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Where
we are going: Education for the 21st Century |
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| Learning
for a Lifetime | The Learning Experience
| General Education | Internationalizing the Campus | Complete Learning Environment | Liberal Arts/Professional Programs | Graduate Education | Distance Education |
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| Complete
Learning Environment As I hinted in my comments on the Learning Experience, I think our commitment to the complete learning environment is, absolutely, right on. Students learn so much in the classroom and outside. I did notice, in my conversations, some areas of concern. Faculty may not always fully appreciate how much of a student’s learning takes place through experiences apart from formal instruction. And, how much a student’s academic success depends upon critical student support services beginning with pre-college programming through effective recruitment, financial aid, admission processes, on to academic support, student support and student-life programming services, and through to career counseling. My sessions with those in student affairs helped remind me of the critical role these professionals play in the lives of our students. I did pick up some indications of “zero-sum” or “us-against-them” thinking. These were rare, and the most obvious manifestation came in the debates surrounding where the too meager learning experience resources should be allocated. In various meetings, I did share my view that attention to the complete learning environment is critical. I also shared my interpretation of various fiscal analyses: that we are underfunded as an institution — and that applies to all areas — and that we are somewhat disproportionately underfunded in the instructional area. From this, I drew the conclusion that resource additions (or reductions) should not be across the board, and that position guided us as we prepare for the budget reductions associated with the second year of the biennium. Such a focus — where does the money go — may tend to repeat the “us-versus-them” thinking and misses the more important point: We cannot have strong academic programs without strong academic and student-support services. To this I will add the thought that resource allocations need to be based not on “fairness” considerations alone when comparing different groups but on “results,” on the quality of learning our students attain, preferably through experiences integrating the complete learning environment. We also tend to overlook the importance of facilities, administrative services, and business operations in enabling the academic success of our programs. In the course of my meetings, I was impressed with the negative effects of past efforts to protect direct academic program delivery by squeezing ever more out of our administrative and business support services. I heard this from directors at the top. I heard this from custodians just as clearly. So, resources are stretched across the University. Toward the end of this report, I will take up strategies for addressing our resource needs. Here, I do want to note the importance of continuing to recognize our strong interdependencies. In this regard, several groups discussed the need to build bridges between the faculty, the administrative staff, and classified colleagues. There are important governance issues to consider. Today, we run parallel governance structures. That creates problems for the University — and the Chancellor — when we want to engage the campus in considering subjects that require integrated consideration by faculty and staff. There is a tendency to then go outside the normal governance processes. We can all be pleased, I think, that various governance bodies are seeking ways to more fully integrate their efforts. TOP OF PAGE Liberal Arts/Professional Programs I had the pleasure of meeting with faculty in both the traditional areas of the liberal arts and sciences and those contributing in areas such as social work, business, education, and nursing. For simplicity in this document, I will refer to these latter areas as “professional programs.” By so doing, I do not mean to imply that the liberal arts are “unprofessional programs.” Far from it. What I do intend to imply is that, unlike the liberal arts, some of our programs must prepare students in response to the standards established by professions, usually expressed through “special” or “professional” accreditation requirements. The distinction is significant. Arts and sciences programs look nationally but within their disciplines when it comes to standards for such matters as curriculum, scholarship and other creative activity, student evaluation, and faculty evaluation. Professional programs look to external groups of practioners for important matters regarding curricula and what constitutes scholarly or other disciplinary engagement. Tensions result. Faculty in professional programs and those in the arts and sciences do not share all the same components of an academic culture. Sometimes, the tensions can become dysfunctional as colleagues treat each other with lack of respect, impose standards that do not fit within the culture of the other, and, basically, fail to fully appreciate the interdependencies of our programs. Having talked with all faculty on our campus, I am very pleased to report that UWGB does not show such a debilitating split. There are some of the usual tensions. Some people in the professions believe that faculty in arts and sciences do not appropriately value or fully appreciate their approaches and their contributions to the University. They are probably right. That would only mean that we are like most other universities. Some faculty in arts and sciences have expressed concern about whether the heavy enrollments in the professions might skew the academic commitments, traditional strengths, and character of UWGB. That, too, is a legitimate subject for us, as a community, to discuss, and I will shortly take up that subject. What I have sensed, and this is critical to our continuing success, is that, in the end, faculty outside of a program are willing to defer to the wisdom of the faculty in the involved area to set standards within their own area for such subjects as curricula, teaching, scholarship, and service. There is not carte blanche nor should there be. We believe, as I think we must, that we attract and retain the strongest possible faculty in each area and then depend largely upon them to determine their curricula and to evaluate the achievements of their students and their colleagues. Collegiality is an essential condition for strong universities: collegiality not as “friendliness” but as “trustfulness” in the academic integrity, commitments, and principles of those in disparate fields. You may take this for granted but it is not always so at universities of our size, and we should count this as a strength. In several meetings, people raised the concern about whether the professional programs fit within an institution that emphasized interdisciplinarity. Significantly, I think, these conversations occurred at meetings with faculty in professional programs, expressing concerns about how their arts and sciences colleagues might characterize them, and the question did not arise in my meetings with arts and sciences faculty. This does not seem to be a “hot button” issue for arts and sciences faculty. I can understand why. As a traditional arts and sciences faculty member myself, I cannot think of fields that more closely approach “practical problem solving” through multiple perspectives than, say, education or nursing or business or social work. Interdisciplinary understanding achieves insights that result from a synthesis of perspectives, understandings that would not be possible by simply “adding up” the perspectives of the contributing discipline. Something new results. That is what happens in the professions as they draw heavily upon arts and sciences to create a unique synthesis — a profession. And, they certainly are engaged in practical problem solving. To the extent that there may be concerns about “the fit” of professional programs with an institution dedicated to interdisciplinarity, I suspect the concern rests on grounds other than the “interdisciplinarity” of the professions. I will suggest two. I did hear some people express concern that, while the core of a university such as ours must be in the liberal arts and sciences, our largest enrollments are in Business and Education. Further, if one looks at long-term institutional growth through academic program additions and expansions, then those programs will be in areas of greatest regional need and strongest student demand. Could a resulting “vocational” orientation swamp core programs and longtime institutional commitments? Additionally, the concern about “the fit” of professional programs within the UWGB culture may not have so much to do with interdisciplinarity per se as with the question of what is distinctively “Green Bay” about our programs in the professional areas. Interdisciplinarity distinguishes UWGB. How do we maintain distinctiveness if we have professional programs, interdisciplinary though they in theory may be, that look like professional programs at most other campuses? During our discussions of such topics, I shared several thoughts. First, I accept the general premise that our future academic program development will be in response to regional needs and student interest. The days when higher education could act the oligopolist and direct students to particular majors simply no longer exist if, indeed, they ever really did. We compete for students. If we elect to not offer a given program, that does not mean students will redirect their attention to another of our programs; rather, they will redirect their attention to another institution. This does not mean, by the way, that we must respond mindlessly to a marketplace. Wise competitors figure out what will be demanded before the customer herself knows what she will need and isn’t doing precisely that for our students one of our highest academic responsibilities? |
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I
also believe strongly in the interdependencies between the arts and sciences on
the one hand and the professional programs on the other. Strong professional programs
require strong programs in the arts and sciences. We all take that for granted.
Perhaps not as frequently appreciated is the fact that strong arts and sciences
programs require strong professional programs. Growth in professional program
enrollments allow for expansion of arts and sciences programs. This is because
arts and sciences still provide the core courses. But, there is another reason.
As a political science professor, I quickly realized that the biggest recruiter
for our poli sci major was the business program and, after that, the engineering
programs: Students would start in business (or engineering), find that the required
political science courses really captivated them, and, having seen the light (or
having developed a dislike for calculus), change their majors. As a political
science faculty member, I had a selfish interest in there being professional programs
that would attract strong students to that university. One conclusion logically follows, though, if the interdependencies between academic programs are to work to the mutual benefit of all programs: Growth or program addition must be planned and funded considering the impact of enrollments across the campus. Finally, on this subject, colleagues shared with me the view that our professional programs can maintain a degree of distinctiveness commensurate with our special academic culture by offering a degree of interdisciplinarity beyond that found in generic professional programs. It is the idea, again, of “learning for a lifetime.” UWGB’s programs are professionally accredited and prepare students for their first jobs. But, because of the thoughtful inclusion of our interdisciplinary, practical problem-solving components, we also prepare these professionals to not only handle new careers but to be the leaders in inventing careers we do not even know about today. This strikes me as an outstanding aspiration. We must, within the guidelines for professional accreditation, continue to find creative ways to assure distinctively UWGB professional programs. TOP OF PAGE Graduate Education Occasionally, colleagues did raise the question of the future of graduate programs at UWGB, sometimes expressing support for our emphasis on undergraduate programs, sometimes expressing concern that an overemphasis on undergraduate programs masks the strong and valuable graduate programs that we do offer, and, sometimes, simply wanting to know “where I stood.” I typically would share the thoughts that follow. We are fortunate that, unlike some universities that went heavily into graduate programs, we have not had to figure out how to maintain expensive graduate programs by drawing resources away from undergraduate offerings. I have seen those dynamics: a university with extensive graduate commitments that proved to be an albatross once increasing competition — and legislative pressure — made it more and more difficult to run graduate programs on the backs of undergraduate programs. We need not do so. We will not do so. That does not mean, in my mind, that we need be strictly an undergraduate campus. Fact is, most of our enrollments will continue to be at the undergraduate level. But, first and foremost, we must be a university responding to the needs of our students and our region. That is the consideration that will shape our blend of undergraduate and graduate programs. We will develop programs — graduate and baccalaureate — where there is a need, where the programs are consistent with our mission, where we can mount quality programs without diluting other offerings, and where we are meeting the needs of students and the region. As we have done in the past and, increasingly in the future, we will develop programs in partnership with other entities, and we should be thinking broadly and creatively about collaborative opportunities. TOP OF PAGE Distance Education This topic is significant, perhaps, because of what was not heard, because of the absence of the dog barking. Certainly, in meetings with units supporting or actively engaged in distance education (Nursing) or in supporting distance education (Outreach, Information Services, Library) or in needing distance education (community groups), we talked about the subject. However, distance education was not much on the minds of campus academic and student support units. I do not know if this is because of an active aversion to such involvement or if this is because we have not really begun the sorts of debates and discussions that many other campuses have undertaken as demand for education at a distance has sky rocketed. I suspect it is more the latter. We have, in the recent past, focused upon building up the residential aspect of our mission and, indeed, may have been seeking to shed the “commuter campus” image (and reality) of earlier days. I did reach the conclusion that it is time for the campus to seriously discuss the ways in which education at a distance might fit within UWGB’s plans. Too many campuses are simply embracing distance education, often with unrealistic dollar signs in view and without thinking through how distance education fits within and supports the mission of the university. We have not made that mistake. Our involvement in distance education has been limited and targeted. While one can embrace distance education without careful, strategic thinking, one can also ignore the potentials in distance education through a similar lack of careful analysis. We need to do the careful analysis — of distance education, of our mission, and of the possible fit between the two. Part of the discussion we need to have concerns our participation as a “consumer” as well as a provider. Are there areas where we can better employ our areas of strength — and allow us to concentrate our resources in maintaining the quality of those areas of strength — by bringing in, through distance-education mechanisms, essential or enriching curricula that we are not prepared to provide? Environmental engineering (until recently usually called “civil engineering”) comes to mind as an illustration: We have important strengths here, and it can be a valuable major for students in our region. But, do we want to develop the expensive ABET accredited engineering curricula that would be a part of such a program or work with, for example, UW-Milwaukee for such purposes? I happen to believe that there is a role for distance education in our future. It has to do with serving audiences traditionally not well served by higher education. These non-traditional students are often place-bound or time-bound. Experiences from across the country document that they out-perform residential students and can be provided with high-quality educational experiences. We are primarily a residential campus, now, and will remain so. But, if we are serious about reaching out to serve our region, we will need to figure out how selected programs can be provided to where people are in their lives and in our region. This means extending degree programs, not merely courses. It means doing so in partnerships because it would be foolish for us to try to duplicate what others have already developed. And, it means being off our campus making specific degree programs available through face-to-face teaching by faculty at remote sites. In my “educating the chancellor” sessions throughout our region, I did find strong interest in our accepting such a commitment, and I found people who were excited about partnering with us to better serve Northeast Wisconsin. We have to decide if we want to move forward in this area. I have lots of ideas to add to such a discussion. But, first, we need to get the discussion going. |
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| TOP OF NEXT COLUMN | TOP OF PAGE | |||
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| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | INTRODUCTION | THEMES | WHERE WE HAVE BEEN | FOUNDATIONS | ||||
| WHERE WE ARE GOING: Engagement | Excellence Across the Board | Education for the 21st Century | ||||
| GETTING THERE | CONCLUSIONS | CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION | SUMMARY | APPENDIX | ||||
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| Office
of the Chancellor, David A Cofrin Library, Suite 810, University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 Phone: 920-465-2207 E-mail: shepardb@uwgb.edu Comments to: Chancellor's Web Manager Revised: 7/31/06 |