Davis Faculty Association

The Davis Faculty Association conducted a survey asking faculty to rate their deans. The survey ran from May 17 until June 4 and we had 87 respondents during that time. In summary, a majority of the faculty were satisfied with the handling of merits and promotions by their Dean but were not satisfied with the academic leadership of their dean nor with their dean’s handling of resources and response to the current financial crisis. This survey will be brought to the attention of the Chancellor. Here are the specific questions we asked and the ratio of responses:

 

My dean handles merit and promotion actions fairly while establishing reasonable expectations of quality:

strongly agree	27%
somewhat agree	27%
neutral	8%
disagree	7%
strongly disagree	15%
do not know / not applicable	16%

 

 

 

 

My dean provides strong and effective academic leadership:

strongly agree	15%
somewhat agree	17%
neutral	17%
disagree	16%
strongly disagree	32%
do not know / not applicable	2%

 

 

 

 

My dean distributes resources in a fair and transparent manner:

strongly agree	17%
somewhat agree	16%
neutral	9%
disagree	26%
strongly disagree	23%
do not know / not applicable	8%

 

 

 

 

My dean is handling the current financial crisis appropriately with transparency and consultation with the faculty:

strongly agree	20%
somewhat agree	16%
neutral	8%
disagree	24%
strongly disagree	31%
do not know / not applicable	1%

 

 

 

 

My dean is accessible to the faculty:

strongly agree	34%
somewhat agree	26%
neutral	16%
disagree	9%
strongly disagree	14%
do not know / not applicable	1%

 

 

 

 

My dean is successful at raising external funding:

strongly agree	5%
somewhat agree	14%
neutral	21%
disagree	12%
strongly disagree	12%
do not know / not applicable	36%

 

 

 

 

The survey also invited respondents to provide any additional comments they wished. These comments are the opinions of the survey respondents. These responses are in no particular order and it should not be assumed that successive comments refer to the same individuals. The majority of respondents chose not to identify their Dean specifically but in many cases the comments can be associated with particular Colleges or Schools. Comments collected included:

1. Being Dean is a tough job, especially in the current economic crisis. It would be a very exceptional individual that could provide strong leadership and bring in external funding in today’s climate.

2. CBS needs and deserves a qualified Dean recruited via a nationwide search.

3. The current dean has given too much authority to a particular staff member (Asst. Dean Fulton), who seems to be treating the budget crisis as an opportunity to consolidate her own power rather than working with the faculty. Faculty input and requests for information have been routinely ignored, and it has taken a Freedom of Information Act request just for her to release basic budget info. It is not clear how one staff member has come to have the authority to maintain a death-grip on the budget numbers despite the concerted voice of the faculty. Worse, Asst. Dean Fulton seems determined to remove staff from the departments and move them to the Dean’s office, regardless of what the faculty think or how many times we object to it.

4. Dean and Associate Deans in my college are generally mediocre faculty with little prior leadership experience (e.g. haven’t been dept chairs). Their behavior is often defensive in nature. In the past we have had a much stronger cadre in our dean’s office. The recent budget crisis began and continues with no meaningful consultation with the rank and file faculty in the college. The staff reorganization committees have consisted of dean’s office faculty and staff, and dept MSOs, and one member of the college executive committee. However, we are told by the dean that these committees are representative of the faculty???? The Assistant Dean is permitted to run roughshod over all members of these committees and the dean of the college. The situation can only be described as surreal.

5. Dean Owens was recently reviewed by the Senate — at the insistence of divisional faculty. The report can be found at http://academicsenate.ucdavis.edu/documents/RA_2-11-10-FINAL-Meeting-Call.pdf. It begins on p. 42. It makes interesting reading.

6. He hasn’t been in the role very long, so I don’t really know the answers to some of these questions. As far as I can tell, his effects on our department and department chair have been good, clear, cooperative, etc. I have a very favorable overall impression of him, but it isn’t based on extensive information acquired since he took the job. (I knew him and highly approved of him well before he took this particular job.)

7. He is probably doing as well as can be expected given the command structure of the university.

8. I am referring here to Dean Osburn of the SVM. I am an emeritus, and find it shocking how the dean has corrupted the academic processes of the UC, and helped put the SVM in economic peril, more so than it would have been alone from the current economic downturn. M Thurmond

9. I believe that my dean has the mentality of an authoritarian corporate CEO and has lost touch with the essence of what a university should be. I am strongly disappointed by this deanship.

10. I do want to add the caveat to my comments that Bruce’s independence in his actions can arguably be held under question. He is expected to be replaced, and it is not clear the extent he feels comfortable to act against the desires of either the senior staff or of returning Dean Lavernia, who will have to live with his decisions. I do know that Bruce has always been very open and fair in all my personal dealings with him.

11. I have never known the present Dean, or his predecessor, to allow the mere best interests of the College and Departments to interfere with opting for politically expedient decisions that further their own career ambitions. The College and individual Departments have suffered terribly over the past 5-6 years, and faculty morale is rock-bottom. We need new College leadership that can pull us out of this morass, re-invigorate the College, and stop the disenfranchisement of faculty. It is high time to end the brazen self-interest and nepotism that have characterized the College leadership for so long.

12. In my opinion, Dean Burtis has been a disappointment.

13. In the Division of Social Sciences, the Dean does not appear to be an advocate for the entire division but rather for his own department and secondarily for those programs/faculty who fit a narrow (money-based) metric of “success.” The question you ask about the Dean’s ability to raise external funds is difficult to answer because he is a successful fundraiser for his own research center but not for the division as a whole.

14. Ken is competent, and dedicated, and he is doing his best to lead the college of Biological Sciences.

15. My Dean has largely outsourced the personnel process to an associate dean in order to concentrate on fund raising and other duties. More generally my Dean is responding to the current challenges with stock solutions, borrowed from other units on campus or around the system, and justifying them using the prevailing buzzwords. He has embarked on a reorganization of the administrative and computer support staff and can not show how such moves will improve service or save money. Now he wants to concentrate support on what he perceives as the strong departments in the college, basing his assessments on bad data and vague impressions of what departments do. He also has turned to the advice of a selected and secret group of faculty (“stars” of the division) who it seems have provided him with justifications for why their units deserve to be regarded as strong.

16. My Dean has vision and he knows where he wants to take the College. He is fair and as far as I know, transparent and straightforward. He is NOT so good at interpersonal communication, and here is where he has had some major gaffes. He also has never been able to understand what makes my department unique. He appears unable to appreciate the value of academic diversity in terms of the benefits of multiple departments. Rather, he has focused on large department size for no defensible reason. This has led to ample frustration and morale issues in the College (faculty and staff alike).

17. My Dean is in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. His first term was good to very good. His second term was OK; he picked battles that he won, but they were of little consequence to the health of the College. In his third term, he seems to be abandoning his first principles (which he defined as merits). Instead of quality, all that seems to matter is size and rather retrograde notions that were important to Agriculture in the past. Following Schneeman, the College got off to a good start with Van Alfen, but he seems intent on messing up his initial good start.

18. My Dean is unqualified for his post. His academic achievements are near the bottom, when compared to all of the faculty in the College of Biological Sciences. He has had only one research grant in his career, and it was remarkable that he was granted tenure. He was given the Dean’s position because he was the ‘low bidder’. He does not have the respect of his faculty.

19. not happy with current direction away from teaching and towards the business model of education

20. Our dean plays favorites, punishes those with whom he disagrees, and instead of supporting a stronger academic program, is eagerly on board with the current push to focus on money-making programs (which in our case, means diluting quality). He is interested only in his own career and salary. Most faculty in our unit are afraid to speak out or oppose him, others are being rewarded for supporting him.

21. Overall, very good dean.

22. She (the Dean) plays favoritism. Unequal treatment of faculty.

23. The budget problem is a biggie. Although the dean attempts to be transparent in his decision process, and sometimes overkills will information overload, the fact that he continues to harbor the idea for a need to cluster units just because his Adm. staff wants it done is clearly indicating that he is a weak dean.

24. The College is operating like a ship with no rudder. A staff person, who is unqualified in many aspects, yields more influence on where the college is going (or not going) than the Dean. Faculty consultation is an after thought.

25. The College of Biological urgently needs new leadership.

26. The Dean is too internally focused, has no idea how successful development programs are run, but seems not to know he has no idea suggesting that at upper levels they have no idea how successful development programs are run.

27. The Deans office in Engineering has suffered from cronyism. The College has not been well served by any of the past 3 occupants. The Dean and staff are guarded from the faculty by gatekeepers – access is limited. Consultation with Faculty is very limited and recent performance on budget and staff cuts has been inadequate. None of our recent Deans has shown any success in raising significant external support and funding, nor in raising the visibility of the College. The Chancellor should clean house by asking all current Deans to re-apply for their jobs – we have too many holdovers from the Vanderhoef days.

28. The lack of leadership and planning in the current crisis is unconscionable.

29. The question which may be most difficult to answer is “What has our Dean done for our College during his/her tenure.” The day-to-day operations seem to absorb most of the time and resources of the Dean’s office….perhaps not too surprising given the current financial situation (read disaster) and the fact that our current Dean’s position is described as “interim.” Still we seem to be gradually spiraling downward and have been for some time.

30. The recent exercise by the Dean’s Office to consolidate departments into so-called cluster groupings on the pretext of achieving fiscal savings in the current state economic crisis is without merit. Such groupings save funds ONLY in the long run after retirement of faculty, which account for the majority of costs in running a/any department. The fiscal crisis is NOW, not in the future. What — in fact — have any of the Deans at UCD implemented to reduce the immediate fiscal crisis impact on the College? I hear talk and sense hand-wringing but have not seen concrete decisions…and next year may be even worse. The only so-called savings of such clustering and consolidation in the current crisis is to realize short-term savings by eliminating staff and 2-3 MSOs. If the Dean was serious in cost-cutting there would be immediate reduction in the number of Associate Deans in his office…that would be a start and send a strong signal that the Dean was serious. Why must university-related cuts come primarily from hard-working staff and not from cutting administrative positions? This is the same problem with UC in general. Clustering departments has little to no intellectual value since faculty do not collaborate with other faculty merely because they are clustered under a so-called “unified” title — faculty collaborate with others of like intellectual interests not because they are clustered under artificial groupings. Further it is inappropriate for any Dean to propose an increased “skim” of an extra % from the gifts of alumni and friends-of-UCD — merely on the guise of the funds are needed to administer them. I know of too many alumni and friends-of-UCD who no longer will give to the campus for various research-related programs because of this inappropriate “tax” by the Dean’s Office. Enough said.

31. To be fair to the deans, this survey should have had a section where we could identify which dean is ours. I feel bad for the other deans, who may actually be doing a good job.

It is time to renew the DFA board. In accordance with DFA bylaws, a nominating committee has selected the following slate of candidates to fill DFA board positions as listed below with the following code (C – continuing; N – newly elected). Thank you very much to the nominating committee — Alan Jackman, Doug Nelson, and Gerhard Richter — for their work.

Chair: Robert Rucker (Nutrition) [C]
Vice Chair: Colin Cameron (Economics) [C]
Norma Landau (History) [C]
Lyn Lofland (Sociology) [C]
William Lucas (Plant Biology) [C]
Marjorie Longo (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) [N]
Richard Scalettar (Physics) [C]
Scott Shershow (English) [N]
Blake Stimson (Art History) [N]
Pieter Stroeve (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) [C]
Ex-Officio: Joe Kiskis (Physics)

All nominees have agreed to serve. Newly elected members serve a two-year term of office that will run until academic year 2012-2013. Further nominations may be made upon petition of 5% of the membership (15 members) in good standing as of April 1, 2010. Such petitions must be delivered on or before June 30, 2010 to the Executive Director at 1270 Farragut Circle, Davis, CA 95618. If no nominations are submitted, the slate shall be accepted as elected.

We very much want to thank the DFA’s long serving outgoing chair, Ian Kennedy, as well as long serving board member Kathryn Radke and board member Saul Schaefer for their past service on the DFA board.

It has become a tradition in recent years for the members of the DFA to get together over beers towards the end of each year to discuss the faculty issues of the day. This year we’re going to give Bistro 33 a try.

So consider yourself invited to join us Wednesday, May 26th, at 5pm, at Bistro 33 in downtown Davis. And do invite any of your colleagues you think may have an interest in the Davis Faculty Association. The first round of drinks is on us.

Please find the DFA survey of Deans at the following link:

http://ucdfa.org/surveys/?form=ppoe0r

We encourage you to send the above link to all your colleagues in your department, and to other colleagues who may not be DFA members. Our opinions will carry more weight if they are backed by a good response.

DFA chair Ian Kennedy asked that I forward on to the members of the DFA the following, a response by the Berkeley chapter Faculty Association to certain proposals made by the UC Commission on the Future, especially as seen in light of a separate call from Berkeley Law School dean Christopher Edley for a cyber-campus:

—————————–

Dear BFA Members,

Attached is a brief report on the picture of UC’s future that we believe emerges from a combination of the initial recommendations forwarded by the Working Groups of the UC Commission on the Future (UCOF, aka “the Gould Commission”) and the proposal for a Cyber Campus recently described by Law School Dean Edley. As you will see, we find this picture to be a gravely troubling one. Both faculty governance and the standards and integrity of a UC education are at stake.

We hope to convene a BFA symposium on these matters in early fall. In the meantime, please read the attached and urge your colleagues to do the same.

very best,

Professors Wendy Brown (Political Science), Suzanne Guerlac (French) and Gillian Hart (Geography)

Gould Commission Subcommittee
Berkeley Faculty Association

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The UC Commission on the Future and the Edley Proposal for a Cyber-Campus:  An Interim Report from the Berkeley Faculty Association
May 12, 2010

Abstract

A group of preliminary recommendations of the UC Commission on the Future Working Groups, viewed in combination with Dean Edley’s current plan for a “cyber campus,” threaten the quality of UC undergraduate education, the right and ability of Senate faculty to safeguard educational standards, and the existence of a public university in which excellent students are taught by excellent research faculty.

Overview

The UC Commission on the Future (UCOF, also known as the “Gould Commission”) is moving rapidly.  The Commission will soon disseminate a final round of recommendations for comments from faculty, staff, students and the public.  In the Fall, it will present prioritized final recommendations to the Regents.  These will include some added by UCOP which, according to a recent report to the Divisional Council, disparaged the initial Working Group recommendations as weak and insubstantial.  Accordingly, it is imperative that faculty be aware of the directions in which the Commission is moving and the future of UC is being conceived, even as the final set of recommendations will likely be more dramatic and draconian than those analyzed here.

In this brief report we outline the big picture that emerges from close scrutiny of the recommendations issued in March by the five UCOF Working Groups (Size & Shape; Education & Curriculum; Access & Affordability; Funding Strategies; and Research Strategies).  We also explain how the UCOF recommendations for streamlining undergraduate education link with plans for a cyber-campus (not part of the UCOF recommendations) recently outlined by law school dean Christopher Edley.

Certainly some positive and useful preliminary recommendations issued from the Working Groups.  We applaud especially the “Research Strategies” recommendations, which focused on sustaining a premier university research environment across the disciplines in the context of a constricted higher education economy.  We also support sound strategies for raising and using funds more effectively and for economizing and simplifying cumbersome operations.

Apart from plans for dramatically increasing student fees and enrollment of non-resident undergraduates, a cursory review of the individual recommendations may not suggest significant departures from trends already underway.  Taken together, however, the preliminary recommendations from the Gould Commission Working Groups foreshadow a disturbing future for University of California faculty and students. This is a future of profoundly degraded undergraduate education, eroded faculty governance and control over curriculum, research delinked from teaching, and constricted access to UC by California’s best high school students.

UC Commission on the Future Working Group Recommendations:  Lowlights

The Working Group recommendations for new revenue sources call for continued annual tuition increases and an increase in Non Resident students.  Recommendations for savings call for reduced time to degree and cheaper “instructional delivery systems”– lecture-taught or on-line courses.   Thus, future undergraduates will pay more for less. Measures for streamlining “throughput time to degree” include improving access to gateway courses and increasing transfers from community colleges (where UC can claim the degree while much of the cost of instruction is carried elsewhere).  Most significant, however, is the proposal to create a pathway and student incentives for a three-year undergraduate degree.  This would maximize use of high school AP and honors credits, summer term enrollment, and on-line courses, all of which effectively out-source an education once provided by UC faculty. But the three-year degree path would also require “streamlined major programs,” and “eliminate unnecessary course taking,” by “reducing excessive degree requirements.”   Here, the danger is not only degraded education but centralized academic policy that undermines faculty control of academic standards and curriculum as well as campus autonomy.  Three year degrees, of course are also incompatible with double majors, education abroad, and other rich elements of existing undergraduate offerings.   Currently, many students of the humanities carry a second major in the sciences or professional schools.  What does it mean to eliminate the prospects of humanistically educated engineers, doctors, lawyers and MBAs?

But compressed degrees are only one way in which the UCOF proposals threaten educational quality and faculty governance.  Another set of cost-reduction proposals aims to “make more effective use of faculty resources” through frequent evaluations of faculty workload (presumably to increase it) and more careful scrutiny of course releases (presumably to reduce them).  There are proposals for “changing faculty mix,” using non-Senate faculty to “backfill for instruction” and to separate teaching from research faculty.  In short, the current reliance of summer session on graduate student and other lecturers would become the model for cost-effective UC undergraduate instruction. (Dean Edley’s proposal for a “cyber-campus,” discussed below, relies almost exclusively on non-Senate instructors for “high touch contact” with students.) Here it is important to remember that the connections between teaching and research have always distinguished undergraduate education at a research university and are what place the University of California in league with the Ivies.

Finally, the UCOF proposals for streamlining undergraduate education call for “a systemwide academic planning framework that incorporates campus goals with the context of priorities identified for the university as a whole.”  Again, system-wide centralization of this sort threatens Senate control of curriculum and campus autonomy.  It is also out of step with recent trends to eliminate substantive academic features of UCOP, raising the fear that such centralized decision making would be detached from deliberations that are academically informed, and not simply contoured by revenue, cost and efficiency concerns.

In short, taking these proposals together, a picture emerges of undergraduates jammed through a mediocre education and ladder rank faculty substantially removed from both control over and involvement with undergraduate education.  Undergraduate programs of study would be narrowed and shortened.  More UC students would take fewer courses from a shrunken UC Senate faculty.  Education Abroad programs, double-majors and non-required courses would be devalued if not eliminated.  Faculty would have less say over breadth and major requirements and would face more academic standardization across the system.

These changes pave the way for the institution of an on-line degree program but, conversely, the policies and practices of the cyber model described below would surely seep into campus educational protocols. Finally, apart from being a picture of degraded undergraduate education and decreased faculty control, it is difficult to see how these plans are compatible with attracting large numbers of high-fee paying non-resident students or steep rises in tuition for California students.  They presume that the UC brand can outlive declining caliber of education and educational experience on offer.   For how long might this be true?

The Cyber Campus Proposal

The tendencies described above appear still more ominous when combined with the proposal for a UC “Cyber Campus” presented by UCB Law School Dean Edley On April 20, 2010, under the aegis of the Center for the Study of Higher Education.

Edley’s proposal for on-line instruction and degrees seeks to position the University of California as a leader in offering online education in what he termed “the quality sector.” Edley identified the project as one in which the revenues from the project would eventually subsidize on-campus teaching, as the cyber campus made available UC courses and UC degrees to students around the world. The UC brand, Edley claimed, would be secured by the high level of tuition and technical ownership of courses by Senate faculty.

Edley’s plan for developing the cyber campus involves a number of stages, beginning with the development of a few courses for on-campus students, through the establishment of sufficient lower division courses to offer an AA degree, followed by the production of courses comprising a BA degree along with courses to develop college readiness and, finally, the establishment of partnerships and courses for students around the world.   The first several stages – essentially those covered by Gould Commission recommendations – would not yield significant increases in revenue.  It is only when the UC brand can be sold in mass quantity that this project becomes a potential money maker for UC.  As Edley put it, “the big payoff is when you do it at scale.”

Cyber campus courses, Edley said, would be “owned” by Senate faculty, but have separate “instructors of record” along with “squadrons of GSIs” who will be the “frontline of online contact.”  Availability of GSIs (but one could also imagine poorly paid lecturers in this position) would constitute the only constraint on enrollment for these courses, a constraint that could easily lead to the hiring of barely or sub-qualified instructors in courses whose sole purpose is revenue generation.  In this new “three tiered” faculty, the lowest tier–instructors and GSI’s–would have actual contact with students on line.

Edley described Senate faculty “attached to the conservatism of greatness” as his main obstacle in developing and implementing this plan. Indeed, to date, all faculty Senate committees consulted have opposed the cyber campus. Edley, however, noted that he does not need the preponderance of faculty to buy in, only to get out of the way of “a coalition of the willing.”

Our concerns about the Edley plan are many. We do not reject the use of on-line tools in teaching, but a) it is extremely difficult to develop and expensive to develop excellent on-line university courses and b) such courses are inappropriate for many subjects and types of learning.  Thus, it is one thing to put a handful of courses on-line and quite another to sell UC undergraduate degrees this way. Since this project is wholly driven by entrepreneurial concerns, we worry that the UC brand alone will carry the burden of excellence, at least until it is too degraded to do so.  This danger is intensified by the fact that since cyber-students need meet only the bare minimum of UC admissions thresholds, and will not be exposed to any of the academic-intellectual benefits of university culture, course standards will almost certainly need to be lowered to meet the skills and capabilities of the paying clientele.  We are concerned as well that casting Senate faculty as an obstacle suggests a plan for an end-run around the Senate, a move that would further depress the quality of the enterprise and further undermine Senate oversight of the academic standards and content for a UC education. Of course, it is also likely that the whole thing will be a boondoggle: efforts at producing high-quality on-line liberal arts education have thus far met with dismal financial and educational failure.

Conclusion

Above all, we are concerned that the Cyber Campus plan in tandem with the UCOF recommendations discussed above portends a future of severely degraded undergraduate education, eroded faculty governance and a thorough gutting of the California Master Plan.   From the student side, the picture is one of narrow technical training replacing a broad and deep university education provided by a first class research faculty. From the faculty side, the picture is one of Senate and non-Senate faculty alike demoted to a relatively powerless workforce in a large entrepreneurial operation where the bottom line drives every educational policy and the University of California is reduced to a brand whose quality steadily declines even as its price steadily rises.

We fear that this future is extremely close.  We urge faculty with a different vision for UC’s future to speak up before it is too late.

Wendy Brown
Suzanne Guerlac
Gillian Hart

For the Berkeley Faculty Association

May 10, 2010