Big changes coming to shared governance at UHCL? Not likely.

Not really.  It's the same old stuff that's happened over and over before, it's just called something new this time.

Students: This will be meaningless to you because it's all inside baseball.  It might be fun to read, and if you plan to work in state government then it might be something to pay attention to.  This type of bureaucratic sinkhole comes up over and over in government agencies, and that's not likely to end anytime soon.  Petty bureaucrats get a little bit of budgeting power... same story, different day.  (Maybe if they could make the trains run on time it would all work out in the end.)

So... where do we start?  UHCL is required by SACS and other accrediting bodies to have a system of Shared Governance in which the various constituencies and stakeholder groups from within the university have a part in making decisions.  I know that sounds kind of obvious, but I state it here to remind people that functional shared governance is required by accrediting bodies.  For good reason.

Bullying, on the other hand, is frowned upon by accrediting bodies.  Especially systematic and long-term, pervasive bullying and abuse.  Those things don't work out well for anyone in the end.

The latest boondoggle at the university involves the continued co-opting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.  This is the group of folks at the top of the official faculty hierarchy, and they set the agenda for faculty senate meetings and other faculty events during the year.  These are the folks who chair the various shared governance committees across the university and the committees within and appointed by the senate itself.  They spend a great deal of time grinding away on this stuff every year and I've done it plenty and I don't envy them a bit.

The particular committee at the university level that reviews, investigates and passes along new programs and degrees to faculty senate is called Curriculum and Teaching.  All new programs are supposed to go before Curriculum and Teaching (CandT) and get approval before moving ahead to the vote in the Senate - that's how it was designed, I was there when it happened and that's what the documents online say.  That's the charge of the committee, and that's why it's called "Curriculum and Teaching."  Well, last semester CandT didn't like a new degree program proposal by one college at the university because it appeared to be redundant - there was another degree in a different college that already did what was being proposed (well, I might add, but that's just my opinion).  The first time we saw it we sent it back for more info, and we asked that the proposing faculty work with the existing faculty in the other school to determine what was wrong with the new plan and try to fix it.  When the proposal came back again nothing had been done, but at least both sides agreed to sit down and talk with us.  CandT shelved it again.  Why?  Because it was redundant.  Still redundant.

The sit-downs didn't really happen, and the proposing faculty just decided to ignore the requests for information and bully faculty on the committee instead.  How did they learn to do that?

Ultimately CandT sent it to senate, and the full senate failed to pass it.  It was a very poorly done proposal, and the people involved refused to answer questions and/or build consensus beforehand.  Plus, they wanted to train undergrads to do something that undergrads aren't supposed to be doing (according to the APA).

Evidently that program is finding a way to move forward without CandT.  I don't know at this point whether there's another committee that will look at it, or whether it will just go straight to senate, or if it will simply bypass the faculty altogether.  The only reason that I bring it up is that this type of thing isn't a new phenomenon.  During my time in senate I've seen plenty of programs (degrees) ramrodded through in this manner simply because one administrator or another wanted it to happen without faculty concerns being addressed.  The history of some of these new programs hasn't really been that glowing, either.

Another topic that's come up lately is the university-level committee designed to find solutions promoting academic integrity in online programs (specifically because professors had been told by the university administration that we couldn't proctor online exams). There's more about all of this proctoring stuff in a big post from last spring, and I'll refer you there for details.  It's worth your time if you've followed along this far.  The online proctoring committee was created by senate in Summer 2011.  The committee met several times and discussed everyone's concerns (the committee had reps from the dean of students' office, enrollment management, university computing, human resources, and various faculty, one or two from each school, a couple of students, etc., everyone except someone from housekeeping and the grounds crew, it seemed).  The committee's activity wasn't rushed - there was no reason to rush, after all, unless this was a widespread problem, and administrators assured everyone that it wasn't a widespread problem.

The first year we met with a couple of online proctor providers, and discussed ways to determine the identity of students when they logged in for tests, etc.  The next year some BUS faculty got our dean to agree to a pilot study, and so a handful of hand-picked BUS faculty started using ProctorU.com as a proctoring test.  The university committee wanted to do the same thing - run some pilots with the various providers to see what worked.  And we should do enough to make it fair and representative, so it might take a few semesters.  Unfortunately, UH System legal didn't like one or more of the contracts from the providers, and so the committee met a few times that second year to talk about that and see what could be done.  Nothing was done.  BUS moved ahead because it had an accreditation visit coming up, but the university committee did nothing.

I will contend that "doing nothing" was the committee's function.  I firmly believe that the university-level committee (that I was on) was convened simply to delay decisions until the administrators who were against proctoring and accountability in online classes could figure out a way to get in front of it again.  Given the university committee's results (we're in Year 4 now if I'm counting right) it's obvious to see that its objective has been met - there is still no university-wide proctoring or accountability agenda.

Meanwhile, the BUS "pilot" moved ahead.  The university initially volunteered to pay for students who needed strictly online exams, and faculty were "granted" the right to offer local students on-campus tests.  After several confrontations, BUS has decided to implement proctoring in all of its online courses (again, see earlier posts for the full skinny on this) and students have to pay for proctoring if they need to take exams off-campus.

Where were we?  We have a university committee that's supposed to provide solutions for online test cheating issues, and it's done nothing in 3+ years.  So let's create a NEW committee.  Someone in the administration doesn't like the composition of the old committee (even though it achieved the objective that administrators designed it for) so they prod FSEC to come up with a new one.

Just like CandT.  Wow.

And the absolute latest issue is the proposed "accessibility policy."  Some folks at the university level have decided that all documents must be "accessible."  As it's currently written that might mean that faculty have to change textbooks to reader-accessible e-versions or even have full transcripts for any podcasts that we do (in anticipation of someone needing those transcripts, maybe, at some indeterminate time down the road).  Once again, those folks who won't have to change anything to comply with the policy aren't up in arms about it, but those of us who teach online (and a few who don't) see this as a potential screaming academic freedom issue as well as a big waste of time.  The reasoning?  "It's the law."  Have we seen other schools in the UH System put out new accessibility policies with this type of impact?  Nope.  Nor will we see that either.  UT?  A and M?  Nope.

The accessibility policy didn't pass in senate because faculty don't trust administrators.  I have no doubt that this policy will go around senate in some manner to be implemented.

We're not talking about "rogue faculty" here folks, just people who are trying to do our jobs right.  Those of us who have asked for change, and for our opinions to be taken seriously, are just trying to move things forward in a responsible way.  We made enough noise that staff expansions at the expense of faculty were reconsidered, but only at considerable personal cost.  Loud voices got some transparency on budget cuts and allocations a few years ago.  Some of us got proctoring instituted in the business school, but only at considerable personal cost.  And it's gotten to the point that so few people in the university really pay attention and understand the issues that even faculty leadership is fully compromised now.  Why?  Because they don't perceive any consequences to themselves in the short term?  They lack imagination?  Do they enjoy being doormats and abdicating their responsibility to exercise their own judgement on these things?

I gave up tilting at windmills a while ago (things such as how many adjuncts v. full-timers we have, summer pay, etc.) and decided that I would only get riled up over things that had important effects on students and their outcomes (and things I can hope to change).  Unfortunately, all the rest of this noise is yet again making it difficult for some faculty to focus on students and employers and the community at a crucial time in UHCL's history.  

The worst part, I guess, is that all of these folks are adults, and they should know better.  That's the hardest thing to understand.

Online education in the UH System, an update

Students have asked me about the "UH Online" discussion that's been taking place over the last year or so since the UH-Victoria MBA announced that it would be leaving Sugarland.  Well, I can only tell you what I've been told by smarter people: the proposal is on the desk of the system chancellor at this point.  Evidently the systems proposed by the outside consultants would end up looking like what we already have (individual schools with individual strengths and links to programs within) and so there wouldn't be much cost savings there.  That's probably true - since faculty have to be involved in order to call something "education" then I guess online education will still be expensive when done correctly.  It's the last part that's most important.