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Prepared Remarks Easy-to-Print
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Speech to the University Senate
January 10, 2002
Ed Ray
Executive Vice President and Provost
The Ohio State University
Plans and Practices
The state of the world in which we find ourselves today is strikingly
different from the one we knew when I last addressed the Senate
on December 2, 2000. The state and national economies slowed down
substantially. The state budget went from bad to worse. And our
state's financial support for the university went from disappointing
growth to mandatory cuts. These issues paled in comparison to the
senseless acts of cruelty and horror that unfolded on September
11th, as our nation declared war against an enemy that could be
anywhere, with no sense of when it will be over.
But as President Kirwan has said on a number of occasions, we can
all take great pride in the way our university and broader community
came together in the wake of the tragedy of September 11th to honor
those who perished and those who saved lives and to provide help
to those in need. And in the wake of the disappointing news regarding
state budget cuts, we can take some pride in how quickly we came
together to develop plans to meet our needs for competitive compensation
increases, to implement key elements of the Academic Plan, and to
address the budget cuts from the state.
It is important to remind ourselves at times like this that we
do have strengths to draw upon, plans to guide our actions, and
extraordinary people among us who are making a positive difference.
When I addressed the Senate last academic year, I said that an academic
plan is useful in the best of times and essential in the worst of
times. Those were not the best of times, and these are not the worst
of times. We have been changed by the events that have surrounded
us, and our ability to remain resolute and stay the course with
respect to our ambitions for this great university is being tested.
But much of what we are accomplishing gives testimony to the fact
that we will not fail the test.
My purpose in coming before you today is not simply to bear witness
to the truth of the observation that life is what happens between
scheduled events. Yes, we will continue to face life's changes,
disappointments, uncertainty, and challenges. Nonetheless, because
we have the Academic Plan and Diversity Action Plan to guide our
actions, we are taking concrete steps to deal with the university's
most urgent needs. We must and we will stay the course.
When President Kirwan spoke to the Senate in October, he pointed
to the Academic Plan to remind all of us that if The Ohio State
University is to become one of the world's truly great universities,
our first priority is to recruit the best faculty possible and to
retain the many excellent faculty we have here at Ohio State. I
have had the good fortune over the last 10 years to get to know
many of our staff people throughout the university and to learn
what an exceptionally talented and dedicated group of staff we have.
Our staff colleagues are essential partners to our faculty in strengthening
this great institution. And it was for the purpose of retaining
the very best faculty and staff that we have made a commitment to
cut central investment expenditures up to 10 percent. And we have
instructed each college and support area to provide me with specific
plans to redirect up to 5 percent and 7 percent of their respective
budgets to provide faculty and staff with compensation increases
that average 1 percent above the average salary increases of appropriate
benchmark peers for each of the next several years. They are to
provide me with preliminary versions of those plans by the end of
this month.
In my last address to the Senate, I said that previous efforts
to promote diversity and a genuine sense of community on this campus
had yielded disappointing results because we are a predominantly
white institution and we lack the collective sense of imperative
necessary to maintain the constancy of purpose required to make
satisfactory progress. The call for a Council on Diversity in the
Diversity Action Plan recognized the need for constant vigilance
in our efforts to promote diversity and community here at Ohio State.
We have established that Council. Chaired by Carole Anderson, it
already has issued a template for benchmarking our standing and
progress with respect to diversity, collected reports from all colleges
and support areas, and will soon distribute its first report on
our diversity efforts. In short, we have begun a new chapter in
our efforts to address diversity and community on this campus armed
with the means to ensure that we stay the course for years to come.
Furthermore, we already are making substantial gains with our diversity
initiatives. With respect to curriculum, several colleges will come
forward with a proposal for a four-course sequence in American Sign
Language and an undergraduate minor in disability studies. We have
opened our new Multicultural Center with Christine Ballengee-Morris
as director, continued to hire key faculty for our ethnic studies
programs, and begun recruiting a director for our proposed Institute
for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Americas. In addition,
the Women's Place and the President's Council on Women's Issues
are meeting important community needs.
In effect, the Academic Plan and the Diversity Action Plan are
now guiding us toward genuine progress as an institution and as
a community despite external circumstances beyond our control.
While the challenges of the past year have weighed heavily on us
all, it is important for us to remember some of our many accomplishments
and the people who made them possible. For instance:
- Thanks to the hard work of Bill Shkurti, Alayne Parson, Lee
Walker, and the faculty, staff, and student members of the Budget
Advisory Committee, we have a set of university guidelines for
the new budget process to be implemented this coming July.
- Thanks to Michael E. Moritz and his family, our College of
Law has a solid resource base to support the implementation of
its strategic plan.
- Thanks to the successful efforts of a number of search committees,
we have new and exceptionally talented colleagues to work with,
including Karen Bell, Interim Dean of the Arts, Rich Hall, Interim
Dean of Biological Sciences, Jan Kronmiller, Dean of Dentistry,
Betty Lenz, Dean of Nursing, Nancy Rogers, Dean of Law, and Jim
Williams, Dean of Engineering.
- I have the good fortune to have new colleagues such as Carole
Anderson and Barbara Snyder as Vice Provosts, Kay Halasek as Associate
Provost for Honors and Scholars and Susan Metros as the Executive
Director for Educational Technology and Distributed Education
and Deputy CIO.
- We have a football coach, Jim Tressel, who has made us proud
of him and our football players and who has reestablished that
we can beat that school up north on its own turf.
- And finally, for those of you who still need to be convinced
that there can be positive change even in these difficult times,
I remind you that thanks in large part to the recommendation of
the recent Presidential Commission on the Senate and the vigilance
of Jane Case-Smith in implementing it, we are holding this Senate
meeting on a Thursday afternoon.
My purpose in coming before you today is not simply to tell you
that because we have the Academic Plan and Diversity Action Plan
to guide our actions, we have the means to implement a budget process
that will be aligned with our aspirations for this great university
to be an engine of economic, social, and technological progress
for the people of Ohio, our nation, and the world, although I do
believe that. And my purpose is not simply to suggest that we should
congratulate ourselves for initiating a process of change that will
direct us to achieving our goals, although I do believe that we
should feel good about that accomplishment, too.
My purpose in coming before you today is to ask that you join the
President and me in accepting a challenge to go beyond setting the
stage for profound changes at this institution. I ask that you join
us in taking additional steps that will accelerate the transformation
necessary to attain the promise of the Academic Plan. Specifically,
I want to inform you of the actions I am taking and the help I need
from you to deal with three major organizational issues that together
affect all parts of the university. The three issues are:
- one, to begin the long overdue review of the organization of
the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences;
- two, to create clinical faculty appointments outside of the
Colleges of the Health Sciences;
- and three, to implement changes in the probationary period
for certain tenure track faculty in the College of Medicine and
Public Health.
I invite your support as we make further progress in each of these
important areas.
The Colleges of the Arts and Sciences
Let me begin with an appraisal of the status of the colleges of
the arts and sciences at The Ohio State University. While my 32
years at Ohio State hardly qualify me as an historical expert on
the institutional development of the university, I would like to
briefly share my perspective on the role that the colleges of the
arts and sciences have played at this university and how that role
must change if we are to realize our goal of making Ohio State one
of the world's truly great universities. Because Ohio State emerged
as a land-grant university in the late 19th century with an initial
emphasis on providing educational opportunities for the people of
Ohio in the agricultural and mechanical arts, a number of the professional
colleges developed more quickly and attained higher professional
status relative to their peers than was the case for our arts and
sciences disciplines. In fact, to establish the five colleges of
the arts and sciences in the mid-1960s, we actually had to take
a number of academic units out of the professional colleges to create
a liberal arts core that stood independent of the professional schools.
That history stands in stark contrast to the histories of many of
the leading universities that have had well-defined and distinguished
arts and sciences programs for many decades. It is not surprising
that, given the advantage of a head start, a number of our benchmark
peers have more highly regarded arts and sciences cores and are
at a competitive advantage relative to us in recruiting and retaining
the most accomplished colleagues and well-prepared students for
their arts and sciences programs.
To effectively implement our Academic Plan, it is essential that
we have a highly visible arts and sciences presence nationally and
internationally. And it is essential that we have a coherent, collaborative,
and financially sound core of arts and sciences programs of the
highest possible quality. Every university in the top tier of public
teaching and research institutions has a strong arts and sciences
core. The five separate colleges within arts and sciences at Ohio
State - Arts, Biological Sciences, Humanities, Mathematical and
Physical Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences - represent
the core of our undergraduate curriculum. These colleges have received
the majority of the university's selective investment and academic
enrichment awards, and it is clear that we already have great strength
on which to build in many disciplines. Yet we have not taken maximum
advantage of the synergies that can exist among those programs.
Now is the right time to examine whether or not the arts and sciences
colleges are appropriately configured for implementing the Academic
Plan and for working collaboratively to strengthen our national
reputation. Therefore, within a matter of days I will appoint an
ad hoc committee to study the status of the colleges of the arts
and sciences. I am pleased to announce that I have asked our former
President, Edward H. Jennings, to serve as chair of the ad hoc committee,
and he has graciously agreed to do so. Furthermore, I have asked
the Dean from each of the five colleges to nominate three distinguished
faculty members as potential committee members, and I will select
at least one faculty member from each college to serve on the committee.
I also intend to invite several faculty members from outside arts
and sciences to serve on the committee.
As some of you know, I get advice about everything - including
the organization of the arts and sciences. A number of individuals
have suggested to me that this is an opportune time to consider
consolidation within the arts and sciences, given the current situation
in which among the five deans of the arts and sciences we have two
interim deans and two deans who are expected to step down in June
2003. Nevertheless, it is important that we not act simply out of
opportunism. I am interested in developing a plan for the advancement
of the colleges of the arts and sciences here at Ohio State and
using that plan to help all of us differentiate genuine opportunities
for progress from opportunities to make changes that may not serve
our long-term interests. I already have reviewed information on
the organization of the arts and sciences at other major universities,
and I have observed that one college of the arts and sciences is
not a common model elsewhere and that one college that includes
over 1,000 faculty is not likely to serve us well.
Given those considerations, the charge to the committee will include
three levels of review with a request for a final set of recommendations
by the end of autumn quarter 2002. First, the committee should make
a recommendation regarding the optimum configuration of the colleges
of the arts and sciences. Second, the committee should consider
whether or not the departments and programs within the colleges
are assigned to the appropriate colleges. And third, the committee
should assess what authority should reside with the executive dean
of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences and whether or not this
should be a stand-alone position. Currently, that position is filled
by one of the five deans of the various colleges.
The Senate recently adopted rules for the consideration of consolidation
and elimination of academic units, and we will employ that process,
as appropriate, to evaluate and act upon any substantive organizational
changes the committee recommends. I intend to submit the recommendations
of the ad hoc committee to the faculty, chairs and deans of the
colleges of the arts and sciences for consideration, review, and
appropriate action. It will be the collective responsibility of
the faculty of the arts and sciences to build upon the work of the
ad hoc committee to create meaningful change in the organization,
the operation, and the opportunities of the arts and sciences.
In advance of that effort I am asking the current Executive Dean
of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, Michael Hogan, Dean of
Humanities, to begin discussions with his colleague deans and others
in the arts and sciences to take three preliminary actions:
1. They need to create a strategic plan for the five colleges that
will guide efforts to integrate and coordinate their budget decisions
in alignment with the needs of the Academic Plan.
2. They must integrate and coordinate the curriculum of the five
colleges to maximize the coherence and minimize the duplication
of all of the arts and sciences programs by building upon the work
of the current GEC committee chaired by Marilyn Blackwell that is
expected to report its findings by the end of this academic year.
3. They should work with Jerry May and his staff to consolidate
development operations for the arts and sciences under the direction
of the executive dean.
Following the completion of the work of the ad hoc committee, I
will ask the executive dean to take the lead in consultation with
his colleagues to develop a Patterns of Administration document
for all of the colleges of the arts and sciences. It is my intention
to keep this integration moving forward in the years ahead by providing
the executive dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences with
strategic investment funds as the new budget process generates them
so that the executive dean will have the ability to seed and facilitate
collaborative program activities within and across the colleges
of the arts and sciences.
Clinical Appointments Outside the Colleges of the Health Sciences
The second issue that I want to address is the fact that a number
of the colleges outside of the health sciences have inquired over
the past several years if it would be possible to obtain approval
for the appointment of clinical faculty. My position has always
been that individual colleges must make the case for clinical faculty
appointments, but I could support the use of clinical appointments
outside of the health sciences under limited circumstances. In response
to the challenge for the colleges to step up to the issue, the Moritz
College of Law and the Fisher College of Business have each developed
a proposal for creating clinical faculty positions. Vice Provost
Nancy Rudd began an effort last year to develop a general rule to
permit colleges to qualify for such appointments by adopting as
part of their own proposals criteria contained in a general rule
approved by the Senate. And Vice Provost Barbara Snyder has been
consulting with the leadership of the Senate on refining the elements
of a new rule that would provide the framework to enable colleges
to come forward with specific proposals.
Without presuming to make the case for any one proposal, I do want
to briefly share my understanding of the argument of the Moritz
College of Law for clinical faculty appointments, because I think
it illustrates how the entire university could benefit by extending
the use of clinical appointments outside of the health sciences.
The Moritz College now has seven clinical programs ranging from
the housing clinic for our students to the new legislative clinic,
which, among other things, provides Ohio legislators with research
on the impact that proposed legislation for Ohio has had in other
states where it is already in place. The market for the best and
brightest faculty to staff such clinics is national in scope, and
our ability to attract the best colleagues here depends, in part,
on whether we can offer them clinical faculty appointments. It seems
to me that the ability to compete nationally for the best people
under appropriate constraints would be a great benefit to the quality
of our clinic programs, to the legislators that we advise, and especially
to the students who have these exceptional learning experiences.
I urge the Senate leadership to continue to work with Barbara to
craft acceptable enabling legislation and to proceed to consider
individual college proposals on their merits.
Extension of the Probationary Period for Regular Tenure Track
Faculty
Finally, I want to discuss the issue of the probationary period
for regular faculty in general and a request from the College of
Medicine and Public Health in particular. I understood at the beginning
of my administrative career 25 years ago that the most important
issues for faculty are recruitment and retention decisions, including
tenure and promotion, compensation, and teaching and research opportunities.
So it is with a great deal of forethought and after extensive consultation
that I bring to you this matter of considerable importance. During
autumn quarter, the College of Medicine and Public Health brought
forward a proposal to extend the probationary period for tenure
track faculty in the college and to uncouple the promotion and tenure
processes from each other. Specifically, the college requested that
the probationary period mandatory review year be increased from
the sixth to the 11th year for all faculty with the expectation
that faculty with patient clinical service responsibilities will
take advantage of the extension of the probationary period and that
basic research faculty generally will continue to come up for review
in the sixth year. And given the proposed lengthening of the probationary
period, the college requested the ability to promote individuals
to the rank of associate professor in advance of the tenure decision.
This request involves both substantive and process issues. Let
me speak to the substance of the matter first, because an absence
of evidence to support the need for this change would lead me to
reject the request in its entirety and make the process issues less
immediate.
The first priority of our Academic Plan is to recruit and retain
outstanding faculty. I have said before that it is clear that without
students we would not have a university but without outstanding
faculty we will not have a truly great university. Our colleagues
in the College of Medicine and Public Health have been developing
an ambitious plan to greatly increase the teaching, research, and
patient care service capabilities of the college, which is critical
if the college is to perform its tasks at the same level of excellence
as its benchmark peers. The Research Commission Report of 1998 already
documented the need for such a plan by the college as a key element
in advancing the quality of the university.
Our current effort across the university to move the average compensation
rate in each unit to the middle of an appropriately defined benchmark
group recognizes that the competitive pressure in terms of compensation
varies from college to college and, perhaps, from department to
department. Furthermore, the revision of Chapter 47 adopted by the
Senate in 1996 recognizes that faculty responsibilities with respect
to teaching, research, and service may vary considerably within
and across colleges and that promotion and tenure documents need
to be flexible enough to embrace appropriate differences across
units.
The College of Medicine and Public Health has made a case that
it needs greater flexibility in the probationary period to compete
for regular faculty. The most compelling element of the case is
that tenure track faculty with patient clinical service responsibilities,
which includes almost 60 percent of the regular faculty in the college,
generally have patient care and service responsibilities that demand
on average 10 to 40 hours per week of their time. As the college
continues to raise its performance expectations for tenure and promotion,
there is a genuine concern that the tenured ranks of the regular
faculty with patient clinical service responsibilities will shrink
dramatically, and yet, such faculty members are the key to the future
excellence of the college.
In the current ranking of medical schools by US News and World
Report, The Ohio State University is ranked 40th. Among the top
50 institutions, 37 clearly have probationary periods for regular
faculty with patient care responsibilities that exceed our sixth
year up-or-out rule. The Association of American Medical Schools
has documented the trend toward extension of the probationary period
and the AAUP, in its 1999 report on tenure in medical schools, acknowledged
the need for longer probationary periods for faculty members with
patient care responsibilities.
In short, just as the College of Medicine and Public Health and
all other academic units must compete with respect to compensation,
teaching, and research opportunities with their peers, our College
of Medicine and Public Health must also compete with respect to
the probationary period for regular faculty.
The issue of the appropriate process for considering this change
has received some attention in the last two months. The "exceptions
rule" of Chapter 47 states that "An academic unit that
believes there is a reason for the unit to have policies and procedures
differing from those set forth in this chapter may petition the
office of academic affairs through the dean of the college and must
set forth a rationale for why approval of the request is in the
best interests of the unit and of the university. The office of
academic affairs will consult with the rules committee or its designee
in considering such petitions."
The Rules Committee has advised me that it does not believe that
this rule should be interpreted as permitting me to make a decision
regarding the lengthening of the probationary period for regular
faculty in the College of Medicine and Public Health, and it has
provided me with a preliminary comment that while there may be some
merit in providing an extension for regular faculty with patient
clinical service responsibilities, there is no basis for providing
the extension for basic research faculty. John Biancamano, associate
general counsel, has advised me on behalf of the Office of Legal
Affairs that the exceptions rule is clear in giving me the authority
to make a decision on the proposal, after consultation with the
Rules Committee. Moreover, the faculty of the College of Medicine
and Public Health have followed the published rules of the university
as adopted by the full Senate and the Board of Trustees in 1996,
and they determined in an open and deliberative way, following all
of the approved rules of governance of the College of Medicine and
Public Health, to bring this proposal to me. Key leaders and some
of the most experienced and distinguished members of this body,
past and present, have urged me to ignore the plain language of
the exceptions rule and require a vote of the full Senate before
any action is taken in this case. While I can understand the argument
for following that course, I honestly believe that it is not the
principled and responsible thing for me to do. Our colleagues in
Medicine and Public Health have done everything asked of them to
bring this proposal forward following the rules of Chapter 47, which
were designed to empower faculty to take greater local control of
their governance. I cannot in good conscience walk away from making
the decision that is required of me.
Since I am authorized to approve or disapprove the proposal forwarded
to me in accordance with the rules of the university by our colleagues
in Medicine and Public Health, with the concurrence of the dean,
I informed the dean that I could not accept the proposal as initially
submitted to me but that I would consider a revision that extends
the probationary period and uncouples the promotion and tenure decisions
for regular faculty with patient clinical service responsibilities,
while maintaining the current sixth year mandatory review period
for basic research faculty. I am sympathetic to the need for an
extended probationary period for basic research faculty in Medicine
and Public Health, but I was not persuaded that it is in the university's
interest to provide different probationary periods for basic research
faculty inside and outside the College of Medicine and Public Health.
I met with Dean Sanfilippo and shared my concern with him.
The dean has provided me with a revised proposal brought through
the same college governance process that requests the extension
of the probationary period and the uncoupling of promotion and tenure
for faculty with patient clinical service responsibilities only.
I have accepted that proposal.
With regard to the appropriate process for extending the probationary
period elsewhere in the university, I am not persuaded that further
changes in the probationary period for regular faculty are best
accomplished through the piecemeal, unit-by-unit process identified
in the exceptions rule alone. No other unit has brought forward
a proposed change in the probationary period for consideration;
I will not take further action on this issue in the next year. I
ask that you, the members of the Senate, foster a thoughtful community
debate regarding the need for greater flexibility in the probationary
period throughout the university and consider the adoption of additional
rules. If the existing rule can be improved, we will all benefit
from it in the years to come.
In summary, I have focused on three organizational issues today
that are each important to our efforts to move beyond the rhetoric
of the Academic Plan into meaningful implementation. I genuinely
believe that if Ohio State is to become one of the world's truly
great universities we must begin to determine how to advance the
position of the colleges of the arts and sciences in the university,
to explore the use of clinical faculty appointments outside of the
health sciences, and to increase the flexibility of the probationary
period for faculty across the university. Each of these initiatives
provides flexibility so that the different parts of the university
can be stronger and can better meet their distinct missions. We
have created the framework for change and articulated our vision
in the Academic Plan, and I hope that we can now make some of the
hard decisions critical to realizing the goals we have established.
This speech has been longer than I believe most of you bargained
for but I hope you have found it to be time well spent. I know that
all of the members of the Senate, to a person, share my respect
and affection for this university and its remarkable faculty. I
tell you honestly that it is an exceptional honor and responsibility
to serve this great university as provost. We have much to accomplish
and I know that we can continue to work collaboratively to reach
our common goal for the greater good of this institution.
Memorandum on CMPH Proposal
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