Transition Team Meeting
May 22, 2008, 2:30 p.m.
Bilger 242
Present:
| Thomas Bingham | Joseph O'Mealy |
| Alan Teramura | Chung Lee (for Dick Dubanoski) |
| Ned Shultz | John Mayer (for Joel Cohn) |
| Martha Crosby | Jerry Russo |
| Takeo Kudo | Laura Lyons |
| David Chin | Vilsoni Hereniko |
| Noel Kent | Carol Karimoto |
| Karin Mackenzie |
I. Minutes of May 15, 2008 Meeting
- correction per email note from Karin Mackenzie to change sentence on page 1 under II. Constituencies
, fourth sentence, to read: For the alumni representative, the main constituency is the Colleges of Arts & Sciences Alumni Association Board of Directors, not necessarily the alumni at large.
II. Announcements
A. Robert Valliant from SPAS that will be creating and maintaining the website (email: valliant@hawaii.edu). The site will have space for response/feedback and links to the colleges' sites.
B. The Chancellor's Transition Group was scheduled to meet last Friday, May 16; however, that meeting did not occur. Alan has a meeting scheduled with Peter Quigley tomorrow, May 23, to update him. The overlap in the two transition teams' membership should result in lots of transparency.
III. Discussion Notes
In the notes from the last meeting, the term über dean
was used as reference title for the position. The decision on what the position title may be and whom the person would report to has not been made yet. That decision may not have to be made at this time. Once the structure is developed, it would be possible to move the structure up or down (report line) and the appropriate title determined.
In looking over the organizational structures of peer/benchmark institutions, there are some commonalities. Wisconsin has a Dean and eight Associate Deans, half of which oversee functional areas and the other half over divisional areas. At Florida, all the Deans have functional responsibilities.
The question is how we envision a structure for us.
SPAS wants to keep the divisional aspect, but perhaps should explore functional aspects also.
If there are central offices (i.e., for Research), would the head be a Director? Associate Dean? It would not be necessary that all be Deans - possible to have Divisional Deans and functional Associate Deans.
Education and content area are important in academia - so Laura's preference is for Divisional Deans. Functional Deans would dilute the importance of the academic areas.
In the recently completed College of Natural Sciences Program Review, the reviewer's recommendation was that the unit head should be a Dean, with no modifiers. This recommendation was also made by the program reviewers for SPAS.
It is important to identify functions - to have clean division of responsibilities - to avoid duplicating existing functions.
Reorganization can (may) impact other offices - e.g., Vice Chancellor for Research, Office for Undergraduate Education.
Functional Areas:
- not to be viewed as separate offices, but as functions that need to be accounted for in the structure
- some functions can be grouped together
- important not to duplicate effort being done at another level
- functions need to be facilitating for A&S
- may need to negotiate
taking back
some functions from other offices
- Undergraduate Education
- Research and Graduate Education
- Community Relations/Alumni Affairs
- General Administration & Budget, Personnel
- Development
- Student Affairs
- Advising
- Curriculum
- IT
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- Assessment
Regarding Honors Program,
the favored structure is a direct line to the chief academic officer of the institution (for Research I universities). For UHM, Honors falls under the purview of the VCAA.
Functions could be grouped together:
- 1. Undergraduate Education
- 6. Student Affairs
- 7. Advising
- 8. Curriculum
- 10. Interdisciplinary Studies
- 11. Assessment
- 2. Research & Graduate Education
- 3. Community Relations/Alumni Affairs
- 5. Development
- 4. Administration, Budget, Fiscal, Personnel
- 9. IT
Divisional Deans:
- What might be considered logical groupings? The five we currently have?
- What would be the most parsimonious grouping?
- Might be helpful to know the percentage (or number) of faculty in each college (the number of people each dean is currently in charge of - issue of access for faculty).
- Equal distribution of resources would be a concern for Executive Dean.
- If the structure is going to have divisional deans, what would be the divisions? This issue would have to be taken to the faculty for their input - where they want to be grouped.
- Presumably, even if there were different groupings, faculty would be located in their same offices, teaching the same classes.
- Need to consider how we might improve A &S on campus - keeping in mind the positive reasons for reorganization identified earlier.
IV. Assignment for next meeting
Identify divisional deans/units - groupings cannot be the same as we have now.
V. Next Meeting:
Thursday, May 29, 2008, 2:30 p.m., Bilger 242
Nancy Fujii
5/27/2008