An open letter to the UNCG faculty senate and to faculty colleagues: it's time to pay attention

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.
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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.
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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)
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.Dear UNCG members of the Faculty Senate and other members of the faculty.
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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?

• Leadership shows concern about trust issues by actively seeking to understand them. Senior leadership might send an anonymous survey to faculty and staff regarding assessing the level of trust faculty and staff have in the chancellor, provost and VCFA with respect to leadership with (perhaps one simple multiple choice question) with an open ended question of "why?". And, then actually read, reflect, publish and respond to the results. They could also just have meetings with small groups with a simple agenda item- "how are you feeling regarding trust in us as leaders" but the campus is too toxic for people to speak up.  It will be a lot easier to get people focused on a future, if the chancellor, provost and vcfa actually demonstrate that they care about building the trust necessary to get the UNCG ship through a hurricane and to do so by candidly addressing concerns (as opposed to stating that faculty and staff are always whiny as the Chancellor appeared to do in response to concerns of chairs about morale).
• Leadership is honest about RPK.  It is pretty clear to me that RPK wants to be the Hunter Group for Higher Ed. The Hunter Group was hired by hospitals that were hemorrhaging money after Medicare reimbursements were cut in the 1990s with the sole purpose of slashing and burning to lower costs and increase revenue. RPK seems to want to be the same go to emergency specialist to regional universities suffering significant enrollment declines and financial distress. The Hunter Group got rich, did its job (many hospitals recovered financially), and most hospitals eventually had to recover from the slash and burn by rebuilding, as opposed to sustaining the efficiencies forced by slash and burn.   The reason one hires a group like RPK is that leadership (usually boards) believe disruptive change is needed for survival, and know that the level of disruptive change needed can never happen from within, because employees usually don't embrace truly disruptive change (this is in every unit in the university, not just faculty). David Hunter articulated his consulting group’s role this way in the NY Times .''If they are using guys like us,'' he said, ''the problems have to be enormous.”  As faculty, we have to understand that RPK is not coming to help make us a better university- none of their senior staff have experience in higher ed.  They are coming to make slash and burn recommendations to stop financial hemorrhaging.  If it were just about program evaluation and financial viability, we actually could do that  by ourselves (U Idaho did such an exercise because it was required by the State). Faculty will not have input into RPK’s analysis or choice of metrics. And, we will have no real input into which of the recommendations will be implemented. The only data on UNCG that RPK can get is ours—and ours is bad-mostly because centrally held data is rarely validated with data at the dean and department level.  The slash and burn that RPK will recommend might be necessary, but there has not been a candid  discussion of how the provost, chancellor and vcfa see the university after implementing RPK recommendations. 

Here are a few very fair articles on the Hunter Group

• https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/31/business/bitter-pills-for-ailing-hospitals.html  
• https://www.thedp.com/article/1999/10/hunter_groups_medicine_may_be_hard_to_take
• https://californiahealthline.org/morning-breakout/the-hunter-group-helping-or-hurting-ailing-hospitals/

 
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:

• Leadership uses clear and candid language about why RPK is being hired and how their recommendations will inflict great pain, but may be necessary for the survival of the university..
• If RPK is being hired because of financial hemorrhaging, show the data.  For me it is simple-- a table showing in and out of state undergraduate and graduate enrollment, and online enrollment for the last five years (all separate columns) and the associated tuition revenue with each category; the state funding for in-state undergraduate and graduate students, F&A recovery, and Unrestricted endowment (I think those are the only real operating revenue). Then show current projections of these figures out at least one year, if not two or three. Presenting pieces of data that you want people to know (calculations of the state formula w/o other information), while hiding other data just destroys trust.
• Clearly state a vision for what UNCG will look like after RPK.
• Clearly state what senior leadership sees as the major priorities of the university and how the budget will be laser focused on those priorities (it is teaching/learning, research and service; is it the health and wellness of students, faculty and staff; is it diversity programs?; is it athletics? is it boutique programs? is it navigating NC politics, is making all stakeholder groups happy?)- yes they are all related- but every resource allocation decision should be able to be explained in the context of providing resources for the highest and best use with respect to meeting a focused mission when under financial stress. This ecosystem model is one framework (https://www.jim-coleman-phd.com/blogs-musings-and-podcasts/previous/2 )

 

• Leadership is totally transparent on budget allocations and hiring decisions
  • Share a simple table that shows the amount of funds reallocated last year (from all units, including non-academic units) and exactly how they were spent.
  • The provost clearly states how the position funding that she's recaptured and not reallocated back to academic units, over the last two you years is being spent - even better if there were details. If it is all being used for the budget cuts, faculty should know that.
  • The provost/VCFA/HR create a table of all of the positions that were requested over the last two years (or one year) showing which ones were approved and why they were considered "must haves" and all of the requests that were denied (I don't think they need to state a reason, but it might cause people to ask). For faculty positions that were approved, the provost should explain clearly what criteria she used to select them as the small number that were approved. The campus is dying to know how she actually implements priorities. There have been a number of positions posted that clearly do not seem as must haves for the university (e.g., a director to institutionalize community engaged research; a social media director for athletics; two assistant directors for multicultural affairs in student affairs). We should know why positions like these, which are tangentially related to our core mission, are "must haves" (using the language of the VCFA).
  • Be willing to be transparent and specific about what position and operating cuts have been absorbed in all units of the university. The provost is the executive vice chancellor- so she should not feel limited to only discussing academic affairs.
  • Be specific on the subsidies provided to athletics from general revenue.
  • Be willing to be upfront with the Administration's perceptions of how hard faculty work and how hard they need to be working and how that relates to retention and recruitment. The dashboard reflecting faculty teaching productivity on  the web has been shown  to be pretty useless when applied to in Texas in 2010-2011 by right-wing anti-education officials in Governor Rick Perry’s administration. It is a pretty silly way to capture that information on faculty teaching productivity (see below for some published articles on the issue).  I am at a loss why faculty senate has not offered a resolution on this issue. Additionally, according to several chairs, the data are "wrong" in how they have been used (e.g., a faculty member that is the instructor of record on 50 lab sections does not teach the 50 lab sections)
  • Be willing, to seek feedback or lead discussions  and answer questions about the bullet points above. This would allow for a useful town hall or group meetings
  • Stop having multiple town halls and meetings with no agendas pretending that is transparency-- because without the information above, there are very few questions of substance that can be asked and neither the Chancellor are Provost are candid in answering substantive questions at least without being defensive. In my experience as provost here, the administration’s goals in Town Halls seems to be to come out unscathed, not to listen and absorb the angst and mistrust expressed,  and not to openly address concerns that were raised.

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

• The Faculty Teaching Productivity dashboard strategy as a way to assess faculty productivity was developed (or at least implemented) around 2010 to support a conservative narrative in Governor of Texas Rick Perry’s administration that faculty are lazy and don’t teach and are the entire reason for inefficiency in Texas' largest universities.  That approach has been demonstrated to have immense flaws, yet is continued to be espoused by anti-education conservatives- and apparently our provost.
• A teaching productivity dashboard based on classes or revenue generation does not work as a model to understand faculty productivity as seen in Texas in their 2010-2011 debacle with UT Austin and A&M.   Several articles were written and some research papers as well about this situation. A few are listed below.
• Faculty recruitment ads. contracts and workload assignments never mention a requirement for demonstrating how one will generate maximal fundable credit hours. Why?  Because Faculty are not sales people (development professionals and admission professionals are). Evaluating productivity by funded credit hours for a class of employees that do not have the metric in their hiring or workload plans is wrong.
• The current version of the faculty teaching productivity dashboard shames faculty with no context, suggesting that faculty with high numbers are doing something special when they were just assigned to teach large courses or many courses based on their workload assignment. By having a dashboard with no context, no other information, and listing  every faculty members productivity calculation can only lead to internal finger pointing, which perhaps is the goal of posting it, but is not a great way to gain collective support. This data is important for Chairs to know in managing their units but is not important for faculty to know about each other.  This is another example of faux transparency- sure it is just putting data out there and I always agree that no one should ever be afraid of data. But, it seems to have been put out there as the only transparent information about faculty productivity (or staff and administrator productivity) with a purpose of supporting one narrative (if one really wants to shame underperformers, why not post every faculty member, staff member and administrators annual evaluations?). Releasing only selected data to make a point is not consistent with the approach a university should take about using data to draw conclusions. Transparency involves being transparent about all relevant data, not just the ones that support an administrator's narrative.  For, example, why isn't UNCG's Delaware Study  data posted vs other peer universities that show that most departments are very efficient in their instructional costs per credit hour (despite the variation in teaching loads)?  Why is there not a senior administrator productivity dashboard? 
• The FTP data assume that faculty course and credit hour loads are a function of a faculty member's own choice as opposed to faculty being assigned to various courses and activities by the chair to make the department more efficient.  For example, if teaching productivity is the primary metric for evaluation, every faculty member in the biology department will want to teach BIO 105, 111, and 112—but we don't  need 20 faculty teaching large intro courses. Our curriculum is designed with a normal progression of large to medium to smaller courses. Smaller, highly engaged courses, are not necessarily easier to teach than large lectures, and if there is intense engagement by faculty with each student in smaller courses, they can be more time consuming, and more critical in retention and graduation. We also have significant graduate programs that require smaller courses.  I have seen reputable data demonstrating that the average class size in the UNCG biology department is larger than any biology program in the State (but that data is not up on the dashboard). In any case, the relevant question to me is, that as a department, can we deliver a streamlined curriculum as efficiently as possible without sacrificing quality, because quality is necessary for retention and post-graduation success of our students. There is no need to have all faculty teaching the same load.  There needs to be a strategic use of faculty resources (time) to meet the department mission.  
• The data simply show what everyone who studies higher education knows. The existing financial model for every large or medium public university is built on a simple premise: a small number of relatively low paid faculty members teaching large introductory courses and Gen Ed courses in order to generate the revenue to support smaller classes, research, and units that lose money (including cost centers like admin).  At the APLU provosts meeting a few years back that I attended, former Governor of Utah Michal Leavitt made the point to the provosts that he and other state leaders across the country understood this as the model. The implied idea that all faculty should be having similar high level class load and funded student credit hours has never been the operating model for successful moderate to large public universities who have a tri-partite mission of teaching, research and service..  The variation in funded credit hour production is necessary given that vast number of roles faculty play beyond being in the classroom (including the time spent engaging with students outside the classroom, which for me, this semester is leading to three or four 18 hour days in the office a week). Community colleges often have a model of full time faculty doing nothing but teaching.  But, if one wants to find  stable long-term financial models in public higher education, community colleges probably aren't what you are looking for. They, as a group, seem to have, by far, the most unstable funding model in public higher education.
•  Evaluating individual faculty productivity at the provost's level is micromanagement at its worst.  Again, every provost I know (and me), except ours, used a larger data set with more complex variables. I, and most of my provost colleagues, used the Delaware Study data. The most important metric for me were department level data on instructional costs per credit hour.  This metric is easily compared to department with similar structures in the Delaware data.  I did the analysis for UNCG  (using our data which is not good) when I was provost.  In my analysis.  the campus and most departments were very efficient in their cost per student credit hour when compared to peer departments. I told this to the UNCG VCFA and he said the “data must be wrong"- I think because those data did not fit his narrative that we have a bunch of lazy faculty.  When instructional cost/credit hours are too high as determined by the provost, then it should be expected that a dean and chair have the responsibility (and they should have the authority) to reduce the cost per credit hour to a level as determined by the provost (which may need to be lower given the financial situation), by whatever criteria best serves the mission of the department, which may or may not include addressing individual faculty productivity. On the other hand, it is very possible to be too efficient causing an inability to deliver the curriculum and greatly diminishing the quality of a student's experience. One of the university's major selling points is the level of engagement of students and faculty. Too much efficiency will most certainly lead to reduced recruitment and decreased retention. One has to remember that student success offices change retention at the margins. The bulk of student retention is driven by student experiences in the classroom.  And, as the Purdue-Gallup survey of over 35,000 alumni showed in 2015- the best predictor of "life success" and "post graduation engagement with the university", by far, was having a faculty member who cared about the former student (not a student success coach).
• As dean and provost, I saw the major role of chairs as managing their faculty as a team to put the right faculty in the right place to serve the department’s mission. The FTP assumes that all faulty should contribute in the same way.  For anyone that knows how academic department runs, this is simply ludicrous
• Our department has recruited an extraordinarily talented group of younger faculty members who are rapidly becoming leaders in their field, are great teachers and engage with large numbers of students in our research-based curriculum and in their labs.  They tend to teach smaller classes, even though they work with a large number of students and are considered some of the best teachers in the department.  They don't appear toward the top of the list of faculty teaching productive faculty, but are some of the most overall productive faculty in the university. Their response to what is going on at UNCG is not to angrily express concern, nor is to be passive. Unless they have other reasons for staying here, their response to the messaging of leadership is to apply for new jobs in institutions where they see their contributions valued.  Nothing good will happen to our department if our best young faculty are compelled to seek other pastures despite their extraordinary success here..
• Here are some articles on the lack of meaning of faculty teaching productivity metrics

Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

• Understanding the productivity of faculty members in higher education by Julie A. Delello; Rochell R. McWhorter; Shelly L. Marmion International Journal of Management in Education (IJMIE), Vol. 12, No. 2, 2018. DOI:10.1504/IJMIE.2018.10009661
• Study finds U. of Texas faculty are productive - Inside Higher Ed
• Measuring Faculty Productivity: Let’s Get It Right - The Chronicle of Higher Education

When this analysis was finally complete at the University of Texas at Austin, they found:

• The average compensation and benefits to tenured and tenure-track faculty members was $129,000 in 2009-10, but the average sum generated in tuition revenue and research funding by each one of these faculty members was $280,000.
• The data rebut the assumption that the busiest teachers are graduate students or those without tenure. Of the instructors in the top quintile in terms of credit hours taught, 56.8 percent are tenured or tenure-track faculty members. Of those in the lowest quintile in terms of credit hours taught, 77.2 percent are either graduate students (many of whom have only minimal teaching expectations) and non-tenured faculty members.

  
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).
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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.
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​"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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