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 Boards 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
improvementsfinancially 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 communityits 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.