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We’ve read and talked about prioritizing academic programs and, in a recent SCUP webcast, prioritizing non-academic programs. Alcorn State is having faculty prioritize deans.

Dickson Idusuyi, the Faculty Senate president and an associate professor of social science at the university, said that discussions have centered around how to make Alcorn more efficient and whether some departments need restructuring. Idusuyi said the university has had a culture where deans stay on in their jobs year after year. “They stay in these positions too long to be effective,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they are not doing their work or they are inefficient. Being a dean is not a lifetime appointment. Just like there is reassessment in the business world, there should be a reassessment of these positions.”

Brown said that one problem with the existing situation was that the deans were not being re-evaluated regularly.

A solid majority of faculty members (58 percent) described themselves as filled more with fear than with excitement ... . Meanwhile, academic technology administrators —defined as “individuals with responsibility for some aspect of academic technology at their institutions”—were overwhelmingly enthused; 80 percent said the online boom excited more than frightened them.

A new study—quite timely in light of the University of Virginia presidency situation and its relationship to online learning—shows faculty more fearful of online learning than tech administrators. Here’s an Inside Higher Ed article about it and here’s the PDF of the study. Inside Higher Ed is having a free webcast about this report on July 10.

Faculty and tech administrators also disagree on assessment of online instruction:

Meanwhile, online courses tend to generate more data from which instructors and their overseers can glean quantitative insights on student engagement and the degree to which a professor has succeeded in meeting specific learning objectives.

Administrators seemed more confident that their institutions were indeed supplying their online instructors with good quality-assessment tools; more than 50 percent of administrators believed their institutions had such tools in place, compared to 25 percent of faculty members.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's most recent listing, by Nina C. Ayoub, includes several books we thought might be of interest to SCUP members:

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Academe is worth a regular bi-monthly look. The AAUP provides quality content. Access is not restricted. In the current issue, using its own words:

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A fairly comprehensive view of current faculty-tenure issues and models in the US, from the perspective of the UK. Worthwhile:

"Some arbitrary volume of published papers, on some narrowly defined points of debate, is not necessarily more worthy than other activities," said Gee. Instead, Ohio State should value applied research that has an impact on people, he argued. "We can dare to say, 'No more' to quantity over quality. We can stop looking at the length of a vita and start measuring its heft."

Implementing the grand vision is challenging. Ohio State has more than 100 tenure-granting units, each with its own set of criteria. Donoghue says he welcomes a broader definition of scholarship, and hopes that digital publishing will be recognised. "But I still don't know what the president means by 'interdisciplinarity'," he says. "In the English department, we're baffled about how to interpret that."

Below, you can read or skim this excellent and important article from Planning for Higher Education. Please do share this URL with any faculty colleagues you know who might understand the value of this for their campus.

The authors are faculty at the University of North Texas who reviewed peer institutions for faculty senate missions, analyzed them, and engaged their faculty in a process resulting in a faculty senate mission statement.

Here, you can also access an interactive beta SCUP semantic analysis of the document, where you can explore its facts, summaries, and key terms in a customizable fashion.

That analysis tells us that the following are the top ten "facts" in this article:

Why are top researchers paid so much while top teachers are recognized, if at all, with awards of little dollar value?

We wonder, could it somehow have to do with the research function being just a little more clearly defined as "public" good than the more personally-directed academic function, which may be seen by more as a "private" good? These authors go from here:

During your undergraduate studies you were introduced to several luminaries in your field who receive considerable attention from the news media and are often on the lecture circuit. They are well-known for their six-figure salaries and commanding positions in your discipline. So far, it’s all good. Except …

Unfortunately, the luminosity of the luminaries has nothing to do with their teaching prowess; it is entirely due to their scholarship. There is a thriving market for senior scholars in higher education -- a market that brings plenty of release time from teaching, along with high salaries and fame.

There is no corresponding market for world-class teachers. No one in higher education becomes famous or well-compensated for exceptional teaching. How could this happen, since the students, parents, and taxpayers (those who pay the bills) have only a passing interest in research, but an abiding and personal stake in high-quality teaching?

Before we address that question, it is important to note there are many social benefits to be derived from an efficient market for senior scholars; the existence of that market is not the problem. Only spite and envy would ban the market for scholars as some ill-conceived “fix” for the imbalance between teaching and research. The correct response is to learn why we have a market for scholars and no market for teachers.

The critical reason why one market exists and the other does not is the information available to potential employers. Potential employers of professors have sufficient information to judge scholarly productivity, but virtually no information that would allow them to judge teaching productivity.

Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List is one of the best lists we subscribe to, and not just because they occasionally republish some good SCUP faculty-related materials. The list describes itself as "desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year." And it is.

A recent post to that website is Connie D. Foster's review from Planning for Higher Education of the book, Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders by Adrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester. 

Foster's conclusion:

To create and sustain change means rethinking overall organizational structures, processes, and design as well as understanding the critical roles of mission, core values, and leadership skills. In The Courage to Lead: Transform Self, Transform Society, Brian Stanfield describes the journey of the organization. He states, "More and more, organizations are beginning to realize that they have to change their whole network in many dimensions-a process that has been called whole-system transformation. A first step in this wholistic change is transforming the organization's current worldview" (Stanfield 2000, p. 151). Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration is a book that can help a higher education institution rethink its worldview, a valuable exercise in these challenging times.

The document is titled Quality Higher Education for the 21st Century. It was prepared by the California Faculty Association and reviewed last week by faculty representatives from 21 states. 

The report: Feedback is requested. From Inside Higher Ed, a report on the report and the meeting from Dan Berrett:

And yet, the draft document prepared by the CFA advocates for more public investment in higher education. While this position is politically difficult, it represents sound policy, several faculty members said. “The irony is that not investing is dangerous for the future,” said Landy.

Some argued that cost efficiencies could be better realized in places other than the classroom, such as administration. When colleges put less than 50 percent of their budgets into what goes on in class, it is, said Taiz, "plain, flat-out crazy."

Another place to cut might be sports, or new facilities projects, some said. Roiblatt pointed to the $38 million renovation of a health, physical education and recreation building featuring space on her campus for student health services, fitness centers, a jogging track, gyms, locker rooms, café and classrooms. "The institution seems to have plenty of money for edifices," she said. "It seems like that is never questioned -- even when the dollars are enormous."

 A snarky piece from an English professor, using building and facility names as a hook for writing about the dissonance of having money for new buildings, but not for faculty salaries. Useful for a reminder about faculty perceptions:

“Architecture is sexy. Faculty salaries aren’t.” So, for the next five years, or until the moolah runs out, the U of All People campus will be alive with the cheerful roar of electric saws, cement mixers, and nail guns. Here are just a few of the current building projects:

The Tip Tapp School of Dance: named after alumnus George Tapp, whose latest trophy wife, Tip, wanted something more substantial than another house in the Hamptons. This 40,000square-foot facility will contain five soundproof rehearsal rooms, a 3,000-seat auditorium with a massive proscenium stage, and even a classroom. Cost: $22 million, $40,000 of which will go to recruit students for the new dance major and hire instructors to teach them.

Bland Cafeteria: puzzling, since we already have three cafeterias, a café, a refectory, and two dining halls. But this is what the class of 1985 pooled its donations for: a 24/7 facility so that students pulling all-nighters need never go without munchies. Shaped like a giant pretzel and designed by the ecologically correct Swedish architectural firm ELOF, known for its innovative use of building materials, Bland will have its very walls made of hardened dough. “It is edible, theoretically,” says ELOF CEO Elof Elofsen, “and that is the point, yes?”