Tough choices at Radford University

Academe, May/Jun 2001 by Barnard, Susan, Ferren, Ann

When a small department faced big cuts, collaboration between the chair and the vice president for academic affairs rebuilt its programs.

EVERY CAMPUS IS FACED WITH RISING COSTS and limited resources. Too often, faculty and administrators fail to communicate effectively about the challenges and hardships this double bind creates. This article is a case study on how Radford University, a public comprehensive institution with 8,800 students in southwest Virginia, responded to an external mandate to restructure for efficiency.

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. 1 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!"