And these notes from the last Board meeting

So I thought I would give you loyal readers an update on the recent Board of Trustees meeting. Unlike the last twelve hour marathon event, this session of committee meetings and full board meeting was more reasonably managed. During the Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting, five faculty were recommended for tenure and subsequently awarded tenure by the full BOT later in the day. Congratulations to Professors Gaytan, Kimble, Mardis, Nkansah, and Green on their achievement. There were also some concerns voiced about the dual enrollment scheme being pursued with Kennedy-King College and Chicago State University.
During the Finance Committee meeting several interesting items were discussed. First, the bookstore contract is being negotiated. Unfortunately no faculty or students were involved in the contract negotiation. I see this as problematic because as the primary users of the service, we would be the ones with the most knowledge about how the bookstore contract should be structured. It is another example of the lip service given by the administration to the practice of shared governance. Second, the much maligned Ghana Book Project has been resurrected under new leadership. A Certified Public Accountant has been hired to provide financial oversight and hopefully protect the university from negative publicity. Third, the Chief Information Officer reported that the university will be upgrading all of its servers, (email, web, Banner etc.) and replacing the network switches campus wide. After years of us being told we can’t lease equipment, the university will be leasing equipment so that we are not saddled with equipment at the end of its life. I was assured by the CIO that faculty will be informed of changes as they progress so that we can all attend the necessary training that will accompany these upgrades. And finally, good news from the Audit front. The final audit report for FY 2009 has been posted to the Auditor General’s website. We had seven fewer audit findings in FY 09 than FY 08. As the BOT chair remarked last year, the credit for this improvement goes to our former Interim President Frank Pogue, who even though was prevented by the aforementioned BOT chairman, from hiring a Vice President for Finance did manage to oversee a 35% decline in audit findings.
The Facilities Committee meeting was equally enlightening. The Director of Physical Plant informed the committee that the master clock controller can no longer be repaired and must be replaced. When I suggested that maybe it would be cheaper to place battery operated clocks in the classrooms I was told that $10 clocks with replaceable batteries would be impossible. Go figure. Finally, the committee was told that a contract was given to a vendor to conduct a feasibility study for the construction of a new 1,000 bed dormitory. The value of the contract would probably have only saved one or two jobs of recently fired employees. At least the university has its priorities in order.
At the full BOT meeting the date for the annual gala was announced. I imagined that since this was the only mention of university fund raising that there will be none until September. The Board was also informed of the glaring absence of emergency planning, specifically the absence of a Continuity of Operations Plan. (COOP) Every office, division or department should have a COOP so that if they are unable to conduct business as usual every individual knows where to go and what to do to continue functioning close to normal. I would hope that the administration would be aware enough of the current situation to know that the institution is no where near to being prepared for any emergency.

More on shared governance

So if you are like me when I receive multiple messages about book orders, I quickly delete or destroy the message because I choose not to employ the university book store and do not appreciate the hard sell approach employed by the administration. Of course I would expect some criticism from those who do not use the book store or teach those who do. We call them administrators. And the administration is at it again. The university is currently negotiating the bookstore contract and to my knowledge no faculty or students have been involved in the negotiations of this contract. It is troubling that the new regime still hasn't demonstrated any understanding of or inclination to practice shared governance. Those of us on the faculty who understand shared governance know that it isn't making decisions for administration. Rather it is being invited to provide a much broader and deeper knowledge of events, activities and history of the institution. This is done to empower decision makers to make more informed and ostensibly better decisions. Without a viable practice, not discussion, of shared governance the university will continue to limp along being sub-par and subject to the criticism we seem to have grown accustomed to. Until administrators acknowledge that faculty, the people who spend the most amount of time with the students, probably know better what our students need than they do, we will not have an environment where our students are served in the best way possible. Is the new regime learned anything since they have been here or is this the old CSU with a new face???

As the Semester Winds Down

So the Faculty Senate met yesterday for its last full meeting of the academic year. The body was visited by two new members of the Board of Trustees. I am hopeful that the new trustees will invigorate the Board by establishing relationships with more constituents than university administrators. Their willingness to attend a Senate meeting characterizes the spirit of service that I expect of a Board member. This is the first time in my 12 years in the Senate that any Board member has attended a meeting. To Trustees Samuels and Rozier, thank you.
During the course of the meeting Devi Potluri, our body’s re-elected Vice President invited the Trustees to consider putting CSU in the running to host the Barack Obama Presidential Library. The University of Chicago has apparently already hired a lobbying firm to assist them in securing the right to host the Presidential Library after his term of service ends. For all of the issues that Devi and I agree on, this is an issue that I could not support him on. Unfortunately, our university does not have a good history as far as libraries are concerned.
Let’s travel back in time a bit. In the bad old days, whenever budgets needed to be cut, those cuts often came at the expense of the book acquisition budget. This would often happen when there was either no Library Dean or an interim dean. Later during the period when the university was discussing the impending construction of our library, one of the complaints from academic faculty and library faculty was the number of non-library activities in the library and in Douglas Hall. Fast forward to our last accreditation visit from the North Central Association and some of you will recall the university was told that our library was problematic because it wasn’t a single use facility. There were many programs, projects, centers and offices located in the Douglas Library. The HLC was assured that the new library then under construction would be a single use facility that would be the focal point of the university. The goal was to focus the academic attention in the new building while providing more space for the other various and sundry programs elsewhere on campus. Slowly but surely, non-library creep set in. The Black Legislators exhibit and office space was just the beginning of what is becoming a flood of non-academic uses of the still unnamed Academic Library. And what are the future non-academic uses of the library going to be. Apparently the plans are either in the works or already approved to cut up the Academic Library like the Douglas Library was cut up years ago. That history is repeating itself isn’t surprising. What is disturbing is that faculty were not consulted in a decision that ultimately affects us in our scholarly activities. This wouldn’t be an issue if scholarly activities were being downgraded in importance. I only say this because there has been a change in the way research CUEs, and sabbaticals are awarded. The current library dean is on sabbatical and I would be interested in what he thinks of the new regime’s plan to reconstitute the library space. Is the new regime going to continue to ignore the body that retains the corporate memory of the institution or will they begin to engage in actual shared governance and not just mouth the words?

What is our mission again?

So during a recent BOT meeting the university community was assured that the budget cuts, personnel reductions (firings) and other various and sundry activities designed to 'right size' the university, would not impact the university's mission. The statement was made with such conviction that no one asked what that mission is. So I decided to look it up and remind myself what grand mission we are all in support of. From the university web site I found,

"The mission of the university is to: 1) provide access to higher education for residents of the region, the state and beyond, with an emphasis on meeting the educational needs, undergraduate through doctoral levels, of promising graduates from outstanding secondary schools as well as educating students where academic and personal growth may have been inhibited by lack of economic, social, or educational opportunity; and 2) produce graduates who are responsible, discerning, and informed global citizens with a commitment to lifelong-learning and service."

This is a noble mission, one that appears to position the university as being all things to all people. For example, recruiting promising graduates from outstanding secondary schools and educating students from what could be characterized as at risk backgrounds is quite challenging. There is a compelling need to maintain the academic standards needed to retain the promising graduates and those whose preparation for a university education has been inhibited. How well do we do this is subject to debate. We do graduate more than a thousand students per year. We do this having very little in terms of resources, have had significant leadership challenges and we continue to perform this balancing act in terms of the mission.
We also seem to be challenged by defining the parameters of the region, state and beyond. How much recruiting does the university do beyond the borders of the city of Chicago? Is there something about our fixation of recruiting high numbers of CPS graduates and not graduates from Northwest Indiana, Southern Wisconsin, Western Illinois, Eastern Iowa and Eastern Missouri. How many high schools get visited in those areas? What about visits to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, California or Arizona schools? As a Minority Serving Institution, what percentage of our recruiting budget goes to recruiting in states with high minority populations? Oh, it seems we would rather use our time and energy to partner with community colleges five miles from our campus than expand our horizons and possibly draw out of state students, paying out of state tuition. Of course that would mean fundamentally altering the character of the university, a task only a visionary educational leader could accomplish. It would mean getting the entire university community invested in and inspired by a new vision, a shared vision of educational excellence, not acting like the local high school.
So how is it that we got here? Is it a strict adherence to this mission or something else that guides the university? It appears that the university is on track to go through yet another strategic planning process, one that will either affirm or change the mission of the university. Given the number of strategic planning processes I have witnessed I have little hope for it substantively guiding the university into the future. Rather I suspect there will be much hoopla about a community effort to re-define ourselves or re-affirm our positioning. Then the administration of the day will continue to operate in crisis management mode much like administrations for the past 2o years have done.
And where will the faculty be in all of this? Who knows. There is talk of shared governance and no real practice of shared governance. There will be nominal faculty involvement and no real dialogue between faculty and the ruling regime. And for those of us who have been here for more than 15 years it appears like the movie Groundhog Day. The university keeps repeating the same mistakes by focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time and consulting the wrong people.
So the question for me is what is the mission that we are supporting and does that mission really matter that much when everything is managed as a crisis because of our lack of planning, execution and leadership.
I realize I will be challenged around the absence of leadership given the number of firings recently and our performance during the HLC visit. What has been absent is something mentioned by supporters of our CEO, namely being a local who has relationships with power brokers in the city and state. The university was told by Chairman Finney last year that the Board could not possibly consider hiring anybody from outside of Chicago. I like many are waiting for the local connections to translate into fund raising. At the last Board meeting about finances, not one board member or the CEO mentioned any plan or commitment to raising money during our fiscal crisis to reduce the necessity for firing or laying off employees, people with families and responsibilities. It seems firing people is easy. Inspiring people to excellence and impeccability in support of a noble mission is a bit more elusive.

Partnerships?

This month our department and a few others on campus are doing CSU's CEO's bidding and creating a dual enrollment program with the Kennedy King Community College (a place formerly under Dr Watson's rule). I think we got wind of this at some point in the past year, but details have only been given out in dribs and drabs in the usual trickle-down passing of information from on high to provost to deans to chairs etc. etc. Well, the business is upon us this month and we are supposed to hurry to get it into place. The dual-enrollment action is being negotiated by deans and department chairs, but not a single faculty member is part of the meetings and negotiations with this community college--nor do there seem to be faculty members present from the community college side either. Has this been vetted through CSU's Faculty Senate at least? The dual-enrollment has important curricular implications and should not be usurped by CEO edict: "make it happen."

Faculty in our department have been asked to "review" the proposals in our continuingly tedious slot as merely "advisory" to any major thing that happens on campus. At what point in CSU's history did we become tangential and "advisory?" Is it so that the Adminstration can cover themselves to the politicians they answer to by claiming faculty were aware and marginally part of the process, while not really ceding any control? (Hello, contract negotiations anyone?). We are being assured that the dual-enrollment is not dumbing us down to the level of a community college but will be a win-win situation for both KKCC and CSU in regards to enrollment. From my understanding it's supposed to stream community college students straight into CSU. But it seems to me to be a bit like an enrollment smokescreen to keep the politicians off our back. CSU can claim it has more students even if they spend half their time at Kennedy-King. What the implications are for the dreaded statistics for first-time, full-time freshmen, I don't know. Will we have to be responsible for those KKCC first-time students who drop out? Is this dual-enrollment a way around CSU's "strict" (sic) admissions policies to open us up to a more community college-like admission standard? Trustee Finney weighed in on lowering CSU admission standards last year as a way to gain enrollment numbers (note, get the numbers up, student performance is secondary). Does Senator Maloney's office know about this? I know that CEO Watson likes to believe that the newspapers "always get it wrong" when they are talking about CSU, but he might want to re-read Sen. Maloney's comments last fall. Maloney is a CSU grad and chairman of the Senate's Higher Education Committee. "They (CSU) have to raise standards, be aggressive about recruiting quality kids who are going to graduate," Mr. Maloney said. "Its a state university, not a South Side university." The New York Times, November 29, 2009.

In my "review" of the draft we faculty were given I have lots of questions. Does the Illinois' Higher Learning Commission approve of this action? Will this look good for re-accreditation? Is there a model in Illinois that we are following? What other state universities that grant doctoral degrees are pairing up with community colleges? And explain to me again, why our current articulation agreements with Illinois community colleges (city colleges included) are not effective enough in streaming students to us? You remember that project a few years ago where a number of our courses were coded IAI to ease transferring credit from one college to another in Illinois. Has that panacea now proved such a failure that it is being scrapped?

I suppose I'll be criticized for not "thinking enough outside my box." OK, so here's another suggestion. Why is it that on many, many CSU committees when we are asked to do something new our first inclination is to compare ourselves to schools that are "like us?" Why, can't we model ourselves on schools that are more successful or better in a particular area or ranked higher than ours? If you want to improve your tennis game, you play with someone better than you. Maybe we at CSU should be the ones looking to partner with a school that has more resources than ours. How about a sister school like--UIC? SIU? Northwestern? or even the University of Chicago? If some of the ivy league schools are doing it, let's get in on that action. This idea was inspired by a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (in spite of their newspaper status we must believe them, their fawning article about CSU has been plastered on the front page of the main web page for months now). The article a few days ago focusses on how "minority-serving institutions are doing great but unheralded work and are worthy of more investment" by research universities. This is what Brown University is doing:

Valerie P. Wilson, associate provost and director of institutional diversity at Brown University, joined other speakers at Thursday's event in emphasizing that even top research universities with much smaller proportions of minority students have much to learn by forming partnerships with minority-serving colleges. Brown, in fact, has a nearly 50-year partnership with Tougaloo College, a private, four-year historically black institution in Jackson, Miss.

The partnership provides faculty and student exchanges and collaborative research projects, and administrators from the institutions meet regularly to plan projects that benefit both. For example, Brown and Tougaloo students from a wide variety of majors have been able to gain valuable insight studying at Tougaloo's archive of civil-rights materials. Another program gives Brown graduate students an opportunity to teach in their field at Tougaloo for one or two semesters, providing them the experience of working in a different cultural and academic setting and making them better prepared for the job market, Ms. Wilson said.

So, that's my advisory opinion on the dual-enrollment question, let's try to partner up for a change.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 22, 2010 White House Adviser Urges Historically Black Colleges to Change How They Are Seen By Eric Kelderman
http://chronicle.com/article/White-House-Adviser-Urges/65218/

Layoffs and Cutbacks at Chicago State

I regret not having been more active, both on the blogsite and elsewhere, this academic year. But recent posts about Haki Mahdubuti suggest that we should discuss the recent layoffs.

I believe about seventy people were escorted from campus. One of them was the person who has been most helpful to me in maintaining my computer. So in an area of service to faculty and staff--servicing computers--where we are already short-staffed, the bosses lay off another. I am sure many of us know valuable workers who have been laid off.

The cuts that have occurred and future ones to come will have a negative effect on educating our students. They make an insufficient educational experience worse.

Why are they cutting? One answer points the finger at our local administration and its poor choices managing the available funds. Another identifies the State of Illinois and its failure to raise tax revenue. These are certainly loci of the problem. But are they the main ones?

Two facts stand out: first, education cuts are occurring at all levels across the U.S.; second, urban transit and public health care are also being cut, not only in Chicago, but in many places. There is, however, plenty of money for Obama's war in Afghanistan.

Federal funding for education, health, and urban transit peaked in the sixties and early seventies and has been in decline since under both Democratic and Republican presidents. The U.S. is a declining imperial power, and its economic and political crises are felt by workers in education, health care, and transit as well as by the students, patients and riders who depend on these workers. This combines with a conservative (and implicitly racist) anti-tax climate and movement to damage conditions for those with the least resources, especially urban black and latin people.

We should be clear in our oppositions to these cuts; we should educate ourselves and students about the nature of the struggle for a better life, and what it tells us about how contemporary U.S. capitalism values our lives. I hope you will join me in celebrating May Day and protesting cutbacks at Chicago State.

Structures and outcome

"If you understand the power structure, you understand the outcome."

This was something I learned last year from a sociologist in the midst of the contentiousness that was our search for a university president. This sham process made many of us heartsick as academics, ignored as we were by that rump of four Trustees, and then angry as we saw how political machinations were allowed to kick in and manipulate a situation that only the politicians of the state could stop. They, as we know, took a pass on that and focussed on the University of Illinois.

From the time I arrived here fourteen years ago, I have been told two things: that >"Chicago State has lots of potential" and then paradoxically, "what can you expect, it's just Chicago State, it will always be this way... Not being from Chicago, or Illinois for that matter, I had no real clue what that latter statement meant, let alone why people acquiesced to it so easily.

I was thinking about the power structure at CSU in light of a very good discussion about shared governance on campus this week sponsored by the Faculty Senate. This was probably one of the most informative meetings we've had. Kudos to Devi Potluri for bringing to campus Professor K. Anderson from the American Association of University Presidents and Dr. E. Lowe, Special Advisor to the President of Northwestern University. Dr. Watson, and others, from the faculty, civil service, and students, also made comments.

I think it is time to recognize the pink elephant in the room that we pussyfoot around all the time: political patronage. Any chance for there to be some kind of change in culture on campus (not, as Dr Watson thinks it is by making the likes of Haki Madhubutu teach four courses), or any chance of achieving real university governance (shared or not) has to confront that thing that many of us know about CSU, but few speak out loud. At a university, in a university system that is dominated by politicians, how do we negotiate and govern and keep in place all our constituencies? Who really governs CSU?

James Warren, in the New York Times, this year said it in black and white: "Chicago State is a patronage dumping ground..." ("Making Touch Choices for Higher Education", New York Times, March 7, 2010).

Mary Mitchell said it out loud this week in her Sun Times article, 'Chicago way' at play in turmoil at CSU
Publisher backing president got $19,000 contract from him
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/2154959,CST-NWS-mitch13.article

She writes of Hermene Hartman's "contract" with Chicago State as hypocritical in light of her defense of Watson's actions toward Madhubuti.

"Having hit Watson up for a $19,000 no-bid contract, Hartman still had the nerve to tell readers that "it's hard to protest Watson's demand for a full-time workload at Chicago State."

The price of dissent
..."Will Chicago State University become a battleground between the black empowerment movement and Chicago-style patronage politics?" Lucas asked.

Today, conscience has been trumped by connections. Today, it is all about what's in it for me, not what's in it for us.

In this kind of showdown, Chicago-style patronage politics wins every time.

The poor economy certainly gives Watson a cover.

But as long as contracts are being doled out like patronage -- and no one says a word about it -- I suspect more people of Madhubuti's ilk will be quietly ousted.

Contrary to Hartman's dismissal, this is not a "pity party."
This is a call to action.

Unless the power structure at CSU changes, unless we at least acknowledge the political patronage, how can we really think any of our outcomes, any of our initiatives, any of that great potential that we all see every day, will do anything but lead us back to extreme mediocrity characterized by that statement, "what do you expect, it's just Chicago State"?

Shared Governance Conversation

So seven months into the new regime, we are having our first conversation about shared governance at the university. It is a concept and philosophy that some glibly spout and barely understand and clearly don't practice in the way it is intended. Thus we are having a community wide conversation on Wednesday April 14th, from 12-3PM in the SUB Fine Dining area. UPI Local 4100 is graciously providing lunch for this event. All faculty are welcome for all or part of this event.

And now, the Madhubuti Wars?

Mary Mitchell, the columnist at the Sun Times, is darned mad at Hermene Hartman of N'Digo Magazine . Hartman took Mitchell to task for using her friendship with Madhubuti to support him in print and going against the prevailing populist view that because the man teaches only one class it must mean he does nothing else. Mitchell defends the legitimacy of her position on l'affaire Madhubuti on her blog, but in the midst of this a very interesting fact emerges concerning Hermene Hartman's relationship to the CEO Watson and the Board of Trustees who sign university contracts. Check out Mary Mitchell's blog comments:

Chicago State University unleashes hired gun
I can't understand why N'Digo publisher Hermene Hartman is trying to link me to Haki Madhubuti.

In her column supporting Chicago State University President Wayne Watson's handling of Haki Madhubuti, Hartman accused me of deploying what she dubbed as "friendship journalism."

That's pure bull.

Madhubuti is not a personal friend.

But for whatever reason, Hartman is intentionally trying to mislead people about why I believe it was wrong for Watson to force Madhubuti out at Chicago State University.

If anyone is showing bias, it is Hartman. In fact, she is Watson's hired gun.

She admits to being Watson's friend. And as recently as July, Hartman had a $19,000 no-bid short-term public relations and marketing consulting contract with Chicago State University. Yet nowhere in her April 7th column did she disclose she had been on the University's payroll...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/mitchell/2010/04/chicago_state_university_unlea.html

Hermene Hartman (is she a journalist or CSU's quasi-official publicist?), defended Watson on her Publisher's Page: Mitchell's Manufactured Madhouse: The Watson Controversy at Chicago State University.

See: http://www.ndigo.com/commentary.asp Or, you can find this "free" paper all over CSU, no wonder it has been appearing so regularly on campus this year.

Amazing what $19,000 will buy you.

And yet more on Madhubuti...

The Madhubuti Affair at CSU is becoming its own cause celebre.

This morning I find Scott Jaschik has written about us, "Disrespecting Whom?" in Inside Higher Education (April 6, 2010) and seems to be wondering whether it's about retaliation or something more? The comments to the article are also interesting, unlike a lot of the racist rants one finds attached to Chicago newspaper articles.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/06/chicagostate#Comments

"One thing that isn't in dispute is that Madhubuti was among the many professors who criticized the selection of Watson, who had a series of clashes with faculty members at the City Colleges of Chicago, which he led previously, and whose selection as president last year was greeted with boos on the campus. At the time, Madhubuti released an open letter to the university, questioning Watson's suitability for the job. Madhubuti was hardly alone in offering such criticisms, but his letter was much discussed on campus."

Dr Watson defends his position by saying, "The university is going through a "cultural shift," Watson said, and that is difficult for many. But it's the only way to build the "right foundation" for student learning."

Could someone remind me what this "cultural shift" is that Dr Watson is trying to do? Does anyone else in the university know what this is, let alone who decided it? "Cultural shift," from what to what?

On Sunday, Mary Mitchell in the <em>Sun Times wrote again about CSU: "Where's the support for Madhubuti? Where is the outrage over blatant disregard for poet?"
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/2138541,CST-NWS-mitch04.article

Mitchell writes,
Obviously, Watson is facing a tough challenge.

The former City Colleges chancellor will have to increase the deplorable graduation rate while raising standards -- not to mention change the university's negative image as being the university of last resort.

Watson has already shown he can clear some impressive hurdles.

In 2005, he received a "no confidence" vote from the faculty at City Colleges. Four years later, he was given a five-year contract at Chicago State University amid complaints that the process was rigged.

And while the public is outraged that state employees can collect hefty pensions after moving into new state jobs, Watson has managed to do so without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Icon is disappointed, not bitter
Unfortunately, Madhubuti is not a politician.

He is the poet who turned his words into institutions.

Yet the fact that so many of us have no clue about what this man's stature has meant to Chicago State plays into Watson's hands.

I wouldn't call Madhubuti bitter, but he certainly is disappointed.

It sounds like she is saying, it's not what you do, but who you know.

And what a difference a year can make in university presidential politics here in Illinois. Have a look at the Chicago Tribune article about the presidential search process going on this spring at the University of Illinois:

"University of Illinois interviews finalists for president; List includes 5 university presidents" by Jodi Cohen
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-university-illinois-president-20100405,0,4533564.story

The 19-member search committee, including university trustees, students, faculty, staff and alumni, interviewed 10 candidates over three days last month, Strobel said. She said the university received about 200 "applications," mostly nominations for the job.

Wow, the entire search committee at the University of Illinois participated in the interviews of the 10 candidates. Imagine that. Why, it was only last year that here at CSU the Trustees kept our own presidential search committee as much in the dark as possible about who the applicants were and in no way let the committee near the interviews with any finalists. I wonder why the University of Illinois Trustees treat their faculty, staff, administrators, and students so differently?

Politics. Who you know, not what you do.

I may be wrong, but I kind of doubt that there will be a "cultural shift" by the Administration from running Chicago State like a church any time soon.