Published: April 12, 2008 06:42 pm            

FLASHPOINT: Campus conflict will have impact on ISU’s long-term health

In recent weeks disputed issues at Indiana State University have again appeared in the editorial pages of the Tribune-Star. Many in the reading public are probably wondering what the devil is up with ISU or have grown weary of the seemingly endless academic conflict. I beg the indulgence of readers as I provide a context for understanding recent events and suggest that the taxpayers of Indiana as well as the students and employees of ISU have an interest in how these issues play out.

As social organizations go, universities are odd creatures with regard to their authority structures, and most of the public is not familiar with how they are run nor why they are set up in this unusual way. They are not organized as hierarchies the way militaries and many private businesses are. We have a system of organizational control known as “shared governance,” which is duly recognized in essential documents such as the University Handbook.

The central idea of shared governance is that, while ultimate authority on key decisions rests with the Board of Trustees, day-to-day running of the university is delegated to both faculty and administrators interacting from clearly distinguished spheres of authority. Shared governance recognizes the depth of disciplinary expertise a university requires and allocates authority accordingly. Faculty have primary authority over curriculum, research and academic structure. Administrators have primary authority in areas such as facilities, student services and fiscal issues.

While this may seem chaotic to those unfamiliar with it, the system works, and there are sound reasons for this institutional design based on the efficient utilization of information. Universities produce knowledge, and faculty members are the workers on the “factory floor.” Unlike in conventional factories, these workers possess the best information about how to produce knowledge and what kind of knowledge the broader community needs the most. They ought to have a strong voice regarding curriculum, academic structure and research.

At the same time, they do not, and should not, have complete control over these matters. Shared governance strikes a balance by constraining faculty power via administrators and vice versa, a system of checks and balances. This unusual authority structure has been the dominant paradigm in American higher education for decades, and it has produced a system highly respected throughout the world.

Since 2004 ISU has had two groups of biologists working in separate academic departments, one with a focus on ecology, whole organisms and animal behavior, the other with a focus primarily on life forms at the cellular and molecular level, the raw material of biomedical technology. The allocation of work across the faculty groups was not so neatly divided, but these divisions are roughly accurate.

From fall 2006 through the whole of 2007, in direct response to a request of the ISU administration to pursue innovative consolidations of academic departments, one group of biologists teamed up with ISU’s geologists and anthropologists to develop a new department and program of study in Environmental and Ecological Sciences (EES). As a faculty representative from a different department I read their proposal, a detailed document of 28 pages, and countless more of specific course descriptions. They worked long and hard on this. I found it to be a highly professional, coherent and innovative proposal that addressed an important educational need, which is reflected in the establishment of such programs in universities across the country.

A large majority of my peers on the Faculty Council agreed, and we approved it last November. It already had the approval of the Dean of the College and Provost of the university. All concerned expected it to come before the Board of Trustees this spring. In early March the Dean and Provost abruptly changed their minds, deciding instead, without any consultation with the affected faculty, to stop formation of the EES program and to consolidate the two biology groups into one department.

Their actions completely ignored principles of shared governance. They side-stepped due process in coming to their determination and intend to ask the Board of Trustees to act on their recommendations without hearing anything from faculty governance bodies, justifying their actions by unsupported claims of crisis within the biology programs.

Instead of engaging the faculty in open and honest debate on the merits of their recommendations, they seek to impose their will dictatorially.

This is not effective management in a knowledge factory. Rather than respecting the faculty for their professional accomplishments, the administrators seem to hold them in contempt, ignoring their expertise and casually dismissing the hard work that was devoted to the EES program. This is hardly the way to motivate knowledge workers. Aside from this “human factor,” these administrators have spent on the order of $150,000 of faculty labor on a project that they initially encouraged and are now throwing on a trash heap. Is this fiscally responsible?

The harm to the university is not fatal, and ISU will recover from this episode even if many of the demoralized faculty members involved depart for other jobs or withdraw to a minimal performance standard until retirement. But the administration is inflicting damage rather than nurturing growth, and the stakeholders of ISU, including the taxpaying public, should take note.

— Richard Lotspeich

Associate Professor and Faculty Representative

Department of Economics

Indiana State University

        

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