Date:  September 12, 2007

To:  Chairs and Program Directors, Arts and Sciences

From:  Orin Grossman

Re:  Various governance issues

 

I want to bring up a few items, none of which are new to you, but which gain urgency with the expectation of a new dean.  If we can resolve any of these difficulties before the new dean arrives, it will greatly increase his or her chances of successful leadership and therefore the successful growth of the College.  Resolution will also be a major step forward in our ability to attract a superior candidate.

 

So many positive changes have occurred in the past few years: 

            Many new faculty have added energy and excitement

            International Studies has solidified its curriculum and resolved difficult tensions

            Environmental Studies has found new energy and received approval for a senior hire

            The CAE has led significant pedagogical innovations, mostly within the College

            The College has the ability to retain all monies from retiring faculty salaries and has therefore increased the number of faculty in the college

           

The new dean will find a vibrant college, with a creative and energetic faculty.

 

The new dean will also find some very difficult governance issues that divide us.  I won't go over them all, but a few stand out as particularly divisive and, at the same time, open to compromise and settlement.  I realize we have not resolved these in the past, but I still think it is worth exploring again, to see if there is any room for compromise and change.

 

The first issue is the election of Chairs in the College of Arts and Sciences.  As you know, the selection of chairs in the College is by the vote of the majority of full-time faculty in the department.  If there is any conflict regarding this matter, the problem goes to the Academic Council for resolution.  This method is described in the Arts and Sciences governance document, which also contains a clause that states that the provisions of the Arts and Sciences governance document may only be amended by agreement between 2/3rd of the faculty and the Board of Trustees.  I will submit to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences a proposal to amend the governance document to allow for the nomination of a chair by the faculty and the appointment of the chair by the dean.  This opportunity could be the College's best chance at reaching a favorable compromise on this issue

The chair should be the bridge between the administration and the faculty.  The chair should advocate for the faculty's interests to the dean and present the dean's point of view and issues to the faculty.  Our structure allows only for the former.  Chairs in general see their role only as advocates for their department.  Our present structure creates a divide between the administration and the faculty which contributes to the tensions and mistrust on both sides.  Faculty members have no one outside the administration who works with them to build bridges.    College administrators have no faculty who have a responsibility to navigate between faculty needs and institutional limitations.  It is not an accident that the only school with this particular governance anomaly is the school with the greatest tension and misunderstanding between faculty and administration.    As you know, the College is alone among Fairfield University's schools and virtually alone among comparable institutions in having this structure.  I realize you do not have the power to change governance, but I am asking for your support and that of your departmental colleagues through persuasion when the matter comes before the Arts and Sciences faculty. 

 

Release time:  In an earlier presentation on this matter, I linked a change in chair selection to the granting of release time.  I may have given the impression that I agreed with the granting of release time, because a number of faculty members suggested I should not link the two issues and, since we agreed on release time, release time should be granted independent of the issue of chair selection. 

 

But I am not in favor of release time.  Some might argue that my position is debatable in view of increased chair duties. In view of that argument and my realization that it is common in educational circles to grant release time to chairs, I am willing to compromise. I will essentially give in on this point in exchange for the faculty's willingness to compromise on chair selection.  I know a few chairs have received release time.  I will not inflict any further burdens on Ray by changing this arrangement for the present year, but I don't see how that could continue in the future without some resolution of the selection issue.

 

Stipends:  Chair's stipends have not been increased in some time.  Should the College be willing to change the governance structure regarding chair selection, I would be willing to compensate chairs for their increased administrative responsibilities. 

 

Merit pay.

 

The new dean will inherit an unpleasant situation regarding merit.  At present there are a number of issues.  I should say that a good number of departments developed their own criteria and submitted reasonable recommendations that were in the vast majority of cases accepted.  Some Arts and Sciences faculty members worked on a general template of criteria that departments could choose to follow.  Those that did so most commonly submitted evaluations that were very high indeed.  There remain strong back-door attempts to vitiate the consequences of a merit system, either by seeking guarantees that all faculty will get COLA, or by evaluating faculty so highly that any meaningful differentiation disappears.  I do not believe sufficient good will exists to resolve these issues this year.  I will write to the College faculty expressing my views regarding the merit plans, particularly the College merit plan. 

 

Basically there must be a process that ensures meaningful differentiation.  There are some simple ways this can occur.  First of all, I don't think a lot of steps are necessary.  I would have no problems with only two levels of additional merit, beyond sustained.  Together with the dean's fund, that is enough to have meaningful difference.  But these three levels—sustained, and two further merit levels—have to be populated by reasonable numbers.  One way to do this is to have rough expectations of the numbers that should populate each category.  Some faculty would object to this as establishing quotas. 

 

Another method is to determine the difference in salary for each category.  While that would depend on the increment, it could be fixed at $1,000 for each additional level.  If the increment weren't sufficient for two levels of additional merit, only one, or in a lean year, none would be used.  Again, the amount of money available would then dictate the number of awards.  This past year nine faculty members received only sustained merit.  The rest were all judged to be deserving of further merit.  This is simply unacceptable inflation. 

 

Many faculty members blame the previous dean for tensions, but let me assure you the situation will not improve this year without strong effort.  Dean Snyder met with me many times on this issue and my advice was normally to be more forceful in rejecting some recommendations of the chairs.  He convinced me to accept most of the chair's recommendations, believing that it would be more prudent to do so.  It is unlikely I would accept similar recommendations this year.  When I write to the College faculty, I hope you will at least share with your colleagues the seriousness of the issue and the importance to seek compromise and resolution before a new dean arrives.