Chapter 3
Mission, Planning, and Governance

 

Academic Affairs

Academic Affairs, with 240 full-time faculty and 119 staff, is responsible to ensure the effective delivery of the curriculum, the development of new programs, and the employment of a properly credentialed faculty in sufficient numbers to maintain the quality of the curriculum as well as instructional support. It also is responsible for the library and the three academic student support centers.

The Vice President for Academic Affairs, the chief academic officer of the campus, provides leadership for the overall administration and quality of all academic programs. This includes promoting academic excellence among the faculty and efficiency in instructional operations. The Vice President presides over Deans and Directors meetings and over Deans and Chairs meetings, and serves as a member of the President’s Planning Council and the President’s Staff. The Director of the Library and the directors of the academic student support programs report to the VPAA.

The Vice-President for Academic Affairs oversees an important aspect of academic planning: the creation of the course schedule for each semester. The course schedule must take into account student needs and the deployment of instructional resources, both human and physical. Input from academic departments and consultation with departments relative to student needs are essential phases in this academic planning process.

The Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs is responsible for the implementation of academic program assessment, the institutional self-study, the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Advisory Council for Graduate Programs, university awards committees, and other tasks as assigned.

The Academic Deans are the chief academic officers of their respective colleges:

Deans are responsible for College budgets and faculty recruitment (subject to approval) and coordinate department search committees and faculty evaluation teams. They also work with department chairs to evaluate and implement academic staffing requests, plan curriculum changes, and work with the Vice President for Academic Affairs to make academic staffing recommendations to the President. Deans also appoint and supervise graduate program Coordinators. The College of Arts & Behavioral Sciences, the largest college, has a full-time administrator serving as Assistant Dean; the other Colleges have Acting Assistant Deans (faculty members generally serving half-time with 6 credit/semester teaching load).

The extent to which academic colleges engage in college-wide program planning varies, and most initial planning occurs at the academic department level. All departments are required to undertake a departmental self-study every ten years. These studies provide an opportunity for departments to assess their effectiveness and identify needs for curricular changes. It is not clear how well departmental self-studies are incorporated into the academic planning process; some faculty feel they are ignored. Externally accredited professional programs are subject to additional oversight. Academic program assessment is carried out at the department level, although the Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs is charged with monitoring these activities and developing a more comprehensive program assessment plan. (An expanded discussion of Academic Program Assessment can be found in Chapter 5).

Governance within Academic Affairs is informed by the Faculty Contract, which details the procedures for curriculum ratification and faculty evaluation decisions. Committees comprised of elected faculty members and administrative appointees make recommendations to the President and Board of Control for approval and implementation. These decisions, of course, have implications for university-wide planning, resource allocation, and policy implementation. (For a fuller discussion of these processes, see Chapter 5).

The Curriculum and Academic Policy Committee (CAPC), the Graduate Committee, and the General Education Committee (GEC) are responsible to review, clarify, and evaluate curriculum proposals and identify issues for further discussion. Proposals that emerge from these committees are then presented to the faculty at large for ratification. However, the administration allocates resources to colleges and departments. This two-way structure provides a series of checks and balances that may result in conflict or collaboration. (As will be discussed more fully in Chapter 5, the development and eventual approval of the new General Education program was based on contractual processes and successful negotiations between the faculty and administration.)

Department Chairs are faculty members and thus are in the Faculty Association bargaining unit. They are spokespersons for departments and liaisons to the dean and administration. Chairs are elected by the department’s faculty for two-year terms and have no formal authority over the faculty. They work with their departments and Deans on curricular planning, staffing needs, and course schedules.

Chairs oversee the development of departmental curriculum change proposals; these are submitted to CAPC, Graduate Committee, or the GEC. Chairs may take responsibility for tracking departmental assessment processes or they may ask someone else to do so. Chairs also monitor departmental budgets and send funding requests to the Dean. Chairs receive release time annually, as determined by the faculty contract, depending on the size of their departments. They receive no summer compensation, although they often have duties to fulfill during this time.