UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
Kingston, Rhode Island
FACULTY SENATE
MINUTES
Faculty Senate Executive Committee Meeting #2 -- July 17,
2003
1. The meeting was called to order at 1:07 p.m. on Thursday, July
17 in the third floor conference room in Green Hall, Chairperson
Beckman presiding. All members were present.
2. The minutes of Executive Committee Meeting #1, June 2, 2003,
were approved.
3. The Executive Committee was brought up to date on the
following matters of business that had been considered previously:
a. URI Wireless Network Policy: Senator
Boudreaux-Bartels reported that it was her understanding that devices
used by faculty at URI were unlikely to be affected by the policy.
The Executive Committee asked Ms Grubman to inform Vice Provost
Gandel that they had agreed that the URI Wireless Network Policy
would not require Faculty Senate approval and could be added to the
UNIVERSITY MANUAL pending receipt of a signed policy proposal form in
accordance with the Policy on Policies.
Ms. Grubman was asked to post a copy of the URI Wireless Network
Policy on FacSen-Bus once it has become official.
b. Release Time: Ms. Grubman reported that $12,000 would be
transferred by the Provost's Office to the Faculty Senate's Budget to
provide each of the departments of those Executive Committee members
who do not receive release time by statute with $3,000 to compensate
for one-course release.
c. Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions to AFSCCE: Ms. Grubman reported
that she has been working with the Provost to establish the ad hoc
committee requested by the Faculty Senate. She said that the
committee, chaired by Professor Paul Arakelian would be asked to
report by the end of October.
d. Qualitative Accompaniment/Supplement to the PCA: The Executive
Committee agreed that the supplement to the PCA should be sent to all
department chairs so they could have the opportunity to clarify
aspects of the PCA that were misleading. This is especially important
in light of the reference to programs to be considered for possible
abolition in the President's Strategic Plan.
Vice Chairperson Hollinshead expressed concern that even with the
opportunity for departments to elaborate and clarify the PCA, the
accompaniment/supplement did not go far enough in addressing quality
issues. Vice Chairperson Hollinshead urged the members of the
Executive Committee to review the letter that the four faculty
members on the PCA Committee had written expressing concern about the
usefulness of the PCA data. The letter, which had been attached to
FSEC Minutes of April 16, 2002, is attached to the minutes of this
meeting.
4. Announcements/Correspondence:
a. Chairperson Beckman reported on the June 27
meeting of the Board of Governors Academic and Student Affairs
Committee. She said that each institution reviewed for the Board
their tenure and promotion process. Chairperson Beckman said that the
Provost had also responded to questions about release time and on the
mentoring program for new faculty members.
b. Chairperson Beckman said that she had also attended the June
30 meeting of the Board of Governors for Higher Education and
reported that the Board had not been able to approve the allocation
for fiscal '04 because of delays related to the Governor's veto.
It was noted that the Board had taken action at that meeting on
the elimination of the following seven academic programs as
recommended by the CAC and the Graduate Council and approved by the
Faculty Senate during 2002-03:
B.S. in Civil and Ocean Engineering
B.S. in Home Economics
B.S. in Materials Engineering
B.S. in Plant Science
M.S. in Geography
M.S. in Plant Pathology
Ph.D. in Plant Pathology
c. Members of the Executive Committee who had attended the July 9
JSPC meeting brought the rest of the committee up-to-date on what had
transpired at the meeting.
With regard to the JSPC's discussion of metrics for monitoring
the Strategic Plan, it was agreed that baseline data should reflect
what information is needed to make decisions rather than what is
relatively easy to measure.
The Executive Committee agreed that the major role for the
faculty representatives on the committee was to continue to ask
questions about assumptions and to continue to ask for follow-up on
matters discussed by the JSPC.
5. After discussion, the CBUM Report on changes to the UNIVERSITY
MANUAL based upon Senate Legislation 2002-03, which had been mailed
to the committee the previous week, was approved.
6. The Executive Committee discussed committee appointments for
the coming academic year. It was agreed to consider appointments to
the Library Committee at a subsequent meeting and to postpone action
on the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA) in light of
the responsibilities of the JSPC .
7. The Executive Committee agreed to meet on Tuesdays from
1:00-2:30 p.m. beginning on September 9. Ms. Grubman said that she
would try to schedule regular meetings with the President and the
Provost for that time.
8. The Executive Committee discussed their goals for the 2003-04
academic year and setting an Agenda for the 03-04 Senate.
9. Ms. Grubman reported that she expected the following potential
business items to be on the Agenda for Faculty Senate Meeting #1,
September 25, 2003:
a. Senate committee appointments.
b. Annual Report for 2002-03 from the Honors Program and Visiting
Scholars Committee,
c. Annual Report of the Ombud,
d. Report #02-03-4 from the UCGE Committee,
Ms. Grubman explained that at the request of Professor Wenisch,
the CBUM Report on Proposed Reorganization of Chapter 5 would be
postponed until the October meeting to give the committee the
opportunity to make revisions based on changes that have occurred
during the summer.
The Executive Committee agreed to ask Deans Richmond and Salomone
to provide the Senate with a report on retention efforts at the
September 25 meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:15 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Sheila Black Grubman
SBG:DD
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ATTACHMENT TO THE MINUTES OF JULY 17, 2003
April 15, 2002
Dear President Carothers and Provost Swan,
We are pleased that faculty members were included in discussions
around the 2001 Program Contribution Analysis. The PCA committee's
deliberations have given each of us a better understanding of this
process, but what we have learned is disquieting. While we have
concerns about the design, use, and cost of producing and responding
to the PCA itself, our main concern is that the values and priorities
underlying the PCA should not be central to the assessment of a
University. Nevertheless, the PCA is sending the message to the
faculty that this financial analysis is key to the administration's
evaluation of a program's performance. As a result, specific programs
may end up taking measures or making decisions aimed at improving
their PCA standing, decisions that may in fact be detrimental to the
University's mission and overall operations.
Recognizing that URI faces ongoing budgetary constraints, we
acknowledge that some measure of cost effectiveness is beneficial,
but only if 1) the method of analysis provides appropriate
information for accurate interpretation; 2) the results of the
analysis are used in the context of the University's
priorities/mission; 3) the results are averaged/weighted over a
representative period of time, in order not to be biased by temporary
situations. We are dissatisfied with the current PCA on all counts,
and we share our criticism of the PCA with you in hopes that open
discussion will subject this mode of analysis to greater scrutiny in
the future.
As educators, we find the fundamental values embedded in the PCA
troubling. According to the PCA, programs that look strong only do so
based on financial considerations. The PCA ranking does not imply
that these "good" programs are quality programs. For instance, they
may have no tenure-line faculty positions and many per-course
instructors, a situation that hurts retention. More specifically,
below is a first assessment of what we feel does not work well in the
current PCA:
… Although the University distributes its resources through
departments, the PCA examines the economic efficiency of programs.
This disjunction makes the PCA an indirect and at times misdirected
management tool. For instance, several departments grant more than
one undergraduate degree, all taught by the same departmental
faculty.
… Programs that fare well in the PCA have low net costs and high
enrollments per faculty FTE. Yet, programs that appear to be more
expensive than others in the PCA may house exciting scholarly
activities and have far-reaching effects in the extramural community,
bringing value and visibility to the University.
… Some disciplines by their nature require more equipment and
smaller classes for instruction, and therefore have higher costs. For
instance hands-on subjects such as studio art or engineering
laboratories require smaller classes than large lectures in, say, the
social sciences.
… Most costs attributed to programs in the PCA are not controlled
by those programs, but by the administration, such as salary costs
for a given seniority structure, cost of using facilities,
administrative costs affecting research, etcŠ
… Research and graduate education, essential activities of any
university, appear to consume more resources than they generate,
according to the PCA. However, they attract outside resources and
have significant local, regional, even international impact. Graduate
programs are an essential element of any comprehensive university
like URI.
… The census of students used in the PCA (expressed in number of
credit hours) only reflects the number of recipients of a specific
degree. Because the PCA does not specifically identify credit hours
generated in service courses, it is not a measure of a department's
instructional output.
… In the PCA, service credit revenues are assigned to the
departments that deliver them rather than the colleges or departments
that recruit and sponsor the student's major. Thus, the PCA
overstates the positive financial contribution of some colleges and
programs that are heavily engaged in delivering service courses to
non-majors. At the same time, it understates the contributions of
those programs which, by nature or accreditation requirements, must
"export" a large portion of their student's credits to other programs
and colleges (engineering is a typical example of this situation when
we see in the PCA that the College of Engineering, as a whole,
teaches less than 50% of the credits required for its students to
graduate).
… The design of the PCA does not accommodate cross-disciplinary
endeavors such as the Honors Program, Centers, and Partnerships, all
of which rely on resources "loaned" by departments as well as
University overhead costs. These initiatives have received praise for
integrating learning across traditional boundaries, but the design of
the PCA cannot express such "irregularity."
… Finally, and this is very important, no real measure of quality
is included in the PCA, particularly for scholarship and teaching.
The only parameter reflecting some measure of a program's excellence
in scholarship is the total research funds generated. Only a small
part of these funds, the overhead returned, is included as positive
contribution in the PCA. In addition, no measure of the local
economic impact and importance for the Rhode Island community of a
program is included.
Every administrator we have encountered emphasizes that the PCA
is just one method of evaluating programs. The essential complement
to this sort of cost-based analysis is the Program Quality Review
(PQR). Along with accreditation reports, the PQR presents a more
detailed look at all aspects of an academic department, or college.
The factors considered in the PQR are important for attracting
students, obtaining external financial support, and recruiting
faculty. However, the PQR examines departments rather than programs,
and is chronically behind schedule. We would urge that departments be
judged in part by the effectiveness of their members in teaching,
research, and service and also by the value of certain subject matter
within a university.
In hindsight, we would challenge the cost effectiveness of the
PCA itself. It seems to us an unnecessarily complex method to reach
conclusions that might be achieved with far less expenditure of time
and money. Staff (and faculty) time alone makes this a very expensive
exercise, especially when, in some cases, the conclusions are
predetermined: engineering and oceanography programs are among the
most expensive at URI, yet no one would suggest closing the College
of Engineering or GSO. It is time to ask whether the analysis is
justifiable by its own standards.
We have participated in the PCA process hoping to improve it. To
their credit, Dean Mazze, Cliff Katz and others have been responsive
to several important issues: total research revenue is now displayed,
(to offset high costs in programs like Oceanography or Engineering)
"flags" (requests for explanation) are no longer made public, and we
have articulated some of our reservations in a brief introduction to
the PCA. While we appreciate our colleagues' help, we remain unhappy
about the PCA itself, for the reasons discussed above, and one more:
faculty morale. In an institution that is chronically underfunded, no
one is living fat. When everyone is busy trying to make do with less,
this sort of effort to identify fiscal inefficiencies feels
mean-spirited and ultimately draining of those resources it purports
to protect. We would ask you to take a hard look at whether the PCA
is worth it.
Sincerely,
Stephan Grilli, Ocean Engineering
Mary Hollinshead, Art
Glen Ramsay, Economics
Nedra Reynolds, English