Transparent

I have been spending the last few days reviewing my tenure and promotion recommendations to the President.  Each tenure and promotion candidacy has a file that has multiple recommendations, starting at the department level after the candidate has presented his or her tenure/promotion portfolio.  Once that portfolio is prepared and submitted, the candidacy is reviewed and a recommendation is provided by the department chair, and the Ad Hoc Tenure Committee or the Promotion Committee.  The process continues at the college or school/division level with another faculty review followed by a dean’s review.  After that review, if there are disagreements, the candidacy is referred to a University Appeals Board followed by my review, the president’s review and action by the Board of Trustees.  Copies of the substantial recommendations are always given to the candidate and the candidate is always given an opportunity to respond.  So far the transparency is clear.

However, for the process to work well expectations also need to be transparent and known from the point in time that the candidate first joined the University or first considered submitting for promotion. And here we are also doing well—the standard of teaching excellence and how we measure that excellence is well known and well established.  In regard to scholarship, we have reached the point where each department has clearly stated the qualifications (e.g., expectations in terms of number and quality of journal articles/books/presentations/grants/performances) for tenure and promotion.  The one area where there is still some ambiguity is service.  We want every faculty member to be involved and recognize that for a college or university to move forward, there needs to be a culture of faculty service.  However we have not spelled out specific service expectations in detail  but everyone recognizes that the service has to be significant.

What helps further minimize this ambiguity is the annual evaluation of every full-time faculty member (other than first year faculty members), which asks every faculty member to memorialize in detail what the person has done the previous year and then provides an opportunity for a chair and dean to comment.  If the faculty member is in disagreement with any of those comments, the person can add comments to the record.  We also have for untenured faculty regular reappointments which provide extensive feedback.  Therefore, not only is there a comprehensive tenure and promotion review process, but there are frequent (at least annual) reviews that serve as an important barometer of progress and lack of progress.  And there are clear expectations of what a person is expected to do.

The bottom line, which is inherent in transparency, is that there should be no surprises.  And we have come a long, long way in making this a reality that is fair to all concerned.  Higher education isn’t perfect in this regard but overall we are doing well. If you go back to when I started in higher education, there was a very different culture – little transparency, few expectations clearly stated, and a much greater ability to adjust the “standards” to fit whether you liked or did not like the person being judged.  Years ago, in going through some old files in the Provost’s office, I came across a personnel recommendation from a senior administrator that simply stated “Good guy.  Should be tenured.’’  We can all take pride in the progress we have made.  More work remains to be done but the commitment  in the higher education community is strongly in support of clear standards,  a transparent process, continuous feedback: all adding up as it should, to a fair chance to succeed.

Tabletop

Hurricane Katrina helped convince much of higher education that there is a tremendous need for emergency planning.  And many of us developed sophisticated plans to do what we need to do if an emergency strikes—resume full operation or get as close to that as possible, and do it in the least possible time.  But what has happened to those plans since then and how prepared are we?

Earlier this week the Provost’s Office, working with the University’s emergency preparedness person, undertook a tabletop (simulation) exercise to see how well our plans would work in the case of a severe (at least category 3) hurricane.  Overall, the plans were solid, but there were clearly lapses even though most were very minor.  For example, there had been some personnel changes but our notification information was not updated accordingly. Clearly, this would not have been a significant issue since all of us were aware of the changes and knew how to quickly contact anyone involved in the office.  But as we need to contact faculty, students, administration and staff, issues like this clearly magnify many fold.  How often do we proactively reach out to all the campus constituencies to make sure our contact information across the board is as accurate as it needs to be.  Likely not often enough.

Last year, when we were developing contingency plans for the possible flu pandemic, we reached out to all faculty to provide information on the tools provided by BlackBoard to help a class continue to meet if on -campus meetings were not possible.  But emergencies can be less or more predictable depending on the type of emergency and we should  regularly update the faculty on all the features of whatever classroom management system we use.

In the course of our discussion, we talked at length about how we would do all we can, remotely if need be,  to maintain the academic functioning of the University in a serious emergency.   Two areas where we spent considerable time were grant applications and payroll.  For grant applications, we cannot—especially if the emergency is very local in nature—assume that grant deadlines will automatically be extended.  For payroll, if an emergency comes at the beginning of a semester, it is not likely that every faculty member’s (or every employee’s), especially every adjunct faculty member ‘s, paperwork is already fully processed  on our payroll system and yet it needs to be a priority to get everyone paid in a timely manner.  At this point the discussion was going well and we seemed to have everything under control in terms of what needed to be done until… the lights went out.  When the simulation included the loss of electricity (which could be a very local problem or a regional problem) we were not fully prepared.  Our laptops might be fully charged but what happens after a few hours? Or what if internet service was down...how would we connect to this communication’s lifeline.  In the first case of the battery running low, the fix was easy.  If we all had car chargers, we could charge the computer batteries by using our cars. The loss of internet service was more difficult but could still be resolved with an aircard.  What matters most is that our simulation forced us to confront difficult issues and work through the resolution of key problems.

No one is looking for a serious emergency to happen.  On the other hand, ignoring the possibility of an emergency make us much more vulnerable.  We should all make sure our plans are as up to date as possible and regular tabletop simulations should for all of us be standard operating procedure.

3D Education

Within the last two weeks, I have taken my older daughter to see Eclipse in IMAX as well as Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, and The Last Airbender all in 3D.  You haven’t “lived” until you have seen vampires and werewolves in IMAX, and 3D makes animation more fun and people and events more real.  Having first seen Avatar in 2D and then subsequently in 3D, the difference for me is very much worth the difference in price.  And yet, of the five films I have mentioned above, 2 were excellent, two were good, and one was fair.  IMAX and 3D enhance but can’t overcome a weak story line.

Both my daughters now expect that, if we see a movie, we will look for the 3D version.  They have already looked at a demonstration of 3D TV and asked that we make this a priority purchase. My wife and I have responded in 3D that we are sticking with 2D TV for the foreseeable future. Technology has given my kids a very different growing up experience than I had.  On a car trip, in my youth, you would look to see how many different state license plates you could spot or you would sing songs or you would read. I list reading last here for a reason—reading would lead to car sickness for me which would lead to ….. .   Singing and license plates wouldn’t really carry the day for a long car trip and were supplemented by “how much longer until we get there” being asked more and more frequently.  Now, for any car trip over 2 hours, we take along the DS, the DVD player as well as the always present IPODs.  Yes, we also take along books, but on car rides this is hardly the first choice (and both my kids enjoy reading).  However, as the technology has increased, the complaining has decreased.  Another clear benefit of technology. On a recent “non-stop” ride back from Niagara Falls of over 600 miles and about nine hours, there were no complaints heard (except from the grownups).

We all know that technology has changed our lives but for many of us and especially our kids, technology has also changed our expectations and our patience level.  We expect more, and most certainly, we expect to be more entertained. And if the entertainment and the technological sizzle aren’t there, there is a real risk of being turned off by what we are looking at and/or doing.

In education, we constantly strive to harness the benefits of technology to enhance the quality of education.  Vastly more accessible and robust sources of information are clear examples of technology’s crucial benefits.  But reading, writing, thinking, reacting, and assimilating are critical on-going building blocks of a good education that are not fundamentally tied to technology.  But they are tied to patience so that learning has the time and the concentration to happen all through a person’s formal education and life. This is not an easy lesson but we all need to remember that if “let me entertain you” becomes our highest priority, we may have stripped away the essence of good education.

Essays That Lie

I was very pleased to read the recent news article in Inside Higher Education describing the new essay service that has been made available by Turnitin.com to uncover plagiarism in admissions essays. The article presented some compelling statistics for utilizing this service including that “36 percent [of the 450,000 admissions essays scrutinized] had enough in the way of ‘significant matching text’ to make it reasonable to suspect plagiarism or the use of purchased essays.”  I am clearly pleased that we will have a new tool in the fight against plagiarism.  Academic dishonesty should always result in serious consequences and imposing consequences can only happen if there is knowledge of what transpired.

But does this go far enough?  A number of years ago, a friend was talking to me about his son.  The son was in the process of applying to the top five national graduate programs/ schools in his subject area.  This friend talked about his son’s GPA, and his score on the standardized test and both were very impressive.  The dad also talked about his son’s essay which he felt was also very compelling.  The essay outlined a series of activities undertaken by the son to help economically disadvantaged youth.  I commented to the dad that I was enormously impressed by both the quality and quantity of the son’s community engagement.  The dad’s response, which surprised me, was that he wasn’t sure that his son had done all that was claimed but that the essay was nevertheless very compelling.  I very quickly responded that I have zero respect for someone who takes credit for important work that the person never actually did.  And the friend responded just as quickly that his son had done all the work claimed.

Did he actually do the work?  I accepted what the friend said but I’m not sure I believe it. And the reality is that we often have no basis to conclude whether an admissions bio or an admissions essay is true or is not true.  But we would be very safe in assuming that both alternatives are well represented in the typical pool of admissions essays.  Therefore, even if we can spot plagiarism, we may not have made the overall progress we need to make if major league lying is not detected.  What should we do?  Rethink the admissions essay and be careful that what we ask can help limit puffery.  But if a potential student talks about service or accomplishments and if this service or these accomplishments can make a difference in terms of the admissions decision, the student should be asked to include a reference from a person familiar with this aspect of the student’s accomplishments.  We should give credit where credit is due for a student’s accomplishments.  And we should do all we can to make sure that credit is not given and a penalty is imposed, if the reality is that there is no reality in what the student is claiming.

A Very Private Office

After I completed my PhD and accepted my first tenure track full-time teaching appointment, I was assigned a faculty office that I shared with three other full-time faculty.  I was on campus usually four days a week but I hated the office even though I liked my office mates.  Trying to talk with students and trying to grade exams, or trying to do research was seriously and negatively impacted.  It is impossible to talk to students about their future plans and ambitions, about courses they needed to meet requirements and graduate, and about economics.  Often I would just leave the office and do research in the library, and talk with students at a remote table in the cafeteria.  My situation was not unique in those days.  Many faculty shared offices with the same ramifications as I experienced.

Fast forward to today.  Every full-time faculty member at Hofstra has his or her own office and once again this is not a unique situation.  The facilities provided for faculty have been enhanced with the realization that a private office is a good investment.  The more comfortable a faculty member is on campus when having meetings with students and when doing research, it should follow that the faculty member spends more time on campus.  In turn the campus becomes more attractive to students with the easy accessibility to faculty. And for many years this relationship worked as predicted.

But the world has changed.  First of all communication is very different than when many of us went to school and very different from the way it was when we started working in higher education.  When I started teaching, a student would always be able to see me if they came during my regular office hours.  Typically, this was 4 hours per week.  Student could also make appointments to see me or any other faculty member; if the regular office hours didn’t work for a student or students, alternatives could usually always be found. Notes could be left in the department mailbox and a phone call to the office was also a possibility. Today, email, text messaging, Blackboard as well as other classroom management tools, provide a much faster and more convenient way of increased student/faculty communication (but you do lose the in-person contact).   In addition, the campus library, which often was key to a faculty member’s research or to a student’s education, has also felt the impact of technology.  As a starting faculty member, I often spent time in the Government Documents Room studying economic data and trends.  All the information is now available on-line with many more analytical options. 

Furthermore, many faculty look for a teaching schedule with fewer days per week on campus and often faculty live further away from the campus.  And students often have part-time jobs and some are looking for an earlier start and a later finish to the weekends which also leads to a more compact class schedule. For faculty the end result is less time on campus and less time in their private office.  Often an office is not occupied for extensive periods of time during the academic year.  Faculty need and deserve first rate office space.  But presently we are not using resources in the most efficient way possible. It’s time for a new model of space utilization.

The Neighborhood Effect

All of us have heard that the key bottom line in real estate is location, location, location.  The value of property, be it residential or commercial, is directly tied to the neighborhood and what positives or negatives are contained therein. How good is transportation and access; how good are the schools; how low is the crime rate; and what is the proximity to major attractions and critical needs.  Do we have a water view or a strip mall view; it all enters into the equation.

For a college or university, location presently has two major dimensions.  Why presently?  The world is clearly changing.  Students especially at the graduate level and especially also for part-time programs will, in the years ahead, no longer be attending class the way that we were educated or the way that we have taught most of our careers.  On-campus programs (once again, especially part-time and graduate programs) will gravitate to distance learning, most likely the blended variety.  On the undergraduate level, however, the campus experience remains crucial and the location factors are real assets or real concerns.

Going back to location - the first aspect of location is the neighborhood, the college or university is located in.  Is the school in an urban setting, in a suburban setting, in a rural setting? All have their advantages and all have their disadvantages and potential students and their families have feelings and concerns triggered by these settings.  We all know of schools that are located in “college towns” where the ambiance of the town directly enhances both the college experience and the attractiveness of the school or schools located there. Location as an absolute clearly makes a difference.

But there is another aspect to location and that is relative location, where you live in relation to the college or university that you are considering.  For a commuter campus, this aspect is direct and uncomplicated.  If you don’t live within a reasonable commute to the college or university involved, you will not be attending this school.  But what if the college or university nearby is significantly residential and what if you want to “go away” to school?  What happens then and what is the impact?  This is a much more complicated situation.  Potential students and their families often discount a very good college or university because it is too close.  Some students and their families feel that if the college or university is with an easy commute, it really can’t be a going away experience. And I have even encountered students and parents over the years who value going away to such a degree that distance away takes on a higher value than the quality of education provided.  Clearly somewhat flawed judgment. A good college or university educational and co-curricular experience is fundamentally different from high school.  And a university that attracts student from a majority of states and a significant number of different countries provides an environment that is very different from the neighborhood.  It really is a different world. Overall, location does matter but distance is mostly a state of mind.

When New is New

All of us are used to reading ads and seeing commercials for products and services that are characterized as “brand new” or “totally new.”  And the reality often is that these products and services aren’t really new but they aren’t really “old” either.  What they are, and there isn’t anything wrong with this, reflects evolutionary changes.  We know change is a continuum and that over time these evolutionary changes can be an effective vehicle for significant change and enhancement.

Evolutionary change often reflects constraints that make complete or total change (to something totally new) not possible.  On the product level, even if a car looks like it is totally new, the high cost of product development may dictate that the engine, the transmission, and much of what you don’t see is a carryover.  Or at times, much of what you see is unchanged or slightly changed but sometimes with (and sometimes without) new mechanicals; nevertheless, the car is promoted as “the all new” 2010 or 2011.  New is clearly relative.

In education, new is also grounded in constraints.  Programs and majors (and organization frameworks) change and evolve but often the pace is measured and sometimes it is glacial.  A measured pace makes sense to me.  Collegiality is best served by a full airing of the issues.  Glacial, though a comforting thought when the temperature outside is approaching 90, is not a productive approach for change.  A number of years ago, when a unit was unable after years of trying to pass by-laws, I involved the Provost’s office in continuous negotiations with all the different factions until the by-laws (and a framework for shared governance) were a reality.  Do we really need the Provost’s Office involved?  Certainly all the faculty members involved were intelligent and had a commitment to the University. But for some reason there was a long-term inability and unwillingness to talk through and compromise on what were minor differences.

 Tenure, for all its positives, is also a constraint.  As needs change in different areas and programs, the ability to respond to those changes is sometimes limited by a workforce that brings tremendous strengths to one area but doesn’t have the expertise in another area.  Having a structure that includes untenured faculty as well as adjunct faculty helps you maintain needed flexibility.

I have had the pleasure over the years of being in a lead role for the establishment of two new schools on the Hofstra campus (the School of Communication and Honors College) as well as numerous programs and other initiatives.  In virtually every case, “new” was built on an existing framework and existing constraints. I think the end results were excellent and moved the University forward but the magnitude of change had to be limited by the reality of constraints.

Just now, on the Hofstra campus, another new school has been formed.  The Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with the North Shore/LIJ Health System has received preliminary accreditation and will bring in its first class for the fall 2011 semester.  The School began with a broad vision from Hofstra’s President, and that vision was translated into reality by a Dean and his team.  This team designed an innovative curriculum that was much more integrated and patient centered and brought in those individuals that fit best with that vision. The end result is a new vision of medical education that would have been virtually impossible to implement at an existing school.  Yes, cost is still a constraint (as it is in everything we do) but the magnitude of change and progress at this new school is stunning.

The new medical school is an exception; virtually all change is evolutionary.  But we should all make a commitment, within the constraints we operate under, to make as much meaningful progress as we can.  Glacial for the sake of glacial just has a chilling effect on a college or university campus.