Address to
the Board of Control on February 23, 2012
Chair
Richardson and members of the board; distinguished audience:
In
terms of “delivering a report properly”, I wanted to start by asking why Board
Member Woychowski’s recently extremely successful company
has not so far constructed a car where when you open the door, snow does not
fall onto the car seat but unfortunately I drive a Ford. While not a GM product, it is still made in America
unlike the fancy foreign imports favored by some members of the University’s
administration, though to be absolutely honest, this is more a reflection of my
salary, not necessarily a manifestation of patriotism. Just recently I discovered a simple solution
which is a measure of intelligence since I was living here for 14 years. Gently crack open the car door and then pull
it out slowly. I am pleased to report
that this slower opening of the car door solves this problem and this is just a
long winded way to apologize for the speed with which I read out my previous
address back in December.
President
Obama recently gave a speech (SLIDE) at an
institution located in lower Michigan specifically aimed at somehow containing
the cost of higher education. I was not
particularly impressed with this speech for President Obama pointed out only
one reason for the fact that state run institutions have to increase tuition,
which was reduced State support for universities. He mentioned that States should be encouraged
to give more to universities and also alluded to the fact that he wants to have
some sort of equivalent “no-child left behind’ policy applied to universities
where measures as to the value of the education that students received should
be available online so that people can judge where to send their children. He would also restrict funding to those
institutions where the tuition level was not kept under control. President Obama did not mention many of the
other reasons why tuition costs are increasing, including, rising health care
costs, IT infrastructure, administrative increases, energy and building costs, costs
of conducting top-level research, and a much more competitive environment to
get students, including modern housing facilities and maintenance of athletic
facilities such as a renewed surface for our racquetball courts. Incidentally, I did notice that earlier today
you approved the expenditure of funds to repair the SDC and perhaps some of
these could be used to repair the racquetball courts. I can testify that water on the roof does
indeed leak into these courts. President
Obama did correctly state that as the economy transfers from a manufacturing to
a service base, the nature of the job skills required are so complex that a
university or two-year college education is mandatory for us to maintain a
position of pre-eminence in the world economy.
An
important message from President Obama’s speech was the reference to some sort
of yardstick by which to measure the value of the education that students are
receiving. Board members Ashford and
Ollila are no doubt intimately aware of such measurements. I believe we would be wise to foster some
attention on this issue and our current position here is already noteworthy. Provost Seel has recently asserted that the average
starting salaries of our graduates are among the highest in the state and
indeed higher than the institution where President Obama spoke recently. President
Mroz also made a related claim in a recent speech to the Michigan State Senate.
However, the University Senate was
recently made aware of a situation which would appear to have an easy solution
and for which a mechanism to effect a quick remedy would not appear to have
been utilized. It came to the Senate’s
attention that a student was in a course for 8 weeks without receiving any
indication of progress. Eight weeks is
the drop date, i.e., the date to drop the course and only receive a “W” on the
transcript. Because the student did not
have any quantitative feedback to know whether to drop out of the course, she maintained
hope but unfortunately received a low grade.
We should not have a circumstance such as this. Given the competitive capitalistic nature of
the education enterprise, I think we need to add to President Mroz’s
transformational strategic goals the suggestion that everyone appreciates the
complex nature of the educational enterprise and regard students as customers
entitled not only to a product but also a certain level of professionalism and
competence in the courses they take. These
changes if deemed necessary would not add any extra costs to our budget but
they might be very difficult to accomplish since they involve changing the
culture. However, it should be noted that
we do have successful examples of changing the culture and Senate Proposals 5
and 6 of 2011 dealing with redefining charters and searching and evaluation of
chairs and school deans are examples. I
would also add the “Centralization of Computing Services” to this list.
This
(SLIDE)
shows the various drop dates for courses at institutions around Michigan. As shown in the fourth column, one school
allows students to drop out of a course on the last date in the semester. The fifth column lists which schools allow
for students to withdraw completely with a W grade from all courses in which
the grade is greater than a D- and with an E grade for failing
work. Most schools have a longer period for
students to drop out of a course with a W grade compared to Tech. Other schools also allow for first year
students to remove all W grades from their transcripts if they complete the
first year reasonably well. Yet others
specify that there should be no homework due in the last week before final
exams. I believe we only specify that a
final exam should not be held during the week before the final exams. This next (SLIDE) shows
the situation regarding the commencement ceremonies during the fall and winter
semesters. Most schools have the
commencement after the final exam period.
There are two reasons why these other schools have their present
policies regarding the drop dates, restrictions during the final week of
classes, study days before the final exam, and holding commencement ceremonies after
the final exam period. First, they
acknowledge the fact of the student as a consumer. Second, perhaps these schools also recognize
that the student is not a responsible adult in the truest sense of this word
but engaged in a transition from the stage of childhood into adulthood. These seemingly lenient policies are used to
perhaps soften this transition and are there to assist students in the
maturation process. Needless to say the
Senate’s Instructional Policy Committee and the registrar’s office are working
to resolve this matter.
To
date this year, we have received two new degrees to examine, the first of which
is displayed here (SLIDE). This details a degree in engineering
management which was featured prominently in our local paper, the Daily Mining
Gazette (SLIDE). Interestingly, our Business School had a BS
in Engineering Administration in the 80’s which was removed due to
accreditation difficulties as it was only a one year program. During the deliberation on this new degree,
it was pointed out that the chemical engineering department would like to be
included as an option in this School of Business and Economics degree and we
were assured that this will be possible.
The second degree shown here (SLIDE) is
currently being debated in the Senate.
Senate
Committees (SLIDE)
are each working on material falling under their respective charges as detailed
in our By-Laws. Academic Policy is
investigating joint appointments where the situation regarding the duties and
evaluation of persons hired and placed in two different departments is being
examined. Sabbatical leave policy is
also being reviewed. The Administrative
Policy Committee has met several times to examine the evaluation questions for
the President’s evaluation, and they solicited input from various
administration sources including the AQIP Tsarina, Associate Provost Christa
Walck and President Mroz. Comments have
been received from all sources, they were incorporated into the questionnaire and
this should be conducted shortly after we receive the President’s statement. The Curricular and Finance committees have
examined several proposals to date and elections have been held for various
committees on University Standing committees, most notably, the CATPR. The Fringe Benefits Committee (SLIDE) has
participated in the various Benefits Liaison Group meetings and has contributed
to wellness plans initiated by our Human Resource department. The Institutional
Planning Committee will try to comment on the Strategic plan and I have already
mentioned the work by the Instructional Policy Committee in perhaps revising
our academic calendar. Joan Chadde
assisted the Research Policy Committee in conducting the survey questions shown
here regarding the research environment at Tech. This survey, the purpose of which was to find
out what could be done to assist faculty in research, was conceived by ex-chair
Brian Barkdoll of the Research Policy Committee who worked with VP Reed to facilitate
its distribution. Some 51 pages of commentary,
compiled by Senate Assistant Judi Smigowski, were produced as a result of this
survey. Once compiled, the material was distributed
to the Provost, the VP of research and the Dean of Graduate Studies. As can be observed from reading the selected material
on the next four slides,(SLIDE) (SLIDE) (SLIDE) (SLIDE) some
very complimentary points were made about our Research Services department in
answer to the second question regarding which measures were useful. The decision was made to request that the
administration comment on the points written in answer to the first question. Obviously the Research Policy Committee can
rank these suggestions in order of perceived importance but since we cannot
implement any of them, it would be more prudent to allow the administration
time to deliberate on them. The Senate
was assured by Provost Seel in our meeting on February 1st that the
concerns expressed in the survey will be addressed.
Finally
(SLIDE),
our Professional Staff Policy committee is working on a proposal to rearrange
the staff constituencies. This will first
require updating the constitution to reflect changes that took place external
to the Senate. For example, the Senate
Constitution in Article II.C.1 refers to a Department of Physical
Education. This is now called the
Department of Kinesiology
and Integrative Physiology.
The Professional Staff categories are defined by the Senate Executive
Committee as stated in the By-laws and are shown on this slide. As the various employees move around these
categories quite frequently, we propose to have this list consist of 12 titles,
equivalent to the listings in bold on this (SLIDE) and
maintain an accurate listing of the actual breakdown between the departments in
the Senate office. As this entails
changes to the constitution, the entire Senate constituency will have to vote
on this and, if approved by 2/3 majority of votes counted, it will next have to
be approved by the Board of Control.
Thanks
for listening.