Tough Choices at Radford University

By Susan Barnard and Ann Ferren

When we presented the case study at the conference jointly sponsored last fall by the AAUP and the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD), we focused on the question, How can faculty and administrators treat budgetary challenges as opportunities to renew institutional missions, collaborate in effective strategic planning, make collective decisions, and maintain or increase mutual trust within a climate of evidence? Because faculty and administrators have such different perspectives on these matters, we chose to write this article as a dialogue between the two contrasting perspectives.

Barnard: It all began in 1996. I was a faculty member in the Department of Interior Design, a small academic unit with four faculty members. This tiny but highly focused group had been working since the early 1990s to set the stage for a site visit by the Foundation for Interior Design Education and Research (FIDER), the agency that accredits educational programs on interior design in the United States and Canada. The department had hired new faculty, completed an exhaustive curriculum revision, and overseen a major facility renovation. The FIDER site visit was tentatively scheduled for 1997. Expectations were high.

In January 1996 the department chair and senior faculty member decided to retire under the Workforce Transition Act (WTA), a retirement-incentive package sponsored by the state. Soon thereafter, another professor in the department took disability retirement, and a junior faculty member accepted a position at another institution. As the lone remaining faculty member, I suddenly found myself accepting the dean’s appointment as chair and assuming the challenge of holding things together until new faculty could be recruited. Because all these changes had taken place so late in the academic year, only temporary replacements would be possible. Nonetheless, I remained confident, fully expecting two of the three tenure-track vacancies to be advertised in the fall. During this period, I held steadfastly to the goal of FIDER accreditation, assuming only a slight delay in scheduling.

Ferren: My term as vice president for academic affairs began in summer 1996, just after the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia, the policy board for all campuses, had mandated elimination of programs that produced few graduates. The state had offered a substantial buyout program for all public employees, and had required restructuring and strategic plans to improve effectiveness and demonstrate significant cost savings. Consequently, my predecessor had overseen the closing of programs with low graduation rates, managed the elimination of many full-time positions as faculty members took WTA retirement, and cut the academic budget by reducing funds for library materials, travel, equipment, and secretarial support. In addition, state mandates for post-tenure review and academic program review had just been put in place. I inherited these accountability and efficiency actions, which would have been difficult to manage even without the added feeling of instability that often accompanies a transition in campus leadership.

No strategic plan had guided these decisions, and the process for involving faculty in meeting the challenge of cutting programs and budgets was ineffective. Many faculty harbored deep suspicion about cost cutting and resented what they perceived as the state’s "bottom-line approach" to higher education. One year earlier, a new president had acted quickly to initiate strategic planning and engage the campus in adjusting to current circumstances while planning for the future. Under his leadership, the internal governance process had been revised to provide for a representative faculty senate. After years of top-down leadership, however, faculty members were unclear about their role and authority, especially regarding matters such as program closure and budget. This was a sensitive time. It was not a good time for establishing trust.

Barnard: When the 1996–97 academic year began, the Department of Interior Design and the Department of Fashion existed as two separate units within the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Over the course of that year, the two were merged into a single department. I was appointed chair of this new department in which there had been a combined total of eight tenure lines, but now there were only four. Fully aware that this restructuring move had been rumored for some time and was probably inevitable, the faculty involved made a conscious decision not to oppose the merger. Instead, we decided to "get with the program" in hopes of having a stronger voice in shaping the future. As I remember it, our motto was, "If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!"

Ferren: The decision to reconfigure programs is never popular; it can be lethal for a new administrator who has not had sufficient time to generate good will among faculty. Unfortunately, that was the situation in which I immediately found myself. The president had asked me, as one of my first priorities, to finish the reorganization begun by my predecessor and to consider eliminating programs, combining programs, and moving programs and departments to other colleges. No data or task force recommendations were in place to guide the decisions. In fact, the files were filled with memos from departments roughly translated as saying, "We won’t go."

Clearly, the most vulnerable of all were the fashion and interior design programs, where faculty numbers had been reduced by retirements and other personnel changes. I knew little about these disciplines. They had no critical role in general education as do English and philosophy, and they had no special support from the state or the board of visitors, which is the university’s governing board. It would have been a perfect time to take advantage of their weakened condition, declare that they were not central to the mission of the university, and put them on the chopping block as part of the budget-reduction mandate.

Clearly, eliminating open positions is easy but will not match strategic priorities. Consequently, I chose instead to work with department chairs and deans to review priorities, reallocate resources, and restore fundamental needs, such as faculty travel, the library budget, and equipment. To simultaneously strengthen our academic programs and our financial situation, we invested more in retention programs, recognizing that spending money could bring a payoff intuition returns by keeping currently enrolled students. We also began to address salary inequities that had been created by the ups and downs in state authorizations for salary increases. To distinguish my role as the new vice president for academic affairs, I relinquished my seat on the faculty senate and suggested instead that I be held accountable for consultation and for reporting on administrative issues at each senate meeting. My goal was to place decisions about individual programs in the context of institutional priorities.

Barnard: By 1997, having survived the WTA and embraced a departmental merger, faculty in the Department of Interior Design and Fashion thought the worst was behind us. We quickly made plans to replace the tenure lines and move forward with the programs. To our dismay, however, we were not allowed to advertise for tenure-track positions. Instead, the positions approved were "full-time temporary with the possibility for reappointment for up to three years." Although disappointed, we nevertheless found three qualified applicants willing to accept positions without promise of tenure. We hoped these hires would stabilize the faculty for the present, and that, over time, these positions would convert to tenure track.

During the following year, the faculty senate rewrote the faculty handbook to clarify the fact that three-year temporary faculty were ineligible for rehire under another three-year contract, and that the terminal degree would hereafter be a requirement for tenure-track positions. Fearing there was no future for them at Radford, one of the three temporary faculty members left for a position at another institution, and the other two dropped to half time in order to pursue doctoral degrees. We were disconcerted that the administration was still unwilling to approve tenure-track positions for interior design. Frustration mounted. Morale plummeted. It was our lowest point.

Ferren: Unfortunately, enrollments in fall 1996 and 1997 were below expectations and, as the vice president for academic affairs, I was faced with budget reductions that made the reauthorization of tenure-track positions difficult. Tenure, linked both to accountability and to efficiency, was a topic of discussion statewide, and was of particular concern to the board of visitors. Not wanting to begin my term by challenging either the board of visitors or the faculty, I asked the faculty senate to approve three-year temporary appointments, hoping this new type of appointment would provide the needed stability, yet allow for flexibility. I told the interior design and fashion faculty and the dean of visual and performing arts the truth about the budget and what it would take to persuade me to replace faculty. In order to buy time to understand the quality of and demand for the programs, I authorized only temporary faculty.

To their credit, the faculty in interior design and fashion did not launch a powerplay or issue a whining response aimed at getting everyone else to fight their battle. They set about demonstrating that programs of quality such as theirs could attract students and first-rate faculty, even without tenure lines. Further, in addition to combining energies to develop a strong, unified department, the faculty stepped out individually on campus initiatives emerging from the university’s strategic plan. Their role as campus leaders from 1996 to 2000 in technology, experiential learning, research, and department-chair development gave them visibility and credibility.

Barnard: Finding ourselves back at "square one," we concluded that no approvals for tenure-track appointments were likely until our unit had completed the program-review process mandated by the state. We were equally convinced that the department would remain at a stalemate until there were tenure-track faculty members in interior design who could participate along with the fashion faculty in long-term planning. In an effort to ensure our future, we requested permission to proceed with the program-review process a year earlier than originally scheduled.

Ferren: Under the state-mandated process for reviewing academic programs, each is assessed on a rotating five-year cycle. During the first three years of the process, some themes common to many programs emerged, including limited attention to outcomes assessment, underenrolled concentrations that splintered the curriculum, and specialized course offerings matching faculty rather than student interest. Every department routinely requested additional tenure-track positions and increased funding, despite no increase in the university’s budget.

As departments received their evaluations and recommendations for improvement from the Academic Program Review Committee and from me, faculty members were often surprised and annoyed that there were criticisms and suggestions for change. Departments that had involved their entire faculty, undertaken conscientious review, and made their own recommendations for improvement were much more sanguine about the final reports they received.

To aid understanding of the process, department chairs whose programs were coming up for review during the next year served on the Academic Program Review Committee. This experience helped them gain a larger institutional perspective, see how important data were to making a persuasive case, and understand that the purpose was not just to improve a single program but also to strengthen the institution. Inevitably, they also saw that additional resources could not be the only way to achieve continuous improvement.

Barnard: My experience as a member of the Academic Program Review Committee in 1998–99 was of great benefit in facilitating our departmental review the following year. We began by developing a five-year strategic plan during the fall semester. The following April, we submitted our self-study documents. After official review by a university-wide committee and the vice president for academic affairs, our program was recommended for "enhancement." Since that time, we have received approval for two tenure-track positions. Enrollments were up significantly in fall 2000. The merged faculty is dynamic and collaborative, aided partly by the intense work on the plan and the self-study.

Based on the university’s strategic plan and recommendations arising from the review process, the department has received approval for re-establishing the eight-member tenure-track faculty, revising the design curriculum, expanding experiential learning opportunities, integrating technology, expanding faculty development, strengthening links to alumni and professionals in the industry, and, ultimately, achieving accreditation.

Ferren: The situation chronicled above is not an unqualified success story—it is a story of hard work, good intentions, missed cues, and still-fragile results. In retrospect, had I not been new to the university, had I been more familiar with the programs, or had I perceived them to be central to the university’s mission, I would still have combined the departments, but I probably would also have authorized faculty positions. During that same period, I did authorize tenure-track lines in areas such as biology and English, because the demand for these programs was evident and the courses were important to other programs on campus.

Had the chair or the dean had a different temperament, I might well have heard angry demands for support. Instead, they went about the business of sustaining the programs. Had the department chair been less willing to shoulder the responsibility for the future of the department and for bringing the faculty together, or had she shared her dilemmas with everyone on campus, including students, I might well have had petitions and student complaints to deal with. Finally, had I not had confidence in regular policies and processes for planning, allocating resources, and reviewing the quality of programs, I might have relied less on my commitment to a rational, equitable approach and responded to the squeaky wheel sooner.

I have had over fifteen years of experience with reviewing programs, combining departments, and managing budget reallocations and reductions. I wish that faculty and administrators shared the same perspective and same timelines for decisions, but I am realistic enough to know that those on the local level do not always share a larger view of the university or the commitment to harmonize competing interests. Further, while we may seek a collaborative perspective on funding and resource allocation, deans and department chairs are always called on to be strong advocates and to "bring home the bacon." It is also clear that no one voluntarily gives up anything or makes dramatic changes without both an impetus and a belief that things will be better if they do.

Based on past experience as well as this special case, I offer the following recommendations.

Small programs and departments should be combined because there are savings in administration, committee work, facilities, staff, equipment, and more. But programs and departments must have something in common if they are to be combined and the whole is to become more than the sum of the parts; typical candidates are disciplines such as sociology and anthropology or management and marketing.

An administrator faced with the need to combine or eliminate a program must give faculty a chance to help with the decision and the process, and must tell the truth and be forthcoming with all data. An administrator must be patient and not make a swift bold strike to meet a mandate. If a program is weak, interim steps such as eliminating courses and concentrations or suspending enrollments pending reorganization can be taken. Given an opportunity to rethink a program, faculty are often willing to let it go once they can see the need for doing so themselves. Although some may argue that an external mandate that allows no choice makes the decision easier, such forced decisions have long-term consequences and create anger and mistrust that must be dealt with for a long time. Finally, when all the decisions are made, there should be a clear paper trail so that those who come after will know what happened, why it happened, and who was involved in the decision-making process. Without documentation, time will create its own story and cloud future confidence between faculty and administrators.

Barnard: So, what have I learned during these five years as department chair? Clearly, roadblocks, both internal and external, can converge to threaten the viability of an academic program or department. The various decision makers involved see academic situations from very different perspectives. A department chair tends to perceive the situation in a longitudinal view, whereas the administration and the state perceive the situation essentially from a cross-sectional perspective. These two views—the long-term quest for program excellence versus the "snapshot" evaluation of department productivity—meet at a critical intersection. Because program success ultimately requires attention to both of these perspectives, it is crucial to build collaborative bonds between faculty and administrators.

What enabled our department to survive the bizarre set of events that converged to threaten the viability of our programs? I am convinced it was the sheer determination of four faculty members who faced the reality inherent in the situation and made a conscious decision to work within the system to succeed "against all odds." In a larger sense, we survived because a system existed in which dialogue was possible, in which decisions were communicated truthfully and openly, and in which those decisions were made deliberately, over a period of time, and not suddenly and arbitrarily. I have come to believe that it is only in an atmosphere of honesty, fairness, and candor that the element most essential for collaboration—trust—can flourish.

Ferren and Barnard: When we shared this experience with the audience of academic administrators and faculty at the AAUP–ACAD conference, the responses were enlightening. Some administrators applauded our ability to stay in conversation through a hard time and maintain a positive relationship. Many were particularly admiring of a department chair who stepped up to a challenge and quietly and gracefully unified a disparate group. But faculty members in the audience seemed far less willing to accept the fact that administrators have hard decisions to make that may call for new models of governance or new types of academic appointments. And although they did not say so directly, they may have found the department chair too willing to accept the administration’s view of institutional realities.

The one point of agreement overall was that change in higher education is not likely to come except when there is pressure. Given that premise, we conclude that if we wish to achieve shared vision and direction for that change, communication and collaboration can ease the way.

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