Board of Trustees meet Friday--

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...

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!!!

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...

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

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?

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

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

“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

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....

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?