21 April 2009

Letter to the Radford University Board of Visitors

We are writing to share our deep dismay with the manner in which recent decisions by the Academic Affairs Division were made. We wish to emphasize from the outset our profound commitment to the University, our students, and the distinctive kind of collaborative teaching and learning that have rightly been acclaimed as hallmarks of a Radford undergraduate education. The decisions in question, involving radical restructuring of the curriculum and an expedited program review, have subjected Radford University to damaging criticism from the media, taxpayers, students, and alumni.

We are concerned that the reputation of the University has already suffered from the manner in which the Office of Academic Affairs has chosen to go about its plans for curricular transformation. Recent administrative actions threaten to undermine our excellence by diminishing the essential role that a university faculty must play in governance and in shaping the curriculum. We do not mean to impute ill-will or bad faith to any administrative decisions that have brought us to this pass. We wish, rather, to open a dialogue with the Board of Visitors and the Administration that will help us all move beyond this present upheaval and establish a basis for collaboration to advance the interests of the University and our students.

None of us objects to curricular change or to cutting programs if they are not central to
the University’s mission. In fact, we realize that constant critical assessment of the curriculum and revisions of programs predicated on this meticulous work are essential to the vitality of any university. That’s why the University has clearly delineated Internal Governance processes for the creation of new majors and programs as well as for rigorous program review.

Whether proposing a single course or proposing changes that affect the curriculum university-wide, everyone must follow our Internal Governance processes. Just as we are a “nation of laws and not men,” we must remain a “university of established governance processes” not just individuals. When established processes are violated, the kind of upheaval that has recently buffeted Radford is predictable.

We are optimistic, however, that the controversies disrupting the University at the moment can be reduced if the Provost would rescind the plans for restructuring presented to the Board of Visitors in January. In its place, we request full inclusion of the faculty from departments and colleges affected by any proposed changes, as required by the established process for university-wide curriculum changes.

For whatever reason—budget crisis, some inner sense of urgency—this step of the established process was omitted. It is not too late to include the faculty in a way that can only benefit the process of curriculum transformation.

We wish to make absolutely clear the depth of our commitment to the University and to educating students in our disciplines. This is the work to which we have dedicated our lives. Radford’s faculty have historically shaped an institution noteworthy for the superb opportunities it offers to students. While teaching is the most important activity for faculty at Radford University, research and scholarly activities play a vital role in our effectiveness as teachers.

Serving on the faculty at Radford is a privilege for us because the University supports our commitment to the disciplines we love and our passionate interest in teaching. Class sizes are smaller than at many other state institutions, professors often meet with students outside of class time for conferences on projects and papers, and courses often include innovative programs outside of the classroom to engage students as active participants in the learning process.

One effect of the distinctive symbiosis between teaching and research at RU is that as faculty members we engage students in collaborative research projects, working with them as colleagues.

Most recently, 23 Radford University undergraduate and graduate students presented their research at the 32nd annual Appalachian Studies Conference. This year two Anthropology and one Physics professor collaborated with six students from four different majors to search for the remains of U. S. Marines missing in action since World War II in Guadalcanal. Several professors from Biology, Chemistry, Geography and Geology combined their areas of expertise to study the changes occurring in a wetland constructed by RU to treat parking lot runoff. Several hundred students conducted research across disciplines.

In 2007, two Radford University students presented research at the 11th annual Green Chemistry and Green Engineering Conference in Washington, D.C. Our students were the only undergraduates making presentations, both having received scholarships from the National Science Foundation to present their work.

These examples have three features in common: first, they represent collaboration between faculty and students from multiple disciplines; second, they were initiated by faculty members from various departments and colleges; finally, they represent departments that were ordered either to restructure in a way that will effectively eliminate some of these majors, or to combine with other departments in a way that most faculty believe will weaken them. The eliminations and restructuring were all administrative mandates from the Academic Affairs Division with little or no input from the faculty.

In its Principles of Accreditation (2008), the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools states that one of its tenets for accreditation is: “The institution places primary responsibility for the content, quality, and effectiveness of the curriculum with its faculty” (3.4.10). In the opinion of many faculty members in the departments mentioned above, primary responsibility for curriculum was wrested completely from their hands.

The faculty of the Biology Department, in fact, voiced skepticism and elaborated several concerns about a merger of the Departments of Biology and Chemistry and the creation of a new Biochemistry major. The faculty of this department had not been consulted about the change, and they did not provide the rationale for it. Yet they were informed that the change would occur, the Provost having mandated it.

The majority of the faculty in Physics, Geology, and Geography were also excluded from any substantive discussions about how to restructure their programs into a new School of Environmental and Physical Sciences, about the pros and cons of creating a new major in Geosciences, and about the quite likely future elimination of majors in one or more of these disciplines once the Academic Affairs Divisions establishes a new major in Geosciences.

In his “Address to the Academic Affairs Committee of the RU Board of Visitors” (January 2009), the Provost recommended several program changes in order to create, in his words, “a solid foundation for a university 50 years into the future.” As delineated above, some of these changes required merging programs in ways that made little sense to the experts in these disciplines, who were not consulted; others appear as though they may eventually require deleting whole majors that we consider vital not only for the next 50 years, but well into the next century.

For many of the programs mentioned above, the recommendations were imposed downward upon the departments, which were told, simply, that they must restructure. Prior consultation between the Provost and some deans or chairs may have occurred, but the teaching faculty, all experts in their disciplines, were not included in any substantive discussions of these major curricular changes.

This, in our respectful opinion, violates established internal governance guidelines and the principle of shared governance espoused by professional organizations like the American Association of University Professors. Two of the “core values” posited in our 7-17 Strategic Plan are “collegial working relationships among students, faculty, administrators, and staff; and “shared governance and participation at every level within the University community.” If we are to do more than pay lip service to these bedrock principles, we need to modify the process already begun so that it conforms to our established internal governance process concerning curriculum changes.

We are calling upon the Board of Visitors and the Provost to initiate a substantive dialogue about these issues before any further restructuring ensues. For this reason, the Faculty Senate approved an ad hoc investigative committee to determine exactly what happened in the decision-making process concerning a number of programs whose faculty have complained about violations of procedures for curriculum changes.

If Internal Governance procedures were, indeed, violated, we need to know this in order to avoid similar mistakes in the future. A powerful gesture by the Academic Affairs administration to restore faith in collaborative working relationships and shared governance at Radford University would be rescinding the Provost’s recommendations made to the Board of Visitors in January 2009. We wish to open a dialogue with the Board of Visitors and the Administration that will help us all move beyond this present upheaval and establish a basis for collaboration to advance the interests of the University and our students.

Sincerely,

Editor’s Note: This letter was signed by 65 members of the RU faculty. Do you agree with those faculty members? Give us your thoughts on this letter by commenting below.