Reflections on Academic Year 2003-04

Truman State University Chapter of AAUP

David K. Robinson, chapter president

October 1, 2004

            (A much shorter form appeared recently in MO-AAUP newsletter.)

            The past academic year was a busy one with many concerns and problems, and some hopeful signs.

            To mention the hopeful signs first, the restructuring of Faculty Senate has been completed. By April, faculty representatives were elected to an expanded Senate, where 18 of 20 votes are held by full-time faculty members, rather than 10 out of 15, as had been past practice here. (Still, there are some administrators, with full votes, sitting on the Faculty Senate.) Although we had kept quiet about it during the later stages of the reform process, anyone with a reasonably sharp memory will recall that discussions of restructuring Faculty Senate began with a series of AAUP-sponsored forums, a couple of years ago. On a related matter, a “Faculty Senate Budget Committee” has been formulated, although people are understandably puzzled why so many administrators have appointments to this “faculty” committee. The Faculty Senate is now in the process of establishing a Faculty Personnel Policies Committee. All these changes, modest and tardy though they may be, point towards better faculty representation and participation in important policy decisions.

            On October 23, 2003, our AAUP chapter had a well-attended and very cordial meeting with our new university President, Barbara Dixon, to whom we presented the AAUP Redbook. We were pleasantly astonished at how open and engaged she appeared to be (having missed these characteristics in our administrators for some time). She vowed to work with us where she could, and we invited her to meet with us again at some future date.

Later in the year we were very pleased to contribute AAUP policy to university-wide discussions of a revision of our non-discrimination policy, to specifically mention sexual orientation. We sent the text and a discussion of the long-standing AAUP non-discrimination policy to President Dixon, and she mentioned AAUP policy in her own memo to the University Board of Governors, encouraging the Board to make the appropriate change. At this point, the matter still awaits the Board’s decision.

On the negative side, we asked the Vice-President of Academic Affairs whether faculty might regularly attend Division Heads Meetings, and his answer was a clear “no.” Since we are convinced that these meetings come under the open-meetings laws of the State of Missouri, we believe that this matter is still open. We are considering the best way to proceed, in the face of this rebuff.

Another on-going, now-chronic concern centers on the late and often dissatisfactory summary reports of the annual faculty evaluation of administrators. Once again, the idea to evaluate the performance of administrators began in our AAUP chapter, before it fell into the purview of Faculty Senate and, presumably, the offices of the administrators themselves. In our AAUP meetings, we raised the possibility that our chapter should once again conduct and publish administrator evaluations; it may be the only way faculty members will ever see numbers and comments that are meaningful or useful.

In 2003-2004 we did not conduct our traditional state-of-the-university survey; this will take place early during 2004-2005.

We continue to ponder another area of concern that needs increased attention from faculty who believe in shared governance: Summer School, interim courses, and the recent addition of on-line courses. Many faculty members are still not convinced that recent, abrupt changes in the summer-school schedule have resulted in improvements—financially or pedagogically. They are therefore understandably vigilant when they hear that new policies are being defined for interim courses, and that there will also be increased offerings of on-line courses. Faculty governance bodies should be very concerned about consistency, fairness, and pedagogical soundness in the course of these developments. For example, many faculty still remember the argument that five-week summer courses were not pedagogically sound; now they hear the same administrators argue that, under certain circumstances, the same courses might be offered during interim or on-line.

On the horizon is a new issue, one that is probably not so new, except that now the administration seems poised to set policy about it: the use of contingent, non-tenure-track faculty appointments (or, as some have it, permanent-temporary faculty lines). Our chapter of AAUP will do what it can to facilitate a full discussion of this issue, as it affects important aspects of our university community—its budget, operation, and reputation. In this as in many other matters, we will insist that policies that are rightly part of shared governance should not decided by the very few, behind closed doors, and then announced to faculty at a Faculty Senate meeting; instead, such policies should result from fully informed discussions in an atmosphere of democratic, professional participation.

We welcome the challenges and successes of the coming year.