[Vision2020] Spokesman Review story on Yardley report

[cynthia nichols]

It also criticizes the faculty for failing to galvanize after the  
financial crisis and leaving the recovery to administrators,

Hmmmmmm--let's see, who CAUSED the financial crisis???? Who should be  
responsible for the recovery?

cynthia

On Jan 5, 2008, at 10:28 AM, Carl Westberg wrote:

> UI professors are behind, says research group
>
> Shawn Vestal
> Staff writer
> January 5, 2008
> Say the words “culture of Moscow” to anyone familiar with the  
> northern Idaho college town, and a certain stereotype of artsy  
> granolians is likely to emerge.
> But when a team of consultants hired by the University of Idaho use  
> the term, they have something different in mind – an inflexible,  
> unproductive faculty they say is hindering the UI’s efforts to  
> overcome the financial crisis of recent years.
> The report on the UI’s graduate programs, prepared by the Yardley  
> Research Group, says the school’s professors cling to longtime  
> divisions and hostilities, are committed to an outmoded idea of the  
> university’s mission, and see themselves as overworked and under  
> siege, when in fact they lag behind others in producing research and  
> publishing scholarship. The report concludes that the “destructive”  
> members of the faculty should be offered early retirement.
> “We do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the current  
> faculty culture is one of the factors causing a brain drain away  
> from both the University and the state,” the report says.
> Faculty leaders say the report gets the culture of Moscow wrong, and  
> is cast in such a nasty tone that it’s likely to impede change  
> rather than inspire it. Professors have also challenged some of the  
> data used to quantify and compare faculty productivity.
> “I am disappointed in the tone of the document, which comes across  
> as both arrogant and condescending,” said Douglas Adams, an English  
> professor for 36 years and an officer on the Faculty Council.
> Adams said the report could make it more difficult to engage  
> professors in developing the very improvements the report suggests.  
> “People will have their backs up in ways that probably could have  
> been avoided,” he said.
> Dale Graden, a history professor and former president of the Faculty  
> Council, said the report missed the mark.
> “To me, it almost verges on being disgraceful, some of the comments  
> they made about faculty culture,” he told the Lewiston Morning  
> Tribune. “That’s a joke. That’s a complete farce. The people I know  
> work from morning to night, seven days a week.”
> Provost Doug Baker, who commissioned the report along with UI  
> President Tim White, said he hopes it will prompt further  
> improvements that expand on efforts already in place. The past  
> couple of years have seen the UI expand its faculty hiring, improve  
> its fiscal health, win praise from accreditors and begin developing  
> research initiatives across several disciplines, he said.
> He acknowledged that the report is “biting at times,” but said many  
> of the criticisms of faculty attitudes are based on a limited sample  
> taken about a year and a half ago.
> “We wanted to hold up a mirror and look at ourselves, at where we’ve  
> been and where we’re going,” he said. “We’re rebuilding the  
> institution.”
> Research vs. teaching
> Commissioned last year by the UI, the $103,000 report’s first draft  
> concludes that the UI is lagging behind its peers nationally in  
> research and graduate programs. The report blames that primarily on  
> a failure to restructure and refocus the university after financial  
> mismanagement of its efforts to expand into Boise helped created a  
> budget deficit of $20 million in 2003.
> The university’s reaction to the financial crisis – and subsequent  
> loss of roughly 200 professors and sinking enrollments – underlies  
> much of the report.
> “The best response to the financial crisis would have been strategic  
> reduction and elimination and corresponding marshalling of resources  
> to build existing strength,” the report says. “Instead, the  
> University continued to do everything it once did, with the  
> consequence that most of what it is doing is not nationally  
> competitive.”
> The report recommends that the UI shift resources toward research  
> and graduate programs that attract significant funding, and away  
> from “financially unproductive” academic programs. It says the UI  
> should work to improve research productivity and recruit better  
> graduate students, and it says the school’s professors have a “very  
> low” rate of publishing scholarly research.
> It also suggests that tenure-track faculty should spend less time  
> teaching undergraduate classes, and that the UI should turn over  
> more of those duties to non-tenured faculty such as adjunct  
> instructors.
> Faculty Council Chairman Don Crowley said that he and other  
> professors have concerns that the report makes graduate and research  
> programs such a singular priority.
> “They were asked to look at graduate programs so in a sense they  
> became advocates of graduate programs,” he said. “I, at least, don’t  
> want to sacrifice the undergraduate part of the program to enhance  
> graduate programs.”
> The report’s authors call this a “mistaken concept” of the  
> university’s core mission, which “has caused a major research  
> university and land-grant college to function, in many critical  
> respects, as a liberal arts college.”
> Baker, the provost, said that the report should spur the UI to  
> consider whether it’s balancing the needs of undergraduate and  
> graduate programs, but that undergraduate education will still be an  
> important mission for tenured faculty.
> He noted that one of the consistent themes in the report is a need  
> for research centers that combine disciplines, and he said the UI  
> already has several such efforts under way, such as its  
> interdisciplinary effort on water issues in the West.
> “We’re a different university than we were a few years ago,” he said.
> ‘We try and do everything’
> The report analyzes the graduate programs at each college in the UI,  
> and concludes that the university is stretched too thin, attempting  
> to offer programs in many subspecialities instead of focusing on key  
> areas.
> Adams, the longtime English professor, and others said they agree  
> with that part of the analysis.
> “The university has needed to have a really in-depth and important  
> discussion about its endeavors in graduate education for at least 20  
> years,” he said. “We try and do everything. We just don’t have the  
> resources. No one has the resources to do everything.”
> The 435-page report includes a college-by-college breakdown of  
> graduate programs and research efforts, comparing the UI to other  
> colleges nationally. The comparisons show that most UI programs  
> don’t offer competitive stipends to attract grad students, and that  
> the UI faculty has tended to bring in less grant funding than peers  
> at other schools.
> Some professors challenge the figures used in those comparison,  
> while acknowledging that budget cuts have increased undergrad  
> teaching loads.
> Despite the range and depth of the report, though, it is the  
> authors’ focus on “faculty culture” that is likely to attract the  
> most discussion.
> The report says that the “culture of Moscow” is provincial, and that  
> professors lack an understanding of national standing in their  
> fields. Hiring is often based on considerations such as whether a  
> candidate fits into the community and not his or her research, the  
> report says, and the UI has a widespread habit of hiring and  
> promoting from within rather than conducting national searches.
> It also criticizes the faculty for failing to galvanize after the  
> financial crisis and leaving the recovery to administrators, and  
> portrays a widespread sense of entitlement and lack of  
> accountability. Baker said a final version of the report will be  
> finished after accepting comments from people around the university,  
> and that then discussions will begin around campus about ways to  
> respond to its suggestions. The Faculty Union is planning to meet  
> later this month to discuss the report, Crowley said.
> “I’m sure it will be a topic of a lot of conversation when faculty  
> return next week,” he said.
> Contact Shawn Vestal at (509) 459-5431 or by e-mail at shawnv at spokesman.com 
> .
>
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