Blog Post 2

Well, it has been a series of months now since I began work in the Office of the Provost in earnest, and I have learned a lot. When colleagues ask how I like my job, I pause, take a breath and then say one of two things (usually depending upon the audience): “I have much more sympathy for the pressures that come from above on the upper administration” or “boy is there a lot of work to do to bridge the gap between faculty and administrators, despite good intentions on both sides of the equation.”

Let’s cut to the chase: what are the barriers to understanding? What are the perceptions and misconceptions? Allow me to take a stab.

-Faculty members think that administrators spin their wheels, get paid very high salaries, lack a sincere commitment to the mission of education; are increasingly like corporate bosses, do not respect academic freedom and think only about the bottom line in a neo-liberal university model. They operate in a universe of lack of transparency and irregular practices (old boys; old buddies) and so on.

-Administrators believe faculty members are lazy, entitled, complaint departments, resistant to change, too caught up in their own heads and brilliance to engage in real world problems like budgets, metrics, etc.; they are imagined as impractical divas who fail to move beyond their own interests and see the bigger picture.

There is truth on both sides; but also a lot of falsehood and misunderstanding. At least from my vantage point. I can certainly empathize with the administrator position about faculty members who imagine the world revolves around them; and surely we all know an administrator or two who forgets that we work in a university and not in some corporation. But, by and large, we are all trying to achieve similar goals of providing a quality, well-rounded education for our students at all levels and advancing our research agendas and bringing in research dollars where we can.

In other words, here is what I see:

-Faculty who would like things to be transparent; equitable; who love to teach; get grants; write books; make innovative and beautiful objects; and believe in the mission of a public research university in a diverse community. Want to innovate in the classroom…reach out to the community….are overtaxed and often underappreciated…

-Administrators who feel as though they are holding back the flood of pressures from above and the ebbing tides of diminishing state funds; they worry all of the time about where new revenue streams will come from; who must comply with state mandates of many varieties; how to create the space for faculty members to thrive; and at the center of all concerns are, again, the students themselves.

Where does that leave us? How can I translate?

Let’s take a Faculty Fellow Favorite to start: Textbook Affordability. These famous emails come from the Office of the Provost about two months before the start of every term and most of us simply delete them. Why should we be expected to know what materials/books/etc. will be on our syllabus two months out? Why should we help the B&N store make money? Why are they encroaching on our natural rhythms of course preparation and book choice? It turns out there are answers to these questions and they are pretty compelling and simple.

First of all, it is a Legislative Mandate meant to protect the interests of our students: to allow them the opportunity to “shop around” for classes based, in part, on the books & materials we assign and the amount of money that those books & materials cost. If that is not reason enough, because students should be happy to “get what they get and not get upset”, then how about number two?: If we remain out of compliance with the Legislative Mandate to have 100% of the books & materials reported 30 days before the semester begins, we will continue to get audited (as we were this year) and eventually we may see more draconian dictates that impact instructors choosing course materials.

So, this is an example of some miscommunication (as I said in a memo not too long ago). The administration should communicate better to faculty how Textbook Affordability works, and maybe should better integrate the process of adopting textbooks into one central system (Panthersoft) or continue to work on the existing system (FacultyEnlight); and faculty need to have some faith that the Office of the Provost is not doing Barnes and Noble’s bidding or forcing us to make decisions about course content earlier than we might because they want to exert control. On the contrary, each side is trying to do the right thing.

When I sent out my memo some weeks ago, I got a flood of messages from individual faculty members thanking me, asking for clarification, and reporting the failings of FacultyEnlight; all done with the object of complying. Likewise, those in the Office of the Provost tried to work on the system, issue the request more clearly and get the job done.

So let’s keep communicating and have faith that listening and talking will help to continue to bridge the gap.

Let me know what you think.

Rebecca