The 1984 College Bylaws mandated that the Dean would call for two meetings of college faculty each semester. Dean Gerald Donovan held bi-semester meetings in Woodward Hall. Most meetings afforded ample opportunities for comment and decision-making on issues of general concern. There were occasional debates, at times lively. Meetings were participatory, fostering a sense of community; disparate viewpoints were shared and respected, including viewpoints contrary to those of the administration.
College meetings were less regular under Deans Miller and Leinen during the 1990's. An annual spring meeting was largely given over to an awards ceremony, recognizing teacher, researcher, outreacher, and staff person of the year, etc. Dean Miller assemmbled his faculty for substantive questions of curricular direction and to discuss university budget cuts, an unfortunately recurrent theme. Moving the meetings into the library and offering refreshments encouraged attendance.
Dean Leinen continued the annual awards tradition. But Leinen was also Dean of Oceanography and Vice Provost for Marine and Environment, and she introduced a full new agenda, refocusing and renaming the College, and launching the Coastal Institute and Environmental Biotechnology initiatives. Under Dean Leinen, meetings were highly participatory and theme-driven. Considerable effort was spent, for example, on grass-roots involvement to derive an encompassing mission statement for the new College of the Environment and Life Sciences. Similarly, a meeting of 50 university-wide biologists was called to outline and endorse the Environmental Biotechnology Initiative on another occasion. At these meetings, the air was open and low key, and issues were resolved decisively and without fanfare. All viewpoints were welcome. The Environmental Biotechnology Initiative, for example, was endorsed through discussion leading to consensus, but without a formal vote or even a session-ending cheer.
Except for annual awards ceremonies—institutionalized through standing awards committees—there were essentially no College meetings of substance following Leinen's departure in 1999. Other than the awards meeting, the 18 months under interim Dean Wright (through June 2000), saw no other college gatherings. (A newly instituted annual gathering of Coastal Fellows poster exhibitions was largely ceremonial, focused on presenting student projects to the President and Provost), but this was never a forum for college-wide discussion).
Although the Seemann administration began with an announcement that decision-making would be based on strategic planning, there were no general college meetings to discuss anything relating to such a plan. After departments submitted individual plans by December 2000, no further mention has been made of college-wide planning, and certainly no college-wide discussions of strategic planning have been scheduled to date. Despite a recent pronouncement at an interview at North Carolina State University praising the essential role of "shared vision," Dean Seemann has never been known in Rhode Island as an administrator who practices such a view, and certainly there have been no college-wide meetings to discuss strategic planning, vision, or mission.
In 2003, the Dean informed the Department of Community Planning of plans for its elimination. The Department asked to leave and requested a college meeting to approve this. After both the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and the President informed the Dean that he must do this, the Dean scheduled the meeting. (It was scheduled for early November, postponed twice, and held at 4:00 on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.) The meeting agenda did not mention the Community Planning resolution (which may have been relegated to "New Business," the last of seven items on the agenda). After being reminded that the resolution had been passed by the College's Curricular Affairs Committee, a standing committee of the college, the Curriculum Committee report and the Community Planning resolution were properly placed second on the agenda. The resolution generated no discussion of reasons for the leave, and no talk of tradition, mission, or other factors that might have been expected in the face of such an extraordinary request. Only two questions came from the floor: One asked whether the Department would be allowed to retain its space in Rodman Hall, and the other asked whether it would be allowed to retain its 1.5 graduate assistantships or operating budget, and it was agreed that these details would be left to university administration. The motion passed, without further comment, unanimously.
The remainder of the November 2004 meeting included a report by Associate Dean Richard Rhodes, who indicated that nearly 30% of the external grants over the previous 10 years had been awarded in the last 3 years of that period. Rhode's presentation revealed a $3 million (30%) decline in external funding over the first two years of the new administration but offered no comment and there was no discussion (curious only in light of an administrative pronouncement that it would double external funds during its first 5 years). Cathy Curtin Miller reported on finances, indicating that federal and institutional funds had remained flat (adjusted for inflation) in several years and that she was in charge of a $24 million budget. Her report included no materials on cost of administration, or of changes in those cost under the new administration. The meeting ended with the assignment of three members of the college Executive Committee and Associate Dean Nixon to a committee charged with updating the College's 1984 bylaws. As he dismissed the audience, the Dean remarked that he had always been a champion of the kind of open dialog that the meeting had produced and that he found the discussion gratifying.
The second meeting of the College took place in April 2004. Its purpose was to hear the report of the Bylaws committee. The committee returned a minimized version of the 1984 bylaws that eliminated standing committees on research and outreach, dropped mention of the Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension, and eliminated both the College parliamentarian and even reference to Sturge's Rules. Dr. Gold defended the latter and held forth that parliamentary maneuvering was an unnecessary source of annoying delay by faculty and that parliamentary procedure should be done away with. The meeting ended as faculty voted to adopt the new bylaws, in effect significantly suppressing shared governance, in the process rejecting or at least significantly clouding the future of parliamentary procedure in the College.
The third meeting of the College was held in November 2004. The Dean thanked all for support of the successful biotechnolgy building bond passage. Associate Dean Rhodes clarified that the next step in the building process would be to finish architectural work and to start construction, the whole edifice to be ready for occupation in 3 years. It was then moved to accept the Department of Biological Sciences into the College, following a vote two days earlier by the College of Arts and Sciences to allow the department to leave. The motion was introduced with three stipulations, including a call for application of uniform priniciples for resource allocations among all departments in the college, and calls for reviews of course and curricular congruencies, compatibilities with the mission of the College, elimination of duplications, and creation of cross-listings. Drs. Nelson and Swallow expressed shock and anger over the stipulations, which they indicated were inappropriate and unfriendly (perhaps it is their view that discussions of resources associated with a department are only appropriate for departments about to leave the college). Dr. Hepner said that his department would reconsider his application for admission if the stipulations passed. Dr. Casagrande questioned terms of "the deal" promised to BioScience, which he indicated he believed included a promise of full retention of the 29 teaching assistantships by the department (several times the number of assistantships in CELS departments), access to AES funds, and a promise of additional support for teaching in the form of new assignments of CELS faculty to teach BioSci courses. (Hepner may have further aggravated the situation by claiming that no Bioscience faculty member was forced to teach any course they did not want to teach.) The offering of CELS faculty to teach had been widely rumored, and was allegedly repeated in the College Executive Council meeting the previous week: in the context of responding to an indication by Dr. Hepner that 70% of the classroom contacts experienced by bioscience students were with per course instructors (i.e., the 29 graduate assistants), Associate Dean Nixon had indicated CELS would be able to help the department by using its "excess teaching capacity." Rumors that the Dean had promised that CELS faculty would be used to alleviate teaching burdens in Bioscience had been circulating for over a year, in part fed by Dr. Hepner's remarks to CELS faculty who were told that he (Hepner) looked forward to having CELS faculty teaching introductory courses in the near future. Dr. Hepner and Associate Dean Nixon denied that there had been any "deal." The Dean then rose to explain that in fact the terms of the deal were essentially those outlined by Casagrande, and that the terms were necessary to accomplish what "you have been trying to do for over 15 years." Associate Dean Nixon then declared that no CELS faculty would be used to teach Bioscience courses, and that what he had meant was that there existed excess capacity in under-enrolled courses taught by CELS faculty that could be perhaps filled by Bioscience students. A substitute motion to welcome the department on a fair and equal footing was then passed unanimously. Associate Dean Nixon ended the meeting by commenting on how much he enjoyed the opportunity for free dialog with the faculty.
Comment: What is becoming most apparent in CELS is that faculty and administration are jointly not adequately conscientious about the importance of basing key decisions on openly derived sets of principles. Indeed, it appears that there is a definite lack of principle-centered leadership throughout the College, which may be a symptom of unprincipled leadership elsewhere in the University.
In 1992, the Life and Environmental Sciences Task Force, organized by Provost Gitlitz and chaired by Graduate School Dean Morrison, explored structural and organizational relationships among the biological and environmental sciences. At that time, it was concluded that the dominant organizational principle at URI was that the College of Arts and Sciences was responsible for general education of undergraduates, including education in the natural science fields of biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. The distinctions were adamantly defended, most strongly within the Zoology Department, where Professor Hepner and several colleagues concluded that the differences in philosophy and outlook between biologists in his department and those in Resource Development were analogous to the differences between "portrait painters" and "house painters." The discussions at that time actively engaged faculty in face to face debates and in open forums sponsored by the Task Force. The intense rancor and strong residual ill will that resulted from this exercise essentially stifled all interest in the issue among most faculty until the present time.
It is unclear whether there was an administrative interest in reorganization during the time since 1992. That is, to what was the Dean referring in alleging that merging with biological sciences was "something you have been trying to do for 15 years"? Certainly, there is no reason to believe that the Dean of Arts and Sciences saw any particular advantage to loosing Biology. In May 2003, the Provost, on the other hand, cited fears of perceptions of a divided biology faculty as a threat to a proposed biotechnology building bond issue, as she ordered a review of the position of biological sciences within the University. {The bond was approved by both the legislature and the voters without a word of discussion of this particular issue.} Even had the Provost's fear been sound, it is difficult to discern a useful principle to be used to guide future structural realignments in University organization (to move a department every time there is a fear that someone outside of the University might not understand or agree with our organization is not a management strategy based on principle).
No one has articulated a set of principles behind the drive to move biological sciences to CELS. The Dean cited the usual platitudes about removing institutional barriers to collaboration, but in fact there has never been any evidence presented that such barriers existed, and there is considerable skepticism about the whether the new merger will now precipitate a wealth of new collaborations. On the other hand, the division of CELS faculty among several buildings has had a notable detrimental effect on interactions among faculty, yet presumably the new building will include homes for some members of existing departments, but not others; where is there a principle here?.
If the organizational principle is no longer that a core of natural sciences exist in the College of Arts and Sciences that is to be responsible for general education, then nothing prevents similar migration of the remaining natural sciences outward from Arts and Sciences. The suggestion that restructuring was based on an expectation of new working relations suggests that the principle could be that we organize according to perceptions of working relations, existing or imagined. This at least underlies the Dean's insistence that his Departments of Marine Affairs and Resource Economics should remain part of his proposed College of Science because of established working relations with other units of the College (an assertion that bears further examination). This is a highly subjective and self-serving perspective, however, with little to recommend it as a basis for structural organization.
It is hard to visualize a viable organizational structure that is based on such intangible and ephemeral relations. Rather, if the "general education home" principle is being abandoned (without the appropriate University-wide discussion, for this is a decision that affects all parts of the institution), one must presume that it would be replaced by some other discernable principle, perhaps one based on natural intellectual affinities among academic units. Were this the active principle, why has the Provost not insisted on a college of natural sciences (including CELS departments NRS, FAVS, PLS, and GEO, plus Arts and Science departments BioScience, Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics (and possibly Computer Science and Statistics, which could also be viewed as engineering units), a college of social sciences (including CELS departments MAR, ENRE, and FSN, Arts and Sciences Departments Psychology and Sociology), and most of HHS), and a college of arts and letters?
Will a similar lack of principle-based organization eventually undermine the new biotechnology building? That is, is lack of principle-centered management undermining the existence of current academic units that are engaged in applied organismal or ecosystem-oriented programs? The biotechnology building was sold to the legislature and the public as a economic development investment. Still, the mission and vision for the building remains remarkably vague, as there has been no effort to hear or otherwise engage in a discussion leading to a "shared vision" of the purposes of this building (published claims for the value of the building as an economic development investment, etc., do not constitute a principle-centered shared vision). Is it to become a new home for a new cohort of faculty engaged in biopharmaceutical or biomedical research? What would then differentiate the building from Brown's more ambitious life sciences building (under construction currently) or genomics program (under a $23,000,000 renovation currently)? How will centers for commercialization be promoted, and what will attract existing companies to enter the building for collaborations? Is the building a center for nursery industries, biotech start-ups? What justifies inclusion of an entire unit of non-biotechnologists in the building, as distinct from other departments engaged in applied biology (e.g., Animal Science, Plant Science), or is there an anticipated advantage to fracturing these departments, providing new-building homes for some faculty but not for most? Failure to make "cogent arguments" for the building nearly prevented it from making the bond list in July (only a last minute intervention by President Carothers and Vice President Weygand, who pleaded with Speaker Fox to have the item added to the bond list, saved the building from oblivion in 2004). The administration will not identify potential occupants to the building (other than the entire biological science department, none of whom are engaged in commercializing biotechnology at present), and has yet to articulate principles upon which such assignments are to be made. If the building is to open in 3 years with capacity to support 35 faculty, then some 12 to 20 new faculty positions and at least as many permanent staff positions will have to be filled. To date, however, the University has indicated (in its EPSCOR proposal) that it intends only two senior level biotechnology hires and one junior level hire over the next 3 years (Brown plans for 6 senior and 4 junior faculty, with a $100,000,000 overall increase in it life sciences budget). If the University intends to make good on its implied promise to the public to provide an economic return on the bond investment, it must now also put forward the case for funding for the 35 faculty and perhaps as many staff as it will take to deliver on that promise (for an estimated cost of upwards of $17,000,000 per year, based on average $/SY support costs for USDA-affiliated university scientists). The only thing that is clear at this point is that paying for the cost of running this building will not be realistically done by expecting newly hired faculty (or yet-to-be identified corporate in-house collaborators) to shoulder the bulk of the permanent costs of annual operations.
Also missing from the recent college meeting is any trace of principles upon which to base resource allocations, particularly graduate assistantships. The Graduate Council established in 1992 that there was no university-wide correlation between any measure of productivity (on a per faculty basis, external grants, publications, credit hours, majors, etc.) and either per capita operating budgets or graduate assistantship allocations. Numbers of graduate assistantships per department in 1982 were near perfect predictors of numbers in 1992. That they would nearly perfectly predict the current allocation is a testable hypothesis, yet what is the basis for this allocation? and by what principles can resources be related to raw productivity or to any other stated goals of the institution? The outrage expressed in the BioScience merger debate in CELS against the stipulation that resources should be allocated according to a principle of fairness or equity reflected a legacy of some faculty having extraordinarily privileged levels of institutional resources while others (with equal teaching, research and outreach productivity) have lived entire careers with virtually no support whatsoever. The Dean's suggestions that the numbers of graduate assistantships allocated to former Arts and Sciences departments now in CELS (GEO, MAR, CMMB) has not changed substantially from what it was 9 years ago (when the departments first arrived) suggests that inequities can be preserved not only between colleges (maintained by the statistically undefensible argument (there being no correlation between resources and productivity) that priorities are related to teaching general education, etc.), but now can also be perpetuated with a college, so long as resource allocation is not tied to principle, mission, or any rational democratically derived formula, and so long as administration is unwilling or unable to address the issue.
Within the past three years there have been three hours devoted to meetings of the college. During those three hours, the faculty and administration of CELS have managed to accomplish the truly remarkable. They have demonstrated that they are willing to dismiss colleagues and an entire academic unit without discussion of reasons why (but with the pettiest of concerns about possible lost resources), and without regard to tradition, constituents, students, or faculty. They have voted to abandon structures intended to facilitate shared governance, including the formal underpinnings of the English Parliamentary system, because they were overly inconvenienced by those who use those structures, or overly burdened by the processes of participation. And they have demonstrated an ability to govern without principle, and without concern for fairness or equity as a basis for resource allocation. All of these accomplishments are signs of an internal dynamic that is not promising for the long term health of the organization.