FACULTY CAUCUS MINUTES

January 21, 2004

(Approved)

Call to Order

Senator Crothers called the Faculty Caucus to order.

Reinstatement Committee Faculty Election

The Faculty Caucus unanimously elected Angela Bonnell, Milner Library, to the Reinstatement Committee. Her term of service is Spring 2004.

Foundation Board Senate Representative Election

By ballot, the Faculty Caucus elected Senator Joe Armstrong as the Senate Faculty Representative on the ISU Foundation Board. His term of service is Spring 2004.

12.08.03.02 IBHE Faculty Advisory Council Faculty Productivity Report (Senator Jerich)

Senator Crothers: In the fall, Senator Jerich reported that the Chair of the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), James Kaplan, had charged the Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) to the IBHE with the responsibility of coming up with an explanation of what faculty do, why they do it, do their workloads actually matter, etc. This is part of a broader context where in light of the state’s focus on what they call “administrative bloat”, they are obviously looking for areas where they may be able to reallocate or save resources. Senator Jerich, working with a number of the other public university FAC representatives, was responsible for drafting that reply, which is the report included in your packet. I bring this report to the caucus for discussion because it is time for us to think proactively about how we can best explain what we do and how we do it in ways that are actually meaningful. Senator Bragg has some insight into why people sometimes ignore our story. If we think this issue is important, the Faculty Caucus can endorse this report and send that endorsement on to FAC. Senator Jerich is also distributing to you now a report on the most recent IBHE meeting.

Senator Jerich: Discussed a summary of the IBHE meeting of 12/9/03. In the summary, an e-mail from Allan Karnes, Chair of the IBHE-FAC, Dr. Karnes reported on his commentary to the IBHE at the morning meeting, which FAC representatives felt very strongly should be a part of the official IBHE record of the meeting. Dr. Karnes reported that one of the IBHE members stated that ‘we need to cut more money out and that faculty are not productive.’ Chairman Kaplan wanted specific recommendations for faculty cutbacks and faculty productivity from FAC. Dr. Karnes stated that his response to that end is that he in no way wanted the quality of education to be diminished.

What is striking to me is that we have been extremely cordial with the IBHE; but it is very irritating that Chairman Kaplan unilaterally dismisses whatever FAC does. We have said to him that we are not in the position, nor will we take the position, to give the IBHE recommendations for faculty cutbacks. Each of the 12 public universities have their own mission statements, their own contexts and it is up to each respective university to deal with faculty cutbacks and faculty productivity efforts.

Senator Bragg: It is important to separate specifics from general trends. Jim Kaplan, Chairman of the IBHE, is a very unique individual. His task is at hand and we certainly have to address that task. Some of it is idiosyncratic and may or may not represent a long-term trend. The more general issue of faculty productivity or faculty lifestyles is there and it has been there for quite some time. Some of you may remember us discussing Senator Rauschenberger, who formerly chaired the Appropriations Committee; this was his mantra as well. It is something that needs to be addressed in the long run.

Senator Armstrong: For additional information, there is a document written by the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Sciences on the CAS web page. It does a pretty good job of summarizing what faculty do to occupy their time. It is very similar, in many respects, to the report from FAC.

Senator Borg: Substantively, this report is a rather good summary of what we do, emphasizing the diversity and benefits. I fear that the political implications outweigh the scholarly implications of this, however. This document has relatively little to be argued with other than on bigoted or political bases. I would like to congratulate the Faculty Advisory Council on the report that it has created. I would encourage us to endorse this and go on record that the IBHE ought to pay attention to it.

Senator Jerich: FAC would like for all 12 public universities in Illinois to endorse the report.

Senator Fowles: My question is more political. In the governor’s state of the state address, he made very negative remarks about the State Board of Education (K-12), but no mention was made of the IBHE coming under the state auspices. Is it his plan to do this?

Senator Bragg: No one really knows for sure. The best you can do is look at other trends that have been going on. It is very clear that the governor’s advisors are trying to centralize control over fiscal operations as much as possible.

Senator Crothers: We are engaged in a long-term transformation of public higher education in the U.S. The days in which the majority of a student’s education is supported by state tax revenues are gone. Some institutions are going to survive this transition as real institutions of public higher education and some will likely become what amounts to community colleges. The two fundamental questions in politics are ‘what do you want and how are you going to get it?’ We need to start to actively think about what kind of institution we want to be in the future. I agree that we should endorse this document. We also need to have a discussion tonight on how we can explain what we do and how we do it, given our resources, in terms that are going to mean something to the people that make appropriation decisions and why those explanations may not be persuasive at large.

Senator Borg: It is frustrating when a report of this persuasiveness, documentation and articulation is overlooked simply because people don’t understand the dialogue that we use. However, I have no idea how to communicate the diversity of what we do when we are not in the classroom. I don’t understand what people don’t get. I can only encourage the continuation of the dialogue that has begun.

Senator Crothers: What are the terms to which people might respond? When we tell our story to legislators, is there a sense that we are coming at them in a language that they don’t grasp?

Senator Armstrong: Since they don’t make any distinction between training and education, they feel that our job is to turn out trained workers for the State of Illinois. We are dealing with people who don’t value what we value in higher education. We are really talking past each other. Their view of what our degrees and programs are accomplishing is very different from our view.

Senator Crothers: Then why don’t we expropriate the terms?

Senator Waterstraat: We do need to explain our profession in their terms. Senator Riegle, who is not here this evening, would be a good resource because of his area of research.

Senator Pryor: In the broader context, we are engaged in what many people have called a cultural war. We are on one side of a war where such things as diversity, intellectual values and pursuit of truth are good. We have to realize that the other side thinks that those things are meaningless and are not going to help them train workers. I appreciate what you are saying--that we ought to use the weapons of the other side against them—however, using these machinations of language doesn’t really appeal to me. In fact, we need to teach people to get away from those things and try to get to the heart of the matter without trying to spin things.

Senator Crothers: Is it more effective to achieve an outcome that you and I agree on or is the expropriation of the values and the destruction of the regime from the inside a more effective strategy?

Senator Pryor: The point is, those are not our values.

Senator Pereira: Without compromising, we could explain what it is we do in terms that they would understand so that we bring them to our point of view. It’s a question of finding the language that they will understand. Teaching, generally, around the world has been devalued over the years. The idea of being educated has gone by the wayside. Students want certain courses to find particular jobs.

Senator Holland: To a large extent, there was one period where we were selling higher education as a way to get a better job, so we are partially to blame ourselves. As the State continues to cut our budget more and more each year, at what level can we declare ourselves a private institution and charge whatever we want?

Senator Crothers: The State would have to allow us to do so. It is a fair question about whether or not we want to imagine trying a more privatized model for the University, acknowledging that state support has been reduced and that we are state-assisted and not state-supported.

Senator Hampton: I am disturbed by the “us versus them” construct. This is not a productive method of solving problems. I would recommend that we get together and hash this out among ourselves. I think that we should take the language right out of our national founding documents and demonstrate the ways in which we are supporting those values.

Senator Crothers: That’s explaining what we do in our terms.

Senator Hampton: I think people can understand that. We are all fighting for liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Senator Adams: I think that we need to acknowledge that we really are fortunate to have the amount of flexibility that we enjoy. Perhaps part of the reason that they don’t see it is that they value and understand productivity as a 9 to 5 endeavor. We need strategies to alleviate that perspective.

Senator Fowles: Maybe it is citizen preparation that we are doing. We encourage thinking abilities in our students, which will help them make choices about for whom they will vote. Why don’t we appeal to the voters about what we do well for them? Maybe we need to tout our successes in the outcomes of education.

Senator Pereira: In some ways, we overestimate our position in the education system. We think of ourselves as an integral part of that system. Politicians don’t see us as the integral part, however, so they don’t have to please us. They see students as the integral part; but since most students don’t vote, they don’t have to please them either. Politicians are most concerned with pleasing the over-fifty age group that does vote. We need to find ways to get students to vote. If students voted in large numbers, politicians would start to woo them and more money would come into the education system.

Senator Jerich: Perhaps we could get IBHE members or legislators on campus to immerse them in our culture.

Provost Presley: We could have a legislator in residence, if one would agree. I don’t think that there is any one answer because they don’t share our language, assumptions or goals. The only way to go at this is through a combination of many small efforts. One of the problems is that there is no strategic plan for higher education in Illinois. The void between legislators, citizens and us is huge. There is no sense in which any legislator would appreciate our becoming more selective. They do not understand it. Their goal is to educate as many citizens as cheaply as possible.

Senator Bragg: The Provost is absolutely right. In response to budget requests from higher education, Senator Rauschenberger, when he was the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, made the statement ‘Don’t your faculty understand that they could take care of their salary and enrollment problems is everyone would just teach one more course?’ He followed it up with, ‘Over the last ten years, there has been an erosion of teaching loads. What have you given in return?’ A legislator, who is not necessarily an admirer of Jim Kaplan said that ‘asking the Faculty Advisory Committee to take responsibility for commenting and coming up with an approach for faculty productivity was a stroke of genius’ because Chairman Kaplan knew that FAC would avoid the issue and that they would not come up with a recommendation. It sets him up perfectly to say, ‘we asked and they did nothing.’ One recommendation is certainly to endorse the concepts and ideas in the report. I would also recommend that the Faculty Advisory Committee make very specific recommendations and then let Mr. Kaplan and the IBHE respond to those recommendations.

Senator Crothers: I suggest that we refer the Faculty Productivity Report to the Faculty Affairs Committee so that they can take a closer look at it.

Senator DeSantis: Since the Pantagraph has essentially charged this faculty with answering to its readership about what we do, I suggest that we lobby the Pantagraph for a weekly column wherein faculty members actually tell the readership what we do in terms that everyone could understand. It would have to be a very careful, rhetorical approach telling the people how we are educating students. It needs to be centered on students.

Senator Adams: I think that the Pantagraph could do that fairly easily incorporating the pieces that come in weekly on job profiling. Maybe they would be willing to do something related to that.

Senator Coliz: We need to recognize that there is tremendous pressure on the legislators to allocate a relatively small amount of money for which a great number of groups are appealing. They have to figure out who gets the money and they are asking why should I give money to higher education instead of to all of the other people who truly need help from the state. We need to show the benefits of the money that they give to higher education. We need to give them what they need in order for them to make the decisions that we want them to make.

Senator Crothers: We can revisit this issue. In closing, do we agree to refer the report to the Faculty Affairs Committee for review and for any additional questions that they might want to forward to FAC before submission to the IBHE?

The Senate unanimously agreed to forward the report to the Faculty Affairs Committee.

Senator Borg: What is their timeframe for the completion of the review?

Senator Crothers: I spoke briefly with Allan Karnes. They don’t have a specific timeframe for it, but we need to move forward as quickly as possible. I think that the Faculty Caucus will want to revisit this at some point. In the meantime, we should talk to our colleagues and think about how we can market ourselves to the population at large and to the state legislature even if it is only in a narrow economic framework.

Adjournment