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updated 1/11/04

To: ASEC

From: Roger N. Johnson (TAS)

Date: Jan. 2, 2004

Re: Academic Structure

Introduction. Many thanks to the three committee co-chairs (Brian, Carol, and Kai) for their presentation at the last FA meeting. They invited input from the faculty, and so I am following up with a statement which (a) discusses the process of change in higher education, (b) outlines defects in the current Ramapo structure, and (c) proposes a new academic structure.

I apologize for the length of my statement, but this is important. In my opinion, ASEC may be the most important committee in the history of the college! I was there in 1971 when the college was formed, and I can tell you that many of the decisions were made in a fog of optimism and a certain conceit that Ramapo was going to be better than all the other colleges in the world. At that time, the prevailing fad was to be different from all other educational institutions, and in particular to be "innovative" and "interdisciplinary." Funding was not an issue, and we essentially had a blank check. So we invented a totally novel academic structure which seemed to make sense at the time.

We were also cautioned that our radical academic structure might not last, and that our fiscal honeymoon certainly would not last. This is exactly what happened. We made a lot of mistakes, the money dried up, and the fads of the 70s are no longer appropriate. We basically designed a structure to fit the wishes, whims, and egos of the founding faculty members. This structure no longer serves either the interests of the college or the greater the public interest of the state.

One of our mistakes was not providing a mechanism for change. We did not intend that the original plan would be solidified in stone forever, yet that seems to have happened. During the last third of a century, the institution resisted major change as if the most important feature of Ramapo was to preserve at all costs the radical academic structure it designed in the 1970. Now, after three decades we finally have a chance to correct our course! ASEC is the mechanism for change. Times have changed, funding has changed, our mission has changed, and the compositions of the faculty and students have also changed. Is ASEC ready for change? It seems clear to many that this is a golden opportunity to reshape the college. We may never have another chance.

Objectivity. I have several preliminary concerns. First, the committee was formed in a representative manner. I question whether everyone should be representing the best interest of their own school. If the very existence of schools is open to question, can the committee be objective? One possible major structural change (advocated by many) is the dissolution of schools. I would hope that committee members can be objective and put themselves above any particular constituency. I hope everyone can be looking at the long range interests of the whole college rather than defending the unit which elected them. This means placing the interests of the college above the agenda of any particular school or convening group which committee members supposedly represent. In TAS, several people (Gordon Bear and myself) were nominated and we both declined on the grounds that we favored major changes and hence might not have the necessary objectivity to serve on the committee. I sincerely hope that everyone on the committee can forget about the way the college is now and try to imagine what it might be like decades from now.

Change in Higher Education. My second opening point is to emphasize that Ramapo is not the only college which lacks a culture of change. This turns out to be a major problem for all colleges and universities. Some of you might remember the convocation address in the spring of 1999 in which Dr. Overton gave an inspiring one hour speech on the process of change in higher education. She made a distinction between unintended change, which is usually the result of budget constraints and local politics, and the more serious (and more difficult) planned change which requires new ways of thinking, new strategies, and changes in behavior. She noted that few colleges are able to execute planned change. Instead, colleges tend to move by "creeps" rather than "leaps." She attributed the difficulty of planned change to (a) institutional rigidity, (b) the unwillingness to do serious self-evaluation, and (c)the lack of a "culture of change."

She seemed to be describing Ramapo perfectly. I worry that the ASEC committee will fall into the traditional trap of tinkering with the present system rather than thinking and acting boldly. Will the committee define its mission narrowly (as most committees do)? Will it present a compromise and come up with vague recommendations that will be debated forever (and never acted upon)? The schools and the faculty assembly have never been able to accomplish serious structural changes. I hope ASEC will demonstrate some leadership and come up with bold new plans to do whatever is necessary to redefine the way the college is organized.

Interdisciplinary Education. We might begin by asking why the college is currently organized around the fads of 1970s. Why not organize the college around the needs of the 21^st century? "Innovative" and "interdisciplinary" sounded great in 1970. Neither is currently the main thrust of the college, so why do we maintain a structure which is not suited for the needs of today? Interdisciplinary education is laudable, but we don’t need an interdisciplinary structure to accomplish interdisciplinary goals. We have paid a huge price for having an interdisciplinary academic structure. We should know by now that we need a structure suited to the needs of today, not the needs of yesterday.

We have also learned that interdisciplinary education is not the automatic result of an interdisciplinary structure. Our interdisciplinary structure has produced precious little interdisciplinary education. If we take the truly interdisciplinary programs (such as bioinformatics, environmental studies, and law and society), they produce only 2.2% of student our student majors (according to the Fall, 2003 figures). We pay a huge price for this. The current structure is wasteful of resources. It weakens some of the more traditional programs which the students and the public demand. Like it or not, traditional programs are now the backbone of the college. Our interdisciplinary school structure has weakened the college and had saddled us with many limitations and many problems that other colleges do not have.

The bottom line is that the current structure (a) has failed its mission, (b) is counter productive to our present and future mission, (c) is wasteful and inefficient, and (d) is a source of inequity, low morale, and general malaise. It is time for major change.

In addition to mentioning that interdisciplinary education was a fad of the past, Dr. Overton also made some other good points. First, she mentioned the discontinuity between true institutional need (serving student interest) and serving the needs and pet interests of a vocal minority of faculty members. Second, she stressed the importance of having a "culture of achievement." She went on to note that it was not good enough for a college to dwell on "good teaching" and to ignore achievement. She said that it was bad for an institution when faculty members see their role as nothing more than being good teachers.

Unit Structure. The root of our structural problem has to do with the extra (and in my opinion unnecessary) layer of bureaucracy that we have imposed on ourselves. At most colleges, the glue that holds the institution together comes from faculty members at the grass root level working within their individual programs. It does not come from a strong centralized administration full of powerful deans. When faculty members are expected to do little more than teach while leaving decisions to higher-ups, we have a sure formula for mediocrity. We need a system which is decentralized, a system where the professors have a major say in everything: curriculum, personnel, budget, and research.

At Ramapo, we do have departments, but we call them "convening groups." But these convening groups are kept weak and ineffective by making them subservient to schools. What should be the strongest part of the structure is actually the weakest. We are saddled with what has been called for years Unit Supremacy. Everything is subservient to the school organization. The convening groups are kept weak and ineffective by reserving real power for the schools and Deans. Convening groups mainly do the dirty work of putting a schedule together. Units have power of personnel and budgets. The two compete with each other in an unhealthy way. In the end, faculty members operating within their convening groups have little real power. Little wonder that there is low morale, detachment, endless politics, and major inefficiency.

The waste in this system is obvious. Faculty members are expected to run the academic programs, yet they get very little release time. We give token release time to 31 conveners who have to spend much of their time maneuvering through and around their units. Then we devote 5 full-time lines to Deans of the units. I have heard that about 650 release time credits are awarded to administer our current structure. This is highly wasteful.

The convening groups are thus kept weak and ineffective because (a) they seldom meet; (b) they have little power to make major decisions (such as personnel action); (c) they have no home; (d) they have no budgets; (e) they are often divided into different schools; (f) conveners have little release time. The end result is to weaken and demoralize the faculty. Decisions are made at higher administrative levels rather than at the faculty levels. Political intrigue and end runs become the way to do business. How can the faculty be the backbone of the college is faculty members have so little power?

Semantics. One thing that interferes with change at Ramapo is the abuse of names. Those who favor the status quo often greet any idea for change with one word: departments!" The implication is that a departmental structure is inherently evil and that any tinkering with school supremacy automatically means departments. The argument is simple: we either have schools or we have departments. There is no other choice. Since departments are unthinkable, therefore we must have schools. A departmental structure would mean that we would become like other colleges and universities, God forbid!

Another semantic problem is the confusion of "indisciplinary education" with "anti-disciplinary education." Some actually maintain that in order to be interdisciplinary we must be anti-disciplinary. Being antidisciplinary solves nothing.

Another abused word is "school." Originally we were supposed to have "schools" in the sense of the "schools" of Oxford or UC Santa Cruz. Our "schools" have little resemblance to those of Oxford or Santa Cruz. They have residential colleges built around themes. We have nothing of the kind.

I hope that ASEC will put the semantic issues to rest. It doesn’t really matter what we call the structural elements: schools, units, convening groups, departments, or programs. What really matters is how many layers we have. In my opinion, the central question before the committee should be simple: how do we convert from a 3 layer structure (convening groups, schools, all-college) to a 2 layer structure (program level and all-college level)? . Whether you think of it as expanding the schools or contracting the convening groups, the result is the same.

The Consolidation Model. A merging of 3 layers into 2 could be seen as a convergence or consolidation. For convenience, I simply refer to it as the consolidation model. I propose the term "program" which would be the basic organizational structure of the college. There could be other 2 layer models, but I think it is instructive to flesh out how a consolidation model might work. It is not really that radical, and in fact it is a logical extension of the current school structure. And it does not go back to departments.

I would propose that we abolish the current structure of 31 convening groups and 5 schools and replace both of them with about 12 programs. The exact names of the programs, who is in which program, and even the total number of programs should be up for extensive discussion.

In this Convergence Model, the backbone of the academic structure would be the 12 or so programs. Most would be interdisciplinary and most would have more than one major. Some of the larger majors (such as communications or psychology) would be mostly self-contained since they are too large to combine with other programs. But communications has interdisciplinary aspects, and so does psychology (which would be combined with neuroscience). An important reform is that everyone would be housed with their most immediate colleagues, something we do not have now. The structure would therefore be organized about academic programs, not political groupings like "schools." This would be a huge reform and a big achievement. Each program would be a more cohesive group tightly focused around a curriculum. Each program would control not only its own curriculum but also its own budget, hiring, retention, promotion, tenure, sabbaticals, SBR, travel, research, etc. This decentralization would greatly strengthen the role of the faculty.

Size Counts. I would urge the committee to take a close look at the size of the current schools and the size of current majors. A quarter of a century ago we had 8 schools, each with about a dozen faculty members. Everyone knew everyone else. We worked in small cohesive groups focused on academics. Today, we have only 5 schools and they are 2-3 times as large. Meetings are large, impersonal, often political, and too little time is spent on academics. Many do not even know everyone in their own unit. Some programs in the same unit have nothing to do with each other. The idea that this is interdisciplinary education is preposterous. Worst of all, some programs are divided among two and even three units. We have managed to create artificial administrative barriers to split programs and separate faculty members from their own immediate colleagues. No other college in the world is organized in this manner, and we shouldn’t be either.

Our current structure is based around sprawling, inefficient, cumbersome "units" which resemble large university departments. It is clear that the size of our basic units (whatever they are called) must be reduced. The only way to do this is to increase the number of units (or what I have called programs). Ideally, the programs should be approximately equal in faculty lines and student majors but in practice there will be disparities (just like there are now in school size and convening group size).

As an interesting exercise, I took the fall 2003 enrollment figures by majors and came up with the following possible groupings in terms of student majors:

25.0% Business

10.5% AIS (humanities)

11.5% Communications

8.1% other CA majors

12.0% Psychology

10.8% Biology and nursing

7.2% other science majors

10.5% other SSHS majors

5.0% other and undecided

If the above groupings were used, and if business were divided into about 3 programs, we would have the basis for 11 programs of about equal student size. Any grouping should also consider faculty size as well as student enrollment by major. In principle, it would be nice to have a program in international studies or a program in environmental studies, but it is unclear how such small programs could justify a status equivalent to other programs with fifteen times as many majors.

As a footnote to the size issue, many do not realize that the founding faculty members anticipated inequality of majors. By historical accident, many of those founders came from tiny majors and they feared losing power to the larger majors. By coming up with schools rather than departments, and by splitting large majors into different schools, large programs were weakened and smaller programs were given power disproportionate to their numbers. Unfortunately, some of the same sentiments remain today. There are some who say that we should deliberately short change the large programs, compromise their quality, and divert resources to smaller programs with less student interest. Such considerations were part of the original plan of the college and part of the reason why we now have a school structure. Yes, size remains an issue but we cannot overlook a fair distribution of resources. And we have to remember that the reputation of the college is mostly determined by the larger programs.

Considerable wisdom is needed in balancing the needs and resources of large programs and small programs so they can both thrive, but not one at the expense of the other. While the large programs carry much of the weight, we also need a place for small programs such as International Studies (43 students), Environmental Studies (41 students), or American Studies (16 students).

Governance. In the Convergence Model, each program would run every aspect of its program. A half-time chair would be needed (each program chair would teach half-time). This could be paid for from all the convener credits that would be saved. The program chair would be elected from the ranks of the faculty and would serve a 3 year term. Individual majors within a program could still continue to meet as "convening groups" if the faculty members so wished but these would be mainly curricular discussion groups with no administrative power. Faculty members could participate in more than one program, however their primary voting rights should be in one program. Each of the 3 schools (Arts and Sciences, Business, and Special Studies) would be headed by a full-time professional dean.

Personnel Policies. One of the greatest weaknesses of the present system is in the area of personnel policies. Personnel decisions should be made by immediate close colleagues who are best equipped to make sound professional judgments. Under the present system, personnel decisions are made by interdisciplinary personnel committees at the unit level and interdisciplinary committees at the all-college level. Those who know the candidate the best are often not even consulted. This is highly unprofessional and would be unthinkable at any other serious academic institution. Inequities abound and morale suffers. Decisions are often influenced by politics rather than by credentials. We now have a system whereby some personnel action is done within convening groups while other personnel actions are . done at the unit level. All personnel actions should be made within a single program unit. This can never happen in the present system but it is guaranteed in the Consolidation Model.

Savings. Three professional Deans (Arts and Sciences, Business, and Special Studies) would cost 72 release time credits. 12 half-time Program Chairs would cost 144 release credits for a total of 216 administrative credits. I believe that we now award over 600 credits in administrative release time (someone please supply the correct figure) which would mean a savings of 384 faculty credit hours. That is the equivalent of 16 new faculty lines! There has to be something wrong with the math here — I can’t believe the savings would be that much. Whatever the math, there would be (a)considerable savings; (b) new faculty lines opened up; (c) programs administered by half-time chairs (not quarter time as we have now). The 2 layer Consolidation Model offers huge benefits over the present 3 layer school model.

Meetings. Programs would have scheduled meetings perhaps every 2-3 weeks. This is more often than the current convening groups, however remember that there are no unit council meetings and no convening group meetings. The only other regularly scheduled meetings would be faculty assembly meetings. This would mean (a)programs could meet more frequently and for longer time slots than what convening groups presently enjoy; (b) there would be far fewer meetings for everyone; (c) the Wednesday time slots could be relaxed with more open times.

Does anyone need to be reminded that the current college structure is almost at gridlock because every hour of every Wednesday (including exam weeks!) is already allocated for fixed meetings. It is almost impossible for any ad hoc or personnel committee to find a meeting time. Our convening group meetings are infrequent and sharply limited in time. In my own convening group, we almost never finish the agenda. The result is that business gets put off for a month and often never gets dealt with at all.

At the end of last semester, I asked Kay Fowler if in the future we could avoid any scheduled meetings during exam week. Her answer was that we have so many committees and so many groups which have to meet that we have no choice but to schedule wall-to-wall meetings every Wednesday including exam weeks. The procedure for setting up the academic calendar is simple: take every hour of every Wednesday from day one right through exam week and then fill every block with as many meetings as possible. Let’s face it, the current structure simply does not work.

Students. When the college was first formed, school "membership" was an important feature. Students attended unit councils meetings, held voting privileges, and took "tutorials" within the school. None of these features remain, yet will still require students to "join" a school. Student "membership" in a school is a romantic fiction of the past. Why saddle students with confusing additional requirements when these credits might be used more soundly in other ways? To many students and faculty members (and virtually everyone outside of Ramapo who tries to figure out our requirements), the school requirements are very unusual and extremely confusing. The fact is that some students do not even know what school they are in (and many don’t care). Eliminating school membership (and the additional requirements) provides an opportunity for added flexibility in our existing programs, a flexibility which should be welcomed and debated.

The Business School. For many years, the School of Business has attracted large numbers of students. Because it is so integral to the college, and because its mission is somewhat different than that of the Arts and Sciences, I propose leaving the School of Business as one of the three major arms of the academic structure. It could remain pretty much intact and organize itself into 3-4 programs (now it has 4-5 programs). Most colleges and universities have a separate School of Business and it seems appropriate that this should be the case for Ramapo also.

The School of Graduate and Special Studies. The third branch of my proposal needs further elaboration (and inspiration). There are a number of elements which don’t fit into Arts and Science or into Business in a tidy fashion. These include the Graduate Programs as well as the applied programs such as Teacher Education and the Nursing Program. It would seem that one full-time professional dean could administer all of these programs. At the same time, it might be wise to have a home for special programs which might be small, unusual, or interdisciplinary. What might they be?

Arts and Sciences. This is perhaps the most common center piece of most liberal arts colleges. Exactly what programs would be included remains to be hammered out. The number of programs, the names of the programs, and what disciplines fall into each program should be widely debated. I would propose at least the following:

Program in Humanities

Program in Communications

Program in Human Environment

Program in Physical Sciences (including Math and Computer Science)

Program in Biological Sciences

Program in Behavioral Science

Program in Fine Arts

Summary of the Consolidation Model

I: Office of the Provost

II. Dean of Arts and Sciences

about 12 programs

Dean of Business

about 3-4 programs

Dean of Graduate and Special Studies