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.

A Grating Exam

Anytime a semester ends, there are always multiple conversations about final examinations.  And final exams come in all sizes and shapes.  Not surprising, faculty focus their attention on the quality of the student work be it in response to short or multiple choice questions or in response to essay or term paper assignments.  Students tend to talk about whether an exam was “fair”: in other words did it cover the materials that the students were responsible for.  After that, the students tend to focus on whether the exam was clear or confusing and whether it was easy or hard.  Certainly there are extremes in all these categories but for the most part, faculty view the students’ work to be reasonable and responsible and students view the examination to also be reasonable and responsible.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a friend who is also dean of a professional school.  Quickly the conversation evolved into a discussion of final examinations.  But this conversation was very different.  Normally as noted above, discussions regarding a final examination tend to focus more on the quality of the students work, and the fairness of the exam.  But this dean was focused not just on fairness but rather on exam appropriateness.  The dean’s point was that a faculty member had given an “F” exam, one which did not in any way cover the key points of the course.  On this exam, according to the dean, the student could receive a 100% and you would still not have any concrete notion as to whether the student did or did not understand the critical course material or did or did not achieve the course learning goals.

In higher education, for the most part, exam development is the purview of the faculty member teaching the course.  Exams are sometimes (but only sometimes) included in the teaching portfolios presented by candidates for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.  Exams are sometimes created by groups of faculty where there are multiple sections of a course and a common final exam.  But these examples account for a minority of all the exams given.  Mostly likely the faculty member develops, administers, and grades the exam.  Overall this system works well, but we also know for certain that it doesn’t work perfectly.  And just as there are brilliant exams developed on a regular basis, there are also very flawed exams developed as well.

Outcomes assessment and using exams in part to determine whether learning goals have been accomplished should help minimize the flawed exam problem.  But this is not enough.  Many department chairs and deans review grade rosters on a regular basis.  If there is something out of the ordinary (grades seem extraordinarily high or low), the department chair typically just asks the faculty member.  Chairs and deans need to follow the same procedures with final exams (and perhaps exams in general).  We all recognize that chair and faculty classroom observations are a tried and true method of enhancing a faculty member‘s teaching excellence.  The same type of support can also be invaluable in facilitating the most meaningful examinations possible.  All of us want more “A” students; we should also make sure there are “A” examinations for our students.

And the Winner is…

On almost every college or university campus, there are various awards given out on a regular basis.  Most typical are awards for student achievement: academic, co-curricular, or community service are just three examples.  Also very common are awards for faculty, most likely based on the quality of teaching, or innovations in teaching, or the quality of research.  Teaching awards often are based on student input while innovation and research awards are based on faculty/administration input.  For me a “teacher of the year” award based on student input is particularly meaningful.  We are all here to, hopefully, provide an excellent education to our students and I remain convinced that excellence in teaching is a key ingredient in making that happen.

The teacher of the year award program we have at Hofstra is based on the votes of graduating students.  For a faculty member to be selected as teacher of the year  we look at the cumulative votes of these students over a three-year and a five-year time frame.  We have one award annually for each school or college and winning this award is considered a singular honor.  However, once the award has been won by a faculty member, that person is ineligible to again receive teacher of the year recognition.  A number of prior award recipients have questioned the fairness of being forever excluded from future consideration saying that there are many prestigious awards that have no such restriction.  And if you look at the Tony Awards, the Oscars, the Pulitzer Prize, and many other awards, it is certainly possible for a person to win major recognition more than once.

We are now discussing whether a faculty member can be eligible more than once.  On one hand, with 500 full-time faculty and many many outstanding faculty within that number, it makes sense, especially given the stature of this award, to maximize the number of different recipients.  On the other hand, it is testimony to the on-going teaching excellence of the faculty member if that person can win this award more than once.  It shows that year after year the faculty member involved is an inspiring teacher. And that the person involved can clearly stand the test of time with very tough competition.

Where do I stand?  First and foremost I remain convinced that excellence in teaching is a key determinant in maximizing the learning of our students.  And I do believe a person should be able to win more than once.  How often?  Difficult question—later rather than sooner; my preference is that a person be eligible to win no more than once a decade.

All Other Things Being Equal

From my earliest days as an economic major, almost at the same time as I was studying supply and demand, I learned the phrase ceteris paribus which translates into “all other things remaining the same” (or remaining equal).  Almost every concept in economics was learned by manipulating one variable so that you could measure the impact of that variable while other variables were kept constant.  Going back to supply and demand, you would gauge the demand for a product (be it a car or a coat or a croissant) by keeping the price and the preferences for all other products exactly the same.  In other words, what happens to the demand for a croissant (my preference would be for a chocolate croissant) if the price of a brownie, a chocolate chip cookie, and a smore stayed exactly the same.  Certainly a food for thought example of how economics works.  In most cases, the rule is simply as price declines, demand increases.  There are important distinctions even in a concept as basic as demand.  If you are describing the demand for a life-saving drug, the demand would remain exactly the same within a wide range of prices.  You need a drug to save your life; you need a certain dose to achieve that result; and likely you will pay whatever needs to be paid (within reason) to get that drug.  Or the opposite example, you want “take out” pizza for dinner and in most neighborhoods, there are many sources of pizza.  Assuming you feel that most of the pizza is equally good, a small increase in price (above the norm) (all other things being equal) could result in a huge decrease in demand for this particular pizza.

But what does this have to do with higher education besides the fact that pizza is always popular on a college campus.  Economic modeling is all the rage on many, many college and university campuses.  Typically this modeling is in the financial aid area and it is a leveraging model.  Given a student with a particular profile (SAT score and high school GPA), how much financial aid will it take for that student to register at a particular college or university.  More complex models adjust for whether the student is local or lives at a distance, or is attending a highly rated high school, or is interested in a particular major.  These models make use of regression analysis to predict the future based on patterns of the past and as an economist, I appreciate the information provided.  And the presentation of these models is often dazzling.  Instantly, as you change an assumption regarding the financial aid offer for a particular cohort, the model will change its prediction.  Not surprisingly more money yields more students (and much of the time more net tuition income) and less money yields less students (and often less net tuition income).

All of this is very impressive and can at times be amazingly accurate.  However, building a future scenario based on past performance while in a serious economic recession may require more than any such model can accurately provide.  If the foundation of the model is replicating to some extent the past, the validity of the model may not be there if the future varies significantly from the past.  We should all keep in mind that ceteris paribus foundation is most likely to fail just when we most need it to succeed.

Appreciating Memorial Day

In addition to having a long weekend, Memorial Day should be appreciated for its original meaning.  And during the actual day or during the weekend, we should all make time to remember, reflect and honor those who gave their lives to protect our country and our quality of life.

For many people, in higher education and in many other areas, the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend is an extra day added to the weekend. But for me, the day serves another vital function for which I am very appreciative.  It is the first catch-up day after the spring semester.  In higher education administration, meetings are a fact of life.  A University functions best in an environment of collegiality and collaboration.  This doesn’t happen without good continuous communication and meetings are a crucial facilitator of this good communication. External relations, which are also vital to a University, also require continuous communication and they typically also take place in formal or informal meetings.  Add to this the ever escalating number of emails, the new issues that arise on a regular basis, a mini-crisis now and then, and the day is complete and fully occupied.

I’m not complaining (and I enjoy my job) but in addition to needing time to  think through issues, there are always responsibilities that are part of virtually any position that need not be done in the moment but certainly need to be taken care of.  For thinking through issues, I recommend a combination of a very early start time in the office plus lap swimming.  Going back and forth in a pool is mindless and consequently for me the perfect opportunity to think without being interrupted.  But as we all know, different strokes for different folks.

Under necessary responsibilities, especially at this time of year, is going through all the materials on your desk, and organizing the materials.  What better day than that Friday to start going through the piles of paperwork.  Phone calls were at 25% of their normal level; emails were also at the 25% level and meetings were almost non-existent.  I might be lonely if I didn’t have all those papers and memos to keep me company. And by the end of the day, I’m pleased to note that there were patches of wood among the sea of white paper.

Working the Friday before Memorial Day works for me but it clearly doesn’t work for everyone. And everyone has to do what works best and makes the most sense for them.  Time, for all of us, is a scarce resource.  The balance of your job responsibilities so as to do all that needs to be done and the balance of work/personal life responsibilities are challenges we all confront.  And we should all realize there is room for improvement.