In planning for the 2005-06 academic year, the Faculty Senate set out to undertake initiatives in improving interactions between both the faculty and the administration and the faculty and the students. Communication concerns, academic advising for students, mid-term grade reporting, the new faculty chain of command survey, and the changes made to some pension plans remain on the agenda of the Faculty Senate, with Senate President Achille Messac committed to seeing significant progress made on all of them by mid-semester.
Most of the major initiatives that the Faculty Senate undertook in the fall semester were done jointly with the Student Senate and focused on improving faculty-student relations, with the largest goal being the improvement of academic advising. Messac said he sees this as a “paramount issue” for the body. “If advising is not as good as it should be, it is something the faculty should take very seriously,” he said.
Those working to improve the system see that the main problem is that the current system does not encourage the advisor to develop a relationship as a mentor to the student. Rather than merely answering the question “have I taken the courses I need to graduate?” Messac sees advisors offering career advice and helping their students choose courses that would most suit their aspirations for a career or graduate study.
“If students have a big brother or friend or mentor that they can go to tomorrow, or next year or, better yet, 10 years from now, then we will have succeeded,” Messac said. “We’re not there now, and we are trying to push in that direction.”
At present, the joint committee between the Student and Faculty Senates on the issue has drafted a preliminary resolution and will be taking feedback on the ideas presented before coming to final conclusions. The document proposes two changes to the current system.
First, after completing 85 credits toward a degree, a student’s progress would be reviewed by the department and they would be given formal notice of their remaining coursework and be guaranteed that completion of those courses would result in a degree. This is meant to alleviate some of the confusion students pursuing multiple degrees may face.
Second, each student would be required to meet with their advisor before registering, in order to allow the advisor to remain current with the student’s degree goals.
The second initiative the Faculty Senate has jointly undertaken with the Student Senate is implementing a mid-term grade report through SIS. At present, the effort is still in the planning stages, and it is not yet certain what form the mid-term grade will take. At any rate, Messac said, there will be a clear-cut indication of performance available to students at the half-way point in classes. He said this is one objective that he thinks the entire campus should be able to get behind, so he hoped to have it resolved by the end of this semester.
“If this goes through, it will be a wonderful thing. The students have everything to gain from it, and the faculty should want to do what they can to help the students,” he explained. “I see it as a win-win situation on all sides.”
In addition to working with the Student Senate, the Faculty Senate is tasked with representing the faculty to the administration. Toward this end, several projects are underway to resolve several issues facing the campus.
Messac said that the faculty view communication and governance style as one of the main problems on campus, especially since discussions on the subject can become quite heated and hostile. While he said that he has “yet to see significant improvement in the nature of the interaction between the faculty and the administration,” Messac was happy to say that as of this point the exchanges have been civil.
As a result of discussions regarding those concerns, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Sam Heffner ’56 retained consultant Barbara Shipley to “assess the perceptions, processes and issues surrounding internal communications,” according to a memo on the subject. Since July, Shipley, who works with the communications consulting firm Rudder Finn, has held more than 50 interviews with faculty and staff at both the Troy and Hartford campuses, and will be presenting her findings to the academic leadership of campus throughout this month.
The issue of pension plans is as yet unresolved, and Messac said the Senate will be looking to settle it in the coming months. The topic concerns a change to some pensions plans offered by the school to faculty and staff that was made retroactive, affecting those already enrolled in the plan. Some feel that the changes made would result in a lower compensation and feel it is a retraction of the promise made. Messac said numbers have been presented showing that both the pension payouts remain neutral and decrease, and is hoping to negotiate a solution soon.
The latest effort of the Faculty Senate regards the Faculty Chain of Command Satisfaction Survey. Just as in 2004, in December the Senate released a survey to the general faculty to gauge satisfaction with the academic leadership of campus. One hundred and eighty of the over 500 tenured and tenure-track faculty took it, compared to 188 in 2004. The results were roughly commensurate with the previous year’s results. Several favorability ratings did go up, among them the president’s (from 34 to 43 percent), the dean of the graduate school’s (from 24 to 40 percent), and the school deans’ (from 41 to 68 percent).
Messac said there were seven themes in the general comments section of the survey: the administration should make a greater effort to join with the faculty to address issues of governance; the faculty should recognize the tangible and significant progress that has been made under the leadership of President Jackson; EMPAC offers potential opportunities, and also poses significant concerns/challenges; the Senate/faculty and the administration must engage in meaningful dialog; the position of Provost should grow into that of a Chief Academic Officer—more in line with that of a top tier university; the Faculty Senate should put greater emphasis on issues that concern younger faculty, as well as on issues of research effectiveness; and the Board of Trustees has a larger role to play.
Messac said that the survey showed that the main concern the faculty had regarding Provost G.P. “Bud” Peterson was that he “can not make the tough academic decisions independently.” “He is a member of the cabinet just like any other VP, and in an academic environment he should have a greater role,” he explained.
Peterson disagreed, saying, “While the position of Provost has overall responsibility for academic enterprise, the decisions that I make and the positions I represent must be made within the overall context of what is best for the Institute.”
