Transition Team Meeting
September 25, 2008, 2:30 PM
Bilger 242
Present:
| Thomas Bingham | Joseph O'Mealy | Alan Teramura |
| Ned Shultz | Hye-Ryeon Lee | Joel Cohn |
| Subramanian Shankar | Takeo Kudo | Laura Lyons |
| David Chin | Carol Karimoto | Mike Kirk-Kuwaye |
| Karin Mackenzie | Mike Peters | Peter Quigley |
| Lynne Higa | Mary Boland |
This was a joint meeting of the Transition Team and the Chancellor's Working Group.
II. Discussion Notes
Last week the first draft of the TT report was discussed and suggested changes were made to the document. If there are additional minor changes (i.e., grammatical corrections, etc.), please email Alan. Substantive changes, if any, will need discussion.
The document was accepted by acclamation.
S. Shankar raised a question regarding the vote on the models. The previous vote was a straw vote
and in terms of procedure and in order to solidify consensus, it was suggested that a vote by secret ballot be done. TT members were asked to pick one of the three models (Academic, Functional, or Hybrid). The voting results were:
- Academic Model 1
- Functional Model 0
- Hybrid Model 11
Suggestion was made that a PowerPoint presentation containing the major points in the document be developed for use in discussions with faculty.
Peter Quigley thanked the TT members for their work. For the benefit of Working Group members who were not part of the TT, Alan presented an overview of how the TT came to its recommendations:
The Transition Team began meeting in March, after the five Deans met with the Chancellor. The TT is composed of representatives of the stakeholder groups and its charge was to discuss and develop a recommendation for the structure of a single College of Arts & Sciences. The TT has been meeting for about an hour and a half each week since mid-March. At the start, there were few people in favor of having a single A&S college. The decision for a single A&S college was made by the Chancellor -- the Deans wanted stakeholders to have input regarding its structure and organization. The TT agreed upon principles that would guide the decision-making: improving undergraduate education by raising the centrality of a liberal education, preserving areas of excellence, and raising the stature of Arts & Sciences. The consensus was that the reorganization must result in improving undergraduate education.
The TT started out with the goals of determining a structure, developing a governance statement and determining faculty re-alignments. As discussions took place, the focus became the administrative structure. Peer and Benchmark institutions with a single A&S college were researched. These institutions are comparable in size to the Manoa Campus. Institutions were contacted and specific questions were asked concerning the administrative structure and how it worked. From these discussions, three basic models were identified:
- Academic Model -- most similar to current UHM structure
- Functional Model -- with functional offices rather than academic divisions; departments reporting directly to the Executive Dean
- Hybrid Model -- with academic divisions and functional offices.
The TT concluded that the faculty will need to discuss and make the decisions on academic re-alignments.
As a whole, the committee contributed a lot to the process and were able to develop a consensus document.
The Hybrid Model could potentially have fewer administrators:
- an Executive Dean and 2 or 3 Deans of Academic Divisions
- functional offices -- 3 out of the 4 could be led by APT personnel (Directors), only Academic Affairs would need an academic head
Peter Quigley shared a document the Working Group developed. The WG had several meetings, spending some time on clarifying what needed to be done. The document represented edited suggestions and has not been finalized as it was decided that the WG needed to see the TT's recommended model first.
Regarding the Dean's title, the TT recommends the title Executive Dean
. The Chancellor initially told the WG that the title was Dean,
but over time it seems that she would not be against the title suggested by the TT. A question was raised on how the other college deans would view the Executive Dean
title.
Mary Boland stated that she thought the pros and cons for the three structures were well described.
Comment made that the Executive Dean would function like a VC -- the college would have about 700 faculty and a $100M budget. The Executive Dean would be like a small college president. The suggestion of an Associate VC and Executive Dean was not well-received by the Chancellor.
Mary also stated that the narrative didn't address research as an academic priority and suggested it would be good to include this component.
The function of the research office (unit) in the Hybrid Model is to facilitate research by identifying funding sources, proposal writing, etc. The Divisional Deans would be involved in the research planning. SSRI might serve as a model.
Question was raised concerning the $1M the Chancellor has requested in support of A&S. Is this a commitment? Peter stated that he has not yet had a chance to discuss this with the Chancellor.
There is the issue of cost. How to justify hiring someone at a high salary given the current economic situation? How much would this cost -- which model would be the most expensive, cheapest? Can we afford to do this? Reorganizations cost money. The Chancellor recognizes this. Basically, not adding any new staff as existing staffing will be reorganized.
Peter stated that the relative budget impact may be a way to justify one model over another. It was pointed out that the cheapest
choice received no votes.
Alan pointed out that one of the TT guiding principles was improving undergraduate education, cost was not a main consideration. The TT has done its job and cannot second-guess the Chancellor.
Next steps: feedback from WG members who are not on the TT and feedback from TT members on the WG description. The information in the WG document will be incorporated into the TT report (placeholder on page 10 -- Executive Dean description).
Who will roll out the document to faculty? The document will be sent to the A&S Senate Executive Committee. The A&S Deans will be asked to distribute it to their Department Chairs for dissemination to their faculty. The document will be sent to the Chancellor as a courtesy before released to the campus. Peter and Alan will meet with the Chancellor next week (September 30).
Nancy Fujii
October 13, 2008