Resonating Requirements

At this time of year, I spend a lot of time with accepted students and their families.  My primary goal is to convince our accepted students to attend Hofstra.  But inextricably interwoven into this goal is the corresponding desire for these students to make the best informed decision possible, the decision that best fits their needs, goals and aspirations.

It always resonates well with potential students to talk about the wide range of available majors.  Most new students will tell you that they have made up their mind regarding a major and perhaps even a career path.  But the reality is that some students change their mind and change their major and I am fully supportive of students doing so.  A good college education provides the opportunity to explore new fields. If one of these fields interests you enough to make that your major, higher education is clearly facilitating your growth and development.

It also always resonates well with potential students and their families to talk about the high quality of the faculty and their commitment to teaching excellence.  For me this has always been a pivotal point.  Thinking back to my own education, the courses I liked and those I didn’t like were highly correlated with the quality of teaching.  The more dynamic, knowledgeable, and articulate the faculty member, the more I enjoyed the course, and, in my opinion, the more I learned.

For families, at times even more than for accepted students, advisement, counseling, public safety, internship opportunities and placement all matter a great deal and all resonate well.

But what sometimes doesn’t resonate well are the degree requirements other than the major.  By degree requirements I don’t mean the minimum number of credits or the minimum GPA.  No one questions these requirements and everyone understands.  The requirements that are sometimes questioned are the distribution requirements that ensure a student receives a well rounded education.  The faculty, and this is true throughout higher education, carefully structure a foundation that any educated person should have and build in the curricular structure that provides that foundation. As we know, there is not one universally agreed upon foundation covering all of higher education, and there are often great discussions – and these typically include disagreements followed by compromises – on what should and should not be in the curricular structure.  But if our goal is to educate a well rounded person, requirements that include exposure to a critical body of knowledge, are the necessary means to this end.  Within this framework, in my opinion, we should provide for as much choice as possible.

I still remember my undergraduate experience that included passing a mandatory course in swimming as a graduation requirement.  In those days, if you didn’t swim, you didn’t graduate.  I am a recreational swimmer but a swimming graduation requirement (and there were no alternatives) made no sense.  Today’s challenge in developing distribution/graduation requirements is still to make sure we include what is essential and stop there.

Dress Like a Dean/Provost

After about a year of serving as Assistant Provost, the Provost called me in and indicated that he was more than pleased with my job performance and was ready, especially given the added responsibilities I had taken on, to recommend promotion to Associate Provost.  I was thrilled and very appreciative and indicated as much to the Provost. He repeated that it was well deserved and then said there was one stipulation regarding the promotion.  He made it clear that this wasn’t a “requirement.”  However, he also made it clear that this was more than a casual suggestion. The stipulation was that I wear a tie each day that I was in the office.  Now the reality was, up to that time (including my years as a full-time faculty member), that I tended to wear nice sport shirts.  The provost at the time was a tie every day person and he wanted everyone in the office to have that more formal look.  I agreed.

At first that agreement was my way of saying how much I appreciated the promotion.  But over time and especially when I represented the office, I realized that the professional look, as opposed to the dress down/casual look, resonated better with all constituencies and was a far better visual for a provost’s office.  But what about on your own time? Over a weekend, especially when there are no official events scheduled and you don’t plan to be on campus, how should you dress?  My preference has been to wear jeans and under the heading of full disclosure I also tend not to shave.  Is this a problem?  Yes and no.  Let me explain.  One Saturday, I went to my local bank to ask for an account clarification. I was wearing jeans, a polo shirt and I was unshaved.  I felt there was no reason to dress up and I also thought my local banker would be the best person to ask for clarification. She was.  However, at the end of the conversation, after I had said thanks and goodbye, she commented that I looked much better at a recent University event she had attended.  I didn’t comment, just said goodbye again and kept walking.  Thinking over this event, having had some time elapse, I would not change anything I did.  The banker’s comments were inappropriate; dressing casually on your own time is your own business.

Sometimes, dressing like a dean or provost even on campus isn’t always possible.  I am a recreational swimmer; Hofstra has a great swimming pool and I try on a regular basis to swim after I leave the office.  Now imagine a situation where after swimming I am in the shower room and in comes a faculty member who I had just written a negative recommendation on, for tenure.  Mine was not the first negative recommendation written for this person’s candidacy, but this was still an uncomfortable moment.  Wearing a suit and tie would certainly have been more comfortable at this moment, but a setting other than a locker room shower would have been a prerequisite.  Fortunately, we both chose to not recognize each other and I was out of the shower before the next drop of water hit my body.

But there was another shower incident where leaving instantly wasn’t  a possibility.  I had just walked out of the shower, and was drying off.  At that moment, a fully clothed young man came up to me and said: “Can I talk to you about the MBA program?  I have a concern I would like to discuss immediately!.”  The ultimate gotcha—wearing just a towel and needing to get dressed doesn’t give you a lot of coverage to say “I can’t talk now; please call my office.” I got dressed and listened at the same time.  I was able to help the student and given the circumstances, I will resist saying I thought the student was very cheeky in how he handled the situation.

History Continued and Appreciated

In last week’s blog, I talked about the importance of remembering key individuals in the history of an institution.  Remembering key events and how those events happened is also critical and here, too, higher education doesn’t do well.  All too often key events are mentioned briefly and clinically only in Board of Trustees’ minutes and in more detail, but often with substantial inaccuracy, in student newspapers.

Two examples come immediately to my mind.  A number of years ago, I decided to recommend that Hofstra establish a School of Communication.  We had strong majors in this area but Communication wasn’t receiving the time, attention, or the resources it needed as part of our liberal arts college.  Our President at the time was supportive and was, in fact, willing to make the recommendation immediately to our Board of Trustees. Following this route, we could have a new school immediately.  I suggested instead, that we go through the entire shared governance process, feeling that for the school to have faculty support required their investment in the process.  We did go through this process and it was a grueling two year effort with unfortunately too much time spent on attempted turf protection by some of those favoring the status quo.  But at the end of the day, we had our School of Communication and given the process we followed, very substantial faculty support.  Now how has this process been memorialized on our campus?  Very briefly is the best answer.  A two-year effort resulted in a University Senate resolution, a Faculty resolution, a student newspaper article, and a President’s report to the Board of Trustees approving establishment of the School.  Details were almost non-existent; nuances were missing in action; and different positions taken were glossed over.  No doubt this was helpful to fostering a sense, going forward, of collegiality.  But if we are to learn from the past, the information must be there to learn from.

Much more recently, when our new president took office, he made an almost immediate courageous decision that will help the institution for decades to come. That decision was to not build a $50 million plus performing arts center.  This arts center was not designed to serve our students.  It would not provide us with music rehearsal space or dance studios or any other academic facilities. Rather it was to be a professional arts and entertainment venue that would possibly run a deficit yearly in the millions of dollars in addition to the millions that would be spent yearly to cover the cost of construction. Clearly the performing arts are very important and we have a robust educational program and quality venues and facilities in support of that program.  And professional performances are a valuable resource for the community but they are certainly not mission critical for the University.  And the costs involved in the arts center would have diverted resources and attention from what was mission critical, the best possible education for our students.  Our new president’s decision was enormously popular with the faculty, but received very little attention in our student newspaper and a relatively brief mention in our Trustee minutes.  A defining decision for the institution and yet there was hardly a recorded history mention.

We know that every institution has defining events and yet  we can be equally certain that the history of these events is often relegated to minimal mention.  In understanding an institution, we need to know  what happened when and why and how.  A brief mention records the event but the full meaning and impact may be lost for all time.  For institutions as well as for our students, there is value in a history requirement.

Every Department Should Be a History Department

Recently I was asked to sit for an oral history interview covering my years at Hofstra.    Since my years at Hofstra go back more than half the time the University has been in existence, I enjoyed talking about and recounting key happenings.  At the same time, I was asked to suggest names for special 75th anniversary awards to those key individuals who made a major difference in the development of Hofstra from 1935 to the present.  Having been here so many years, I was able to suggest individuals who clearly made a difference but who are also mostly forgotten today.  True, these individuals, if they were faculty members, will likely be remembered by their students.  Or they could be remembered for their scholarship. But what if they were administrators, or faculty who championed or created key programs?  Who would know? Who would remember?

A Broad Education More Narrowly Defined

My first full-time teaching schedule was a four course, Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule where I taught my first class at 9AM and my last class (a once a week graduate course ) ended shortly after 8 PM.  For as long as I was a full time faculty member, my schedule was virtually identical.  Only once did I complain to my department chair about my schedule – in my second year he presented me with a schedule that started at 8 AM and ended (one day a week) at 11PM.  I thought the hours were unreasonable and he agreed and modified it back to the way it had always looked.  My courses during those early years were filled regardless of the time. Many students, especially those who worked in addition to going to school, favored early classes or late classes and consequently almost every time slot had a robust enrollment.  The expectation was clear that as a faculty member I would be teaching an evening class virtually every semester and a relatively early morning class as well.

Title Wave

Just recently I came across an organizational structure for a School that had both Directors and Associate Directors as well as Associate and Assistant Deans (plus, of course the Dean).  The individuals holding the various dean and director positions were all very clear as to who did what and who reported to whom.  The question was whether anyone outside of the administration had the same level of clarity.  As it turned out, Assistant Deans reported to Directors but how would anyone know that or even expect it? .  For many outsiders looking  into higher education, the assumption is that anyone with a dean title has more of an academic leadership role. How did this happen ?  The answer often is that a prior dean favored the dean title and the current dean favors the director title  but so as to not make anyone feel bad, the current dean has decided not to take away the dean title from anyone who already had it.

Undercover Economics

Given the severity of our current recession, everyone I know has either been touched directly by this economic malaise or knows someone who has been adversely impacted – jobs lost or not found, salaries reduced or not increased, houses lost or not purchased, health insurance foregone, vacations foregone and the list goes on and on.  People are clearly hurting.  But the impact of this and any recession is on more than people; colleges and universities are good examples of institutions adversely impacted. The adverse impact can happen in many ways and take many forms; some are almost invisible with a price to be paid only over a long term time period.

We know that support from governments for public higher education has declined in many parts of the country.  As support has declined, tuition has increased and often there have been major increases in fees as well. In community colleges where the cost of education is lower (both for the supplier and the consumer) there have been some dramatic increases in enrollment.  In four year and graduate public institutions, enrollments are more likely capped and in some areas reduced.  Often at the same time that tuition is rapidly increasing, so is the use of adjuncts and the average class size. Faculty travel and sabbaticals in support of research are often also adversely impacted.

Private higher education faces many of the same challenges.  The difference between public higher education tuition (where there are varying degrees of government support) and private higher education tuition (where such support is much more limited and most likely tied to financial need) prompts some families, especially during economic uncertainty, to favor the lower priced alternative (even if they clearly recognize the benefits of private higher education).  Or the uncertainty could lead to more commuter students rather than residential students. Private higher education’s response, almost across the board is to increase need and or merit based financial aid, which requires almost across the board tuition increases as the funding source.  And here too, adjunct usage is increasing as is average class size.

The economic consequences of these actions are visible to either a greater or lesser degree to the student and his or her family.  Tuition increases are clear to everyone; increased class size is clear only if you have a basis for comparison; and increased use of adjuncts is much less visible.  But there are other effects which are even more undercover.  First of all, what is taking place is a fundamental shift in the allocation of resources away from the classroom.  Because funding has declined or because more dollars need to be allocated to financial aid, the dollars spent on education have been constrained. There is no alternative but unless too many resources were originally allocated to direct classroom education something has been lost. And it remains to be seen whether the allocation will shift back again to the classroom experience either in the short term or in the longer term.  For faculty, and faculty clearly are the heart of the education we provide, the lack of job opportunities for new faculty, the increased economic uncertainly for continuing faculty, larger classes and the reduced level of support for research can result in a morale problem that could extend past the current recession.  All at the same time as we look to faculty to play an increased role in retention.

Overall, as we move forward, we need to objectively look at what we have enhanced and what we have compromised.  And where compromises have been made, we must look for opportunities to restore what has been lost.