Thursday, April 23, 2009
RU faculty is acting responsibly
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Gwen Brown
Brown is an associate professor in the Radford University School of Communication and received the 1996 Distinguished Teaching Award.
I am a faculty member with 21 years of service to Radford University, and though I am on academic leave this semester, I can see -- even from a distance -- that The Roanoke Times editorial board has done a disservice to its readers and to the university.
The editorial "Radford faculty are on the case" (April 13) glosses over the legitimate concerns of the faculty and does little to explain to readers why the university's Faculty Senate voted to form an ad hoc investigative committee.
The crux of the problem is that an unscheduled and expedited review of certain RU programs occurred without explanation or rationale. Suddenly it seemed as though programs, which the faculty might argue are central to the university's existence, were on the chopping block with little to no warning.
Some programs had just completed the normal, two-year-long academic review process and faculty were surprised to learn that they would be evaluated again, while others had only a week's notice that justification of their programs' existence would be required.
The faculty would certainly understand if they were told that an expedited review of programs might be warranted given the state's current financial woes; it is feasible that the university might need to act quickly to determine where cost-saving measures could be implemented.
If this rationale were given, though, the faculty would rightly expect an explanation of why certain programs were being targeted for evaluation and how their restructuring or elimination would result in specific cost savings.
However, when asked on several occasions if the expedited review was prompted by current budgetary concerns, the administration of the university consistently denied that financial considerations were motivating factors.
If there is no compelling financial reason to conduct the reviews outside the normal process, then there is no need for a rushed assessment, and the routine procedures of academic review that are described in internal governance documents should be followed. Those procedures say nothing about an expedited review process.
Additionally, with little to no faculty input and again seemingly by administrative fiat, programs were being moved and departments were being merged. Again, faculty might understand if reasons had been given and the opportunity to comment had been offered to them.
However, absent a compelling reason for the expedited reviews and the structural changes, faculty understandably grow suspicious that the academic shape of the institution is being altered at the whim of the administration and without the expertise of the faculty. It is, after all, the faculty -- not the administration and not the board of visitors -- who have the responsibility of overseeing and shaping academic programs.
The Faculty Senate, in a first-step effort to fully inform itself before taking any further action or making any further comment, voted to charge an ad hoc investigative committee with determining exactly what process was used in these matters and how that process comported with or departed from the published governance procedures. To describe its charge any more specifically would have been to predict its findings, and the Faculty Senate wisely chose not to taint the committee's work.
The Roanoke Times editorial, while admitting that there are serious questions to be answered by the administration, charges that the Faculty Senate has foolishly voted to name an ad hoc investigative committee and has given them an unclear charge instead of handling this through an "existing grievance procedure."
I presume the editors refer to the University's Grievance Committee. The charge of that committee, however, is limited to hearing "grievances regarding an employment matter directly and adversely affecting the professional well-being of a member or members of the teaching and research faculty." Broad curricular and programmatic concerns are clearly not an employment matter.
Moreover, the Grievance Committee is described as reporting to the administration -- not the Faculty Senate. But it is the Faculty Senate that requires information about this unusual review process if it is to represent the faculty well.
Finally, the editors do little to enhance their own credibility on this issue when they gratuitously insult the Radford University faculty: "If college professors did not tend toward a peaceful temperament, we would be worried about the safety of Radford University President Penny Kyle." There are a number of RU courses the editors might enroll in to learn how to distinguish between fair and reasoned argument and ad hominem attack -- if, that is, those courses aren't cut under an expedited process that the faculty did not expect.
