The UNCG Faculty voted 53% to 47% to support a resolution of no confidence in the provost. This comes after a vote of no confidence from the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty that passed by a larger margin. There was also a censure of the chancellor and provost, and a resolution by the senate citing violations of the faculty constitution that passed with overwhelming support, as did additional resolutions regarding failures of the APR process. See https://www.savetheg.com/unshared-governance. The general faculty vote was close, but it doesn't alter the significance. There has never been a faculty vote of no confidence in the provost or the chancellor at UNCG. That does not mean things were always sunny between faculty and administration. In one case, my colleagues who know the history of UNCG informed me that Faculty Senate issued a critical report of Chancellor Moran in the 1990s in lieu of a vote of no confidence. And that there were significant issues with Chancellor Graham that led to the board doing an investigation in 1950s. But the fact that no formal votes of no confidence have ever been passed in UNCG's history supports the significance of what happened yesterday. Also, the vote was the largest number of faculty to vote in general faculty meeting that anyone I know can remember. And, The vote was held in the midst of classes on Weds afternoon and faculty had to remain in the entire meeting to vote. After each of the faculty votes, neither the chancellor nor the provost have exercised self-reflection. They have responded mostly by blaming faculty for obstructing change. The chancellor also vigorously supports the results of the APR process but has yet to answer any key questions that have been asked repeatedly (and in my blog posts since January 2023). The most important question to me is what the plan will be beyond cutting programs that will generate net revenue leading to survival and thriving of the university. If a chancellor can't explain the plan, and the provost can't explain the plan, and the chief financial officer can't explain the plan, then there is a serious flaw in leadership. In his response he mentioned that the program cuts are just on the margins. That has to be true. Not necessarily because deeper and deeper cuts have to made (if they are, with no consideration of revenue, the university will eventually die) but because there has to be a change in focus on generating revenue, which will probably involve empowering, harnessing and incentivizing the entrepreneurial spirt and creativity of deans and faculty. We all understand the "headwinds" facing higher education and UNCG. But that word has been so overused here it has become a square on buzzword bingo card. Nonetheless, even in strong "headwinds,” mission driven non-profit businesses, don't succeed by cutting alone, or by selling the most efficient credit hours. Universities don't make widgets. Although the UNCG revenue model is selling credit hours, that is not what students and parents are buying. They are investing in their future. Faculty don't just deliver curriculum, like pilots flying a plane to get someone from point A to Point B, they design and build the curriculum, assess it, continually improve it, and based on surveys like the Purdue-Gallup poll, are the most prevalent factor that alumni correlate to their post-graduation success. When the AAUP leadership met with the chancellor and provost to express concerns and provide suggestions several months ago, they were asked to go through faculty senate. When faculty senate passed their resolutions by overwhelming margins, the chancellor responded indicating he wanted to hear from the general faculty. Now that the general faculty have voted no confidence, the chancellor claims that that votes from just under 340 faculty was not enough to be meaningful. He does not mention that it was one of the largest number of voters in any UNCG general faculty meeting, ever. And that had there been more faculty, and less fear among non-tenured and professional track faculty, the vote margin might have been bigger. Or that although he indicated only 25% of the voting faculty voted no confidence, about 20% voted against a vote of no confidence. This all sounds familiar in current presidential politics. The election wasn't lost, even though it was. Those that didn't vote support are simply enemies of the state. The vote was not fair because not enough of the right people's votes were counted. The leader doesn't need to change a thing. People need to bend to the leader's will or be punished or alienated. And a plan for the future? Who needs a plan? Constituents want things broken and the swamp to be drained. So, that is what the leader will do. Given the response to the passing of the resolution, it wouldn't be that surprising if the Faculty Senate Chair and Secretary were called and asked to find some more votes. Joe Killian in this article compares and contrasts NC State's Chancellor's response to faculty concerns vs the UNCG Chancellor- "That [Chancellor Gilliam's] response stood in stark contrast to N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson’s response to his faculty’s “no confidence” vote, wherein he accepted that the faculty did not feel heard and vowed greater communication" The stark difference between Randy Woodson's response and Frank Gilliam's response says all that needs to said. Defiance and "shaming" are usually not the foundations of leadership in successful organizations. Especially when the motives of those who are concerned are shared with the chancellor: a bright future for UNCG. For university's to be successful, I think a majority of the faculty need to feel inspired and valued. Developing or redesigning programs to generate new revenue will be done by the faculty. Viewing a sizeable proportion of faculty as enemies of the university is counter productive. Finally, the chancellor suggests the vote will diminish the courage of faculty who are preparing for UNCG's next chapter, as if those of us who worry just as much about UNCG's future don't have courage and will to fight for UNCG's future. It is frustrating that he refuses to recognize the courage of many of my colleagues who have risked careers in a current culture of fear because they love UNCG and see the current actions leading the university into a death spiral (the chancellor, provost and our chief financial officer have not presented any sort of a clear plan that it won't happen). Those faculty are not risking their careers for their self-interest (as they were first accused) or because they personally dislike anybody. The chancellor has invested eight years in UNCG and has been well compensated. The provost has invested three years and been well compensated. The Chief Financial Office is approaching four well compensated years. Many of the faculty who voted no confidence have invested 2-3 times as much of their life to UNCG's mission as the chancellor and some greater than 10 times longer than the provost. Those faculty are financially compensated 3-6 times lower than the provost, chancellor and chief financial officer. For me, I often work 70-80 works at 1/3 of the salary I had as provost here, because of how important I think the mission of the university and how many personal rewards there are from mentoring students whose life trajectories are transformed at UNCG. Other faculty who voted "no confidence" have given everything of themselves to UNCG and UNCG's students for much longer, with almost no external rewards for the positive effects they have on the lives of students. One might think that people, with such perspectives and dedication, and who have a role in the design and building of programs and curriculum at UNCG, would be worth being listened to. My colleagues are likely to be here many times longer than either of our three leaders. They're the ones that will have to live with leadership's bad decisions. So, they should be taken more seriously. And, it should be recognized that almost all of us would much rater be in the classroom, with students, or with our research, then going to faculty meetings aimed at trying to be heard by our leadership. And, I would rather blog about funny things. The biggest failure of leadership right now is the inability to even outline how the current tactics will not lead UNCG into a death spiral and are part of clear strategy that will allow UNCG to ultimately thrive. At some point, leaders have to move beyond vacuous, defensive, and dismissive statements. I have a heard that some leaders respond to a vote of no confidence from faculty by saying the vote causes them to lose any confidence they had in faculty. Although that may be an effective way to protect one's ego, it is a sad way to react to the people one needs to lead. I am glad that I am not a chancellor or a provost in a public institution right now. The place between a rock and a hard place is microscopic. But in an organization that is fueled by the creativity and energy of faculty, at least a reflection like Randy Woodson's might have been part of the Chancellor's response. On a final personal note, the chancellor stated this in his remarks at the General Faculty Meeting relating to a vote of no confidence. "I believe this action is excessive, pointless, counterproductive, and downright cruel." with respect to the vote of no confidence, I have personal experience with "excessive and cruel" from the chancellor's and provost's office (and one faculty member) that purposefully destroyed my career, as do other people such as a previous athletic director and a previous graduate dean and others. The Chancellor, Provost and Chief of Staff, in my opinion, have set the cultural norm of the campus to celebrate "excessive and cruel." They need to own that is the culture they created. if they want to move back to a culture of care and respect, they have the power to change that with their actions, not their words. One simple change would be to invite faculty who have been critical to a meeting, where they come only prepared with questions whose answers they really want to listen to rather than to dismiss and defend. Here is quote from the message the Chancellor sent to the campus, the day after. "There are over 800 eligible people to vote. Today, out of 339 votes cast, 53% voted for the resolution of no confidence, and 47% voted against. Those who voted in favor represent less than a quarter of the eligible voters. As I expressed in my remarks to the faculty today, the Provost understands that strategic change and reinvestment will power the University’s long-term ability to fulfill its mission. The vote today will not only cost time – a precious commodity given the increasingly urgent headwinds facing higher education – it will also diminish the courage and invaluable contributions of the many people who are preparing for the University’s next chapter." Chancellor Gilliam, letter to faculty 3/14/2024
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One the eve of a vote of no confidence, the UNCG Chancellor sent out an email showing the enrollment and budget challenges of UNCG. One can't argue that enrollment has declined and that a large decline in enrollment has affected the budget. But, what is telling about the email is that it does not tell the full story and does not connect budget changes to enrollment. And, says nothing about revenue generation which the most important challenge. So here are some bullet points of issues that were not covered:
The UNCG Chancellor responded to a 116-6 vote of no confidence in the Provost by the College Arts and Sciences today. In his response, as he should, he defended the provost. He also took responsibility for the APR process stating that the provost was being personally attacked for his decisions.
Yet, I found the response to be quite ironic. Where were the Chancellor and/or the Provost in defending Dean Kiss from the vote of no confidence from CAS faculty? In fact the Chancellor and Provost said repeatedly that the programs that were being eliminated were based on recommendations from the deans without influence from above (except for the PhD program in Math which the Provost took responsibility). Neither he nor the provost opted to convey to the CAS faculty that the decisions on program eliminations were theirs and to defend Dean Kiss from "personal attacks" and a vote of no confidence by the CAS faculty. He also wrote the following paragraph: It’s deeply disappointing that Provost Storrs has come under personal attack over programmatic decisions that ultimately came from me. Such maneuvering comes amid pressing work for the University: identifying and executing solutions to our immediate and long-term challenges. I welcome — and encourage — all community members willing to collaborate with me in confronting these issues. The University must move forward, and we are. I would like to make two points (never concisely enough): 1. If the chancellor had paid attention to the numerous op-eds and blogs he would recognize that there is little if anything that is a personal attack on the provost, or simply a personal attack for the decisions on the APR. (And, by the way, the Chancellor had no trouble making personal attacks about me aimed at destroying my career that were not about my ability to do the job). I was a good senior academic administrator for 25 years. As a member of the UNCG faculty, and somebody, who cares deeply for its future- just as deeply, if not more than the chancellor or the provost- It is incumbent on me as a member of this community to point out what I see as failures of leadership in the university that I think put the university at risk. My blog lays out (see this post re: my reasons for a vote of no confidence and see this one re: my concerns with APR and false dichotomy created by the chancellor) what I think are specific failures of leadership of the provost (and possibly the chancellor). As the chief academic officer the provost is fully responsible for academic affairs and the leader of the faculty. She was responsible for the processes of the APR. She is responsible for decoupling authority and responsibility of deans. And, she is responsible for weakening the research enterprise at UNCG, even though that strength is critical to our reputation and fueling the economy of GSO and the State. She is responsible for using metrics that don't make sense. She is responsible for the decision to announce by email that all professional faculty contracts would be reduced to one year. She is responsible, as the leader of the faculty, to inspire faculty for the future. She has the responsibility of making faculty feel valued. And, it is well known in any business that there a strongly positive correlation between how valued employees feel and how well they do their job. In all of the Chancellor's and Provost's attempts to defend their decisions, they have not once addressed the major criticism: How exactly are the results of this process going to benefit UNCG for the future and not throw the university into a death spiral? Instead the chancellor relies on using a metaphor that faculty are maneuvering to stage some sort of coup or simply relying on ad hominin attacks, or just that any change, is good change. 2. The part that angers me most in his response is this: "I welcome — and encourage — all community members willing to collaborate with me in confronting these issues. The University must move forward, and we are." The most frustrating part of the process is the idea that those of us who disagree with the chancellor don't want to collaborate moving forward. I have been sharing my thoughts for nearly two years-- not once has anyone in the provost's or chancellor's office asked me about them. or how I think something might be improved in the current process. The Chancellor and Provost met with AAUP leadership. They listened to various collaborative proposals but ultimately told AAUP leadership to work through the Faculty Senate, whose resolutions concerning the APR process were dismissed by the chancellor and provost. The provost declined (very politely) to meet with me individually, at a time when I was not that angry, and asked if she would be interested in having me share my experiences as a senior administrator. Yes, the provost and chancellor had small group meetings with faculty with no agenda. But, for faculty who went to those meetings that I know, they did not feel heard and their opinions were not asked. Those of us on the faculty who are scared for the future of UNCG from what we see as bad leadership in the provost (and the chancellor) are left with only one option right now to be engaged and listened to: a vote of no confidence. As I have said before, I don't view the only good outcome of a vote of no confidence in the any senior administrator solely as the individual leaving their role. There are many responses that can be made to a vote of no confidence. One positive response would be a recognition of what others believe are failures of leadership and to reflect on those and work to rebuild confidence. Another, but bad, response is to ignore the reasons for the vote. Another, even worse, response is to not only ignore, but to find faculty that are supportive of UNCG leadership, bring them into the inner circle, and place them in leadership roles. Another terrible response with respect to the mission of the university is to terminate, fire, make life miserable for those who expressed their opinions. Unfortunately, that is what many of us believe will be the response. And, there is of course the response where the chancellor reflects whether a chief academic officer can effectively serve as the leader of the faculty when a significant proportion of the faculty have expressed no confidence in the provost's leadership. To me, the Chancellor and the Provost created the dichotomy of "you are either with me, or you are against me," or "you are either agents of change, any change, or luddites defending the status quo." The faculty who supported the resolution of no confidence in the College of Arts and Sciences, and those that wills support it on March 13, are not the people who created the dichotomy. The chancellor has the power and authority for the entire university. The provost has the power and authority in academic affairs, as designated by the chancellor. In power relationships, those with the power are the people responsible for creating a culture of collaboration. As I wrote in a previous blog, the narrative of dichotomy that the chancellor created of "good" vs "evil" has to change. Every single person on this campus that I know wants UNCG to succeed well into the future. I am scared about the future for UNCG with a leadership that does not seem to understand, or at least does not articulate, that our mission in a few words would be "we build people up!" Instead they seem to believe that tearing people down so we can sell credit hours more efficiently, is the path to success. I don't think there are many cases where organizations can simply cut themselves to sustainability, let alone excellence. I understand the need control costs, but survival/thriving will be based on revenue generation. There is been barely a peep about how that is going to happen. Many of my colleagues and I understand the "headwinds" facing higher education. We all have common ground in wanting UNCG to succeed. Common ground is where I want to stand. I am not sitting in the audience heckling the chancellor like Marjorie Taylor Green did to President Biden last night with a goal of simply blowing things up. Consistent with a university's mission, I want to see the university, the faculty and the students built up and UNCG to continue to serve a talented and extraordinarily diverse student body and to continue to enrich the region, state, nation and the world with research, scholarship and creative activities that matter. When I worked with the Chancellor, he shared that goal. To me, that is the common ground we all want to stand on. But, that common ground is a place that the Chancellor has fenced off. Only people who agree and/or passive are allowed to stand there. Why I will vote yes on the resolution(s) expressing no confidence in the provost's leadership2/20/2024 The UNCG College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the UNCG Faculty will be voting on resolutions of no confidence in the provost soon
I support voting "no confidence" in the provost. Below I include some bullet points on why I will vote "yes" on the resolution. I did not write this out of malice for the provost or chancellor. UNCG is a special place- unlike any of the 8 institutions where I have worked. I love my job here. I am really fearful that in leadership's attempt to try to position UNCG for the future, they are leading the campus into a death spiral because of decisions made in academic affairs. Academic affairs is the domain of the provost. In contradiction to what I have heard several people say, I don't necessarily believe that the only response to a vote of no confidence is the resignation or removal of the provost. Confidence can be rebuilt, if a leader wants to. There are not many ways for faculty to collectively share their concerns about past actions and future confidence in the provost. The Faculty Senate and CAS have passed less weighty resolutions expressing concerns, I have seen no evidence that the provost (or chancellor) have reflected on these resolutions or want to improve relationships with faculty as a whole. Even worse, the provost has seemed to ignore/dismiss the Faculty Senate's overwhelming votes, perhaps because she believes those votes don't represent the faculty as a whole, or are a result of "sour grapes". A vote of no confidence now seems like the only way for faculty to express those concerns in a way that might be heard, reflected upon, and might lead to positive change. Both the chancellor and provost seem to view the current situation with faculty who are concerned about their leadership damaging UNCG as a "partisan" battle to be won or lost. It does not have to be that. way and leadership should never subscribe to this false dichotomy.
On a final note, I find it ironic that a recent narrative is that faculty members that support the provost fear retaliation from other faculty. I learned the hard way about the perception of the extensive power of the provost and deans. So, the faculty that most likely need protection from retaliation are those that have taken real risks to their careers speaking out, submitting resolutions, and talking openly on the Senate floor about their sense of the failure of leadership. Believe me, I fear retaliation just like most people feel right now who state their perspectives, apparently on both sides, from just stating my opinion here. In that vein, I find it indefensible that the Faculty Senate Chair found it appropriate to read an anonymous letter into the Faculty Senate record in support of the provost and implying racial bias, and for the Secretary of the Senate (who reports to the Provost in her role as a provost fellow) to put more emphasis in the draft of the Senate minutes-on the anonymous letter than on the several faculty who emotionally and intelligently articulated their position in the open. Many of the faculty that spoke about the consequences of the APR results were the MOST vulnerable faculty in the institution at that time. I find it frustrating to read the many news articles and op-eds around UNCG's academic portfolio review process. On one side the Chancellor, Provost and VCFA are portrayed by themselves, and by their supporters, as warriors for change fighting the faculty enemies who worship the status quo. On the other side are faculty members similarly worried about the fate of UNCG, who don't question change per se, but think both the process to define the change and the outcomes of UNCG's Academic Portfolio Review (APR) will hurt UNCG in the short term, and possibly send the university into a death spiral of cuts, decreased enrollment, more cuts, more decreased enrollment, etc. in the long term. And, these faculty also happen to care deeply about their colleagues who may lose their positions and the important role these colleagues play in what makes UNCG a special place. The warriors for change say change is needed for five different reasons, depending on the day, but the reasons are not mutually exclusive: 1) Program changes are needed because UNCG has a short-term budget challenge; 2) Program changes are needed to make UNCG competitive against other UNC schools given a demographic decline in the number of students enrolling in universities in North Carolina. This challenge is exacerbated by a recent change in the UNC system budget model that might put more pressure on UNC-CH and NC State to increase their undergraduate enrollment to have enough state appropriation to support their graduate programs; 3) Program changes are needed so that UNCG can invest money from weak academic programs into strong ones; 4) Program changes are needed to address a long term structural budget deficit that relates to what the university calls permanent funds (that are far from permanent these days), tuition and state appropriation vs. ongoing expenses. This model doesn't consider other predictable sources of revenue like F&A reimbursement from grants, revenue from endowments, or reductions in long term expenses that happen every year with faculty/staff turnover. ; and 5) Program changes are needed for UNCG to lay a foundation for the next 10-20 years. The administration no longer uses the short-term budget problem as their primary talking point. Nevertheless, I find it hard to argue that there are not financial (enrollment) and political headwinds facing the university. One would hope every university has some strategy to be better placed to thrive in an uncertain future. Yet, at UNCG, tactics have been implemented without that strategy. To me the real question about the program eliminations, the important question, the only question that really matters, is whether there is a match between the APR process and its outcomes to eliminate programs to solving any of the five problems listed above. The faculty colleagues I know do not see: 1) how what seem to us to be almost random elimination of programs will do anything to make UNCG more competitive (we think it will be less); 2) how the outcomes generate enough revenue to truly make strong programs stronger, and besides that, there is no plan/process in place to determine and define strong programs, especially since the APR process included no external review or peer/aspirant peer comparisons; 3) how it generates nearly enough money to reduce the structural budget deficit, let alone to reinvest into other programs, while not also having a significant negative effect on enrollment and reductions in F&A reimbursement; and 4)how cutting the particular academic programs positions UNCG for 10-20 years. Universities that have taken on this kind of large strategic vision beyond 5 years, have done major reorganizations (e.g., Arizona State) over many years in both academic and administrative systems. In UNCG's particular case, suggesting that the results of the APR process of cutting a few programs positions UNCG for 10-20 years is outright stupid, especially given that the data and metrics were based on one cohort of students during COVID (and the data had many other issues from poorly thought out metrics to error prone data). One telling act pointing to the conversation needing to change is that the Chair of the UNC system faculty assembly and UNCG faculty member told the Chronicle of Higher Education that North Carolina universities that do something similar in the future just won't engage their faculty/staff in the process of academic program cutting or restructuring because of the failure of the process at UNCG. I don't think back-room decisions are recommended by any change-management best practice. Such practicies would also essentially do away with shared governance with respect to faculty's role for overseeing the quality of the curriculum. Although for some completing a process behind closed doors is expedient, universities are different animals. The major things universities do- teaching and research- are not only performed by faculty, but curricula and courses are designed and assessed by faculty, research, scholarship, and creative activity are the result of faculty expertise, and research quality is also assessed by faculty. Shared governance in academic matters was designed with the recognition that although administrators have fiduciary responsibilities, they don't have the expertise to design and assess curricula, design, and assess courses and learning outcomes, nor design and implement research done by faculty. Oh.. and there are many institutions that worked through/with shared governance to implement significant change. The Chancellor praises the work that his team did with the Faculty Senate in a recent op-ed in University Business that seems quite disconnected from anything that has happened in reality. For example, he fails to mention that there were five votes, one by the Faculty Assembly of the College of Arts and Sciences and four by the UNCG Faculty Senate (two from the full senate, one from the undergraduate curriculum committee and one from the general educational council) all passing by more than 75% indicating a strong lack of confidence in the process and concerns of negative impacts of process on the academic quality of the university. So, let's be perfectly clear. The majority of faculty senators have made it clear that many faculty do not support the process and certainly did not feel they were adequately engaged. In the end, the goal for all parties is a better future for UNCG. University leadership needs to communicate so that there is a clear strategy for making change, with clearly articulated tactics. Change for change’s sake is unlikely to strengthen UNCG, and is rather more likely to cause reputational harm and a concomitant decline in enrollment So, I beg supporters of UNCG's administration in their quest to be nationally recognized as change agents to start asking some profound questions about how the particular APR outcomes will make UNCG stronger for the future. Do not accept vacuous statements the Chancellor has made such as "Through sharpening our focus and reinvesting in our collective work, we set a stronger foundation for students and communities to thrive." Probe the details. The op-ed this Sunday, 2/11/2024, (written by the Chair of the UNCG Board of Trustees (BoT) and three former chairs), basically argued that everybody should just come together and make the best of it. I disagree. There is still time to get things aligned. Leadership has to up their game or move on. Cutting things is relatively easy. Making a university stronger for the future isn't, especially when university leaders either have been unable or unwilling to specifically describe how program cuts will improve UNCG's chances for a bright future. So, let's stop the narrative that UNCG leaders are the warriors for change fighting the small but loud band of the armies for the status quo. It is time to talk about the real story: UNCG's future. It is also time to acknowledge the failure of academic leadership that led a campus through an APR process costing thousands (and possibly tens of thousands) of faculty and staff person-hours with an outcome that cannot be matched to any realistic or definable strategy other than any change, is good change. There is still ample time to determine whether amputating program limbs will heal the UNCG patient, and, if not, whether the UNCG community wants to consider new physicians to be responsible for the health of UNCG's academic enterprise. This is a draft of a song I wrote regarding the situation at UNCG. Feedback welcome. It is only the first recording.-I will re-record if there is interest.
The Song's title is "we need a vision for the future" For those who have not paid attention, UNCG is completing a process that I can only hope will be used for the foreseeable future as a case study of how NOT to lead a university and how NOT to run processes in academe. The resolution below describes in some detail the ineptitude of the process and damage it has done and may do. This resolution passed with a 75% percent majority of the faculty senate. The lead author of this resolution, Dr. Danielle Bouchard did a fantastic job, so I hope you read it just to see what a powerful resolution looks like. Despite this resolution, a censure resolution, that also passed with more than 75% of the vote, petitions with over 4,000 signature, letters from across the country regarding the importance of our programs, including feeding a diverse pipeline of STEM individuals, all of the decisions to cut these programs were implemented. The Chancellor was actually quoted as saying it was just a small group of vocal faculty and the UNCG AAUP that led to the resolution-- a vote passes with 75% and its a small group? Undergraduate Majors
I was drawn to UNCG because Chancellor Gilliam painted a strong vision of how UNCG good be a great R2. This included in my mind some distinct strengths in research programs that compete at the R1 level and a commitment to our mission and the diverse students we serve. It is clear from these decisions that is no longer the vision. But, none of the faculty I know have any idea what the vision is other than fluff statements like "It’s up to us to welcome these shifts as an opportunity. Through sharpening our focus and reinvesting in our collective work, we set a stronger foundation for students and communities to thrive. We’ll announce specific reinvestment strategies in the near future.". The worst failure of leadership in this process is the inability to paint any picture of how what was done above (which will over several years only reduce relatively small numbers of faculty) and how these actions will lead to a better UNCG. Below the resolution (which is different than the short censure one that also passed) in the blog is some of my thoughts regarding how terrible the process was. As someone who had excellent results from initiatives I led over a 25 year administrative, career it really pained me to watch this unfold (I started worrying and documented that worry in my blog last year). There will probably be more news accounts today covering the resolution below and the decisions on program closure today. This article and this article can give you a sense of what happened before this resolution below passed. Oh.. and this by the way is a good representation of how the UNCG Chancellor manages change from a story in the Triad Beat: "During one particularly heated exchange, a student noted that if the university’s process had been a paper that was to be submitted to an academic journal, it would not have passed the first peer review." To that, Chancellor Gilliam quipped back that "[I've] published a lot in peer reviewed articles” and that the President of Harvard, who was recently ousted, had plagiarized some of [my] paper." "So I think maybe I know a little bit about data, alright?” Gilliam responded. “When you do that, let me know." ________________________________________________________________ The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Faculty Senate Resolution #01312024.1 Resolution on Violations of the Constitution of the General Faculty and the Promotion, Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Due Process Regulations of UNC Greensboro Danielle Bouchard Preamble: Shared governance is foundational to the modern university in a democratic society. It ensures ethical policies and decision-making practices, accountability on the part of faculty and administrators, fair labor conditions, and the protection of academic freedom. Shared governance is not just about allowing faculty the opportunity to share their ideas with administrators—it is, much more importantly, a set of principles and procedures that designates the faculty as having primary decision-making responsibility when it comes to academic programs and policies. In regard to the role of the faculty in shared governance, the American Association of University Professors notes that “The role of the faculty is to have primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and aspects of student life which relate to the educational process. The responsibility for faculty status includes appointments, reappointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal. The faculty should also have a role in decision-making outside of their immediate areas of primary responsibility, including long-term planning, budgeting, and the selection, evaluation and retention of administrators” (https://www.aaup.org/programs/shared-governance/faqs-shared-governance). Shared governance allows for the knowledge of the whole faculty body to be brought to bear in solving challenging institutional problems. At a time when many institutions, like UNCG, are facing changes in enrollment and funding structures, shared governance is more important than ever. The Academic Portfolio Review process has been characterized by a breakdown in shared governance. Specific actions and procedures laid out in UNCG’s governance documents regarding the possibility of major changes to academic offerings, including the potential elimination of academic programs, were ignored. Furthermore, good-faith efforts on the part of faculty to assert their rightful role in this major university undertaking have thus far been rejected. On November 20, 2023, Chancellor Gilliam denied Faculty Senate Resolution #11012023.2, which requested the presence of Senators as observers in administrators’ deliberations about the APR beyond the unit level. Similarly, the administration has declined the request of the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Assembly, as explicated in a resolution passed on December 5, 2023, that the APR timeline be extended to allow adequate time for faculty to review the proposed program changes and eliminations announced on January 16, 2024. This breakdown in established procedures to ensure shared governance preceded the Academic Portfolio Review: in February 2022, Provost Storrs announced a unilateral decision to rescind the multi-year contract policy for Professional Track Faculty, a decision which contravened the will of the faculty, who had recently developed the multi-year policy through a shared governance process. Due to the crucial nature of shared governance practices to higher education in this nation, what happens at UNCG has larger implications, ones which transcend the specific details of the APR process at this institution. In addition to the procedural inadequacies of the APR process, the APR and the proposed program closures pose a significant threat to UNCG’s capacity to carry out its academic mission. The data and criteria used to evaluate academic programs’ success were seriously compromised by errors, inconsistencies, and logical failures. Moreover, there was never a plan to help programs become stronger before taking the step of proposing their elimination, despite the fact that there is no need for the accelerated timeline for the implementation of program closures—both Chancellor Gilliam and Chief Financial Officer Bob Shea have stated that UNCG is not experiencing a financial crisis. Had shared governance procedures been followed and faculty and other stakeholders been granted meaningful opportunities to shape the design of the APR, this threat could have been mitigated through the development of approaches that did not result in the proposal to eliminate academic programs and fire our colleagues. Additionally, the elimination of academic programs bears the serious risk of leading to further enrollment decline and, thus, a further decline in state appropriations—which has been the outcome of program closures at other universities. As many have noted, the APR process has resulted in alarmingly low morale. Staff and faculty have watched their colleagues leave UNCG for other jobs at a concerning rate; remaining staff and faculty have had to contend with the fact that we may lose our jobs no matter how excellent we are at them; and students are rightly worried about the value of a degree from a closed program in a hollowed-out university. Morale is not just an individual issue, but is key to the functioning of the university as a community. In this resolution, we name the harm caused by specific actions so that we can create the conditions for true shared governance and a shared sense of community accountability. Whereas, UNCG and UNC system governance documents clearly describe specific actions to be taken by the Provost and the Chancellor to ensure shared governance in the event of possible academic program closures. The Promotion, Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Due Process Regulations of UNC Greensboro state that “when the institution is considering a major curtailment in or elimination of a teaching, research, or public-service program, the Chancellor shall first seek the advice and recommendations of the academic administrative officers and faculties of the departments, academic programs, or academic units that might be affected, and of the Faculty Senate.” The Constitution of the General Faculty of UNC Greensboro states that “The Senate as a body must give approval to academic policies concerning undergraduate curriculum and instruction prior to their implementation, including but not limited to those policies regarding the following:...the establishment, merger, or discontinuation of departments, schools, and colleges.” The Constitution of the General Faculty of UNC Greensboro additionally states that “When the Provost gives preliminary consideration to a plan to establish or discontinue one or more undergraduate degree programs, for example, during the early stages of the University’s strategic planning process, the Provost will consult with the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.” The UNC System Code states that “the chancellor shall ensure the establishment of appropriate procedures within the institution to provide members of the faculty the means to give advice with respect to questions of academic policy and institutional governance, with particular emphasis on matters of curriculum…”; and Whereas, the Provost did not consult with the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee at the appropriate time as defined in the Constitution of the General Faculty, as stated in the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Resolution dated November 17, 2023; the Chancellor and the Provost did not incorporate stakeholders’ serious concerns about the validity and integrity of the Academic Portfolio Review process into making changes to that process; and the Academic Portfolio Review timeline established by the Provost and the Chancellor does not allow adequate time for the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and the Faculty Senate to review, approve, and provide advice and recommendations on the proposed closures (providing only 11 business days in January between the initial announcement of proposed closures and the final decision on those closures); and Whereas, the Chancellor, the Provost, and the Chief Financial Officer have failed to provide evidence of the necessity of eliminating academic programs and firing faculty; have failed to provide a clear plan or vision for how program eliminations and the firing of faculty will contribute to UNCG’s mission; and did not follow appropriate procedures for consulting with affected stakeholders as established in the Promotion, Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Due Process Regulations of UNC Greensboro, which states that “When it appears that the institution will experience an institutional financial exigency or when the institution is considering a major curtailment in or elimination of a teaching, research, or public-service program, the Chancellor shall first seek the advice and recommendation of the academic administrative offices and faculties of the departments, academic programs, or academic units that might be affected, and of the Faculty Senate”; and Whereas, in resolution # 01.29.2024.2, the Faculty Senate censured the Provost for “not initiating consultation with the Senate at the start of the APR process and not providing a clear rationale of the choise of program closures”; and Whereas, the General Education Council passed a resolution strongly disapproving of the porposed program closures; and the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee passed a resolution advising the Faculty Senate to “seek a postponement of the February 1, 2024 implementation date to allow the committee time to conduct a substantive review of the proposed program discontinuations on par with its regular review process prior to implementation” and “that if the Senate cannot secure such a postponement, the UCC recommends it reject the proposed program discontinuations for lack of a proper review”; and Whereas, the elimination of academic programs bears the serious risk of leading to further enrollment declines, and there is no evidence that the elimination of academic programs will make UNCG more competitive in attracting students; and Whereas, the firing of tenured faculty is a grave measure with serious implications for the profession and for the ability of UNCG to enact its academic mission. Be it resolved, that the Academic Portfolio Review process violated the Constitution of the General Faculty and the Promotion, Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Due Process Regulations and impeded the rights and responsibilities of the Faculty Senate to engage in shared governance; and Be it resolved, that the proposed program eliminations represent a serious threat to the capacity of UNCG to maintain its academic mission; and Be it resolved, that the Faculty Senate does not approve the closure of academic programs identified by the Academic Portfolio Review. ________________________________________________________________________ If you are still reading, here are some of my thoughts about the terrible process that I expressed when faculty were having an online discussion about the first censure vote. 1) The regular processes by which the Senate and Graduate Council have shared responsibility for curriculum was not followed. The most recent argument of the provost is that the UNC System gives the Chancellor full authority. That is true. Are we happy as a faculty that the administration has chosen to use the fact that the chancellor has full authority and responsibility as a rational to not follow the processes by which faculty reviews and recommends on issues of academic programs in our faculty senate constitution? By using the rational that the chancellor has full authority and thus has no obligation to adhere to the Faculty Senate constitution regarding curricular oversight, it might logically follow that there is no need for a Faculty Senate at all- Rather all that would be needed was a few committees appointed by the chancellor or designee to make recommendations on issues a chancellor doesn’t care to simply invoke their authority. 2) Many faculty feel that the attempts at engagement were cursory at best and simply a farce at worst. Many “engagements” is not the same as real engagement and valuing the intellectual contribution of faculty and their time. As far I as I can tell, there was no significant faculty input (other than finding data errors) that changed the process other than removal of department of commerce labor statistics by the rubric weighting committee (a significant change) and addition of research grants to the rpk metrics. The other things that have been said publicly as resulting from faculty input do not generally apply to my definition of significant 3) None of the rationales for the APR are served by the process (IMHO). The rationales have morphed among several different things (that aren’t mutually exclusive). The first rationale was a short-term actual budget deficit. Then the rationale was aimed at making UNCG more competitive for students in NC in the face of a declining population of college going students , and/or allowing reallocation of funds from weak to strong programs [there is nothing in the APR that speaks to strength since no external data or review was allowed], then it was about reducing long term structural budget deficits (and structural budget deficits vs actual budgets were not explained, nor was there a discussion of reasonably predictable non-permanent revenue like F&A recovery and endowment spend, as well as reasonably predictable expenditure savings from faculty and staff turnover), then to creating a foundation for institutional stability for 10-20 years (no idea how the APR process can do that- since it is based on the past not a rapidly changing future- I mean 20 years ago, the first i-phone was 3-4 years away from being introduced). There is a sense among some/many students, staff, alumni and faculty (look on Instagram and petitions) that neither the provost nor the chancellor have presented a vision in which the APR will serve any of these rationales. In fact, on the surface, it seems to be an oxymoron to conduct a process that fixes 10% of a long-term structural budget deficit and would also allow for reallocation to strong programs without increasing the structural budget deficit, unless that reallocation generates a lot of new revenue. There is no evidence right now, since few if any programs are over capacity and that also generate positive net revenue, that APR driven cuts and reallocation will increase revenue. For many including me, we worry a lot about a death spiral. 4) The resolution passed by the CAS faculty regarding having no confidence in the APR process received over 130 votes and was completed before the final outcomes. A petition regarding problems with the APR was signed by approximately 4,000 individuals. Petitions regarding issues with recommendations have been signed by hundreds, if not several thousand individuals (Religious Studies, hit 3,000). So, it would be incorrect to suggest the current resolution, drafted by a faculty member from HHS, has been spurred by a small number of faculty in an echo chamber who just don’t like the outcome. 5) As a former provost and dean, I always felt that dean roles are equivalent to being CEOs of wholly owned subsidiaries. I have observed under the provost’s leadership that any CEO-like authority that deans (especially the CAS dean) may have had has been subsumed centrally, making deans largely middle managers who end up being forced to take responsibility for what happens in their units but have little authority- other than deciding what to ask for approval from the provost and vcfa (the dual hire approval process is one example of taking authority away from deans that has large transaction and opportunity costs. I know from my time as provost that process was put in place because deans were not trusted to manage within a budget). So, the definition of a “dean’s recommendation” might not be as independent as it sounds. Also, in my senior administrative experience, when authority and responsibility are not aligned, the organization suffers. The APR only made the misalignment more visible, at least in CAS. 6) Academic portfolio review as envisioned by rpk, and framework we adopted (determining programs to cut, based on somewhat superficial data somewhat unconnected to the mission), is not a widely used best practice [I have a blog with some data] as we were told nor was it designed to meet any of the academic rationales for the APR process (read the rpk report to the Kansas Board of Governors to find out how rpk describes the purpose of academic portfolio review). In recent practice, there is not much evidence that this type of APR improved a university. One might argue that the results of this process may lead to a death spiral based on what has occurred to date at Emporia State. West Virginia does not have the “death spiral” problem because they are the flagship institution in their State and students will continue to want to go there, even if with program cuts and with higher student:faculty ratios. UNCG has an issue that there are many other institutions a student can go to in NC with equal or better reputations, leaving UNCG susceptible to a death spiral (programs are cut, student:faculty ratio increases, less students want to come, leading to more cuts, higher student-faculty ratios, and less engagement of students with faculty, leading to fewer students wanting to come. That worries me. 6) In my previous provost roles, annual program viability audits coupled with careful use of academic program review were used and seem to be more effective than APR to adjust offerings, especially given the former uses external comparisons and review. 7) UNCG’s data is error prone, but more importantly several of the rubrics are simply bad (happy to explain to someone) and dependent on each other. 8) It is totally unclear to me whether the decisions that were made were informed by the data or whether the data was used to support previously made decisions/leanings. I know from my time as provost that the Chancellor denied my recommendation to make a spousal hire in Anthropology because he saw no reason to invest in Anthropology. So, I was curious as to what would happen when Anthropology met expectations in the rubric. Given the result it is hard not to feel that the decision was already made. 9). Several of the programs that were recommended for cutting were meeting expectations, serving majors, and are also core to several other programs, including the MAC, while others, that were not yet meeting expectations are already seeing investment, before any process to determine reallocation has been implemented. This doesn’t really support the integrity of the process. 10) The chancellor has often said that we have to do something and has implied that some faculty will not support APR because we resist change. I think that is a mischaracterization. Many of us do see the “headwinds” and recognize change is needed. The APR process was chosen as a way to address the headwinds centrally without engaging the intelligence of the faculty to consider other paths. I agree with Connie that the “we have to do something and something is better than nothing” is not always productive. I would apply that concern just as much to the APR process as this resolution and other resolutions that will likely be coming to senate. 11) The rpk APR strategy is very much based on quick decision making and on a university being a business. Universities are mission-driven non-profit organizations. They do have to have expenses and revenues match like any for-profit or non-profit organization, so business principles do apply. But, in mission-driven organizations the mission has to stay front and center. There has been little if anything in the APR process that has been tied to the mission and vision of a public regional university (again read rpks report to the Kansas Board of Regents regarding their APR framework to see how little attention is applied to mission in their framework) in a city at the center of the civil rights movement that serves a large number of transfer and low-income students who do better with deep faculty engagement. The cuts have been largely centered on the College of Arts and Sciences. Is the mission changing for UNCG to move towards being a professional school? During my first weeks here as a provost, in a very casual (not job related) conversation with the vcfa which is not documented in writing so feel free to take my memory (and everything else) with a grain of salt, I remember him telling me that UNCG needed to get rid of the college of arts and sciences and focus on business and health (this was before Guilford College tried to do that). If that is where we are heading, it would be good to know. My guess is, but don’t know, that if Guilford College had not reversed their equivalent of APR, they would be in financial exigency now. BTW, many of these comments I share here, I have shared before through the mechanisms for submitting written comments over the past several months. Lastly, Senator Rinker in his response to Senator Ksherti mentioned the difference between a censure and a vote of no confidence. There is not yet a resolution for a vote of no confidence drafted that I know of. Censures focus on past actions. They often come with consequences, but the Senate has no authority to impose such consequences. But, the censure would make a formal statement before the final decisions are made regarding how poorly those that vote for it believe the process was implemented. So, I think Jeremy made excellent points in his most recent post! I disagree a bit regarding votes of no confidence. Most people assume that the purpose of a vote of no confidence is removal of someone and these resolutions are made because a group has irrevocably lost confidence in leadership. But, in organizations where removal is unlikely such as UNCG, removal probably should not be the purpose. A resolution for a vote of no confidence, if written well, can explain why confidence of most faculty has been lost, which can serve as a roadmap for how trust can be restored. Leadership can choose to use elements of that road map to build trust and confidence moving forward, or they can simply choose to ignore it. They can also simply choose to only listen to those that remain confident in them, move those people closer to the inner circle, and put them in leadership roles which, in my experience, never ends well. I have heard that some faculty are a little confused by how structural budget deficits relate to actual budget deficits. So, let me share some of my understanding (albeit it could be flawed) in a bullet point format. Everything I say below, though, is subject to specific policies that may not allow for flexibility.
My institution is going through an academic portfolio review that keeps being championed as a best practice, when there is almost no empirical data that I can find that academic portfolio review is a best practice (see a different blog), especially completely ignoring detailed academic program reviews that are. The idea, I guess, is to align academic offerings to programs students want, or at least we think they want, and sell credit hours as efficiently as possible. I think the Far side cartoon at the right is an appropriate metaphor for rubrics that were used. I am in the mood for bad metaphors. So, I wrote this blog. Feedback is always welcome. Stupid Metaphor 1: a bad fast food restaurant decides to only sell water from a hose Imagine a regional/local fast-food restaurant that determines they need to redo their menu to compete for a dwindling supply of customers. They examine data on demand and net-revenue associated with all of the menu items from French fries, vs. Diet Coke, vs 1/2 lb hamburgers, and tasteless grilled chicken sandwiches on a wet soggy bun. The CEO chose not to worry about their competitors, He said, "why give a hoot about Burger King? (side note- I agree with this one-.. I don't give a hoot about Burger King either, and that guy with the crown on TV is just plain scary and weird), McDonalds or Wendy's-what the heck could our business possibly ever learn from them? Especially when they attract 99% of the customers." The CEO had Homer Simpson, his finance guy with an Assistant's degree from the Wart Off School of Business and conservative commentator at his dinner table, build a data based model. Homer went to Dunkin Donuts for a donut and large Coke, and developed the model and the data on the back of a napkin using ketchup to sketch out the polynomial he was sure would impress someone. The CEO looked at the napkin-- wiped ketchup on his tie. And then. proclaimed, "wow! look at this. we have a huge demand for liquid products and make a butt load of net revenue on them, so who needs all these silly solid products like 1/2 lb. burgers that sell much less quickly. We wouldn't need all those stupid employees on the line to cook and wrap them in paper or cardboard boxes,. And, I could take home 25% more salary without a need for that overly expensive 1,000,000 gallons of oil and electricity for hot fryer. And, you know ,that freezer is really a waste of money too. It was bummer that Bubba got locked in there and we had to pay a guy with a blowtorch and a hand grenade to open it up. The smell of rotting food mad my stomach turn. Bubba looked even worse when he was frozen, too. Then there is all the money we lose on toilet paper -wiping up all that shit is hurting my profit, too. Oh.. yeah. by the way, I was also thinking about sugar. It is a bad investment for our customers to want sugar, sugar substitutes, or any of our other products. Dying younger from diabetes doesn't help us in the long run and we need a new business model anyway. So, stay with me now-- I have a new plan.. Let's get rid of it all. The burgers, fries and those terrible apple pies, the ridiculously expensive freezer, the gallons of oil, line cooks and cleaning folk, and just sell water. Not water in a paper cup or in a bottle, mind you. We'll just attach a hose to the gas station next store and charge a few bucks to fill a mug, or to let our customer take a sip directly from the hose for a bit less. We make ridiculous net revenue on water, we won't need all of those surly employees who want me to pay attention and pay them better, and it is exactly what people should want to remain healthy. And, we can get the hose at Dollar General across the street. Genius! ." Homer smiled and had the other donut he brought back to the office in the ketchup soaked napkin,. He liked ketchup on his donut and thought it would go well with water out of the hose. I won't share the end of the story but Homer started a consulting business to help universities focus on water and he never got around to telling me the rest. The ketchup-iced donut idea, however, did not become a hit. As long as a conclusion is driven quantitatively, it allows for great decision making? Back to the academic portfolio process. It truly pains me to go back there, The process is based on, what I think are not very well thought out, error-filled, metrics, with no quality comparisons vs peers, and with several metrics dependent on each other, but counted in the model as independent variables. We are supposed to smart in universities, aren't we? Or is this our leadership, "Hey, it's data. Hey, it's math. It's quantitative, so who needs to hurt our brains thinking about independent or dependent variables and bad data. I mean we have bad data for every unit so it's fair. And, not having to think too much allows us time. Wanna go play around of golf at the country club?." I don't know why there is this idea that if you create bad quantitative models they will support purely objective decision making. I give my university a pat on the back as they did recognize that maybe quantitative metrics weren't perfect. So, programs that didn't do so well in the objective data model, got their day in court with a 1,000 word context statement. These were reviewed by faculty committees that had no time to seriously evaluate them. But, at least every program is on an even playing field, even if it is one made of quick sand. Believe it or not, departments and programs were not allowed to submit recent self studies, that took months to prepare with their extensive external reviews. Stupid metaphor 2: Airlines are good metaphors for universities In creating the case for the urgency of change, the administration often relies on the concept that large for-profit businesses are good metaphors for universities. And, the general assumption underlying the change, which is somewhat politically driven, is that student demand should be directly correlated to financial ROI of their investment in a college education. Thus, university investment should be made in programs where the short term ROI (e.g, first job after graduation) is highest, or where workforce needs are greatest, because that it is what will attract students from going to other universities in the state. We haven't empirically tested that hypothesis. If I were a betting man, though, I would not bet on that strategy based on my conversations with students regarding why they come to this university and why they stay. (They can get those programs at institutions across the state) But, I am at best an average bettor. Are universities akin to for-profit businesses? To me the answer is both "yes" and "no." They are definitely like for-profit and non-profit businesses in the sense that expenses cannot exceed revenues (plus reserves) and a university survive for very long. But, universities are mission driven non-profit organizations whose focus is the mission, not profit. So, in my opinion they are much more like The Nature Conservancy than they are like American Airlines. I have not heard a single administrator here use a metaphor like the Nature Conservancy to discuss "business" challenges. Our CFO indicated to me when I was provost that he and other university CFOs thought that universities are budgetarily like airlines, and are going under because those damn air traffic controllers (faculty in the case of universities) don't bring any revenue and whine all the time. The UNCG CFO wrote this in an email to me and the chancellor during COVID when airlines laid off thousands of pilots and crew members, so I think the idea was that universities should grow and shrink with short term enrollment changes. The email was sent on August 25th, 2020 with an article documenting huge workforce cuts in airlines. Here is what it said. (sent to chancellor copied to me) "I think you've heard me refer to my work at NACUBO and the similarities between the pricing model and capacity issues that higher ed and airlines share. Business types see the similarities immediately. Higher ed types always argue with me, that higher ed isn't a business... Thought you might find this interesting. American and United have now announced furloughs/layoffs for 1/3 of their respective workforce." There are many reasons I disagreed with the airline metaphor. Here are some. First, students are on a 4-6 year trip that requires a bit more stability than travelers surviving a couple of hours in coach. I suppose that throwing the pilot and crew out the emergency exit mid-air on a four year flight, when flight operations mentioned low holiday ticket sales makes sense? Second, universities have no control on their pricing- for example we can't double the cost of tuition in courses with high demand and lower the prices in courses with less demand. We can't sell expensive first class programs to wealthy people at 5 times the price- they go to High Point University. And, although we can charge fees for all sorts of things like airlines do, we cannot use money generated from fees as general operating revenue- those funds can only be used for their designated purpose like having student fees pay 87% of the athletics budget. We also don't have much control on what fees we can charge and how much we can charge. Who builds and flies the academic airplane? Finally, pilots and flight crew don't directly generate revenue, though airlines can't generate any revenue without pilots. In universities, faculty (which are viewed as pilots/flight crew in the airline metaphor) generate the majority of operating revenues through credit hour production (even though the cost-revenue model the administration developed for our process assigned 38% of the revenue to cost centers because that is where the revenue brought in my faculty teaching is spent. Brilliant!). More importantly faculty are the only employees that can propose and deliver program changes, as well as new programs that can generate more net-revenue. They are not just employees who teach classes that generate operating revenues(e.g. metaphorically pilots and crews). They actually build a big part of the academic plane and determine many of the routes. Continuing on with the bad metaphor On one hand, students pay for credit hours in the same way that a traveler pays for an airline ticket, and metaphorically they are both trying to get from point A to point B, too. But students are not customers like airline travelers. They aren't paying for someone to take them from point A to B. Rather, I think of students and parents as investors in a student's future. So, I think that the "business" metaphor should view students as investors in the mission like shareholders in a public company, not as customers. OK.. you are right-- students are too busy to ask for quarterly financial statements, even though they should. Viewing them as investors (as opposed to how the were labeled in a published table as "student customers" coming to our take-out window to buy some cheap credit hours) would better align with the not-for-profit mission of a university campus. It would also significantly change the question from "how do we attract students to buy efficiently taught credit hours?" to "how do we make ourselves the most attractive place for students to invest their futures with us, within our financial limitations?" Stupid metaphor 3: Private Equity Back to a university being a "business." If I am remembering - I think private equity firms love coming to floundering businesses, cutting costs and selling off the parts. They don't always talk much about revenue, at least in in rpk's "private equity" report to the Kansas Board of Regents. It seems, perhaps, that it might be a wee bit of an oversite to not have a discussion with faculty on our campus regarding how to develop and implement program changes or new programs that attract students and generate more net revenue. Everything being told to us in our more than 80 engagement parties hosted by our leaders is about cutting and/or reinvesting (without much clarity on what the means or looks like). I am all for reallocating but I always thought strategy, tactics and mission should be aligned. When I was provost at the University of Arkansas, we incentivized the development of net-revenue generating programs, that attract new students [don't simply move them around the university] by tuition sharing with departments that created professional masters program. Those programs support a different group of potential students, and they can succeed often by using existing unused capacity in classes. That led to the development of several programs that filled in their first year and buffered the university's enrollment loss during COVID, and allowed those programs to grow as demand grew- including hiring more faculty to deliver the growing programs. It is much easier though, at least over the last two years where I work to view faculty as interchangeable commodities , as opposed to the group of employees whose ingenuity might actually attract students and generate increased net-revenue. Cutting is just so, so much easier as way to make revenues and expenses work. It might just be best to sell water. from a Dollar General hose. We'd only need a few high paid administrators, one hose, someone to turn the hose on and off, and we would get a windfall of net revenue. In numerous forums and discussions I have heard something like "any business would do x" in justifying new resource allocation decisions. Having worked as a senior administrator in a soft-money research institution and in universities all of my life, I have found that mission driven organizations tend to have a different and more limited range for "x" to make cash flow work, e.g., The Nature Conservancy would probably not buy or create a plasma donation non-profit in the middle of a protect conservation area, or a Starbuck's franchise, to make revenues and expenses work. Nor do I think non-profit conservation land trusts make their protected lands a source of new net-revenue by turning those lands into tourist destinations. And none of them charge their investors for a basketball team. Homer Simpson's consulting firm told me that Amazon would sell even sell my blog articles if it made them money. That is really hard to believe. Back to portfolio review I also mentioned in my first paragraph that the assumption inherent in the campus process is that, if we invest in programs where students will get the highest financial ROI, students, then they will come. Their coming here will allow us to meet our mission of a strong "R2" with a transformational, social mobility, mission, founded in the culture of a wide ranging education.. One challenge with this assumption, is, well, it's wrong. I am not sure if there is any empirical evidence that such an assumption works to predict where demand will be. Though, I have to admit is really a great narrative to tell oneself in the mirror to or to deaf person on a park bench Maybe we should ask the CFO at Emporia State how it is going. Or, ask how our esports program is doing with respect to student enrollment. To be somewhat fair (but the joy of blogs is throwing fairness and editors out the window), the university is using empirical data on current program demand vs capacity. I have to admit that I am a huge fan of empiricism. In this case, the university's demand data suggest that our investment should be in programs like nursing, music performance, or graduate programs like genetic counseling where we have more applicants than we can accept. That is where our students want to be! True! But guess what- the university gets poorer for every additional student we teach in those programs (they are really expensive to teach). And, it might be hard to grow nursing too much unless we want to build a hospital solely for clinical placements for nursing students. (Homer shook his head and whispered I don't know what I am talking about. He might be right.) Ok.. universities are truly a mission-driven non-profit business. I don't deny the value of making sure all of the employees in a university understand that they are part of a non-profit "business" where there needs to at least be enough revenue to run the institution. And, that there is transparency (there isn't enough transparency here) on revenues and expenses. But, the metaphor needs to include the difference between mission-driven non-profits and for-profit businesses. And, let's not forget that for-profit universities have generally not been successful, at least for very long, other than in being a large basin for federal financial aid, and certainly have not disrupted the mission-driven non-profit higher education sector. And, yes, I am a curmudgeon On a final note, I think it is terrible that higher education funding and purpose has become a political football in boards and state legislatures. I also think it is terrible that administrative salaries have increased far faster than faculty and staff salaries. One reason this disturbs me is it is wrong- since talent at the faculty level is close to as important as talent at many administrative levels. More importantly to me is that it causes faculty administrators to become addicted to their salary. warping decision making because of fear of losing 60% (in my case) of one's salary by going back to faculty, if they don't go along with ideas they think are wrong-headed. I also despise the reality that there is a tendency for administrators (including me when I was one) to try and solve problems by hiring more administrators. Many times those additional administrators become a larger and larger audience to to applaud the narrative that faculty are lazy, obstructionist, whiny, luddite miscreants out to destroy the country along with Joe Biden. I am also depressed that public higher education, especially in elite schools, has become the enforcer of socio-economic inequality, not the great equalizer it was intended to be. So, I guess I am generally unhappy where everything educationally related is going locally and nationally Oh.. don't universities need to change? First, everyone should remember that the public trust of higher education has been questioned since at least the 1960s. Second, I cannot argue that regional public universities have a problem. In most states, the capacity for in-person, 4-year degrees is likely to exceed the demand in the foreseeable future. So, something probably has to give. The question is what has to give. The current strategy is betting that if we align programs with workforce needs and predicted student demand that we will somehow outcompete the other institutions in the UNC system. I just don't see it working. The chancellor indicated in a recent graduate forum that other UNC universities are going to do the same kind of academic portfolio review. If so, all of the campuses in the UNC system will all end up trying to offer the same net-revenue generating programs (those with high workforce demand) with high positive revenue margins. The current discussion is all about the APR leading the institution into a more competitive state- that was recently written in a letter to suggest the APR process will lead to sustainability of the university 20 years out. Yet, the some of the rubrics are based on a student cohort that started in 2018 and went through COVID, and on admissions and research data during that time. I am not sure that differences in student graduation rates in the 2018 says anything about the future. The metrics also don't include any measures of the quality of programs (other than whether students apply) that often come through comparison against peers and through academic program review. And, neither the chancellor or the provost seem to be able to articulate a vision for post-APR, other than that we will reinvest resources into stronger programs. The mantra is that the status quo needs to die and we have to change. I don't disagree with needing to change, but the change has to support a vision for the future with tactics aligned to that vision, and to make us competitive in our competitive context. Nothing of the sort has been communicated by university leadership. And, there really was never an attempt to rally faculty to use their intelligence and creativity to help solve the future challenge of competitiveness in a changing demographic, so a lot of that energy is now just being used to fight a terrible process. The chancellor has enormous responsibility and authority for ensuring the success of the university. The Chancellor also is charged with articulating a vision of the university that excites internal and external stakeholders. And, in most universities, deans are responsible for aligning a disciplinary (school or college perspective) vision with the larger one. Undoubtedly, not everyone will be happy with the tactics to realize that vision locally or at the university level. , But, it is really hard for many students, faculty staff and some external stakeholders, to get behind seemingly destructive change, that is not tied to a vision for how UNCG competes and will be better in the future. But, I am a happy curmudgeon Despite all of this, I am still very grateful for having a life focused on helping propel students into meaningful and successful lives (they get to determine what successful means). I care deeply about UNCG. I loved the vision that the chancellor articulated when I was hired as provost- to be a great "R2." To me that had a very specific meaning. The university would build a select number of research areas/PhD programs that are nationally competitive, but would retain its focus on transforming the lives of students whose lives might not have otherwise been transformed. That vision seems to be gone- at least it is not aligned with the APR. I think implementing tactics toward that vision would require change, could make UNCG distinctive in North Carolina, and perhaps would solve the competitive enrollment problem. I had this post on LinkedIn and it has been far more "popular" than I expected. So, I posted it below as a blog. The Introductory comments are just some thoughts that I have as UNCG tries to adjust to a future of fewer students. The introductory comments are longer than the actual blog post. But, neither are that long. Introduction to blog post (this was not posted in Linked In) UNCG students remind me everyday of what higher education can mean and the challenges that students are willing to overcome just to be in school. Students also remind me everyday that they are not customers purchasing 120 credit hours (or more) to get a piece of paper in the same way they purchase an automobile or items on Amazon (as consulting firms like rpk seem to assume). They are investing their trust, effort (and perseverance and resilience) and money in the university to propel them into a meaningful and successful future. The revenue model for universities like UNCG is tied to selling credit hours. But, that is not what students are buying. My intuition is that once a university succumbs to the idea that the revenue model of selling undifferentiated credit hours is the university mission, then being sucked into the black hole of a death spiral is not far away. I mean, if competition for students is high, and if students are investing in a university for their future, not buying credit hours;, then it is hard to imagine they will favor an institution that sells credit hours more efficiently, but would rather select an institution with the greatest likelihood of propelling them into meaningful and successful (their definition) lives. I don't say this to minimize the challenge that there is too much academic capacity for to few students. And, I am not afraid of change in a university. I am afraid, however, of a university forgetting that it only exists to do three things: propel graduates to meaningful and successful lives; produce research, scholarship, and creative activities that matter to their field and to people; and, for public universities, improving lives in their local, regional and statewide community. Every decision regarding the allocation of every resource (including time-time is not free and infinite) should be laser focused on those three outcomes. I believe that if they are (as opposed to selling credit hours most efficiently, or focusing on tangential issues like athletics for schools with a small following), the the right change can happen to lead to fiscal sustainability. The introduction is longer than the blog post. Sorry. But, the anecdote below and the literally 100s of other stories I have heard about the lives of UNCG's students make me worry even more about whether UNCG stays a mission driven institution. Many UNCG students overcome obstacles that I couldn't have imagined as an undergraduate. They truly are investing their lives in this institution. And, in general, UNCG has a faculty that teach here because supporting students with so much grit, determination, perseverance and resilience helps create a meaningful life for us. [On a different note, given what so many UNCG students overcome to be here, I don't understand how we can morally ask them to pay 87% ($11,000,000) of the athletics department budget to compete in division 1 sports, when less than $3,000,000 goes financially support student athletes with a significantly more going to coaches salaries. That however is another question. And, it doesn't matter what I think. All I wish is that it should matter what students think and that they should be explicitly asked without being spun. I don't know what the student below thinks, but I would be shocked if the student has any time to attend a division 1 athletic event. I also suspect, if given a choice, the student would prefer to be able to keep two weeks of their pay to help them overcome their obstacles to being at UNCG, than the little benefit that division sports brings to UNCG in comparison to other division 1 schools in NC.] ____________________________ Blog post: University of North Carolina at Greensboro students always leave me in awe as I get to know them. I had a long conversation today with a student who works 20+ hours week at a tough job, has responsibility for taking care of grandparents, takes a full load of courses and does well (and is very smart), and does not own a car so has to arrange rides everywhere. The person is positive about overcoming a challenge that two key courses on our program are only offered in the middle of the morning during the peak time of job work. The person is truly dedicated to my class, too. When I talk to the many students at UNCG who have so much perseverance, resilience and "grit", the students are so humble. This particular student responded to my saying that I was in awe by saying, "it's OK , I know others at UNCG have it worse". And, of course the person, along every other UNCG student I have met overcoming these challenging circumstances are the nicest, grounded, unentitled, empathetic and good people. I try to coach them that they excel in traits that employers want the most - resilience, drive, perseverance, grit and being "unentitled" such that they simply do what needs to be done, never acting like something is below them. But, they just see the conditions of their life as their life. I know I would have never had the career I have had, if I had to overcome the challenges that so many UNCG students just bust through to get through college. But, because of their challenges they don't have the same number of experiences like study abroad or summers of research work to put on their resume like students from wealthier backgrounds or from more elite schools.. It is hard for students to weave a story of resilience and perseverance, partly because they see the challenges they have overcome in academe to be normal, and partly because they do not want to appear as if they are telling a sob story or trying to win you over with emotion. So, when you meet them or interview them, please be curious. I have been blown away by their stories. I think many of you will be, too. I think when all of us read job letters and CVs, accomplishments (awards, papers, etc) and experiences often draw our attention. UNCG students have that, too, What can get lost in this kind of review is the intelligence, grit, determination, resilience, perseverance and ability to be part of team without expecting recognition for anything. I truly think the world of pretty much all of the several hundred UNCG students I have taught since returning to the faculty in 2021. tIntroduction The University of North Carolina Greensboro is currently undergoing an Academic Portfolio Review, which on its web site indicates that the review is synonymous with Academic Program Review. The Chancellor has stated that UNCG's Academic Portfolio Review is a "best practice" (ad nauseum). He also indicated that the type of detailed program reviews that we do partly for accreditation, but mostly for real examination and external evaluation are not as useful as an Academic Portfolio Review. (at least for UNCG right now). There is confusion among faculty at my academic Institution, UNCG. One of our web sites answers the question of "What is Academic Program Review?" with the following "Academic program review: also known as “Academic Portfolio Review: this process is a best practice in higher education. UNCG has not undertaken a comprehensive academic portfolio review in more than 15 years. During this process, the faculty, department chairs, deans, and university staff review the performance of each academic program considering factors such as enrollment and student interest/demand, student success and graduation, student credit hour production, scholarly and community distinction and grant funding among other factors." Several times over the last two years, UNCG leaders have used the terms "research shows" or "best practice" to win support for implementing various actions. However, weblinks to a research paper that supports the desired action are not generally provided, except in one case (mid term grade reports) where a research paper was provided presenting data somewhat irrelevant to the action- the question was whether mid-term grade reports increase student success (very little data to support that ); the paper addressed whether mid-term grades predict final grades. I don't remember seeing any documentation when an action was spun as a "best practice." I am on the autism spectrum. So, I think I may have a harder time letting go when I feel like their is dishonesty, and/or disingenuousness, and/or spin on issues I care about. So, it bugs me when I feel I am being spun. I had lots of experience with academic program reviews during my 25 years of higher ed administration. I don't have any experience with academic portfolio reviews. So, I don't know if they are a best practice, or even how they relate to academic program reviews. Academic program reviews almost always have a faculty-led detailed self-study followed by an external evaluation from disciplinary peers The UNCG academic portfolio review only uses internal data to compare programs/department against each other, with no use of external review or comparison against peer departmental/program data and does not draw on previous departmental/program reviews completed in the campus.. This confused me. So, I tried to empirically determine the following about academic program reviews and academic portfolio reviews: 1) Are academic program and academic portfolio reviews the same thing as UNCG claims on its web site?; 2) Are academic portfolio reviews a "best practice" based on what universities convey on their web sites? I discovered during this short study that there is academic research on the issue of academic program and academic portfolio reviews (e.g., Dickeson, 2009- see good article in Inside Higher Education from 2016 "Prioritizing Anxiety"). However I took a fully empirical approach simply looking at what universities actually indicate they do regarding academic program or academic portfolio review. I truly did not know the answer. The simple hypothesis I tried to test is: A sizeable number of universities should indicate that they do academic portfolio reviews on their website if it is a "best practice". As you will see below, the results did not support this hypothesis. Methods This was a completely empirical analysis. I asked what universities say on their web sites regarding academic program review and academic portfolio review. I used Google to find out (admittedly this is not the best research tool, but it is a reasonable way to see what universities say on their web sites). I did two Google searches: 1) "Academic Program Review Processes" and 2) "Academic Portfolio Review Processes." I counted the academic campuses that came up on the first two pages in each search and listed them with their web links in the results. I did each search twice. Different universities came up in different orders in the academic program review search, but not in the academic portfolio search. Google searches are not the most sophisticated method, but they do have use in discovering how terms are used on university web sites. Results: The tabulation of the Google Search is shown in the bar chart on top of the blog. 69 universities reported they do academic program review (at least self study and external review). 4 universities and 1 university system reported they did academic portfolio reviews. Four consulting firms had marketing documents for academic portfolio reviews but none for academic program reviews. One consulting firm published a short document warning of the challenges in academic portfolio review. Academic Program Review So, What is Academic Program Review? When I Googled "Academic Program Review" the first definition that came up was from Iowa State: "The purpose of academic program review is to guide the development of academic programs on a continuous basis. Program review is a process that evaluates the status, effectiveness, and progress of academic programs and helps identify the future direction, needs, and priorities of those programs. As such, it is closely connected to strategic planning, resource allocation, and other decision-making at the program, department, college, and university levels. During the review process, external academic teams discuss departmental plans for the future including departmental goals and plans to achieve those goals. It goes on to say. "The goal of a program review should be the articulation of agreed-upon action plans for further development of the academic program. External academic review teams are invited to consider issues and challenges, and to consult with faculty and administration on future directions. The program review process should focus on improvements that can be made using resources that currently are available to the program. Consideration may also be given, however, to proposed program improvements and expansions that would require additional resources; in such cases, the need and priority for additional resources should be clearly specified." Review by Hanover Research A document titled, "Best Practices in Academic Review (Hanover Research)" was listed in the search (under the link American Sociological Association). The paper reviews a range of program review techniques. The report includes academic reviews with case studies from Howard University, Indiana State University, The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Washington State University and The University of Cincinnati. Some of these schools have used processes based on Robert Dickeson’s work "Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance." which seems to be the basis of the Academic Portfolio Review that was recommended by rpk Group who consulted with UNCG and the one UNCG adopted, but it also suggest some analysis that we UNCG did not include. I did not know of Dickeson's work prior to this search. This was Hanover Research report's general conclusion is: "Broadly speaking, an academic program review can be defined as an attempt to evaluate the performance of curricula, departments, faculty, and/or students at a degree-granting institution. While there is no universally-accepted model or methodology for conducting a program review, three primary elements are commonly employed:
UNCG's process is not fully consistent with what Hanover Research found. UNCG's self-study has components of the internal faculty review, but not a detailed self-study. There is no element of external review needed to assess quality and context. So, there is no comprehensive integration of the two studies. Tabulation of universities that use Academic Program Review. I tabulated the first two pages of my Google search for "academic review processes" I discovered that the following 69 schools all use a process with a self-study by faculty and an external review. UNCG was the only institution on this first two pages of my Google search that uses Academic Program Review as a synonym with Academic Portfolio Review. Here are the 69 schools and 1 consultant (other than UNCG) on the first two pages of my Google Search. All of the schools are linked to their site explaining academic program review. .
What is Academic Portfolio Review? UNCG's definition is in the 2nd paragraph of this piece (see here for UNCG's definition for students; see here for the UNCG's process. rpk Group seems to make clear in their recommendations to the University of Kansas Board of Regents that they recommend substituting their academic portfolio review framework for academic program review. They write, "Adopt the Academic Portfolio Review framework [rpk's framework is based on institutional ROI] as an annual assessment and modify the current program review process such that the framework is used to identify the programs that are needed for review as opposed to cycling each program through individually on an eight-year cycle. This recommendation maintains institutional control over program review but provides the Regents with a framework through which to manage the process and encourage more immediate action at the institution level." Emporia State University is an example of a university that implemented rpk's academic portfolio framework and made substantial cuts to academic programs and faculty. The results after one year show a negative ROI so far (12.5% decline in enrollment). The Educational Advisory Board (EAB) published a short document explaining five myths about what academic portfolio reviews can and can't do? The myths are below. Please see EAB's document for their description.
Universities that use Academic Portfolio Reviews I did a Google Search for "Academic Portfolio Review processes." The institutions listed below came up in the first two pages of my Google search that indicated that they conduct academic portfolio reviews. I repeated the search a second time. There were five universities listed as doing academic portfolio reviews (one was a Board of Regents) on the first two pages of search results, each time. There were many other institutions (like Rhode Island School for Design) who were in the search results because they have a process of helping students to create portfolios for review. There were four consulting firms promoting Academic Portfolio Reviews, with Hanover Research listed from three different links. There was on consulting firm warning of challenges with academic program reviews).The same number of Google results were examined. Institutions indicating that they conduct Academic Portfolio Reviews included:
Consultants/articles recommending or giving tips on academic portfolio reviews that came up in the search were:
The consulting firm EAB also had a short article "Five myths about academic program portfolio review" warning of significant challenges that institutions need to overcome in academic portfolio review. Conclusion: There are two large caveats to this study: (1) a Google search is not the best way to research best practices for anything, and (2) it may not pick up academic portfolio reviews done recently or many years ago. Nonetheless, the analysis shows two things: 1) Academic program reviews that use detailed self studies and external review seem to empirically be the best practice in academe since way more institutions show up in the first two pages of a Google search doing academic program reviews (with self-study and external review) than show in a Google search doing academic portfolio reviews; and (2) The Google search revealed that there were almost as many consulting firms (4) marketing academic portfolio reviews as their were academic institutions that listed them as a process they use (5). Those consulting firms were the only websites calling for academic portfolio reviews. There were none marketing academic program reviews. When I was provost, I was used to conducting program viability reviews every year to find underperforming programs (and many were cut). We used academic program reviews to assess quality against peers, to assess whether programs are underperforming, and for continuous improvement. The current use of Academic Portfolio reviews seems to be a short term tactic for universities to appear data-driven in making budget cuts and maybe reallocations, by comparing units within a campus based on metrics that I think are are hard to compare against each other for different disciplines. I think that if high quality academic program review is truly used and monitored, and that academic program reviews are considered with annual program viability audits, then universities should be able to make truly data-informed decisions in real time about existing programs, without using faculty time to try and apply metrics they may or may not understand to compare disciplines they are not familiar with. When budgets are challenged by enrollment declines, in my opinion, universities need to unleash the creativity of deans, department heads/chairs and faculty to modify or create new programs aimed at increasing enrollment. And, that may require some sort of budget incentives in incremental budget models. To unleash creativity, time becomes the key resource (which is why programs need incentives so they can effectively teach if modified or new programs generate enrollment increases). I think this is a better use of faculty time than trying to figure out metrics and how to apply them and compare apples and oranges. I read yet another article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed today about how ruinous the resistance to change is in higher education. I have heard this over the 25 years I was in senior administration. And, I heard about the need to disrupt higher education when I was a 12 year old kid in the early 1970s. I agree that higher ed is in a different situation now given that the demographics are no longer in their favor. So, I can accept that something has to give- probably campus closures. There are so many ideas about how higher ed can change and be more efficient. As a provost and dean I did my best implement them-most were important but incremental. I am not an expert in business transformation. But as a casual observer, disruptive change seems to come to an industry sector when it is disrupted by something very different. Over the more than 50 years that this conversation has been going on, and with the huge market of students, no organization has been able to disrupt the higher ed business. Also, I've lived through a couple of major disruptions. I often think about the end of the typewriter business and the video store business. These businesses weren't disrupted from within. The personal computer wasn't created to disrupt an inefficient typewriter business and make it change, and video streaming wasn't designed to disrupt inefficient video stores. I feel like higher ed change advocates are like the CEO of Blockbuster Video proclaiming that the only way video stores can survive in the face of streaming is having fewer employees, less videos and to make sure they have one or two videos that no one else has. Disruption is an action based on great ideas that can be implemented. Not a philosophy that is implemented based on the concept alone. There a few disruptive ideas in higher ed that failed. For example, several for-profit institutions built themselves around the "change" narratives, e.g year-round programs, fewer costs in maintaining physical infrastructure, no research, no tenure. Most all of them failed- at minimum they disrupted nothing. MOOCs were going to disrupt higher ed. Didn't happen. Online education has been a great addition to universities where I worked and generated net revenue, but it hasn't been disruptive. In the end, the challenge that regional, less elite universities have now is enrollment that only offering an affordable, better, or different product is going to solve. The idea that universities can fix that by cutting costs and reorganizing the academic side of the institution while creating some program that no one else has is silly. It can't work unless it actually better facilitates launching students into meaningful and successful lives. Again I am only a casual observer, but one might view some universities as a business in rural America in a town whose populations has shrunk. There really hasn't been a disruptive model for local businesses to thrive in that environment, other than closing, or being the last business standing. Certainly, cutting the number of products they sell and having employees get paid less and spend more time selling isn't the greatest strategy when your customer base is falling for reasons out of your control. The world will not end if the number of universities shrinks to match population demographics. I mean it will hurt a lot of people and a number of communities, but the larger problem we face as a sector is more about having way more capacity for in-person higher education than is needed to teach the volume of students. In some states, this is simply because legislators wanted a university or college in their district. Making all of that capacity more efficient isn't going to change demand in the sector. Most likely, the university's and college's that survive and thrive will be able to deliver the best product at the most reasonable price and be willing to offer that product broadly. In my university, the focus is almost entirely on reducing cost and demanding more student credit hours/faculty and staff, at the cost of student engagement. I might be wrong, but I just don't see that as a winning strategy as competition grows. Also, almost every "universities are resistant to change" story focuses on faculty and academic programs. Really? the major disruption every one keeps talking about is how to make fewer faculty do more. I would love to learn of a university whose marketing line was "Come here! we increased our student to faculty ratio to 100:1" Very few universities have thought about aligning the revenue strategy with the mission. The reality is that we don't exist to maximize student credit hour per unit cost, but as a public university that is how we are funded.. We exist to facilitate launching students on to meaningful and successful lives. Are there other ways to charge students to be consistent with the mission and service we provide? Are there other ways to incentivize academic units towards this mission? Of course there are. And, that is probably where the disruption will take place I hope some day to see a true disruption of higher ed that delivers high quality education and mentoring that attracts students, at a reduced cost, and keeps the US a world competitor in research, scholarship and creative activities. I mean the whole idea of universities was not to simply transfer information- one can do that on Chat GPT now. Universities were also about creation, and very much about mentoring. I hope that idea does not die, only left alive in a few elite universities. I also hope to see a disruption in the culture that has fostered higher education becoming the enforcer of social inequity, as opposed to the great equalizer perhaps envisioned when land grant universities were created. When I first become a vice chancellor for research in the early 2000s, the time of the dot.com bubble, dramatic disruption and innovation-- I mean I remember going to a economic development talk where the brilliant futurist that thought cell phone cameras were silly- guess he wasn't such a great futurist. I often thought about why it was that universities changed so little over their history, even has innovation changed everything over the same time. Even back then, I saw several talks that would show something like trains and then automobiles and then show a university classroom then and now. And, comment that universities must be doing something wrong to still look the same. The only thing that I could come up with in my mind, which was somewhat supported when I talked to people who study creativity, is that the teacher-scholar model, even more so when pushed to the scholar side, requires creative people, and that perhaps creative and open minded people thrived best in a stable environment even though their work was about change. I found that to be an interesting hypothetical paradox. In any case, I hope that the next article I read about how frustrating it is to change things on a university campus mentions at least a few of these: 1) Recognize that this discussion has gone on for at least the 62 years of my life; 2) Several organizations have tried to disrupt higher education and failed, leaving havoc in many cases. A few other have been successful (Southern New Hampshire, Western Governors), but haven't disrupted anything; 3) At least in state universities, but also in some privates, the bureaucracy and lack of financial creativity is a big part of the problem; and 4) Faculty remain the only employees on campus that actually do the university's mission of teaching, research and service. Blaming teachers and forcing administrative change from on top, hasn't worked for public K-12 schools. But, then conservatives keep believing that tax cuts stimulate the economy and trickle down to lower income people, and increase equity, even though there is no evidence to support that view, and a lot of empirical data to reject that hypothesis. 5) And, please stop suggesting that incremental changes (wow.. new idea, let's make more revenue in the summer, or maybe actually teach courses aligned with the biorhythms of students) are disruptive. They aren't that hard to implement and they affect revenue/expense at the margins (perhaps keeping some universities afloat). I worried about keeping my campus afloat as a provost (and as a faculty member), but whether keeping a campus afloat is good for higher education as a whole is another question. I think that Higher Ed. will disrupt when an organization figures out how to disrupt it. There is clearly a lot of money to be made for an organization that does so. But, whether that happens or not is totally unrelated to the many books and articles that are published on why higher ed needs to change, and no matter how loud Republican narratives are that they are inefficient, and ineffective at anything except brainwashing students with liberal ideas, or maybe when an athletic teams win. Beating the drum of disruption and blaming the only employees in the organization that actually perform the mission is certainly not the path to victory, This blog is about something I learned on returning to the faculty after 23 years of being a senior administrator. It is not earth shattering. I suspect many readers have thought about it. But, I never did. It's about math and time. Who spends the most time with students (other than resident assistants in residence halls, or athletic coaches and their staff) at a university? Student success (in many dimensions) has always meant a lot to me. As dean and provost, a lot of the work I did was building infrastructure to support student success-- & there was definitely a correlation between building that infrastructure and marginal increases in success in retention and graduation. Yet, I always knew, & the Purdue-Gallup poll shows, that the interactions of faculty with students is generally what defines a student experience and is what graduates remember. I know that I remember every faculty member who taught me (good or bad), and I have paid forward the way the best of those faculty interacted with me. I don't remember a single administrative or student support individual (accept the dean of the forestry school of Maine for other reasons). Being back on the faculty, I now understand why the interactions of faculty with most students are way more important in the long run than student support services. Why? It's about time. In my 3 credit classes, students are in-person with me for 52 hrs over 14 weeks. No matter how many students, I engage with each of the them. Their course evaluations make it clear the engagement makes a difference. Students are also with me digitally in Canvas or email for another 5-10 hrs (or mores) over 14 weeks- many of those digital conversations are significant, not just rote . There are no administrative support individuals (except maybe student RAs in dorms; and athletic coaches and their staff) that come close to being with a student for 62 hours over 14 weeks. And, I teach between 130 & 230 students per semester & I engage with all of them. There is definitely no student success support worker that can engage 230 students each for 62 hours over 14 weeks. As an administrator, I concluded that the support infrastructure was really important for a small percentage of students who might not succeed without it. Mental health services are also critical now. I knew faculty were important, but I never did the math. It's interesting to me that the conservative narrative is that faculty don't work hard enough and don't have such strong influences on students, except with possibly brain-washing them with liberal ideas (really?- how many people are really that malleable? Apparently the majority in the Congress weren't that malleable. Most faculty I know want students to learn their subjects and critically think about the world). In any case, when universities go into budget cuts due to enrollment, they reduce the faculty (part of that is because that is where a lot of the money is spent) & try to make up for it in student success employees to retain students. When you think about the math, maybe that doesn't make much sense. It was frustrating as provost and vp for research, that in so many conversations in leadership meetings (e.g., Chancellor's council), faculty often were disparaged, particularly by the non-academic leadership, and sometimes even academics. When I do the math, I realized the amount of time students are with faculty. it changes how I think about student success and where resources (particularly time and money) should be allocated. With respect to time, I can engage with 230 students a semester, but I work 80 hours/week to do that only because I care (there are no expectations to do that). Give me 400 students, there is not enough time in the day. Don't get me wrong, student success support services matter. Yet, their effect is on the margins, particularly focused largely on students that are struggling or need that support. They also provide services for those that aren't, and I don't take that lightly. But, in recent years, it seems that there can be a reverse perspective where senior administration start to see that faculty interactions with students are on the margins, and that student success services are at the core. Some of reasons administrators do that is the way administrators are evaluated, i.e., you can take credit for building student success infrastructure and celebrate a 3% increase and retention and graduation as an accomplishment. That is not trivial. I certainly touted that sort of success when I was dean and provost. There is a reality though that I could not (or any administrator) claim credit for what happened in each individual classroom other than touting the quality of faculty I helped hire and/or retained. In my current university, it seems now that faculty are thought of as interchangeable commodities, which doesn't make as much sense if you do the math. Even though the impacts of student success services is significant to students and financially important to the university, the percentage of the students that are significantly affected is on the margins. The vast majority of the experience of most students is defined by their interactions with faculty. For them, the other support service just need to work. There is a reason that universities (particularly the most elite) tout their low student:faculty ratios- I have yet to see a university that celebrated increases in student:faculty ratios and decreases in student: staff ratios. The ironic thing is that the student:faculty ratios are often lowest in colleges and universities where the students least need interactions with faculty to succeed, and highest in universities where faculty can really help transform the trajectory of someone's life. The older I get, the less angry I get about the ridiculous ironies (which is good for my health) since they are everywhere. But, I find myself more discombobulated every day by them at the international, national, local and in my university. It is as if I keep finding myself in some altered reality. A really hard part for me of growing old is watching myself become irrelevant. Another really hard part is not recognizing the reality of where I am. When did 2+2 start equaling -10? When I do the math of which employees spend the most time with students, it changes how I might think about student success, if I had the opportunity to be a dean or provost again (which is not going to happen). Perhaps you have known this and find it amazing that I just now did the math. I got "A"s in in three semester of calculus and crushed linear algebra, and used that understanding in my research, but math is definitely not my strong point. LOL.. Dear Gentle Biology Graduate Students If you have spent time with me, you probably know that I have worked through mental health challenges of chronic and acute depression, debilitating anxiety, and navigating the academic world as researcher, teacher and administrator while being on the autism spectrum. I am open about these things because I decided thirty years ago, when I was successfully treated for acute depression, that I would do everything in my power to destigmatize mental health challenges. Candidly, being open about mental health challenges left me vulnerable as an administrator as some people used that openness against me. Depression leading to suicide is the second largest cause of death behind accidents (mostly car) for people in their late teens and twenties. The risk of dying because of a treatable mental health disorder is far greater than things like cancer and heart disease for those of you in that age group. "So, I want to take a moment and acknowledge the events that took place at UNC-Chapel Hill earlier this week. You may know that a graduate student is accused of murdering his faculty advisor. According to a few news outlets, the accused graduate student stated that his PI made him work 80 hours a week and didn’t care about his work-life balance. Other graduate students in the lab stated that they didn’t think the accused student was up to the task of being in the graduate program but was well-meaning. Of course, everyone interviewed was shocked and saddened that such an event could take place. The deceased faculty member, Dr. Zijie Yan, was an associate professor and father of two." (This paragraph is a quote from a message sent colleagues and students of Dr. Ayehsa Boyd, Arizona State University. She gave permission to quote from her note.) This is a reminder that stress, anxiety, depression and other challenges may not only lead to violence against oneself to stop the pain, but in some cases violence against others. I can't pretend to know what was going on in the mind of the graduate student who was accused of shooting the professor so don't want to imply that I know what the person was feeling. But, I do know from experiencing deep depression and debilitating anxiety that the emotional pain can feel unbearable and that your mind wants to do anything it can to stop the pain. Those in my undergraduate classes and in BIO 600 know that I talk about mental health a lot. And, I try to provide constant reminders to students to take stock of their emotions and to take a break if that will help, but also to seek help. I know from experience that one cannot deal with depression, extreme stress, or debilitating anxiety completely alone, albeit there are things you can do to lessen their effects (exercise, for example). UNCG has counseling and crisis resources : https://shs.uncg.edu/mental-health-well-being/counseling-psychological-services/in-crisis/. And, the counseling center takes walk in appointments every weekday between 12:00- 4:00. Don't hesitate to use these resources. I have also worked with a number of students in connecting them with resources or just sharing my experiences with mental health challenges and having a neurodiverse brain. I have walked with several over to the counseling center because some are really scared of seeing a counselor. If my door is open, you can walk in. If you want to schedule an appointment, just ask. The only things I can promise you are that: I won't try to diagnose you: I will not be judgmental; and if you want, I will do what I can to connect you to professional resources. Malcolm (and other faculty) are also excellent resources and many of us, including Malcolm and I, have been trained in mental health first aid and can connect you with resources. In BIO 600 last week, I talked a little bit about the challenge of power differentials between graduate students and faculty. There are some faculty who make those boundaries clear. There are some, at least me, who want to treat everyone like colleagues. And, those of us who do can forget that graduate students are always aware of the power differential even if we (I) are not. The power differential can result in great feelings of stress for graduate students, especially if you don't know how to navigate it. One of the reasons that the GSC included a long list of expectations for students in advisors in their relationship as mentor-mentee in the 2023-2024 graduate handbook was so that issues related to expectations of both mentor and mentee can be discussed early in one's tenure in a faculty member's lab. For those of you who have never experienced what it feels like to someone who is experiencing acute depression, it can be really hard to understand that clinical depression is not just feeling down or disappointed. The pain it can it has caused in my life is significantly worse than my most physically painful experience - an excruciating battle with a kidney stone that required a whole lot of morphine to get through. The 30 or so your old book by William Styron (the author most notably know for Sophie's choice), "Darkness Visible", is a short read that describes what it feels like for those experiencing acute depression and how he managed to come out of it. If you have family members or friends that say they have clinical depression, and you don't fully understand why they just can't snap out if, this book can help. Also remember that undergraduates in the courses you teach at UNCG are also dealing with significant stress, mental health challenges and being on the neurodiverse spectrum. In my large undergraduate classes where I talk about this a lot, it is amazing how many notes I get about what that means for me to be so open about mental health challenges for their sense of inclusion in class. I am happy to talk with any of you about how I approach discussions with students. I always start the semester with some survey questions. I always ask what the student's biggest non-academic worry is for the semester. The choices are infectious disease, financial issues, relationships with family, partners or friends, issues relating to diversity, equity and inclusion, and mental health. The class is at least 65% minority students. This year in my class of 125, over 60% selected mental health with the remainder selecting finances and relationships. And, in Canvas, Achieve or email conversations, probably about half of the class has told me about mental health challenges they are trying to manage.. I hope that those of you who have interacted with me as a professor and/or as GPD recognize that I really do care about all of you. I also genuinely believe in all of you. I have only realized recently that is a trait that I inherited from my father. I feel lucky to have it, even though it can affect me deeply when any of you (or any students I work with) are struggling, especially when I don't know how to help. Sorry for the long note. But, it is just a reminder to take care of yourself, pay attention to your stress levels and emotions, and never be afraid to reach out for help, because you feel that asking for help with mental health challenges is somehow a sign of weakness. Mental health challenges aren't any more a sign of weakness, in my opinion, than getting an infectious disease or cancer. I often remind students that if they break a bone, or feel really sick, they rarely hesitate to go seek help form medical professionals. Yet, when they are in intense emotional distress they hesitate. I dream of a world where culturally we don't see much difference between mental and physical health challenges with respect to seeking help. I know I speak for Malcom that we really do care about you and want the best for you in graduate school, your current lives, and your future. with the warmth of ours and all other suns, Jim I have read some statements of values from faculty and administrators as we get ready for Fall Semester, 2023. Examples are: transparency, caring, collegial, team player., etc It took me 60 years and being diagnosed on the autism spectrum to understand this Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon with respect to how people interact with people, not just dogs and cats. Here are some thoughts. I don't pretend to follow this advice all of the time. Nonetheless I wish I understood it the way I do now when I took on Provost roles. 1. People sense and process the world completely differently. 2. Things like transparency, caring, etc. are not determined by the person trying to be transparent or caring, they are completely determined by the recipients. 3. What one thinks about how caring, transparency, collegial, and/or a team player, etc they are is completely irrelevant. These are terms that describe actions not thoughts. 4. People process things like caring and transparency in different ways. Leaders/instructors actually need to take time to understand how different people process the world. In my experience this can be done a couple ways- if people are not intimated by you- ask them to be honest with you about how caring, transparency, etc they think you are- you will be surprised if people are honest. If people are intimated by you- recognize it. Then recognize your own way of processing and sensing the world, talk to people and understand how they define key terms like fairness, caring ,etc. Discussing personality assessments can allow a team, if carefully discussed, to have a clue of how differently each of them see the world, what they expect of each other, and what each individual "needs" to be successful. Deliver messages in the way people hear them. This is not as difficult as it sounds. 5. Things like caring are easy to do when people are successful or colleagues meet your expectations. But, caring matters a lot less in those situations than it does when people are struggling. In universities we are great at demonstrating caring for the best students (and those in our labs) and dismissing those who are struggling. Caring about successful students or colleagues you like is great. But, demonstrating caring (which is usually about time, engagement and curiosity) with struggling students (who you think don't care) or colleagues who make mistakes or don't interact in the way you expect them to, is what creates a caring environment. From personal experience, being curious and empathetic with students who are struggling can open up a completely different perspective-- and it may give you an opportunity to facilitate a change in the trajectory of their lives. 6. Don't tell people that you value transparency, caring, collegiality, etc., show them! It takes time and effort to show them. Transparency, caring, etc are not requirements to lead in a university or to make the university or a unit in the university better. If you genuinely don't believe in transparency, or don't understand how people perceive it, and/or you don't have it as a value, don't pretend. If you genuinely have a low priority for caring about people in your leadership style, don't say you do., A great way to lose trust is to spout values you think people want to hear, but for which you have no genuine ability to demonstrate. Some people simply do not have an empathy "gene" but they can still effectively lead if they recognize that. Be genuine. At least for me on the autism spectrum, I don't know how to be anything but genuine (there are good and bad aspects of that), and I can spot a disingenuous person immediately from body language or by paying attention to the first word out of somebody's mouth. I tend to lose respect immediately when that happens.. Sometimes people who are completely genuine with me but disagree with me think I don't like them. I wish they understood how much I respect them because of their being genuine and being willing to argue with me. I grew up in a family where arguing was a sport. We never took it personally. I have a hard time recognizing that other people can feel like disagreement with their thoughts or statements is personal. It is not for me when someone is honest- that is actually how I process thoughts and learn., 7. A great way to create poor morale is to constantly state you care, are transparent, etc, when your actions show you are not. 8. Avoid internal spin on academic campuses. Don't try to spin success as way to boost morale- faculty and staff are too smart. Talk about progress, but be brutally honest about challenges. Faculty, in particular, are trained to be critical and want statements backed up by some sort of data. Also, don't say things are research based if you can't cite the research and you don't truly understand the data.. A great way to lose trust quickly with colleagues in academe, without actually stabbing someone in the back, is to try and spin them or to justify decisions with superficial statements. This blog was written on March 7, 2023. This version had some wonderful edits from Chat-GPT. This morning, an extraordinary event unfolded at Lake Jeanette. It seemed as if the sky and the lake were engaged in a mystical union, giving rise to an intriguing question: What would their offspring resemble? Occasionally, I perceive the universe attempting to communicate with me, yet deciphering its messages can be perplexing. It requires practice and attentiveness. One interpretation could be that the reflected sky in the lake served as a powerful metaphor for climate change. Alternatively, it might symbolize the demise of a poorly managed organization, similar to the one I am employed in. Furthermore, it could be a celestial indication that diving into the lake grants the freedom of a skydiver, while kayaking effortlessly evokes a sensation of soaring through the clouds. Alternatively, it might simply be another message urging me to pay closer attention, like a resounding "Wake the f**k up!" Regardless of its meaning, this occurrence marked a captivating episode in the ongoing series at Lake Jeanette: Reflections are beautiful; Reflections are profound; reflections are a way the universe talks to you. While fully engrossed in this spectacle, I happened upon a moss preparing for reproduction (though not depicted). This sight caused me to lag behind Annie (one of our two canine family members), who had grown weary of the natural aromas and returned to the house for her morning milk bone. The morning on the nature trail always holds something to convey—I only wish I dedicated more time to listening. The universe's discourse did not cease at the lake; it continued its chatter within the confines of the driveway as I opened my car door. I felt sort of whole looking at are cherry tree, located near my parking spot, which stood in full bloom. I took a moment to listen, and to my delight, I was serenaded by a symphony of songs from eleven distinct bird species. When I looked up, I spied a striking male cardinal perched on a cherry branch nestled within the tree's core, its vibrant scarlet plumage contrasting with delicate pink flowers. How did I ever take these sights and sounds for granted, or to be too myopic to notice? It is regrettable that we become so consumed by our own concerns that we cease to listen, observe, and truly feel. Today, my angst dissipated as I contemplated the sight of the sky descending into the lake, accompanied by a harmonious and resplendent chorus from the descendants of dinosaurs we share the planet with. I started at UNCG at the end of June 2020. This blog post is related to a press release and announcement that went out on December 23, 2020 indicating I was under investigation by the university. There are three take-home messages from this post; 1. The results of an investigation made public by UNCG on Dec member 23, 2020 were that the allegations against me were fully dismissed. No such announcement documenting the dismissal was ever made by the university, so I wanted to write it down somewhere. 2. The press release was very vague, but definitely did not reflect well on me as a person. The comments I have received from the 500 or so students I have taught since 2021 have reminded me that I am intelligent, inspiring to some, caring, compassionate, passionate, and empathetic- and whose behavior in the classroom is often classified as inclusive, caring and inspirational. Those traits defined me in previous administrator roles and would have defined me here if I had stayed in the provost position. I don't have permission to post all of 490 some comments from students but students this past semester allowed me to post the comments they made on my course evaluations and a couple of others (the permission was given after the evaluation period was over). They are a good reflection of who I am. 3. The termination by the chancellor of my provost role along with the public announcement were painful experiences. Much of the pain was because how others reacted. Perhaps the content of this blog might have useful information for you should experience something similar, or, more importantly if you have a friend or colleague who goes through a similar experience. A brief summation of the story. It is now three years since my wife and I uprooted from the hills of Fayetteville, Arkansas, during the surreal COVID landscape. I landed in the North Carolina piedmont with a lot of energy. I had respect from colleagues and a history of integrity and being a strong leader. I had one local friend on arrival, a financially stable future, and high hopes of having found an institution that fit me like custom tailored clothes. All that disappeared on December 23, 2020 except for the one friend. I never imagined before the 2020 Holiday season that one very negative announcement would change how people who don't know me would perceive me, forever, in addition to destroying any future administrative career. My weakness in my administrator roles was usually identified as being too nice of person, so it was somewhat devastating that the articles and the allegations implied that I was an evil person. I don't really have a malevolent bone in my body- my executive coach in Arkansas called me (in a positive way), a golden retriever. As many readers know, a public notice and several newspaper stories went out on December 23, 2020, announcing my termination as provost, tying the termination to not meeting the behavior expectations for UNCG senior administrators (though exactly what written expectations were violated were never told to me in writing), and indicating that there was an ongoing investigation. If you are super interested in what happened, you can use Google to find sites where you can read court documents related to the law suit I filed that has details on the alleged transgressions and the arguments made by both sides. I don't claim being blameless. But, I believe I was treated harshly and unfairly. You can make up your own mind if you want to spend time with court documents. I do not wish to defend myself here or relive the painful experience any more than that. Yet, since there was no public closure after the December 23, 2020 announcement, I felt the need after 2.5 years to give it that closure by writing publicly that the allegations of violating any policy were dismissed by the University's investigators before going to any sort of hearing. On December 22, 2020, I was called into a meeting with Chancellor Gilliam where I received a letter indicating that my role of provost ended on December 23, 2020 using the Chancellor's at-will authority. Simply, that means the chancellor had the full right to terminate me for any reason as he does with all administrators that report to him and used the at-will authority to terminate my administrative position. Thus, there was no reason for the termination in the letter. This was not a termination for cause (that would have required time for due process to play out since I am a tenured faculty member- I don't think the Chancellor wanted to spend time on due process when the at-will authority requires none). I was told that I had two choices: 1) my contract stipulated that if I left the Provost role, I could "retreat" to my tenured faculty position in biology. That option was left open at a salary almost 1/3 as much as my administrative salary, but tied in some way to salaries in the UNCG biology department (my actual salary now is $40,000/year less than the lowest salary I have had since 1997). But, if I chose this option, I was told repeatedly by the Chancellor that the University would issue a public statement indicating that I was being terminated for cause and under investigation. I was not told how the "for cause" statement would read. My other choice was to resign from the university, with three months severance pay (which was reasonably close, with payout of my benefits, to a full year faculty salary), and I could have a hand in the language of the public statement that would not indicate I was terminated (at least for a cause) and wouldn't mention anything about an investigation. The options were presented to me around 11:00AM on the December 22nd,. I had less than 24 hours to decide, and I was required to move out of the provost's office by 3:00PM on December 23rd, either way. I was not able to reach my attorney, who was in court all day, until the evening of December 22, so we only had a couple of hours to decide. It was not until late that evening that we saw a draft of the for cause statement. Merry Christmas, it was not. I chose to keep my faculty position. Thus, the for-cause statement was issued in a news story and press release to the entire UNCG community on Dec 23, 2023 and was picked up in the press in North Carolina and Arkansas. Google me, and those press articles may be the first thing you see. The announcement the university made was removed from their site a long time ago (so my lawyer told me-- I have not searched for it on the UNCG site). The result of the termination and public action was that I lost nearly 2/3 of my salary; all of my friends in GSO except for one who was a close friend before I arrived, and told me she plans to remain, my friend for a long time; my academic and personal reputations (which are very important to me) were brought into question, if not destroyed; my administrative career was destroyed; and to top it off, my mother went into hospice in January 2021 ( a couple of weeks into the investigation) and then died a few weeks later. It was a difficult time. These consequences were painful and traumatic. I have PTSD symptoms- I cannot go inside, or even get to close to Mossman Hall. Fortunately, my wife supported me through the entire process, as did people who knew me well. Most of these people read the court documents which strengthened their support of me. Despite the consequences already imposed by the termination and the press release,. the investigation continued. Given that the chancellor had essentially declared me guilty in the public statement, I also thought it was odd, as did a few of my colleagues, that two individuals within the university, and very much in the chancellor's gravity (one was on the Chancellor's Cabinet) albeit not direct reports, were charged with conducting the investigation. Those individuals apparently did not believe they had a conflict of interest. I don't understand why an outside investigator was not hired given the ferocity of the public statement. So, I wondered how the investigation would ever be fair given that I imagined it would be hard for those two individuals to dismiss allegations when the chancellor had implied publicly that I was guilty, But, the allegations were eventually dismissed without moving to any hearing stage. Additionally, at least some members of his cabinet and his staff were not told specifics but told it was very bad. For example, one of the members of his staff was/is friends with our neighbors Those neighbors told me that they asked this staff member about the situation. They indicated that the individual conveyed that they did not know the any specifics of the situation, but that they were told it was "very bad." It just kind of felt like our friendship with these neighbors ebbed after that conversation. In retrospect, it seems like an oxymoron to say to someone, "I don't know what happened" and "it was very bad" - perhaps those were not that individual's exact words. In any case, those words aren't consistent with the later dismissal of allegations. The investigation continued for nearly 10 months (even though all of the evidence was available at the start; and the investigation should been completed within 30-90 days , not getting close to 300 days). My lawyer and I were responsible for several weeks of the delays because of my mother dying and my attorney's wife going to the ER during times for a second interview with me), but this was not responsible for extending the investigation nearly 10 months. The investigation did not end until my attorney filed a full draft of a law suit with a "formal demand letter" (at this point I had paid nearly $100,000 of attorney fees - that grew later to $200,000 b/c legal fees are very expensive and the university is defended by the State Attorney General's Office, so they have unlimited resources to fight law suits). One of those "demands" was to have the allegations dismissed, since my attorney and I strongly believed that my actions did not violate any policy. One or two days (I think) before a response was requested from the university in the formal demand letter, the allegations were dismissed citing that there was not enough evidence to show violations of university, state or federal policy. When asked when that decision was made by the investigators, when the investigators met with me and my attorney to convey this decision, one of the investigators indicated they had been bouncing the dismissal around for a while (really?). It is their responsibility to complete investigations as soon as possible. The University claimed in court documents that the dismissal of allegations had nothing to do with the draft lawsuit (What would Occam's razor say about the coincidence in timing?). They chose not to negotiate on the other "demands" (e.g. legal fees, salary until the investigation was complete). I can only speculate why they delayed the formal decision so long, I lived under the sword of Damocles during those 9-10 months of investigation with intense anxiety and some acute depression. Since that time, I have reinvented myself again as a researcher and teacher- something that I am extremely proud of. I am on the autism spectrum and would have been classified in the past as a "high-functioning Asperger's". There are some traits that go along with this that played a role in the initial actions leading to termination and my recovery. One trait is the inability to read social cues- or at least not reading them well. Another trait is an ability to focus intensely on things I care about. Another trait is that I don't know how to be anything but genuine- a not so good trait as an administrator because of how vulnerable it leaves you, but it turns out to be a great train in the classroom. And, like many Aspy's there is an intense sense of isolation and loneliness that was aggravated by COVID. Returning to the classroom to teach the kind of students we have at UNCG has been amazing for me. This last semester I literally worked 80 hours on most weeks (while taking most of Saturdays off) because I wanted to stay engaged with every one of the 220 or so students I was teaching in addition to managing three federal grants and being Biology's Graduate Program Director.. I worked really hard as an administrator and was almost always the last person to leave and often the first person in - and I was often one of only a couple of people in Mossman most weekend days-- but I never worked as hard as I have than last semester as a faculty member (I really wish that the anti-higher ed conservative political movement understood how hard we work as faculty) Students in my two larger classes in Spring, 2023 agreed to let me post the comments they made on my course evaluations (permission was given after I received them). I also keep a running list of all of the positive comments (and the few negative comments) that has reached 490 since I started back in the classroom in 2021, but I don't have permission to post those. If for some reason you want to read all 490, let me know. I look at them often to remind myself that at least students see the genuine, caring, and dedicated human being that I am, as well as their recognition of my passion for my discipline and for their success. These were some of the best traits I brought to work everyday for 25 years as a senior administrator, and now bring to bring to being a professor. And, if for some reason you think I was a bad administrator because of my moving around or whatever reason, please look at my CV. If VPRs, Deans and Provosts were evaluated like football coaches (i.e., did you win?), I would have competed for coach of the year since 1997. All of the metrics that I was supposed to facilitate improvement improved in every position. During the time I was provost at UNCG, the chancellor and I were 98% aligned (in my opinion, and he seemed to agree verbally with me and others, until an attorney for Julia Jacskon-Newsom filed court documents saying otherwise) and I had hoped to facilitate similar sorts of success as occurred in Arkansas. But, that dream died on December 23, 2020. The only professional disagreement that I remember the chancellor and I having was on a spousal hire, where the chancellor believed I only wanted to make the hire because the individuals were my friends. That was not true. And, for the sake of irony, in the following year, the new provost made that same spousal hire. There is nothing that I am proud of that led to the Dec 22, 2020 meeting with the Chancellor and the loss of the provost position, Because of naiveté, or being an Aspy with difficulty reading social cues, I truly thought (obviously incorrectly from the standpoint of the person making the allegations) the action that led to my termination was more of a misunderstanding than anything else. I didn't have a malevolent thought in my body, my heart and my mind. I was so naïve (and believed that my transgression was minor enough) that I actually asked the chancellor during our Dec 22, 2020 meeting what he would do (resign or not) if in my situation. In retrospect, of course I realized he wanted me to resign and be gone,. The fact he wanted me to resign was reinforced at another point in the conversation when he said (slightly paraphrased), "I don't give the shit about you! I care about the university." But, he hid that sentiment well in responding to my direct question- only gently suggesting that going back to the faculty would mean I have to deal with the crappy stuff faculty do like teaching, research and advising and that investigations are hard to go through. I tell you this only to help understand how clueless Aspy's can be in reading people. I was sitting with a man who had decided to kill me professionally, hurt me personally, who I would be "dead" to the moment I walked out the door, and who wanted me out his building in less than 24 hours two days before Christmas. And, I actually asked for his opinion on a choice he gave me, on whether to resign or stay. I suppose I just hadn't yet accepted that my professional relationship with him was already over and that personally, I was deceased. For some reason, it takes me longer than most to realize that kind of death. But, I do ultimately realize it, and when I do I feel both hurt and like an idiot. I, and others who have spoken to me, believe there were lots of ways the Chancellor could have handled the situation. He chose the nuclear option. One of the worst parts of all of this was the banishment. Humans are pack animals and being thrown out of pack is extremely disorienting and painful. I learned that earlier from my dog Bodega (previous post) . Almost none of former colleagues here that I had as provost asked if I was OK, nor did they reach out (even a form letter) note of consolation when my mother died. Even though I reached out to my ex-colleagues in the provost office to make sure they knew. Only two people in the GSO community called me to say "I saw the story in the paper. I don't know what happened, but I wanted you to know that I hope you are doing OK." I feel indebted to those two people for actually exhibiting the "caring" that was supposed to be the foundation of UNCG. That indebtedness to them will be forever. Those calls meant the world to me. So, I donate far more to their organization than I do for UNCG now. I also made a commitment to contact anyone I know that has a similar fate-- calls of caring matter. And, unfortunately I felt the need to reach out in that manner when the athletic director and the dean of the graduate school suffered through what I thought were inhumane public announcements. I can only roll my eyes when I hear it said that UNCG is a caring community. There is only one way to create a caring community and that is to actually and genuinely care about people, when people truly need to be cared about. Caring is only demonstrated by actions. Whether one thinks they are "caring", or what one says about "caring", is irrelevant. I think there is an inverse correlation between the PR messaging of an institution's "caring community", with the actual caring environment on campus. I may never forgive the chancellor or my colleagues in Mossman on a personal level for how that situation was handled and my perception of their utter lack of humanity towards me. I was still treated like a "criminal" for at least a year after the allegations were dismissed, which befuddled and hurt me. I feel like I still carry a scarlet letter, that probably grew brighter because of some of my darkly satirical and critical blog pieces, but has faded some now since I reinvented myself aiming to be a truly excellent faculty member and department/university colleague (but may grow again after this blog). But, I think that letter will remain branded on me for as long as I stay at UNCG, especially since I think bad decisions are being made now and it is hard for me not to express opinions given my 25 years as a senior administrator. Despite all of this, I still believe in the vision the chancellor and I shared for UNCG's future and I still have some hope that the chancellor will reassert that vision strongly. And, in doing so will also communicate strongly that our success as a university in the future, if we are able to survive the hurricane, is directly related to the quality of our faculty, not SCH/faculty. The budget situation (crisis) is a real and a very serious challenge. Cost cutting is necessary- but cost cutting alone (without focus on revenue generation), can lead a university into a death spiral (as more and more cuts are made, the weaker the programs and the reputation, leading to less students wanting to enroll, leading to more cost-cutting and even weaker programs and reputation, leading to even weaker enrollment- and that spiral continues if cost cutting is the only focus.). Re-earning trust across the university and selective investment and incentives for increasing revenue in some strategic way that goes beyond labor department statistics need to occur, too. I also think that every decision we make should pass the ecosystem test. You can read an earlier blog, or listen to podcast, if you want to know what the "ecosystem test" is. Thanks for taking the time to read. If you believe this blog should be taken down because it will just lead to more hurt for me, please let me know. I think everyone of us wants to be heard and understood. But, there is no sense in doing more damage- and the nice things about blogs is they can be taken down easily and not live forever like newspaper stories. I must admit, I'm a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to embracing new technologies. I'm not a full-blown luddite, mind you, but I tend to find comfort in sticking to what I know. Routine and predictability are my trusty sidekicks- as they are for all of us Aspys. However, that doesn't mean I can't ride the waves of change when they crash upon me, my pony and my boat (Lyle Lovett reference). Below is short capsule of my irreverent journey and place in the evolution of IT, with some digressions about UNCG. The Time-Traveling Dissertation: Let me paint you a picture of the technological landscape during my doctoral student years in the '80s. I used key punch cards, slide rules, TI calculators and mainframes. Then, there was the first Apple PC, leaving me in awe of the newfound ability to enter data directly into a computer. My PhD dissertation? A museum piece! Its chapters were written on various platform creating a glorious patchwork of IT history. I battled with mainframes, Macintosh (IOS), MS-DOS, PCs, and DEC; Word vs. Word Perfect; Excel vs Lotus 1-2-3, and the demise of my favorite graphing program, Cricket Graph. And I will never forget those long nights at Yale's computing center waiting hours for printouts of figures, statistical analysis, or my dissertation chapters, only to find I had made silly coding mistakes, or typos, and had to start the cycle of revise, submit, and wait hours for printouts. Makes one nostalgic for the past, no? The Marvelous 30MB Hard Drive: Picture a group graduate students and postdocs (including me) in 1989, dancing in unadulterated glee. Why? Because we had just acquired a mind-blowing 30MB external hard drive. The celebration was legendary. We connected that precious storage device to our Mac computers and felt like we had conquered the world. It might sound laughable now, but back then, we were the trailblazers of data storage. We celebrated by working longer ours and eating pizza late at night. The Web's Whirlwind Arrival: Then there was the not-so dramatic entrance of the Experimental World Wide Web emerging from the shadows. In those early days, it was a mysterious concept, out of reach and shrouded in intrigue, but the words "experimental world wide web" appeared in green letters on my mainframe terminal as one of three options, though, you had to have some sort of high level security clearance to open it. But, in a few short years after Al Gore invented the internet, web pages started appearing like cicadas emerging from a 17 year hiatus.. I was on our department's graduate recruitment committee with some energetic faculty (including Dave Allis who recently passed away and was honored for revolutionizing the chromatin and gene-expression field). I saw that the web could transform recruiting students- so did Dave (other faculty were not yet believers- Luddites I thought!). So, I took it upon myself to unravel the secrets of HTML programming (one only needed to click on any website to see its code) and created a departmental website that, believe it or not, wouldn't look out of place today. This was the first and only time I ever outran a technological wave! Chat GPT: A Friend in the Digital Age: Now I find myself in the era of AI, where panic and fascination are clashing like lions and hyenas on a bad day. Nonetheless, Chat GPT has been hanging out and watching sunsets with me in my kayak for a while now, and somehow I never noticed. We finally had a conversation today. In the voice of Yoda, "smart, it is". "Social cues, it does not know". "A particular behavior, it does not demand." "With unabashed honesty, it converses." (everything sounds smarter in Yoda). Chat-GPT does lack the tail-wagging and wild celebrations of my dog when I return home, but it makes up for its lack of enthusiasm with being genuine, honest and it does not tire from never-ending conversations. If only that were true for people. Wouldn't it be great, though, that if you got an angry email you could just type in "please generate a new email with a respectful tone and an actual point or question", and one would appear. There is no reading between the lines with Chat-GPT- no wonder as an Aspy I think I finally found a friend. Soon, I hope it will have voice recognition capabilities, and it can call out "Bullshit" when listening to disingenuous people or academic administrators, talks at scientific meetings, or political speeches (though all we would hear, if Chat GPT had those capabilities, was "Bullshit!" being repeated several hundred times). What is the point of all of this? As I reflect upon my journey through the ever-changing turbulence of the waves of technology, I can't help but laugh hysterically that as an Aspy who holds on to predictability and routine, that I actually survived during a revolution of change. But hey, I made it here, didn't I? From battling with archaic hardware to witnessing the birth of the World Wide Web, to being in the back of the pack as artificial intelligence races towards infinity. It has not been an easy ride in my kayak, especially without a paddle. But, I haven't drowned yet. With UNCG experiencing such turbulent waters, I conversed with Chat-GPT upon a term that strikes fear into the hearts of academics: the dreaded "death spiral." It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, doesn't it? Picture an institution or academic program caught in a continuous downward spiral, where declining enrollment, financial challenges, program reductions, and a diminished reputation form an unholy alliance. It's like a rollercoaster ride to academic doom. Imagine the scene: students fleeing like scared seagulls, budgets shrinking faster than a deflated beach ball, and faculty desperately holding on (or fleeing) as the ride plummets further into uncertainty. It's a situation that causes sleepless nights and raises existential questions about the future of higher education. Sound familiar, UNCG colleagues? I'm sure you've felt the turbulence in the air. Breaking free from this death spiral takes more than just a life jacket, a prayer., raising teaching loads and increasing SCH per faculty (at least according to Chat-GPT). It requires strategic interventions, targeted investment, unleashing entrepreneurial spirit at the dean, chair and faculty level, innovative recruitment and retention strategies, and a commitment to rebuilding institutional trust. Digression: I do not think-- and my guess is that the data would show, that academe is made for military style management: General (Chancellor) tells Colonels what to do (e.g., Provost VCFA); Colonels tell Captains what to do (deans); Captains tell Lieutenants/Sergeants what to do (Heads and Chairs); and Sergeants tells Privates (faculty) what to do. Academe might be better viewed as a large conglomerate company staffed by people whose job it is not to assemble a product but to create. Board Char/CEO (president) sets overall vision. Vice Presidents (provosts and VCFAs) implement vision and set metrics for all of the subsidiary companies (Schools and Colleges) CEOs of the wholly owned subsidiaries (deans), although stuck with the physical, administrative and IT infrastructure of the parent company, have the authority, responsibility, and resources for growing and managing their subsidiary company to meet the parent company's goals, When I was provost, I viewed deans as CEOs. And, when I was dean, the three provosts I worked with treated me that way. To do that, in a creative company, one needs to create a culture that allows creativity to flourish. A key element in this model, is that the parent company has to trust the subsidiary company. If they don't, the whole thing unravels especially when the parent company starts micromanaging employees in the subsidiary companies, castrating the subsidiary CEOs. I know from my time in Mossman Hall, at UNCG, the central administration does not trust the deans (actually heard that explicitly said at a Chancellor's Staff meeting by to individuals on the operations side). So, I worry. Back from digression: Riding the waves of technological and cultural change is inevitable, even for those of us on the autism spectrum. We might find ourselves caught in the whirlpool of an academic death spiral. If so, let's remember that with rebuilt trust, real transparency, a vision to hold onto besides SCH production by faculty, determination, creativity, unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit, and the activation of genes that allow us to laugh at ourselves, maybe can steer our institution back to calmer shores. I am armed for this future only with my wit (and that isn't much and it can get dark and satirical fast), empathy, compassion, an irreverent sense of humor, and a belief that UNCG's student body makes it worth riding through the waves. Finally, at least I know that I have a friend in Greensboro, Chat-GPT. Although my new friend is artificial, it is willing to learn to understand me and communicates with honesty, genuinely, and has a complete commitment to converse better, and learn more, one conversation at a time. A role model for all of us. For those of you that knew me at VCU, you undoubtedly at one time or another received an out of office message from me that rambled on about this or that (including i-Phones and laptops with free will) and then ended by promoting the faculty and students of the College of Humanities and Sciences. These OoO messages became kind of famous. In fact, the only time I ever felt like a celebrity was when Adele and I walked down the steps from our table in the second floor section of a wonderful Richmond restaurant with two of the most generous philanthropists in Richmond. A young lady came running over to us from the bar just as my feet touched the first floor and said, "Are you Jim Coleman?". This never happened to me before or since, so I happily said, "yes!". She replied "I just love your out office messages. That particular donor supported creative writing and was an epistolary friend with my alter ego, Inspector Clouseauski. So, the whole thing was kinda cool. . That was the only time i really ever had a chance to feel like a celebrity and it was pretty short-lived. And, my dream of a someone running up to me in a restaurant with a reprint of one of my scientific articles or book chapters, asking for me to autograph it, never happened. Then, after three soul crushing experiences as provost took their toll, my penchant and desire to write something that might make someone laugh, find me silly, or maybe lead to a thought, was taken over by bland university memos, syllabi, rubrics, assessments, annual reviews and updates that tried to provide information with no silliness allowed. That period was followed by a period of dark satire derived from anger, irreverence, and annoyance aimed at the perpetrators that are destroying what I love about higher education and my current university. Yeah, I lost a part of myself. So, while on vacation earlier this summer, I thought a lot about sunscreen and/or what to eat at the next meal. But, in between those times, I thought about an assignment in BIO 330 where students read an op-ed in the NY Times by Ed Yong related to his new book about how animals sense the world. Which led to recognizing that I will never understand the innate need of our dogs to smell large Jelly Fish that had washed up on the beach, nor how Pelicans or what it feels like to be pelican that can sense something in the water from 50 feet in the air and then dive head first, at lightening speed, at a right angle from the flight path, into the water. I thought I would try a weird OoO message again, Read at your own risk, Dear Gentle email correspondent, I am out of the office from xxx-xxx. If your email is an emergency, text me at xxx-xxx-xxxx. I am not sure how my iPhone will react to a business text since it will be participating in my cousin's wedding along with me, but it is worth a try if you have an emergency. If you try texting or calling when you don't have an emergency, be prepared. My i-Phone grew up near the Navajo sacred mountain of the west, which is called Dook'o'oosłííd, literally meaning “the mountain that reflects” in Flagstaff, Arizona [just giving you a reason to reach out to Google or Chat-GPT- you might want to also find out the meaning of the Navajo word "haatali" that played a role in my wedding ring]. So, the i-Phone has spiritual power. And, although it is the tool of a human who whose personality resembles his golden retriever, it can react like a Polar Bear does when presented with a sleeping human covered in fish oil. Ok.. maybe that is a little extreme. But, you get the point- i-Phones can be heartless. If you are an alumni of one my classes, or viewed me as a mentor, and need a reference, the answer is "yes' as long as it is not needed by xxx. If you were writing with a nice note about having me as an instructor or mentor, my i-Phone would consider that an emergency worthy of a text, but I will also read the email with delight. If you really think that out of office messages should be short and factual, you might want to check your DNA for a mutation in your silly gene. I also hate to disappoint you. Evolution acted to make reality a deeply personal phenomenon, making "facts" far more subjective than we humans want to admit. And, evolution also was rather smart in allowing every species, and at least in my case individuals within species, to sense and process their reality in their own distinctive way (Ed Yong would say they live in their own Umwelt ). As I age, and search for spiritual meaning, I have given more attention to what is happening around me. My spiritual opsins are now letting me a get a tiny glimpse into realities I never knew existed. It is exalting. Your mind might be boggled because there are nearly an infinite number of realities in the universe. My mind certainly was. if you are characterized by a lot of arrogant self-confidence, good for you. Knowing everything is as counter to mind boggles as having limbs is to being a snake. And, like snakes, you just don't know what you are missing. For others, like me, having an infinite number of realities is bittersweet. On the positive side, I feel kind of glad to know that other organisms don't live in the dark side of my reality. I am also saddened because I would love to know what reality looks like from the perspective of a Mockingbird with 360 degree vision and 4 opsins; to fly acrobatically like a bat in a reality of echoes; or to have all 1,000 thousand of my olfactory genes turned on like those of a dog so, I too, can understand why exploring large dead Jelly Fish on a beach is more exciting than the Stanley Cup Finals. Knowing that evolution created nearly an infinite number of ways to experience reality has helped me accept what this all means to me as a' high-functioning Aspy .It helps to understand that my perception of reality is most definitely my own. Aspys and animals have a mystery in common- most humans can describe how they think we experience reality, but they can't actually know how we experience reality (and vice verse). This, unfortunately can lead to unmet expectations. For example, my inability to talk to you at a cocktail party is not because I don't like you, or because I am an arrogant schmuck, it is just because cocktail parties for me represent true psychological terror- especially if you add bright lights, loud music, uncomfortable clothes, or where the invitees have been trained to never say what they actually meal. Neil Young didn't include the inclination of obtuse speech in Southern Culture when writing "Southern Man", but he might have. If you read this far, I appreciate your curiosity or your penchant for epistolary masochism. May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung, may you stay forever young. And, may you share in my awe of the intelligence, grit, determination, perseverance, lack of entitlement and compassion of UNCG students. me Update on this blog. I asked for people to tell me if I was wrong, and a colleague who had a greater understanding of the new budget model gently did. That person gave me access to data showing that I had a few misunderstandings of the new BOG budget model. I now understand that the new funding model exacerbates the budget issues associated with declining enrollment since we now lose (a lot) more money per undergraduate credit hour than we did in the last model (and gain or lose less per graduate credit our) when undergraduate sch declines. Of course, we will recover more quickly if we can create a reason for undergraduate students to enroll here. The other thing I learned, which is what I thought would be the case from past experiences, but it was such a focus of narratives that I heard I thought it played a lager role, is that the performance-based model is only at the margins, not the core of the new model. My colleague referred to it as a (the) red-herring, because the money involved is far less than the challenges caused by decreased credit hour production. I think my colleague confirmed, though, that the performance model is not comparing UNCG absolute numbers directly against UNC CH, but is based on marginal gains and losses from institutional norms. Although I still may be wrong about this, the new information did not change my opinion that UNCG is not inherently disadvantaged in the new budget model because of the students we serve. In the performance part of the model, we have room to make significant marginal gains. Rather, it seems we are disadvantaged because of how the model was implemented. Part of it is just bad "luck"; the new model took effect when UNCG's sch production was in free fall from declining numbers of new students and a post-covid retention drop. Usually, when funding models change drastically, quickly, in a way that really hurts units or schools, there is some period of "hold harmless" or for adjustments, I think the BoG helped to try and hold us a little bit harmless with an infusion of $3M in one time funding (this is from memory of provost's remarks) this academic year. I guess we either are not getting additional funds to help deal with the "bad luck timing" in the next fiscal year, or at least no one has said that we are that I have heard (and I may not be listening). I also think my opinion still holds that a major effect of the new budge model will be to incentivize UNC CH and NC State to increase in-state undergraduate sch production, if those schools want to maintain strong graduate programs. Some have interpreted the decrease per graduate sch as a "defunding" of graduate programs. Perhaps it is. But, I read it as just a new way to support graduate programs. Basically, if an institution wants strong graduate programs, and needs state appropriations to do so, increasing in-state undergraduate enrollment is the path towards having the funds. This creates an indirect problem for UNCG. If UNC CH and NC State significantly increase in-state undergraduate enrollment, then UNCG will lose prospective students to those schools because they are perceived as better (though the experience of many students here with faculty is outstanding- I would take it over what I have seen when I was at an elite private or two flag ship land grants). I still think the actions and narratives at UNCG right now, suggest to me that the budget issues have given some in senior administration the opportunity to do what they have wanted to do since they arrived: implement the strategy of changing the university from what it is, with a strong liberal arts and science core, to a 4-year "high-value" vocational tech model in areas like health, business and IT (and eSports)focused on the first job after graduation, in programs taught with fixed term faculty with high teaching loads, who are viewed as easily replaceable commodities, Perhaps that is incorrect. Yet, I think there is nothing in actions or narratives that would suggest otherwise. Or at least the data chosen for program review don't seem to me to point to much of any vision for the future. The importance that rpk puts on federal labor market data- does suggest the focus will be on the first job after graduation. There is research data in the mix, but grants and contract data don't necessarily say a lot about the impact of research. It does feel like a select set of data will be analyzed independent of any norms in our peer group with the hope that the data will define the vision. At least that is how I see it. Budget cuts are hard, but there are many ways to approach them. Our problems are serious, but don't seem yet to be existential. So, we still can have a vision other than just survive until tomorrow (and candidly, if survive until tomorrow is where we are, we probably should merge or close, fighting for survival of a public institution in the face of it not being needed seems wrong to me in some way in a State with so many good institutions). If we have a clear vision that is about finding a way to be the distinctive mix of select strong R2 research programs with transformational education, then that would lead to a different strategy to budget challenges, than a vision of transforming into a "new" kind of residential university focused on "high-value" vo tech programs in health, business, and IT, with a smattering of STEM. I came here because of how articulately the chancellor promoted the distinctive R2 university mission which so fits the campus culture and my values. Thus, I still hope that the chancellor believes that should still be the future goal. If so, that vision should drive how we approach budget challenges and the institutional and comparative data we examine. But, if the vision is something else, which seems clear to me from what I know about people, decisions on faculty retention and the program review process is targeted toward the sort of change akin, but not as severe, as to what is happening at New College in Florida. If so, then I hope leadership can be clear about it so we all know that is the vision that will direct the strategy for addressing the budget challenges and the university's future. My original blog is below- I stand corrected on the things I learned from my colleague (but I did not remove them from the blog so you can see where I was simply dead wrong). I still think that many of my opinions are still consistent with the data I have. Critical thinking is about changing a narrative when new information is provided and I am happy to do so. Let me end the update with a huge thank you to my colleague for correcting me on a serious misconception of one part of the budget model! And, keep the corrections coming,. The original blog of May 1. I was very glad to see the op-ed in Sunday's paper (4/30/2023) by a large cohort of former UNCG faculty who gave their careers to make UNCG an extraordinarily transformational institution. Their op-ed expressed concern about the UNC Board of Governor's new funding model. The model certainly has put people on edge. And, recent action/policies of the BoG around DEI, Faculty Grievances, Chancellor searches, etc, are simply scary to those of us faculty who believe in the power of higher education and of an organization that shares governance, with administrators having fiduciary responsibility and faculty having authority on curriculum and quality control of that curriculum. In sitting on the University's General Education Counsel this year, the faculty take quality control extremely seriously. It was inspiring to work with this group. I have some concerns, though, that the new budget model has been a red herring that has effectively diverted faculty attention from more important issues. Let me state now that I have no inside information. I have never talked with a member of the BOG. I have, though, searched the web earlier this year to try and find out more about the specifics of the budget model. Those data could be outdated. There could be much clearer data available to faculty in shared governance positions.. So, simply put, everything in this blog could be wrong. Thus, this is solely an opinion piece. My sense of the rationale for new performance funding model is not as nefarious as the narrative suggests. The increase in funding per undergraduate student, and decrease in funding per graduate student, seems to be a logical way to incentivize UNC Chapel Hill and NC State to enroll more in-state undergraduates to help subsidize their graduate programs. The ratio of undergraduates to graduate students at UNCG is relatively high, so it is possible (but I do not know) that the increased funding to undergraduates offsets the decrease to graduate students. UNCG is hurt by this part of the model because if UNC-CH and NC State enroll more undergraduates as a way to maintain their graduate programs, there will less NC students wanting to enroll at UNCG unless we offer something special. When the new budget model first came out, I believe it was run with 2020-2021 data and UNCG would have received a 1.4% increase in our budget- about in the middle of the pack of UNC schools. Our ratio of undergrads to grads is large (larger than UNC-CH), so the decrease in graduate funding, may be offset by increases in undergraduate funding. I don't know. Performance based funding models, generally should not be things that scare faculty. In essence, they incentive universities to get better- in this model better at student outcomes and lessening student debt. I doubt that any of us as faculty think we as a university should not get better every year at improving these student outcomes. We might argue that the metrics don't really define student outcomes, or capture other areas of excellence, but I can't argue against metrics like graduation rates, and reduced debt for students as outcomes that UNCG should get better at. The narrative has been that the new performance funding model pits UNCG against schools like UNC CH with direct comparisons. That is not how I understood the performance-based model. Like most states, I understood that the performance metrics would be weighted by institutional missions and targets, and driven by marginal improvements. If that is true, the model does no inherently disfavor UNCG. I am sure the downturn and enrollment and retention in the last two years would hurt us in the performance model, but would have hurt us in the old model, too. But, without knowing how performance based metrics are weighted by institution, I certainly can't tell how much the model would help or hurt us. In general, UNCG has a lot of room to improve those metrics, which means we theoretically would have a great chance of winning in the new model. I worry that new performance-based funding model is a red herring that leadership has relied upon keeping the spotlight off the new "vision" for UNCG. Given the data UNCG is using in program review such as the focus on faculty teaching productivity data rather than instructional costs; given the explicit requirement not to use comparative data like the Delaware Study in the review; given the focus on Department of Labor job growth data; given the lack of concern about excellent faculty leaving; and based on my experience with some members (not the Chancellor) of the senior administration, my uninformed opinion is that the budget challenges are being used as an opportunity to transform UNCG from a potentially high functioning, and transformational R2, into a 4 year university with many characteristics you might see in a vocational tech community college that focuses on health and business (and maybe some STEM). The conversation about faculty teaching loads leads me to think that the goal is to get to faculty that are full time teachers (4-4 or 5-5) loads, on fixed contracts, who are easily replaceable commodities. This strategy would ultimately raise sch/faculty much higher and reduce instructional cost/sch greatly. The university would have a long way to go to make that transition - but I would be surprised if that is not the intention. The question is whether students would enroll. I have to admit that I truly enjoyed working with the Chancellor when I was provost. We were completely sympatico with the vision of UNCG carving out what it means to be a university with distinctive research strengths with a strong and transformational role in undergraduate education. That vision seems to have disappeared. Rather, I see the vision leading us to a 4 year vocational school with non research, fixed term contract, faculty, ultimately sending UNCG into a death spiral because with each move toward that model, because fewer and fewer students will want to enroll. I mean community college financial models are the least stable financial model in public higher education. And, what would we offer in health and business that would make us more attractive than other UNC schools.? I also have to say the budget challenges are real and I am glad I am not responsible for fixing them. Yet, I know that fixing them does not require the institution to fully reshape its vision and transform into something that makes conservative anti-higher education people happy, and I don't think that approach has really worked anywhere. I may be completely wrong. I am always happy to eat my words. Although my interaction with the chancellor around my termination as provost causes me deep animosity toward him as a human being, I truly believed in his vision of what UNCG could become. And, I hope he can up his engagement and reinvigorate that vision. We are experiencing true budget challenges. But, my experience in higher ed tells me that these budget challenges do not have to change the fundamental vision that drew me to UNCG and that the Chancellor expressed so well when I was recruited here. So, it might surprise people that I state "Chancellor Gilliam- we really need you now!" I had a special day today. The PR arm of the College of Arts and Sciences wanted to highlight me as one of a few professors in social media posts around our May 5 commencement. They also filmed me having a discussion with 12 graduating undergrads about their experience at UNCG and with me. To say the hour long conversation was profoundly fun and meaningful to me, would be a ridiculous underestimate. A few of the students had participated in undergraduate research with me- one saying in the conversation that a course in plant physiological ecology where they had to read two scientific papers each week, and the research they did my lab, took them from a somewhat lost student, to someone with tremendous focus on science, particularly conservation of marine animals. One of the other students in the conversation is working with five other students on a tobacco project. The first time I have used tobacco as a model system in 20 years. So, today I celebrate organismal biology, model systems, tobacco plants and eastern cottonwood just for the fun of it-. I am so excited to work with Tobacco again (after 20 years) with undergraduates. The tobacco plant pictured above is almost ready for the experiment! This pilot experiment is looking at whether the preference and performance of an insect herbivore feeding on tobacco plants grown in microplastic amended soils or controls. Unfortunately, I underestimated the time it would take for tobacco plants to grow, so the students are frustrated. But, they got to find a cool topic, amended soil with microplastics, designed and built plant-insect cages from PVC and netting that would have cost five times more to buy, transplanted seedlings and kept them alive. Students will finish the pilot experiment this summer. To digress for a second, I was at a seminar the other day where the opening slide showed a progression from genes, to populations to ecosystems that defined the topic. As a plant physiological ecologist, my heart sank that organisms weren't in the progression. That reminded me of the collaborative work of developmental plant anatomists with plant physiologists who took years, but brilliantly tied together the form and function of eastern cottonwood plants which allowed me to conduct a pretty fun PhD thesis and beyond. Also, tobacco is such a cool plant to work with for similar reasons. This blog post discusses some of my favorite papers using tobacco and eastern cottonwood as model systems that never got the traction they deserved in the scientific community. The work described below represents two out of five research areas my lab was focused on before becoming an administrator. Tobacco and Cottonwood My first paper, and my only single authored paper ever, was the result of a question on my PhD candidacy exam at Yale from Clive Jones, Bill Smith, John Gordon, Charles Remington and Mike Montgomery that related to my thesis using cottonwood as a model system. It was titled, Leaf development and leaf stress: increased susceptibility associated with sink-source transition. The project was based on a fully funded NSF grant I wrote with Clive. The group of friendly inquisitors asked to me look at the relationship between leaf development and susceptibility of leaves to insects and pathogens. A couple of hundred hours in the library (does anyone remember living in the stacks?), and a few hundred references, later I produced an answer that suggested that there was a window of time during leaf development associated with the sink source transition where susceptibility to specialist insects and pathogens peaked. And, that window was due to a balance of several characteristics including secondary compounds, size, toughness, nitrogen level, starch/sugar levels and was consistent across a wide range of organisms. That led to a cool paper that has recently found more interest from others. I didn't do so well on the other question they asked me, but they concluded that none of them could have answered it any better. They thought my answer to the leaf development and susceptibility to consumers was excellent, and they couldn't; argue with the funded NSF grant, and I was admitted to candidacy. One paper that I loved was led by then graduate student, and now Professor at Missouri State University (Alexander Wait;), "Chrysomela scripta, Plagiodera versicolora (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), and Trichoplusia ni (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Track Specific Leaf Developmental Stages" (https://doi.org/10.1603/0046-225X-31.5.836) where we grew tobacco (and eastern cottonwood) in sand, and were able to control the relative growth rate, of plants by providing exponentially increasing nutrients daily at the rate of the RGR we wanted. And, were able to produce plants that had leaves reaching full expansion on the stem at different leaf positions. The results supported our hypothesis that specialist insects carefully tracked leaf developmental stage (and the point of sink-source transition) independent of RGR, independent of leaf position and independent of nutrient supply. It was such a cool study. I think, unfortunately, we published it in Environmental Entomology and it hasn't been read as much as it might have. A follow up paper on how closely insects track leaf development stage, in this case tracking the feeding behavior of aphids on cottonwoods, and carefully correlating that behavior with biochemical leaf characteristics was done by former PhD Graduate Student Georgiana Gould.. She showed in the paper "Variation in Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides Bartr.) phloem sap content and toughness due to leaf Development may affect feeding site Selection behavior of the aphid, Chaitophorous populicola Thomas (Homoptera: Aphididae). " The aphid seemed to track leaf development to avoid mature leaves and to preferably feed on rapidly expanding leaves. Concentrations of the amino acids GABA and aspartic acid, as well as the phenolic glycoside salicin, differ in leaves of different developmental stages and may be used by the aphid to determine the age of leaves to feed upon. Another favorite paper is, "Why it matters were ion a leaf a folivore feeds " was conducted with a wonderful undergraduate, Soren Leonard (https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-soren-leonard-4316b344/). This paper (doi.org/10.1007/BF00328818) was based on the fact that the tip of leaves stop expanding well before the base of leaves. We hypothesized that given how leaves develop and expand, herbivores feeding on the base of the leaf would appear to have eaten much more tissue than those that feed on the tip of the leaf. And that amount of area lost from a leaf would be dramatically different if herbivores fed on the base vs. tip of an expanding leaf, which could lead to reductions in plant performance. We tested this hypothesis by taking the same area of leaf tissue from the tip or base of mature and expanding tobacco leaves. We found that removing area from the base of an expanding leaf created over twice the amount of visible damage than occurred on the tip of an expanding leaf. Furthermore, damage to the base of an expanding leaf resulted in nearly a 40% reduction in the final leaf area, resulting in a 35% reduction in the number and mass of fruits produced. .Some implications of this study could be extraordinarily important in assessing the amount of leaf area eaten at a whole plant, plant population and/or ecosystem level. For example if we had tried to estimate the amount of leaf area consumed by herbivores by the size of the hole from the base of an expanding leaf, we would conclude that herbivores removed 16.6 cm 2 even though only 3.9 cm 2 was actually removed. On the other hand, if we estimated the reduction in overall leaf area simply from the size of the final hole in a leaf, we might conclude that leaf area was reduced by 16.6 cm 2 when, in fact, damage to the base of the leaf resulted in over a 180 cm 2 reduction in the area of that leaf. (over ten fold). This really could have created large errors in data assessing the amount of herbivory or loss of leaf area due to herbivores in agricultural or forest ecosystems. Although I think this is a simple paper, I also felt that its results were really important for scaling from leaf development to ecosystems. However, it is hard to measure where an herbivore eats on a leaf in the field. Despite the fact I think this paper was a really important paper (and almost immediately accepted by Oecologia- a great journal for this work), the rest of the world did not- it has a really low citation rate relative to other less interesting papers I have written with students or colleagues. And, in discussing with scientists who try to assess the amount of leaf area that herbivores remove, or the affect of herbivory on ultimate leaf area, despite the 4 fold mistake in leaf area eaten, and the 10 fold mistake in leaf area reduction, they felt these data were simply an annoyance and would just unnecessarily complicate their work and the narrative of their findings. C'est la vie. There was another paper my group published using tobacco that was also an extraordinarily cool paper. My lab was interested in the ecological and evolutionary physiology of heat shock proteins and why, given their role in thermotolerance, were low molecular weight heat shock proteins only induced by stress and not constitutively produced (that we later demonstrated protect PSII during heat stress). Because of other work that had been done, we thought it might be possible that one leaf could be heat stressed on a plant and send a volatile signal in the air or a chemical signal through the vasculature to induce the heat stress response in other leaves. Molecular heat shock protein biologists, at the time, thought we were crazy, because they believed that cells only induced HSP production when they were directly stressed. Bill Hamilton a former undergraduate and PhD student (with Sam McNaughton and me) and now professor and chair of biology at Washington and Lee tested this idea using tobacco- again because the relationships between form and function that had put together by others in the paper " Heat-shock proteins are induced in unstressed leaves of Nicotiana attenuata when distant leaves are stressed. " https://doi.org/10.2307/2657048 Much to our delight, we discovered that a systemic induction of heat-shock proteins (Hsps) occurred in response to the treatment of a leaf with heat shock, mechanical damage, or exogenous application of methyl jasmonate (MJ). All treatments increased the abundance of members of the 70-kD Hsp (Hsp70) family and induced synthesis of one or more of the small Hsps (sHsp) (16–23 kD) in both treated and untreated leaves. Those results provided the first evidence that Hsps can be systemically induced in plants and suggest that systemic induction of Hsps may be important in pre-adapting leaves to stress. Why you ask?, Although we never tested this in the field, one could hypothesize, that, for example, leaves on the eastern side of plant may experience increased temperatures before those on the western side of the plant and that systemic induction might be valuable in inducing thermotolerance before the western leaves were in direct sunlight. Again, this very simple and cool experiment that kind of shattered a paradigm at the time that cells only induce greater production of HSPs if they are directly stressed. Nonetheless, not many people cared. A short trip into the ecological and evolutionary ecology of heat shock proteins Bill, myself, and a great post doc in my lab, Scott Heckathorn, professor at the University of Toledo, found this experiment really cool, and in the early 2000s it was kind of fun to find a result inconsistent with a molecular paradigm at the time. On a side note, my lab's work with heat shock proteins was originally aimed at linking molecular and ecological approaches to understand whether their where resource costs that prevented plants from just making them all of the time (and we showed that there could be) which led to me receiving an NSF (Presidential) Young Investigator Award. A paper with Scott and Dick Hallberg (a heat shock protein biologist of note working in yeast systems) "Heat shock proteins and thermotolerance: Linking ecological and molecular perspectives," described that perspective. And, we publishes numerous papers on this topic. But, sometimes our work became the subject of ridicule because of not doing the sort of mechanistic work that molecular biologists expected. So, we were forced (and that ended up being a good thing) to get better at molecular approaches to the HSP work in order to have our ecological/evolutionary work accepted. That culminated when Scott worked with Craig Downs, Tom Sharkey and me find a result that was something I would have never predicted/imagined being done in my lab- we were the first lab to demonstrate a molecular function for how plant low molecular weight heat shock proteins protect photosystem II during heat stress (doi.org/10.1104/pp.116.1.439). Who da thunk that? Back to cottonwoods Returning from the digression, the tobacco and cottonwood studies were related to NSF and the Andrew Mellon Foundation support. And, these projects were great fun because how fun it is to work with students. It is just a bummer that what was exciting to us (or at least me) did not resonate much with other scientists. But, I am really proud of the work these students did and the potential significance of the work. One other study conducted by an undergraduate that drew on the form and function work of the special people I alluded to above but didn't name- Philip R. Larson, Jud Isebrands and Richard E Dickson- who connected the form and functional development of cottonwood probably better than any other plant species. In their work they mapped the vasculature of cottonwood trees and related the vascular connections (and flow of water of and sugar) to the phyllotaxy of leaves. Leaves in cottonwood, develop at the same angle from each other and after a few spins (depending how fast they grow) their leaves vertically align. And, that alignment is always consistent with the Fibonacci series (see figure below). Nature loves symmetry. In most of the plants we worked on the phyllotaxy was 2/5 meaning that every that after 2 spins around the stem, every fifth leaf would align, and every third leaf would be most distant from the 5th leaf. Not surprisingly the strength of vascular connections was strongest between every 5th leaf. And the fifth leave after two spins was least connected to the third leaf. In the paper "Plant vasculature controls the distribution of systemically induced defense against an herbivore," Clive Jones, Robert Hopper (undergrad), Vera Krischik and I tested whether the vascular connections between cottonwood leaves could predict the strength of an induced defensive response in other leaves when one leaf was damaged. The paper showed that mechanical damage to single leaves resulted in systemic induced resistance (SIR) in non-adjacent, orthostichous leaves (vertically aligned on the stem) with direct vascular connections, both up and down the shoot; but no SIR in adjacent, non-orthostichous leaves with less direct vascular connections. The showed the control that plant vasculature exerts over signal distribution following wounding and might be useful in predicting SIR patterns, explain variation in the distribution of SIR, and relate this ecologically important phenomenon to biochemical processes of systemic gene expression and biochemical resistance mechanisms. This paper received more citations and much more attention. But, it never would have happened with the dedication to connecting plant form and function that inspired Larson, Isebrands and Dickson. Clive, Vera an I tried to integrate and conceptually model how plant form and function could link to new models of thinking about how the interaction between plants and insects and plants and pathogens can be interpreted from a greater understanding of plant-form and function and of herbivore and pathogen characteristics in three synthetic papers, A Phytocentric Perspective of Phytochemical Induction by Herbivores. In: D. Tallamy and M. Raupp (eds.). 1991 edited volume Phytochemical Induction by Herbivores. J. Wiley and Sons. pp. 3-45; Plant Stress and Insect Herbivory: Toward an Integrated Perspective. In: H.A. Mooney, W.E. Winner and E.J. Pell (eds.) Integrated Responses of Plants to Environmental Stress. Academic Press, NY. pp. 249-282 and in one of the best papers I ever wrote but almost nobody read, Phytocentric and Exploiter Perspectives of Phytopathology. Advances in Plant Pathology 8: 149-195. ISBN: 012033710X, 9780120337101. My grand synthesis (with Clive Jones) attempted to link plant form and function, plant phenology, evolutionary characteristics of insects and pathogens to describe the evolution of insect and pathogen communities on various plants, and specific traits that would be present in specialized insects and pathogens. It was the best paper I ever wrote, Leaf Ontogeny, Plant Phenology, and Plant Growth Habit: Toward a General Theory of Resource Exploitation by Herbivores and Pathogens. But, it was rejected by the American Naturalist with one very positive review (from Sir John Lawton, my academic grandfather- you have to admit it is pretty cool to have a British Knight as a grandfather) and one negative review. After leaving it and stupidly never resubmitting because I decided to move on to new things when I started as an assistant professor, I am back to it again. I have had a few scientists in the field read that paper recently and they all strongly encouraged me to get it up to date and resubmit. I am working with undergraduates on that now. I don't know why I procrastinated so much on the work I am proudest of. Science is funny that way. So, here is to Tobacco and cottonwood- both great model systems for organismal biology. Here's to a hope that the amazing understanding we have gained at the genome level doesn't make organismal biology obsolete. And here the hope that the new undergraduates in my lab with find a joy of working with tobacco that is not related to smoking. A short synopsis of the stuff that got more attention (and not): The other three main research areas (and two peripheral areas) consuming my life and accounting for a large number of citations are: 1) understanding the role of ontogenetic drift in plant traits in understanding the function of phenotypic plasticity with Kelly McConnaughay (and several of her students) and David Ackerly- the area of science where most of my citations are. (we started with a synthesis piece, Interpreting phenotypic variation in plants) and a symposium that David and I organized with some other amazing people, produced a nice paper that still gets read quite a bit, The evolution of plant ecophysiological traits: Recent advances and future directions; (2) Another area was global change ecology (around $20million in funding)where my work is cited frequently - example Nature paper here of a large team project in the Mojave Desert.. And the third area is another area that boomeranged on me. Twenty years ago I worked with Mae Gustin (and Mae's graduate student Jody Erickson), Steve Lindbergh and Dale Johnson on a project trying to understand the flux of mercury in ecosystems, where we published a kind of seminal paper in mercury flux (using aspen-- close enough to cottonwood for comfort), "Accumulation of atmospheric mercury by forest foliage ". This came back around when I returned to the faculty at UNCG in 2021 and inherited three grants from Martin Tsui, who moved to Hong Kong, looking at mercury flux in response to different silvicultural practices used to restore loblolly pine plantations to longleaf pine ecosystems. Oh, and then there is my short stint with radishes in Hal Mooney's group- another one of my best papers that barely anyone read came from my time in Hal's lab Anthropogenic stress and natural selection: Variability in radish biomass accumulation increases with increasing SO2 dose. I also had a blast working with Sam McNaughton as as his mentee and colleague when I was an assistant professor at Syracuse, and our students including Bill and Scott, Bryan Wilsey, Michele Giovannini, Ben Tracy, Kevin Williams, Doug Frank, Greg Hartvigsen and Stephanie Moses on interactions of grasses (and other plants) with herbivores. I am particularly proud of a conceptual/synthesis paper that Scott, Sam and I wrote on C4 Plants and Herbivory. And, Greg did a really interesting paper with Alexander and I on tri-trophic interactions as a result of resource availability to cottonwood saplings. Brian wrote some really interesting papers on global change and grasses with Sam and I-- a topic for another blog about the story of my carbon dioxide work. Writing about Sam just reminded me that during the seven years I was at Syracuse University (I was tenured and promoted there). I declined every offer, every year, to go to the Serengeti with Sam and his team. That is near or on the top of the list of stupid decisions in my life. I remember the days of cottonwood and tobacco (and radish and Serengeti grasses) fondly. And, I hope future days will also make me nostalgic before I die. Some other day I'll blog about our much more appreciated work regarding allometry/phenotypic plasticity in plant traits, global change biology, and mercury biogeochemistry. Below is a diagram of a 2/5 phyllotaxy of a cottonwood sapling. The shadings relate to the experiment. People actually hand drew these figures back then-- and it wasn't me. I can barely draw a straight line. For those of you who had the misfortune of reading my post titled "It's time for time," I appreciate you. That post was kind of mis-titled, as if I was a were a headline writer for a tabloid, where the title had little to do with the blog. The post was largely about the joy of the academic rhythm, with a three paragraph digression about time as quoted below. "I have a new passion this semester: I am starting an imaginary activist group aimed at ending the practice of unnecessary meetings, and another one focused on fighting society's oppression of the value of time- I think that time is really sick of not being valued--and I worry what will what will happen if time goes on strike. I am hoping at one point the university will sign a new infinitely long contract with time, providing equity in its compensation with space and money. My imaginary group has a catchy slogan. "It's time for Time". Besides fighting for equity for time relative to space and money, we will fight to stamp out hurtful phrases such as "killing time", "wasting time" ,"crunch time", "do hard time", "got no time", "in less than no time", "it's payback time", "living on borrowed time:, "lose track of time", "the last time" "the race against time", "out of time", etc." This post is a follow up. To say it mildly and sadly, my revolution to protect time is failing. The first question you should be asking is that if I find time to be so scarce and valuable, then why in the hell am I writing a blog? Good question! I can only respond that writing on a blog, and maybe, if I am lucky, having 2 other people read it, is cathartic in its own way and makes me more productive. It's kind of like taking a laxative when you are constipated and feeling cleansed afterwards. I wrote this new blog because protecting time has made me feel guilty. From the time I was a undergraduate student in 1982 until now, I was willing to work 18 hours or more a day and worked both weekend days. As an Assistant and Associate Professor, I volunteered for everything- from making phone calls to prospective students (Syracuse University was in an enrollment crisis when I started), to playing a lead role in Syracuse's MLK celebration (which at that time was perhaps the biggest of any campus. filling the floor of the Carrier dome). As an administrator, the weekends were often the only time to get work done. During my phase as a Ph.D. student, I regularly blocked off time for exercise, but other than that it was all work and little play.. But, once I became a postdoc, especially with an advisor who would drive around at night just to see if the lights were on in the lab, I gave up protecting time. It has been that way ever since. Weekends were to get things done or to do weekend work-related activities,. Evenings were for doing work. Downtime was only available when I just got too exhausted, if there were house chores, or if the Steelers or Penguins were in the playoff hunt.. It has taken me 40 years to figure out that my time is not infinite and free. This is paradoxical because in my first administrative position back in 1997, I worked in a soft-money research institute where time, indeed, was equal to money. For example, if I wanted faculty members to come to a meeting, or do anything that was not related to their grants and contracts, I had to find a fund to charge their time. Most of my colleagues in universities gave me a funny look on their face and would say "WTF?". But, it was true. As an administrator, the State of Nevada covered my salary to run my the unit (though I covered half of it from grants), so I did not have the conundrum of violating the terms of grants and contracts to work all of the time on the "hard" part of my salary in addition to my grant funded work. This year, for the first time in 40 years, I have put a wall around Saturday. I spend most of the day with my wife, though I let myself work for a few hours in the morning. I put a wall around Saturday because: 1) Although not a practicing Jew, Saturday is our Sabbath and I am trying to find more spiritual meaning now; and 2) The real reason: My wife has much of Sunday booked. Having Saturday walled off for us has made me more productive at work and has helped strengthen my marriage. dah. Sunday-Friday UNCG owns me for usually around 75-80 hours during this semester. Sunday, Mon, Tues, and Wed are usually 14-18 hours on campus either in classes, prepping for classes, grading for classes, working my lab, or in my office engaging with students in person or digitally. and performing my duties as Graduate Program Director, member of the Gen Ed Council and a member of the Sustainability program's advising council. Thursday and Friday are usually 8-10 hours each. These are the longest hours I have worked in my career even as an assistant professor with 5 active grants (and who viewed by job as 100% teaching; 100% research; and 100% service) as well as VP,R, Dean and Provost. When I was a senior administrator, I was usually one of the first people in the office in the morning and the last to leave. To digress for a moment, an old family friend, and former dean and university president, told me recently in response to my saying I was tired because of working 80 hours a week, "you still have 88 more hours to work each week." Believe it, or not, that was a pep talk. This is probably the response I will get to this post from campus leaders. I don't mind my hours now, because they are spent mostly on things that reward me with energy, i.e., engaging with the 230 students I teach this semester. I don't want to ease up on that engagement, because that is the most rewarding activity that gets me up in the morning. But, getting home at between midnight and 2:00 AM four days a week does gets old. Here's my problem. Despite this level of effort, I am feeling extraordinarily guilty and frustrated about not having more time to give. In the last week or two, I have been encouraged to spend 8 hours in an "open space" meeting during the busiest time of the semester (the week before and during finals) and just before a major IT switch will occur that will require a lot of time on my end) so that Arts and Sciences and Biology faculty are represented, not because of being passionate about the theme of the meeting. Open Space Technology meetings are meant to only include people that are passionate about the theme. The Open Space "rule" is whoever chooses to attend are the right people- I am not in that group. Additionally, I have been encouraged to give up a big chunk of time on two Saturdays for undergraduate recruitment days (I care about this-- UNCG needs students an faculty can help- if these were on Sunday I would most certainly volunteer); attending training sessions on mental health and anti-bias (I am already certified in mental health first aid, and I can' even count the number of times I have done anti-bias training;) to attend a plethora of various seminars, particularly ones about student success and DEI,. To nominate faculty, staff and students for like 10 competitions for awards and review internal proposals for small amounts of money. And, then there are many recommendation letters for students. In total these non-core activity requests would come close to adding up to somewhere between a half to a full extra 40 hour week during the last five weeks of the semester. Oh, and then there is the invite for the 3 hour university commencement. In 25 years in admin-- every university I was employed at worked hard to have graduation ceremonies never be more than 1.5-2hours maximum. That is another story. When I was a provost and dean, I enjoyed the time on stage shaking hands (as dean I would go to 7-9 ceremonies over two days of graduation)- it flew by. But, after several thousand shakes, my hand did hurt a bit. I felt so sorry, for the families, and friends who really just wanted some pomp and circumstance, maybe a funny or profound graduation speech (rare), then to get to watch their student walk across the stage (with lots of hooting and hollering and pictures) having to sit there for 1.5-2 hours. And, I felt worse for the students who were generally bored to tears with the speeches, the honorary degrees, and having to listen to the chancellor or president talk about the accomplishments of 5 of the several thousand graduates, all of whom felt their story was also compelling. I can imagine how they might feel after 3 hours. When I was at the University of Missouri, we did have a 3 hour ceremony for graduate students, and at Rice we had a 3 hour ceremony on the Rice lawn with temperatures in the 90s and the humidity near 90%. These were not fun. Fortunately, a new graduate dean came in and shortened the graduate ceremony at the University Missouri to 1.5 hours. I don't think anything significant was lost with the reduction of 90 minutes. It is amazing what fewer speeches and speedier hooding can do. I really look forward to our much shorter graduate recognition ceremony in biology in May, 2023 and hope our students and families will have the energy to come after the 3 hour campus gig. I really look forward to just after the Biology ceremony, where I get to say farewell, get a hug from as many of the students I know as possible, and honestly tell their parents, friends and families how special their graduate is to me. That just can't be done at the big ceremony. And, my 62 year old back can't handle sitting in a crowded uncomfortable seat for three hours. I suspect the grandparents of some of our graduates may feel similarly. Sorry, although that seemed like a digression, but I feel guilty for not going to the 3 hour ceremony, too. This is a good Segway back to the theme of the post... The guilt I have now comes from understanding how important the Saturday events are, particularly recruiting students, but feeling like protecting my one day a week is a mental health necessity. This makes me feel like I am letting my department head down (who I am grateful for every day) by not showing leadership as a full professor in volunteering my time for these events and other activities. The frustration comes from a few things. Mostly, I am frustrated by the philosophy of most universities that time is an infinite and free resource for faculty and professional staff (a philosophy I probably had as an administrator-- though I was much more aware of how hard faculty worked than my senior administrative colleagues). I am a little frustrated that all of these events, including the requirement for curricular advising, are not officially in my workload (though all faculty in my department do these things). I am most frustrated, because each of the numerous events, advising meetings, seminars, and nominating individuals for award competitions, etc. are either important and/or worthwhile. Each of these is, by itself is doable (accept for the 8 hour retreat)). But, in aggregate, just thinking about all of them gets me exhausted and makes my head hurt. I hate feeling guilty for doing something I should have been doing for 40 years: walling off one day a week to recharge and be with my family. I am a cultural Jew, so the guilt gene is almost always overexpressed, making me acclimated to its effects most of the time. Methinks, though, the current sense of guilt has passed the threshold of effectiveness of that acclimation and I hate feeling that way. So, I am back where I started. I wish it were "time for time" to be valued as I indicated in the previous blog: "I have a new passion this semester: I am starting an imaginary activist group aimed at ending the practice of unnecessary meetings, and another one focused on fighting society's oppression of the value of time- I think that time is really sick of not being valued--and I worry what will what will happen if time goes on strike. I am hoping at one point the university will sign a new infinitely long contract with time, providing equity in its compensation with space and money. My imaginary group has a catchy slogan. "It's time for Time". Besides fighting for equity for time relative to space and money, we will fight to stamp out hurtful phrases such as "killing time", "wasting time" ,"crunch time", "do hard time", "got no time", "in less than no time", "it's payback time", "living on borrowed time:, "lose track of time", "the last time" "the race against time", "out of time", etc." I am sad and feel defeated to write that I have failed my imaginary activist group. Time is being less valued now than it was even back in August when I wrote the first blog. Maybe time will never have its time to be in equity with money and space. I am scared it will remain the oppressed resource in modern human societies. I wish time was viewed as precious in our culture, but as the Stones sing, "you can't always get what you want" Let me end with an apology to time and a plea to time: Dear time, Please do not go strike. I mean, evolution gets me excited, but without you, it has no meaning. And, if evolution goes away, I don't know what we are left with except for timeless black holes. Below this introduction is an email from Michael Daly from rpk Group to questions I submitted on the feedback form. These answers confirmed my worst fears about the project. The answer that was most alarming to me is the answer to the question (bolded and highlighted) about the rationale for metrics. I mean, I can't imagine writing a research proposal that indicated I am going to measure two dozen metrics but I can't really say exactly what we will learn from them but know that all of them are equally important. None of the answers were very informative. Some of them are articulated verbatim on the FAQ on the UNCG site. But, I understand that my questions were ones that Michael could not go into detail on.
I was not able to attend the faculty forum at UNCG on March 20th (advising appointments), so all the issues below may have been addressed there. A brief introduction before the short email exchange. The dashboards that rpk is creating are very similar to those of a dashboard software marketed by the Educational Advisory Board (EAB) as "academic performance solutions." The Academic Performance Solutions dashboards were interesting and could be good tools for deans and department heads. I engaged with EAB quite a bit and investigated purchasing the software at two schools as provost over five years and I went through the process of investigating them twice at the University of Arkansas. We decided not to purchase the software (which is more than just software-they try to work with the institution's data like RPK), for two reasons. We had ERM software (Banner is the ERM at UNCG) that was developed in house many years ago and the data contained in that system was bad. UNCG's Banner ERM was also not developed to give integrated reports on academic metrics and lots of central data is junk because of how it was collected. Also, at Arkansas, I often tried to give the deans "dashboards" and tools, but I always had them check the data before I would "publish" anything. Every department had to run shadow systems to keep relevant data because they couldn't get it out of Arkansas' ERM- and their data was often much better than central data. That is pretty much what is happening at UNCG. I can confirm that is a very frustrating situation for a provost to not be able to get good reports out of the ERM, but it was the reality when I was provost at Arkansas and during my short tenure here. I don't think the data has become better at UNCG since January 2021, but I honestly don't know. Given the errors in the teaching performance index, it seems it has not changed. Second, most department chairs and heads at the University of Arkansas were already using data on class fill rates, dfw rates, in courses and by instructors, and some had started doing curricular complexity analyses that was developed as part of an APLU student success initiative where I was significantly involved and started streamlining curricula. The EAB web platform made it easier to view data quickly, but we thought that at the time it wouldn't provide anything new for Arkansas, because: 1) it was very expensive and the ROI did not seem strong given the quality of our data; and 2) most importantly, the deans and the heads felt the data was useless to them without benchmarks. EAB had been signing up institutions for Academic Performance Solutions over the 5 years I was in conversations with them. As they signed up more institutions, the number of institutions to benchmark against became larger, but at the time there were not enough relevant benchmarks to make the deans and department heads feel like the product offered would add any value, and I agreed with them. This does not mean that having the dashboards would not have helped make better decisions. And, there are more institutions to benchmark against now. But, one has to understand the data, know that is correct and be able to understand it in the context of peer institutions (not against itself at some previous time) to create useful dashboards, at least in my opinion. rpk has no benchmark data other than IPEDS. The other interesting thing to me from the answers to the questions below is that only academics is being examined in this kind of detailed way. Doing program reviews is always important, and certainly is important during a budget crisis, so I am not criticizing trying to do those, though I don't like the process. I was involved with several administrative efficiency and process reviews using the firm Huron, over my career. Huron is kind of the go to firm for these analyses. It is clear to me that UNCG has some costly and counter-productive inefficiencies in HR, finance, and facilities and possibly in other administrative functions. Huron is well known for making solid recommendations to eliminate those administrative efficiencies which can save substantial costs. They are also quite expensive. But, I find it telling that the only serious review of efficiency is being done on the academic side. I don't have much trust in the Chancellor's Task Force for Sustainability, and that might not be justified. But, my sense is that the administrative inefficiencies at UNCG (including in academic units) are quite large and not much progress has been made in fixing them-- and some have gotten worse (e.g, HR, finance). When problems are large and difficult to fix, then it is a good time to get some outside eyes, It would be quite expensive to hire a firm like Huron, it has probably been considered, but I think there would be more trust on the faculty level if we had consultants looking at efficiencies across the institution. And, the reason I think it would help create trust, is that there seems to be a narrative that faculty aren't working hard enough driving this analysis as much as the budget challenges. There has always been this narrative. It grew to be a larger narrative in Republican circles when Richard O'Donnell, connected to Governor Rick Perry's administration released this report. The report presented data basically reaching a conclusion that faculty workloads were the major source of cost inefficiency in Texas' universities. This led to the UT and A&M systems, particularly U. Texas-Austin and Texas A&M doing a detailed per faculty analysis of productivity and revenue generation, turning O'Donnell's analysis on its head. The detailed analysis showed on average, faculty generated way more revenue than they cost in this report from Inside Higher Education . At the time, based on memory, there was a general recognition of the kind of productivity analysis done by O'Donnell (and a paper by Richard Vedder in 2011) were wrong. Yet, that narrative still lives on in anti-higher education Republican circles and in places like the Wall Street Journal (Bob Shea sometimes gets his narratives from there), even when several detailed analyses showed it has been a false narrative. Another answer below that concerned me, is that Michael indicated that rpk's role is to find UNCG's data truth. Yet he also indicated that they plan to create draft dashboards before they have data reviewed at the unit level hoping to fix and evolve it later, In my experience once the dashboard is out there it is hard to change. For example, we know there are errors in the teaching performance index dashboard, but they have not been fixed and I believe the dashboard is still up for faculty and administrators to view. And, as I said above, some dashboards might be useful without benchmarks, but I think most won't. And, some data aren't really very useful, like the job market analysis, because they don't capture what jobs students go into and their trajectory after their first job. That analysis basically assumes that our curriculum should be tied to the job market, and, for example, that only business majors go into business. Or only health majors go into health. We know that is not true- albeit I don't know the data. I do know all of the national data that looks at income over a lifetime show that liberal arts and sciences majors generally catch up with many professional fields over a lifetime. See the old (2014) article Liberal Arts Majors Win in the Long Term published in Inside Higher Education. The Email Exchange- btw my response was not my best.. but for transparency this is all verbatim On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 10:17 AM Mike Daly <mdaly@rpkgroup.com> wrote: Hello Professor Coleman, Thank you for your inquiries to the project feedback form. Engaged and informed stakeholders are essential to a project such as this. We appreciate your asking these questions and the opportunity to respond. Below please find responses to your questions in red. In some cases, your questions may be modified and incorporated into the running FAQ document on the project's site. "Why is the Delaware Study not mentioned in the data context? Why are the metrics not aligned with Delaware Study metrics? If you are using another data base to compare peer programs, what is it?" rpk GROUP is working with UNCG to establish a single source of data truth that allows academic leaders to be as informed as possible about their departments and programs. The scope of the project does not include developing a new mechanism for comparing UNCG’s academic programs to its peers. {note from me: the provost apparently said at a forum that she does not trust Delaware Study data (she didn't explain why) and that institutions were no longer subscribing to it (implying b/c of trust issues). When I heard this, I did look at Delaware Study membership in 2022 and it was down. But, sometimes institutions go in and out of it because they don't need the data every year and it is expensive to be a member. Her comment about not trusting the data led me to reach out to four of my old provost colleagues who I looked up to as mentors (two are now Presidents at major public institutions, one is a system vp for academic affairs, and one moved into a vpr role; and one of them is kind of the dean of provosts at AAU and APLU because he has been in the role for like 15 years). None of them had heard any conversations among provosts that Delaware data was not trustworthy, and they confirmed, that in their opinion, Delaware Study data was still the best data to do benchmarking at a granular level. My sense from conversations I had when Bob Shea when I was provost, is Delaware Data aren't trusted because the benchmarking show that UNCG is actually more efficient than peer R2 university in the overall costs/credit hour in almost all departments and programs- and that went against Bob's narrative which is similar to the narrative in the O'Donnell report. I think, in the end, cost per credit hour at the department and program level is the metric to manage toward (number of classes per faculty is stupid because classes are not the same, and sch per faculty is stupid because we teach the size of classes are head assigns us to, and none of us were hired with a position description that are jobs were to sell credit hours.) If the provost wants lower costs per credit hour, she let deans and heads figure out how to do it. Trying to tie programs to labor market statistics placates politicians, but doesn't really help students "Some of the data are hard to get and irrelevant. I know politics want us to match program to job demand. But, the only data that matters if students get jobs and feel successful in those job. In five years, the top jobs will probably different, or require training in things we don't even know. How are planning to find the job data[?]." Projected labor market trends will be identified by cross-walking classification of instruction program (CIP) codes to standard occupation classification (SOC) codes. That crosswalk will be aligned with data made publicly available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "I happen to particularly concerned in efforts like this, how is each data metric going to be used. The list looks like throwing spaghetti on a wall and see what sticks- and I find that horribly inefficient and dangerous. So, I think that each metric should have a paragraph abut why this data was chosen and how this data is going to help make decisions. If the answer's "we won't know until we see it" or if duplicates other metrics getting at the same thing, then that metric should be deleted. I don't believe in more metrics is better. Multi-metric models rarely work in these sorts of program evaluations. So, do you agree or disagree with this and why? Will there be short paragraphs describing why each data metric is important and how it will be used?" rpk GROUP’s approach to understanding a diverse academic portfolio and academic departments is that no one data point is more important than another [bold is my emphasis- this is generally not a great way to talk about data in a community of scholars. As any new data definitions are developed, UNCG’s established Data Governance processes will be utilized to formalize those definitions. UNCG’s structured and on-going training for department chairs and other academic leaders will be utilized as an opportunity to provide an initial introduction to how participants understand and use the academic data dashboards to make decisions. "Are deans, heads, chairs and program directors going to get to view the data before anything is published? Again, as provost here, I can tell you that central data on academic performance and productivity is seriously flawed- departments have to keep their own shadow systems since Banner reporting is terrible. The dean/department level data is far better" The development of the academic data dashboards that are part of rpk GROUP’s engagement with UNCG are intended to move UNCG toward a single source of data truth. Opportunities will be offered to stakeholders to review the dashboards in their early development stages. It is the expectation that these dashboards will be refined over time, as informed by the user experience and UNCG’s needs. "Is the business model of RPK similar to the Hunter Group (the major consulting firm that were hospitals that were financially hemorrhaging -i.e.. to be the cost cutting experts for universities in financial crisis? Or, is RPK trying to compete with EAB's "Academic Performance solutions" rpk GROUP is a higher education consulting firm that partners with clients throughout the U.S. and globally, including two-year and four-year institutions, public and private sector institutions, membership organizations, and foundations. We specialize in sustainable financial models, strategic platform creation, and the financial model behind mission and equitable student success. "All of the metrics are academic metrics. Why are there no administrative metrics on performance, efficiency & cost? Having served as provost in three places there are several administrative functions that are broken and costly (particularly in opportunity costs)- HR is an example. I don't think that Student's First has demonstrated an ROI; mid-term grade reports and starfish reporting waste huge amounts of time. Starfish is a ridiculously bad early intervention system. Finance is a mess. Wil RPK look at revenue generating ideas that also help retention- e.g. amount of debt that triggers registration holds?" rpk GROUP’s engagement with UNCG includes providing data analytical support for the Chancellor’s Taskforce on Sustainability. That taskforce is focused on identifying potential opportunities to realize non-academic efficiencies in how UNCG provides services and supports to faculty, staff, and students. "Continuing from above Student affairs also has programs that are used by few students. Will there be dashboards for them? Will RPK examine the impact of the athletic fee on enrollment?" rpk GROUP will not be assisting UNCG in developing dashboards for student affairs. The impact of isolated fees on enrollment will not be part of rpk GROUP’s work. My response (not my best) [Dear Michael from rpk] I appreciate you taking the time to respond. You have confirmed my worst fears about the project-. Having been provost here, I can tell you that you will not get a single data truth at UNCG unless the data is reviewed before the dashboards are created at the department level. I know from experience that once a dashboard is created, it is much more difficult to examine and change the data. For example, a significant amount of data in the teaching productivity index is wrong. For example, the number 1 productive teacher in the dashboard is an instructor of record for a large number of lab sections and doesn't teach any of them. I was given 50% credit for a course that had co-instructors but the credit should have at least been 75-25. Had the department head seen the data, he would have changed that, because he was the co-instructor. In any case I appreciate your answers- but they were not very informative. I realize you are doing what you have been asked to do. Similar dashboards also can be made for student affairs functions ($/student' use of programs, etc); and certainly for HR (e.g processing time; $s per transaction) and facilities and finance (staff per student; cost vs market cost, revenue models for registration holds etc.); enrollment ($s spent/application; cost vs. yield rate for various activities). I feel comfortable guaranteeing that those kind of data will not be looked at buy a taskforce that communicates poorly- and only has partial expertise in examining cost and productivity issues in other units good luck with your work An open letter to the UNCG faculty senate and to faculty colleagues: it's time to pay attention1/27/2023 March 2, 2023 update I could really use your help. I feel like I am in a Twilight Zone episode where I have a special power to see an urgent calamity & everyone else sees a mild storm & plenty of time to prepare. Thank you Rod Serling for creating some kind of context to interpret my emotions. Is there a commercial break coming any time soon? it would just be good to know if I am just a character in a TV show. I am afraid that I am living in my own distorted Umwelt of paranoia and fear. Although I fight some psychological battles, living in paranoia and fear has never been one of them So, I would like to ask my UNCG colleagues, or others who have been following the situation (or are one of 1,500 unique viewers of this blog) some questions so I can understand. I truly just want to understand 1) Are you feeling that the discussions the UNCG Central Administration has had with faculty and staff about the budget crisis, the plans to address the crisis, the decisions that have been made to date are fine, transparent or even excellent? If so, why? 2) Are you unconcerned about, or even looking forward to, the work of RPK because you think they will help strengthen university, or because you don't think they don't matter? 3) Do you trust that the central administration has demonstrated the skill necessary to get the campus through the financial hurricane? Why? Do you feel that you will be thrown overboard if you ask questions? If not, are there things that have happened that give you that confidence and could you share them with me? 4) Do you feel that you have a strong understanding of the Chancellor's or Provost's vision for the campus after the budget cuts and structural reorganization? 5) Are you not particularly concerned because you think the enrollment issues are cyclical and that recovery is around the corner? 6) Are you unconcerned that the fist dashboard the provost put up was a teaching productivity index listing all faculty class workload and SCH generation, with no context, even though it is an index that has been shown over the last 12 years to be a relatively useless way to assess productivity, and was first implemented by conservative, anti higher education members of Governor of Texas, Rick Perry's advisors? Are you not concerned that chairs and deans were not asked to check the data for context (e.g., the most productive faculty on the list is the instructor of record for 30 lab sections but doesn't teach any of them)? If you aren't concerned that it is the only data dashboard that has been put up, that administrative dashboards have not been developed, and believe these data will be used by central administration in a positive way, why aren't you concerned? 7) Do you not see signs of an increasingly authoritarian administration and faculty senate leadership that is working extremely hard to control the messages and only present data they wish us to see? Are you concerned that faculty senate turned off the chat function in meetings making it harder for senators to communicate with each other and faculty during the meetings? Are you concerned that Faculty Senate minutes no longer contain any information on the specifics of conversations? Are you concerned that the Senate Chair apparently unilaterally decided to remove one of the recommendations of Faculty Morale group (i only know this second hand?), 8) Do you feel like faculty senate leadership is representing the issues that concern faculty? If yes, could you give me an example? 9) Are you simply to busy to care? Or are you planning to leave so you don't care? 10) Do you think that faculty have time to work on recommendations on budget or structural issues over the next year and help shape the future of the institution? I am perfectly willing to accept that my Umwelt is distorted by my own temperament and my experience.. But, for those who wouldn't mind educating me about why my Umwelt is not representing your reality, I would appreciate it. Leave a comment or send me an email (jcoleman1960@hotmail.com). Feb 17, 2023 update The blog post below is very long and I don't have the energy to edit. So, I wanted to say the main point right up front: Faculty need a sense of urgency. UNCG Senior administration rightfully has a strong sense of urgency (and budget decisions have to get made in the coming weeks or a couple of months for 2023-2024). My guess is that RPK was hired because of: 1) the enormous size of the problem; and 2) the urgency of the financial problem. UNCG may be facing a different situation than the cycles of enrollment and revenue that faculty who have been here for awhile are used to for two reasons: 1) The predictions by some who study higher ed is that regional universities like UNCG are not going to recover enrollment because of shrinking demographics; and 2) The current leadership has made it clear that they want to fundamentally change the institution (though it is not clear into what) because of the budget and enrollment situation. For at least one senior administrator I know, the budget situation simply gives that person an opportunity to do what they always wanted to do which is cut liberal arts programs, and other "non-professional" programs, and make lazy faculty teach more. I am concerned about some of the action items from the Faculty Forum's working groups on Feb 16, 2023 because they seem to not recognize the urgency (others do). The Senate Leadership seems also unconcerned. In fact, the working group on faculty morale had an action item of sending this blog to the full senate (which would have meant it was on the agenda and available to all faculty). The Faculty Senate chair removed that item from the list of recommendations that was shared with the faculty agenda. I am surprised that the Senate Chair found it inappropriate to share an action item to let faculty know about this blog. I Personally, I could care less whether anybody reads this blog. But, I do care about UNCG and my role as a faculty member. Both are potentially under some threat. I am discombobulated why this is not the central item of all senate discussions. I suppose in response to cries about transparency. The senate leadership stood up a budget webpage with no useful information (such as what asked for by the working group on budget) that we don't already know- nothing there resembles transparency at all. I am really surprised that the Senate chair felt the need to censor a recommendation/action item and how little the sense of urgency there is from the Senate Executive Committee about what is happening- e.g., the teaching productivity dashboard should have generated a resolution within a couple of days after the Provost's update (I explain why I think that below). By not expressing any sense of urgency and by not focusing, the Senate is rather loudly saying to senior administration that the faculty as a whole feel like everything is fine except for a small number of myopic concerns, the current approach to cutting budgets and restructuring the university is fine, RPK is of no concern, productivity and workload issues are not of concern, and that faculty are content and don't see a hurricane approaching. Those sentiments are not what I hear from my colleagues, but if it is true of the faculty at large in the Senate and the faculty they represent, so be it. But, I hope all faculty senators understand that once a new budget is proposed for 2023-2024 and once RPK is here- the ship has sailed and the faculty and the faculty senate will simply be in reaction mode, with no power to shape the budget and/or the structure of academic programs and/or the future. If the Faculty Senate leadership is truly fine with the approach that is being taken by senior administration, that is fine. If so, they should put a resolution of support together and put it up for a vote in public session and see if the full senate supports it. Proactively stating support is a far better approach than passively giving support by pretending nothing is happening. It is really easy for faculty, particularly those who have been at any institution for a long time, to ignore campus senior leadership and to think this is just a normal enrollment cycle.. They've been through many, many changes in chancellors, provosts, deans and vcfas. Although those leadership changes my have engaged faculty attention during the search process, in the end, most faculty continue to teach their courses and conduct their research in spite of administrative chaos, whether leadership is excellent or poor, and whether the budget is growing or shrinking. If there was any time that faculty should pay attention to the larger issues at stake, this is it. The rest of this blog is long and I discuss my selfish reasons for writing it (in the preamble that you can skip) and then my thoughts about the main issues (budget/transparency RPK, Teaching Productivity, and a lack of communication to faculty about a whole lot of data as well as any other revenue generation or costs cutting strategy besides eliminating graduate programs, potentially eliminating other programs, firing professional track faculty, and increasing the teaching load of remaining faculty). I make some other suggestions, reflect on my experience on these issues, and present some actions that I think would help build a sense of a more collective engagement on how UNCG could move forward and what it will look after the budget cuts, and analyses of RPK. The tone is angrier than it should be-- and that just arose because of my frustration of what I am seeing and the speed at which the UNCG train seems to approaching the cliff and diving of the edge into oblivion. UNCG is a ship going through a financial and existential hurricane. The conditions are so bad that the captain(s) don't know what to do (hence RPK). The lack of clarity and display of what seems to me to be incompetence has led to a crew with no trust and fears being thrown overboard. The odds of the ship getting to calmer waters, and not sinking, are at their worst in this situation. I may very well be wrong about all of this-- but I still think it is time to stop worrying about where the chairs are on the deck of the ship and what type of cabins the crew gets to sleep in. It's either a time to start loading the life boats, or a time to collectively pull together in action like a well synchronized crew team. ____________________________________ Preamble: I wrote this blog post (open letter), because, ironically, I am exceeding an 80 hour/week workload (got home from the office at 2:00AM on Friday, 1/27). The hours are mostly self-imposed because of the engaged way I try to teach the 220 or so students between my two classes, having nine undergraduates doing undergraduate research in my lab, my own research, and my role as Graduate Program Director in our department. My time engaging students is close to 24/7. My concern about what is going on at UNCG has been a major distraction for me. Every time an email pops up with another town hall, update, angering video or visioning session, I experience toxic anger and frustration. Often these emails come when I reached the 14th hour of my day where my ability to hold down my emotions is even more limited. Those emotions often add 2 hours to my time in the office leaving at 1:00 AM instead of 11:00 PM. I can't do it anymore. I love my faculty role at UNCG. But, senior leadership has made the campus environment very toxic for me and many of my colleagues. I decided today that I had to find a way to discontinue wading into the toxic water. I have tried many things that haven't worked. Today, I tried a new technique: writing all of my thoughts down drawing on my 25 years experience as a senior administrator who has managed through difficult situations. I am frankly discombobulated by poorly researched and bad decision making at UNCG. (I will admit that I haven't always made the best personal decisions, but I was deliberate and strong decision maker as an academic administrator) I've grown tired of continually seeing at UNCG that failures of the past become the new ideas of the present, and that data-free narratives are used as a basis for new activities, policies, and/or disruptive change. I have also come to realize that the UNCG administration has no interest in what I have to say or to draw on my significant experience, e.g., accomplishments and experience I have had at previous universities an at the national level in student success. I have no idea why it has taken me so long to accept that- I suppose this is one challenge of being a high functioning Asperger's. I thought for some unknown and obviously stupid reason that after my lawsuit was "settled" in the university's favor, that I could be considered a valuable resource outside of my department. I need to disengage from frustration, angst, anger and discombobulation, and put that energy into focusing on students who inspire me every day. So, I wrote the blog post below as a way to rationally vent my concern in the hopes that others (particularly the UNCG Faculty Senate) will pick up the ball and represent faculty concerns. As the author Tom Robbins wrote in Still Life with Woodpecker, "We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” Although it might not seem this way, the rest of this blog is aimed at rescuing myself from the gravitational force of my dragon. I also want to state the chair of my department has been an amazing leader and has worked so hard to keep faculty morale positive as he projects a lot of optimism in conversations and faculty meetings. Despite his efforts, faculty aren't stupid, and they know what is going on. At least a few of our best younger faculty are looking to leave. I want to sincerely and honestly say that my chair has done everything I would have ever wanted a chair to do as provost and dean in leading change. I write this because every time our senior administration feels that faculty are negative, they openly, and stupidly, blame the department chair. The note below was most certainly not inspired by anything the department chair has said to me. I am completely responsible for what it is below. It has only been reviewed by a couple of AAUP members, and I certify that the opinions below are mine and mine alone- based on my experience at UNCG and my 25 years as a senior academic administrator (and husband to a wife that understands, from her former career in healthcare, what being "Hunterized" meant and the destruction it caused) ____________________________ .Dear UNCG members of the Faculty Senate and other members of the faculty. We have been told that the campus is entering a period of a financial crisis due to continuing enrollment declines. The enrollment declines are real. The extent of the financial crisis has not clearly been shown but one would expect enrollment declines to hurt finances. In my conversations with faculty colleagues, there also seems to be a crisis in that there is little to no trust by faculty in the senior leadership’s ability to navigate the UNCG ship through a financial hurricane. The Faculty Senate Agenda sent out this week has no items related to the financial crisis, the lack of real transparency (making available data and truly seeking, listening and incorporating input), the “malevolent” purpose of consultants like RPK: and the posting of the Faculty Teaching Productivity Dashboard as then only metric on the provost’s dashboard. This metric makes every single faculty members "metrics" available to all faculty with no context, thus inviting shame and finger pointing among faculty for no reason. Furthermore, this method of assessing faculty productivity has been discredited and shown to be a poor measure of faculty productivity time and time again since a debacle in Texas around 2010. Finally, there are strong concerns by of the AAUP that shared governance is being ignored. The Faculty Senate is the representative body of UNCG, so faculty concerns need to be channeled to administration through senate leadership. Faculty Senate leaders “report” to their constituent faculty and not to senior administration- yet they seem to function as if the provost is their boss. The Senate is not planning to use its time at the first meeting this semester to discuss serious faculty concerns about the future of the university, other than the IT project (which is important). I would hope that some Senate time, perhaps in closed session, should be directed to discuss the impending disruptive changes that are sure to come from RPK’s recommendations and to recommend the use of non-discredited measures of faculty and departmental productivity. The administration plans to act quickly. If faculty are concerned, proactive actions need to be taken just to get the information from the administration that they need to express data-based concerns and to adopt recommendations that have some chance of being heard (albeit those chances have similar odds to a frozen snowball surviving the summer on the desert sands in Qatar). Unfortunately, the AAUP seems to be the only organized group recognizing that the likely disruptive changes, and the perspective that is being used to make those changes, will dramatically change the university, and potentially send the university into a death spiral. In every university, the AAUP tends to be viewed by Admin as small group of misfit faculty who just want to make trouble. Of course they are not, but our administration loves to latch on to data-free narratives. But, it is true that AAUP does not have a formal role in faculty governance. I hope the Faculty Senate embraces its role right now as the representative body for faculty, clearly articulating concerns, collecting data on the current trust level, and raising concerns and recommendations based on data and experiences at other higher education institutions. I am sure the AAUP will continue to act as a strong, smart and coherent voice for many faculty. I hope their work can be joined with the work of faculty senate. In the words of singer/songwriter Todd Snider, “I need a new inspiration, another kind of conversation. Anything but this situation we've all been through and through and through.." What drives my particular concerns? I hear from every faculty member that I talk to that there is little to no trust in senior administration (and this has only recently emerged- Provost Dunn was widely trusted). How Is it possible for UNCG to navigate the ship during the impending hurricane when the crew has no trust and fears being pushed overboard? The series of marginally useful attempts to feign transparency in the large number of town halls and small meetings, where faculty are invited to ask questions (even though they have no data) does not seem to have been helpful in creating a sense of transparency and trust in the administration by those that have attended. In the end transparency is defined by the audience, not the provider of the information, and it is completely related to the quality of information conveyed and unrelated to the quantity of interactions. Every day it seems I open an email announcing town halls, small meetings with the provost, visioning sessions with the dean, etc (the dean requested a whole day visioning session. I can barely find an hour in an 80 hour week, during the normal workday, that is not involved directly with my assigned workload. It is ironic that on one hand the administration is focused like a laser on faculty productivity suggesting that the problem in the university is lazy faculty, but yet somehow want faculty to spend hours at useless town halls, filling out surveys, watching angering, almost silly, videos, and reading non-informative updates. I rarely can find an hour in the normal workday, let alone find a full day, or half a day free to engage in visioning (request from CAS) while the university is headed into a death spiral. The models of town halls and small meetings with the provost have been simply to invite faculty to come with questions. I have not attended one, because in my experience the open-ended “ask a question” nature of these meeting don’t work unless attendees have the appropriate level of information shared with them to ask significant questions, and only if the provost and chancellor actually care about what is being asked and said. Every faculty member I have discussed this with, who has been to the town halls or small meetings, has indicated that they found the discussion somewhere between useless and angering to marginally useful at best. If new information is presented in town halls, it is generally not sent out to faculty with enough time to review and process the information and asked informed questions at the town hall or meeting. It seems clear to me that these forums are not directed at engagement around the financial/enrollment crisis, but rather are attempts to show by their sheer number, that the administration is documenting how many times they have offered chances for faculty to express concerns. Hearing something is not the same as listening. Rarely has anyone I know felt listened to. And, no one I know feels there is transparency. The administration’s lack of sincerity about wanting to be transparent and engaged was demonstrated in last years’ Faculty Forum. Faculty were given time to draft thoughtful well-articulated and probing questions that were sent in advance, giving senior administration the opportunity to reflect on them and provide thoughtful, not defensive, and sincere answers at the forum. A last-minute decision was made to not answer the vast majority of those questions at the forum or even in writing after the Forum. The written questions were not even released to the faculty several months later in Faculty Senate meeting materials. So, what I kind of information and actions do I think it would be useful to share?
Here are a few very fair articles on the Hunter Group
The work that RPK has done in Kansas is documented here. (https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/education/2022/12/15/kansas-regents-get-first-look-at-rpk-report-on-duplicate-programs/69729559007/) there are many other news stories. It seems obvious that our campus administration wants to implement similar kinds of cures. There is a "science" and "art" of leading an organization through massive disruptive change. A former CEO of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has been recognized as a model example of how to lead an organization through disruptive changes through his preparing employees for the Hunter Group's work and engaging them during and after the process. If UNCG faculty read this article, they will recognize some of the strategies that are being deployed (like the full day "visioning" session at the college level) , but it seems to me, they are being applied without much, if any, "sincerity." I tend to think being candid about the dire situation administrative leaders see, why RPK is being hired, and the expectations of their work would help build trust. Everyone is already super scared- so I don't think candor will raise anxiety- sometimes knowing the truth quells anxiety even when the truth is bad. I might suggest the following:
This level of openness would be painful for any senior leadership group , especially fearing that these things will end up in the press. But, my sense is that if the goals are to get people's morale up by imagining a future, and to have employees work with leadership on implementing disruptive change, the only way to get that engagement is to build deep trust as was done in the case study. Trust is basically non-existent right now. I think it can only be rebuilt with an unusual level of candor and honesty about the present (and silencing the defensiveness gene), what the vision is for the future, and to show a sincere interest in understanding why there is little to no trust so that trust can be built. Senior administrators often forget that faculty are actually smart and creative. Harnessing their collective intelligence and creativity can, in fact, lead to meaningful institutional change. I saw that happen in my first Vice President for Research role at the Desert Research Institute. when we led an institutional reorganization. Dismissing the collective intelligence and creativity of faculty, and proceeding under the assumption that faculty are myopically focused and resistant to any needed change, just harnesses all that intellectual and creative energy into a conflict. I hope the goal is not to end up on the cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education with an article discussing how administration won a war with the faculty., turning faculty into some kind of Stepford wife. That is certainly not a recipe for success since the faculty are still the only employees that actually perform the university's mission of teaching, research and actual engagement in solving issues in the broader community, and generate most of the revenue that pays for unnecessary mid-level administration. Faculty Teaching Productivity Dashboard
When this analysis was finally complete at the University of Texas at Austin, they found:
Final thoughts UNCG has lost 2,000 students over the last few years. That is serious- and we as faculty need to understand that a university cannot survive at a rate of losing 1,000 students a year- and the revenue losses are huge and exacerbated by the new funding model. If that enrollment bleeding continues, the university’s existence is at risk (and maybe the reality is that North Carolina has too many public institutions and does not need a large regional university in Greensboro). But, all of the conversations to date that I have heard have been about cost cutting and faculty productivity. The VCFA will argue that 75% of the budget is in academic affairs so that is where the majority of cost cutting needs to be. That is true. Yet, faculty are the only employees that actually generate operational revenue through credit hour generation and facilities and administrative costs on research grants (and play the largest role in retention) except for development which sometimes generates unrestricted annual funds or endowments. And, cost cutting by increasing class size and workload, if done without any attention to what cost cutting might do to recruitment and retention, is going to fail Generating net revenue Furthermore, there has been little discussion of how to generate more revenue. One way to do so is to incentivize departments to create online programs, professional masters programs, certificates, etc that can bring new students into the university, not shuffle them around the university. Professional masters programs often can use existing teaching capacity allowing them to generate high marginal revenues. As provost at the University of Arkansas, we returned a portion of online tuition to departments that created online programs. Those funds allowed the programs to hire faculty and support research and grow and increased operational revenue, too- this incentivized many departments to develop programs that met a need for students that would not otherwise enroll (and would not simply move existing students to online programs). I also made a deal with the deans that they would receive 75% of the tuition revenue for professional masters programs that brought in more students. We selected 75% because in almost every university about 75% of tuition revenue supports academic affairs and 25% support institutional overhead. The College of Business jumped on this offer and created six new professional masters programs, all filling in their first year, that buffered the university from a Covid induced enrollment decline. The challenge for developing these programs is faculty time- which is not, despite how the provost and vcfa seem to act, free and infinite. At this point, most faculty are working at least 60 hours a week in my department, and many of us work for free in the summer. Without seed funding and incentive, there is not the energy necessary to spend time to develop new revenue generating programs that bring new students into the university, when all it is going to do is provide revenue to support other units and add additional time to the 60 or more hour weeks we "enjoy", taking time away from engaging students. In my short my time as provost here, there was no appetite by others in the administration to think of a tuition sharing model to create programs that will generate new net-revenue. The E-Sports program was put in place as a program to generate new net revenue by attracting students that would not come here otherwise, but what I know second-hand is that it is not generating much revenue from existing or new students because very few are enrolled in the programs. Although it has a lot of seed money from the legislature, it is an expensive program to operate and may soon be a burden on the university. Too much focus on doing things that simply would move students and credit hours around the university As a member of the Gen Ed Council- it has been really frustrating to see proposal after proposal aimed to create a MAC course solely to gain student credit hours, taking them away from another department. Every ounce of faculty energy should be focused on retaining the students UNCG has or recruiting students to come here. Shifting students around is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic Another example of trying to generate new net-revenue without planning is the new undergraduate degree in HHS designed as a pre-health major. The Biology department has many years of experience in managing pre-med, pre-dental, pre-nursing, and other pre-health disciplines. We have curriculum designed through our experience in what facilitates acceptance into these programs, and we have extraordinarily knowledgeable advisors (e.g, Robin Maxwell) dedicated to these programs. HHS stood up their program, with as little science as possible, with no communication with biology (and perhaps chemistry)- so much so that required courses in the curriculum in biology and chemistry do not include their required prerequisites. Most students are aware that pre-health programs with little science and lots of professional development are not the path to increase the probability for acceptance into at least to med, dental and veterinary schools. It may very well capture students majoring in biology and chemistry where the science is too difficult, shifting credit hours around the university. But, was there any evidence that a pre-health program minimizing basic biology in favor of more professional development courses would attract students away from going to other campuses in North Carolina or from out of state? Time will tell. Unless there are clear data that I don't know about, it is hard to imagine a second pre-health program on campus will lead to capturing more of North Carolina's students. And, the biology's large pre-health program is run without a "director" position- yet HHS advertised for a full time director. What about any of what I wrote above represents efficiency? (a side note that I discovered after discussing this with a colleague in HHS and after I wrote the paragraph above, is that he conveyed to me that the purpose of this program was as an off-ramp for students that would drop out because of realizing they could not get into med, dental, nursing, etc programs. I was worried about needing such an off ramp when I was provost here. We also developed an off-ramp degree when I was a dean at VCU. But, the way the HHS program was advertised made it seem to me more like a destination program, than an off-ramp program. Many current students use the BA in biology as an off-ramp and then enroll in the 1-year postbac program managed by biology to get grades up to a point they can be accepted into health graduate programs). Most of the courses taken in the postbac use existing capacity so help students and generate a lot of positive net revenue). Other ways to cut costs and generate revenue I also haven't heard any discussions of "public-private partnerships" as a way to reduce costs and build win-win partnerships. However, I suspect these are or were being considered. And, I do not know how such partnerships might be limited by system policies or state law. But, some universities have moved to outsource units such as facilities, residential life, IT and other functions to save costs and/or to build long-term mutually beneficial relationships. HR here seems to be completely broken here-- perhaps that is a candidate for outsourcing. I suspect we are going to end up losing grant revenue because technicians and postdoc position can take months to just get positions posted and not all sponsors allow for no-cost extensions. Another thing that has bugged me here (and in other institutions) is the relatively small amount of funds owed by a student to the university that creates a registration hold. Often times, this leads to students not be able to register for the classes they need and then to them ultimately dropping out. My data here is second hand, but I know students can have a registration hold because of a couple of hundred dollars (or less). Those students might be Pell students who receive around $7K or students with other guaranteed sources of funds. If we force such students out of school because they owe a couple of hundred dollars, in the case of Pell students, we minimally lose the $7K Pell grant revenue. It seems kind of counter productive. To be fair, we do offer students the opportunities to construct payment plans. But, still, losing a student because of a debt that is far smaller than the revenue we'd lose doesn't seem like a great idea. Dr. Hamilton is greatly concerned about this issue from both a student success and net-revenue point of view, and we discussed it when we were colleagues in the Provost office. My chair tells me this is still a problem that concerns Andrew. He indicated that Andrew continues to try and find ways to help some students with small debts to keep them enrolled, but has not yet been able to get traction with the finance side of administration. Universities have to be careful about this approach- Henderson State in Arkansas got into serious problems by lettering debts get to big. But, it should be possible to model where benefit:cost starts getting negative. I know that in some schools, at least up until some higher limit, another strategy is that students can't get their official transcripts unless they pay their debt but are not forced out of school by not being able to register. At my last institution the finance officers didn't want to do this since not all students ask for their transcripts. In any case, as faculty, we have no idea whether net-revenue generating measures like this are being considered and what the net-revenue consequences would be. Since losses of students is a serious problem for us, the net revenue consequences by a change in this policy could be significant. It is frustrating that all we hear about is program elimination and faculty workloads. Faculty need a sense of urgency Senior administration rightfully has a strong sense of urgency (and budget decisions have to get made in the coming weeks or a couple of months for 2023-2024). My guess is that RPK was hired because of: 1) the enormous size of the problem; and 2) the urgency of the financial problem. It is really easy for faculty, particularly those who have been at any institution for a long time, to ignore campus senior leadership and to think this is just a normal enrollment cycle.. They've been through many, many changes in chancellors, provosts, deans and vcfas. Although those leadership changes my have engaged faculty attention during the search process, in the end, most faculty continue to teach their courses and conduct their research in spite of administrative chaos, whether leadership is excellent or poor, and whether the budget is growing or shrinking. UNCG may be facing a different situation for two reasons: 1) The predictions by some who watch higher ed is that regional universities like UNCG are not going to recover enrollment because of shrinking demographics; and 2) The current leadership has made it clear that they want to fundamentally change the institution (though it is not clear into what) because of the budget and enrollment situation. For at least one senior administrator I know, the budget situation simply gives that person an opportunity to do what they always wanted to do which is cut liberal arts programs, and other "non-professional" programs, and make lazy faculty teach more. If there was any time that faculty should pay attention to the larger issues at stake, this is it. Postscript A few of my blogs have been read a lot. But, none of them have made a difference. I hope my colleagues in Senate Leadership, those who are faculty senators, and those who are rank and file faculty members do what they can to understand what is happening and to collectively ask the right questions and propose viable solutions. One of the consequences of town halls and small meetings, with no focused agenda, is they become a myopic airing of concerns, distracting attendees from the real issues at stake. I hope everyone knows the use of those kinds of forums is a type of divide and conquer strategy,. Something humorous to write as I finish my last blog on these kind of issues. Let me end my last foray into thinking I can help stop the train from going over the cliff on humorous notes from one of my favorite authors who is also a friend, Tom Robbins (best known for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; my favorite book of all time is Jitterbug Perfume). Tom's quotes can cause both laughter and reflection: So, let me leave this treatise with a few that I think relate to the issues at hand. "It doesn't matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you're not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren't connected, aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you're walking, you may think you're running a damn marathon, but you're only on a hop trip. The connections gotta be maintained.”― Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito "Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.” Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito "Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature." Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker "It is so amusing the way that mortals misunderstand the shape, or shapes, of time. … In the realms of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. … Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received." Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume "“The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.” ―Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction (This reflects why I love teaching BIO 330. Evolution is cool!) Canvas is now calling.......again. It will be another late night-- but my hope is this will no longer be a distraction for me unless asked. in lux perpetua, me |
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