New England Board of Higher Education » faculty

Don’t Sweat the Big Stuff: Academic Innovation in all Shapes and Sizes

NEBHE Admin — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:00:18 +0000

To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to care or demonstrate any institutional commitment or loyalty. Professional schools lag behind their professions rather than provide cutting-edge wisdom for their next generation, as faculty rely on their reservoir of dated materials and perspectives.

Or so we often hear.

I believe we don’t give ourselves enough credit for innovation and creative thinking within higher education. The soap operas of entrenched faculty, factions divided over trivia, professors protecting their sub-disciplines, lengthy and convoluted approval processes, and ongoing acrimony and melodrama all overshadow progress made without fanfare. The longer view of the history of the American college and university clearly demonstrates the responsiveness to changing societal needs and opportunities—with faculty often at the forefront of that change.

If a growing creative class, to use Richard Florida’s term, is the catalyst for our dynamic society, then the university is its temple. Cruise control is anathema to the academic temperament. Academics’ very psyche draws them to tinker rather than stagnate. Faculty are innately restless. Even when they devote their entire adult life to one institution, faculty often reinvent themselves several times over the course of their careers. This is one of the undervalued appeals of the academic life and the malleability of the academic enterprise. Professional lives can change even when titles do not. Faculty can move in and out of various roles. Universities, consequently, have been remarkably adaptable and even protean institutions over the centuries—and very capable of reinvention and delivering new knowledge and value to their expanding constituents. While the list of top corporations changed dramatically over the course of the past century, America’s leading universities have not: far more because of their resilience than their resistance to change.

David Riesman, sympathetic to the impediments that leaders face in higher education, coined the term “faculty veto group” to characterize the negative force faculty play in moving their institutions forward. Faculty block but rarely facilitate; micromanage and second-guess, rather than support their institution’s leadership. Though there is no denying the inherent intransigence in this stereotype, just as often faculty quietly innovate. We look for evidence of blockbuster changes when modest, incremental change is far more common, less detectable, and perhaps much more desirable. By focusing on the challenge of introducing major transformations or innovations, it is easy to overlook the march forward from ideas far more discreet, minute and local, though cumulatively perhaps even more impactful.

I would distinguish between micro- and macro-innovation—one a baby step and the other a major leap, one whispers and the other screams, the first overlooked and the latter overrated. Micro doesn’t mean mini; introducing innovations in the classroom, reinventing course content, developing interesting scholarly projects each pave the way for even larger breakthrough events. We tend to elevate and romanticize vision and self-proclaimed paradigm shifts, as if these are frequent and planned. “If you are having visions,” former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said, “you should see a doctor.” Beware the prophet, but study the plodder. What is micro today can lead to macro tomorrow—with the foundation, reassurance and wisdom that help to ensure success. Lasting innovation benefits as much by slow cooking as stir-frying. So, let’s give a cheer or two to the academics we too often berate for their inertia.

Forecasting the future of various possible actions—or inactions—has inherent false negatives (thinking something looks safe, and it isn’t) and false positives (fearing something bad will occur, and it doesn’t). Potential risk should never paralyze an organization, but there are ways to mitigate that risk: seize concrete opportunities, take trial-and-error steps that minimize large investments or lingering commitments, select options that permit a variety of alternative paths, and avoid dependency on any set outcome. Academic innovators find ways for their institutions to be nimble rather than calcified, and avoid public megafailures. There are few institutions as unforgiving and intolerant of failure as academe.

In my experience, the most successful innovations occurred through steps that wouldn’t have been catastrophic if aborted, and worked out in ways, frankly, no one even predicted or planned. I would modify the popular business cliché “disruptive technology” to suggest that academe benefits most by its disruptive pedagogy. Trying new things causes old habits and assumptions to be revisited. While I am coining new jargon, I would also introduce the phrase “planned serendipity.” Strong academic leaders place themselves in the path of potentially good ideas and capitalize on them.

Chocolatier Willie Wonka morphed Thomas Edison’s famous edict (invention is 99% percent perspiration and 1% inspiration) into a slightly different, more mathematically-challenged formula: “Invention, my dear friends, is ninety-three percent perspiration, six percent electricity, four percent evaporation, and two percent butterscotch ripple.”

Effective academic leaders cleverly bring the butterscotch to the party.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.

Data Connection: State Work, Guns, Sports

John O. Harney — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:22:18 +0000

In January, we revived the collection of facts and figures called "Data Connection" that we had published quarterly for nearly 20 years in the print editions of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

The latest ...

Change in Connecticut State University System (CSUS) "administrative and residual" staff, fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2011: -15% Connecticut State University System

Change in CSUS full-time instructional personnel (faculty) during that period: +10% Connecticut State University System

Share of accounting employees at Certified Public Accounting firms who are Hispanic/Latino: 3% American Institute of CPAs

Share who are Black/African-American: 3% American Institute of CPAs

Number of states that now allow weapons in their state capitol buildings after New Hampshire in January overturned a ban on weapons in the State House and permit concealed weapons on the House floor and in the visitors gallery: 7 National Conference of State Legislatures

Share of of football players who competed for programs ranked in Sports Illustrated’s 2010 preseason top 25 were charged with or cited for a crime: 7% Investigation by Sports Illustrated and CBS News

Amount of money the University of Connecticut athletic department lost at the 2011 Fiesta Bowl: $1,800,000 The Daily Campus

Amount UConn absorbed from 14,729 unsold tickets: $2,924,385 The Daily Campus

Change in number of applications to Butler University one year after the Indianapolis university made it to the NCAA basketball championship: +41% Butler University

Population of Maine, 2010: 1,328,361 Lewiston Sun Journal on U.S. Census

Change in population of Maine, 200o to 2010: +4.2% Lewiston Sun Journal on U.S. Census

Change in Maine's non-white population: +37% Lewiston Sun Journal on U.S. Census

Faculty Raises Sluggish in Tough Economy

John O. Harney — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:22:19 +0000

Median faculty pay did not increase this year at public colleges and universities, and inched up just 2% at private institutions, according to a study from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR).

The CUPA-HR’s annual National Faculty Salary Survey covers more than 800 four-year institutions nationwide and includes salary data from well over 200,000 full-time faculty members from all manner of academic disciplines.

The CUPA-HR survey has tracked changes in faculty pay every year since 1982. It does not include community colleges nor part-time, adjunct faculty.

For all of the institutions and faculty ranks surveyed, pay increased around 1.1% this year. During the 2006-07 academic cycle, before the economic crash, faculty pay grew by about 4% across the board.

The CUPA-HR survey also ranks academic disciplines by average baseline compensation. This year’s highest-paid disciplines at all ranks were legal studies, engineering and business, in that order.

The lowest-paid academic disciplines were markedly different between public and private institutions. The lowest-compensated faculty at public universities were those teaching in disciplines like: English; foreign languages; and the visual and performing arts. The lowest-compensated at private institutions were those in: theology; law enforcement; and parks and recreation.

Maine Works on its System

John O. Harney — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:37:22 +0000

Trustees of the University of Maine System got an update this week regarding the financial and programmatic health of the state’s seven university campuses and its online and distance-learning initiative called University College.

Last year, projected budget shortfalls to the tune of $42.8 million prompted administrators to reevaluate the management and academic structures of the Maine system. At its November 2009 meeting, the board of trustees endorsed a broad-based plan that sought systemwide financial sustainability by 2013. System chancellor Richard L. Pattenaude discussed the plan on the NEBHE website in June.

At this year’s meeting, trustees were presented with a “newly updated multiyear financial plan” outlining scenarios leading to a balanced budget and sustainability for the system in five years. Officials in the chancellor’s office praised the seven Maine campuses for helping in this effort; institutional leaders this year have identified cost savings totaling about $5 million.

Many of these efficiencies and reductions have cost jobs. The system, in an effort to cut spending, has reduced its total workforce by 6% over the past three years. Facing a $5.9 million shortfall, the University of Maine alone trimmed more than 52 FTE positions, though few of those reductions were outright layoffs.

The elimination of many adjunct faculty positions may have also led to spikes in faculty teaching loads and class sizes, and hampered student access to certain courses, as sections were eliminated. Proposed spring cutbacks reportedly threatened the existence of the French department (among others) at the University of Maine, and trustees this week approved the elimination of two bachelor of science degrees in secondary education at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Academic programs at Maine campuses, according to Pattenaude, must pass the “12/5 rule”—meaning that any class with fewer than 12 students and any department with fewer than five majors must defend its continued funding.

Some UMaine System priorities are growing, however. For example, distance and online education credit hours increased this year (at annual rates of 8.5% and 27%, respectively) and community college transfers into the system are up 12% over last year.