CSU Faculty Voice

CSU/UPI Nominations

2012-02-06T20:55:00.004-06:00

FYI In case you haven't seen the memo from UPI President Laurie Walter
Dear CSU/UPI Members:
Bob Bionaz asked me to send you the following, about our meeting for nominations:

The CSU chapter of UPI local 4100 will hold its next membership meeting Tuesday, February 14, 2012, from 12:30-2pm in Science 116. The purpose of the meeting is to solicit nominations for the upcoming union election. Lunch will be served from 12:30-1pm and the meeting will begin at 1. All members who wish to nominate someone for an office are urged to attend as the final list of candidates must be submitted to the local by February 17. The following is the current list of nominees:

Nominations
Local 4100

President
Ellie Sullivan

Chapter Offices
President
Louis “Pancho” McFarland
Laurie Walter

Secretary
Deborah Lynch

Treasurer
Eric Shen

Executive Board Rep
Tim Harrington
Mark Sudeith
Deborah Lynch

Vice President-Unit A
Mark Sudeith

Vice President-Unit B ASPs
Romona Raymond

Delegates-House of Delegates (26 allowed)
Linnae Bryant
Gabriel Gomez
Kathleen Haefliger
Carol Leach
Ben Liu
Deborah Lynch
Devi Potluri
Ramona Raymond
Steve Rowe
Eric Shen
Virginia Shen

Delegates-IFT and AFT Conventions (5?)
Deborah Lynch
Romona Raymond

Response to Professor Pancho's post

2012-02-02T21:23:00.001-06:00

Dear All,
"Professor Pancho" recently posted a very thoughtful series of questions, concerns, etc., to which I wanted to respond. His text is in black with my answers immediately following in red.

The new contract was not made available until after the second week in January and the faculty was hurried into voting without having access to the entire contract. The union membership needs to be aware of provisions in the contract that have changed.

On the CSU/UPI website (the exact location is http://upi4100csu.org/contagree.html) is the version of the Contract I sent out in September of 2011, which is what faculty and staff were asked to vote upon (also in September). (Note that it is not the same as the final version.) It is the entire Contract (with the exception of changes to the minima tables) and the proposed changes are highlighted. This enabled us to have members review the Contract and in some cases note inadvertent errors, which were corrected prior to the vote; that's why the final version differs from the one sent out in September.
I'm not sure what you mean about January. As far as I know, the hard copies are being printed as we speak; meanwhile, you can see it online on the Contract Administrator's site or the CSU/UPI site.

Grievances won or lost should be communicated to the membership. The grievance process is an important tool that we can use more effectively. In speaking with colleagues in the halls, in meetings and on the faculty voice blog, I have detected a sharp rise in faculty complaints about working conditions. I would suggest that keeping and communicating to the membership an easily accessible record of the types of grievances, their number and outcome would encourage us to use the process more. Such communication would also increase solidarity among our members.

As long as privacy is maintained, we can further publicize our grievance achievements. There is generally a report on grievances at each membership meeting. However, we will begin posting the draft minutes of our membership meetings on the website for more public access. Thank you for the suggestion.

How did we let the bosses get away with doubling our parking fees without union membership outright approval?

I sent out a survey (below, in brackets) in December of 2010, querying the membership as to their opinion on the proposed increase in fees and the possibility of additional increases in future. I received ~55 responses, out of a membership of ~400. Parking fees were negotiated based upon the survey responses we received. We also got agreement that future increases would be small.

[Dear CSU/UPI Members,

As you know, since earlier in the semester, the UPI and the Admin have been bargaining the increase in parking fees implemented in August. This increase was implemented before it had been bargained, and so we (the UPI) have been attempting to both reduce the amount of the increase, and to bargain language that would regularize any future increases during the life of the contract we are currently bargaining.

The Administration initially responded to our proposal to reduce the amount of the increase by suggesting not only that it would stick to the current fee amounts, but increase them substantially beginning in January of 2011. We rejected that plan, and hoped that the next counter-proposal would accept our language on reducing the current increase. The next counter-proposal did withdraw the proposed increase for January 2011, but has left the current fee increases in place.

We therefore decided it was time to poll the membership as to your opinion on the fee increases already implemented. As we've explained previously, the Administration DOES have a right to raise parking fees; however, the UPI also has a legal right to bargain such increases. Our questions would be:

1. Do you accept the current fee structure? yes / no / don't care

2. Should we continue bargaining to set what we consider a reasonable rate at which fees will increase over the next 2-3 years? yes / no / don't care

Please respond as soon as possible, as we would like to have an idea how the membership wishes us to proceed. If you are worried about the confidentiality of your reply, send to lwalter@interaccess.com from a non-CSU account. Thank you.

In solidarity,

Your CSU/UPI Negotiating Team]

(Back to Professor Pancho's text.)
I recognize that there are legal barriers and constraints placed on union activity. However, I want to suggest that we should be open to using any strategy that will further our rights and goals as working people.

Again, we should use the grievance process more effectively. Discussion and communication of grievances and outcomes will help us analyze this as a strategy that halts administrative overstep and abuse. (See above.)

Historically, all sorts of tactics have been used that go beyond rules-based, formal actions that we, as a union, most commonly use. We are a union of professional workers who have a great deal of specialized knowledge that makes us invaluable to the mission of the university. We should be more creative in how we pressure management.

We would be interested in your specific suggestions.

The ongoing college reorganizations have been discussed in committees, faculty conversations and on this blog. This reorganization is a substantial “change in working conditions” and the processes have no input from faculty or a representative body of faculty. A faculty entity “with teeth” must weigh-in strongly about these ill-conceived changes. We have to reassert that such academic matters must be the primary purview of the faculty. The union can be a place for such a challenge.

The Contract guarantees discussion of proposed reorganizations; it does not guarantee that reorganization may not take place. We will continue to insist on discussion with affected faculty for any future planned reorganizations.

I would also like more information regarding the process of contract negotiations. I have heard from many sources that there were irregularities during the process including that the majority of the negotiating committee was sidelined during final negotiations which were then conducted by the chapter president and the UPI president. I would like to know if this is true and why this occurred. While it is true that the faculty voted approval of the contract, how did the tenure review clause get inserted into the contract to begin with? What was the trade-off? Who has a record of the union proposals on the contract and the Administrative counter-proposals?
Based upon meetings held with the full team to discuss the outstanding issues, a small group met with a small administrative group to work out the remaining issues. Our group included the chief negotiator, the chapter president and the Local president. The CSU administrative group included the President, the Provost and the CSU legal counsel. We reached agreement on the outstanding issues. This did include “annual evaluation of tenured faculty.” This was based upon a proposal from the Administration which was very punitive and had a very short proposed time from start to termination; we modified it considerably to make it constructive, rather than punitive (based on language from Western Illinois University, where it has worked very well). We felt that some sort of enhanced annual evaluation was inevitable and wanted to be proactive, to prevent it from being far more potentially damaging to faculty. Note that under the current language, a faculty member would have to both 1) fail to meet the "adequate" standard in a single area of evaluation for two consecutive years and 2) refuse to participate in development of a plan for improvement, in order to be vulnerable to sanctions. We also "stretched out" the time course.

There was no direct "trade-off" for the enhanced review language. The "trade-off" was a generally favorable Contract in very difficult times. There was a modest raise, going up in future years, and commensurate increases in minima. The rate for override CUEs will go up by 33% in 2013-2014 and, for the first time in my memory, will be equalized between tenured/tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, which is a matter of basic fairness. Also, Composition faculty (who are overwhelmingly non-tenure track) will be paid 4 CUEs per course if they teach four such courses per semester; recently, they received 4 CUEs per course if they taught three sections but only 3 per course if they taught four, which needless to say made no sense. Again, these gains (except for the basic raise) do not apply to all members but are important for some members and for solidarity.

Improvements in language include that a faculty member who receives the maximum advanced standing towards tenure does not have to apply for tenure by exception, which has sometimes been the case in recent years--of course, that doesn't apply to every member but it matters to the people affected. Faculty applying for a second PAI award can apply after five years, not six (which is what the language said all along--but again, there had been problems of administrative interpretation recently). Again, that may not seem major but it is important to people applying for PAIs. And in a year when all the other unions and administrators had their bereavement leave reduced from five days to three--with the loss of an uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, or cousin no longer eligible for any leave--we retained for our members the five days for all relatives except the aforementioned, and three days for these. We also have Pharmacy language (for the first time) and a revision of the Distance Education language written by one of our members.

There were also several disturbing administrative proposals that we were able to fight off. These included abolition of the CUE range (everyone to work 24 CUEs unless excused by the Provost), no differential pay for summer school (in other words, a flat rate), and anyone covered by Civil Service not having access to the contractual grievance process--this last would have applied to most of our Academic Support Professionals and Information Technology Professionals and would have made it more difficult to fight sanctions or termination aimed at members of these units.

Overall, I believe we can be quite proud of this Contract.

We need to become more aggressive in our relationship with administration. We should be much more pro-active. We have been too reactive in the past. The special events parking lot crisis serves as a good example. Since Dr. Watson’s arrival and push for more special campus events we have heard complaints from students, faculty and staff about not being able to find parking on campus during special events. As a union we should have already addressed this problem with the administration and developed a workable plan for these occasions instead of grieving the issue after the fact.

My remark concerning grieving parking applied only to people who have paid a premium to have a parking place available 24/7--not to say it couldn't be widened to include all who park on campus. No one has ever complained about parking during special events to us, until now. Again, we would welcome your specific suggestions.

We need to recognize ourselves as part of the working class and strengthen our relationships with other unions and other working class people on this campus. Given that we all work at the same institution and are aggrieved by the same bosses, we should support each other more and ally together. While the conditions on our campus have deteriorated, we are not an isolated case. University workers all across the country and workers in other sectors are being attacked by the same anti-worker mentality that exists at CSU.

We agree. We began those meetings with the leadership of the other campus unions a couple of years ago; we have met as needed since. The leadership of UPI and Local 743 have been in communication frequently, especially during negotiations.

Thanks to the blogmaster for giving me the chance to communicate in this forum. And if there is anything additional you'd like to see on the chapter website, please let me know.

Some Notes from the Front

2012-02-02T09:28:00.002-06:00

The controversy over the university’s ham-handed attempt to censor faculty and staff reached a crescendo yesterday as, according to several witnesses, at least one administrator felt the need to verbally accost and attempt to physically intimidate one of the faculty members who demonstrated the temerity to challenge this ill-conceived policy.

While the faculty member passed out leaflets at the Michelle Alexander program, the university counsel, Patrick Cage, esq., approached, and wildly gesticulating with his index finger, loudly berated the faculty member for disagreeing with the university’s new computer use policy, for which he (Mr. Cage) claimed authorship. Mr. Cage reminded the faculty member that he (the faculty member) was “not an attorney,” and that he (Mr. Cage) “stood behind” the constitutionality of his policy. In full view of several other members of the university community, Mr. Cage, with CSU’s chief of police standing silently next to him, continued his tirade for several minutes, all the while standing directly in front of and quite close to the faculty member.

I am not in a position to speak to Mr. Cage’s competence as an attorney, although I showed the computer policy to a friend who is an attorney and watched her read it with increasing amusement. When she had finished perusing the document she said, “no attorney could have written this--it is so vague and contradictory--it is simply unenforceable. If an attorney did write this, he or she should be fired.”

Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that in the intellectual argument arena, Mr. Cage fell rather short in this situation. Rather than mount an intellectual attack on his opponent’s argument, he resorted to volubility and crude physical interposition to make his points, leading me to believe that his intellectual fuel tank must have been on empty. I wonder if he has any intellectual defense for his “policy?” In any event, this is an alarming way for a top university official to behave at a public university event.

On another topic, I find it interesting that the story on Wayne Watson’s lucrative sick leave buyout with the City Colleges has not appeared in any of the local newspapers. I guess in the political cesspool of Chicago, this kind of stuff really is not newsworthy. With city colleges doling out seven million dollars to various recipients, including our “half-million dollar man,” it makes one wonder how flush with money that system must be. Spare me the legal niceties over this issue, it may be legal under Illinois law (there’s an oxymoron), but that certainly doesn’t make it right, or ethical. Indeed, think of what this kind of payout really means. The state’s taxpayers are rewarding someone in an administrative position for simply coming to work, an endeavor for which the employee is already amply compensated. In this state, it is possible to work full-time while drawing a full pension and, in addition, to be rewarded to the tune of $16,000 per year of previous service simply for showing up. No wonder our pensions are under attack.

Reject CSU Computer Usage Policy

2012-02-01T08:53:00.002-06:00

CHICAGO STATE UNIVERSITY’S COMPUTER USAGE POLICY IS CENSORSHIP

DO NOT SIGN CSU’S COMPUTER USAGE POLICY.

We are warned that if we do not sign, then we will lose our computer privileges. We will not sign this poorly written policy as it contains many objectionable sections including the following paragraph:

“Electronic mail and all other electronic communication (including websites and blog posts) should adhere to the University standards of conduct which prohibits any communication which tends to embarrass, humiliate or shed a negative light on any member of the community. Respect others you contact electronically by avoiding distasteful, inflammatory, harassing or otherwise unacceptable comments.”

For a number of reasons this policy should be rejected by all who care about our university and rescinded by the administrators responsible for it:

1) It is too vague. Who defines humiliating, embarrassing or negative? Does an email to a poorly performing student which makes them feel bad constitute a violation? Does publishing a blog that points out the potential fraud and mismanagement at CSU constitute a violation?

2) It violates first amendment rights to freedom of speech.

3) It violates the whole premise of an institution of higher education that proposes to engage in free inquiry, critical thinking and problem solving.

4) It creates a climate of fear in which workers at CSU feel their jobs threatened for merely exercising their constitutionally-protected rights and doing their jobs as members of a university.

5) It protects from scrutiny those engaged in questionable practices and, thus, wish to hide their actions behind a policy. Recent and ongoing negative press coverage has resulted from mismanagement. Those who have cast this negative light on our campus would rather that their “dirty laundry” (in other words, their failures) not be examined.

The policy can also lead to severe punishment for those who violate. The policy requires our signature affirming that we are aware of the consequences of its violation. The policy reads “my failure to comply with the laws, rules, policies, and procedures referred to within this training course may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination of University employment and possible criminal prosecution, depending on the nature of the violation.”

Resist this attack on our university and our rights to speak freely within it. Let everyone know of this latest in an ongoing attack on students and faculty. Call the press. Call elected officials. Let CSU administrators know of your rejection of such policies.

Michelle Alexander on New Racism and the Criminal Justice System

2012-01-31T14:55:00.003-06:00

On Wednesday, February 1, between 10am and noon, Michelle Alexander will discuss her work. According to Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! her book, The New Jim Crow, "argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system."

I'm eager to see how Professor Alexander ties the policing and incarcerating institutions of state to the ideological institutions, especially universities. How do institutions of higher education serve an ideological control function that benefits the ruling classes? How do class relations influence policies and conditions at universities and prisons? What role do we, as faculty, play in this? What role do non-faculty administrators/managers play?

We made the Sunday NY Times again!!! Ex-Workers at City Colleges Paid for Unused Sick Days "Wayne Watson, a former chancellor, is a big beneficiary."

2012-01-29T09:41:00.017-06:00

Well, if you had any doubts about it you must know by now just how much we are working at the State of Illinois/City of Chicago Public Education System Patronage Pit...

The New York Times
January 28, 2012
Ex-Workers at City Colleges Paid for Unused Sick Days
By PATRICK REHKAMP

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/city-colleges-pay-millions-for-unused-sick-days.html

Wayne Watson, a former chancellor, is a big beneficiary.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/01/29/us/29CNCWATSON.html

Many public and private employers have a use-it-or-lose-it policy toward sick time. But the City Colleges of Chicago has generated more than $7 million in postemployment sick day payments for about 140 former employees in the last decade, according to records obtained by the Better Government Association.

Wayne Watson, the former chancellor at Chicago’s community colleges, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the policy — he accrued 500 unused sick days, for which he will be paid about $500,000.

Mr. Watson, who stepped down from the top job in 2009, has already received about $300,000 in sick day payments and he will receive two more annual payments of $100,000. City Colleges records show the system has paid retirees at least $3 million and still owes them $4.2 million.

In addition to Mr. Watson, at least 15 former City Colleges administrators were owed $100,000 or more in unused sick time payments in the last decade, according to records. Charles Guengerich, a former president of Wilbur Wright College on the Northwest Side, was due $309,061 in sick time. Martin Faber, former executive director of business services at Richard J. Daley College on the Southwest Side, was expected to receive $216,973.

On Friday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office ordered City Colleges to halt all payments for unused sick time to Mr. Watson and other former administrators while his office tried to determine whether the money still owed to them must be paid. “The mayor has zero tolerance on this,” said Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. “This is not a benefit City of Chicago employees receive.”

In November, the City Colleges board, at the urging of its new chancellor, Cheryl Hyman, voted to eliminate pay for unused sick days for new nonunion employees.

City Colleges’ vice chancellor, Laurent Pernot, said that the change was made to “save taxpayer resources.”

Asked about his $500,000 payment, Mr. Watson, who is now president of Chicago State University, said, “You’re asking me about three years ago and a different institution.” He declined further comment.

Mr. Watson worked for the City Colleges for 31 years, including the last 11 as chancellor. He had an annual salary of $300,000 when he retired. Under the system’s policy at the time, departing nonunion employees who met certain age and service requirements could convert 80 percent of their unused sick time to cash, with no cap on how many days they could amass.

Mr. Watson took only 11.5 sick days in the last decade he was with the City Colleges. In addition to his payments for unused sick days, Mr. Watson receives a pension of $140,000 a year and is paid $250,000 a year at Chicago State.

Under the revised policy, new nonunion employees can accumulate up to 200 days of unused sick time, but they are no longer allowed to cash out any of them when they leave the college system, Mr. Pernot said.

A similar perk that Mr. Watson and other managers enjoyed remains in effect, however, for the unionized employees of the City Colleges.

Members of the Cook County College Teachers Union who were hired before July 15, 2000, can still cash out 80 percent of their unused sick days upon leaving City Colleges if they meet certain age and service requirements, and they have no cap on the number of days they can collect. Union members hired on or after July 15, 2000, can cash out a maximum of 80 unused sick days.

The contract that provides those benefits expires next year. In negotiations for a new one, City Colleges officials hope to bring the rules for union employees in line with the newly enacted policy for nonunion employees, Mr. Pernot said.

Patrick Rehkamp is a senior investigator for the Better Government Association. Mari Grigaliunas contributed reporting.

The State's Computer Policy

2012-01-28T18:45:00.001-06:00

As far as I can tell, this is the state's most recent iteration of its computer policy (2008). Its here: http://www2.illinois.gov/bccs/Documents/Policies/GeneralIT.pdf

A look at that policy reveals that the activities enumerated under prohibited actions include: "Libelous, slanderous, degrading, insulting, vulgar, obscene, offensive, or hostile remarks, and/or emails, and/or websites." Obviously, this has some problems since I'm not sure how we would define things like degrading or offensive remarks (not to mention vulgar or obscene), but it seems far more specific than “Electronic mail and all other electronic communication (including websites and blog posts) should adhere to the University standards of conduct which prohibits any communication which tends to embarrass, humiliate or shed a negative light on any member of the community. Respect others you contact electronically by avoiding distasteful, inflammatory, harassing or otherwise unacceptable comments." As has been pointed out repeatedly, these definitions are so vague that they could encompass almost anything.

Union Kudos, Questions, Directions

2012-01-25T13:09:00.002-06:00

Kudos to the union leadership for challenging one of the latest administrative oversteps as mentioned in an earlier blog post by Corday. The computer usage policy is a “change in working conditions” and thus must be negotiated with the faculty union. Unfortunately, the administration continues to try to force us to sign the very troubling document with a reminder sent to us via email on January 25. As a union we should stand together and not sign the document until our union and legal counsel has had the opportunity to review and negotiate the policy. Additionally, in an email dated January 24 UPI Chapter President Walter suggested that the campus visit of Minister Farrakhan would cause a parking problem that could be grounds for a grievance.

I hope we can be even more aggressive in using our position as the body that carries out the primary goal of the university. Any number of recent administrative decisions constitutes a “change in workplace conditions.” We can use the union more aggressively to reverse the attack on faculty and the mission to teach our students. In that spirit I offer a set of questions and a set of ideas about union affairs.

First, I have questions regarding intra- and inter-union communications regarding the union contract, grievances and the parking contract Memo of Understanding. Secondly, I have questions about union actions and strategies including the use of grievances. Finally, I suggest some directions that we might explore in order to regain our faculty and worker spaces; all in an effort to further dialogue, develop solidarity and increase our power.

Questions

1) Communications

a. The new contract was not made available until after the second week in January and the faculty was hurried into voting without having access to the entire contract. The union membership needs to be aware of provisions in the contract that have changed.

b. Grievances won or lost should be communicated to the membership. The grievance process is an important tool that we can use more effectively. In speaking with colleagues in the halls, in meetings and on the faculty voice blog, I have detected a sharp rise in faculty complaints about working conditions. I would suggest that keeping and communicating to the membership an easily accessible record of the types of grievances, their number and outcome would encourage us to use the process more. Such communication would also increase solidarity among our members.

c. How did we let the bosses get away with doubling our parking fees without union membership outright approval?

2) Actions

I recognize that there are legal barriers and constraints placed on union activity. However, I want to suggest that we should be open to using any strategy that will further our rights and goals as working people.

a. Again, we should use the grievance process more effectively. Discussion and communication of grievances and outcomes will help us analyze this as a strategy that halts administrative overstep and abuse.

b. Historically, all sorts of tactics have been used that go beyond rules-based, formal actions that we, as a union, most commonly use. We are a union of professional workers who have a great deal of specialized knowledge that makes us invaluable to the mission of the university. We should be more creative in how we pressure management.

c. The ongoing college reorganizations have been discussed in committees, faculty conversations and on this blog. This reorganization is a substantial “change in working conditions” and the processes have no input from faculty or a representative body of faculty. A faculty entity “with teeth” must weigh-in strongly about these ill-conceived changes. We have to reassert that such academic matters must be the primary purview of the faculty. The union can be a place for such a challenge.

3) Contract Negotiations

I would also like more information regarding the process of contract negotiations. I have heard from many sources that there were irregularities during the process including that the majority of the negotiating committee was sidelined during final negotiations which were then conducted by the chapter president and the UPI president. I would like to know if this is true and why this occurred. While it is true that the faculty voted approval of the contract, how did the tenure review clause get inserted into the contract to begin with? What was the trade-off? Who has a record of the union proposals on the contract and the Administrative counter-proposals?

True. We have a signed contract. We approved it. We have to live with it. However, we need to have a more rigorous transparent process including dialogue among faculty so that we have a contract that reflects our central role at this university and so that any irregularities in the latest contract negotiations will never happen again.

Directions

1) We need to become more aggressive in our relationship with administration. We should be much more pro-active. We have been too reactive in the past. The special events parking lot crisis serves as a good example. Since Dr. Watson’s arrival and push for more special campus events we have heard complaints from students, faculty and staff about not being able to find parking on campus during special events. As a union we should have already addressed this problem with the administration and developed a workable plan for these occasions instead of grieving the issue after the fact.

2) We need to recognize ourselves as part of the working class and strengthen our relationships with other unions and other working class people on this campus. Given that we all work at the same institution and are aggrieved by the same bosses, we should support each other more and ally together. While the conditions on our campus have deteriorated, we are not an isolated case. University workers all across the country and workers in other sectors are being attacked by the same anti-worker mentality that exists at CSU.

3) Unions are successful when the creative energy and skills of all the members are utilized. We must, as a complete body, take ownership over and have responsibility for the union so that we can participate more fully. This should be a democratic process.

Again, this blog is written in the spirit of collegiality and a desire to see our university prosper. The administrative oversteps, bumbling, and attacks on faculty, staff and students have reached such a critical mass that they seriously threaten our workplace, the success of our students and the very existence of our university. Together we can find ways that the union can respond effectively to these threats.

Faculty Development Opportunities

2012-01-21T09:19:00.005-06:00

For those in the humanities and social sciences it has been a difficult couple of years at CSU getting real time off for research and writing if you can't get funding for yourself. In his first year at CSU, Dr. Watson, claiming financial cutbacks (remember all those firings?), banned (or suspended--pick your word) sabbaticals. It seemed counter to the Admin's desire to "raise standards" on campus --mandatory thesis requirements for undergrads and grads were rammed through, but limited money for real faculty development. One could get a leave of absence, but not the traditional 1/2 year at full salary/full year at 1/2 salary that has been part of the contract. I'm happy to report, that they seem to have returned. Rumor has it that some people this year, not sure of the number, have been granted sabbaticals, not just leaves of absence.

Another opportunity that faculty at CSU should pay attention to is the great seminar experience through the Faculty Resource Network at New York University. CSU is affiliated with this and I have been reminded that we need to get as many applications as possible since the CSU affiliation is again in jeopardy.

The week-long summer seminars and the month-long scholar-in-residence info can be found on the faculty resource network website.
Summer Seminars:
http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/enrichment/network.summer.2012.html

Summer Scholar-in- Residence
http://www.nyu.edu/frn/programs.events/scholar.in.residence/summer.scholar.html

FRN Webpage
http://www.nyu.edu/frn/

The deadline is approaching soon (Feb. 10th, 2012)/ Housing, breakfast, and lunch are covered. Airfare/travel to NYC is the only thing a participant pays.

Take advantage of the opportunities that we have here.

Think, ask, and ask again, before you sign

2012-01-15T10:55:00.002-06:00

Last week faculty and staff were sent a message from Human Resources (another office with lots of new powers on campus--didn't the Admin dismantle the Student Career Development Center and put it under the control of the university's Human Resources Department?--odd). At any rate, HR sent this message under the title of COMPLIANCE ALERT: Computer Usage Policy claiming "to provide guidelines for appropriate use of computers and tech services by students, faculty, and staff..." We were asked to print it out, sign and return the "Certification page," by Feb. 3rd indicating that we understood the policy or our "computer access would be suspended." Any questions about this were to be directed to the Ethics Office.

When I clicked on the link to see exactly what it was I would be signing I did not find a pro forma statement about being nice on the computer (e.g. don't read porn, use passwords etc). Instead, I found a multi-page document with more than a few troubling paragraphs. Two in particular raised red flags:

This policy will be modified as new questions and situations arise. Each individual who uses Chicago State University’s computing facilities thereby agrees that his/her use of these facilities will remain within the bound of acceptable use as described in this and other University computing policies or other Chicago State University codes of conduct...

1. Respect the rights and sensibilities of others.
a. Electronic mail and all other electronic communication (including websites and blog posts) should adhere to the University standards of conduct which prohibits any communication which tends to embarrass, humiliate or shed a negative light on any member of the community. Respect others you contact electronically by avoiding distasteful, inflammatory, harassing or otherwise unacceptable comments.

SEE:http://www.csu.edu/humanresources/adminstaff/documents/ChicagoStateUniversityComputerUsagePolicy.pdf

Another colleague shared my sentiments about the offending passages but articulated the problem more succinctly. Computer technology should be used for furthering open inquiry and discussion.

"I noticed the passage and I too thought it threatened the open criticism of the administration on the blog and using university computers. It seems that we should argue that this is precisely what universities should do—encourage open examination and criticism of the conduct of members of the university—and if folks feel embarrassed, humiliated, or cast in a negative light, then they should examine the conduct that brought on the criticism, not attempt to block criticism. If the comments that may tend to embarrass, humiliate or case someone in a negative light are incorrect, then they should be rebutted in the same spirit of open discussion and criticism. For example, the president early on cast the faculty’s teaching in a negative light; we did not attempt to censor him but to rebut his remarks."

Since the document tries to enforce faculty "conduct" we need to know who put this statement together and who it is that will be determining good or bad conduct. Since it steps on free speech issues, H.R., the Ethics Office, and the campus CIO should explain how this statement came into existence--what campus committee of faculty, staff and students put this statement together? CIO Ce Cole Dillon responded to an email about this, but not to the question. The Ethics Office and H.R. have yet to respond.

CSU's Union Leadership, however, did respond and has alerted the Administration to the following: The requirement for employees to sign the new "Computer Usage Policy" is a change in working conditions and, as such, its implementation for members of UPI Local 4100 is a mandatory subject of bargaining. Not sure when or how this will be bargained. Until then, I'm not signing and am certainly not signing away my right to question issues and individuals at CSU.

New Year's Resolution

2012-01-06T11:54:00.002-06:00

In the spirit of Langston Hughes and for the spirits of our incredible students and the working classes across the globe, I resolve not to be a “coward of the college.” I resolve to use all personal and institutional means to stand-up for our students, faculty and staff. This will include being a better teacher, mentor, advisor and colleague as well as being active in and pushing our various committees, departments, union, faculty senate, and working groups to be the best that we can possibly be. I resolve to not sit by while the disingenuous, cynical, and short-sighted corporate mentality turns our university into free job training for the corporations that ruin our planet and deprive people of safe, secure and meaningful lives.

Please join me in resolving to not be a coward of the college. For insight into what that might mean read Hughes’ essay, “Cowards of the Colleges.” I have a copy in pdf form, if any are interested. Below are a few of my favorite quotes from the essay.

"And can it be that our Negro institutions are not really interested in turning out leaders at all? Can it be that they are far more interested in their endowments and their income and their salaries than in our students?

And can it be that these endowments, incomes, gifts—and therefore salaries---springing from missionary and philanthropic sources and not from big Northern boards and foundations---have such strings tied to them that those accepting them can do little else (if they wish to live easy) but bow down to the white powers that control this philanthropy and continue, to the best of their ability, to turn out ‘Uncle Toms’?...”

“The day must come when we will not say that a college is a great college because it has a few beautiful buildings, and a half dozen PhD’s on a faculty that is afraid to open its mouth…”

“…unless we develop more and ever more such young men and women on our campuses [e.g., I.S.U. members] as an antidote to the docile dignity of the meek professors and well-paid presidents who now run our institutions, American Negroes in the future had best look to the unlettered for their leaders, and expect only cowards from the colleges.” (Langston Hughes, “Cowards from the Colleges: An Essay”, 1934)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!!

2011-12-24T12:08:00.002-06:00

To All of the Faculty Voice Blog Participants and Guests,

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones! We may disagree on some policy initiative or vision for the university's future occasionally, but we can all agree on the importance of family and spending time with loved one's, the glad tidings the holiday season brings and the cause of realizing the common good in our communities; whether that community is personal and familial, institutional, or societal.

So Happy Holidays to All from the Faculty Voice Blog!

Chicago politics???

2011-12-20T22:15:00.000-06:00

So, one of the lessons I've learned in being an academic is to thoughtfully consider things, not to traipse down some intellectual rabbit hole like an ADD addled adolescent. After all aren't university faculty paid to think about things and not just throw unformed slop against the wall to see what sticks. Mental discipline, honed in a rigorous doctoral program, has given me a skill I lacked as a younger man, patience. This is the patience to think through the intellectual Rubik’s cube that are the challenges that life presents. Several of my colleagues have checked in with me since Corday’s post about some of the activities at the last Board of Trustees meeting, namely the scurrilous attacks on me by an unnamed party. What I discovered during the past couple of weeks was that I didn’t have any anger at being attacked. What I figured out from that was that I wasn’t really attacked. This leafleting was so poor in its construction and pitiable in its execution that the only feeling I did have was sadness. And the sadness wasn’t about me. I was sad for whatever intellectually deficient person even conceived of such a stupid idea masquerading as an ad hominem attack. The lack of cerebral depth in the originator of this pathetic idea was apparent. A slapstick attempt at best in a city where politics is blood sport was more insulting than hurtful. Part of my history, and it is no secret, is that I manage political campaigns. I know attack politics. As a tactic this was worse than bad. It was pathetic. I can’t believe I didn’t merit a better effort at personal destruction than a poorly constructed photocopied page of nonsensical questions. Is that what politics in this historic city has degenerated to, hapless amateurism?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Trustees meeting...

2011-12-14T20:42:00.027-06:00

A lot happened last Friday (Dec. 9th) at the CSU Board of Trustees meeting, but a new twist to life at CSU was the emergence of the "Chicago Way" on campus. An older man stood near the entrance to the library before the full board meeting at 1 p.m. handing out flyers to those on their way in. As I passed him, he said, "you need to read this before going into the meeting." I asked him how he knew I was going to a meeting, but he just repeated that I needed to read the flyer.

The flyer was a two-page scurrilous attack on CSU faculty member Phillip Beverly.

As I began reading I found out that Dr. Beverly was largely being tainted by association to some disgraced southside politician I had never heard of and who has not been in office for decades. Not being from Chicago some of the other references went over my head. Dr Beverly's teaching was impugned and even his retired history teacher father was referred to disparagingly as not being a supporter of Chicago's African Americans. A series of rhetorical questions implied Dr. Beverly was being paid off by someone, I guess to attack the same African American community.

As I read along, I kept thinking, is it 1928? "Don't vote for Al Smith because he's Catholic..." or 1952? "Don't vote for Adlai Stevenson because he's a communist..."

The flyer listed no author or organization. There was no stamp of approval from the CSU censor's office that all campus flyers are supposed to have. After I had read a few paragraphs of the diatribe, I turned back and asked, "who told you to hand these out?" But the man would only repeat that it came from "interested students and parties on campus." He continued to pass these out as he tried to move away from me since I would not stop asking him questions.

As I walked into the library a few professors were on their way out to see what was going on since the flyers had apparently made their way upstairs to the meeting room. Dr. Beverly was unfazed by the flyers. Eventually what happened was that the Administration told campus police to find out who the man was and what he was doing. When he wouldn't identify himself, merely saying his daughter was a student here and that he would not give her name out, he was escorted off campus. So were two other men who were handing out the same flyer on another side of the campus. At least that's the story I got later on. Mr. Patrick Cage, Dr Watson's legal counsel (and former City College colleague), made a point of reminding Dr Beverly that it was the Administration that Dr. Beverly so likes to criticize that got the man off campus. Dr. Beverly pointed out that he did not ask them to do that.

It was probably only a matter of time until the full force of "The Chicago Way" hit CSU. I mean we saw it in play as the bogus presidential search of 2009 unfolded before our very eyes as CSU's "Godfather" paid off his debts and no one on the state level who could have intervened cared that we got what we got what we got.

But the story of the scurrilous flyers didn't end last Friday. Earlier this week, Dr. Beverly's parents' neighborhood was swamped with the same flyers--this time stuffed into mailboxes.

My guess is that CSU students are not involved in this effort to tar Phillip Beverly and certainly not his family. In the first place our students are not as cowardly as all this. They would have been the ones outside the building passing out the flyers themselves and would own up to their actions. Certain members of the Administration like to think that the faculty are puppet-masters goading the students on in their recent activities on campus--the formation of the Independent Students Union, and the Occupy Cook protest, as well as more student voices at the Board of Trustees meetings. It tells you how poorly the Administration thinks of the students and their capacity for independent thinking and organizing. At another meeting late last month a senior administrator is quoted as saying that faculty in a certain college have been told to pull down any posters or flyers especially from the Independent Student Union "that would disturb" the students. The paternalism that has been traditional at predominantly African American universities is not something that our students here seem to want to continue nor do they respond very well to it. Maybe they are just better at seeing through the banners around campus that proclaim "students are our first priority" or that the CEO has an open door for any student concerns. Langston Hughes' famous critique "Cowards from the Colleges" should be mandatory reading for all Administrators before they take a job.

So, are the ad hominem attacks on Dr Beverly retaliation for his vocal assaults on the university administration? Are they intended to silence him by fear? --"we know who you are and where you live..." By extension are they intended to silence anyone who criticizes the university or the African American Community in Chicago? Dr. Watson is on record as recently as November 17th's so-called "faculty forum" as admonishing faculty not to "air our dirty laundry in public" since we are up for accreditation and the HLC reads the Chicago papers. If that isn't the old paternalism in action I don't know what is. How about the CSU Admin stops doing things that put our accreditation in jeapardy? In other words, stop dirtying the laundry and there would be nothing to air.

The commotion at the afternoon meeting of the Board of Trustees did not stop Dr Beverly from making a prepared statement during public comment. In it Dr Beverly made a plea for faculty primacy in academic matters on campus and outlined for the Trustees how faculty approach issues differently than administrators. It also did not stop approximately 10 CSU students from stepping up to make public comment to the Board of Trustees. Ironically the first student who spoke brought up censorship of another form. In January a mandatory dress code will be instituted for business majors in the College of Business. In an eloquent statement to the Board, our student spoke of wanting to be "educated," not merely "trained" and painted a picture for them of students who work in the morning at a job having to carry a change of clothes from their uniforms or work clothes to business attire to attend a class. She added, what about students who have to struggle to buy books now having the added expense of buying business clothes? In the end she called for a boycott of the Business School and that business majors should all change their majors in protest.

The Board of Trustees meeting last Friday was important for other reasons. Two campus constituencies that have had to rely on indirect contact with the Board were allowed to give reports thanks to the efforts of Senate President Yan Searcy and the new Board Chairman Rozier. The Faculty Senate and the Civil Service Council will continue to be allowed to report to the Board in a formal manner. There is a firm commitment from the Board to ensure that shared governance has meaning on campus and Chairman Rozier charged President Watson to continue to adhere to these principles.

While it seems last Friday that a gauntlet had been thrown down to those who criticize the university (or its southside community) the faculty, administration, and trustees should take to heart and consider the concluding remarks of one of the student speakers. In spite of admonishments and intimidation, he said, "the student voice will no longer be ignored." Neither, I hope will others.

Time to Stop the Nonsense

2011-12-14T11:00:00.007-06:00

After the fiasco surrounding the hectoring e-mail sent by Cheri Sidney on December 9, it is really time to end this nonsense at Chicago State. This person has no qualifications for the position she currently holds, (either Assistant or Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management) and her persistence in that position suggests that our current administration is not serious about giving this university the kind of leadership it needs and deserves. Interestingly, on September 9, 2011, the City Colleges of Chicago posted a job announcement for the position of Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management. Here is the announcement:

Posted September 9, 2011, City Colleges Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management

Qualifications
Master’s degree from an accredited college or university in Business Administration or related field with five years of progressively responsible experience in academic management, or an equivalent combination of training and experience.

Excellent organizational, management and decision-making skills. In-depth understanding of business and operational processes across many industries, with an emphasis on educational processes. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Demonstrated commitment to diversity and multiculturalism in one’s work experience; and ability to develop a technologically integrated environment that fosters innovation within a learning organization. Experience in higher education articulation processes and program review preferred. Flexible, honest, tactful, independent worker. Ability to work cooperatively and strategically in a team environment with all levels of professional, technical and administrative staff in order to integrate resources on a timely and organized basis.

As the reader can clearly see, the minimum requirements for a position similar to Ms. Sidney’s at the City Colleges stipulate qualifications she does not possess. So why is she in a Vice President’s position at a graduate degree granting institution? How in the world did she obtain this position? or her entry level position in Human Resources, a position seemingly created just for her?

One of my colleagues returned from the recent Graduate Council meeting disturbed by the creeping influence of the office of Enrollment Management, headed by Angela Henderson. Apparently, Enrollment Management will assume some of the administrative functions formerly entrusted to the Graduate School. Again, why? What qualifications does this office have to assume any authority over the Chicago State graduate programs? In addition, this office will likely operate independently since the proposed configuration separates the functions that are Enrollment Management’s from the academic oversight of the Provost’s Office. Given the evidence that our president believes that he is qualified to dictate academic policy across the disciplines, how long will it be until the superbly qualified duo at Enrollment Management start to make academic decisions?

Let me be clear here. While Angela Henderson’s continued tenure in her position is troubling and may create accreditation problems, having someone working as a university vice president with the nonexistent credentials possessed by Cheri Sidney is a disgrace and an embarrassment. If she could not even apply for a similar position at the City Colleges, what is she doing at this school? Her hiring at this level of responsibility could be perceived as being motivated by something other than academic qualifications or experiential factors. Allowing her to continue in this position makes a mockery of our stated commitment to “academic excellence,” or “academic integrity.” I wonder how our “stakeholders” would respond if they knew that this university employed an individual with such qualifications in an important academically-related position.

The continued presence of these two administrative employees puts Chicago State in the unique position of being the only one of five similar schools, Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Northeastern Illinois, and Western Illinois, to employ administrators in these positions without doctoral degrees. (No need to wonder about the University of Illinois, Northern or Southern Illinois universities, they have no one with similar credentials in comparable positions) I will not discuss university experience here since I have addressed that issue in previous posts, but suffice to say that Ms. Henderson and Ms. Sidney are woefully inexperienced when it comes to university management. In the other four schools, the Provost is entrusted with the operation of enrollment management. In order to emphasize my point, I present the following:

At CSU, the VP of Enrollment Management holds a M.S.N., the AVP holds a B.A.
At Eastern, the VP holds a Ph.D., the two AVP’s, also hold the Ph.D.
At Illinois State the VP holds a Ph.D., the AVP also holds a Ph.D.
At Northeastern, the VP holds a Ph.D., the two AVP’s also hold the Ph.D.
At Western, the VP holds a Ph.D., the AVP holds a Ed.D.

I suggest that the foregoing illuminates one reason why many faculty and students are expressing concerns about our current administration. Everyone in comparable positions at similar institutions possesses a doctorate. It also suggests that some of our administrators treat Chicago State like it is a second-rate institution. While they complain about negative press coverage, they bring in administrators with laughable qualifications. I am sure that this comparison of academic qualifications would seem puzzling even to persons with no knowledge about university operations. For people who do know how universities are supposed to be run, this could suggest that this school is being operated for the benefit of a handful of well-connected people, regardless of the potential consequences.

It is time for our administration to stop this nonsense. I believe that Chicago can offer a far more attractive lifestyle than Charleston, Macomb, or Normal. Why then, can we not attract stronger candidates for these key positions? Most important, this university is fortunate to have hundreds of dedicated staff and faculty and thousands of motivated and willing students. Is this all we deserve? In 2003, an HLC survey found faculty, staff and students dissatisfied with the school’s administration. In 2010, staff, faculty, and administrators expressed the majority belief that the university (read administration) respected neither the staff nor the faculty. Currently we are under attack from a variety of sources and the problems identified in 2003 and 2010 continue to fester. While the administration prefers to think that the disaffection on this campus stems from a few “disgruntled” faculty, this is a dangerous and delusional way to view the recent complaints. In fact, many of the administrative actions over the past two years seem to demonstrate a profound lack of respect for the people who do the job of educating and assisting our students.

I believe that Cheri Sidney should be removed from her position immediately, before she has the opportunity to do real damage to our academic endeavors. Perhaps some of our administrators believe she is performing adequately, but continuing to defend her tenancy in this position is simply to endorse and validate the notion that her mediocre academic credentials should be sufficient for a school “like Chicago State.” As her tone-deaf e-mail of December 9 demonstrates, she lacks any fundamental knowledge of what faculty do between the end of classes and the calculation and posting of final grades. I regret having to say this, but I think it is shameful that some of our administrators apparently think so poorly of this school’s staff, faculty and students that they seem unwilling to mirror the commitment to academic excellence exhibited by the vast majority of the university’s employees and students.

Overreach versus Outreach: The "Sidney memo"…

2011-12-11T13:44:00.002-06:00

First, let me say that I am in complete agreement with my colleague, “Corday” who posted recently about the “Sidney memo” (see below). Never before have I seen at Chicago State (or any other institution of higher education at which I have worked) a promulgation like the Sidney memo is claiming to be just a “reminder.” For the time being, I will give Ms. Sidney the benefit of the doubt as it is equally unlikely that she would have seen such a memorandum written to university and graduate-level educator as an undergraduate student. However, perhaps some reminders for her are in order:

The university under President Watson has strongly encouraged improving “writing skills” for our students as they have often been underserved in this area by their prior educational experiences. Indeed, I agree. Having graded papers for fifteen years (30 semesters plus 15 summer sessions), I can attest both to the underpreparedness of our students (and in this regard they are little different from undergraduates nearly everywhere!) and the importance of improving this skill before they receive their baccalaureate degree and make their way further into the world as a CSU graduate. In order to improve one’s writing skills (not an innate skill), many hours of practice are required. This should also indicate why my colleague “Corday” was particularly irritated by the Sidney missive. GRADING PAPERS TAKES HOURS to do well and fairly!!

When I received the “Sidney memo” last night, I had just completed grading a stack of papers for the entire day. From 10 am until nearly 11:30 p.m., that was almost all I accomplished. This term, I received approximately 75 term papers (between 6-8 pages each). For the math challenged, this means somewhere between 5-600 pages of content not including cover pages, summaries, endnotes, bibliographies, etcetera. The stack is about as high as two or three reams of papers or nearly half a foot high. There are not many who can read a 600 page book a week and still maintain a teaching schedule, personal and family obligations (which I confess I often ignore this time of year in addition to the hour long commute each way to campus). And I should add, I do this every week for the last six weeks of each semester because I assign and must grade many other paper assignments to provide “feedback” to students before their term paper is due (full disclosure: I have three short essays due per class before Thanksgiving). This is one way of saying; all I do is grade papers at this time of the year. I do not do Christmas shopping, the holiday tree is on the ground in my backyard, and Christmas cards to 100+ people are on hold till next week. Given the approximately 2,000 pages I actually grade in November and December (not counting other assignments and daily quizzes), I can assure Ms. Sydney that I am acutely aware of the deadline this term and every term.

There is a solution: I could give multiple choice (multiple guess?) exams. These can be graded in about 5 minutes by a machine. And I remember all of the questions/answers to these types of exams from my own undergraduate days very well while I have already forgotten most of the papers I wrote back then (full disclosure: I still remember many of the paper topics from my undergraduate coursework and could explain several in great detail. And in fact, I remember none of the questions from the multiple choice tests.) Another solution would be to “skim” the papers. I could read 600 pages very quickly if I needed to do it. But since final grades are involved, my concern would be that the consequences of doing this never outweigh the benefits. If I skimmed too quickly (and missed that signature progress I had been hoping to see), I might underreport a student’s progress or worse, not recognize the profound accomplishments of those rare students I get in every class who really “surprise” me on the term paper in unexpected and usually positive ways.

However, none of these remedies to increase the speed and efficiency of my term paper grading are reasonable in a manner that would conform to standard indicated in the “the Sidney memo.” What Ms. Syndey seems to require would be that I always finish grading all of my term papers three or four days early and that I only work during office hours in my office on campus (as needed to count on my CSU timesheet I must submit). In fact, I spend hours at home usually well into the “wee hours” because my office hallway is too loud with many students just now visiting their professor’s office for the first time that semester for me to concentrate effectively on grading. I estimate that it takes twice as long to grade a paper in my office this time of year than it does at home. Yet none of these concerns hit the mark.

The real problem is overreach. Why is staff from “enrollment management” bothering to contact faculty? This is a non-academic area of the administration where Ms. Sidney’s competence (or awareness of professional standards for university faculty) is severely lacking. If any such memo were desirable, it should have been sent to ALL FACULTY reminding them of the timetable to submit grades; not apparently a punitive one sent to academic deans. Given the fact that there remains two days to submit grades and that the timetable for submission had already been sent out by the Interim Registrar, I can only speculate on the reasons Ms. Sidney choose from to send this memo out.

Perhaps there is a turf war in the administration? Perhaps AVP’s are fighting over which areas are under their “control.” or perhaps enrollment management is assuming the functions of the Office of Academic Affairs and simply desires to let faculty know “who is in charge.” Additionally, it could be that Ms. Sidney did not realize that professors are also “professionals” and you do not need to “make a list and check it twice” as the song goes this time of year. We are not “bad” and “good” professors; only professors who have to get their grades in by Monday. For the most part, CSU faculty do fulfill their professional obligations to their charges and to the institution with integrity and in a timely manner. I guess another reason might be that Ms. Sidney just hit the send button on an email message too quickly and now wishes she hadn’t but cannot retract the memo. Yet another possibility might be that she had a bad meal and wrote something she later regrets. Finally, the real likelihood is that she has no experience dealing with university level administrative work and doesn’t really understand the nature, purpose and function of the faculty at a university and what the vocation of the professoriate consists of in real and concrete terms.

As one not given to premature speculation, I won’t claim to know what Ms. Sidney’s motives are for sending out the memo I received last night. But I do hope I never receive another one again as I know what the deadline is after only one memo and I am a professional. Furthermore, I am also fair and I shall take all the time I need to ensure that I have respected my students work and effort in submitting their final term papers (even if it means getting grades in at 11: 56 p.m. on the final day).

Part of being a professional means “self-determination” with regard to professional duties, not just skimming stuff and following orders.

Who is Cheri Sidney and why is she sending me this annoying email?

2011-12-11T10:12:00.006-06:00

Oh right, here at Chicago State High School she's the one with the online degree B.A. making 95,000-100,000+ per year (apparently to send out emails like this). On Saturday she squealed on me and others of my "teaching faculty" colleagues to my Dean and Provost that I have still not submitted my grades. I guess this was so important that we had to by-pass the preferred method of oral communication from powers on high of "telling the deans to tell the chairs to tell the faculty..." Others of "teaching faculty" have voiced irritation over this irritation. But I forget, our university status has been rapidly downgrading to that of a community college with doctoral programs run by school marms.

Grades are due on Monday, well, duh.
Ok Ms Sidney, B.A., here it is for public view: I'll get my grades in on time, but please, please don't report me to the principal.

Cheri Sidney csidney@csu.edu
11:19 AM (22 hours ago)
to David, Cheryl, Derrick, jbalogun, nmaynard, rmilo, sgist, Office, Angela, Debrah, Victoria, Carnice, bhicks

Teaching Faculty:

You are receiving this email because you have not submitted your final grades for the fall term as of December 9, 2011.

In order for the registrar's office to effectively run the end of term process it is imperative that final grades be submitted by December 12, 2011 as indicated in the December 5th communication below.

Please feel free to contact Beverly Poindextor (x3526) or me (x3534) with any questions or concerns.

Cheri Sidney
AVP, Enrollment Management
Chicago State University

REMINDER: Friday Board of Trustees Meeting

2011-12-07T09:28:00.024-06:00

Faculty should attend the CSU Board of Trustees meeting tomorrow, Friday, Dec. 9th, all day in the Academic Library, 4th Floor. It would be worth it for no other reason than to meet the new trustees who have not even been formally announced on campus (as far as I am aware).

Morning is for the various committee meetings, but afternoon @ 1 p.m. will be the Full Board meeting. Not sure when public comment will take place. The Faculty Senate is presenting a report and there is a chance that faculty concerns may be represented to the board in a more formal way than ever before (and happily ever after?). I believe students will be present and speaking out since both the Independent Student Union's "Occupy Cook" protest and the Student Government Association's open forum over the past two weeks have been raising student consciousness.

Faculty should attend the board meeting. It is so easy to give in to apathy about this meeting and all else attached to administering this leaky old ship of Chicago State. One of the things that we do not learn in graduate school is how important we are to the functioning of the university, not just as teachers and scholars, but as talent that the best universities know to utilize. We forget what a privileged position we have as faculty, not just because "we can have our summers off" (as any of our relatives will remind us--like all we do is lie on a beach from June until August) or that we are the envy of friends with our flexible schedules that makes it seem as if we work only 2 or 3 days a week (would that I only had a 40-hour a week schedule). For those happy few of us this is what we have netted from the many years in graduate school --and most of us have averaged 5-8 years in that great limbo of the "ABD" while surviving on shoe-string salaries. We might not now be making $90,000+ like some of our administrative colleagues, but most of us are richer in other ways.

Faculty are priviledged. We are experts in a field, we hold specialized knowledge, methodology, and a way of thinking critically, of expressing ourselves eloquently and this is what we have the privilege of sharing and passing on to our students. At the last Board of Trustees meeting in September after several faculty had spoken up, it seemed to have emboldened a few of the students who were present. One young woman who spoke during public comment told the Trustees, the professors who were speaking and expressing concern about what was going on at the university, "they have what we want." Such a simple statement, but it gave me pause. Our duty as faculty is not just in the classroom, but to the university as a whole. We have a responsibility to be concerned about the way the university is run, who is making policy, why we should listen to them; we have to question why policies are being put in place, especially policies that affect that academic integrity of the university where our prerogative is paramount as almost any university's governing regulations will state. There have been plenty of things happening on campus, hirings, firings, directives, countermanded decisions, re(dis)organizations coming at us at a fast and furious pace this year. Many of us, not just "a few disgruntled" or "fringe" faculty, as the Admin likes to think of us are immensely concerned about the state of Chicago State.

During the contentious past presidential search of 2009 at CSU we faculty never got the chance to have an honest discussion with the Board of Trustees as to what we wanted our university to be (that elusive "potential" we are all aware CSU has)-- and maybe these days we are more aware of what we don't want CSU to be. Either way, it's time to realize we still can have that discussion.

One Dean's Search (continued)

2011-12-06T05:26:00.003-06:00

In response to the most recent post on the search for the Dean of Students, I offer the following:

First, I don’t believe any of the previous posts discussed whether or not a search occurred for this position.
Second, if none of the previous posts talked about the search, it seems difficult to argue that anyone said anything that seemed “unfair to Dr. McKinney and the search committee who worked so hard to bring a solid candidate to campus.”
Third, the post argues that communication with the faculty took place and alludes to “one of the email announcements that were sent to all faculty through the Moodle site” as an example (this e-mail did not come though in the post). Is that how these notifications were handled? I do not recall receiving anything from the administration regarding this search, I also do not recall receiving anything from the Provost. In fact, on October 17, 2011, one faculty member specifically asked the Vice President of Enrollment management about whether or not a search had been conducted. Here is the text of that e-mail message:

“Dear Ms Henderson,

Thank you for the information you forwarded regarding recent appointments. Was there a university-wide academic search for the position of Dean of Students? As per Board of Trustees regulations any search to fill the position of of Dean and above (VPs, Provost, President) must be conducted as a university search with faculty participation. Please advise that this process was followed.”

If the communication regarding the search had been as transparent and inclusive as you assert, why would such a request be necessary? Recently, the administration made the unusual request for faculty input in drafting the job description for the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The e-mail request for this input went from the administration to the Chairs who were then supposed to forward it to the faculty. Does not the administration have the ability to send e-mail notifications directly to faculty?

In addition, as we all know, search committees on this campus do not hire candidates, the administration does. Unless the administrative searches operate in a fundamentally different way, no search committee is able to rank candidates. In addition, I am also unaware of any administrative search that has included faculty participation in creating the job description, a function the faculty participates in at a number of universities.

Because the administration does the hiring, faculty have concerns about how these job searches take place. Eventually the people hired for administrative jobs may be moved to positions in which they can affect the choices made for administrators, faculty, and staff. That is why we feel that viable faculty participation in these searches is vital. Does the administration go through the Faculty Senate? Does the administration simply cherry pick faculty they know are acquiescent? Let’s not be too naive here, there are a number of ways the administration could (notice I do not say “has” here) “stack the deck” in favor of a particular candidate.

As pointed out in previous posts, several of our administrators in key posts do not possess qualifications similar to incumbents at comparable institutions. The question remains, why? Why cannot Chicago State attract the kinds of persons that hold these positions in places like Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Northeastern, and Western Illinois universities? This remains the question for many faculty and we hope that our new administrators' lack of non-academic degrees and/or experience in graduate degree granting or four-year universities does not adversely affect our accreditation efforts.

As for your post’s final paragraph, you imply that faculty are suggesting that Dr. McKinney’s hire represents some kind of political maneuvering on the part of our president and you express your indignation at the fact that this “false information” only serves to “discount the efforts put forth by the committee . . .” I don’t see the accusation anywhere on this blog that these personnel moves are being orchestrated by the president, but there does seem to be a pattern of moving Watson-era persons from the City Colleges directly into key administrative positions here at Chicago State. I hope you are not suggesting here that our president would not make a politically motivated personnel decision because his history proves that false. More on that later.

One Dean's Search

2011-12-05T17:48:00.007-06:00

The chair of the Dean of Students Search Committee wrote this to the President of the Faculty Senate and has allowed to let me post it for anyone who is interested.

I am responding to your request for information on how the Dean of Students search has handled, per Dr. Westbrooks request. Personally, I am glad that I was asked, as I have been trying to decide whether or not to respond to the post on the faculty blog that didn’t seem to have all of the details straight on this specific search, which is unfair to Dr. McKinney and the search committee who worked so hard to bring a solid candidate to campus.

What I have outlined below are the 1) qualifications of the chair of the committee as a faculty member, 2) composition of the committee, 3) process followed, 4) notification process and response to faculty, and 5) outcomes.

First, please know as a faculty member, I chaired the search three separate times in order to find this candidate. While I am serving as the Interim Associate Dean, I have never given up my faculty status – I have taught courses, advised, and had to complete portfolios for retention just as everyone else. In fact, now that the CTRE is fully functioning with a focus on faculty needs, I am working to reposition the LAC with a more student focus and then will be returning in Fall full time to my role of Associate Professor.

Second, the composition of the search committee for the DOS is listed below. It was a solid group of individuals who had a broad knowledge of student affairs. There were two faculty, four directors from the area, one civil service and one student.

• Chair, Liz Osika, Associate Professor in COE and Interim Associate Dean
• Yvonne Patterson, Associate Professor, Counseling Center
• Fernando Diaz, Director of the Latino Resource Center
• Jason Ferguson, Director of Student Activities
• Stella O’Keekee or Raven Curling, Director and Manager of Housing
and Residence Life
• Lee Junkins, Director of the Career Service Center
• Julie O’Banion, Administrative Clerk, Dean of Students Office
• David Anderson, IBHE Student Representative
• Six students who are active in student affairs were part of the on-campus interview process

Third, during the process the search committee reviewed over 100+ resumes, made 24 phone screening calls, and brought eight different people to campus beginning back in November 2010. The first two candidates we brought onto campus in December were not recommended for hire. We resumed the search again in February and brought three
candidates to campus. The committee recommended a candidate from the University of Akron and everything was approved for him to come to campus. You might recall that the Provost even made the announcement to campus that he was coming. However, at the very last minute he decided not to make the transition to CSU. Finally, the search was reopened in June. We brought three candidates to campus, of which the
committee made the recommendation for Dr. McKinney to the Provost.

Fourth, faculty were notified for each of the campus visits that they were welcome to come to the open interview session. The only faculty member that I recall who actually showed was Laurie Walter. I have pasted one of the email announcements that were sent to all faculty through the Moodle site at the bottom of this message.

Finally, I would like to discuss the outcome. Dr. McKinney was a top candidate as rated by by all of the students and individuals who were part of the process. The students especially stated that they felt that they could relate to her and that she knew what to do to help make the improvements needed within Student Affairs. She brought to campus a broad range of skills including background in assessment,
accreditation, and student services, just to name a few. She held positions at the level of Associate Dean, Assistant Director, and even was a faculty member for two years and a police officer for five.

If you would like more information about the exact details, please let me know.

Whatever you can do to dispel the belief that Dr. McKinney was someone who was brought to campus by the president would be appreciated. As I said at the beginning of this post, that is false information that really discounts the efforts put forth by the committee and the quality individual that CSU is lucky to have in the position of Dean of Students.

Chicago State City College

2011-12-03T10:36:00.005-06:00

Given the spate of former city college administrators in key administrative positions at Chicago State, it seems appropriate to make a comparison between the current state of affairs and the conditions that existed under interim president Frank Pogue.

First of all, let’s discuss the qualifications of Frank G. Pogue (Ph.D. Sociology, University of Pittsburgh), our interim president in 2008-09. Dr. Pogue came to Chicago State as interim president in 2008. By that time, Dr. Pogue had already served for 25 years in various university administrative jobs, including 11 years as president of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. Prior to that he had served from 1983 to 1996 in the SUNY system as interim president of SUNY-Cobleskill, as Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs and Special Programs at SUNY-Cobleskill, and as Vice President for Student Affairs at SUNY Albany. After leaving Chicago State, Dr. Pogue received an appointment as the interim president of Grambling State University. He is now that school’s permanent president.

Given the fact that Dr. Pogue continues to serve as a university president, it seems likely that given the right circumstances, he would have remained at Chicago State. In any event, we know the history of the subsequent presidential search and the ultimate selection of our current president.

Early in his brief tenure at Chicago State, Dr. Pogue articulated his goals for the university under his stewardship. Among them were: “Continuing to pursue academic and personal excellence;
Improving the financial aid and operational management and enhance other University operations; Restructuring the University to ensure that we enhance the quality of administrative leadership; Enhancing and increasing undergraduate and graduate enrollment and improve persistence and graduation rates; Aggressively instituting marketing and public relations strategies that will enhance the image of the University; Creating additional ways to recognize and acknowledge the contributions of University constituents for the excellence they achieve;” and finally, “Increasing graduate enrollment, support for the graduate Division and identify future graduate program opportunities.”

The Pogue administration disseminated these goals to the entire university community and they are encapsulated in a press release dated September 9, 2008. In addition, in mid-2009, Dr. Pogue made this observation about university leadership: “My position is anybody can clean house. Anybody can walk in off the street without an ounce of education and fire everybody. My job was to empower people to do their jobs.”

Dr. Pogue made these comments in response to remarks made by the newly-selected president of Chicago State, Dr. Wayne Watson. Compare Dr. Pogue’s views on the university with Dr. Watson’s: On May 4, 2009, Dr. Watson spoke to Peter Sachs of the ChiTown Daily News about the need to change Chicago State’s culture. “You’ve got to change people’s behavior or you’ve got to fire them.” That included faculty. Dr. Watson warned: “If for any reason they refuse to do their job and to do research … then those faculty have defined… their future status.” On May 6, 2009, Dr. Watson described himself as being “among the top in the nation in terms of higher education.” and asserted that he would “focus on helping CSU professors improve their teaching,” a comment he disputed on May 11 when he claimed “This quotation is not attributable to me, for I did not make such a statement.” Then three days later, on May 14, the Chicago Tribune reported that Dr. Watson was thinking of creating some kind of faculty training program because "We are going to have to take our existing faculty, and in some instances, not all, we are going to have to teach them how to teach. Why do we make the wrong assumption that because you have a PhD in chemistry that you know how to teach?" Based on this material, I think it is safe to say that the two presidents take a somewhat divergent view on the competence of Chicago State’s faculty and on their own appropriate roles as university presidents.

I think that one of the ways to judge a leader is by the quality of the people he or she chooses for key administrative positions. Again, there is a fundamental contrast in the two president’s choices for important posts related to the university’s academic integrity and reputation. On October 28, 2008, Dr. Pogue announced the appointment of Dr. Howard C. Johnson as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Enrollment Management. Given the reported (often times inaccurately) problems with graduation and retention our school has encountered over the past several years, this position seems vital to our continued accreditation and academic progress. At the time of the appointment, I asked myself: who is Dr. Howard C. Johnson and what are his qualifications for this position? This is what I discovered:

Howard C. Johnson held bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics and a Ph.D. in mathematics education from Northwestern University. He had taught mathematics and mathematics education at the City Colleges of Chicago, Syracuse University, and the University of North Texas. He had published extensively and presented numerous papers at various conferences. He had supervised 10 doctoral dissertations and served on another 15 doctoral dissertation committees. His administrative experience included 12 years as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Syracuse University, which included 7 years as the Dean of the university’s graduate school; 1 year as Executive Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at Syracuse; and 4 years as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of North Texas. Needles to say, I thought Dr. Johnson an outstanding choice for his position. Of course, he is now gone. You may view Dr. Johnson’s recent C.V. here: http://chancellor.utk.edu/search/finalists/cv/Johnson-CV.pdf

Since our new president has taken over leadership of the university, the personnel in the Office of Enrollment management have come to their jobs with quite different credentials. Prior to beginning this discussion, I want to categorically state that there is nothing personal in any of the following comments. I know that administrators often like to deflect the conversation from the subject at hand to the behavior of individuals participating in the discussion. Unfortunately, I do not know how to nicely say that someone is unqualified. I do not personally know any of the individuals I am about to discuss, so I do not want anything I say to be construed as an attack on their character or worth as human beings. Because they lack what I believe should be the minimum qualifications for their jobs, I simply do not think they deserve to hold the positions they occupy. I am also unsure about whether or not the persons I will discuss are the only persons to have occupied this position during the tenure of our president, they’re just the only ones I know of. As always, if there are factual inaccuracies, they are mine alone and I will be happy to correct them if someone has the consideration to point them out.

Someone named Andre L. Bell came to Chicago State as the Vice President of Enrollment Management, possibly late in 2009 or early in 2010, He apparently came directly from the City Colleges of Chicago, where he had worked for only 10 months. Mr. Bell had been hired on January 12, 2009, by the City Colleges, seemingly for his first position, a Senior Research Associate in the District Office at a salary of $66,240. Mr. Bell must have done a superb job in his 10 months at the City Colleges because the Chicago State administration hired him at a salary of $150,000 per year. I do not know what became of Mr. Bell since he no longer appears on any CSU sites. I am assuming that he has left the university. I have no idea what educational or other qualifications Mr. Bell possessed that made him a suitable choice for such an important position.

Our next (and current) incumbent in this position also came to us from the City Colleges. Angela Henderson had a long tenure in various CCC administrative positions: She was an instructor, an assistant professor, a departmental chairperson, a Dean, Vice Chancellor of Health Programs, Academic Affairs, and finally Provost from August 6, 2010, until her resignation on May 11, 2011. According to public records, Ms. Henderson holds both an M.B.A. and a M.S.N. from the University of Illinois-Chicago (1992), and is currently enrolled in a program described as “Nursing Administration,” which may be one of the components of the Doctor of Nursing program at UIC.

Other staff in the Office of Enrollment Management include the new Dean of Students, Teresa McKinney. Dr. McKinney served from September 10, 2007 to June 15, 2009, as the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, then from June 15, 2009, until November 5, 2010, as the Assistant Dean of Student Services at Daley College. On November 5, 2010, the City Colleges apparently laid off Dr. McKinney as part of a “reduction in force.” Dr. McKinney received an Ed.D. in Community College Leadership in June 2011 from National-Louis University.

Finally, the Director of Enrollment Management, Cheri Sidney, seems the most mystifying occupant of one of the university’s most important management positions. While neither Ms. Henderson nor Dr. McKinney possess any administrative experience at the university level, it is not apparent that Ms. Sidney had any managerial experience at all when she got her job as Associate Director of Human Resources on November 9, 2009. As noted in an earlier posting, Ms. Sidney possesses an on-line degree from what is essentially DePaul University’s equivalent of our Board of Governors program. In addition, she came to her position with no relevant university administrative experience, and possibly no management experience at all. Interestingly, the university hired her into a newly created position in 2009 and has subsequently promoted her to the Director of Enrollment Management, a position roughly equivalent to the Dean of a College. Why?

As I and other posters have said repeatedly, we are concerned about the qualifications of these administrators and the effect it may have on our upcoming accreditation. Again, I am not saying they are not nice people, I am simply pointing out that given their thin academic and non-existent university administrative credentials, they seem curious choices for such important positions. Having top-level administrators like these puts Chicago State in a unique position relative to similar schools (as I pointed out in a previous post).

Given the caliber of the person Dr. Pogue selected for the Enrollment Management position, it seems like Chicago State could have attracted a strong pool of applicants. A critical top-level academic management position at a university in the city of Chicago should attract candidates with distinguished academic credentials, strong publishing records, and relevant and extensive university management experience. None of our current incumbents seem to possess any of those credentials. Perhaps the intent of our current administration is to turn Chicago State into the eighth City College of Chicago. Perhaps they know no other model.

In conclusion, after he left Edinboro University in Pennsylvania in 2007, the college Board of Trustees honored Dr. Pogue by naming the student center after him. Perhaps the Chicago State Board will accord Dr. Watson a similar honor upon his departure. Of course, it is always possible that by that point, there will be no campus.

This is Unconscionable

2011-11-28T20:22:00.003-06:00

One of our new Watson-era administrators is Cheri Sidney, currently (I believe) the Assistant or Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, a bastion of former City College administrators. Ms. Sidney earns $95,004 per year in this position, a position that seems rather critical to our continuing accreditation given the problems with graduation and retention we have experienced in recent years. Given her nearly $8,000 per month salary, I think it is fair to ask what qualifications she possesses for a job of this importance.

Some time ago, one faculty member attempted to ascertain her educational qualifications. When the administration returned the FOIA, the administration had redacted the information in the section on "highest degree attained." Of course, information available in the public domain provides an alternative to information produced by an administration that is apparently unwilling to respond forthrightly to a legal request. Here is the answer to the question of Cheri Sidney's educational qualifications.

On June 9, 2006, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in the DePaul University School for New Learning Degree Program. A description of the program follows:

Undergraduate Programs
School for New Learning
If you’re 24 or older and looking for the best way to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, DePaul's School for New Learning might be the ideal approach. This customized degree program is available via online classes, allowing you to complete your degree at a time and place convenient to you. But a remote location doesn’t mean you will be on your own—you will be regularly connected with faculty, professional experts, and classmates, receiving individualized attention and support throughout your academic program. You will also have access to DePaul's extensive resources, including library, academic and student support services. Here is the website: http://www.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/online-learning.aspx.

On November 9, 2009, the Chicago State administration hired Ms. Sidney for her first job at the university, or at any college as far as I can determine: The Associate Director of Human Resources, at a salary of $90,000 per year. Since she landed the CSU job, Ms. Sidney has only two years of experience in any kind of university management, all at Chicago State.

So, this is what we deserve. I can scarcely imagine anything more insulting to the students, our faculty, our alumni, the taxpayers of Illinois, accrediting agencies, and the Board of Trustees than to have someone with an on-line bachelor's degree and no previous management experience, in a top administrative position in our graduate degree granting institution.

Given the administration's apparent desire to keep this information from the faculty, it seems safe to assume that they know about Ms. Sidney's spectacularly unqualified c.v. If our president is really concerned about this school, its students, its public image, and its continued existence, he will dismiss Ms. Sidney immediately and determine who was responsible for this outrage? Any administrators who, knowing of her inadequate qualifications, participated in her hiring should be subject to disciplinary action.

The CSU Cash Cow

2011-11-28T20:21:00.000-06:00

Through FOIA requests, faculty has determined which administrators at Chicago State make more than $90,000 per year. At least six of these administrators come from the City Colleges, and are making quite a nice salary:

Angela Henderson, Vice President of Enrollment Management $150,000 per year
Patrick Cage, General Counsel $132.000 per year
Ronnie Watson, Chief of Police $129,996 per year
Yvonne Harris, Associate VP of Sponsored Programs $120,000 per year
Maricela Aranda, Associate VP of Admin and Finance $114,996 per year
Teresa McKinney, Dean of Students $95,004 per year

Who knew that the City Colleges of Chicago, the archetype of a well-run educational entity, offered such a tremendous pool of talent. It’s nice work if you can get it.

Cronyism continued

2011-11-27T10:42:00.004-06:00

Just to add to the audaciousness of the Chicago-way cronyism at play in the CSU administration revealed in the previous post by BIROBI--salaries for these M.A., B.A., and Ed.D administrators tops $90,000--this is also public record.

When Dr Watson's own appointment as CSU president was rammed through by Trustee & political friends (now gone from the Board and the ILL Senate), fear was expressed that CSU would be turned into a community college. Who knew that this would become so literally true?

What is going on here?

2011-11-27T10:28:00.001-06:00

Students articulated their frustrations with the Chicago State administration at the “Occupy Cook” event of Thursday 23, is it not time for faculty to do the same? In the past on this blog, there has been a great deal of comment about how our president is turning CSU into something akin to an eighth City College of Chicago. Is there any specific evidence to support that assertion? Recently, the president admonished faculty not to “air our dirty linen in public,” that such a desire for one’s “fifteen minutes of fame” might adversely affect our accreditation since the HLC members “read the local newspapers.” Is this something that really might hurt our accreditation efforts?

What does the HLC actually use as a basis for its accreditation decisions? The organization’s website is available here: http://www.ncahlc.org/Information-for-Institutions/criteria-for-accreditation.html

Here are some pertinent excerpts from the HLC site:

The Criteria for Accreditation
Criterion One: Mission and Integrity

Criterion Statement The organization operates with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its mission through structures and processes that involve the board, administration, faculty, staff, and students.

Core Component 1d The organization’s governance and administrative structures promote effective leadership and support collaborative processes that enable the organization to fulfill its mission.

Examples of Evidence

The distribution of responsibilities as defined in governance structures, processes, and activities is understood and is implemented through delegated authority.
People within the governance and administrative structures are committed to the mission and appropriately qualified to carry out their defined responsibilities. (bold is mine)

The HLC website does not specifically address uncomplimentary newspaper articles. It does, however, insist that all university constituencies be involved in organizational operations and that administrators are qualified for their jobs. Keeping this criteria in mind, an examination of personnel in similar positions at Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Northeastern Illinois, and Western Illinois universities reveals stark differences in the qualifications of their key administrators and ours:

President
Chicago State: Wayne D. Watson. Ph.D. in Education (Northwestern), 2 years of experience in university management.
Eastern Illinois: William L. Perry. Ph.D. in Mathematics (Illinois), 22 years of experience in university management.*
Illinois State: Clarence Alvin Bowman. Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Science (Illinois), 9 years of experience in university management.
Norheastern Illinois: Sharon K. Hahs. Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry (New Mexico), 11 years of experience in university management.
Western Illinois: Jack Thomas. Ph.D. in English (Indiana University-Pennsylvania), better than 5 years of experience in university management.
*above the level of dean.

Provost

As does our Provost, all the other provosts at Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Northeastern Illinois and Western Illinois hold the Ph.D. All have significant experience in university management.

Vice President of Enrollment Management

Chicago State: Angela M. Henderson, Master of Science in Nursing, R.N., 6 months of experience in university management. Came to CSU directly from the Chicago City Colleges.

Eastern Illinois: Part of the Provost’s duties. Blair M. Lord. Ph.D. in Economics (California-Berkeley), 20 years of experience in university management.

Illinois State: Jonathan M. Rosenthal. Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literature (Princeton), 10 years of experience in university management.

Dean of Students

Chicago State: Teresa McKinney. Ed.D. in Community College Leadership in 2011 (National-Louis University), two months of experience in university management. Came to CSU from the Chicago City Colleges.

Eastern Illinois: Daniel P. Nadler. Ph.D. in Higher Education (SIU-Carbondale), 18 years of management experience in university student affairs.

Illinois State: Larry Dietz. Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration (Iowa State), 26 years of management experience in university student affairs.

Northeastern: Frank Ross. Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs (Indiana), 15 years of management experience in university student life.

Western Illinois: Gary Biller. Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Administration (Kansas), 20 years of management experience in university in student affairs.

An analysis of this data reveals that the administrators in key positions at Chicago State have neither the appropriate educational qualifications nor the requisite management experience to be in such positions in a post-baccalaureate degree granting institution. Indeed, they seem to be involved in something akin to an on-the-job training program here. My question is simple: why were these two CSU administrators considered the best persons for their jobs? Given all the prior negative (and inaccurate in terms of our graduation rates) reports of our myriad administrative problems, it seems irresponsible at best to fill these key academic positions with persons with non-academic degrees, no Ph.D.’s, and no prior university administrative experience.

These two administrators are not the only key administrators to have come from the City Colleges to CSU. Yvonne Harris, Interim Associate Vice President, Grants and Research Administration at Chicago State, served as a Department Chair at Truman College, then as Dean of Mathematics and Science at Harper College, a community college in Palatine. Maricela Aranda held various administrative positions at Olive-Harvey College between 2002 and August 2011. She is currently an Associate Vice President of Administration and Finance at CSU. Jasmika Cook, Executive Director of Student Support Services at Chicago State, served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development at the City Colleges. Chicago State General Counsel Patrick B. Cage served as a Senior Staff Attorney for the City Colleges from February 2008 until November 2009. CSU Police Chief Ronnie Watson served as the Inspector General (part time) for the City Colleges from November 2007 until early October 2009. Finally Cheri Sidney lists on her LinkedIn page a two year job (2006-08) as Director of Student Retention at Harold Washington College. In addition, she lists her current position as “AVP” (which I take to mean Associate Vice President) of Enrollment Management. Her educational qualifications for a key administrative position at Chicago State are no more than a Bachelor of Arts from DePaul University in 2006. I was unable to confirm Cheri Sidney’s employment with the City Colleges.

In addition to these eight currently employed administrators. Andre L. Bell, who served as Senior Research Associate at the City Colleges from January until late November 2009. He is listed in the 2010-12 CSU online catalog as the Vice President for Enrollment Management. He no longer appears on our website and I am assuming he has left the university.

These administrators are spread out in a number of key operational parts of the university. Former City College employees with no university administrative experience occupy key positions in Enrollment Management, Student Support Services, Administration and Finance, Labor and Legal Affairs, and the university Police. It seems like Chicago State is indeed beginning to resemble the City Colleges of Chicago, at least at the administrative level. It also seems like our academic and administrative integrity is less important that taking care of former City College administrators. I find this extremely troubling and would encourage a continuing discussion on this issue.

The information in this post is based on evidence available in a variety of public venues. I would welcome any corrections to factual errors I have made (which are solely my own).

More Thoughts on "Occupy Cook"

2011-11-24T13:09:00.002-06:00

I enjoyed the contrast in behavior between the students, armed only with their thoughts and their rhetoric, and the administration, protected by a police presence and advised by the university counsel. Although several members of the administration tried to convince the students that there were legitimate reasons for their many failures, or alternatively, tried to avoid responsibility by claiming that the student perspective was simply wrong, the students seemed particularly unpersuaded by those shopworn rationalizations and ham-handed attempts at deflection.

ISU leads student occupation of president's office

2011-11-24T10:06:00.001-06:00

I have been at CSU for twenty-five years, and yesterday--along with a day in 1994 when students refused to allow the provost to take over a student protest rally--was the greatest day in those twenty-five years.
The Independent Student Union (ISU) led well over 100 students over a two hour span in forcing the administration to shut up and listen to what students had to say about the many frustrations they experience from the incompetence and indifference of administrative offices and services at Chicago State: Fs on the transcript rather than withdrawals because of lost paperwork, failure to help new students to find their advisors and get properly registered for classes, failure to properly manage the university’s image including highlighting the many accomplishments of students, faculty and alumni, failure to honor outstanding student achievement, and failure to improve communications. These instances of failure to treat our students as they deserve are a disrespect to them. At Chicago State, with its overwhelmingly African American student enrollment, they are a racist disrespect.
The faculty played an auxilliary role of helping students to prevent the administration from seizing control of their occupation. This was an honor to the faculty present who stood behind and facilitated this expression of working class power.
In the second hour the administration, with the help of a student plant who is a representative to IBHE, tried to turn the tables by complaining that ISU failed to "work through proper channels." As a communist, I observed that this was precisely the strength of what the students did. The "proper channels" are a way of keeping us in our place, under the control and dominance of the administration. What made the occupation of the president's office a powerful event is that it broke the rules, occupied the president's office against the administration's wishes and despite its efforts to deflect student anger toward the government and legislature (though these are proper targets too), and empowered so many students to assert both their diginity and their power. This is an expression of working class democracy.
I commend the faculty who helped with this powerful protest. I congratulate ISU for empowering so many students. May ISU long be a vehicle by which students are enabled to become active against social injustice and the many harms of racist capitalism!

Protest Tomorrow - 10 a.m.

2011-11-22T21:44:00.003-06:00

The Independent Student Union that has organized this fall and plans to exercise its right to free speech and assembly and Occupy the Cook Building on Weds. November 23rd. at 10 a.m. The students are worried about the "cheapening" of their degrees. No, they are not simply trying to attain their "15 minutes of fame" or cause scandal that will lose us our accreditation. Below is listed what concerns them and should concern us as faculty in spite of today's equivocations:

Dr. Watson is embarrassing Chicago State:
• 41 Serious discrepancies in the last financial audit (financial mismanagement).
• Falsification of our student retention rate by allowing students with GPA’s as low as 0.0 to register for classes (dishonesty).
• Overrode faculty and changed the curriculum in disciplines in which he has no expertise (mindless arrogance).
• Repeated reorganizations of departments that confuse both students and faculty (incompetence).

We have a DUTY and an OBLIGATION to speak up and stop the CHEAPENING OF OUR DEGREES! Join the Independent Student Union when we OCCUPY the President’s office and mass call the Governor and our State Representatives and Senators on Wednesday, Nov 23 at 10 am.

Dean's Search in CAS: "In the spirit of shared governance..."

2011-11-21T18:20:00.009-06:00

A letter from the Interim Associate Provost reached some faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences late so I'm noting it here. The Provost's office does not want individual faculty swamping email boxes so if you are from the CAS send your ideas to your department chair before the deadline tomorrow. This is an actual request for faculty input!!! and it's about a search!!!

"Please initiate a discussion with faculty from your departments regarding the language they want to include in the advertisement for the position of Dean, College of Arts & Sciences [CAS]. The advertisements will be posted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education and the CSU Human Resources portal.

All responses need to be in by Tuesday, November 22, 2011. A draft position description will be forwarded to the Chairs & faculty before Wednesday, December 7, 2011.

If the search process goes well it will begin in February and conclude in May before the close of the semester. The position’s anticipated start date is July 1, 2012.

In the spirit of shared governance, please ensure that you solicit input from all faculty, who are so inclined, in this important process."

Now, when will we be asked about that Provost search...?

On the Cutting Edge of Humanities Scholarship

2011-11-18T21:24:00.003-06:00

CSU Professor and internationally know author, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and Dr. Evelyne Delgado-Norris, French scholar and professor at CSU, along with others in the Department of English and Foreign Languages and Literatures, and the College of Arts and Sciences presented a powerful program on Tuesday, November 15 which was appreciated by at least 70 students, faculty and administrators. Webster, a Canadian of multi-racial African descent, described the racial conditions in Canada which mirror our own in Chicago. This activist described life as a young boy and man in a working-class neighborhood in Quebec City. His personal stories of racial profiling and harassment at the hands of police resonate with many in our beloved city.

Webster detailed the nature of racist indoctrination at the hands of Canadian educators who never allowed for the study of African-descended and Native Canadian people. As an educated French- and English-speaking African Canadian man, Webster feels compelled to write and speak about such things. He described how he and his friends speak in Frenglish (hybrid French and English language). Like most colonized and resistant peoples, this generation of multiracial Canadians have had to create a language that allowed them to speak of their circumstances. Or as the late, great thinker/writer James Baldwin wrote “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.” Frenglish, like ebonics and Spanglish, allow colonized people to describe their reality, critique it and mold it. Frenglish, ebonics, Spanglish and other denigrated languages allow the marginalized and the resistant to express their unique subjectivity vis-à-vis an oppressive, dominant society. From this location they can assume agency, identity and a right to speak. Perhaps the words of Frantz Fanon from his important, Wretched of the Earth, help us understand the importance of language to our people: “every dialect, every language, is a way of thinking. To speak means to assume a culture.”

Hip hop throughout the world is created by colonized people in their language. Whether in Spanglish, Frenglish or ebonics, hip hop is a beautiful expression of THEIR knowledge in THEIR language. It’s a shame that the Black and Brown managerial class can’t see that beauty. Perhaps if they were to look to Robeson or Morrison for their examples of ebonics instead of corporate rap ‘stars’ or the latest anti-Black rant disguised as a legitimate prejudice against ebonics, they would be able to appreciate the beauty of our languages and assume their power.

Again, many thanks to Sandra and Evelyne for developing this program on the internationalization of hip hop, highlighting the importance of youth culture to our globalized world and furthering our understanding of the African diaspora. Thanks for bringing Webster’s beautiful hip hop (wisdom) to the CSU community.

Of dogs and ponies

2011-11-17T20:42:00.014-06:00

Well that's the last time I mistake a "faculty forum" for a place where faculty actually have a forum. For more than an hour and half this afternoon I was transported back to the days of Elnora Daniel's All Campus Assemblies--remember those grandiose boring old powerpoint shows of hers? So here was yet another lecture on our strategic plan and mission and vision. [music swells at the point-- The Platters, "Smoke Gets in your Eyes"] Maybe someday we will get a Law School and Medical School complete with teaching hospital and an M.B.A. program,and a westside campus --we are the little college that could. Except, O great Oz, when we can't.

I wanted to hear more about "ethical leadership" from our CEO--the words spoken so seriously this afternoon and with a straight face. I wanted to ask, 'how does this play out on a campus where fear, intimidation, and retaliation are management techniques? where the patronage pit is alive and well?' We are after all the City Colleges Re-employment Program. (BTW Any bets on who will be the next provost? Can we at least have the farce of a search since that seems to be the only way upper administrators are hired?). Ethical leadership, indeed. [music swells--again it's the Platters--this time, "The Great Pretender"].

But if I had had a chance to ask a question, I probably wouldn't have. I would have instead reminded faculty to support the Independent Student Union that has organized this fall and plans to exercise its right to free speech and assembly and Occupy the Cook Building on Weds. November 23rd. at 10 a.m. The students are worried about the "cheapening" of their degrees. No, they are not simply trying to attain their "15 minutes of fame" or cause scandal that will lose us our accreditation. Below is listed what concerns them and should concern us as faculty in spite of today's equivocations:

Dr. Watson is embarrassing Chicago State:
• 41 Serious discrepancies in the last financial audit (financial mismanagement).
• Falsification of our student retention rate by allowing students with GPA’s as low as 0.0 to register for classes (dishonesty).
• Overrode faculty and changed the curriculum in disciplines in which he has no expertise (mindless arrogance).
• Repeated reorganizations of departments that confuse both students and faculty (incompetence).

We have a DUTY and an OBLIGATION to speak up and stop the CHEAPENING OF OUR DEGREES! Join the Independent Student Union when we OCCUPY the President’s office and mass call the Governor and our State Representatives and Senators on Wednesday, Nov 23 at 10 am.

CSU & Trends in Higher Education

2011-11-16T12:17:00.005-06:00

Given the excellent discussion of Benjamin Ginsberg’s recent book in the previous blog post from Nov. 8, I thought I would offer some further food for thought to put the changes that are going on at CSU in broader context. In discussing changes within universities in the U.S., one writer noted that people frequently discuss “the high necessity of a businesslike organization and control of the university, its equipment, personnel and routine. What is had in mind in this insistence on an efficient system is that these corporations of learning shall set their affairs in order after the pattern of a well-conducted business concern. In this view the university is conceived as a business house dealing in merchantable knowledge, placed under the governing hand of a captain of erudition, whose office it is to turn the means in hand to account in the largest feasible output. … Under this rule the academic staff becomes a body of graded subalterns, who share confidence of the chief in varying degrees, but who no decisive voice in the policy or the conduct of affairs of the concern in whose pay they are held. The faculty is conceived as a body of employees, hired to render certain services and turn out certain scheduled vendible results.”

When reading this passage, I was struck by how closely it fit with the emphasis on the “business/corporate model” that seems to have been adopted at CSU – we certainly hear references to creating a more “efficient system” when many of the recent changes at CSU are discussed (such as the attempts to reorganize the College of Arts & Sciences, etc.). Many faculty at CSU can also likely relate to the experience of being “a body of graded subalterns.”

What struck me even more, though, was that the observation of this trend was not remotely new, unlike the newer trends discussed by Ginsberg in his book. The above passage is from Thorstein Veblen’s book The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men, which he wrote in 1918. That Veblen noticed this trend in 1918 and developed a strong critique of it is pretty remarkable, I though. It suggests that many of the problems we are seeing at CSU are not at all unique to CSU and are not anything particularly new.

I suppose that the question this raises is if the attempts to transform universities to follow a “business/corporate model” are nothing new, then what does that suggest to those of us who want to resist these changes right now? For this, I don’t have any answers, but perhaps it starts by affirming what we, as faculty, think that the purpose of a university is and CSU’s purpose in particular.

Veblen certainly had an idea about this in 1918. He starts his book with a discussion of “The Place of the University in Modern Life.” His argument is the following: “The conservation and advancement of the higher learning involves two lines of work, distinct but closely bound together: (a) scientific and scholarly inquiry, and (b) the instruction of students. The former of these is primary and indispensable. It is this work of intellectual enterprise that gives its character to the university and marks it off from the lower schools. … University teaching, having a particular and special purpose -- the pursuit of knowledge -- it has also a particular and special character, such as to differentiate it from other teaching and at the same time leave it relatively ineffective for other purposes. Its aim is to equip the student for the work of inquiry, not to give him facility in that conduct of affairs that turns such knowledge to ‘practical account.’”

Perhaps these ideas are worth thinking about in preparation for President Watson’s “Faculty Forum” that will be held tomorrow in the Breakey Theatre at 12:30.

Fall of the Faculty--how much further can we go?

2011-11-08T21:15:00.003-06:00

Since the purpose of this blog is to share information and opinions among the faculty at CSU I'm not sure many people know that at the Board of Trustees meeting in September several faculty members attended and spoke during public comment on the state of the chaos (most of it unnecessary) that is affecting everyone on our campus. One of our faculty colleagues quoted from a book that has come out by Benjamin Ginsberg, entitled, The Fall of the Faculty. Last week NPR interviewed the author and on their website is a link to the interview as well as an excerpt from the book. I'm posting the link to it here as well as the excerpt below. Many of us, not just "a few disgruntled faculty" ("white" or otherwise as ex-Trustee Finney once characterized us), want to reclaim the faculty's place as the keepers of the intellectual integrity of the university. Our students are beginning to ask us questions about the value of their degrees from a place that values patronage over academics. As one student put it to the Trustees at this same comment period,"they (the faculty) have what we want." The students understand. Ginsberg's book should be considered the first blast of the trumpet.

And if anyone from the Administration at CSU cares to refute Ginsberg's position, consider this an invitation to do so.

From the NPR website:
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/11/02/university-cost-bloated

From 1975 to 2005, the cost of attending public universities in the U.S. tripled. Benjamin Ginsberg argues that much of the increased cost can be attributed to administrative bloat.

Since the 1970s, Ginsberg notes, the number of administrative staffers has risen by 235 percent, while the number of faculty and students has increased by only about 50 percent.

Some administrators do so little that they “could be kidnapped by space aliens and it would be weeks or even months before his or her absence from campus was noticed,” Ginsberg writes.

He also says the increase in administrators is taking universities away from their fundamental academic purpose, and doing students a disservice.

Book Excerpt: “The Fall Of The Faculty”
By Benjamin Ginsberg

College students generally view professors as individuals who exercise a good deal of power. Members of the faculty, after all, direct the lectures, labs, studios and discussions around which academic life is organized. Professors also control the grades and recommendations that help to determine students’ graduate school and career prospects.

Students are often aware, too, that some of their professors are movers and shakers beyond the walls of the campus. Academics are visible in the worlds of science, literature, the arts, finance and, especially, politics where they serve as analysts, commentators, advisors and high-level policy makers.

But, whatever standing they may have in the eyes of undergraduates or even in the corridors of national power, most professors possess surprisingly little influence in their own schools’ decision-making processes. At most, though perhaps not all of America’s thousands of colleges and universities, the faculty has been shunted to the sidelines. Faculty members will learn about major new programs and initiatives from official announcements or from the campus newspaper. Power on campus is wielded mainly by administrators whose names and faces are seldom even recognized by students or recalled by alumni.

At most schools to be sure, faculty members control the content of their own classes and, for the most part, their own research agendas. The faculty, collectively, plays a recognized though not exclusive role in the hiring and promotion of its members. Outside these two areas, though, administrators seldom bother to consult the faculty. And, should faculty members have the temerity to offer unsolicited views, these will be more or less politely ignored. Thus, there are few schools whose faculty members have a voice in business or investment decisions. Hardly any faculties are consulted about the renovation or construction of buildings and other aspects of the school’s physical plant. Virtually everywhere, student issues, including the size of the student body, tuition, financial aid and admissions policies are controlled by administrators. At most schools, fund raising and alumni relations are administrative matters, though faculty members are often asked to entertain alumni gatherings by giving talks and presentations.

Most professors, perhaps, have only a passing interest in the university’s physical plant or its investment strategies. Particularly at research universities many faculty members normally pay little attention to their school’s undergraduate admissions policies. But, professors lack much power even in areas in which they have a strong interest, such as the appointment of senior administrators, the development of new programs and curricula, and the definition of budgetary priorities.

As to appointments, on most campuses, presidential searches are controlled by the trustees or regents, while provosts, deans and other senior administrators are appointed by the president with varying degrees of faculty input. Professors, to be sure, often do serve on administrative or presidential search committees, alongside administrators, students and college staffers. These searches, however, are usually organized and overseen by corporate search firms employed by trustees, in the case of presidential searches, or the school’s administration for other searches. Before the 1960s, such firms were seldom retained by universities. Today, however, as college administrators imitate the practices of their corporate counterparts, search firms are a fixture of academic life. In recent years, two-thirds of the presidential searches conducted by large universities have been directed by professional head hunters.

In consultation with their employers, these firms identify most of the candidates whom the committee will be able to meet and consider. Generally speaking, search firms rule out candidates about whom anything at all negative is said when they investigate candidates’ backgrounds. This practice introduces a marked bias in favor of the most boring and conventional candidates. And, even the constrained choice given the committee is seldom final. Search committees are generally empowered only to recommend two or three candidates for review by the president or trustees who actually make the final decision. Many schools, of course, do not bother with even the pretense of faculty participation in administrative searches. The faculty learns the name of a new president or provost when the trustees issue a press release.

Once appointed, presidents serve at the pleasure of the trustees and can only be removed by them. Other administrators serve at the pleasure of the president. Every school employs a great many administrators whom the faculty regard as foolish or incompetent. But, so long as these individuals retain the support of their administrative superiors, the faculty is usually powerless to remove them. At one school, Pennsylvania’s Albright College, the faculty were dismayed to learn in 1999 that the resume’ of their newly appointed president was filled with fraudulent claims–books never published, positions never held and so on. Yet, while the facts of the matter could not be disputed, most trustees continued to support the president for nearly five years before he finally agreed to step down. Much of the Boston University faculty loathed and feared dictatorial President John Silber during his twenty-five years in office but, given Silber’s solid base of support among powerful members of the board of trustees, faculty opposition came to naught. In a similar vein, the trustees stood by the president of West Virginia University in the face of a faculty no-confidence vote when it was revealed that the university had awarded the daughter of the state’s governor an MBA degree she had not actually earned. Conversely, faculty support will certainly not protect an administrator’s job if she or he runs afoul of the Board. In 2005, for example, Cornell’s Jeffrey Lehman, a president whose work was generally approved by the faculty, was summarily fired by the Board, apparently in the wake of a personnel dispute. The Board neither consulted with nor informed the faculty before determining that Lehman should go.

Occasionally, to be sure, just as riots and disturbances in a third world country can bring about the regime’s downfall, severe faculty unrest may bring about the sudden ouster of an unpopular or inept administrator. In 2006, for example, vehement faculty protest forced the resignation of Harvard’s Larry Summers and Case Western’s Edward Hundert. Yet, not unlike third world peasants, disgruntled professors are seldom able to convert their brief paroxysm of rage into any form of sustained influence. In the university as in the third world, after the jubilant celebrations marking the ouster of the hated old regime end, an imperious new leadership cadre arrives to grasp the reins of power. Confined to an occasional uprising, the faculty exercises little more power over administrative tenure than the students, another campus group that can occasionally overthrow a college president but almost never governs. Thus, in 2006, apparently a difficult year for college leaders, several weeks of protests by Gallaudet College students forced the resignation of president-elect Jane Fernandez. At last report, however, students were not running the college. As often as not, faculty protests have little effect. Thus, for example, at New York’s New School for Social Research, several years of faculty rebellion, including a 271 to 8 vote of no confidence in December, 2008, did not result in the ouster of despised president, Bob Kerrey.

The views of the faculty play a similarly limited role when it comes to new programs and spending priorities. For example, in 1998, faculty at the University of Texas at Austin were surprised to learn that the university administration had decided to spend nearly $200 million to expand the school’s athletic facilities. This plan included renovation of the football stadium as well as construction of an air conditioned practice field, a new track-and-field stadium and a new athletic center. Not only did this involve a diversion of funds from other potential uses, but it would come at the expense of badly needed classroom and laboratory space. The faculty’s objections were ignored.

In a similar vein, early in 2005, Florida State University professors were startled to learn from press accounts that their school’s administration planned to build a school of chiropractic medicine on the Tallahassee campus. Indeed, before the faculty had even read about the idea, the university’s president had already hired an administrator to oversee planning for the new school and advertised for a dean to direct its programs. University administrators boasted that theirs would be the first chiropractic school formally affiliated with an American university, making FSU the nation’s leader in this realm. Administrators apparently were not bothered by the fact that chiropractic theories, claims and therapies, beyond simple massage, are universally dismissed by the medical and scientific communities as having no scientific basis. In essence, FSU administrators aspired to a lead role in the promotion of quackery. Fortunately, the state legislature cut off funds for the chiropractic school before the administration’s visionary plans could be implemented.

In 2008, Virginia Commonwealth University faculty were astonished to discover that their administration had signed a secret agreement with the Philip Morris tobacco company which prohibited professors from publishing or even discussing the results of their research without the company’s permission. Under the agreement, queries from third parties, such as news organizations, were to be directed to the company and university officials were to decline to comment. The school’s vice president for research asserted that the contract, which violated the university’s own rules, struck a reasonable balance between the university’s need for openness and Philip Morris’s need for confidentiality.

At my own university, a 2006 press release informed the faculty that the school’s administration had decided to establish a graduate school of business and would soon begin a search for a dean. The announcement came as a complete surprise to the faculty. Even professors in such fields as Economics, who would be expected to contribute to the new school’s efforts, were not consulted about or even informed of the plan before it was made public. Most faculty members were dubious about the administration’s objectives, particularly when it became evident that fund raising for the business school, which would require tens of millions of dollars from the university, would take precedence over other, more pressing, development priorities. Oblivious to faculty concerns, the school’s former president and former provost blithely declared that they hoped professors would direct graduating seniors with business interests to the new and even now unaccredited school.

Particularly aggressive administrators are prepared to confront and silence faculty resistance to their plans to establish new programs or reorganize old ones. One favorite administrative tactic is the claim that some fiscal or other emergency requires them to act with lightning speed–and without consulting the faculty–to save the university. For example, in 1999, the president of the University of Dubuque informed the faculty that because of a financial shortfall, the administration was eliminating or consolidating more than half the school’s majors and programs. For the most part, liberal arts programs were to be cut in favor of the business curriculum favored by the administration and the school’s trustees. No faculty were consulted before the president made his announcement nor was evidence of the supposed financial crisis presented to the faculty.

More recently, in the wake of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, administrators at several New Orleans schools declared states of emergency. These administrators asserted, with some legal justification, that in times of emergency they possessed the power to reorganize programs, drastically change the college curriculum, eliminate course offerings and, indeed, close entire departments without consulting the faculty. At Loyola University of New Orleans, according to a report commissioned by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), President Kevin Wildes surprised the faculty by releasing a document entitled “Pathways Toward Our Second Century,” which presented a blueprint for a complete reorganization of the university, including the elimination of several programs, consolidation of others and the suspension of eleven degree programs. The president conceded that his administration had begun work on “Pathways” before the hurricane. Katrina, though, “may have forced us to accomplish this undertaking much earlier than expected.” In other words, the hurricane provided the administration with an opportunity to bring about a complete reorganization of the school’s teaching and research programs without faculty involvement.

Similarly, under the cover of a declaration of fiscal exigency, Tulane’s president, Scott Cowen, proffered a “Plan for Renewal,” that included reorganization or elimination of academic programs and major changes in the curriculum. Some faculty members charged that the plan was an opportunistic effort to implement proposals that had been presented to the faculty and defeated before Katrina. Tulane’s administration rejected this interpretation of events, but President Cowen conceded that the hurricane had allowed him to take “bold” actions that could not have succeeded under normal circumstances. “Out of every disaster comes an opportunity,” Cowen said. As we shall see below, the financial crisis of 2009 gave administrators new opportunities to take bold actions.

Even in matters of curriculum planning, an area usually seen as the province of the faculty, some college administrators and trustees have been encroaching on professorial power. In 1999, for example, faculty at the State University of New York (SUNY) charged that the system’s trustees were mandating a new system-wide general education curriculum without so much as consulting the SUNY faculty. In 2005, Delaware State University administrators relieved the faculty of the burden of curriculum planning when they informed professors that the university would be developing a new degree program without any faculty involvement at all. The university had contracted with a New York company called “Sessions.edu” which would design and staff a new online Delaware State Master’s degree program in graphic arts and Web design. The school’s administration dismissed faculty objections to its curricular outsourcing plan.

In many instances, when they declare the need to reform the undergraduate curriculum, administrators have no actual interest in the curriculum’s content. Their real goal is to reduce the centrality of the traditional curriculum and to partially supplant it with what might be called a “student life” curriculum consisting of activities, seminars and even courses led by administrative staff rather than faculty. The traditional curriculum gives the faculty a privileged claim on university resources and decision-making priorities while the new curriculum enhances the power of administrators and justifies hiring more administrators and fewer faculty. Administrators usually seek to justify their school’s shift in emphasis by explaining that a good deal of learning takes place outside the classroom or involves subjects beyond the realm of the faculty’s traditional sphere of competence.

A former assistant dean–or perhaps deanlet or deanling might be a better title–at my university explained that students need to learn more than academic skills.12 They also must be taught, “the universal life skills that everyone needs to know.” And what might be an example of one of these all-important proficiencies? According to this deanling, a premier example is event planning. “For many students, the biggest event they’ve ever planned is a dinner at home.” But, planning an event on campus might require, “reserving the room, notifying Security, arranging transportation and lodging for out-of-town speakers, ordering food.” Armed with training in a subject as important and intellectually challenging as event planning, students would hardly need to know anything about physics or calculus or literature or any of those other inconsequential topics taught by the stodgy faculty.

An instrument often used by administrators to gain control over the curriculum is the study commission. Many universities, in recent years, have established commissions or committees to study the undergraduate curriculum and make recommendations for reform. Though the precise reasons for reform may not be clear, Americans generally believe that reform is a good thing and find it difficult to deny the desirability of considering reform proposals. Thus, even when the faculty is dubious about the need for such a commission, it is hard pressed to argue against its creation. At some schools, Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard and Stanford for example, professors were able to gain control of reform committees, asserting plausibly that they knew more about curricular needs than other groups on campus. More often, though, the makeup of the committee is designed to dilute or diminish faculty influence and the committee’s subsequent recommendations are often designed to create new budgetary priorities that will enhance administrators’ power and prerogatives.

One example of this phenomenon is the Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE) established by my university in 2002. This commission, whose announced goal was to improve the quality of undergraduate education, seemed to be modeled after similar commissions that had been established at Berkeley and Stanford. This sort of “borrowing” is common in administrative circles, where original ideas are usually in short supply. Administrators often hide their mimicry under the rubric of adherence to “best practices.” They can seldom offer any real evidence that the practice in question is even good, much less best. The Hopkins president who launched the committee had once been a Stanford faculty member, while the Hopkins provost, formerly a Berkeley professor, had actually served on Berkeley’s undergraduate education commission. Perhaps it was only natural that they should copy concepts from campuses with which they were familiar. While Hopkins borrowed the name CUE from its sister schools, the Hopkins commission functioned quite differently from its namesakes. At Berkeley and Stanford faculty members had seized control of their undergraduate commissions and had largely beaten back administrative incursions into curricular matters. Hopkins’ faculty, however, was caught off guard and watched as the committee became an administrative tool.

Administrative designs were evident from the outset when the president charged the commission with the task of improving undergraduate education, “ both inside and outside the classroom.” The phrase outside the classroom usually signals an effort by administrators to shift budgetary priorities from teaching, which the faculty controls, to other activities where, as noted above, faculty claims of expertise are weaker and administrators have an opportunity to expand their own bureaucratic domains. The role the administration expected the committee to play became even more clear when its make-up was announced. At Berkeley and Stanford most CUE members had been drawn from the faculty. At Hopkins, though, only eight of the forty individuals named to the commission were full-time professors. Twelve were administrators and staffers, and the remainder were students and alumni. Of the eight faculty commissioners, two were untenured and, thus, concerned not to make waves, and some of the others were individuals frequently appointed to university committees because they could be trusted by the administration to refrain from making trouble.

Named to chair Hopkins’ CUE was a freshly-appointed Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, a former medical school professor who had little or no experience with undergraduate education. This lack of acquaintance on the part of its chair with the subject of the commission’s inquiry would presumably be no hindrance to its efforts to improve education outside the classroom. Before the commission could complete its work, this worthy left the university to become the provost of a small college. The inaugural chair was soon replaced by a new Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, also an individual with no experience inside the classroom.

For at least some of the faculty committee members, service was a mind-numbing experience. On many occasions the CUE chair scheduled presentations by counselors and consultants–presumably experts in education outside the classroom–who led the commissioners in incomprehensible role-playing exercises. One professor told me that he thought he had been transported to an alternative universe whose official language was psychobabble. Administrators on the commission, though, were reported to enjoy their work. Like their bureaucratic counterparts everywhere they welcomed time out of the office, particularly if lunch was provided.

CUE submitted its report in 2003. Only a handful of the report’s recommendations actually focused on undergraduate education, the committee’s nominal topic. For the most part, these recommendations took the form of vague and platitudinous exhortations. Recommendation 5, for example, declared that the university should, “Expand the opportunities available to first-year students for intellectually engaging academic experiences in a small group format.” Presumably, implementation of this bold proposal would require overcoming fierce opposition from the many groups on campus committed to blocking student exposure to intellectually engaging experiences. Other recommendations were trivial. Number 12, for example, called upon professors to, “give final examinations only during the final examination period.” This would end the common practice of offering exams on the last day of class, a custom that had undoubtedly diminished the quality of American higher education for more than a century. Equally bold was Recommendation 33, which prodded the university to, “improve food quality and service.”

If CUE had little to offer on the topic of undergraduate education inside the classroom, it had much to say about what should happen outside the classroom. Recommendation 1 called upon each college within the university to appoint a “senior level administrator” to assure the quality of undergraduate education. Recommendation 12 affirmed the need for a new administrator to, “develop networking and internship opportunities for undergraduates.” Recommendation 26 demanded that more minority administrators be hired. Other recommendations called for expansion of administrative supervision of most aspects of campus life.

One might have thought that improving undergraduate education would begin by enlarging the faculty to allow a larger number and greater variety of courses. Perhaps, the committee might have considered changes in the undergraduate curriculum to address emerging fields in the sciences or new concepts in the humanities. But, apparently the idea that at least the first steps in improving undergraduate education should have something to do with faculty and courses is an old fashioned and overly professorial perspective. Created and led by administrators, the commission found that the undergraduate experience could be most effectively improved if the university hired more administrators! Several years later, many committee recommendations, including those pertaining to the quality of student life, had not been fulfilled, according to the school’s student newspaper. Those proposals calling for the appointment of more administrators, however, had been quickly implemented.

Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Copyright 2011

Senate Drama Follow Up? or Trickle Down?

2011-11-07T12:48:00.001-06:00

Two days after a Faculty Senate meeting where several important votes took place in the life of our University, it appears as if another failure to inform and notify affected parties of critical information has occurred. And it didn’t take long for the same strategies of avoidance and failed communication practices to recur. While an individual senator expressed concern over notification procedures, election violations and the gradual diminution of the faculty’s role and voice on curricular matters on an important University committee, these concerns were never communicated directly to the committee in question by either the Chair of the committee nor by several administrators who were present at both meetings. The tragedy is that these acts of omission are being imposed upon this “faculty elected” committee not by the administration, but by one of our own: another faculty member! The rubber stamp of authoritarian approval was then rendered complete when two administrators attended the same meeting and failed to notify the committee of these matters. Here are some of the pertinent facts:

The November meeting of the University General Education Committee (GEC) that followed the Senate meeting last week started with ten minutes of silence (apparently there is little to discuss) while awaiting a quorum. The Chair of GEC then informed the committee members how a quorum is to be calculated (in a manner that directly contradicts his own statements in a previous committee meeting although this time were close to being accurate for a change). The Chair then proceeded to conduct the meeting as if a close 11-10 vote two days earlier that threatened to disband (and reconstitute) his committee had never happened. The first matter of business, passing the revised General Education outcomes, also had barely survived an 11-10 vote that requested the motion to be tabled for 30 days pending a university wide forum to be held. But neither of these two facts were mentioned or discussed at this meeting.

This led to my asking, “Why is it that CSU faculty are never (or rarely) informed about critical information that may affect their decision-making ability by other university constituencies?” And “does it not matter that nearly half of another faculty elected body found it sufficiently necessary to hold off on approving these outcomes pending an additional month of discussion and deliberation?” And yet this committee simply rolls on to yet another vote without knowing what occurred two days prior? And how come we keep “deciding on” things without being informed of actions taken by other reasonably knowledgeable and well-intentioned faculty colleagues serving on other committees on campus?

In fairness, I should note that for the first time in four GEC meetings, a reasonably substantive discussion occurred in the GenEd committee on the GenEd outcomes where it had not previously. Instead of the usual pleasantries and vague statements I heard the last few months like, “Gee, things are in flux and a lot of change is coming at CSU,” the primary discussion this time was over the significance of the following three phrases: “liberal education,” “liberal arts education,” and being “liberally educated?” These concepts refer to significantly different educational frameworks for general education with greatly varying meanings that will now require assessment (as if we are really clear on the meaning of these terms and as if we had found consensus as a result of collective deliberation on the rest of the terms in this document for our institution).

Naturally, it would be good if there were consensus on the committee that approved this document about the meaning of these terms. Much of the content of this document, how it is to be assessed, and what relation it has to the GenEd curriculum is less well understood. Indeed, I would argue that it has not been well-discussed and that email communication and online editing of a limited body of received commentary has not produced a well deliberated result or an institution wide consensus on these matters. While the discussion at this particular meeting was good, nonetheless it was surprising to this observer that a general consensus on the committee was lacking still after so much discussion had “supposedly” already taken place. And it was also surprising that the GenEd document was approved as amended without the CSU community as a whole being informed of the final version. How can discussion occur when no one has possession of the latest version of the document? Indeed it had not been subjected to anything more than the mere “editing” of a few sentences for twenty minutes during the previous seven months in the GEC itself (since April 2011).

Two items should catch your attention that make this meeting “blogworthy:” First, how can one vote on a document that has been edited from one already been approved by two other university-level committees? Does the Chair intend to return this edited document to the Senate and GEAC for re-approval? And secondly, why did neither of the two administrators who were present inform the committee of the Senate action two days earlier when both were present at the Senate meeting?

The point is that by not providing key information, a deliberative body can continue to deliberate on non-essential items and imagine that is it doing its job without really addressing critical information. Ultimately, the failure to consider said critical information could result in unpleasant and unexpected consequences in the future. In this case, without properly discussing the new General Education outcomes sufficiently and their connection to the current GenEd requirements, the membership will now be faced with the task of explaining future decisions to remove some current GenEd courses from the approved list to their colleagues. This will likely lead to reduced enrollments in key programs and likely to staff reductions that will be unexpected. At least folks will have a few semesters to come up with a reasonably good justification for this decision before the damage appears at which point the administrators in the room last Thursday will be long gone. And just as likely is the possibility that many of the committee members will have resigned from or stopped attending the meetings when they become too “difficult” or “burdensome.” Were they to remain, they will be expected to explain the reason for their vote last Thursday which will be much more difficult because they were not well-informed of the content of the document vote don in the first place.

Representation, effective communication and proper deliberation really are significant on this committee!! And leaving out critical information to affected parties, failing to genuinely discuss and deliberate upon important matters, and administrative attempts to cover up unpleasant facts really does “trickle down!” Ultimately, these decisions (and the lack of sound processes in reaching a result) do affect our students, the quality of the education they receive, and the integrity of the university’s academic reputation.

None of these items were on the agenda.

BOGged Down

2011-11-07T11:31:00.002-06:00

In a few days 701 Board of Governors students, more than 10% of our total enrollment, will require advising for their Spring 2012 courses and the dizzying maze of confusion caused by the CEO and CAO of CSU who commanded that BOG transform into something else. That something else is General Studies (GS). While the proposed changes to the program as presented by the office of the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (who will now inherit the program in this endless reshuffling of university programs, units and departments) illustrate a degree of hard work by faculty, chairs, Deans and staff in the CAS and BOG program, the new General Studies program is troubling for several reasons.

First is the student confusion and extra hassle this brings; the very things students complained about during the 2009 campus teach-in and the comments collected this semester by the Independent Student Union (a collective of students concerned about the direction of the university). BOG students received a letter from Provost Westbrooks on August 12, 2011 informing them of the changes. According to Dr. Westbrooks, “The reason for the reorganization of the program is to ensure that the degree earned by the students will prepare them for the challenges of professional life in the 21st Century.” The rationale sounds reasonable until you consider why many BOG students are in the program. These are students who are non-traditional age. They are pursuing a degree either because their job or job advancement requires it or for personal reasons. So, immediately one should scrutinize the soundness of this transformation.

Back to Westbrooks’ letter: After they are informed that the name has changed students are told that they must chose one of four options. These include 1) finishing their BOG degree by the end of Fall 2013. They have three semesters to complete or they will be transferred to GS; 2) change major to GS; 3) change to a traditional major program; or 4) Change to an Individualized Curriculum Program if they have earned more than 90 hours toward BOG degree. Finally, Provost Westbrooks explains that advisors will be available to assist them. I have faith in our university faculty and staff and believe that those advisors who will now be asked to much more work (will they get properly remunerated for their work?) are very good at their jobs. However, you can’t ask anyone to learn the entire curricula of each department and program in the university! BOG students who wish to choose option 3 will find this process difficult. Many have already expressed confusion and frustration at this additional hurdle on their way to achieving their educational goals.

The BOG confusion serves as metonym, metaphor and meditation on the confusion experienced by many students this semester as colleges, programs and departments were shuffled by executive order. Students sought guidance from faculty who upon return from summer break found out about these latest illogical institutional initiatives (III). One young man summed up this problem at the recent Board of Trustee meeting when he described how his department chairperson changed three times since last semester.

The Interim Dean’s office explained that as the last Illinois State University to have a BOG program we were an anachronistic bunch. We are told that the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) is ecstatic about this move into the next century. So, was this top-down authoritarian imposition into academic affairs (sovereign faculty space under any shared governance regime) a good idea? It depends on who you ask. If you ask current BOG students, you are likely to receive a negative response. These students, who were described as ‘experimental subjects,’ may not like the outcome of this ‘experiment’. Hopefully, the IBHE and HLC will answer in the affirmative.

But, we won’t know the answer to this question for some time. What we do witness is the intrusion into faculty space without an understanding by the regime of what is required to undertake such a reconstruction of a large program. This is illustrated by the scrambling that the committee to eliminate BOG and create GS had to do to develop this still incomplete program. Other faculty committees are being asked to sign-off the reconstruction/demolition/reincarnation of BOG without it even being completed. This, just days before registration. While I have faith in my colleagues and our CSU students that they will get through this maze relatively unscathed (though, obviously this will cause hardship for many), this illustrates well why faculty must govern academic affairs. Those who are not in the classroom nor do the grinding work of running the day-to-day primary mission of the university (learning) can’t possibly know whether or not their plans for reconstruction are pedagogically sound or whether they will assist students in acquiring their degrees, certificates and other qualifications. Nor can they know the amount of frustration and energy, and lowering of morale and enthusiasm that such ill-conceived notions bring.Traditionally, wholesale program changes and eliminations emanate from the faculty. A faculty knows the academic side of the university. Thus, this body is best positioned to develop it. Administration generally serves as a rubber stamp or in an advisory capacity on curricular matters. Their role is to support faculty initiatives and work to take care of the university’s budget. They might also care for the university’s reputation.

Drama in the Senate Meeting!

2011-11-03T01:20:00.002-05:00

Wow! A faculty Senator called another Senator’s proposal “stupid” in the Senate meeting yesterday afternoon and accused him of shamelessly seeking to advance his career by, of all things, offering to serve on a university committee! High drama in the CSU Senate! Of course, things are not always as they appear at CSU.

In fact, the real issues are failed notification procedures, improper committee appointments, failure to follow committee Bylaws and the gradual denigration and loss of legitimacy of a very important faculty elected body. And you thought this blog only focused on administrative failures!

It is important to note that when the Senator in question “claims” to follow Robert’s Rules during the conduct of his meetings closely (though he only uses these to silence the dissent of “certain” faculty members) that often he interprets these rules to his selective advantage. And it is important to note that the Senator in question has a duty under the Bylaws of his committee to perform certain actions in a timely manner (distribute petitions of candidacy for committee vacancies to all eligible faculty members) and he repeatedly fails to do so, all while complaining that he desires faculty input! The truth is that he desires only “certain” input: the input that supports his preconceived ideas or input that he can direct to his own ends. The result is a “faculty elected body” that is not really faculty elected. The committee is “stacked” with new members ill-prepared to meet the challenge of their task and often under-informed of the consequences of their decisions. Decisions whose consequences will be felt long after they are gone and where accountability becomes difficult to establish and any resulting damage difficult to repair. Credibility is hard to win once it has been lost.

And in fact, this committee has few members with any institutional memory regarding policy development at a very important time: right before the HLC visit. Indeed, the Senator in question often claims to have been working very hard on important committee matters. In fact, this committee under his leadership often dallies for months at a time and repeatedly fails to deliberate over the actual consequences of committee actions. Did I neglect to mention that this committee is central to the academic integrity of the university? And that informed deliberation and tolerance for dissent are usually qualities desired in higher education? But alas, we want our students to think critically… faculty members seem to be exempt from this criteria!

And so we settle for another ill-informed policy decision (like the approval of the General Education outcomes yesterday without so much as one public and university-wide forum!) that will play itself out over the next several years causing the predictable Sturm und Drang that will follow in the wake of such decisions. Much of this could have been avoided if only the committee had really discussed and deliberated over these matters (as opposed to merely editing a document). And much of this could have been avoided if only the committee had allowed those with expertise to offer their insights on the matter without assuming inappropriately that they were trying "take over." Spectacle and short term thinking has often triumphed over substance and long-term planning.

And to think we noticed only the administrative failures to notify the university community of the rationale for its decisions or to communicate these effectively! In fact, some of the faculty achieve the same outcome and ineptitude for themselves that they chastise others for…

How “stupid” of us, indeed.

And I guess things may not always be as they appear!

Comparative Search Processes 101: an example of transparency for CSU?

2011-11-02T17:19:00.022-05:00

A friend of mine connected to that lofty institution on the north side known as DePaul University forwarded a letter to me that she received from their president. It was an invitation to faculty "to share the deliberations" with their board of trustees and "to invite you to participate in the decision they will make to select a new university provost."

This letter could be a primer for our own Trustees and upper Administration as well as the Human Resources Department (btw now acting as a career center for hapless CSU students since the student career & placement office was eliminated this term). Our Admin has seemed skittish at best, hostile and secretive at worst, about including faculty in its alleged "searches" for Vice Presidents (btw the Shared Governance Committee of the Senate is still waiting for a response from Ms. H's office over who was on the last VP search, guess it will have to be gotten through the Freedom of Info Act tsk, tsk). And my goodness, the the DePaul Univ. President referred to faculty as "colleagues" in his letter. Since our Admin wants to make CSU over into a version of the City Colleges (note its most recent appointees and those on campus who seem have the ear of the CEO) perhaps it would be worthwhile looking outside the community college and corporate boxes to see how other universities do it. I know, I know, we are not DePaul University (they are not a political patronage pit), but if you want to improve your tennis game you play with someone who is better than you.

So here are some highlights. Wish I could say this is the type of letter I would ever receive here at CSU.

..."As you know, search processes in higher education follow a predicatable timetable. They generally begin in late summer or September with the formation of a representative search committee, seek a search firm to assist the committee, and then collaboratively create a job description for the position. That position is advertised to surface candidates. Simultaneously, through other connections of the faculty or the search firm, additional candidates are recommended and/or encouraged to apply. Offers are generally make to succesful candidates in the late winter or early spring, with the hope that the successful candidate will conclude affairs at her or his present institution and come to DePaul midsummer.

[Timing of the Search since it is the end of the fall term]

"It's simply impractical to ask the Faculty Council, Staff Council and the Student Government Association to propose candidates for the search committee before the winter quarter. The Trustees and I have little desire to conduct a compressed search for a position that is so important to the life of the university. For these reasons, the board thinks it best that we appoint an interim provost for the 2012-2013 academic year and begin the process of search for a new provost this February, getting a head start on the following year's cycle. This will give DePaul ample time to think through what we are seeking in a new provost and to search for a strong pool of candidates.
I am writing today, therefore, to seek your consultation on who you might propose to serve as interim provost. The board is seeking someone who is already a member of the DePaul community, so that the learning curve required for one year's leadership is minimized. That individual must also agree not to apply for the full position. This is for two reasons. That individual's attention should not be divided during the year by both the duties of the job and the search process itself, and the university community should not have to wonder whether decisions are being made to influence the selection process. Both the search process and the day-to-day administration of the university are "cleaner" if the interim provost is not applying for the position.
Obviously, an interim provost must have come from the faculty ranks earlier in his or her career and have shown a significant record of progressively responsible administrative acumen and skill, able to handle the many responsibilities of the provost's office... we also will be seeking someone with good knowledge of standard practices in faculty governance and who has a natural tendency to work collaboratively.
...I invite you to recommend candidates and share your reasons for proposing them. I also invite you to send me any thoughts you might have as to what the interim provost should accomplish during the year of the appointment. I will ask the office of the Secretary to send you a website shortly to which you can submit those thoughts, with the option of doing so confidentially...
Search for a Provost
At the same time I invite the Faculty Council, Staff Council and the Student Government Association to begin immediately the process of nominating members to serve on the search committee for the new provost. I expect the committee's work to begin in early February, and to pick up steam beginning in the Fall of 2012.
I specifically ask Faculty Council, Staff Council the Student Government Association, the deans and the Office of Academic Affairs to propose a slate of candidates and alternates so that the trustee chair can assemble and propose to the board a search committee that is appropriately representative of the larger university. This will also provide additional names if for any reason an individual finds that she or he can no longer serve.
The search process for provost will be conducted in the same manner as in past years. The search committee will consist of trustees and representatives of the faculty, staff, student body and administration. The chair of the board will appoint a chair from among the trustees and that chair will assemble the search committee. Internally, there will be three faculty, two staff, one student, one dean and one representative each from the Office of Academic Affairs and the Office of the President. As always, the Office of the University Secretary will staff the search process, a major task for which I am grateful. And, as always, the entire university community will be invited to meet finalists and submit their recommendations.
I can assure you that the trustees intend to listen carefully to the thoughts of the university community as the process unfurls. I ask you, therefore, to participate in this search process as you are invited along the way. The role of provost is the single most challenging job at any university, and it is important that we find and select an outstanding individual for this task...

We know that CSU's provost will retire in June. When does our university leadership intend to lead Faculty, Staff, and Students in this search? Can we hope for even half the transparency and shared participation that the DePaul University community is promised? Or, are the rumors here true and another City Colleges colleague of the CEO is already in place to take over as provost?

In the news again?

2011-10-26T08:25:00.001-05:00

So how many more hits can the university withstand? To wit, an editorial in the paper of record, a story on the NPR affiliate in Chicago, and a story on the local ABC affiliate all mentioning the university’s connection to an emerging scandal with the former director of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). A local television station ran a story on October 17th that was curious in this regard. The written version of the story, some eleven paragraphs long, mentions the former DCFS Director, his close friend and subject of the Executive Inspector General’s investigation and Chicago State University. There are clearly other agencies involved so I find it very curious that a mention of Chicago State University would be so randomly added at the end of the story. Given that it is alleged that $18 million was misspent what amount was misspent through the university? If it were $180,000, then why would a 1% participation in the alleged fraud warrant a mention in the article? It seems as if the mention of the university isn’t directed at the university but at some agent of the institution. The ABC 7 story states “There are several officials at Chicago State University also implicated in the scandal.” So is the university being portrayed accurately or is it an employee at the university and if so how high ranking an employee. As it turns out the amount of money involved is at least $1million, possibly more. During the Board of Trustees meeting in December 2008, the Board voted unanimously to accept a federal and state funded grant given to the university from the City of Chicago. Little would the Trustees know that their actions would drag the university squarely into the middle of another political scandal. As it turns out, the current CEO hired a new Interim Vice President for Grants and Research Administration, what was previously known as the Office of Sponsored Programs. The newly hired administrator had neither experience at universities or experience in Sponsored Programs, possibly setting her up for what was to come later. When a “Chicago Department of Family & Support Services Head Start Support Services Contracts Non-Federal Share (In-Kind) Cost Report” was due, the Interim Vice President admitted that she signed a document without having the documentation required by the “Agency Certification for Non-Federal Share Expenses.” This essentially defrauded the state and placed the university in a precarious position relative to perceptions of the institution’s ability to perform appropriate oversight for taxpayer provided grants. The Office of the Executive Inspector General recommended that disciplinary action be taken against Dr Harris for her failure to conduct appropriate oversight. The university responded in a letter dated August 1st, 2011 that Dr Harris “will receive a one day suspension.”
So it appears that it isn’t “several officials.” Rather it is one official placed in a position without requisite experience or knowledge by a president who though responsible for the university, has declined to publicly admit culpability in this matter. Of course one would hope that when the criminal and civil cases are launched all who are responsible will be held to account whether they wish to admit to it or not.
And on another note, is it really surprising that CSU is portrayed negatively and sometimes incorrectly when a member of its governing body lacks the sensibility to quietly resign from the Board of Trustees so as not to be a distraction or cause collateral damage resulting from an ongoing federal investigation. Details of this story can be found here. Fortunately Governor Quinn recognized that and appointed three new Board of Trustees members on October 24th. Details of the new appointees can be found here.

Stay tuned.

Failing to lead

2011-10-25T17:56:00.002-05:00

So it was quite a shock when I discovered that the university isn’t subject to just one audit per year. The State Universities Civil Service System (SUCSS) conducts a Biennial Institutional compliance Audit, the final report of which was issued August 16th, 2011. Imagine your humble narrator’s surprise to find that the university received 9 material findings. Taken in a vacuum, that number of findings is virtually meaningless, so I decided to inquire further, looking at the institution’s last SUCSS audit report, other state universities and other agencies under the audit supervision of the SUCSS. My non-scientific findings did lead me to some disturbing conclusions.

First, the university is very consistent in its audit findings under the current administration. The most recent audit report from the State of Illinois Auditor General’s office showed a three fold increase in the number of audit findings (13 to 41) from FY 2009 to FY 2010. The SUCSS audit report shows a similar three fold increase in its audit findings, climbing from 3 in 2009 to 9 in 2011. Among the findings were, paying employees outside of the approved salary ranges, improperly maintaining the register and referring candidates and failing to follow regulatory guidelines in layoff transactions. These findings are all violations of the State Universities Civil Service Act.

Second, in the most recent audits of the state universities, only UIC received as many audit findings as CSU. This is surprising given that UIC has a budget of $1.95 billion, a total enrollment of 27,000 students, and nearly 11,000 Administrative, Professional and Support staff. The cost per budget dollar, per employee or per student is significantly less at UIC than at CSU. Illinois State University racked up 8 material findings, up 2 from its previous report. Western Illinois University and the University of Illinois Springfield tallied two material findings each while Eastern Illinois University only recorded one material finding.

Finally, I examined the audit reports for the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the State University Retirement System and the State University Civil Service System. In each of their most recent reports, these three agencies received no material findings.

As these audit reports are conducted by different agencies I wondered how the university’s performance might be characterized based on these findings. Is CSU three times worse off under the new regime than it was even under the previous interim president? If so, is the recent praise by members of the Board of Trustees for the performance of the president warranted? If, as is indicated in the presidential contract on page2 that there is an expectation of reducing audit findings as a measure of performance, a reasonable person could conclude that the president has failed in that regard. Of course, I would imagine hearing that it was the fault of the subordinates or the fault of the previous administration. Taking the latter argument first, how responsibility could be placed on a previous administration who on their watch had 13 and 3 audit findings turn into 41 and 9 findings on the current watch is quite an intellectual stretch. And taking the former assertion next, I would respond with the question of who placed those subordinates in positions of responsibility in the first place?

Thus the buck stops with the university president. I still haven’t heard any admission of responsibility for the audit findings of either audit report. It isn’t reports that indicate failure. The lack of acknowledgment of responsibility is the leadership failure.

Not so random thoughts

2011-10-18T20:06:00.000-05:00

So a few bits and bobs have tumbled around in my head during the past few days and I thought I'd share them with you loyal readers.

* I have been thinking about the memo sent out from the administration about the university’s termination policy. It was an interesting memo. Because it didn’t apply to faculty I viewed it as a disinterested third party. The portion of the memo that struck me was that some behaviors were so egregious that immediate termination was warranted. Since this was a termination policy memo, I assumed that meant ending the employment at the university permanently. The problem I had with the language of that section of the policy was that it completely disregarded the constitutional protections of the 5th and 14th Amendments of equal protection and due process. Because an administrator says an employee has done something warranting termination doesn’t make it so. Whatever egregious behavior is accused still must be proven in some sort of process. Every state employee below a certain level has rights. The policy should have been corrected to provide for suspension pending a termination procedure but to leave the impression that an administrator or supervisor would be able to be judge, jury and executioner is inappropriate and legally incorrect.
* I was amazed by the number of university employees that are paid $90,000 per year or more. Thirty of those are faculty, while the other sixty are administrators. Save for the academic administrators, which the regime is working vigorously to reduce the numbers of, what exactly does a $150,000 Vice President for Enrollment Management do? I am curious what warrants a level of pay slightly below the chief academic officer of the university..
* The Board of Trustees finally had enough members show up to form a quorum to approve the FY 2012 budget. After a cancelled meeting on October 10th where only three trustees were in attendance for a Special Board meeting the Board met on October 13th. The lack of attendance for a meeting to conduct university business begs the question why the Governor hasn’t replaced the three board members whose terms have expired, who incidentally were three of the four who didn’t show up for the meeting. The Governor seems to have made good choices for the recent appointments as three of the four most recent appointees were in attendance.
* I invite the regime to put to rest the spreading rumors that the next chief academic officer of the university is to be the current Vice President for Enrollment Management. If the rumor is true it would be unfortunate to appoint a Provost with no terminal degree, no publication record, no experience as a university tenure track faculty member, and no experience as a university dean. It is likely to raise red flags with accrediting bodies, the IBHE, and other agencies. A simple acknowledgment that this appointment is only a rumor would put this issue to rest.
* It appears the City College Re-employment Program is in full swing. Is a recently retired employee from Kennedy-King on her way to CSU for a little of the Illinois double dip?
* It is good to see that as the university “right sizes”, the official residence is getting a new driveway. I would assume this would be necessary for all of the potential donors seeking to share their corporate largesse with the university. This sort of infrastructure investment is better used at the official residence rather than in repairing the campus parking lots. Technically, I would suspect that the money for this is in a different account than the money to repair parking lots. Or maybe it is simply a matter of priority setting.
* Given the top down, ill conceived restructuring that has been occurring under the regime, I suggest that faculty in each college form a College Structure Committee to address how academic units should be organized. In response to the question of whether faculty can do that, I consulted the Collective Bargaining Agreement and found no prohibition on the faculty in participating in shared governance. So faculty, take the lead from the Graduate Council committee that is reorganizing the Graduate School. The business of the academic life should be the first priority of the professoriate. Consequently, being more proactive could lead to a more productive work environment. Leaving it to the professional juco administrators is likely to lead to reduced productivity.
* And on a final note, it’s that time of year. Yep, it’s Ethics Training time again. Thankfully, faculty can make their annual digital sojourn to remind them to be ethical for another 12 months. Given all of the opportunities the faculty has to be unethical and steal from the public treasury, an annual reminder to resist giving in to the lesser angles of our nature is probably a good thing. Don’t forget to do your Ethics Training.

College Reorganizing Rationales

2011-10-09T13:24:00.000-05:00

So I find myself disappointed, either for not understanding some greater administrative wisdom at play or at some of my colleagues for their unquestioning acquiescence to continued missteps by the regime. During a College of Arts & Sciences meeting, the interim dean relayed the corporate double speak from the regime about increased efficiencies, improved communications and reduced unit size as being the rationales for reorganizing the College into what clearly resembles a junior college. I was dubious as this was explained because some fundamental questions had not been answered.

First, what problem was the solution of re-organizing into a juco solving? If the answers were size, efficiency and communications, where was the data to support those conclusions? The organization chart of the College could have been reconfigured with only minor adjustments providing an Assistant or Associate Dean for each of the three areas, Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences. Each of those Assistant or Associate Deans could be faculty appointed part time to oversee those areas and free up the Dean to not have to supervise chairs from more than 15 departments. Having part time administrators drawn from the faculty ranks who serve and then return to faculty raises the probability of the faculty not being captured by the mindset of administrative aggrandizement. A three year appointment should suffice in spreading the joy of administrative duties to those who would want to serve.
If size were a justification for reorganization what were the standards that were exceeded that warranted the disruption this reorganization created? Much larger universities than this one have not found a need to reorganize because of size. The University of Illinois at Chicago for example, have 22 departments and programs with 350 tenure track faculty who teach 9,300 undergraduate and 1,200 graduate students. As the largest college at that university, it appears that they haven’t been directed by their chancellor to disrupt the educational mission based on some unsubstantiated corporate speak. Since no data was presented and the rationales only in a cursory fashion I can only imagine it was spun from mid-air like many of the changes foisted upon the university by this regime. Ill-conceived and poorly thought out, this idea lacks any rigorous examination and unfortunately would not stand up to any intellectual scrutiny. Thus I am left with the belief this reorganizing has some other, unspoken more insidious agenda behind it.

Second, why is faculty being included in the discussion of how to manage an academic unit when the plan has already been implemented without them? This perfunctory inclusion is insulting and continues to demonstrate the contempt the regime holds toward faculty, regime apologists notwithstanding. Was the first reorganization based only upon the termination dates of chair contracts? An examination of chair contracts from the College of Arts & Sciences reveals a very interesting thing. The planning for this reorganization has been underway at the highest level since May 2010, as evidenced by appointment letters with language like “...During the coming year, we may revisit the organizational structure of various units, which may involve your unit.” So if the regime was planning reorganizing the academic units, why were faculty not substantively involved for 17 months? With the first, still unannounced/unacknowledged reorganization still causing confusion with students and faculty, I ask why is the regime reluctant to send out a written memo of its decision to ignore faculty (and the faculty contract) and reorganize the university’s largest college roughly a year before the university’s accreditation visit.

It is intellectually lazy to make statements like increasing efficiencies or improving communications without operationalizing what those corporate speak terms mean to highly skilled academicians. What efficiencies emerge when department chairs have more work to do and less help to do it? What efficiencies are realized when departmental offices are dispersed and students find it difficult to locate the appropriate office. What improved communications are generated when disciplinary compatibility are considered less important than operating the City College Re-employment Program.

If the interim Dean is to be taken at his word, then the plan for reorganizing will be left to the faculty. I doubt that since it is past behavior that is the best predictor of future conduct. In that case, the re-organization is already done. It just hasn’t been imposed on the faculty and students yet.

So, Who's Who at CSU? (And who will be the new Provost?)

2011-10-07T18:43:00.018-05:00

A notice I saw recently in an office at CSU made reference to the "Conga Line of Retirements" that is taking place this year --many are administrators, faculty, staff, who are hoping to avoid the 8% loss of retirement benefits (or whatever it is that Gov. Quinn is planning) that will take effect in June 2012. Notable losses to expect: the Dean of the Honor's College, Dr. Milo, in December of this year, and our Provost, Dr Westbrooks, in June 2012. The Conga Line began more than a year ago--remember the firings of a lot of staff? Some folks have been harried out (remember Dr. Madhabuti?) or fired (remember Deans McCrank and Lindsey?), others have just said enough of the madness that is CSU and decided to quit/retire while the going is good (too many to list). Someone recently suggested I might like to follow suit--hmmmm...

At any rate the exodus of so many has made for a grand reshuffling of personnel including collapsing and reconfiguring offices, departments, colleges, the whole shootin' match. Wow, one year before our accreditation visit and we are just a hotbed of activity all over campus. But, as one colleague reminds me, "don't mistake activity for productivity." And as another would say, "the Admin just wants to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic." My more earnest colleagues chide such cynicism--yet they cannot seem to point to a grand scheme or master plan that would explain not just the need but the haste and urgency in which all this is being undertaken. But all things will be revealed in time, I suppose--what with the freedom of information act and all.

At any rate, you could be optimistic and say that it is always nice to see some new faces, get some new blood, fresh perspectives. Maybe. Has anyone wondered, however, who are all the new Cook Admin vice presidents, associate vps, interim associates, assistants that are popping up as soon as some new retirement or firing takes place?

If you look through an old copy of CSU's 2006-2008 Undergrad Student Catalogue you will find a directory in the back that lists Administrators, Associate and Assistant Deans, Chairpersons, Academic Programs Directors, and Faculty. It's quite a detailed listing. Each person is listed by name, title or rank, department to which they are associated, the date of their hiring, the titles and places of their final earned degrees. One thing about our former Prez Elnora Daniel was that she was a stickler for having people in academic administration at Chicago State University actually have earned Ph.D.s or at minimum an M.A. of some sort to hold office. Do you remember her emphasis on this? Faculty still have to have the terminal degree in their field to get tenure or promotion now, this is contractural. So what about the new administrators?

Well, it's not Elnora Daniel's campus anymore. The online catalogue which was supposed to be easier to maintain and keep up with changes is woefully out of date (all those mandated thesis requirements last year and program changes must have created quite a backlog of work). I understand the job has recently fallen into the lap of an individual newly reshuffled from another department so good luck to them with all that. BUT, if you check the online catalogue in comparison to the old printed catalogue the out of date listing of administrators does not include their academic credentials (or any credentials for that matter). Why is that? If it is an oversight then I hope the new website manager will rectify this and let us see who and where the new blood at CSU is coming from. Please tell me that Dr Watson is appointing people to these $90,000+ a year jobs under his prerogative who have more than a bachelor's degree.

And interim or not who will be next in line to the provost's job? This is the chief academic officer at a "doctoral-granting" university, one assumes this will be a properly credentialed person ("Ph.D. in hand" as the job ads in academe usually state). Since we know that Dr Westbrooks is leaving, when is the call going out to establish a university-wide provost search committee--hopefully not in April so that it has to run over the summer when the 9-month contractees (i.e. faculty) are not around? In 2003 we got dinged by the HLC accreditation report for shenanigans on that provost search and we will get dinged this accreditation for the shenanigans regarding the prez search of 2009. How many dings can we sustain?

Does anyone see the iceberg on the horizon?

How could shared governance look?

2011-09-27T06:22:00.001-05:00

As a follow-up to my earlier post on shared governance, here is how I imagine Chicago State could operate if a genuine commitment to maximizing the effectiveness of the university’s human resources existed here. Not to disappoint some of my colleagues, but shared governance is not participatory democracy. Rather, it represents an understanding of which decisions should be made by which university groups. As a 2001 article makes crystal clear:

“Faculty sometimes defend the principle of shared governance by invoking the democratic principle of self-government, but the primary justification for the need for shared governance is not deference to the ideal of rule by the people. A college or university is not strictly speaking a democratic polity. [However,] (n)ot all the constituencies of an institution of higher education are equally positioned to make sound judgments about what is appropriate or necessary when it comes to teaching and research. Consequently, the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, which remains the AAUP’s principal policy document on the issue, premises its defense of shared governance on the assumption that faculty ought to exercise ‘primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process,’ because the faculty—not students, administrators, or boards of trustees—have the greatest expertise in these matters.”

“Inextricably Linked”: Shared Governance and Academic Freedom, by Larry Gerber. http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2001/MJ/Feat/gerb.htm

This quotation speaks to the underlying flaws in Chicago State’s version of “shared governance.” Here, faculty are not treated as experts in curriculum, teaching, or “faculty status.” As our recent history demonstrates, arbitrary decisions regarding curriculum and faculty retention ignore or do not seek the recommendations of “expert” faculty trained in specific disciplines, privileging instead the judgment of persons with little or no understanding of those disciplines. How could this be done better?

I would argue that the key is for our administration to recognize faculty expertise and substitute a collaborative, rather than a hierarchical para-military “we decide, you make it work” approach to curricular and personnel questions. Everyone on this campus has a vested interest in our success. If the administration has concerns about the rigor or questions about the requirements of specific programs why not ask the experts on those programs? My colleagues and I frequently make changes designed to improve the rigor of our degree programs–a process undoubtedly replicated by faculty across campus. Imposition of poorly conceived curricular and graduation requirements, elimination of programs (or colleges)in spite of overwhelming faculty support for their continuation, and unsupportable decisions to terminate tenure-track faculty, have a deleterious effect on students and faculty, sowing discontent and resulting in mistrust. This toxic mix contributes to an atmosphere of disaffection that a top-down management style only exacerbates.

I am not calling for some kind of revolution here. Rather, I am arguing that an effort on the part of our administrators to return (if it ever resided there) primary responsibility for their areas of expertise to the faculty would result in a healthier campus climate, and likely help assuage faculty concerns about their lack of influence in programmatic and curricular issues. While I believe that everyone is motivated only by a desire to improve the university, we need to try a different approach. Interestingly, Northeastern Illinois offers a model for us to consider. In curricular matters, their Senate constitution reads:

NEIU Faculty Senate Constitution

ARTICLE VII: DEPARTMENTAL OR OTHER EQUIVALENT UNITS (INCLUDING
PROGRAMS)

Each College and Resource Professional area is divided into departmental or other equivalent units. The embodiment of the University is the academic department. It initiates all matters regarding curriculum and must approve all curriculum proposals before they are considered by the appropriate College Academic Affairs Committee. Department/unit/program bylaws shall not be inconsistent with the Faculty Constitution.

It seems like this would work no matter how we are reconfigured.

Shared Governance

2011-09-25T06:55:00.002-05:00

At the end of the trustees meeting on Friday, several faculty had a chat with one of the trustees about the institutional role of the faculty at CSU and ways to improve communication between faculty and the board. While some board members(or faculty for that matter) may not be interested in either of these issues, it might be a propitious time to think about what shared governance should mean and what faculty in this institution find so demoralizing about our administrative culture.

A document from the University of Iowa supporting the 1966 AAUP definition of shared governance captures the dilemma of university governance quite well. First, Chicago State operates on sort of a diluted version of the "stakeholder" system. In this rendition, shared governance operates in a figurative sense: various constituent groups ostensibly have a "conversation" before the people in power make the final decision (or in some cases, have arguably made the decision before the "conversation" occurs). Theoretically, the opinions and ideas of the various "stakeholders" are considered, and because decision makers have sought "input" they believe that "governance is said to be shared." As the Iowa document underscores, this version of shared governance "incorporates This understanding of shared governance incorporates two suppositions: (1) when it comes to important issues, final decision-making power belongs to the president, and (2) all subordinate campus constituents are pretty much equal, regardless of function and expertise (the insidious implication of the term “stakeholder”)."

In contrast, the 1966 AAUP "Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities" articulates a vision of governance in which "faculty not only possess the right to be heard in institutional decision-making; they actually possess 'primary responsibility'—or authority—for reaching decisions in their areas of expertise, namely, “curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.” The text of that 1966 document is available here: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/governancestatement.htm. The Iowa document here: http://www.uiowa.edu/~aaupweb/shared_gov.pdf

Thus, the 1966 governance statement recognizes faculty preeminence in certain areas. For example, "the delegation of primary responsibility to faculty in academic matters is founded upon the assumption that faculty are not merely employees, but professionals with special training and knowledge, and thus distinctly qualified to exercise decision-making authority in their areas of expertise." A final note on the 1966 statement: It represents more than a unilateral declaration by university faculty, since it results from the collaborative efforts of the AAUP, the Association of Governing Boards of American Colleges and Universities (AGB), and the American Council on Education (ACE). Chicago State University belongs to both the AGB and ACE.

The preceding material serves as a preface to the question of what changes that CSU faculty would like to see occur in the area of university governance. What follows will detail how the “stakeholder” system of shared governance at CSU has worked in the recent past. I would argue that curricular and faculty retention issues are presently more important to the efficient operation of the university than issues of hiring. In that regard, I would remind everyone that during the past two years, the administration ordered two major curriculum changes: the mandatory senior thesis and the mostly mandatory master's thesis. It seems that the administration presented both these changes as "done deals" and expected the faculty to go about the process of implementing them. To the best of my knowledge, they both came out of the president's "shock" at finding that neither component existed in specific program curricula. I remember no attempt to solicit faculty input on either mandate (if someone can correct my recollection here, I would be appreciative).

The imposition by fiat of these two curriculum changes was flawed on a number of levels. First, the administration arrogated to itself the responsibility for curriculum, a responsibility that clearly belongs to the faculty. Second, the pseudo-educational "one size fits all" approach to curriculum ignores significant differences between disciplines, their research methods, and their standards of evidence. Third, points one and two vividly demonstrate how the administration views the faculty's role in institutional governance and highlights the top-down administrative style that undercuts "shared governance." There was no pretense here of even consulting the faculty. This kind of activity continues as we are now confronted with that ridiculous "General Studies" curriculum. No one seems to know who developed that program's courses or why, exactly, the changes were necessary.

Earlier this year, following a regular cyclical review, the administration eliminated the university’s Economics department. Despite the faculty’s recommendation that the program be retained, a recommendation with which 15 of 17 members of two different committees agreed, the administration eliminated the department and program.

The administration’s haphazard and often arbitrary decisions about curriculum are matched by erratic and arbitrary decisions regarding faculty retention. This past cycle, five tenure-track faculty were denied retention, apparently by the president. It is my understanding that although all five had satisfied their colleagues, deans, and the University Personnel Committee that they had met their respective DAC standards and should be retained, the administration disagreed– based on some unknown criteria that apparently resides outside their DACs. Subsequently, the administration (read president) reversed its decision to deny retention to four of the five faculty.

Currently, institutional structures exist for faculty to express their ideas about university governance, but I am not sure how effectively we are utilizing them. During recent contract negotiations, union representatives were apparently hesitant to insist on the inclusion of shared governance language, primarily because of the anti-union activities going on in Ohio. I did not find this a particularly compelling reason to back off on the creation of contractual language that might give faculty a little more ability to use their expertise for the benefit of the institution. In the same vein, the speed of the implementation of the mandated senior and master’s theses allowed little or no time for discussion. In the only Senate meeting with those two topics on the agenda, Senators spent an excruciating seventy-five minutes discussing the university’s attendance policy, as if we were working in a high school. The Senate never got around to discussing either curriculum change.

I would argue that, at a minimum, the faculty (and students) at CSU need to be insulated against arbitrary and capricious decisions in the areas of curriculum and faculty retention. While acknowledging that the University’s administration in general, and the president in particular, have the ultimate responsibility for the functioning of the school, incursions into faculty areas of expertise should be rare and the reasons for administrative actions should be substantive and clearly articulated. I believe the best way to achieve these goals would be for the university to begin practicing, at least in part, the type of university governance articulated in the 1966 statement. I think this should be our model for a new university culture that includes the faculty in a meaningful way and does more than give lip service to the concepts of “shared governance” based on a recognition of faculty “expertise.” This may have to be done incrementally, but it seems like a worthy goal. As the Iowa document makes clear: “By assigning primary authority in educational matters to the faculty, genuine shared governance, as articulated in the Statement on Government, promotes and sustains academic excellence. It doesn’t take a doctorate in higher education to figure out why. In the plain words of one of the twentieth century’s great university presidents, ‘we get the best results in education and research if we leave their management to people who know something about them’ (Robert Maynard Hutchins, Higher Learning in America, Yale, 1936, p. 21).”

More "General Studies"

2011-09-24T01:52:00.002-05:00

Sorry to go on about this, but here's a link to the University of Connecticut's General Studies program. Follow the weblinks to look at the specific coursework required. You might note some differences between their course offerings and ours: http://continuingstudies.uconn.edu/bgs/academicprograms.html

Our new "General Studies" degree program

2011-09-23T20:46:00.002-05:00

Based on a perusal of the potential courses in our newly mandated "General Studies" program (I assume that those things listed under the four main categories are courses since as a faculty member, I had no input on the design of this program), I think some important topics are being ignored in that new "more marketable" curriculum. I offer the following humble suggestions: 1) Gravity: Truth or Fiction? 2) The Alien Influence in World History. 3) The Earth or the Sun, Which is Really the Center of the Universe (remember Ptolemy)? 4)Where is Elvis Now, Really?

These suggestions are, of course, not fully thought out, and I'm sure that there are other topics worthy of inclusion in any curriculum that includes a course on "flat earth" implications. An obvious companion to any flat earth course would be a discussion of "hollow earth" implications. Honestly, I would like to know which faculty members participated in the creation of this curriculum, and when these courses received approval from the curriculum committee.

Board of Trustees meet Friday--

2011-09-22T22:22:00.012-05:00

The 4th of 5 regularly scheduled meetings of CSU's Board of Trustees is tomorrow FRIDAY, September 23rd in the Academic Library Auditorium (room 415)

The agenda is available on the CSU's BOT website, but here are some highlights:

8.30 A.M.

-->Revised Board Regulations

-->a Tenure recommendation--but of whom? Faculty haven't applied yet. Doesn't tenure happen in the spring?

-->Changes to the President's contract--whatever could that include?

-->A mysterious "miscellaneous" fee increase

-->Approval of the budget --three months into the fiscal year.

-->Approval of the faculty contract

Full Board meeting @1.30 p.m.
Public comment will be at the end of the meeting --that means that YOU can say something about the state of the university as YOU see it.

Come see what the Governing Body is hearing about the goings on at our university

Invite your students to come on their lunch break.

And the thoughtless reorganizing continues...

2011-09-21T23:42:00.000-05:00

So I will chalk this one up in the “I can’t believe what I just heard” column. Chicago State University is a doctoral degree granting institution that has now seen fit to not have a graduate college. I know, for all of us faculty who went to graduate school, it is incomprehensible how a university that awards masters and doctoral degrees will function without the administrative and quality control functions provided by the graduate college.
So as I understand this situation, 1) the current Dean of the Graduate College was removed as dean without cause, 2) the Graduate College is to be eliminated effective October 1st, 2011, 3) none of the faculty on the Graduate Council were officially notified that this decision was under consideration, 4) the Graduate Council will recommend to the administration how to maintain the as of yet un-articulated functions of the Graduate College, and 5) those recommendations will be considered and whatever decisions are made by the administration, with or without consultation or consent of the faculty, will be implemented in January 2012, ten months prior to the HLC accreditation visit.
A quick survey of the public institutions in this state reveals that only CSU and Governors State University do not have a Graduate School, Graduate College or Graduate Studies office. The Graduate College at UIC for example, has a plethora of activities and functions beyond simple admissions. The importance of quality control, especially in the area of thesis and dissertation submissions, cannot be understated. Having no focal point for this activity severely compromises the academic reputation of the institution and can significantly impact our graduate students who could have the quality of their degrees questioned because of the university’s administrative incompetence.
Re-organizing for the sake of re-organizing is useless and futile. It might be compared to teaching a pig how to dance, it just makes the pig upset. Management by ADD which appears to confuse and obfuscate real intentions has become the predominant management model. Unfortunately for the institution, this model could very well lead to its undoing.
And speaking of undoing, the university’s Board of Governor’s program has been restructured. Two curious facts about that are no faculty or staff from Continuing Education were consulted about the restructuring and the faculty contribution ex post facto is making another administratively inept decision worse. Getting the airplane pilots together after you have decided to use a hot air balloon doesn’t seem like the best way to reach the desired destination. Another Management by ADD (MADD) decision. Poorly conceived, ineptly communicated and incompetently implemented. The most disturbing thing about the absence of faculty involvement is the curricular restructuring that transformed the BOG into the General Studies Program. There are to be four concentrations; “Social and Environmental Justice (Struggles for Suffrage, Race/Gender/ethnic studies, Modern and Historical slavery worldwide, Effect of environmental policy on social justice, health care disparities, sustainability); Art (music, literature, dance, theater, art) and Culture(Role of Arts in defining culture, Historical influence of literature/art/music/dance/theater on (US or other) Culture, Art and politics (protest art, propaganda art, etc.), Marketing dynamics in the arts, Influence of Pop culture; Global Society (“Flat Earth” implications, Global Education, Globalization/nationalism, Population implications, Global Health, Global disparities); and Global Economy (Entrepreneurship, Global Manufacturing, Resource Markets, Global Competition, Global Health (i.e. HIV/AIDS or Maternal Mortality, funding formulas for research and treatment, etc.)”

I have quoted you the four concentrations and the additional information, clearly stream of consciousness ideas about these concentrations. And to reiterate no faculty was involved in the creation of “Flat Earth” implications, Struggles for Suffrage or any of the other constructs. After several readings I have no idea what academic value there is in this change especially in examining something like Population implications. I can only ask population implications of what? Since faculty weren't involved in the initial discussions (assuming there was dialog and not dictum) faculty is likely to never know from what place any of this emerged from. And isn't it ironic there would be a concentration in Global Economy when this administration has eliminated the Economics degree and minor?

The newly formed General Studies committee is expected to take what can only be described as unintelligible drivel and transform it into a viable academically rigorous program. Good luck to them in that endeavor. As a computer programmer told me long ago, Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Congratulations!!!

2011-09-19T08:51:00.000-05:00

So this is the post I love to publish. Kudos to Mary Ann Ryan on the completion of her PhD. Mary Ann completed her degree in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. A long time adjunct faculty member in the English Department, Mary Ann finished her doctoral journey August 15th. Congratulations to Dr. Ryan.

Please feel free loyal readers to forward to me the accomplishments and achievements of our faculty. You can reach me at pbeverly@gmail.com.

Bits and bobs...

2011-09-19T08:17:00.001-05:00

So who are the VIPs visiting campus today who have warranted blocking off parts of the parking lot nearest the Cook Building??? Are they legislators come to visit and see that failure is not an option? Or are they financial benefactors come to rescue the helpless university from its financial turmoil? Or maybe they are federal investigators from the Department of Education coming for a second visit to look at some of the university's administrative practices. One thing is certain though. Given this administration's abysmal record of communication, you would more likely discover who shot Kennedy than discover what is going on at CSU.

And the rumor flying around that nepotism is alive and well at CSU is waiting to be put to rest. To wit, some of the desk attendants at the Jacoby Dickens Center and the Jones Convocation Center are rumored to be relatives of some of the university shuttle bus drivers. If that were true, it at least puts to rest that all of the new hiring at CSU is part of the City College Reemployment Program.

That sound was the timeclock punching your time card

2011-09-18T14:06:00.000-05:00

So my colleagues have articulated the time sheet issue well. I will go a bit beyond that to ask about reasonable solutions. The genesis of this policy was with the now discredited Blagoevich Administration. This was the same administration that created the annual ethics test for state employees and formed the Office of the Executive Inspector General. The irony can't be lost on anyone seeing as federal prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of as much as 30 years for the convicted former governor.

So what might a reasonable solution to this problem be? Clearly it isn't the policy of the current administration. I find it interesting that an administration that tripled the number of audit findings would put so much emphasis on addressing this finding. For an administration that took more than a year to negotiate a faculty contract that provided no demonstrable improvement in faculty working conditions, I sense that the current policy is actually about a continued attack on faculty. Recall loyal readers, this was the same president who told members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board that he was going to have to teach the CSU faculty how to teach. His disdain for faculty was evidenced even before his contractual start date. I understand that creativity is not the strong suit of this administration. Yet it doesn't take much creativity, even from a career long political appointee, to know that there is a political solution to this situation.

So let's play the "If I Were President" game. I would first consult with all of the other university presidents in the state and propose a massive lobbying campaign on behalf of the faculty. I would stress how much the faculty does off campus, after hours, or during the summer and in effect teach often uninformed legislators about the role of faculty at universities. I, of course, could do that because I know what faculty do firsthand. I would encourage all of the university lobbyists to pressure the legislature for some relief for faculty. Providing the reasonable explanations articulated by my colleagues could convince the legislature to provide some relief for the faculty who are often scapegoated by those who don't understand the role of university faculty. I would also encourage all of the state universities to lobby the governor and seek relief in the form of an executive order exempting faculty from the provisions of the act requiring time keeping. This would save the state money in trying to implement inane policies. How much is lost in terms of productivity as public bodies play these games without trying to help themselves by getting the rules changed?

Even the most intellectually limited must appreciate doing the same thing and expecting a different result is insanity. That appears to be what is happening here so let's do something different. Since nothing different is being done, it really begs the question about university leadership and/or ulterior motives.

What is Happening to the Non-Traditional Degree Programs?

2011-09-18T13:20:00.003-05:00

As a new academic year dawns with all the enthusiasm normally associated with such an event, unease is also felt on campus. Where did several academic programs go and what happened to them over the summer? Despite 15 of 17 faculty on two different university level committees established to review the matter and voting to retain the Economics program in some fashion, the major and minor degree programs in Economics at CSU have been terminated. What is surprising (maybe) is that there has been no written communication to the university community alerting the faculty and students to this fact nor the reasons behind it. As an occasional student of history, I am surprised that a degree program representing the area of expertise of a major university benefactor with significant political and scholarly distinction (a building is named for him on campus) who also had a profound influence on American life as a trained economist is effectively gone without a trace. I doubt the people who made the decision to eliminate the Economics program even know of whom I am speaking or the influence on critical economic programs created in the 1930's and desperately needed to be revived today. While a few students may continue on to finish their degree (to avoid the likely lawsuits), the Econ program cannot offer any more academic degrees to students who wish to complete a course of study in Economics. That the timing in American history is unusual goes without saying. That the importance to the affected CSU community goes without saying. That the institutional history and memory of some individuals at CSU is deficient goes without saying. But at least the proper committees were formed and I suppose there are some written communications of the decision at the administrative level even though this decision apparently doesn’t merit any more communication of a rationale to the broader university community (including students).

And so now we turn to the BOG… when did these programs become candidates for reorganization? It is my understanding that several non-traditional degree programs have been halted/reconfigured/changed without much discussion to the broader university community about the rationale behind such a move. These programs have been designed to serve the non-traditional student (which usually means returning adult student with work and/or life experience) and for someone who is older than the average undergraduate. This is also a strength of CSU’s mission; that is, that we focus on serving the needs of such students to a greater degree than other local four year baccalaureate degree granting institutions. Given our historical (and current) mission of serving such students, what happened to the program(s) over the summer? and were the faculty consulted? Is there a rationale? Have the appropriate committees been formed to examine the reasons and to find out if these really are in the best interest of the CSU community? Or if this decision is in alignment with our mission? Or whether the reasons are supported by any data?

Maybe I am wrong to have such unease at the start of the academic year. Certainly it must be the case that these decisions have been considered from all sides by the administration with all the avenues for saving key functions and retaining key personnel and institutional knowledge considered. It certainly could not be the case that these decisions were made hastily and only for the appearance of action over inaction. That is why written reasons and public forums to discuss these decisions are so important. It would seem to be the case that if the administration had been careful in making these decisions, then the data to support the decisions, transparency in the process, and clarity of the reasons for such decisions are not much to ask for.

Otherwise why else would we be asking as the Fall semester dawns, “What happened to the BOG?” and “Where is the Economics program when faculty voted to retain the program on probationary status?”

Timesheets and Faculty

2011-09-18T06:57:00.002-05:00

As other posters have highlighted, the time sheet proposal raises a number of questions. What will be the appropriate time threshold? Thirty-five hours per week? forty hours per week? More? What about time off between semesters? Will faculty be expected to report for work at the university? Given that our contracts run for nine months, will we be expected to work 53 hours per week during the semesters to offset our time off during December and January?

It seems like the impetus for this comes from the state auditor, who is attempting to address issues like overtime fraud by creating an audit trail that ensures that employees who are paid for overtime either actually worked the extra time or that the overtime was necessary. However, neither condition applies to faculty who are not paid overtime. Since faculty are not hourly workers expected to work an 8-5 day Monday through Friday, time sheet tracking of faculty work hours will ultimately be ineffective.

Likewise, time sheet tracking to identify which faculty are not meeting either their contractual or professional obligations will also fail. There are faculty who fit the description of "lazy" alluded to in the most recent post: they are not available during their scheduled "office hours," they do not participate in committee work, they do no research and teach poorly, and when called upon to perform administrative work, they do it badly, with the result that they are excused from such onerous tasks and the burden falls upon their colleagues. I would argue that the identities of these faculty are no secret. The fact that our administrators allow them to continue doing what are essentially substandard jobs is also no secret. Time sheets will be of no use for these persons as they will simply falsify their sheets.

Of course, the lack of understanding about faculty work loads is always a consideration. A typical week for a faculty member of Chicago State might look something like this: Classroom teaching--four courses, for twelve hours; class preparation for those four courses, sixteen to twenty-four hours depending on the class level; office hours, four to five hours. This totals thirty-two to forty-one hours and does not include time spent grading papers; time spent in committees; time spent doing administrative tasks like accreditation report preparation; or time spent doing research and/or writing (something that seems to be expected of persons with the Ph.D.).

Perhaps it would be useful for the state to actually convert us to hourly workers. In that case--using the example in the previous paragraph--in a typical week, the average faculty member would be paid between thirty-five and forty hours of straight time, then an additional fifteen to nineteen hours of overtime (based on an estimate of eighteen hours per week doing the ancillary tasks like grading papers, etc.) at time and one-half.

Faculty Time-sheets: Deprofessionalizing the Profession

2011-09-17T22:07:00.007-05:00

“Salaried work is not hourly work. Salaried workers are being paid for their output -- not face time.”

"The fact is, to require anyone who does not bill out time (like an attorney) and is salaried to fill out a time sheet is insulting to that person, implies they are not actually working (all of them), and devalues what work they actually perform."

“Administrators simply do not understand what academics do.”

A directive from the Auditor General that all state employees must submit time sheets is finding its way into the university system here in the state of ILL. The corporately-modeled university, beloved by many administrators who want to force uniformity over unity, may become a reality at CSU. Why not? Even the Chicago Sun Times lamented that "…higher education has been reduced from the pursuit of knowledge to mere job training." Faculty are mere "workers" to the Admins' "management." Politicians with no experience or understanding of the idea of a university control the boards of trustees and appoint our presidents. Administrators on campus make decisions and ask for faculty input later (if they ask at all). At CSU one does not have to dig too deeply to find the chasm between faculty and administrator or should I now say, workers and bosses?

At any rate, other schools in the world are doing the timesheet thing--in the U.K. they've been subjecting Faculty to it for a few years now--and faculty are coping with a nightmare situation for the humanities which our politicans can only envy. I suspect we will see it in a year or two. We're already dismantling CSU's College of Art and Sciences into a farcical community college, no surprise if eventually it ceases to exist altogether, morphed into some thing with an educationalese newspeak title. There is an element of an academic "eliminationist-exterminationist" approach going on--eliminate it from sight, then exterminate it (cf. the Goldhagen thesis). Apply same approach to the Grad School.

And it's not just the U.K. clamping down on faculty. Here's a little piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education from February 2011. Kean State University in New Jersey is trying on faculty time sheets. The comments to the little news blurb are worth reading.

I'd say that the nails in the coffin of public education are in place.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education February 15, 2011, 4:30 pm
Kean U. Requires Faculty Members to Fill Out Time SheetsAdministrators at Kean University, a state institution in New Jersey, have asked faculty members to fill out daily time sheets to ensure that they are putting in at least a 35-hour workweek. The time sheets have become another source of friction in the already-tense relationship between the faculty and the administration at Kean.

#1 It's not that anyone thinks that they are better people than those who work at McDonalds (no doubt some people do, but even they are not objecting on this reason). The point is that requiring faculty to fill out time sheets that demonstrate a minimum of 35 hours a week is assuming that most academics are lazy and/or trying to "beat the system" by not working a full work week. At any institution worth its salt, and many not worth their salt, you simply cannot survive by only working 35 hours (or even 40 hours) a week. Between class prep/grading, advising/office hours, teaching, and research it is a wonder anyone would have the time for that. If it is actually possible to survive in academe working 20hrs a week as you suggest, those workers will simply lie on their timesheets since they are already being professionally dishonest. Requiring timesheets is merely a way to suggest that academics are actually lazy and that doing this somehow corrects the problem. It is part of a larger attack on the academy in general

#2 Yes my experience has been that if you don't join committees, don't respond to e-mails, are never in your office, don't publish or present papers, and consistently don't have class the administration generally already has plenty of reason to terminate you. I have known people who have slacked off, and they haven't ever lasted more than 2 terms (at best). It's not even really that the timesheet is a hassle. The point is that, at its root, requesting faculty to fill out a time sheet is just insulting and devaluing of previous work. Those who are slacking off (if they do manage to stick around) will just find more creative ways to do that. You can have office hours where all you do is play on the computer. You can have class without any prior preparation, and you can show up to a meeting and just not pay attention or contribute anything. The fact is, to require anyone who does not bill out time (like an attorney) and is salaried to fill out a time sheet is insulting to that person, implies they are not actually working (all of them), and devalues what work they actually perform.

#3 People on salary typically do not fill out time cards because they don't receive additional compensation for additional hours worked (over 40). There are exceptions though -- e.g., for attorneys in private law firms who's work hours are billed to particular clients.
Salaried work is not hourly work. Salaried workers are being paid for their output -- not face time. If a faculty member is not getting his/her work done (teaching, scholarship, or service) -- regardless of how many hours the professor is at work -- this should be dealt with administratively, by an Academic Dean or Department Chair. Unless mandated by contract, even tenured faculty can be penalized through reductions in travel money, merit pay, etc.

#4 The timeservers and deadbeats will fill out such forms impeccably down to 3 significant figures. Those who actually put in 50 or 60 hrs per week on their work will be too busy to bother and will be harassed about their timesheets not being in order. A colleague of mine recently had one of those "professional development" wankfest interviews at Macquarie University in Australia. One committee member from admin did not know that you had to mark exam papers on weekends! Administrators simply do not understand what academics do.

#5 I'm tenured at a state research university. I would love to put in a mere 35 hour week. Does this mean the faculty at Kean get overtime for all those other hours, nights, weekends and all? You want professionals, who put in their time? Then you don't have them fill out time sheets as though they were on hourly salaries. You want time sheets? Then don't expect more than the required number of hours. And, um, don't expect faculty to want to work for you.

Seek wise counsel

2011-09-15T17:57:00.000-05:00

So when I hear about personnel changes on the academic side of the university, my ears always perk up. Whether it is the ill-conceived and inept reorganization of the College of Arts & Sciences, the double secret probation in the College of Education, the micro-managing selection of the English Department Chairperson, the elimination of the Graduate College and its Dean, or the hiring and then non-hiring of the Nursing Department Chairperson, it seems that the regime is managing like a decapitated chicken, stumbling in all directions with no sense of what is best for a university rapidly approaching accreditation.
The Nursing Department situation is very interesting. Apparently the former chair was not retained by the normal June 30th deadline of contract renewal. The CEO recruited and was prepared to hire a nursing administrator from another local, public institution until said administrator saw more negative press about CSU and opted not to take the position. With no one willing to assume the duties and responsibilities of the chair, a non-academic administrator was placed in the role some months later. There are some problems with this.
First, internally, having someone with no experience in academic administration does the faculty and the department a dis-service especially in the area of personnel matters. If your humble narrator were a faculty member in that department I would have grave concerns about the ability to be properly and competently evaluated by someone who has not worked with the collective bargaining agreement at this institution or supervised faculty. If, for example, the interim chair were to pass someone along with an positive recommendation who didn’t deserve it and that faculty member was denied retention, promotion or tenure later, she could be placing others at undue risk because of her inexperience administering the faculty contract. If she provides some negative report about a faculty member during the personnel process that is unjustified it creates the same sort of problem. Placing an inexperienced non-faculty member in a position of supervision of faculty could create a situation with significant unintended consequences. Managing a nursing unit at a hospital or similar locale is very different from an academic institution. I would have hoped that wise counsel was sought before this decision was made and yet it feels like yet another decision was made in desperation by a directionless CEO.
Secondly, the accreditation of the Nursing Department was placed at risk because there was no chairperson and one of the conditions for their continued accreditation is no gap in departmental leadership. If the Nursing Department’s accrediting body, the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission, Inc (NLNAC), wished to make an example of an institution by withdrawing accreditation because of administrative incompetence, this regime gave them more than enough justification to do so. An examination of the NLNAC Standards and Criteria Baccalaureate indicates the university could have been out of compliance with the 2008 Standards. Standard 1.5 of the NLNAC Accreditation Manual states “ The nursing education unit is administered by a doctorally prepared nurse.” If no one was serving in that capacity, it could place the department out of compliance. Additionally, Standard 1.2 states “The governing organization and nursing education unit ensure representation of students, faculty, and administrators in ongoing governance activities.” That sure sounds like shared governance language to me and indicates an expectation on the NLNAC’s part that shared governance will be practiced. Without notification to even the Dean of the College of Health Sciences of the change in department chair, faculty were obviously not given a vote, even advisory, on the selection of an interim chair. This loyal readers, provides yet another example of the administration’s refusal to honor basic principles of shared governance.
The question is what becomes of our students who just took the last state examination and those who will take the next state examination as to whether they will be licensed or not since they would be coming from a potentially unaccredited program.
I suppose this is what the university gets when a non-academic administrator and by that I mean one who was never a tenured faculty member, college dean, or provost and one who has never published in a peer reviewed journal, is given license to manage this institution.
I am curious if the Board of Trustees is even aware of the impending self-inflicted wounds the university could suffer. And if they aren’t we really are in trouble.

It's been a year and all I got....

2011-09-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

So where does one begin when a situation has deteriorated to such a degree that discussion is all but useless. The university given the tagline “Failure Is An Option”, by the local paper of record, continues its steep descent into an uncertain future. One thing that is clear about that descent however is that unless tenured faculty speak decisively, the “Failure” will be the responsibility of the faculty because of their reticence during the descent. It took more than a year of fits and starts with the administration to negotiate a contract that provides for nominal pay increases, no shared governance language and no accountability for an administration that routinely demonstrates its ineptness in adhering to the provisions of the contract. I can imagine the T-shirt saying “I waited more than a year for a contract and all I got was...”
For your consideration I present the following. Five faculty who submitted materials for Fourth Year Retention were denied retention by the President after going through a rigorous quality control process. Only when their materials reached the CEO’s office was a problem detected. And no loyal readers, it wasn’t a problem of adequacy on the part of the faculty members. It was a problem with imaginary provisions of their Departmental Application of Criteria. Yes, at least one of those faculty members is on record for challenging the administration for applying criteria that didn’t exist. This does not bode well for implementation of the new contract. Historically, (the past 15 years) some administrators involved in the personnel process have inexplicably lost their ability to comprehend the provisions of the contract. I believe that condition is reinforced when there is no consequence to change that behavior. So what we end up with are administrators who don’t adhere to the contract and create both a hardship for individual faculty members and a depressed state of morale among the faculty generally. If demoralizing faculty through inept management, ill-conceived ideas, inane execution and general incompetence is the goal of this administration then as the British say, they receive full marks. And if the governing body of this university supports the continued management by ADD, then their complicity in creating a legacy of failure will be inescapable as well.
At the end of the day, I believe the only thing I can take to sleep with me is my integrity intact, un-compromised, inviolate. And so here I have a professional responsibility to cast my single vote for or against contract ratification. I could, given the secret ballot, just go along and support the hard, tedious work of the union negotiators. Or I could question my conscience and ask is this the best that could be done. It has been a year. What difference would a few more months make, if it provides some protections to an unappreciated faculty and accountability to an inept administration?
So at the end of the day I decide to sleep soundly knowing that I wasn’t complicit in ratifying a contract that was so clearly against my professional interests and a document that perpetuates the mismanagement of an institution perceived to be a “Failure.” My integrity won’t let me willingly and knowingly contribute to failure. Will yours?

New Contract--more questions

2011-09-13T08:16:00.003-05:00

A colleague in one of the sciences offers some concerns for consideration. I am posting them here. Many people have said they cannot attend the meeting today and still want to ask substantive questions about the contract.

I will add one more question of my own. After more than a year, is it necessary to rush this contract through by this week in time for the Board of Trustees meeting next week? If people still have questions, at this point, what is the rush?

My colleague's questions--note the last paragraph.

1) Clinical Faculty. We are told that this only applies to the folks in Pharmacy, but this new title is NOT Clinical Pharmacy Professional. Several colleges include faculty who are involved in clinical education. Nursing, OT, Education, Social Work etc. all include clinical education, but this new category of clinical faculty who have all of the requirements of teaching faculty and no tenure was developed based only on the needs of Pharmacy. The current version of the contract also includes a reference to "external clinical faculty" but the document does not define this term.

2) Clinical, Teaching and Research Faculty. These titles are also used in the document defining different types of graduate faculty in the policy of the graduate school. So will we now have faculty who are research faculty according to the graduate school but teaching faculty according to the contract?? The folks who wrote this contract seem unaware of the new graduate faculty designations.

3) In many accredited professional programs accreditation requires that instructors only teach within areas that they have documented expertise. This leads to a need to have team teaching in some courses. According to the current contract, you get an extra CUE for team teaching if you work in the nursing department, but not in any other department. This seems very odd.

4) We have clarified that faculty get an .5 CUEs for working with MASTERs level thesis students so that this is not confused with the required undergraduate thesis. But I did not see any provision to provide extra CEUs for classes that will now include an undergraduate thesis. Several composition courses include extra CEUs because of the added work of grading several student papers. Are we not expecting that the requirement for an undergraduate thesis will create more work?

5) Considering the rate at which quality faculty are leaving and the rate at which the administration is denying tenure, I think allowing them to force us to teach well beyond 24 CUEs will encourage CSU to hire fewer faculty and to overwork those of us who stay. The rates for overload will certainly make this a cost effective alternative to hiring.

6) The requirements for a terminal degree in OT were changed so that only three specific degrees will be accepted. This change was NOT marked in red. This makes me wonder what else was changed without notice. '

I could go on and on. But in summary, I don't believe that this contract provides the support that CSU faculty need to promote the educational goals of this University.

New Contract--time for discussion?

2011-09-12T12:11:00.008-05:00

At the UPI meeting on Tuesday there was little time for discussion and questions about the contract so there will be another meeting in SCI 100 at 12.30 p.m. There was supposed to be blog or listserve open last week for people to post questions about the contract if they could not attend the meeting, but that does not seem to be working.

Since UPI wants votes in by Sept. 15th it is imperative that members understand the new contract which is coming at a point when the sands are shifting at CSU. Does the contract negotiated over the last year take into account all the changes that are being wrought for instance by the Admin in reorganizing the College of Arts and Sciences or in dismantling the College of Graduate Studies? These are some questions that I have had and I would encourage others of the faculty to voice their concerns --better yet vote in favor if you think the contract will protect us during this period of chaos and disorganization or vote no if you don't think so.

And feel free to post a thread here anonymously if you like though I know many people are afraid to voice their real points of view in the retaliatory climate we have on campus.

My questions and comments to the UPI Contract Team:

Thanks for negotiating the raise, assuming the Gov. doesn't make us take furlough days to offset it, it's nice to have some hope.

1. Has the university Admin breached the existing contract by drastically reorganizing the College of Arts and Sciences this summer without consultation and discussion in the Faculty Senate?

2. What is now meant by "department" in this new configuration of the CAS and who is in charge of overseeing it if chairs are reduced to division heads? Is this reflected in the new contract? Since the Admin does not know yet or has not yet revealed how division heads or coordinators will be organized, how can these be covered in the new contract? It seems like the contract UPI negotiated is for a different place than one that will exist in a few months time.

3. The Administration got their foot in the door of a post-tenure review process that could eliminate tenured faculty in the new contract (not that I necessarily disapprove of the language per se that is there), but what did faculty get in return for this?

4. With the closing of the Graduate College, how, in the name of heaven, will "departments" be able to handle all the paperwork of the admission and graduation process since the role of Grad Coordinator has been reduced to being that of Grad Advisor and the whole extra cue process is connected to how many students attend your program, not how many submit applications? How are "departments" with no chairs or with mere Graduate "Advisors" supposed to pick up this work which will involve a lot of tedious correspondence and parry questions on financial aid, Veteran's benefits, calculate gpa's from God knows how many programs that a student attended, and a myriad of other details ALL of this WITHOUT proper secretarial aid or even functional computer printers in our offices? We have been told in no uncertain terms by Ms Ce Cole Dillon that there will be no new printers bought for faculty just as there is no upgrading of the smart classrooms planned. I have to beg for any office supplies I get. We currently have one "department" secretary who works for 6 disciplines.

5. Why is the word "consultation" with faculty used so infrequently in the new contract?

Please advise.
To all: does the new contract really secure us?

While Rome is Burning...

2011-09-09T08:55:00.005-05:00

One year before Chicago State Community College and the City College Re-employment Center is to face a full accreditation visit we have

->fired a long-standing Dean of Arts & Sciences who had more university knowledge than all the people on the top floor of Cook Administration put together, had been through at least two previous accreditation visits, was chairing an accreditation committee, was on the HLC steering committee, and had connections to IBHE and HLC

->decided to reorganize the College of Arts and Sciences to reflect our CEO's understanding of higher education as a community college (a fear expressed at the time of the trumped up search that "hired" said CEO); CAS was reorganized in the summer and will face yet another disorganization in January. Try explaining this to students who were wandering around campus in August wondering what happened to their department chairs & department offices in search of signatures since no memos went out to them or faculty describing, let alone explaining, the rationale for the changes (Puh-leeze don't say it is to save money since we are bleeding money at the top in hiring every new VP and/or former City College friend of our CEO).

->decided to shut down the College of Graduate Studies--this is the latest news. Aside from the University of Chicago and some universities of that ilk, do you know any school that offers graduate programs and does not have a School of Graduate Studies? So all those curriculum mandates the CEO and Provost made last year to require a thesis are meaningless. Who is going to enforce that departments do this since the administrative work is devolving onto the departments? Who is going to oversee that departments are following procedures, that theses are being written, that they are being collected, bound, etc. Who is going to oversee the calculation of grad credits--the Admissions Office? the Registrar's Office? Since undergrad enrollment is so low, maybe they do need extra work to do. Or, is the dismantling of the Grad College a step toward eliminating all disciplinary M.A. programs? Or is it another step in completing our march to true community college status?

->shut down the Economics Department and this year bring many many more programs up for program review (God help that committee). Faculty might want to check to see whether they are on "the list."

->no campus newspaper, no mechanism for the Administration to get its message out to the faculty and students (assuming they are not simply on some nihilistic course) about what the heck kind of direction this university is going. It leaves mere mortals like us to speculate in office corridors and on this sad little blogsite.

One year before accreditation I am wondering what we will say to those accreditation officers since it seems like we are careening out of control. If there is some method behind this madness--if the CEO already knows that the Gov/Trustees have decided to close us down/sell us off/merge us with UIC please advise. Otherwise it looks like a lot of fiddling while the house is on fire.

New Contract

2011-09-06T21:35:00.005-05:00

The new contract has been hammered out and sent round by email for discussion and approval over the next few weeks. On Thursday there will be a meeting of the Union Membership to discuss the contract. Plan to attend on Thursday, Sept. 8th in Wm Science 100.

Considering the Administration's mandating of curriculum changes that we faculty have been pushed to accept (and let ourselves be pushed into accepting), considering the failure of the Administration in consultation over college reorganization, following the same pattern of act first and ask for input later, considering the dispensing of required terminal degrees for hiring at the Dean and VP levels, considering the lack of a faculty representation on the Board of Trustees, this contract is one way to ensure your rights on campus. Does it reflect a notion of faculty purview over curriculum matters? Faculty should note the post-tenure review changes that the Admin wanted in spite of the limits on support for faculty research on campus (other than for pedagogy projects)--two years of no sabbatical approvals. Did we get something in return? For the next five years, do we remain "advisory only?"

Find out on Thursday.

Weds & Thurs Students Speak Up

2011-08-30T21:30:00.003-05:00

ATTENTION: CONCERNED STUDENTS
COME SPEAK YOUR MINDThere are many problems that affect students, teachers, and campus workers at Chicago State. We need to do more to address them. Students (and others) who would like to become active from a social justice perspective should assemble
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31 AT 12 NOON
OR
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1 AT 12:30
WILLIAMS SCIENCE CENTER 1F CONFERENCE ROOM (1F LEVEL, WEST SIDE)Topics of interest for concerned students may include, but aren't limited to:

• Bookstore policy of not allowing students to select their own books
• U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adequate services for veterans
• Need for a student newspaper
• Automatic billing of $500 for health services
• Health care cuts in the Chicago area, closing of Oak Forest Hospital; service cuts at Provident, Stroger, and health clinics

• Police abuse, “consent” searches on the street and in cars, support for prisoners
• Student-centered radio station addressing student issues
• Problems receiving good service from financial aid office
• Cuts to state aid to elderly for prescriptions and health care
• ANY OTHER ISSUES AFFECTING US

This announcement has been prepared by those who wish to encourage more students to stand up for social justice. For information contact Pancho McFarland, x2333

What's in a name?

2011-08-25T21:25:00.017-05:00

A year ago, as the semester was ending, an administrator told me that when we faculty returned from the summer CSU would be a very different place. Well, that prediction was a year late.

Just before summer began this year @14 junior faculty members across campus in their fourth year retention, found out they were not going to be retained. Since faculty don't hire, deans do, (remember we faculty only "recommend," we are "advisory only" and God help you if you attempt to send a ranking of candidates to your dean, the Deans' prerogative to hire is sacrosanct) then if this isn't a big old administrative failure I don't know what is. In an age when it is a buyer's market for Ph.D.s how could our Deans have hired 14 people who were so completely un-retainable? Maybe that sacrosanct right to hire needs to be reevaluated at contract negotiations. Or, is it that something else is going on masked as cost-cutting measures, get rid of anyone who is potentially a pesky overpaid tenured faculty member? UPI take note.

But faculty were not the only ones to be cut this summer. One year before accreditation, CSU Admin fired its long-standing dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Rachel Lindsey was swept out of office sometime in June--officially she has "retired," but rumors, as they are want to do, abound.

We in the College of Arts and Science then heard that there was to be a massive reorganization of the college departments--ostensibly to save money. All those departments with their money-sucking chairs would be cut down this fall to the confusion of faculty and students who have been wandering around wondering what happened to their dept chair. By January 2012 we are expected to attain our final status as Chicago State Community College with people attached to "divisions"--no info has been forthcoming on how the division head would manage all those former departments and people. All this has been mandated with no consultation of the Senate's Academic Affairs Committee. And isn't there something in the union contract about the need to consult regarding university reorganization? One more ding to the Admin on the failure of shared governance. We are back in Alice's Wonderland: mandate first, then consult those advisory-only faculty later.

So the College of Arts and Sciences is turned into a community college, but where is the savings in money at the university when new lines for administrators are being created over at Cook Admin at the same time? Oh, right. The demise of the departments allows the creation of new Administrators. Got it. As one faculty member said, the CSU Commencement ceremonies in May looked like a reunion of Chicago City College administrators. And another of my more cynical colleagues has been referring to CSU's "City Colleges Reemployment Program" instituted by our ex-Chancellor of City Colleges.

And just to add to this summer melange of mandates and counter-mandates, out comes the Chicago Tribune with the gloves off. We are again on the front page and subject of an editorial and cartoon (that one really hurt)for keeping students with low gpa's enrolled (and I guess able to get financial aid). Of course the CEO was shocked, shocked to find out that this was going on, this practice didn't start with him, he's only been here for 2 years going on three, so no one should blame him for this, that would be unfair because after all he didn't know anything about it.

In the summer, CSU changed its mission and vision and is touting some kind of new "brand." Having lived through the time of the Noel Levitz consultantcy back in the day (does anyone today remember that brand?), I'm wondering if the time isn't right for a name change. The "C" now most certainly stands for Chaos.

If you are as disaffected by all the chaos on campus, let your Senators and UPI reps know. Attend the Board of Trustees meeting coming up in September and let them know how you feel during the public comment section. It may not change anything immediately, but the discontent will go on record. Better yet, join with some students who are trying to organize a meeting to develop a student group to become active concerning campus issues/problems as well as other issues. See the poster below and pass along the info to your students.

ATTENTION: CONCERNED STUDENTS
COME SPEAK YOUR MINDThere are many problems that affect students, teachers, and campus workers at Chicago State. We need to do more to address them. Students (and others) who would like to become active from a social justice perspective should assemble
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31 AT 12 NOON
OR
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1 AT 12:30WILLIAMS SCIENCE CENTER 1F CONFERENCE ROOM (1F LEVEL, WEST SIDE)
Topics of interest for concerned students may include, but aren't limited to:

• Bookstore policy of not allowing students to select their own books
• U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adequate services for veterans
• Need for a student newspaper
• Automatic billing of $500 for health services
• Health care cuts in the Chicago area, closing of Oak Forest Hospital; service cuts at Provident, Stroger, and health clinics

• Police abuse, “consent” searches on the street and in cars, support for prisoners
• Student-centered radio station addressing student issues
• Problems receiving good service from financial aid office
• Cuts to state aid to elderly for prescriptions and health care
• ANY OTHER ISSUES AFFECTING US

This announcement has been prepared by those who wish to encourage more students to stand up for social justice. For information contact Pancho McFarland, x2333

CJC&FE

2011-07-05T13:44:00.004-05:00

So if the conventional wisdom in the academy is that a university reflects its faculty, what has become of CSU faculty? A bit more than two years ago, some faculty expressed concern that the applicant selected by the Board of Trustees to manage the university was not qualified to become president of this institution. He was (is) limited in his understanding of the function, operation and culture of doctoral degree granting institutions. There was concern voiced that CSU was to be turned into a junior college, possibly the new flag ship of the Chicago junior college system, unfortunately the same system that had a 7% graduation rate while being managed by the Board’s candidate. “No,” others protested. Your humble narrator was berated for being a naysayer, a Chicken Little if you will. I was accused of being an “obstacle to progress.” And now two years on, (at least according to a 50 page report from the State University Retirement System) many of us have pretty clear evidence of the inexorable descent from doctoral degree granting institution to junior college serving unprepared, sorry under-prepared, students. The recent top down reorganization of the College of Arts & Sciences and subsequent firing of the long serving dean of the university’s largest college attest to the fact that this regime has only one goal in mind, devolution to a junior college. The recent rejiggering of the CAS was only phase one with phase two coming next year in time for the much anticipated Higher Learning Commission re-accreditation visit. Reducing the number of chairs from 15 to 4 and moving from departments to divisions is clearly a 1980s junior college model. It is not surprising therefore, since the only experience the incumbent has is in a junior college system. It appears as if the CEO is betting that most people will mistake activity for accomplishment. Change for the sake of change, change for the sake of managing by fear and intimidation, change for the purpose of obfuscation are never good reasons for change.
I was struck by the recent memo announcing the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was leaving the university after 35 years. It is possible to infer from the wording of the memo that her departure was expected and voluntary. It was curious to me therefore, when the CEO and Provost were noticeably absent at the going away luncheon hosted in the college on Thursday June 30th. Had her departure been amicable and expected, I am sure the two most senior administrators along with lesser administrators would have wished her well in her post-dean and post university life. I was very struck by this decision being announced during the summer when administrations are notorious for making decisions without any input from faculty who largely are absent from campus. This behavior was the motivation for the Faculty Senate to form the Summer Committee so that shared governance would not be forgotten by administrators during the summer months.
Also curious was the recent elimination of the Economics department and its major and minor programs. One could conclude that junior colleges don’t need Economics so its elimination is understandable as the university's devolution continues. What isn’t understandable is continuing to operate an Ed.D. program or a College of Pharmacy. Those are expensive programs and definitely unneeded in a community college like this university is becoming. I would invite the regime to consider eliminating those two programs which would save at least ten times what is saved by eliminating Economics. And then as CSU focuses on its entrepreneurship mission and selling fish (without Economics?) other programs can benefit from the elimination of those money eating doctoral programs.
Maybe a name change will be in the offing as well. Moving from Chicago State University to Chicago Junior College & Fish Emporium could well be nigh.

New ideas???

2011-05-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

So it would probably be hyperbolic to describe the university’s inexorable march toward becoming a junior college as the educational equivalent of the Bataan Death March of World War II. During that event more than 11,000 Filipino and American military personnel lost their lives. But, the current period in the university’s history seems similar in that the university is being driven in a direction of inevitable failure by leadership that does not grasp the significance of the collateral damage it is inflicting by its continued mismanagement. The latest torture the university endures is two-fold.

First, CSU will become a drop-in center for students from Moraine Valley Community College with our or their students taking classes at CSU taught by MVCC faculty. The reasoning for this escapes me. If it is designed to circumvent some first-time, full-time freshman designation for students admitted to CSU who are “under-prepared,” it probably should have been managed a bit more opaquely so as not to attract attention to the fact the regime is trying to circumvent the rules established by the US Department of Education. Also, given that faculty are routinely told that there is limited classroom space, especially for night classes, when would these classes be scheduled and what CSU faculty would be displaced? This professionally unhealthy connection to junior colleges is disturbing. The more we act like a juco, the harder it will be to be taken seriously as a doctoral degree granting institution.

The second scheme is much more disingenuous. In it, students enrolled for more than twelve semesters who are not graduating are to be contacted and encouraged to change majors to an Individualized Curriculum in order to graduate, and the university will foot the bill for them to come back and complete the last semester in the original degree program to which they had enrolled. I must say that if this is the way the regime plans to fulfill the promises of the testimony given by the CEO on March 17^th to the Illinois House Appropriations Higher Education committee, then I am extremely dubious. This type of academic shenanigan is more likely to create an accreditation stir than the march toward becoming a junior college. It also does not consider the reasons for the student not having completed a degree in 12 semesters. The impact on students has not been considered. What message does it send to students to tell them to accommodate the university when the university may not have accommodated them? Given the reported difficulties of ‘under-prepared’, working students, I would have thought the efforts would have been directed to assisting students not finding ways to cheat the system.

I believe this scheme compromises the greatest asset of the university, its academic reputation. Of all of the negative publicity CSU has received in the past 15 years, its academic performance and reputation have not been directly threatened. Students and alumni continue to speak favorably of the academic experience they received. This scheme is a direct assault on the faculty of this institution. Matters that affect the academic integrity of the institution must be discussed and decided upon by the faculty. Most universities have language on the diploma that states faculty grant the degree, not administrators with their inane ideas for gaming the system. And with the reputation of the institution remaining in tatters under management, indistinguishable from the Daniel Administration, this appears to be another series of self-inflicted wounds that will no doubt be blamed on “the white media” who will not give a poorly managed institution a pass on its worse than mediocre administrative performance.

Here’s a suggestion. Raise admission standards, eliminate all remedial courses, do not offer special programs during the summer to compensate for sub-standard K-12 education, and recruit high quality students from outside of the city of Chicago and State of Illinois. CSU will not be recognized as a high quality doctoral degree granting university until it has leadership that understands it is not the local high school.

OD Experts Anyone???

2011-05-10T13:21:00.001-05:00

So I was talking to one of my colleagues about the state of the university and posed a question about the efficacy having psychologists with expertise in organizational behavior conduct an assessment of the institution, much like a therapist assesses a patient. I remember from graduate school my Organization Theory professor telling us that organizations are just people writ large. I also recall commenting to a past president that if she wanted to leave a real legacy at the university, she would need to change the corporate culture of the institution, essentially do something to modify its behavior. It appears that presidents come to CSU with expectations of constructing new buildings with little regard for changes to the core of the university. What might a year-long observation and analysis by OD experts of Chicago State University reveal? Would the experts observe that communication is poor? Might they discover there is no culture of accountability? Might they observe that leadership has been negligible? Might they find there is no morale problem with rank and file employees because there is no morale? Might they find a faculty that believes it has been neglected, ignored and overlooked in matters that are central to the sound operation of a university? Might they observe a culture of administrative paternalism that routinely contributes to low retention and graduation rates? Might the high turnover of administrative personnel catch the attention of observers? And if only a fraction of these observations were true, what would they recommend the university do to address them? I don’t think we would need a team of experts to assess the university AND at this point in its downward spiral, could that hurt? Since incoming administrations have a peculiar predilection of not listening to faculty, outside experts might be the only hope of rescuing a drowning university.

The under message

2011-05-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

So I realize that human communications is a complicated phenomenon. There are the words that are spoken, the words that are unspoken, the gestures made and withheld and the messages over and under the words. I am curious why over the past three days, I received 50 emails about the Drug and Alcohol Policy at the university. I understand this is the response to an audit finding that the university was not in compliance with Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 (41 U.S.C., Section 701, et.seq.) and the Drug-Free Schools Act of 1989 (34 C.F.R. 86, et seq.). I also understand that creating the paper trail may have required sending an email and a written memo to all faculty and staff but 50 emails. It gives me pause to ask why the massive over-reaction to a fairly straightforward requirement. Does the university get bonus points on the next audit for sending out 50 emails? Probably not. And the message under this response is the regime will generate a great deal of activity with little accomplishment. Discerning observers never mistake activity for accomplishment and I consider myself a discerning observer.

Musical Deck Chairs

2011-04-27T21:08:00.003-05:00

So I mentioned in an earlier post that the Titanic deck chair reorganizing continues unabated at CSU. Most recently the College of Arts and Sciences became the latest beneficiary of guidance from on high. Apparently the university has been informed that it has too many administrators and that it needs to reduce the number forthwith. This is curious because one might think this is somehow related to a constrained state budget or maybe ineffectiveness of the previous “right sizing” efforts. Maybe the university is spending too much on administrators and reducing their numbers will save the university money which could be used for any number of other purposes. Sadly, no. This reorganizing will not save any money, combine like disciplines to improve scholarship, reduce workloads to allow focus on core activities nor will the university become more efficient or streamlined. The only benefit will be that the Illinois Board of Higher Education can tell the state legislature that the number of administrators has been reduced and that the higher education machine is now running more efficiently because everybody knows that administrators don’t contribute anything to a university’s function. However, it would have been helpful to inform the discussion to have something in writing, outlining 1) what problem is being solved by reorganizing, 2) what data supports the construction of that problem as a problem 3) what outcomes are being sought to establish that the problem has been solved and 4) what resources will be made available to mitigate the unforeseen consequences of this solution.
Well run institutions use the written word to communicate messages. Regimes past and present at this institution has been reluctant to communicate clearly in writing about what is expected so I am not surprised when the desired outcomes are not achieved.
Faculty and administration should have a productively adversarial relationship because they serve different purposes. However, in this case it is administrators as a class who are being unfairly targeted. Yet it appears to be partially self inflicted. During the past regime in an attempt to weaken the Civil Service and the Union, many employees were reclassified as administrators though clearly they weren’t. Now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Instead of focusing on weakening the union or Civil Service good leadership looks into the future and asks itself about possible repercussions of its actions.
So here the university is reorganizing the Colleges of Arts and Sciences to eliminate three department chairs. Lumping English, Communications, Media Arts and Theater with Foreign Languages and Literatures doesn’t make much sense seeing as it was done before and failed. Why then would the university repeat something that has failed? Oh wait, I forgot. This isn’t about whether the university looks or acts like a university; it is about something else.
So instead of aligning Art & Design with Music because they are both humanities or History and Philosophy with African American Studies because AFAM has only one faculty member and the program is always ‘at-risk’, let’s be more creative. Let’s reorganize the departments alphabetically. There are currently twenty four departments, degrees or programs in the college. If there were no more than four in each unit, African-American Studies, Anthropology, Art and Design and Biological Sciences would form one department. A second department would be Chemistry, Communications, Computer Science and Criminal Justice. The third department would be composed of Economics, English, Foreign Languages and Literatures and Geography. The fourth department would be comprised of History, Liberal Studies, Mathematics and Media Arts. Music, Philosophy, Physics, and Political Science would form the fifth department. And rounding out the half dozen A-Z departments would be Psychology, Sociology, Theater and Women & Gender Studies. Since disciplinary affiliation has no import here using a numerically symmetrical approach is as valid an approach as any.
Or the college could be aligned by size. There could be one or two huge departments with the bulk of students or faculty and there could be a smaller department with no degree programs like Philosophy, Anthropology, Theater, and Communications.
A third option is to have the departments be randomly distributed through a lottery process with a pre-determined department size of no more than five disciplines per department.
Maybe a musical chair rotating department structure would work. So divide the faculty in the College into five groups. Create five departments, A-E. In year one all of the #1 faculty are in Department A. The next year they rotate to Department B. That way the university can tell its political masters that it is changing things and nothing is the same as it was. That way we can look innovative and distract them from any of the institutions other shortcomings like repeat audit findings.
All of the foregoing suggestions are based on the premise that the administration is unwilling to manage the university as a university and is only interested in maintaining its dysfunctional administrative structure and behavior. Since reorganizing isn’t based on cost savings, organizational efficiency or disciplinary improvement why not try something different.
The administration could look at how the university got to this point and adjust accordingly. If there are employees classified as administrators who shouldn’t be, RECLASSIFY them. If there are that many who can be reclassified, then I imagine that tinkering with the academic side of the university would be unnecessary. The regime could request in writing from the IBHE exactly what they want, create the paper trail and provide transparency. The continued use of ‘oral tradition’ style communication is inappropriate for public bodies. Once the request is received, then the university has something to respond to. Currently it is a shot in the dark with no real target in sight. And then in a bold move the regime could dispute the conclusion that the institution has too many administrators and challenge the IBHE to justify its conclusions. With a thoughtful analysis the regime may be able to refute the conclusion of the IBHE of too many administrators and turn the request back.
I am deeply concerned at unneeded chaos in academic affairs. Most of the criticism this university receives and has received historically has nothing to do with the academic performance of our students or professional accomplishment of the faculty. That would include the graduation rate criticism as well. The criticism has centered around administrative incompetence and it feels like here we go again. The university has demonstrated repeatedly over the past two decades that it does not manage its resources well and this is just another example. The resource here is time. The dean and department chairs have invested countless hours in an endeavor that does nothing to improve the academic activities of the university. The faculty, students, and alumni of this university suffer collateral damage from administrations that either have no experience managing a university, do not appreciate the core activity of the university or are unwilling to fight to protect the integrity of the university by telling its masters they are wrong. The expression ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’ applies to institutions as well as individuals.

Where has my data gone???

2011-04-17T18:04:00.002-05:00

So as a long time observer of our administrations, Board of Trustees and the general operation of the university, I was dismayed by a comment made by the CEO at the last BOT meeting; namely that the university has relinquished through attrition its Institutional Research function to another state university. With the former Vice President retired, the Associate Vice President departed and the department administrative assistant re-assigned, the university has sought outside assistance in fulfilling a critical and often overlooked activity. As of the last BOT meeting, Southern Illinois University is now providing the Institutional Research support that the university had provided for itself since 1996. So what’s the big deal you might ask. The university has various reporting responsibilities. We send mandatory reports to the US Department of Education, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), the Higher Learning Commission, the National Collegiate Athletics Association, the various public and private grant awarding agencies and organizations, and various academic accrediting bodies. Institutional Research also supports internal activities like program evaluation. Every academic program conducts a periodic evaluation. One of the elements of that process is provided by IR. For example, numbers of majors, numbers of degrees granted, number of minors, number of credit hours etc. Without that data the program evaluation can’t be conducted. Thus when the IBHE requests evaluations of university programs, the university can only tell them it’s waiting on the data that it had been able to provide for itself since 1996 and is no longer able to provide. Institutional research is an area that provides not just data, but methodologically rigorous analysis of the data that is collected by various offices and departments on campus. Those who know little about research design and data analysis might believe IR is only about querying some mystical cloud database. It actually is a bit more than that as many faculty can attest given their decades of research experience.

So imagine my surprise, given all of the corporate speak of the current administration, that the university had gone to what can only be considered a competitor institution to prepare reports that this institution is responsible for. This exposes the soft data based underbelly of the institution in this way. There is no guarantee that every flaw, defect, imperfection, strength, and asset will not be transferred to an institution that competes for the same state resources. I simply cannot envision IBM turning over a critical function to Apple because it allowed that function to wither. It begs three questions. Did the administration appreciate the importance of the institutional research function? Second, what sort of leadership was exhibited in allowing the department to disintegrate through attrition? Finally, why weren't faculty, especially those who teach research methods and/or statistics, asked to assist the university in a time of need? I am sure those who have years of experience working with data sets, conducting data analysis and teaching students about these topics could make a vital contribution and protect the data integrity of the institution. This is troubling not just in the short term but in the long term institutional exposure given a competitor now has unfettered access to the university’s data. One might imagine such an institution cherry picking the university’s best students or seeking out other valuable assets and making a tenuous situation more untenable.
Or I could be completely wrong about this and it is all normal and part of an as of yet undisclosed process of re-engineering the university into something other than a university.

A different path???

2011-04-16T14:57:00.002-05:00

So the inexorable march toward becoming a junior college continues. The pending reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences appears to be providing evidence that the regime wants less of a university and more of a two year institution. Instead of making the bold move of creating two divisions, Humanities and Social Sciences, the College is shuffling departments or parts of departments into other departments. The first question I would ask is what problem is this solution addressing. If this move is being made only for financial reasons, I would challenge the administration to remember what the core function of a university is. If this is just about teaching students, like at a junior college, then it makes perfect sense to lump programs with little disciplinary affinity together. This bottom line of course satisfies administrators who seek fairness in the distribution of cuts not recognizing that administration only exists to support the core function of the institution. I realize administrators don’t like hearing this but they can’t do my job. I can do theirs. Parity or professional equity in terms of importance doesn’t exist. That hard truth plays out in the shadowy ways many administrators attempt to exert their authority. I have long since tired of hearing how hard and how long the recently added highly paid support personnel have been working to clean up the mess left by their predecessors. It is in these moments that I realize these new administrators lack the corporate memory of long serving faculty and thus fail to realize these words have echoed through the campus before. It was under the prior administration that new administrators came onto campus promising to clean up the mess of the prior regime. Now 12 years on, the newest additions to the administrative support ranks parrot the same words and frankly, those words ring hollow. For all of the bluster of the CIO, our technological infrastructure is virtually unchanged. Deck chairs have been rearranged and tasks from now defunct offices taken over by ITD with little productive effect. The audit report and its fallout are indicative of continuing administrative failure. The normal creative tension between administration and faculty has degenerated into low intensity conflict. I suspect most faculty who pay attention to such things would say they have no confidence in the regime to effect the change necessary to keep the university out of receivership or at worst off the auction block. And I would imagine that most administrators realize that faculty have little or no confidence in their capacity to right the ship. Let me provide a recent example. When President Daniel was here, around 2001 or 2002, I spoke to the VP for Finance and suggested the university partner with a couple of banks to provide accounts and debit cards for students. This would give many of our students an opportunity to have a bank account, learn the responsibilities of personal finance and have direct deposit of their financial aid reimbursement. Of course, the past administration couldn’t deliver on this fairly simple idea from a lowly faculty member. Now, 9 or 10 years later, there is the Cougar Card. There are a couple of problems with this system though. First, students weren’t consulted on this project in any substantive way. The paternalistic hubris of this is clear to me. It follows in a long tradition of administrators thinking they act “in loco parentis” when dealing with adult students. Second, there is no option to decline participation. This runs counter to how mature organizations function. And now the newest administrators wonder why our retention is so low? Here’s a clue. Stop treating adults like children. Treat adults like adults. Check the inflated egos at the door and collaborate (good faith shared governance, not symbolic gestures) with those who hold the corporate memory of the institution in order to inform your decision making. Surrender your need to be in charge and lord over faculty. Be the administrators that high functioning universities employ and break with the shameful tradition of administration at this institution, the tradition that has damaged and continues to damage the brand of our fair institution.

Audit report thoughts

2011-04-15T11:35:00.004-05:00

So the earthquake of the state audit report hit and now the tsunami in the form of the press coverage has struck as well. Running every 30 minutes on CLTV, the university, now under new management, continues its tradition of honoring the rites of spring with its fascinating tales of financial and operational mismanagement. Continuing to regale the citizens of the State of Illinois with the reasons that the university didn’t properly account for appropriated funds or manage its Purchasing Cards appropriately, or why it maintained a negative balance in the Student Activities account or didn't manage university contracts in accordance with federal guidelines. And if these and similar tales of university behavior sound all too familiar then you would be experiencing deja vu all over again. What is new and not so new is the response of the university to the latest chapter of university mismanagement? Here are two. First, the university is told by its CEO that the institution asked the auditors to dissect the inner workings of the institution and lay its entrails out for all to examine. However, quoting from the recent Tribune article, ‘...Holland, however, said it was a routine audit and auditees "do not determine the scope of our audits."’ So this was a standard audit with the expected results? Why would the CEO try to publicly spin this as something out of the ordinary, knowing that statement could be easily refuted by the Auditor General? Second, in the political world that I have some experience in, whenever a public body or agency experiences a negative event like the audit report then it is imperative that the agency head contact all of the agency’s legislative and executive branch allies to inform them of the situation, strategize about responses and ensure that when the media does contact the legislators they are not blind sided by the reporter. Apparently that didn’t happen in this case. Again quoting from the Tribune article, “He (Senator Maloney, Chairman of the Higher Education Committee and CSU alumnus) was unaware of the audit until contacted by the Tribune.” This should never happen. Finally, if this was just a routine audit what would an incisive forensic audit yield? Is it possible this audit is emblematic of a dysfunction beyond the capacity of all but the most capable leader? The challenges facing this institution will not be solved by someone because they are local and “know everybody.”
Systems must be put in place and a culture developed to ensure those systems function as intended irrespective of turnover. Systems should always trump personnel. Sound systems in a functional culture will work to counter frequent changes in personnel as is common in administration.
I am curious how the next chapter of public coverage of CSU will unfold but sadly I believe this story will remain the same.

Rites of Spring

2011-04-11T18:49:00.002-05:00

So as I was driving on a beautiful, crisp spring evening, I was reminded of those quaint events that mark the rites of spring. Baseball’s opening day, perennials bursting forth from the ground seeking the light and warm of the sun, clocks springing ahead and of course the posting of the university’s annual audit report on the Auditor General’s website. Spring brings us news of how well the university is being financially and institutionally managed. Last spring brought great news to the university. Under the direction of Interim President Pogue, the university reduced the number of audit findings from 20 to 13. Most notably this was done in spite of Dr. Pogue being prevented by the BOT chairman from hiring a Vice President for Finance. One could only imagine how much greater the improvement could have been if the Interim President was allowed to do his job. So it was widely anticipated that another 35% decrease in audit findings was in the offing as the university right sized and set off on its new mission. Sadly, it was not to be. Under the direction of the current CEO the university’s audit findings jumped from 13 to 41 with 11 repeat findings from the previous year. This means that the university not only did worse in its overall management according to the audit report, it repeated 85% of the errors from the previous year. By way of comparison, the University of Illinois system with its three campuses, $2 bn budget, and 72,000 students amassed 43 findings with 29 repeat findings during its FY 2010 audit. So it appears that any assertions by the regime that he would have the university cleaned up in six months were misguided and foreshadowed what would become another failure of BOT appointed leadership
So, you are probably asking for some context about the audit report. First, it covers the previous fiscal year. The most current report for FY2010 covers the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010. Second, the findings are divided into three categories; Government Auditing Standards, Federal Compliance and State Compliance. Third, the State Auditor General contracts with firms on a rotational basis so one set of auditors doesn’t work with an agency or institution for too long. Fourth, amounts of money are not what generates findings, it is the absence of internal controls, non-compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or non-compliance with applicable state and federal laws or regulations. Finally, the report indicates findings that are repeated from the previous year(s). Repeat findings are not necessarily indicators of mismanagement. Providing background is imperative in understanding the meaning of the findings.
From these three categories the breakdown of the findings provides some insight into the continued dysfunction of the institution. There were four Government Auditing Standards findings, twenty-four Federal Compliance findings and thirteen State Compliance findings. Twenty-nine of the forty-one findings were designated “Significant Deficiency/Noncompliance.”
I point your attention to four of the forty-one findings as being typical of the dysfunction of the university.
In Finding 10-14, the auditors found the University did not have systems or mechanisms in place to ensure federal funds are not spent with vendors barred or suspended by federal agencies.
Auditors discovered in Finding 10-22 that the University did not comply with provisions of the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendments of 1989. The university is directed to provide specific information to students and employees annually. This university didn’t do that. A fairly simple act of communication eluded the institution.
One of the most oft repeated criticisms of the university is its low graduation rate. Somehow during this year, the regime didn’t submit its graduation rate data (Audit Finding 10-26) to the US Department of Education. As this has been a federal requirement since 1992, how would something this significant have slipped through the cracks?
And in the area that disturbs me because of the life safety implications there is Audit Finding 10-38. A curious repeat finding from the previous year, the auditors found the university was not compliant with the Illinois Campus Security Enhancement Act of 2008. As the only employee certified by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency as an Illinois Professional Emergency Manager (IPEM) I have on several occasions commented to the Board of Trustees that the university did not have a National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliant Emergency Operations Plan. I warned the Board that there could be consequences both short and long term if this wasn’t addressed. The Board was told by the Police Chief, that I was over qualified to speak about the university and that the institution had complied with all legal requirements. I believe this repeat finding repudiates the statements made by the Police Chief but more critically points to a pattern of mismanagement that could endanger lives. I am sure you can understand how serious this finding is especially given this urban university is bisected by freight rail lines and a major expressway. There is actually more to NIMS compliance than simply stating to the BOT that a plan exists and an IPEM doesn’t know what he is talking about.
So seeing a threefold increase in the number of findings from the previous year caused me great concern. Of course the regime responded in all of the expected ways, many of them the administrative equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” Using personnel turnover is always convenient but irrelevant. Turnover is a function of the quality of leadership. High turnover brings to question whether the leadership is up to the task of motivating and inspiring people to their best or whether threatening and berating subordinates is the order of the day. The regime has responded that it wanted to know all of the flaws, defects and imperfections. This is a peculiar request of the external auditors. Instead of requesting that the internal auditor go over the university’s practices, the CEO requested the external auditors be particularly incisive. Is this historical revisionism, given that the Chicago Tribune is likely to excoriate the university again or is it sound management practice? This practice of course, gives opponents of the university more ammunition in their war of death by a thousand paper cuts. It raises more questions than it answers, especially given there were 11 repeat findings from the previous audit.
One of the best questions I have learned to ask in difficult situations is what happens next. Any leader worth his weight would recognize his/her limitations, take responsibility and offer their resignation. Clearly, the task of righting the direction of the organization is beyond them and instead of continuing Titanic deck chair rearranging, a new type and style of leadership should be sought. Good leaders recognize when it is time to leave and don’t wait to be asked to go.

Some Thoughts

2011-04-06T07:43:00.002-05:00

Given the most recent post by Corday, I have been thinking about issues like “shared governance” and “consultation” for a number of days. Of course, the two are intertwined, there is no possibility of shared governance without consultation. The question seems to be, do we have either on this campus?

Another dismal set of audit findings underscores, I think, the fact that the old ways of doing business at Chicago State do not work. There is now too much scrutiny, too much political pressure, and too much public notice taken of Chicago State’s various problems. At this point, the institution is facing a set of crises that, if unresolved, will, at best, continue to adversely affect the entire university community, and at worst, may result in the school’s closure. I believe a serious commitment to a more democratic, consultative process on campus would help address some of our most troublesome issues.

For the past several years, our administration (and I include the Trustees here) has worked assiduously to shield itself from criticism over the school’s academic problems. Our dismal graduation rate? The fault of faculty and advisors. Poor performing students? Bad teaching. Concern about the rigor of academic programs? Impose by fiat meaningless academic requirements like senior theses and “mandatory” M.A. theses. Students unhappy over treatment in various administrative offices? The departments and faculty do not adhere to a “customer service” model, or alternatively, display banners that proclaim “students first” while continuing to make their experience in the Administration building as unpleasant as possible. Faculty unhappy with search processes that they feel do not recognize their concerns or result in the hiring of the best qualified candidates? Hire the candidate you want and give interviews to the press blaming “disgruntled” faculty members for causing problems in the search process. I could go on here, but this list seems representative.

How has all this worked? Quite well from the standpoint of dumping the blame on the faculty. Unfortunately, the school is now on the defensive, trying to improve a graduation rate that represents the efforts of a minuscule number of students while doing nothing to increase admissions standards. Meanwhile, the public believes Chicago State to be little better than a community college, with unqualified faculty teaching badly. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no concerted attempt to counter the prevailing narrative, or defend the faculty, by presenting figures that paint a true picture of Chicago State and the students it serves. Perhaps most important, the atmosphere on campus is toxic, with neither faculty nor administrators trusting one another.

The Orwellian corporate-speak sloganeering that attempts to mask actual conditions on campus reflects what seems to be the reality of governance at Chicago State. Because of the union contract, our administration must convene various committees that include faculty. However, these committees are constantly reminded that their role is strictly “advisory” and, on some occasions, admonished not to exceed their contractual “charge.” The perception among many faculty is that members of the committee then work diligently on the issue or candidate only to see their recommendations ignored by the administration. This interface between faculty and administrators, of course, reflects the actual practices of “shared governance” and “consultation” on this campus. In fact, consultation here seems to mean that you grudgingly and impatiently listen to faculty committee members (who after all do not have the “administrative knowledge” to make a good decision) then do what you wanted to do in the first place. When criticized, you then claim that you “consulted” with the essentially “disgruntled” faculty.

This desire to control these processes and to shape, or ignore, committee recommendations that are ostensibly reached through consensus reflects, I think, an administrative model that sees power concentrated at the top in a hierarchical structure (much like a business). As other posters on this blog have pointed out, however, universities are not corporations, and the decision making process should not be viewed, or operate, as a zero-sum game.

I am unaware of any faculty on this campus who want to see this institution fail. That means faculty are willing to work together with our administration to do what is best for the school, and especially its students. Although some faculty are critical of a variety of administrative proposals, these objections, while inconvenient, are important to shaping policies that serve the entire university. Although likely apocryphal, a quote attributed to Attila the Hun fits here: “a king with chieftans who always agree with him reaps the counsel of mediocrity.”

I would argue that this model of consultation has served the university poorly. In particular, groups with expertise in certain academic areas, although consulted in a figurative sense, have ultimately found their voices silenced. Since good management utilizes all its resources, this is a risky course of action. For example, our own board regulations acknowledge the expertise of the faculty and its responsibility for curriculum. Why then does the administration see fit to make unilateral decisions regarding the curriculum? As an extension of that expertise, CSU faculty are likely in the best position to determine who will be successful teaching here as well as who will make a good colleague. Why then, is the faculty not allowed to rank candidates? Why does the administration insist on hiring its own choices without any explanation? These practices, while technically permissible, are hardly desirable. They contribute to faculty demoralization and cynicism about the motives of the administration.

I would urge the administration to abandon the practices that have been demonstrated to be ineffective. No need here to reference Einstein’s definition of insanity, but I think it is time to take a new approach. Ideally, this approach would include the faculty in a more meaningful way. At a minimum, faculty should have primary responsibility for developing curriculum and specifying degree requirements. Faculty should also have primary responsibility for recommending candidates for faculty positions. These recommendations should rarely be overruled by administrators, and only for compelling reasons communicated in writing. Finally, faculty input should be prominent in the hiring of administrators. Using the faculty as a resource instead as treating them as a group of miscreant children might result in better hires and a more stable administrative environment--which might improve performance and generate fewer audit findings. This does not have to be viewed as a diminution of administrative authority, rather it represents a commitment to utilizing the university’s resources to their maximum. The paternalistic and largely punitive management approach that defines this university culture, an approach directed toward faculty, staff, and students must be abandoned if we are to have any hope of success.

Wanted: Faculty Representation on Search Committees

2011-03-31T11:28:00.003-05:00

It seems the Administration was shocked, shocked, to learn that faculty perceived there were no searches being conducted for the Vice Presidents and Deans who have been quitting, fired or need to be hired on campus.

Yes, big surprise that faculty are demoralized and cynical about the university's "search processes"--we receive messages to welcome so and so as the new such and such, but never hear about who was on the committee that picked them, or what the process was that brought them here. Since there is no longer a student newspaper on campus (paper or online) to plant information for the university community (even though students still pay a fee for it), we can only rely on info to be disseminated like peasants listening to an ecclesiastical hieararchy talk down to us at their whim. Staid old Boston has nothing on CSU. I keep recalling the quote from my New England days: "So, this is Boston, home of the baked bean and the cod, where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God."

And who can blame people for not wanting to serve on a committee that has been organized for a while but only sends out a call for faculty or staff presence one week before it will meet? Or faculty who don't want to serve on committees where their presence is mere eyewash for the accreditors, but whose "input" although claimed to be valued, is disregarded if it doesn't match what or who the Administration already wants? Of course who can forget that great trumped up search called the University Presidential Search Committee of a few years ago? No one wants to serve on a committee where you think your voice may actually make a difference, spend a lot of time in meetings, write up reports that go nowhere, just so the Administration can say they "consulted" faculty.

All this said, there are some search committees out there this spring and the Senate has been asked to look for Faculty willing to serve. I have been stung by service on some committees here at CSU and I will no longer serve on committees that have no teeth, that just spin their wheels while the real decisions are made outside. I will no longer serve on a committee where I feel my voice is not heard and I will resign from any committee if I find that my presence is just perfunctory, just as the members of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee did during that farce of a presidential search two years ago. I recommend that faculty continue to participate in the search process that we have at CSU and to offer your time and service in this regard to the university, but to hold your ground as a member of a committee. I'm giving it a chance, like Charlie Brown hoping to kick that football, and joining one of these committees. Maybe this time Lucy won't pull it away.

Yan Searcy said it very eloquently in his email to all of us this week. It is the faculty who hold institutional memory and it is our responsibility to bring that continuity to the governance of the university.

From Yan:
CSU faculty, we are at a crucial point in the history of the institution. The people who may be hired may be responsible for development of CSU or its demise. The faculty voice and perspective need to be heard. Many decisions that are being made are being made by those who have little than two years of institutional memory. The people who may be hired will have less than this.
I ask you to re-read the request below.

From the Provost:
Lastly, please share the attachment with members of the Faculty Senate. This attachment contains the names of search committee members for Pharmacy and Business deans……… I will try my best to keep the Senate informed regarding searches. Also, please note the following searches that will take place soon (before July):

1. Dean of Library (Committee not formed yet)
2.. Dean of Business (Dr. Jefferson, Committee Chairperson)
3. Director for International Programs (Committee not formed yet)
4. Dean of Students ( Dr. Osika, Search Committee Chairperson)
5. Associate Vice President, Sponsored Programs (Committee not formed yet)
6. Dean, Continuing Education (Position not posted yet)

Faculty recommendations to serve on the above searches are much appreciated.

I certainly hope they will be.

Brand U Part II

2011-03-27T08:08:00.003-05:00

I've got some other things to add to Pancho's eloquent indictment of the university's embrace of the corporate model. If you look at what employers want, "image" is not among the skills they are looking for. Most interesting, employers list as a prospective employee's most important skill the ability to "Communicate," defined as "the ability to listen, write and speak effectively." The second most desirable skill sought by employers is the ability to analyze and research, or the "ability to assess a situation, seek multiple perspectives, gather more information if necessary, and idenfity key issues that need to be addressed." Other desirable skills include computer/technical literacy, flexibility/adaptability/managing multiple priorities, interpersonal abilities, and leadership/management skills. Perhaps most salient to this discussion, "image" is not on this list. See the following website for the full list of skills: http://www.quintcareers.com/job_skills_values.html. Since "image" is absent from the list of skills an employer wants, what does our university's focus on "image" mean? Do we want our students to believe they can suceed without demonstrating any of the substantive job skills that employers want? Do we think employers are so stupid that they will not notice that a prospective employee has none of the qualifications they are seeking? Will a good stage presence or "image" overcome an applicant's lack of preparation? her/his lack or verbal or written skills? her/his inability to think critically? In addition, if an applicant lacks communication and analytical skills, how can that person come across as polished? Finally, the skills that are most desirable to employers are the very skills that the humanities and social sciences emphasize. The development of analytical and communication skills is the cornerstone of a liberal arts education. In their fealty to the corporate model, our university seems to be in the process of weakening the programs that provide our students with the knowledge and skills to succeed after college. The university's belief in the importance of "entrepreneurship" underpinned by "image" reveals either a stunning lack of understanding of the world outside Chicago State, or a deep and troubling cynicism about our student's abilities--a cynicism that can't be articulated but that can be detected in the desire of the school to sponsor programs that will essentially turn our graduates into con artists.

Brand U?

2011-03-24T16:32:00.002-05:00

“Did you know that 85% of job success is based on people skills and only 15% based on technical skills?”

This line from a flyer advertizing the first lecture in a series titled “Brand U: Professional Development Series” caught my attention. I read the flyer and large posters spread throughout the CRSU and learned that the College of Business along with Kraft Foods was sponsoring this series. The kickoff event took place on Thursday, March 24, 2011 in the Library Auditorium. It featured image communication specialist, Kali Raoul, of Image Studios delivering a lecture and powerpoint presentation titled, “Image Impact: Your Professional Presence.” I fell victim to the advertising and showed up 30 minutes early to the event.

Ms. Raoul and her presentation were introduced by a faculty member of the College of Business who informed the audience that “it is very important to brand yourself.” “Hum,” I thought. “I can’t wait to see what is next.” I, then, spent the next hour and a half listening to the quite polished and professional Ms. Raoul speak about the centrality of image in seeking success in the business world. Ms. Raoul showed us a number of slides meant to help the audience think about their image or how we would brand ourselves. Memorable nuggets of advice include the following: 1) a slide showing the “Success P.I.E.” chart. P.I.E. stands for performance, image and exposure. Citing some source or other she informed us that performance counts for 10% of success, image, 60% and exposure, 30%; 2) “Once you’re in the door, performance does not earn success.”; 3) “Define your brand!”; 4) Wardrobe is more important than grooming, though you must be well-groomed; 5) Women, always wear makeup.

Now, I realize that this is Ms. Raoul’s business. She is an image consultant and has extensive experience in the corporate world including working for Kraft. In addition, though this was unstated, her husband’s business also lives and dies on image. He is former City College employee, current state Senator Kwame Raoul from Chicago. What would politics be without image? The series continues throughout April. On the 8th, our students will learn how to dress. Their teacher will be an employee of the Image Studios. Apparently, they need to learn how to eat as well. On April 15th, they will learn that the bread plate is on the right and beverage on the left (or vice versa. I was never good at that kind of thing). Modet, Inc. will teach our students “the rules and nuances of proper business behavior.”

I’m not a hater. I know a woman’s gotta make a living. Moreover, Ms. Raoul is probably genuinely concerned about the people she consults with. She wants them to do well. So, it is not so much Ms. Raoul’s anti-intellectual, anti-substance message that bothered me but that our university is promoting this to our students.

At the same time that the President and Provost’s office is attempting to eliminate the Economics major on campus, they are promoting branding oneself. This is corporate speak and corporate think at its most crass. Without an intellectual and critical foundation in economics and other social sciences and humanities, students are at the mercy of the business world where they will be told how to speak, think, dress, shave, and talk by people who will make enormous profits off of their labor. The anti-intellectual climate being fostered by the current powers that be on campus is alarming and offensive. It is an affront to the very ideals of higher education. THIS IS NOT A BUSINESS!! Moreover, why do we want to make it one? Why do we want to instill in our students capitalist and business ethics that continue to undermine the livelihoods of humanity and the environment worldwide and specifically the lives of the people in the very communities from which the vast majority of our students come?

Do the powers that be need to be reminded that it was the branding of Black people that kicked off capitalist transformation in this country? Maybe the College of Business needs to be reminded that theft, violence and rape of native people and Mexicanos cleared the West for business expansion. It is for these exact reasons that we need to expand the centrality of social sciences and the humanities to the overall mission of the university. Perhaps it is due to an inadequate history, economics and social science education that they are asking our BLACK students to brand themselves. Throughout the first centuries of the existence of the United States of America, masters burned the flesh of Black people as a means to accumulate wealth and establish their dominance. Today, this Black-run institution encourages a new branding through clothes, makeup, facial hair and manners that will further the misery of most people on the planet and increase the profits of the children of slaveowners.

This is an affront to our university and especially our students. Any effort to encourage dumbing down and increasing focus on image should be resisted by all of us. All efforts toward anti-intellectualism, attacks on critical thinking and the corporatization of our campus should be resisted. It is imperative in this day and age that we teach students critical thinking and creativity and develop their agency. We need leaders who can change the course of history not acquiesce to the very values and behaviors that have brought us to this moment in history when we now have the greatest wealth gap known. It is because of capitalist and business values that our Black and Brown children lack health care, lack adequate education, are overrepresented in prisons, live in food deserts, and struggle to define themselves. Why are we encouraging this? As thoughtful and concerned faculty we are obligated to fulfill our mission of educating people. We must not fall victim to the marketing of the business model as the direction in which our university needs to go. We must become more vigilant in the defense of our educational principles and mission. We must hold ourselves and our students to higher standards. These standards must go beyond selling ourselves to the highest bidder.

If only they'd consult the professors first...

2011-03-17T17:05:00.003-05:00

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, March 13, 2011

iPads Could Hinder Teaching, Professors Say
Rival tablet PC's foster more interactivity, studies suggest. But students' craving for the Apple devices could matter more.

http://chronicle.com/article/iPads-for-College-Classrooms-/126681

Interesting article if you get a chance to read it.

Do we know if CSU's CIO has instituted a survey of faculty responses to the use of the iPads that the Board of Trustees asked for at its meeting in December?

Imagine what $750,000 (for the ipads) + $140,000 (for the seemingly defunct flatscreen tvs--lipstick on a pig in those brokendown old classrooms of ours)would have bought in the way of upgrading our so-called "smart" classrooms, not to mention benefitting more students at the university.

And, hasn't the new iPad just come out this week?