On Monday, January 10, 2022, Truman State University faculty were informed via a notice buried in Truman Today that as of January 1 the position of a new associate dean had been created and a person had been appointed to it, thereby substantiating rumors that had been circulating widely for over a month. The new Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies will oversee all three elements of the common curriculum (the first-year Symposium, the first-year Self and Society courses, and the Junior Interdisciplinary Seminars). In addition, this position replaces the Directorship of Interdisciplinary Studies with its oversight of all 17 interdisciplinary minor programs and their budgets.
The position of IDSM director was created in 2008 as a means to coordinate interdisciplinarity (both JINS and minor programs), and as such was integral to a coherent curricular vision of the institution’s commitment to interdisciplinarity as an intellectual skill central to a fully-developed Liberal Arts education. This commitment was well-established by the phasing-out of ENG 314, the junior composition course, in 1998 and replacing it with a fertile variety of JINS courses. Since interdisciplinarity has never been housed in any single School and yet coordinates curriculum across the campus, such a position has been since inception a competitive faculty position, encouraging well-qualified faculty from across the campus to engage in a public application process in which principles of shared governance were brought to bear through public lectures. The qualifications for such a position, in addition to the obvious necessity for demonstrated administrative skills, perforce include proven pedagogical skills, a deep understanding of the curriculum, and academic experience and expertise across multiple academic disciplines.
An effective IDS leader (whether “director” or “dean”) must be able to facilitate networking between a wide variety of stakeholders across the campus—advising students, crafting faculty buy-in, and remaining closely connected to the program as a dynamic, living thing through regular classroom experience. Since its inception, the IDS directorship has included teaching the IDS introduction and capstone, as well as not simply administrating but also teaching regular sections of JINS. As at least one previous director observes, in the absence of these attributes in the director, “the program will not run itself”; rather, without that sort of close hand-on connection, Interdisciplinary Studies “will run itself into the ground.” In fine, nothing short of the long-term sustainability of interdisciplinarity at Truman is at risk with this appointment.
In eliminating such a position, and in its place appointing an administrative member with little teaching experience, no experience in development of disciplinary curriculum and no terminal degree, the Provost of Truman State University has established a dangerous precedent by abrogating the prerogatives of faculty governance. Furthermore, by failing to retain the open and transparent process of faculty application and evaluation of applicants to the now-eliminated directorship, the Provost has, in effect, told the faculty that the selection of the person who will directly oversee scores of courses, taught by dozens of faculty across the institution is none of their business. Unlike the hiring of other deans, faculty were not provided with the opportunity to interview candidates or provide feedback on the decision.
If the Provost’s position is that this decision was a matter of efficiency, rolling multiple roles into one and thereby returning one faculty member (the IDSM director as-was) to full-time teaching, we call upon her to make that case openly. If the new appointee, despite not having gone through the rigorous and transparent process of a faculty hire, is indeed well-qualified and possibly the best person for the position, then we call upon an open and transparent application process, in order that she may demonstrate the strength of her application.
The executive committee of AAUP at TSU contend that this fait accompli decision by the Provost demonstrates significant overreach, violating the institution’s long-standing commitment to shared governance. Often the Provost has maintained that certain decisions are hers to make unilaterally, as long as they have no curricular implications: the elimination of the Director of IDSM and entirely unipartite creation of a new associate dean position along with appointing its first occupant with no consultation with affected parties fail to meet this criterion given its wide-sweeping curricular impact. We call upon Truman faculty to resist this erosion of the academic and pedagogical principles of shared governance by requesting that this issue be opened to consideration in a transparent process of decision-making.