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On Wednesday, April 17, members of every SLU
community—undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, members of the
Jesuit community, and administrators—met
to talk with each other about our hopes and dreams for SLU’s next
century. We believe that we all have a stake in creating our future.
The meeting began with a free-wheeling open call for
important topics: what did people most want to discuss? What ideas would be
particularly important as we contemplate the next century in SLU’s
history?
We came up with about twenty topics, including the Jesuit
mission, transparency on academic, financial, and human resource issues, genuine
representation for staff and adjunct faculty, increased attention to future
financial planning (especially scholarships for undergraduate students),
greater flow of information across the entire SLU community, and above all,
mutual concern and respect.
From that list of issues [please see section labeled THEMES
FOR DISCUSSION] we broke out into small groups to focus on specific topics,
which we categorized under four headings:
PROCESS:
topics dealing with deliberation or governance – how do we want to talk with
one another? What should be the structures of power, of representation, of
justice? How should the various SLU communities interact with one another? [Please see section labeled PROCESS.]
PEOPLE: those who participated in this group focused
on “the people in the buildings”--that is, all the issues that touch on the
daily lives of students, staff, faculty, and administrators. Those topics included
justice and representation for staff, as well as for adjunct faculty; campus
safety issues; the current emphasis of bureaucracy over human needs; the
make-up of the Board of Trustees; and HR issues. [Please see section labeled
PEOPLE.]
ACADEMICS: the members of the Academics group focused on
the meaning of the Core Curriculum in supporting the Jesuit Mission, and vice
versa; global outreach; financial issues, particularly in supporting research;
the need for a University Research Council (to be run exclusively by faculty); and
library resources. [See section labeled ACADEMICS.]
FINANCE: this
group emphasized a need for better accountability and transparency, and focused
particularly on the President’s Opportunity
Fund; the upcoming bicentennial as the ideal time for a major capital campaign;
and above all, the need for greater clarity and more information. [See section
labeled FINANCE.]
After the small group discussions wrapped up, we came
together again to share our ideas and concerns. Although we all agreed on the
need for respect, transparency, and free communication, we all felt that the
dialogue had just begun. Many more such conversations will be of vital importance
as we continue to imagine the next century at SLU. At the end of the meeting,
participants agreed to keep the conversation alive throughout the summer, and
to make plans to meet and converse regularly.
THEMES FOR DISCUSSION
Equity issues
(justice for all members of the community)
Process (how do
we talk to each other? How do we communicate across colleges and disciplines?
How do we communicate with administrators, with members of the Board of
Trustees?)
Board of Trustees:
membership, communication, influence
Transparency in planning
& finance
Jesuit mission
Mutual concern
and respect
Focus on
academics instead of buildings or bureaucracy
Building on prior
planning, such as benchmarking (i.e., let’s not forget progress we have already
made in identifying benchmark institutions that can serve as models for SLU.)
Focus on
people--faculty, staff, and students--the
whole person
Increased student
involvement in all areas of SLU governance and planning
Emphasis on Core
Curriculum as reflective of Jesuit mission
Shared governance
and decentralized authority
Bicentennial
capital campaign
Building a strong
Senate
Need for an
active, empowered representative body for staff
Need for an
active, empowered representative body for non-tenure-track faculty (especially
for the Madrid Campus, where faculty have no tenure and no rank.)
SMALL
GROUP TOPICS
PROCESS
The Process group talked about governance and
deliberation: how do we create an ethical
framework for justice and accountability? --how do we talk to one
another? Some wanted tighter restraints
on governing structures; others worried that future administrators might be
hamstrung by rigid controls. There was general agreement that SLU would need an
interim period of calm reflection before finalizing plans for the future or
selecting a new President. All agreed that a University-wide Parliament would
open discussions and serve as a representative body for the whole community,
and that such a body should have a real say (that is, the ability to check or
balance administrative decisions) over the University’s future. The President should be deeply engaged in constituency concerns.
Second, this group agreed that the University needed a new
charter, which must be public.
Some of the structures
we envisioned would include people from all constituencies:
An expanded Faculty Senate
Must include adjunct faculty
Student Senate (already exists in form of SGA)
Alumni Senate - there is a need to engage alumni more
directly
Staff Senate. The current SAC is not
an elected or deliberative body
--all of which
feed into Trustees, for both information to, and for membership in the Board.
Most agreed that
the current structure & selection of Board members has enabled the
President to behave in ways that perpetuate the climate of fear. Question: What
similar / comparable structures of Trustee bodies exist at other private
universities? For example, see Brown for
alumni participation in selecting Trustees, from among wide variety of people;
see Duke for many Trustees coming from University constituencies.
Each of these
representative bodies needs more power and strength, but we also have to
strengthen the interactions between
bodies
We have good structures
on paper (the AAUP has praised SLU’s faculty handbook) but their spirit, even
their letter, have been constantly violated. Question: are structures on paper
adequate if they can be routinely dismissed / violated?
Need to reform
the Board of Trustees before selecting new President. Question: what President
of any worth would come to a University exhibiting present dysfunction?
Question: if
power is diffused (i.e., new representative bodies, more representation on the
Board of Trustees, etc.) would that also weaken or diffuse decision processes?
Suggestion: An impeachment
process for University President:
University Parliament can impeach, Trustees sit as jury
An energized
faculty can accomplish things even in given structures. (example: removal of
Patankar)
We need a community
that communes: informal congregation of all constituencies. Suggestion: a town
hall-style conversation; open communication among all members of the SLU
community (various forms of ice cream socials or sorbet courses proposed; could
be done online through a wiki function.)
Caution: don't
let the current crisis lead to a solution that weakens or debilitates handling
of unforeseen situations in the future
(I,.e., a solution that overemphasizes control or restriction over imagination
and vision)
PEOPLE
This group
stressed equity and representation among all University communities. Above all,
emphasized the need for a meaningful staff representative body. The current SAC
is not a deliberative group and is run by VP for HR An effective staff representative body would:
Allow for the free exchange of ideas
allow for full participation
would be safe and open (no fear of
intimidation or loss of jobs)
Question: What are
the real statistics on staff turn-over?
i.e., sometimes individual jobs
expand when staff leave and are not replaced, leaving existing personnel with
greater burdens and no pay increase
We need more
information on campus safety issues. We need more honest statistics reporting
sexual assaults, for example.
An informed
people are a safer people and a more productive people
This group also
compared HR benefits to the stated University mission:
The high-deductible health insurance
proves costly for lower paid employees
Vitality program very questionable
Some HR programs are very demeaning,
demonstrate lack of trust (demanding birth certificates, marriage certificates,
even criticizing format of official documents before granting or denying
benefits)
Some HR functions are outsourced to a
for-profit group
Adjunct faculty
have poor connection to, and input
in the rest of University
need greater representation
need better access to information
and benefits
are as deserving of faculty development
as regular faculty
Paperwork,
procedures and bureaucracy are currently emphasized over people; research and
conference trips, e.g., sometimes delayed or even denied because of complicated
/ unworkable procedures
Communication: we
need more communication with the Board (not secret / prohibited)
The make-up of the Board of Trustees
should include
students
staff members
faculty
Administrators
are growing in number and, quite notably at SLU, in salary. Result: over-bureaucratization to
justify salaries; inequity in salary freezes; decreased attention to research
and teaching.
While this is a national trend, such
a practice is not compatible with the Jesuit mission. If we truly care about
the whole person we treat people with dignity and respect
ACADEMICS / Research
The Core
Curriculum is central to the Jesuit Mission and vice versa. Observation: there
are different cores for different colleges. Question: is this a good thing?
This group also
focused on adjunct faculty:
underpaid, under appreciated
they are needed in some programs to
prevent too-large classes
we need fewer, but they should be
better paid/treated
SLU must reinstate office of the Provost to attend
to academics and the Jesuit mission (that is, the Provost must be more powerful
and more influential than other VPs)
Academics & mission ought to be
seen as higher priority than other areas of University
Financial issues
(in Academics)
Departments now compete for
resources, meaning, for majors. This competition feeds into the need for
adjuncts
Perhaps consider using numbers of
adjunct faculty, rather than numbers of majors, as a measure for resources?
Research and
teaching should potentiate each other.
We need a University
Research Council, run exclusively by faculty to award internal grant money and
to focus on support for research and scholarship.
We need a strong
focus on greater library and research support across the entire University
community.
FINANCE
All agreed that
we need better accountability and greater transparency.
Board has not
exercised oversight over President's Opportunity Fund, as it is required to:
no checks and balances on POF
not included under Operating Budget
apparently takes everything beyond
first million dollars each year
Information is
power. Without transparency we cannot have meaningful input.
We need a capital
campaign with significant campus involvement. This is crucial as we approach
SLU’s bicentennial.
Fundraising focus should be on academic
scholarships for undergraduates.
Given alumni
reluctance to donate, we will need a new President before we can have a
credible campaign.
Quotations from attendees:
From Timothy J. Lomperis, Professor, Political Science:
”I
had not expected such a deep, thorough, or concrete discussion. The set of
notes emanating from this can serve as a solid archive for a more formal
conference/process on a strategic plan, but there are some solid
ideas/foundations here.
Three things stuck out for me:
1.) There needs to be both a single campus voice (the university-wide
"parliament"), as well as formal voice for the several constituencies
of the SLU community, including the alumni.
2.) As a final source of authority on campus, the legitimacy of the
Trustees as having the ability to be reflective/representative of the entire
campus community will require a fundamental restructuring of the Board of
Trustees so as to ensure that the sources of membership are multiple, rather
than singular.
3.) Finally, written in a new charter must be some provision for the removal
from office of the President. Naturally, it should be a very high bar, but there
still has to be a codified set of procedures to enable this. I very much like
Don Stump's proposal of a process similar to the impeachment of elected officials
in the U.S. Constitution.
Not really parenthetically, I appreciated Christine's call for a focus on
research. There should be, in my view, a single University Research Council comprised
completely of faculty that will review an award all research grants from SLU
university funds.
From Robert Cropf, Professor, Public Policy Studies:
One
suggestion would be to continue the work of the break-out groups by forming
committees to investigate further each of the topics (Process, Mission,
Academics, etc.). Maybe call a final meeting of the year for the chapter to ask
for committee volunteers, etc. Have recommendations from each committee ready
by next fall.
From Steve Harris, President of the SLU
AAUP Chapter:
“We
should definitely continue these planning motions over the summer.”
For a full list of topics, please see the AAUP web page:
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