Thoughts on Being Asked to Endorse a Strategic Planning Framework

by Jeff Baldani
Professor of Economics

The faculty will soon be asked to vote on a resolution of support for the strategic planning (SP) framework.  That framework includes a long list of new initiatives, most of which are clearly desirable in principle.  How can anyone be opposed to providing equal access through need-blind admissions, fostering increased globalization of the curriculum, or enhancing integration of living and learning?  Well, I’m an economist.  My field focuses on scarcity, opportunity costs, and understanding the marginal impact of choices.  I look at the strategic plan and quickly come to the conclusion that the faculty should be asking for much more information before being asked for an endorsement.

The SP website has a spreadsheet (or more accurately, a PDF of a spreadsheet) with more than 150 initiatives.  Some of these have monetary costs, while some merely place demands on faculty or administrative time.  Many of the costs aren’t yet filled in.  There is no bottom line total for the SP.  The planning framework starts with an admonition that future revenue increases (both tuition and endowment) will be constrained and then lays out a relentlessly expansive vision for spending on new initiatives, programs, and positions.  How does this fit with funding the ongoing business of departments and programs?  There don’t seem to be any strategic deletions here, so how is this picture consistent with future budget projections?  Are there priorities in the SP, i.e., what will or won’t get funded if money is not available for the entire wishlist?  Part of the problem here is that last year’s working groups were charged with coming up with good ideas without regard to budget realities and did that job well.  We have a Budget Committee as part of our governance system and they should be the group evaluating the budget implications.  Before endorsing the SP framework, faculty should ask our elected colleagues on the budget committee report on budgeting for the plan.  Some possible topics:

• How the SP initiatives fit with future budget projections, including an assessment of whether the overall level of spending is consistent with balanced budgets and adequate support for ongoing programs.

•  How initiatives in the strategic plan we are already committed to will be financed (for example, the new athletics facility is listed as a $500K hit to the annual budget and the Center for Art and Culture, with property taxes, added staffing and other costs, will not be cheap either), and the same question for other items that are APC identifies as high priority and/or cost.

• How new initiatives may increase risks in future budgets, including, in particular, an analysis of the risks of added debt costs, operating costs, and uncontrollable costs if tuition revenues and endowment returns grow slowly.  (A prime example of uncontrollable costs would be need-blind where the financial aid budget is no longer under Colgate’s control.)

• Whether (as seemed to be the case with the last strategic plan) the plan’s financial realities will exhaust all possible new initiatives, i.e., whether the plan leaves any room for other new initiatives that might be proposed by departments and programs.

Beyond the big picture that the Budget Committee might provide, faculty should also be asking pointed questions about the effectiveness and costs of individual initiatives.  We are not going to be asked to vote on individual initiatives, but that makes it all the more imperative that we feel comfortable enough with the particulars to be willing to endorse the plan as a whole.  As a cautionary example in this vein, the faculty should be demanding a careful analysis of need-blind admissions.  As compelling as the principle of equal access might be, need-blind has been examined in strategic planning before and rejected on the basis of cost effectiveness, i.e., despite the enormous price tag, need-blind was projected to have only a minimal impact on the academic quality of an entering class.

Understanding how this conclusion about need-blind was reached is straightforward once one focuses on facts rather than anecdotes.  The admissions landscape I recall is from decade-old data, but I would be very surprised if the general outlines have changed.  There are three key facts:

• The bottom 25% of an entering class (as defined by admissions office overall academic ratings) consists primarily of students admitted for special reasons, including student athletes, OUS and LPRs (legacies, politicals, and relations).  Need-blind does not alter the composition of this group.

• The top 25% of the class includes AMS students, aided international students, and both aided and non-aided “regular” admits.  Colgate was (and likely still is) already need-blind for regular aid applicants in the top 25%. 

• The impact of being need-aware thus falls (or did fall a decade ago) squarely in the middle 50% of the class.  The only real question is a matter of where in the middle 50%.  Answering that requires actual data on the cutting-room floor and statistical analysis.  In particular, there are diminishing returns and anecdotes can be highly misleading because the main impact stems primarily from initial aid dollars: swapped students display increasingly similar academic profiles as aid is expanded toward the need-blind goal.

The takeaway from past analysis was that need-blind would spend many millions of dollars to swap ~60 full-pay students somewhat below the median (B-/B students) of the entering class for ~60 aid applicants somewhat above the median (B/B+ students).  Publicly reported admissions statistics on an entering class either wouldn’t have changed at all (such as the 25%-75% percentile of SATs for admitted students) or would have changed only marginally (an increase in average SATs in the single digits).  Almost no one involved in past strategic planning viewed this as a good - never mind transformative - investment of scarce resources when evaluated on the metric of academic quality.  The one-year experiment with need-blind, the class admitted in 2002, was almost exactly what the data analysis predicted. 

I don’t know for sure whether analyzing current admissions data necessarily yields the same conclusions as a decade ago, nor am I considering other arguments in the need-blind debate and saying the initiative should be rejected.  (I am, however, skeptical of the other arguments for need-blind whenever those arguments seem to be based on vague hopes rather than evidence.)  My point here is simply that the APC should be insisting on careful modeling of data and be sharing the results with the faculty before asking for an endorsement of the initiative.

Need-blind is an example that I know well from involvement with previous strategic planning exercises, but it is certainly not the only place where questions are appropriate.  A strategic plan is a complex document, much too complex to fully consider every opportunity cost or tradeoff.  Nevertheless, asking about cost, projected impact, and the metric for judging success of individual initiatives is a starting point.  Getting answers that indicate that issues have been carefully thought through - answers that indicate APC has done its homework and that there is substance behind rhetoric – would be reassuring when the faculty is asked to cast a blanket yes vote on the SP as a whole.

Summary of the Colgate AAUP Faculty Meeting

September 30, 2013

An AAUP faculty meeting was held on Monday, September 30, 2013 and attended by 70 faculty.  The following document provides a summary of the comments, organized by topic area.  The name of each speaker was not recorded so that all could speak freely.  The ideas summarized below do not necessarily reflect the perspectives of the Colgate chapter of the AAUP and its officers.

The meeting began at 4:23 pm with the introduction of the officers of our AAUP chapter, and opening remarks by the chapter Vice President.  This afternoon’s meeting stems from concerns towards faculty governance raised at the AAUP faculty meeting held April 11, 2013.  Two primary worries were expressed at that time.  (1) University committees serve an advisory rather than a decision making role.  (2) The structure of the monthly faculty meeting is not conducive towards discussion of agenda items.  The purpose of today’s AAUP faculty meeting was to converse with elected faculty representatives from the five Standing Committees of the Faculty—one category of committee.  Future AAUP meetings may include representatives from other committees.  The session began with the introduction of the representatives, followed by brief remarks from each committee’s representative, and concluded with a question and answer period.

The committee representatives were introduced and summaries given as outlined below. 

The Committee on Faculty Affairs (FAC).  Key agenda items for the year are continued efforts towards the revision of SET forms, development of policies towards faculty mentoring as called for in the new promotion and tenure guidelines, governance and communication with the Board of Trustees, and strategic planning.  The FAC also sets the agenda for the monthly faculty meetings.

The Committee on Promotion and Tenure (P&T).  The new role of the P&T committee in the promotion and tenure process was reviewed—a shift from watch-dog role to decision making role.  Meetings held thus far have focused on getting ready for the new role.

The Faculty Nominating Committee.  To have effective governance, an appropriate ballot must be assembled.  This is the Nominating Committee’s primary role.  To carry out its function, the Committee annually circulates a committee preference form.  Last spring, the Committee developed a new protocol for P&T elections prompted by the adoption of a new procedure for the review of tenure and promotion cases.  This year, the Committee plans to iron out kinks encountered during last spring’s P&T elections.  A better method for tracking who is serving and in what capacity (by gender, rank, division, department, etc.) is needed.

The Faculty Committee on Affirmative Action Oversight (FCAAO).  The Committee proceeded last year without a director, but there is now a new director in place.  This may provide guidance to the Committee.  The Committee did not appear to do anything in its stated charge (e.g., it had no role in faculty searches).  There are aspirations, but no clear role for the Committee.  The Committee is open to suggestions from the faculty.  It was noted that there is presently a separate affirmative action oversight committee for faculty and for staff,.  It was questioned whether this structure is ideal.

Advisory and Planning Committee (APC).  The APC is comprised of elected faculty members, appointed faculty members, and administrators.  Presently, the Committee is engaged in the ongoing strategic planning process.  Members of the APC met with departments to hear concerns and aspirations.  Working groups were formed to examine various areas.  The working groups prepared reports summarizing their investigations and recommendations, and open fora were held.  The reports are largely concluded, with the exception of the campus master plan which has required some re-working due to the recent purchase of a tract of land adjoining Colgate’s campus.  A framing document is being produced that will summarize the overall strategic plan for the next 5 years.

Those in attendance were then invited to ask questions and share comments.   A summary of the questions, responses, and comments are organized by topic area.  Five primary topics were addressed.

1.   Committee Power.

• FAC plays the key role in bringing legislation to faculty meetings for a vote. 
•  P&T will now have a vote in tenure and promotion cases.  The P&T vote is comprised of five elected faculty.  The Dean of the Faculty has an independent vote.  Both votes are forwarded to the President. 
• The Nominating Committee potentially has a lot of power as it decides who stands for elections.  However, the Committee may not be fully utilizing its power given challenges in finding individuals to stand for election.
• The charge of the APC is advisory, not decision making. 
• The FCAAO has not had a clear role recently, but the Committee could influence affirmative action policies, and could work on faculty retention.

It was pointed out that it is important for committees to set clear agenda for the year at the start of the fall semester.  The agenda will determine what gets discussed.

2.   Appointed Committees.

• As such committees are appointed by the administration, the composition of these committees are not under the purview of the Nominating Committee.
• It was noted that time taken by service in appointed positions competes with time for service in elected positions.

3.   The Nominating Committee.

• The Nominating Committee does not operate with all of the information that could be helpful.  They do not know why individuals wish to be on a particular committee.  Information on service is not all in one place.
• Hope was expressed for better record keeping and for more accessible records with the further implementation of electronic reporting (e.g., faculty self-reports).
•  Only a subset of faculty express interest in serving on elected committees.  Many faculty do not complete the committee preference form, even to indicate that they are unwilling to serve.
• It was observed that the Committee used to be more actively involved in the selection of candidates.  The Committee once exerted more power, and was not dependent on the preference forms.
• The mandate of each committee is not universally known, especially among junior faculty.  Guidance and encouragement from senior faculty would be helpful.

4.   Strategic Plan.

• It was asked whether the faculty will vote on the strategic plan.  It was stated that a motion will be brought for a sense of the faculty resolution at a future faculty meeting. 
• It was asserted that the faculty needs a voice while it still matters—before the plan and the framing document are finalized, and well in advance of the January Board of Trustees meeting.  There was a call to discuss the strategic plan framing document at the October faculty meeting, a month earlier than the initial plan, as there is limited time left to provide input.  Some felt that there had been inadequate opportunity to discuss the new student life resolution of about 16 months ago.  In light of that, it was asserted that it is important to discuss the strategic plan at the October, November, and December faculty meetings.  It was proposed that the October faculty meeting should focus on the strategic plan and the annual faculty compensation report.
•  It was noted that the APC and working groups have been gathering input throughout the whole process through a number of means.
• Concern was raised towards the campus master plan and the elimination of parking in the vicinity of the chapel.
• In response to a question on the relationship between the campus master plan and the strategic plan, it was explained that the Campus Master Planning Working Group is one of the strategic planning working groups.  The relationship between the elected Committee on Campus Planning and Physical Resources and the Campus Master Planning Working Group was queried.  It was stated that the working group includes some members of the elected committee.
• Concrete results of the last strategic plan were reviewed.  Institutes, introduction of athletic scholarships, the purchase of Greek Letter System houses, and the Ho Science Center were cited as key elements of the prior strategic plan.

5.   Faculty Meetings.

• The role of faculty meetings was questioned.  Are primary decisions to be made in committee, or will there be a time in faculty meetings to debate decisions?
• Concern towards the structure of faculty meetings was raised.  Faculty meetings are largely comprised of presentations.  Lengthy presentations decrease opportunities for discussion.  This is not a new phenomenon.
• It was argued that special meetings and fora are not the same as discussions during the monthly faculty meeting.  There seems to be less opportunity to discuss items at faculty meetings if they are not on the agenda prior to the decision point. 
• The portion of the monthly faculty meeting devoted to “questions for chairs of standing committees” was discussed.  This agenda item comes late in the meeting when there is no time to discuss.  In response to a question on whether one is required to alert a chair of a question in advance of the meeting, it was stated that while it would be courteous to alert a colleague that a question is coming, it is not required.  We can ask any question from the floor.
• It was asserted that we have the power to change what happens at faculty meetings.  We need to use our voice and speak up.

6.   Other.

• The APC was put forward as a good example of shared governance in that many from across campus work together on the committee.
• It was stated that campus governance is in a rut.  A symptom of this is a sense that there are some things that we can and cannot discuss.  This is not simply due to perceptions towards the administration.  Some items do not get discussed because we forget to bring them up.
•  It was noted that there are places on campus where we cultivate apathy (e.g., Department Chairs telling junior faculty not to serve).  Some of this apathy also comes from the experience of serving on ineffective committees.

The meeting concluded at 5:46 pm.

Prepared by Rick Geier, Secretary of the Colgate University Chapter of the AAUP

Arts, Cultures, and the Strategic Plan

by Mary Moran

Professor of Anthropology and Africana and Latin American Studies

What was striking about the comments at the faculty meeting last Monday was how many faculty noted that a facility for the performing arts, which was a prominent feature of the previous strategic plan that was never realized, is completely absent from the current plan. Many faculty believe that such a priority would help toward the goal of increasing Colgate's academic profile, and it has been recognized as an unmet need for a very long time now. Given all we have heard about changing the profile of students we attract through an increased focus on meeting financial need, it also seems like we should have facilities here that will attract an broader range of students.

At the same time, we are pushing forward with a plan to put a very controversial new Center for Arts and Culture downtown in the village. This is controversial because many village residents are worried about this intrusion into the business district and are concerned about the historic character of the village. It is controversial with many faculty, myself included, due to concerns about having access to the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and the Picker Gallery for teaching purposes. I use Longyear materials in my classes and would like to use them much, much more, if we had the kind of facility that would serve the pedagogical purpose. I protested quite strongly during two consultations with the siting committee, that it was impossible to get students up and down the hill in the space between classes to see and use the materials, and was told this was not a concern and students would "work it out." This to me is not an adequate response.

Furthermore, I and others have grave concerns that the footprint of the downtown site does not allow for adequate storage space and space for expansion of the Longyear collection. Anthropologists have different goals in constructing a teaching collection which are not shared by art historians, who more frequently want to "cull" a collection for its "masterworks." There was only one anthropologist on the museum siting and building committee and he was consistently outvoted on every issue. There was no representative of the SOAN Department on the hiring committee that hired the new director. The Longyear Museum of Anthropology has effectively been taken from the SOAN department without our participation. On the other hand, we very much need a new museum facility because the Longyear has been undersupported for years and the collections are not being preserved in the way they should. A really famous architect has been engaged, and there is trustee and donor enthusiasm for having a "statement" building.

The situation as I see it is this:

• We have a lot of faculty who are are angry that a performing arts center, which was a focus of the last strategic plan, is now off the table due apparently to lack of donor interest (as we were told last Monday).

•  We have faculty and village residents who are very upset about a building planned for the village that directly impacts the faculty's ability to teach.

• We have a famous architect engaged to build a building in a place where many people don't want it, and faculty who want a building they are told they can't have.

My proposed solution: Could we not explore with the trustees and donors the possibility of engaging with David Adjaye (the famous architect) to build on our campus a "statement" building housing an integrated arts center, with space for both performing arts and the two museums? Might it be possible to raise donor enthusiasm for such a project? Has anyone even tried? We now have the space gained from the purchase of the Hoteling property to build such a structure. Also, such a plan would be so much more in keeping with the actual language of the framing document, which talks on pp. 9 about "A Campus for Colgate's Third Century" (emphasis in the original) and how "we must develop a more compact campus in order to enhance student life." In a complete contradiction, the document then turns in the next few paragraphs to discuss the building of the Center for Arts and Culture off campus. in order to "strengthen the role of the arts and culture in Colgate's educational enterprise." This building is projected to cost $15 million dollars; does it make sense to invest in this and still push the unmet need for space for the performing arts off into the future, when another building will have to be constructed at even higher costs?

Teaching and “Teaching”: In Honor of Margaret Maurer, William Henry Crawshaw Professor of Literature, upon Her Reception of the Balmuth Teaching Award, April 4, 2013

by Jerome Balmuth

Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Emeritus

           
Thank you all for your presence here; it is a tribute to our honoree and to the idea of the  award proposed and generously supported by Mark Siegel, class of 1973.
                                                                      
In a recent column in the NY Times, the usually careful writer, Tom Friedman argues that a plausible solution to the commonly acknowledged problem of the increasing costs of University education is a much more determined and systematic use of internet and video education, with a sophisticated employment (as for example in supplementary MIT courses) of a more exacting system of instruction and testing than heretofore practiced.

No one should denigrate the use of the internet for such possible educational uses; nor deny that the internet is -- and can continue to be - a wonderful source of accepted knowledge and detailed information -- as shown by Wikipedia, and by the plethora of other such sources. These would include, I should think, the advertised DVD’s and CD’s of experienced University lecturers, many of which are easily purchased and listened to, as if in a huge University lecture hall. In fact, of course, encyclopedias, for another such source, have been around since even before the French Revolution.

To illustrate his proposal, Friedman offers a Harvard example of such apparently effective and yet economical education: the celebrated course on justice and the law given by Professor Irwin Sandel of Harvard’s Government Dept. This is a course which enrolls no fewer than 1000 students and must use the Brattle Theater and its balconies for its venue. I’ve watched videos of this ‘course’ and marked on Sandel’s use of commonly accepted philosophical materials, such as those I’ve used in my Philosophy of Law and ethics classes over the years. Sandel  talks to the assembly easily and interestingly, occasionally singling out a volunteer student or two in the first few rows to apply or test for a point; which then serves as the lesson of the day. The remainder 998 or so students watch and listen in the loges and balconies, with various degrees of  engagement. Of course student writings and  papers, if any, or the one, at most, as well as a mandatory final exam, are read, if not mechanically, then presumably by a multiple number of apprentices to the department, i.e. TA’S employed for that course.

The irony Friedman misses, I would claim, is the clear failure of Sandel's course to "teach" any of these 1000 students, all so efficiently, in one illusory fell swoop. Teaching, as I understand and try to practice in the class, is unlike merely informing, telling, lecturing or power-pointing; it is not directed primarily, if at all, simply to transferring detailed or general information through indirectly demonstrating how informed the Instructor is as  a model; all the while seeking somehow to engage the student with the instructor’s particular interests. One can read her book for such details and information, or indeed copy and memorize the claims of the associated website.

None of this, I would hold, meets the challenges of genuine teaching: provoked learning and reflective understanding which I, and Colgate, consider at the heart of  the challenge of liberal education. Our students, in relatively small classes, are individually put into  positions of challenged thought: personally confronted to show reflective understanding, imaginative application, and independent  development and elaboration.  No matter how "serious" and "attentive” the merely observant student, it is the imminent insistent human encounter with the instructor's verbal, and subsequently written, challenges for explanation, elaboration, and possible application, that are finally the honest tests of education and practical learning; best enabled -- as alums consistently testify -- under the auspices of a demanding teacher. This is a test -- one of immediate human connection that often continues to endure through time -- that is neither sought nor achievable merely through the large  lecture-halls or, for that matter, from a required exposure to matters of the internet -- even with directed testing as a  challenge.

It is my contention that we cannot economize in the easy ways often suggested if we  are to meet honestly the challenges of learning and genuine understanding that are initiated and realized most often through a determined teacher; the alternative is the shared illusion of unmonitored solitary learning, which is the too easily accepted substitute.

What I have been saying about the community of teaching and learning is in part an outgrowth of our modern humanistic culture; that,  through the centuries, creative humans perfected the uses of words to tell and record stories -- some true as history, some made-up as plays, poems and fiction; the uses of color, shapes and pictures to display and represent appearances, some received, others constructed imaginatively as drawings and  paintings; and similarly for related sounds: to represent as melodies, received cries and tones, as say, bird songs, and then devising and composing  artful, fresh sounding combinations:  songs, symphonies, string quartets.  It is the intellectual  task of present-day humanists and teachers, reflectively, to attend to and build on this special talent: to understand this godlike ability of humans not simply to be in this world, but to ponder and question exactly how we are in, as well as of, this world; dwelling especially on  those creations that more ingeniously enlarge perception, the understanding and self-understanding. Our best teachers, in the immediacy of the classroom, enable our students to draw fresh insights on these talents and their creations -- probing (the class is indeed the laboratory of such probing) their meanings, while exploring with the students, the many  features of the human  creative process itself.

Margaret Maurer, in the many years since  Colgate has seen her work with students, is a genuine teacher in the sense defined above. Her principal focus in her classes, studying Shakespeare and English literature more generally, is the recognized occasion for generations of our students’ exciting confrontation with, and genuine appreciation of, the literary art; their discovery and understanding of created  masterworks; and the light these project on the human condition. Margaret Maurer's courses, like many others in the humanities, are designed to develop a eureka-like understanding of the uses of language to reveal thought,motive and action:  insightful keys to the most profound senses of being human in a human society. These are realized through the imaginative teaching of a master teacher of  acknowledged masterpieces of human creativity.

Margaret Maurer is herself a uniquely creative teacher; and so, Colgate believes, an appropriate recipient of the University’s very special teaching award, particularly designed for such recognition.