Some faculty members in the education college are deeply unhappy with a proposal to reorganize the school’s administrative structure, saying the process has been rushed, undemocratic and will end up severely hurting the college.
The administrative reorganization would fold seven departments into three, a change Dean Donna Wiseman has said will increase efficiency and allow for greater collaboration among disciplines. The reorganization must be approved by the provost, his academic advisory committee and the University Senate.
The faculty members were concerned that smaller departments would lose their uniqueness and autonomy, which they said was key to recruiting students. They also decried the lack of student involvement in the process and questioned the need to reorganize at all. Their discontent has forced Wiseman to slow the reorganization process, eliminating a previously established deadline of July 1. Wiseman said she was aware of the faculty concerns and the college will likely finish reorganization at some point in the 2010-2011 academic year.
“The proposed College of Education reorganization is a fiasco,” a senior faculty member said. “We need to cut our losses and regroup before this goes any further.”
Most faculty members interviewed for this story asked for anonymity because they feared angering Wiseman or other administrators.
“I really respect many of these faculty [members],” Wiseman said. “I don’t think their concerns are empty. As usual, a dean gets kind of pulled between these opposing views. I wish it were smoother, but it’s really messy work.”
“We have to reorganize. It’s not an option,” she said, citing the length of time the college has already put in to the process and the long period of time since its last restructuring.
Some professors were skeptical combining departments would lead to greater interaction, explaining a few years ago, one department was split into two because professors weren’t getting along.
“My prognosis for the college is very dim,” another professor said. “I think faculty will leave; the ability for programs to operate effectively will be affected. The process has just been outrageous.”
“We have really felt like the process has been rammed down our throats,” another professor said.
It’s unclear how many of the about 100 faculty members in the education school are against the reorganization. Professors interviewed for this story said that while many of their colleagues support the reorganization, the feelings of discontent were widespread.
“I think there is much less support for any reorganization (beyond closure of a few small programs) than [the dean] seems to realize or than has been communicated to the campus leadership,” human development professor Judith Torney-Purta wrote in an open letter to the college senate. She declined to be interviewed for this article.
Wiseman cited a college senate vote last fall between the three-department model and a four-department model as a sign she has the support of the majority of the faculty. The three-department model was approved by just more than half the faculty, but professors interviewed said they felt forced to pick between two bad choices, not on whether to reorganize or not.
One professor likened the choice between the two models to a choice between “a black eye or a sock in the jaw.”
Education college senate Chairman Bob Lent said the college has worked hard to address faculty concerns by sending out frequent e-mail updates, sponsoring open forums for discussion and sponsoring “community-building” events. He also said many other education schools across the country were reorganizing, showing a common need to shake up the status quo.
“Most of us realize that it is a tough, stressful process and that it will take years for the new departments to gel and for the hoped-for benefits to come to fruition,” Lent wrote in an e-mail. “It is also hoped that the [reorganization] will create new capacity by bringing together faculty with complementary interests who can pursue new research and teaching ventures together.”
Lent also disputed the idea that the process was undemocratic, explaining that from the beginning, professors have had many opportunities to propose different models of reorganization or express concerns through the college senate and the dean’s advisory group.
Some faculty members said they didn’t understand why the college was reorganizing at all, saying the school was well-regarded and had many strong programs and departments. They said the dean didn’t clearly articulate reasons for reorganization besides saying that the provost had insisted it be done. Provost Nariman Farvardin said he suggested the change but didn’t order it.
“I don’t think people are against the concept of reorganization,” said measurement, statistics and evaluation professor Robert Lissitz. “But where’s the vision? We don’t know why we’re doing this.”
A recent report from the provost’s Academic Planning Advisory Committee came to the same conclusions, advising “more details be provided regarding guiding principles and a specific action plan.”
Lissitz and others called for a formal assessment to more accurately identify places for improvement and to create a clearer understanding of the benefits of the reorganization.
Farvardin said he has been much less involved in the process than some faculty members think, a statement Wiseman agreed with. He also said the reorganization would not happen if it turned out that a majority of the faculty were against it.
Professors were also concerned that the dean told them there would be no money saved in the reorganization and that the man-hours required to create a new plan of organization would end up costing more than the savings from the plan to eliminate four chair positions and possibly a few staff members.
Wiseman said the elimination of the deadline should help give the college more time to work out these concerns.
“We’ll work on it until we get some kind of solution,” she said. “I can say a majority of people support this, but that’s not enough.”
cwells@umdbk.com
