A Note to the College Bylaws Committee
(February 15, 2004)
(Archive | Logan | PSE Department)
{There was never a response to this note. The committee eventually presented a substantially reduced bylaws, eliminating standing research and outreach committees and all mention of RIAES and CE, and eliminating the college parliamentarian and reference to Sturges ("too inconvenient"), in essence significantly reducing the structure of shared governance in CELS. The issues raised here apparently concern no one else in the College.}
Academic bylaws are a foundation for governance shared by faculty and administration. Under shared governance, administration functions on behalf of faculty, staff, students, and external constituencies. Faculty and administration are connected and mutually accountable for performance. Bylaws can explicitly state organizational consensus on administrative functions, the beginning point for connection between faculty and administration—the root of shared governance.
Consensus requires dialog. Within CELS, there has been only a single one hour general meeting between faculty and administration in over three years, an hour mostly limited to administrative reports: this is not dialog. There is also little representative dialog—Executive Council and Program Leaders are also dominated by administration—or committee dialog—e.g., the Environmental Biotechnology Initiative, an initiative of marine and environmental faculty, hasn't met as a faculty committee in two years, even as CELS administration pursues an aggressive bio-pharmaceutical-technology agenda.
The Bylaws Committee presents a new opportunity for dialog. Bylaws must derive from consensus, emerging from open discussion, if they are to serve as a foundation for shared governance. Bylaws should encompass at least six administrative functions. In what follows, I outline these as a statement of needs, some observations and concerns I have with the CELS administrative performance, questions arising from those concerns, and implications for revising CELS Bylaws >
Planning
The need. Administration should plan. It should periodically review vision and mission. It should regularly assess the external environment affecting us as well as our inner environment, evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in both of those environments. It should set goals for the future, derived from dialog with the faculty and critical stakeholders, with specific measures and milestones for each goal.
Shared governance should use strategic planning. Open discussions should lead administration and faculty to a common view of vision and mission. Vision and mission should be periodically reaffirmed or reformulated based on faculty, student, and public input. CSREES mandates this for AES and CE every five years—the current RIAES/CE Joint Plan of Work expires this year. CELS needs clearly articulated goals and milestones. We need a Plan, developed in an open and consensus-based process, so that our stakeholders and supporters can see that faculty and administration have a unified vision and goals, and a realistic schedule for marking progress and measuring success (or lack thereof). We need a Plan so we can know when administration speaks for the faculty, and so we can know that faculty is willing to accept directions set by administration. A Plan is essential for organizational harmony and conduct under shared governance.
We need a Plan so that we are able to inform URI administration, the Board, constituents, and the legislature of our goals and the help we seek from each of these stakeholders and supporters. We need planned, targeted resource growth to meet our goals, and plans that include costs of vital resources needed to meet those goals. Our Plan should target outcomes, highlighting the public good that will come as we meet our goals. Our Plan is critical in presenting our case for institutional and state resources to meet our objectives. Ultimately, our Plan, as it leads to more normal levels of state and institutional support, will also enhance our ability to compete in federal and private funding arenas.
Concerns: It has been nearly a decade since vision and mission were last discussed in CELS. CELS has no clearly articulated goals or milestones. The administration's promise that CELS would double external grants in five years hardly constitutes a Plan or adequate goals and milestones. In the absence of such a Plan, there is no basis for assuming that administration speaks for the faculty, or that faculty will willingly comply with administration. In the face of such disconnection, there is significant danger of continued organizational disharmony and eventual failure.
Planning can be used as a foundation for success in increasing institutional (URI administration and the Board) and legislative support for higher education in general and for our research and outreach missions in particular. We cannot continue without an increase in institutional and state help (both ultimately derived from state tax dollars). It is ineffective, demoralizing, and emotionally and intellectually exhausting to plan research, curricular innovation, infrastructure improvement, staff enhancements, etc., only to have all levels of the institution (including Board and legislature, by extension) callously assume that we can and will—though our own initiatives, energies, and commitments—fund our aspirations totally on ephemeral federal grants. Given the enormous pressures to teach—and in CELS to also demonstrate active research or outreach programs—we cannot continually be held virtually totally responsible for funding all of our operations, as has become a habit at URI. Yet, without clearly articulated vision to inspire, mission to inform, or milestones to attain, we have no basis for asking for the support we so desperately need.
In October 2001, CELS administration declared that it intended to drive all key hiring and other administrative decisions by strategic planning. All departments were told to submit plans in December 2001, and all did, with considerable work and reflection. The administration promised that it would respond with a composite College plan. This process lacked vital dialog with faculty as a whole (such an approach pits departments against one another instead of focusing on common interests), and it lacked external input. Nevertheless, even within this limited framework, the administration has yet to produce its Plan.
The present focus on restructuring to achieve a College of Life Sciences is premature, even if the discussion is limited to the singular question of movement of biological sciences into CELS. Structure should follow from function, which can only be derived from College-wide agreement on vision and mission. The COLS discussion requires consensus on vision and mission, natural products of strategic planning. Without consensus on vision and mission, what is the point of structure?
CELS needs faculty input, derived through representative dialog in the Executive Council, into its annual administrative hiring plan, presented to the Provost each September. CELS needs broad agreement on working policies and formulas that allocate resources (operating funds, graduate assistantships, equipment funds, staff) in proportion to measurable performance objectives. Both of these needs are rooted in strategic planning and open dialog. With no dialog, no Plan, no policies, and no formulas, hiring and resource allocations are open to being viewed as capricious.
Questions: Why has CELS administration not produced a Strategic Plan? Given the premise that decision-making and hiring would be based on the administration's Strategic Plan, on what basis has the College been making decisions and hiring? Given a lack of policies and formulas for resource allocation, on what basis has the College been allocating resources?
Implications: Bylaws should address the need for systematic, stakeholder-based formal strategic planning on a regular (no longer than 5 year) cycle, and for open representative participation in implementation and review of policy formulation, formula-based resource allocation, and decision-making based on that plan (through the executive council, program leaders, or regular open forums).
Management
The need: CELS administration should manage people and funds, driving resources toward goals articulated in the Strategic Plan. It should provide core clerical services to support teaching, research, and outreach. It should budget and adhere to budget. It should account for research and departmental spending. When faced with overall institutional fiscal austerity (seemingly a permanent characteristic of URI), it should provide an example of frugality.
Concerns: CELS is not providing adequate centralized basic accounting and personnel services for individual faculty. Departments and faculty seldom have the human resources or individual time to track grant or departmental spending. PI's need to know their bottom lines, they need help with requisitions, and they need help with personnel, much more than the single clerical person assigned to each department.
PeopleSoft systems do not yet allow PI's to monitor spending or account balances. Extensive PeopleSoft training for faculty and staff has nevertheless been accompanied by an increased burden on faculty to make up for system-wide inadequacies in accounting, requisitioning, and management of students and human resources. This burden has not been offset with concomitant resources or support. Difficulties with simple requisitions and student payroll procedures have left faculty with much more work to do than was necessary two years ago.
CELS administration has admitted that it has difficulty adjusting programs or budgets to meet USDA match requirements. It has even had to compel funds from URI-Foundation accounts to compensate. We need an administration that manages well, and one that seeks cooperation rather than coercion to balance its books.
CELS administration is not frugal. It overspends on itself. The overall austerity of CELS, AES, and CE budgets do not warrant excessive administrative spending on itself. In contrast to the general austerity faced by faculty, numerous examples of administrative self-indulgence show utter disregard for frugality.
Questions: Have major increases in staff and spending by the administrative accounting and personnel offices restored basic accounting capacity, such as we had before this administration? Is CELS administration putting spending on its own appearance above the simplest basic needs of its constituent departments? Is CELS administration accountable for its spending?
Implications: Bylaws should uphold a principle of shared responsibility and accountability for administrative management services, and should include provisions for responsible governance and faculty review of spending by the administration on itself.
Style
The need: CELS administration should lead by inspiration and idea-based persuasion. It should encourage and reward. It should be fair and honest. It should epitomize a positive work environment, devolving responsibility following principles of total quality management. In matters of vision, goal setting, policy-making, and principles, it should be open and democratic. Leadership should be principles-based, moral, equitable, and considerate of the needs of current faculty and staff.
Concerns: CELS administration has become known for a hallmark style that is generally ineffective in successful organizations, and certainly is unacceptable in academic circles. In its approach to reorganization, for example, CELS administration conducted itself in such a way as to prompt the executive director of AAUP to issue this remarkable plea:
“The AAUP calls upon the administration to enter this discussion with openness, good will, and the spirit of collaboration. The faculty must know your best thinking on this most serious subject. For these discussions to be effective, all bribes, threats and, intimidation must be set aside. Please use your leadership to convince, rather than cajole. Please use your power to persuade rather than to hector. But most important of all, listen carefully to what the faculty has to say.”
Administrative style has been the major obstacle to shared governance in CELS.
Questions: Short of more grievances or outright lawsuits, what will it take for administration to adopt an administrative style that is acceptable for academic governance?
Implications: Bylaws need to provide support for mechanisms to prevent civil rights abuse, workplace hostility on the part of administration, and other forms of conduct unsuitable in an institution such as URI. Bylaw provisions for formal and inclusive Strategic Planning would help, as would formal and regular (at least twice per semester) general meetings of the College.
Image-Building
The Need: CELS administration should project a positive and genuine image of the whole enterprise, based on real accomplishments and program outcomes. Outcomes should reflect Plan-driven goals and an overall commitment to meeting the needs of stakeholders, both internal (faculty, staff, and students) and external (traditional outreach clientele and relevant economy-building private sector entrepreneurs). The CELS image should spring from outcomes resulting from a fundamental philosophical commitment to land grant principles. CELS constituents—taxpayers and their representatives in government, parents of students, communities involved in outreach programs, and private enterprise collaborating in applied research—all should be informed of tangible outcomes and accomplishments resulting from CELS faculty and students engaged in Plan-driven real-world problem solving.
Concerns: Within CELS, there is no sense of the uniqueness of land grant philosophy, nor is there a prominent commitment toward demonstrating positive returns on public investment in the form of research outputs or other public goods. There is minimal recognition of the many diverse ways CELS faculty engage (or potentially could engage) in meeting Rhode Island's major environmental, social, or economic challenges. There is far too much emphasis on technology for biomedicine and biopharmaceutics, which are tangential to the marine and environmental expertise of most CELS faculty. There is no sense that CELS has broad intellectual resources capable of water quality, pest management, children-at-risk, community planning, conservation, stewardship, agriculture, aquaculture, or other state needs, nor are there incentives for such engagement. There is no promotion of awareness that RI can benefit from increasing support for its only public research university by an initial investment in the land grant programs rooted in CELS, as a prerequisite to receiving benefits from such an investment.
Questions: What has become of the CELS commitment to support a land grant bill to enhance broad-based outcome-oriented State funding for AES and CE? In a vacuum of Plan-related goals and milestones, by what mechanisms can administration measure accomplishments? How can accomplishments be valued by constituents when there is no stakeholder engagement in setting goals?
Implications: Again, bylaws can help set goals and aspirations—through consensus-based planning and open dialog—to serve as standards by which we can measure and value accomplishments. This will provide a real base for measurement of progress and value, which is the only genuine foundation for image.
Capacity Building
The Need: CELS administration should stimulate development of resources needed to maintain program quality and to grow. Goals for resource acquisition should be Plan-driven, designed to fulfill the vision and mission of the College. Capacity-building should be focused on developing resources to help faculty and students stay on the leading edge of technology, in the classroom, laboratory, or on the outreach road. Capacity-building should be driven by principles of outcome funding. Thus, effort should be focused on resource development to meet the specific goals and milestones of the Plan
Concerns: CELS is an amalgam of faculty with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. AES and CE have national missions that are broader still. Largely because of a failure to develop vision and mission through a consensus-based Strategic Plan, efforts to develop resources are overly focused on biotechnology. Even the broad base and good institutional fit of the Environmental Biotechnology Initiative (1997) has lost focus, giving way to a presumably more marketable (at least to State economic development moguls) biomedical and biopharmaceutical orientation to biotechnology, with considerably less CELS faculty involvement. Without being rooted in faculty, priorities set by the administration have left all but a few biotech faculty disenfranchised and increasingly disengaged.
Questions: What is the relation between the faculty-driven Environmental Biotechnology Initiative and the administration-driven biopharmaceutical Biosciences Building State Bond campaign? How can fundraising priorities be established without faculty consensus or involvement, or without broad attention to the current expertise and priorities of the faculty as a whole? What other public, stakeholder-based, or faculty expertise-based priorities are driving resource development efforts in CELS?
Implications: If bylaws can promote planning and open discussion, priorities can be set by consensus, promoting a sense of enfranchisement and engagement.
Communications
The Need: CELS administration should nurture bi-directional communications. There should be regular and open dialog in meetings of the faculty as a whole, as well as focused dialog limited to departmental concerns. Communications should be two-way, involving a hallmark devotion to open listening on both sides. Communications need to reflect failures as well as successes, shortcomings as well as accomplishments, recognition of the successes of faculty as well as claimed successes by administration. Communication needs to connect faculty and administration to external constituents, including traditional land grant clients, new economic development interests, and public and private social services networks. Communication and active dialog with all members of the Board of Governors and the legislature, within the context of CELS and URI Strategic Plans, need to become standard operating procedure for the College, with administration serving as a facilitator for faculty interests and accomplishments.
Concerns: To date, there has been a real disconnect between CELS administration and faculty and between CELS administration and key external stakeholders and supporters. There has been outright administrative hostility and major foot dragging toward general college meetings, suggesting a general disinterest on the part of administration in hearing from faculty. Failure to carry out its part of the strategic planning process signals enormous disrespect to the faculty. Numerous reports of faculty and staff harassment by administration have created a hostile environment detrimental to communication. Communications have been one-way, with surveys substituting for open discourse and discussion. There is virtually no direct communication between College faculty and URI central administration.
Questions: How can there be shared governance without discourse? How can there be discourse without interest or respect? How can there be interest or respect without two-way communication?
Implications: Bylaws need to protect planning, accountability, and civility, without which there is no communications, and without communications there is little hope for shared governance.
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