should look at the written version in detail. To save time, start at page 13 which says the purpose of higher education is economic prosperity. Page 22 says that degrees will be customized rather than majoring in a discipline. We will organize all undergraduate courses into modules and algorithms (page 26). Professional advisors will be moved to the Provost's office. We will purchase some Computer Assisted and DL courses from outside UT (page 30). We will have a New Entity to do much of this (page 32). Degree programs from University College will be transferred to A&S (page 34). These ideas are "sweeping the business world" (page 35).
While I have many questions, one is Where is the connection to the strategic plan?
David

the bionic university

President Jacobs' speech yesterday was Orwellian. He invoked Dell as a model justifying his vision and plan for the systematic creative destruction of our beloved university! I expected a lady with a sledgehammer at any moment to charge into Doermann and down the aisle to toss her wake-up message at the screen. Clearly, without a fight the warm human heart and any part of the brain not wired to instrumental-rational thinking will be surgically removed from our Bancroft campus community and replaced with cold steel and microchips. Over my dead body. Melmoth

If you want to be astonished, take a look at the President's Webpage at today's video of his "reengineering undergraduate education" speech, this by someone who may never have taught an undergraduate class. You can see terms like "mass customization" and "extreme student centeredness" and "education incubator" much of which will take place in a "new entity." All this will involve a "common experience" involving course "modules" and "algorithms" that will redesign the Arts and Sciences curriculum. It is total educational change by decree and will start today. It is well worth watching and shows how little we have been told.

Memo for Council meeting on April 1

This is an updated version of the e-mail I sent on Saturday. Yesterday Dean Lee summoned the Executive Committee to what he termed an emergency meeting at 5:15. The main item was his request that we withdraw discussion of the merger of the Communication and Theatre and Film departments. We tried to explain to him the importance of shared governance.

We offered several reasons we need to discuss the merger. (1) We believe in letting the sun shine in produces better decisions. (2) The proposal impacts other departments such as Art, History and Gender Studies. (3) It is already widely known about campus. (4) The two departments have already met to discuss the merger. (5) The proposal may decrease faculty shared governance if the director is appointed instead of elected. In addition the abrupt manner in which the proposal was presented to the two departments appears to violate our system of shared governance. (6) The proposal would change the divisional structure in place since 1999 by vote of the A&S Council without an actual debate. Combined with a merger of History and Philosophy and Geography and Political Science, and English and Foreign Languages, it would be a major change in the organization of the College. (7) The Dean has a reputation for moving fast so waiting may not be possible. He proposes the merger to be in place on July 1, and only five weeks remain in the semester. For us to hold off discussion until it is a fait accompli would make our role meaningless. My own belief is that faculty don’t like to be treated like children.

The Provost has required all professors applying for a sabbatical to submit a statement of how their research will fit the Directions document (Strategic Plan) with references to specific sections. Provost Haggett said she will try to change her schedule to talk to us about 4:45. She will also address the issue of how adherence to the strategic plan may affect decisions on tenure and promotion this year and next year.

Taken together these appear to amount to a war against the faculty. They go against academic freedom and standards of shared governance. They will harm our standing with our disciplines, and will impair recruiting. A school of history and philosophy sounds like a community college. Many of the explanations we hear from the higher administration appear disingenuous. Moreover a number of the sections of the Directions document were changed at the last minute without faculty agreement. Although the threat is chiefly to departments with low priority, the disregard of established rules and shared governance can hurt anyone. It unmotivates that faculty. By harming faculty this will harm students.