IUB AAUP REPORTS & STATEMENTS

IUB-AAUP Statement of Principles Regarding the Fall 2020 Bloomington Restart

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The Indiana University Bloomington chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) acknowledges the dedicated efforts across the IU community to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, and affirms the following principles as basic guidelines for reopening and, if necessary, safely and rapidly reclosing the Bloomington campus for the 2020-2021 academic year. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Michael J. Sorrell, President of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, has suggested a wise watchword, that any "rush to reopen is going to set us back in our fight against COVID-19 even more. The sacrifices that we must make to restore order and safety will make us a stronger, more resilient society."

1) Faculty, staff, and graduate employees must be full partners in reaching community agreement around safe reopening plans. The health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic means that instructors and other campus employees face numerous challenges to their ability to deliver instruction or services in the same way they would under normal circumstances. To ensure that plans to resume residential activities on the Bloomington campus address these challenges in a fair, equitable, and clear manner, faculty, staff, and graduate employees must be full partners in their development.

2) Individual instructors should have the freedom to opt-in to face-to-face teaching, rather than being required to opt-out on a case-by-case basis. In its 2013 Statement on the Freedom to Teach, the AAUP notes:

The freedom to teach includes the right of the faculty to select the materials, determine the approach to the subject, make the assignments, and assess student academic performance in teaching activities for which faculty members are individually responsible, without having their decisions subject to the veto of a department chair, dean, or other administrative officer.

It has furthermore been longstanding IUB policy ( BL-ACA-H28) that:
Faculty members teaching courses have the responsibility to provide instruction as scheduled. Variations from the schedule may occur for a variety of reasons, including illness, professional activities, and pedagogical considerations. When such variations occur, it is the responsibility of the faculty member both to provide equivalent activity for the students in the course and to notify the chairperson of the department offering the course of the change in schedule.

Given the strains the COVID-19 pandemic puts on the health of faculty, students, and their families, as well as on pedagogical and logistical relationships in the classroom, exceptions to the way classes are normally conducted must be expected. It is widely understood (here, here, and here) that spending extended time with multiple people in an enclosed space—as required by face-to-face teaching ( here)—is the primary occasion for viral transmission. Under these circumstances, we uphold the principle that instructors have the right to decide the most appropriate method of course delivery in their own case, provided they meet professional standards and offer reasonably equivalent instruction.

3) Decisions on testing and other public health tools require inclusive public education of the whole community. In particular, there must be clearly publicized justification for the plan to test only symptomatic individuals, and an explanation for not pursuing randomized or comprehensive testing of everyone living or working on the Bloomington campus. Moreover, it must be made clear how University-sanctioned specialists will determine whether someone is symptomatic or otherwise.

4) Criteria for an emergency shutting down of face-to-face teaching and on-campus activities should be clearly articulated and publicized before the campus reopens for in-person activity. Whenever IU employees agree to an extraordinary arrangement for resuming campus activities in the pandemic, they are presuming that the arrangement is in effect for only as long as it continues to be reasonably safe. To make informed decisions on such arrangements, employees need to know the viral transmission rates and other circumstances under which the re-start arrangements will be suspended and the campus re-closed for in-person activity.

5) The ownership rights for intellectual property of online instructional material must be released to individual faculty members. Effective March 12, 2020, the University suspended section 1.B.iii. of IP Policy UA-05 relinquishing "rights in any and all forms of online instructional materials, including but not limited to class recordings in Kaltura and Zoom, created or used by IU faculty as a result of the temporary suspension of face-to-face classroom teaching due to COVID-19." This suspension needs to be explicitly extended throughout the coming academic year to be revisited within the shared governance structure at the end of the pandemic period.

6) Any fiscal repercussion of the health crisis needs to be met with a "cut from the top" policy. Benefit cuts or furloughs must begin with employees at the very top of the payroll and should not extend to those employees least able to afford them. Reductions in force must be avoided at all costs.

Approved by the IU-AAUP Executive Committee, June 1, 2020

Composition of the Faculty: Where do we go from here and how does shared governance come into play?

For the Fall of 2011, the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs reported that there were 2108 full time faculty members on the IUB campus, distributed across 8 categories of appointment. Aside from the Research Scientist category, all of the others involve instructional responsibilities and fall into a broad division between tenure-track (TT) and non tenure-track (NTT) appointees. The current proportion of the total faculty that falls into the NTT instructional categories (526 members of the faculty) is almost exactly 25%. Since 2006 the number of TT appointees has increased by 29, while the number of NTT instructional appointees has increased by 115. What will the next five years bring? Which priorities will drive change in faculty composition?

There is significant variability in faculty composition across the academic units, but those details are not the focus of this Report. Rather, the issue is whether the faculty is appropriately engaged in determining the faculty profile of IUB.

The Indiana University faculty has adopted a Constitution which defines the role of faculty in this way: “The faculty has legislative authority to establish policy and determine procedures for its implementation governing the teaching, research, and service aspects of the University's academic mission. Areas within the faculty's legislative authority include: …Standards and procedures for faculty appointments …”.

Faculty Appointments are governed by a policy whose last major revision was approved in 2001. It is important to note that this policy, in addition to being approved by the faculty, was also approved by the Trustees. It is therefore reasonable to expect that university, campus and school administrators will implement the faculty appointment process according to this policy. With respect to the idea of shared governance, the policy clearly states (part A, paragraph 3) that the faculty, particularly the tenure-track faculty, should play a significant role in structuring the work of the faculty in an academic unit and should, at the campus level, regularly review the aggregate of decisions made at the school level.

A significant element of the IUB mission statement, which was also approved by the Trustees, is focused on the importance of research. Clearly there are other important elements, but research is at the very least first among equals. According to the appointments policy, only the tenure-track appointees (1456 in number) and the research scientist appointees (126 in number) have general research responsibilities in their job description. Are the appointment decisions made over the past five years consistent with the campus mission?

This is an important question, but not one with a simple answer. It is clear, however, that the data presented here describe outcomes that are primarily determined at the school level. Appointments are made based on school needs, and there is little evidence to suggest that campus goals figure into the outcome in a meaningful way. Should this continue to be the case?

Some argue, however, that the appointment of NTT faculty, in addition to satisfying school instructional needs, also promotes the research mission by allowing the TT faculty to focus more on research. Others argue that the standing of IUB in the ranks of research oriented campuses can only be elevated, a stated goal of President McRobbie, by significantly increasing the number of TT appointees. Competing needs clearly exist and in order to meet them, academic appointments must be balanced in an appropriate way. Through shared governance, the faculty has an important role to play in finding and maintaining that balance.

Questions can certainly be raised about the faculty’s commitment to shared governance. It seems quite apparent that younger faculty, on average, are less interested in governance issues than are those in the previous generations of faculty. The reasons for this are fairly apparent. As with everything else, however, there is variability about the mean, and even in the younger group there are faculty who view shared governance as an important idea. As discussed here, there are several contexts within which the issues underlying faculty composition can be engaged under university policy, ranging from the departmental/school to the campus level. This Report is premised on the idea that Indiana University will be the better for this type of faculty engagement.

Finally, a Facebook page has been established to facilitate the development of a community of faculty members interested in shared governance at IUB. Hopefully, sharing information with those of like mind will facilitate shared governance in regard to faculty composition, and in other settings consistent with the faculty Constitution. Please visit http://www.facebook.com/IUBSharedGovernance and contribute to the development of this community.

Will We Have to Give Away Our Degrees to Secure State Funding?

This is a rather unusual AAUP Report, since it does not deal directly with academic freedom or shared governance issues. Rather, it deals with a challenge to the professoriate initiated by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (IHEC). This challenge is associated with what is called “performance funding”, which creates a fundamental conflict of interest for faculty at state supported campuses. As argued below, this conflict between standards and salary may well become most intense in Bloomington.

Performance funding has its origins in a problem faced by the State: Indiana has a very low ranking among the states in regard to the proportion of population holding higher education credentials. This is deemed an impediment to economic growth in today’s world, which it may well be. To change this, the IHEC and the Indiana legislature have introduced performance funding, which rewards campuses that contribute to the solution of this problem.

Performance funding operates by measuring, for each campus, the following factors: degree attainment change measured as a percentage (60% weight), change in successful completion of credit hours measured as a numerical difference (25% weight) and a research incentive (15% weight). Different campuses would appear to have inherent advantages with respect to the second and third of these. The growing campuses have an obvious path to increasing the number of successful credit hours completed and the research oriented campuses would presumably score well on factor 3. Degree attainment, which carries more weight than the other two combined, is viewed as an equal opportunity factor in the formula. It appears that the IHEC and key legislators believe that every campus has the same opportunity to increase the graduation rate, irrespective of what that rate may be at present.

Performance funding was used for the first time in setting the 2011-13 biennium budget for state supported campuses. 5% of higher education funding was allocated using this approach, and there were clear winners and losers. The total IUB budget was cut by 5.5%, much of that attributable to a low overall score on the performance factors. The budgets of ISU, Purdue West Lafayette and Ball State were cut lesser amounts, while Ivy Tech received a double digit percentage increase in its budget.

Where will we go from here? The IHEC has discussed increasing the percentage of funding allocated using performance measures, perhaps to 10% in the next biennium and to higher percentages beyond that. President McRobbie has urge the Commission to reconsider its approach and the legislature did direct the IHEC to evaluate the measures used to structure its performance funding recommendations.

Is it true that every campus has an equal opportunity to increase its graduation rate? That is a fundamental question underlying the performance funding system and should be a focal issue in its evaluation. It seems that those who believe this to be true do not recognize the possibility that some campuses are already doing well in this regard, while others are not. This is not simply a question of whether the current graduation rate is high or low, but whether it is high or low relative to the expected rate given campus characteristics. Comparing the actual rate to the expected rate would provide an alternative framework within which to judge performance.

Those who follow the U.S. News rankings will know that graduation performance is incorporated by just such a comparison of actual and expected rates. One of the interesting things about this is that IUB, which has never been a stellar performer overall in that ranking system, has for years had a graduation rate higher than expected by a double digit percentage. In the 2012 ranking the value is 10% and of the 75 or so institutions above IUB in the national university list, only 2 exceed that measure. It is somewhat strange to see that IUB gets no credit from the State for its graduation rate performance, while in a national context it is a very high performer.

If IUB is already a high performer, is it not reasonable to believe that raising its graduation rate will be difficult, much more difficult than for a campus whose actual graduation rate is below expectations? Academic standards are vested in the faculty. It is the faculty that designs the curriculum, grades the courses and recommends students for graduation. If the State insists on increasing an already “high” graduation rate to secure funding for things like salary increases, the faculty clearly controls the mechanisms which could lead to that. Control of these matters is not vested in a dean, the provost or the president, but with each faculty member in a very distributed way. What will a faculty member do when confronted with the choice of standards vs. salary? Why would it be in the best interest of the State to confront faculty with that choice?

SPRING 2011 REPORT

Executive Review of Promotion and Tenure Cases

Executive review refers to President McRobbie’s review of promotion and tenure dossiers, prior to forwarding the names of successful candidates to the Board of Trustees.  The University Faculty Council approved this aspect of the promotion and tenure process on a trial basis in 2008, and the president distributed a memo dated December 5, 2008, summarizing his understanding of how this would work.  Several years of the trial have passed and we believe it is now time for the UFC to reconsider its action.

We want to say clearly that we are not challenging President McRobbie’s participation in the promotion and tenure process.  We know that this has been an issue in some minds, but our understanding of university structure is that if the Board of Trustees must approve a promotion or the granting of tenure, then the president’s office must be involved.  However, there exist a number of interpretations about the appropriate role of a university president in the processes of promotion and tenure, and we believe these views should be part of a full discussion as IU formulates a permanent policy concerning executive review. Our chapter’s Fall 2009 Report raised a number of points in this connection. Here, we wish to raise a different issue, one that directly concerns current practice under the November 2008 memo.

We understand that President McRobbie has accepted the recommendation coming from the campus level in the overwhelming majority of cases.  This is as it should be if those reviewing the dossiers are competent.  However, there have been cases which come to the president with a positive recommendation from the campus that have been denied at the executive review level.   We object in the strongest terms to the way the process plays out upon such a denial.  Our understanding of how this works comes from the previously cited memo and from the experience of the Committee A group in the IUB AAUP chapter, which consults with faculty involved in the grievance process.

What happens when a case that originates in Bloomington is denied at the executive review level?  The memo indicates that the provost “will notify the candidate of the negative recommendation”, and upon first reading this appears to be appropriate, although we are sympathetic to those who believe that the notification should come from the president.  Faculty members are accustomed to review.  We have all been recipients of the results of various review procedures, and when we read the language regarding notifying the candidate of the negative recommendation, it would be natural to conclude that this notification is like all the others that we receive in that it contains an explanation of the decision.  Our consulting experience indicates that this is not what happens.  The candidate is simply told that the case has been denied.

The memo also indicates that the candidate is free to pursue a remedy, which in our system means that a grievance may be filed with the Faculty Board of Review.  We ask you to contemplate the feasibility of developing a persuasive grievance case absent information about the basis of the decision.  In our view it cannot be done, and therefore the part of the president’s memo addressing remedies has to be viewed as a chimera.

This memo does not serve the Office of the President well.  The idea that a critical decision in the life of an IU faculty member can be made with no explanation whatsoever is absolutely contrary to decades of practice within the university.  It is very disrespectful of the faculty and is a practice that must be altered.

If unaccountable executive review becomes a permanent feature of our promotion and tenure system, the IU academic community will have no protection against personnel actions based on arbitrary judgments. This would leave IU vulnerable to the types of politically motivated personnel decisions that led to the creation of the AAUP in 1915. We are certain that this was not the intent of the president when designing the present trial procedure. It is, however, why the IUB AAUP chapter regards this as a fundamental academic freedom and faculty governance issue, one to which it must speak forcefully.

Therefore, we call on the University Faculty Council, which has jurisdiction over promotion and tenure procedures under the Constitution of the Indiana University Faculty, to revisit the executive review procedure as soon as possible and implement changes that restore the right of the faculty to know the basis of decisions made therein.

FALL 2010 REPORT

BFC Exploring Its Own Redesign

At its first meeting in September, the Bloomington Faculty Council received proposals for significant redesign of faculty governance on this campus. These proposals will be a starting point for the BFC, which is has placed at the top of its 2010-11 agenda the need to restore the campus faculty’s role in setting policy for areas under its purview and providing representative input for all major decision-making at IU.

Changing conditions

Patterns of administrative leadership at IU have changed in recent years and the role of faculty governance has been weakened. Like many schools during an era when universities increasingly take corporate management styles as a model, Indiana University has instituted internal control regimes and decision-making procedures that focus on cost-effectiveness, quality assessment, and responsiveness to rapidly changing factors in the university’s environment. The trend is toward increasing professionalization and time-sensitivity in administrative initiatives. So long as the interests of the educational mission are served these can be healthy developments, especially at a time when challenges facing traditional universities are multiplying at an unprecedented rate.

But faculty governance here and elsewhere has been hard hit. Even before the current wave of changes, faculty governance was well known for its slow pace and uncertain responsiveness. As the pace for decision-making has quickened, the BFC has increasingly found itself marginalized, bypassed, or consulted after the fact, particularly in initiatives stemming from the Trustees and central IU administration. Trustees and administrators have made clear that the institutions of faculty governance are not nimble enough and faculty expertise not adequately marshaled through current governance structures to warrant consistently serious consultation or legislative deference. In his 2009-10 State of the University Speech, President McRobbie pointed to these issues: “Universities must often respond to important external constituencies with a rapidity and unity of voice that is more compatible with corporate and governmental organizations than with universities. Throughout the university, new internal and external pressures have made traditional shared governance more difficult than it has been in the past.” He called for faculty leadership to “revitalize shared governance.”

Reforms under discussion

Faculty expertise and the faculty’s unique awareness of the actual conditions of education and research are essential to good decision-making. Without it, increased administrative efficiency will lead to bold initiatives that undermine academic quality as much by succeeding as failing. This past April, the BFC responded to President McRobbie’s challenge by forming a committee to work through the summer and identify aspects of faculty governance that could be redesigned to restore the faculty role in university decision-making. The committee looked at models in use elsewhere and consulted colleagues outside IU with unusual comparative experience in assessing faculty governance nationally. It sent its report to the Council at the close of summer, and many of its proposals can be summarized in three major categories:

1. Leadership  Currently, the BFC President and the Council’s coordinating Agenda Committee are elected by the BFC, and only the full Council can act with authority. The first set of proposals would replace the Agenda Committee with an Executive Committee empowered to act independently in exigent circumstances (though a two-thirds BFC vote could subsequently override such executive action). The expertise of the committee would be strengthened by including among an enlarged membership the chairs of four key standing BFC committees. It would be chaired by a President elected by the full faculty, and the legitimacy of the committee would be enhanced by including the past-president and president-elect as members. These proposals primarily address the issue of “nimbleness,” with attention to issues of legitimacy and credibility.

2. Committee Structure  To respond to the professionalization of administration and the need to maintain a high level of relevant faculty expertise, BFC committees assigned to deal with budgetary issues, faculty affairs, educational policies, and long-range planning will be reorganized to provide permanent meeting schedules, staff support, and circulated minutes.

3. Communication  Currently, BFC verbatim minutes are posted online, where the tedium of wading through them ensures that faculty will remain unaware of Council deliberations and decisions. The proposed changes call for the BFC Secretary to circulate by email brief summary minutes of all Council meetings. Other proposals relate to increased communication between the campus-level BFC and school-level faculty governance committees.

The BFC is now considering these and alternative proposals, with the goal of arriving at a new design that can demonstrate to the administration and the Trustees that the Bloomington faculty has responded to a changing environment and expects that its full legislative and consultative prerogatives under shared governance will be maintained.

The Report of the Committee Re-envisioning Faculty Governance is online at: http://www.indiana.edu/~bfc/docs/circulars/10-11/B6-2011.pdf

2010 Academic Salary Increases

At the August meeting of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, IU President McRobbie proposed and the Trustees approved an overall 3% salary increase for all IU employees. When voting on the proposal, several Trustees stated that they voted in favor of the increase only with the assurance of University officials that it would be distributed strictly on the basis of merit. At a subsequent meeting, the same Trustees sought assurances that some employees would be receiving no increase, presumably as proof of the appropriate implementation of the increases.

President McRobbie and Vice President Neil Theobald deserve credit for pursuing salary increases in the current political and economic climate. It is well known that some in the state legislature would rather see the University lay-off employees than bring down employee numbers through gentler means. Similarly, the idea of pay raises is anathema to some legislators, and the 2010 salary increases have been criticized publicly in recent weeks (see the Herald-Times articles cited below).

However, the implementation of the 2010 salary increase warrants faculty attention for several reasons. University administration issued very specific guidelines for distributing the 3% salary pool (details below) in opposition to long-standing campus and schools’ policies regarding salary-setting and merit increases. The guidelines mandated a certain view of academia, insisting that “stars” and “deadwood” be identified no matter the specific nature of individual performance. Faculty governance groups weighed in with these criticisms before the 2010-2011 guidelines were implemented, but the more directive policy was deemed necessary to meet the expectation of the Trustees. In the interest of pursuing a well-deserved salary increase for faculty and staff, University administration may be setting a new precedent in centralized control of salary decisions.

Individual schools and departments are the best place to determine the distribution of salary increases. Only those with expertise and personal knowledge, guided by appropriate policy, should be tasked with determining just what percentage of a group of faculty are “stars” or whether some individuals are deserving of little or no increase. In the current economic climate, the prospect of further salary increases seems distant, but administrators and faculty should beware of selling out established faculty policy in the lean times. It could become a permanent arrangement, leaving salary guidelines vulnerable to new forms of central control.

University Administration Salary Guidelines:

2010-11 SALARY POLICY for Academic Appointees

Retention and Morale are the foci for faculty salary increases.  The salary pool for faculty is 3% of the FY11 academic salary base per RC/Campus.   Each RC/Campus average increase for faculty will be 3%.

  • A 1.25% salary increase should be provided to all faculty members on record as of June 30, 2010 who have not otherwise qualified for a 2010-11 salary increase (e.g., newly-tenured faculty members already received a FY11 salary increase).   Salary increases of less than 1.25% are allowable, but require permission of the chancellor, provost or vice president and the President.  Please provide a written justification and forward to your campus budget office.   
  • The remaining 1.75% of the 3% salary pool should be allocated across faculty on the basis of merit; faculty that received a FY11 increase and new hires may also be included.   The lone constraint is that at least 20 percent of each unit’s continuing faculty must receive salary increases of 4% or more.

Citations (HT subscription required for access):

“Universities, agencies to be grilled at state budget hearings”
Herald-Times Online, November 13, 2010
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2010/11/13/statenews.qp-7312888.sto

Mike Leonard, “IU officials ask for 4.2% more from state in 2011-13 budget year”
Herald-Times Online, November 18, 2010
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2010/11/18/news.qp-5025648.sto

Open letter to IUB Faculty

The Threats

In the 1990s research universities have become the targets of financial downsizing, political attacks, and general public skepticism about their enterprise. Trustees at Minnesota tried to eliminate tenure. A private company sued a faculty member at Cornell for defamation based on statements that she made before Congress about her research. Over the last twenty years the City University of New York has cut from the number of full-time faculty from 15,000 to 5,500. Brigham Young fired a faculty member on grounds that she prayed not only to God the Father but also God the Mother. These particular conflicts have erupted amidst broader efforts to curb faculty autonomy by instituting post-tenure review, downsizing departments and schools, replacing full time faculty with part-timers, and even monitoring the use of e-mail. Developments like these threaten all research university faculty now and graduate students in the future.

IU has not been immune to these struggles. The trustees tried to impose post-tenure review on the faculty. Regional campuses are hiring more and more part-time faculty. Last year's presidential review followed principles laid down by the Associate of Governing Boards that seek to limit the role of faculty in university governance. The impending changes in senior campus administrators signal a need for increased vigilance in preserving AAUP principles of academic freedom and faculty voice in governance. And every year the Kinsey Institute is attacked and its research mission threatened.

Defending Faculty

Despite declining membership the AAUP has actively and effectively protected the interests of faculty at research universities. It has continually monitored academic freedom at campuses and used its sanction list to publicize institutional violators. It has prepared reports on critical issues from campus fiscal policies and the status of non-tenure track appointments to post-tenure review and the implications of electronic communication for academic freedom. Many of these reports are published in the association's journal, Academe, which is distributed widely. And AAUP staffers regularly and successfully lobby state and national legislators on behalf of faculty interests and file briefs in support of besieged faculty members. On some campuses it has even become a bargaining unit for faculty. Shortly the AAUP will release the first comprehensive statement of graduate student rights.

One of the oldest local chapters in the nation, the IUB chapter of AAUP has for decades provided a campus-wide voice advocating the interests of all faculty. During the past few years the local chapter has spurred debate and policy changes on clinical faculty, health benefits, and post-tenure review to ensure that university policies are in accord with basic AAUP principles. Through its Committee A the chapter has intervened on countless occasions to protect the rights of faculty members. These interventions have included aiding faculty in a department taken over by administrators of the College and defending the rights of a tenured faculty member threatened with disciplinary action for refusing to teach a course via distance learning for pedagogical reasons. And the chapter is now defending the due process rights of an Associate Instructor terminated without a hearing. The IUB AAUP has also sponsored forums on critical questions facing all faculty: the corporatization of the university, faculty reviews, and balancing teaching and research. And its services continue to expand. Last year the chapter established the Jim Christoph Fund for Academic Freedom. This year through the state AAUP the chapter has introduced a legal services plan that provides qualified attorneys for members at reduced rates.

Join AAUP

Faculty at IU and at other research universities cannot possibly resist or prevent the erosion of academic freedom and faculty autonomy on their own, department by department, school by school, or campus by campus. We need a local and national organization devoted to the preservation of academic freedom in all its forms from the right to design our own curricula and conduct research to the right to comment on public issues and disagree with university administrators in our published work, on the street, and on the internet. We need the AAUP. So join us in AAUP to preserve due process and free speech in the classroom, to preserve a strong faculty voice in university governance, and to protect this generation of scholars and those to come.

Signed:

Moya Andrews, Bob Arnove, David Austin, Ben Brabson, Ann Bristow, Jim Capshew, Paul Eisenberg, Laura Ginger, Don Gray, Ed Greenebaum, Dan Maki, Ted Miller, Roger Newton, Norm Overly, Al Ruesink, Myrtle Scott, Sarita Soni, Herman Wells

Reflections on Faculty Governance at IU

Academic Freedom at IU Fifty Years After Kinsey
Retired IU Faculty Health Care Premiums

“Would your administration actually do something it did not want to do if your faculty senate voted for it?”   I was asked that question at a recent dinner of faculty leaders from ten research universities – something I’d said had surprised the group into thinking that the IU administration actually listened to faculty.  It was not an easy question to answer.  It supposed a type of standoff that I’ve seen few of in my time in faculty governance.  That time is about up – after five years on the Bloomington Faculty Council, two as its president, the miracle of term limits will soon send me back to work on scholarship instead of on my collected memos – and having missed the chance to man the barricades in high-profile confrontations with the administration, I’d like to reflect on why that may not be the best test of faculty governance strength, and also on where I think more basic problems may lie.

      In my experience over the past few years, it has been clear that all levels of the administration that I’ve been dealing with – trustees, and university and campus administrations – do listen to faculty, and are increasingly sensitive to the fact that decisions in which faculty have not meaningfully participated are an invitation to problems.  At the trustee level, we’ve seen a significant change in responsiveness to faculty initiatives, such as a dramatic reversal of trustee attitudes in the adoption of domestic partner benefits, the sunsetting of the mandatory retirement policy for administrators, and so forth.  This represents a change in tone from a decade ago, and a significant part of this is the consequence of new policies that include faculty leaders in trustee executive sessions and that literally give faculty a seat at the table in trustee committees.  These changes create opportunities for informal relation-ships to grow between faculty and trustees, and where these reinforce formal procedures, faculty participation in decision making can become much freer and truly meaningful.

    At the university level, although faculty perceptions of administrative responsiveness have been shaped by some high-profile areas of tension – the heavy-handed initial imposition of GradPact, inadequate consensus building in the creation of the School of Informatics, lack of consultation in athletics personnel decisions – the administration has also had areas of high responsiveness, including becoming proactively supportive of domestic partner benefits and, in the case of the new faculty policies on non-tenure-track faculty, leading the trustees towards employing it to invest in a broad conversion from part-time to full-time faculty slots on the non-Bloomington campuses. The movement has clearly been towards more meaningful consultation and better listening, and it will be important that faculty help the incoming President maintain that momentum.

    As for campus level administration here, Ken Gros Louis used to boast that accreditation teams criticize the campus for the overly close relation-ship between faculty and administrators, and if anyone doubted that Sharon Brehm follows the same instincts, the Strategic Planning process, which designed central roles for campus faculty governance as well as unit-nominated faculty, should have dispelled that doubt.

    So my broader assessment is that on balance, the non-confrontational style of our faculty governance is a symptom of its general influence and strength, and while I’m not sure I could say that “the administration” would do something it didn’t want to because the faculty voted it, the record is that all levels of administration are open to persuasion by faculty on most matters before confrontation develops, and that faculty do share meaningfully in governance decision making.

    But this isn’t to say that things are fine and that faculty governance is functioning well; rather, the problems we have not solved seem to lie principally in a direction other than policy design and decision making among trustees or at the upper administrative levels.  The chief problem area, from the faculty standpoint, may be that the academic consequences of non-academic operational decisions are growing in importance.

    In governance, the increasing complexity of university management creates a widening gap between the specialization required of professional administrators and the non-professional ability of faculty to participate meaningfully in university management of non-academic areas, to monitor the quality of administrative performance, and to ensure that the primacy of the academic mission governs all university management.  This is most obvious in the IT area, but it also holds for areas such as financial management and personnel management (think health benefits).  To manage these areas, universities appoint highly professional (and highly paid) administrators and staff, with expertise essential to the institution. 

   The specialized professionalization of these non-academic units makes them extremely difficult for faculty to monitor and assess.  As they become competitors for scarce resources with academic units and the salaries of their leaderships match or exceed top academic salaries, this lack of transparency can severely undermine trust.  And as the influence of technological or financial decisions led by these units have increasing impact on academic as well as business practices, it becomes hard to believe that the institution has not been hijacked by a non-academic, “corporate” perspective.  I think this situation arises, to a greater or lesser degree, independent of the actual effective-ness and mission-consciousness of these units.  It is an issue of transparency, by which I mean not simply the availability of key information, but access to key operational decision making and the information to participate meaningfully in it.

   Faculty councils are a poor venue to try to work out these matters.  Councils are designed to legislate on academic policy issues faculty are familiar with, to serve as information conduits on a very broad level, and to be a political arm of the faculty, in tension (hopefully productive) with the administration and trustees.

   Standing council committees are the most appropriate bodies to monitor the performance of the administration and ensure that there is adequate transparency.  Some BFC committees have been able to accomplish this through the persistent efforts of determined colleagues, but our committee structure may not be ideally designed to achieve these tasks.  Committee continuity is minimized because members serve only one year, and the absence of staff support makes it difficult to schedule meetings, collect information, and generate records.  Reconsideration of how we structure and pursue committee work seems to me a pressing agenda item. 

   This past year, in designing a faculty role in the new Student Enrollment Services unit, we tested a model involving interlocking BFC standing committee appointments and long-term faculty governance appointments to a central resource priorities committee in SES.  While the People-Soft project put more stress on this model than it should have been called on to bear, it clearly narrowed the distance between faculty and administration in an area of great tension.  Elements of this structure already exist in connection with instructional computing, administrative computing and networking, capital priorities, and health benefits.  In each of these areas, tightening link-ages between existing council committees and priority-setting groups in non-academic units could better mobilize and apply faculty expertise to full participation in the decision making of the university, raising the faculty’s confidence that it is able to ensure that the academic mission is being well served throughout.

Overall, then, I think it’s correct to say that IU administration at all levels is more open than most to faculty engagement, and I don’t regret missing a trip to the barricades. But problems do exist, and the next step in addressing them may lie with us.

- Bob Eno (EALC)

Academic Freedom at IU Fifty Years After Kinsey

     As researchers and teachers, it is our obligation to investigate, to understand, to debate and to present ideas.  This marvelous stuff called academic freedom is closely related to our fundamental freedom of speech as citizens.  Since 9/11, however, academic freedom finds itself increasingly under attack.  In 1967 the US Supreme Court emphasized its value in Keyishian v. Board of Regents 385 U.S. 589 (1967), “Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.  That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”  This spring the IUB chapter of AAUP together with the Kinsey Institute sponsored a joint forum, Academic Freedom, Fifty Years after Kinsey, to look into the health of academic freedom here at Indiana University. 

Jim Capshew, IU Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and biographer of Herman Wells eloquently reviewed the historical back-ground of academic freedom at IU.  David Rabban, prize-winning author of Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Professor at the University of Texas School of Law discussed the evolution of academic freedom from an individual freedom of the members of the academy toward one attached only to the academy itself.  Finally, Mary Burgan, General Secretary of AAUP, gave a summary of the defense of academic freedom from the trenches where the battles are being fought.

Capshew: A glance at history identifies why Indiana University has many reasons to be proud of its contributions to academic freedom.  Prof. Capshew, spoke of Herman Wells’ strong support of academic freedom and of the rights of faculty to pursue objective research and to publish the results.  In particular, Capshew discussed Wells’ affirmation of IU Biology Professor Alfred Kinsey’s right to scholarly research in human sexuality, gender, and reproduction, research that lead to the publication of Kinsey’s two classics, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953.  Equally important for academic freedom at IU, it was under Wells’ leadership that Indiana University adopted the foundational 1940 AAUP Guidelines for Academic Freedom and Tenure.

Rabban: David Rabban, past Counsel of the AAUP, speaking from the perspective of an expert in both freedom of speech and academic freedom, identified several IU faculty who have been central in maintaining academic freedom in the American academy.  His list began with Ralph Fuchs, Professor of Law at IU beginning in 1946.  A man of extraordinary personal integrity, Fuchs served as National President of the AAUP from 1955-57 during the period when academic freedom was under attack from the ideology of McCarthyism.  Following Fuchs other IU contributors included Paul Strohm, Ed Sherman, Patrick Baude, and Mary Burgan.  Rabban pointed out that IU has contributed as much as any institution in the US to academic freedom.  Rabban then described the sequence of legal events during the latter half of the 20th century that culminated in the current tension between academic freedom of individual members of a university and that of the institution itself.  A restricted notion of academic freedom asserts that while the university has the freedom to carry out research in any field, it may not necessarily choose to pass this freedom on to its individual faculty members.  Under this interpretation of academic freedom an institution could remove a faculty member who speaks out on a particular issue, who carries out research in a sensitive area deemed inappropriate by the institution, or who refuses to change a student’s grade.  The conservative 4th circuit court has, in effect, removed a portion of academic freedom for individual faculty by giving substantial control to the university.  As an example, a university may give its faculty “special permission” to discuss certain topics. This directly contradicts the AAUP stance that the proper functioning of the university depends on an independent faculty.

Burgan: From her extensive experience as General Secretary of the AAUP, Mary Burgan related stories of attitudes and events that are most threatening to academic freedom on campuses today.   Prevalent among recent challenges to academic freedom is an administrative managerial mentality toward its faculty.  A CEO’s approach to university management is often coupled with phrases of, “strong leadership,” “decisiveness,” “clear thinking,” and “zero tolerance.”   Encroachments on academic freedom come from many directions.  Recently, the legislature of the state of Missouri attempted to use the budget as a means of imposing external discipline on the University of Missouri.  Funds were removed from the University’s annual budget when the president of the university supported a faculty member’s right to speak out.  Burgan then spoke of a campus culture of concerned faculty work through strong faculty governance to provide an effective antidote to these attitudes and events.

In summary, Burgan reminded us of the steps we must take to insure the protection of academic freedom in today’s political environment.  We, the faculty, must provide the strong sense of direction expected of us here at Indiana University and exemplified by so many of our IU colleagues, past and present.  Others look to us to provide this direction.                           

                         - Ben Brabson (Physics)

Retired IU Faculty Health Care Premiums

Professor Emeritus Ed Grant brought to our attention a January 1, 2003 increase of 42 % in his health care premiums for the IU PPO $750 Deductible Plan, a change from $7824 to $11,148 per year!  Anticipating additional large increases next year and the year after, he asked the AAUP to look into the matter. 

In its recent report on College and University Academic and Professional Appointments (Academe, March-April 2003, p. 105) the AAUP reaffirms its commitment to “reasonable and fair employment policies” by colleges and universities.  Specifically, “Compensation should include provision for affordable health care and secure retirement.”  With this in mind, the AAUP Executive Committee has made a series of recommendations to the BFC Fringe Benefits Committee (FBC) asking them to address both short-term and long-term considerations.

Short-term considerations: The AAUP strongly supports the following for the retired faculty:

up-to-date comparative information on available health care plans.  In particular, the retiring faculty need detailed comparisons of the two IU plans (Anthem PPO $750 Deductible Plan and Anthem Blue) with a number of competitive plans (AARP, RIPEA, Standard Life, American Pioneer, UniCare...) Modeled upon the excellent information sheets developed last fall for the active faculty, the BFC Fringe Benefits Committee plans to work with University Human Resources System (UHRS) to develop similar comparative information for the retiring faculty.

clear warnings about potential traps, situations where retired faculty are excluded from certain programs without gate keeping additional medical examinations.

valuable support help from UHRS in assisting retiring faculty in making choices among the options. This includes providing choices of various  available plans  and advice on the consequences of each.  The critical point is simply that UHRS be attentive to the needs of all faculty, both retired and active.

Longer-term Considerations: The AAUP Executive Committee also discussed questions of fairness to the retired faculty and of their treatment in ways that enhance the goals of the university.  Points raised include these.

At present, IU provides no money for retired faculty for health care.  Other universities do (Michigan, Michigan State, for example).

·IU determines retired faculty premiums for the "IU plans."  Retired faculty have no say in this.

The generousness of 18/20 retirement plan is often used as an argument against contributing IU funds to retired faculty health care. The argument does not work for faculty hired after 1988.

IU's choice not to contribute to retired faculty health care has a number of implications for the goals of the university.  For instance, high retirement premiums are an incentive against retirement. Also, the fact that IU does not contribute to retired health care is a recruitment disincentive in hiring new faculty.

After an initial examination of the issues involved, the Fringe Benefits Committee has formed a subcommittee made up of retired and active faculty.  This subcommittee will study problems related to retired faculty fringe benefits, starting with the recent extreme growth of health care premiums, and make recommendations to the FBC, which will work with UHRS to implement these recommendations.       

SOME Q & A ABOUT PROVOSTS

Some Q & A About Provosts
The Office of the Dean of Faculties Today
The Office of the Dean of Faculties, 1940-69
The Faculty Leadership Role of the Dean of Faculties

The Provost proposal has generated a great deal of email and telephone traffic to faculty governance leadership. Many messages have simply requested basic information about the nature of the proposal, others have taken positions.  This column is a non-authoritative attempt to respond to questions faculty may have, and to indicate also some of the pro and con views that have been articulated.

What exactly is a Provost?  Provost is a title applied to chief academic officers in higher education.  In some institutions, titles such as "vice-president for academic affairs" are used, rather than Provost.   All Big Ten institutions other than IU have powerful, Provost-type positions.  Typically, academic deans report to Provosts, rather than directly to Chancellors or Presidents.

Why has Bloomington never had a Provost?  In the past, Ken Gros Louis performed many of the functions of a Provost; Vice-Chancellors for Budgetary Administration — first  Ward Schaap, then Maynard Thompson — also  assumed some of those functions.  In earlier periods, the very different  configuration of upper administration allocated these functions successfully in other frameworks, as Don Gray's account further on in this Report makes clear.  Chancellor Brehm believes the campus requires a chancellor more externally directed towards fundraising, community relations, and legislative initiatives.   

Why would adding a Provost eliminate the Dean of Faculties? A number of functions currently under the DoF are central to the role of chief academic officer, such as faculty promotion and tenure.  Chancellor Brehm has announced that this restructuring must be revenue-neutral, and this would not be possible if both Provost and Dean of Faculties offices were maintained.

Will the Provost be an academic?  Chancellor Brehm has indicated that it will be a requirement that candidates for the Provost position have records of scholarly accomplishment appropriate for a senior academic appointment at Bloomington.

What's the problem with switching from a Dean of Faculties to a Provost?  The DoF at Bloomington has been a faculty-oriented office that has provided critical support to many colleagues.  It has often mediated between faculty and chairs, avoiding the conflicts involved in formal grievance; it has provided critical pre-tenure guidance; it has maintained a consistent focus on faculty development, providing an array of funding opportunities for faculty seeking to build or redirect their careers. Although at times, the role of the DoF office has placed it in tension with the role of the AAUP Committee A, which advocates for faculty in grievance processes, the AAUP leadership has generally recognized the DoF office as the most active administrative defender of the values AAUP takes to be central to academic freedom and integrity in the administration of faculty affairs.  This leadership role is discussed more fully in Myrtle Scott's item in this Report.
      Because Provosts are more directly concerned with budget issues and tend to be oriented towards the deans who report to them, rather than to faculty directly, a Provost might be less apt to defend values of academic freedom and integrity in personnel issues against budget pressures and unit efficiency goals.

Could there be advantages from a faculty point of view?  Recent generations of the DoF office have been less powerful than was the case before, and this waning of power seems directly linked to the fact that academic deans do not report to the DoF, and the DoF possesses no budgetary authority over academic units.  Some people feel that the consequence of this has been an increasing lack of coordination between autonomous schools, a centrifugal tendency much increased by RCM budgeting.  The Provost structure may offer to better balance the unit perspectives of the schools with a campus perspective. 

Why is there already discussion of an Associate Provost?  In discussions with Chancellor Brehm, the BFC Agenda Committee proposed and the Chancellor accepted a structure that might help preserve some of the core features of the current DoF office. That design would involve the appointment of an Associate Provost, whose functions would include maintenance of faculty records, faculty development activities, and faculty advocacy.  In the last function, the Associate Provost would report to the Chancellor, rather than to the Provost.  The position would be filled and reviewed through BFC search & screen and review procedures for high academic administrators, and would thus be a Chancellor's appointment.  Chancellor Brehm has indicated that, like the Provost position, this position would also be filled by an academic appointee.

 How will the Provost fit in the upper administration?  On the campus level, the Chancellor has indicated that the Provost will work as a team with the Vice-Chancellor for Budgetary Administration, Neil Theobald, with the Provost shaping the academic side of the budget. The precise division of responsibility will probably be determined only once a Provost takes office.  In the IU system, the Bloomington Chancellor serves as Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and in that sense, there is a Provost on the system level. However, the VPAA position has never been strongly developed, and given the unusually powerful role of the system President at IU, the lack of a strong vice-president with a purely academic portfolio may be a significant weakness. It is unclear how the shift of local academic functions from the Chancellor to the Provost will affect this.

Doesn't this really mean adding more administrators?  It may.  The Chancellor states flatly that the change will be revenue-neutral, but it is difficult to see how this will be accomplished – the proposed plan involves shifting academic administration formerly accomplished by the Chancellor, not simply renaming the DoF.  The DoF has become an office with many portfolios, as Ted Miller's item in this Report describes.  No analysis of how these will be reorganized has yet been undertaken, and it may be that cost-savings can be realized in that process.  The goal of minimizing administrative costs, however, should not dictate a reduction of essential academic support.

What process has been used to consult with faculty on this?  Chancellor Brehm initially discussed this idea with the BFC Agenda Committee.  Over the summer, she met jointly with that group and the BFC Long-Range Planning Committee.  Her plan was placed on the BFC agenda for September 17, but discussion was deferred to October 1, and minutes of that discussion are posted on the BFC website, as noted above.

Who has approved creating this position?  The position was authorized by President Brand.  Appointment must be approved by the Chancellor, President, and Trustees.

What is the timetable for hiring a Provost? The search committee has been formed in accordance with BFC procedures for existing high academic administrative positions, and its work is already underway.

- Bob Eno, EALC

THE OFFICE OF THE DEAN OF THE FACULTIES TODAY

To understand the nature of the proposal to create a provost, it is important to know what the Dean of Faculties currently does.  The Office of the Dean of the Faculties has several functions important to the life of the faculty.  Primary amongst these is the academic human resource responsibility for the Bloomington campus, exercised by the Dean and supported by the Office of Academic Personnel Policies and Procedures (the faculty records office).  Implementation of the faculties’ policies in the areas of tenure, promotion, sabbatical leave and leave without pay are centered here, as is implementation of the newly revised policy on academic appointments

Currently there is a very significant focus on the HRMS project (PeopleSoft), since that is the environment within which these policy implementations will occur over the foreseeable future.  Once this system is operational, there will be a continuing focus on development of additional functionality in which faculty members have a very large stake.  Faculty interests must be adequately represented so as to ensure that the system will meet our needs rather than dictate how we must do things.  This is but one example of the advocacy role of the Office of the Dean of the Faculties, which allows for the views of the faculty to enter into what many might view as essentially administrative deliberations.

      The DoF also has a significant focus on resolving a wide array of grievances typically brought by faculty, staff, or students against academic administrators or members of the faculty.  This has the objective of resolving issues that could ultimately lead to a formal grievance involving the Faculty Mediation Committee, the Faculty Board of Review, or a legal suit, and has over many years contributed enormously to the well being of the campus community.

      Other components of the office are more logically associated with the domain of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (a title which Deans of Faculties simultaneously hold, and which, presumably, a Provost would also hold).  These include the University Division, Instructional Support Services, Summer Sessions, and the Bloomington Division of Continuing Studies.  The reporting line for these functions could easily be restructured in a number of different ways within a Provost’s office.  On the other hand, significant restructuring the Dean of the Faculties’ functions could affect faculty life in very basic ways.

- Ted Miller, SPEA

THE OFFICE OF THE DEAN OF THE FACULTIES, 1940-69

I don't know how the responsibilities of a Provost of the Bloomington campus will be defined.  But if a future Provost will be the chief academic officer of the campus, with significant authority for, among other matters, faculty appointments and deciding and spending the budget, then such an officer has already existed in Bloomington.  He (it was always he) was called the Dean of Faculties.

      My first-hand knowledge of this office precedes even my appointment to the faculty in 1956.  Like many colleagues of my generation, I was taken before the Dean of Faculties as part of my interview on campus. Such interviews were not simply courtesies.  I remember a Dean of Faculties telling my department that we could not appoint someone we were recruiting because he did not think that our candidate would be an effective teacher of Indiana undergraduates.

      But rather than consult my memories of the office, I will summarize what I have learned about it from Thomas D. Clark's multi-volume history of the University (1970-77) and from descriptions available through the home page of the University Archives.

      In 1940 President Herman B Wells created the office of the Dean of Faculties because "the work of the President's office had become too great" and he needed "someone to be in charge of academic affairs in his absences from campus" (Clark III, 20). "Budget control," according to a synopsis of the responsibilities of the office on the Archives web site, "was a primary responsibility.  In this capacity the Dean controlled all academic budgets and played a key role in the development of annual budgets."

      The first Dean of Faculties was Herman T. Briscoe, a faculty member in chemistry and a powerful presence in the campus culture of his time.  In addition to his budgetary responsibilities, he oversaw the creation of new schools (including the Graduate School and the realization of Wilfred Bain's ambitious plans for the School of Music), approved faculty appointments and recommendations for tenure and promotion, acted on "academic problems and proposals," and, curiously, served "as a member of all university faculties."

   After his retirement in 1959 Dean Briscoe was succeeded by Ralph Collins (1959-63), Ray Heffner (1964-66), Joseph Sutton (1966-68), and Joseph Hartley (1968-69).  When the office of Chancellor of the Bloomington campus was created in 1969, some of the Dean of Faculties' responsibilities migrated to the new office.  The duties of the new Chancellor listed on the Archives web site include "Campus academic program development; Campus budget development; Recruitment, promotion, tenure, retention, and termination of faculty and staff members," and "Library development and coordination."  Byrum Carter was appointed as the first Chancellor of the Bloomington campus.

- Don Gray, English

PROTECTING THE FACULTY LEADERSHIP ROLE OF THE DEAN OF FACULTIES OFFICE

It has become fashionable to say that a Dean of Faculties in a university is an outmoded concept, one with little power, whose tasks could be better done by others.  I beg to differ.  To say that a DoF has no power implies an immature view of organization theory or management of a complex organization.  He or she has some of the greatest and most important powers in the institution and ones that must be protected for the long term health of the university.

     The most basic purpose, aim, or mission of a university is the production of knowledge. The people who produce that knowledge are faculty. The DoF is the keeper of that flame. Knowledge production or creative activity in a university is different than in other organizations in that it is free, open, and unfettered, versus "targeted," or "focused," as might be the case in a drug company or an automobile plant.  Academic knowledge production also requires a different environment in order to thrive.  The person in a university who is specifically charged with understanding, protecting, preserving, and defending this process is a Dean of Faculties.  This gives the DoF enormous power, enormous responsibilities, and enormous challenges.  To reduce or disperse this role, for example into some sort of "faculty advocacy" role, risks substantially weakening the university.  

    In recent times it has also become fashionable to attempt to tie everything to budgetary criteria. An older and more enduring criterion is an equally (often stronger) force driving the nature of the institution, at least of a research university: curiosity, a drive to understand, knowledge creation.   Yes, yes, I know that without dollars...  Well, actually I don't know that.  And neither did Barbara McClintock or Gregor Mendel or Carl Sandburg or Maya Angelou.  And the argument that "the times have changed" doesn't cut much ice either.  No matter how big "big science" gets, what could possibly come of it without a curious, seeking, human brain behind it? 

     A far more important power is the keeping, the protection and preservation of the very bedrock values of the institution, i.e. the production of knowledge and the people who do this as their basic job definition.  That important power is lodged in the Dean of the Faculties.  To simply put those functions "somewhere" or tuck them into some office because it is not clear what immediate purpose they serve is shortsighted indeed and can weaken the institution in both the short and long runs.  Susan Walton Gray once distinguished between the immediately urgent and the ultimately important.  The preservation of the long term values, indeed the raison d'être, of the institution is surely one of the most ultimately important tasks of a university.  The leadership role of the Dean of Faculties must be protected if the institution is not to be substantially weakened.  Herman Wells spoke repeatedly of need to understand these important distinctions and preserve them while also addressing increasingly complex needs.  Let us not weaken our university because we cannot keep straight our basic mission versus an increasing number and variety of demands made on us.

-- Myrtle Scott, Education

Building a Faculty: Does Our Tenure Process Accomplish our Goals?

Faculty and Trustees
A Conversation With the Chancellor
New Lecturer and Clinical Policies

Following its tradition of providing opportunities for the airing of important issues on campus, the AAUP organized a Spring Forum on the topic, “Building a Faculty: Does Our Tenure Process Accomplish our Goals.”  The discussion extended from the procedural issue of how tenure criteria in our university handbook are determined and modified to the more substantive issues involving the criteria themselves. The Academic Handbook states that tenure at IU can be earned either by demonstrated excellence in research, teaching, or service or by near-excellence in all three areas, the “balanced case.”  What messages do our new faculty get from these criteria for tenure and from our present tenure granting process?  Tenure dossiers are typically weighty affairs.  Is the time consumed in the building of this massive collection of evidence by our young faculty well spent?  And, must a colleague be “collegial” to be tenurable?

Remarks from three panel members, David Zaret, Ben Brabson, and Susan Eklund started the discussion.  David is Professor of Sociology and Executive Associate Dean of COAS; Ben is Professor of Physics and President of the IUB chapter of AAUP, and Susan is Professor of Education and Associate Dean of the Faculties.   Bob Eno, President of the Bloomington Faculty Council, moderated the lively discussion.

The Procedural Issue: One recent event prompting this Forum topic was the recent circulation of a draft “Enhancement Plan” for the College, which proposed replacing current tenure expectations of excellence in one of the three areas of teaching, research, and service, or on the basis of the balanced case, by a “teacher-scholar” model, where tenure is granted only to outstanding researchers who are also excellent teachers, eliminating the balanced case option in the College.  During the discussion there was general agreement that changing the policy set forth in the Academic Handbook must proceed through the normal channels of faculty governance and approval of the Board of Trustees.  Though the weight given to individual tenure criteria is left to units to decide, all campus units must follow the stated policy.

Principle vs. Practice: David Zaret pointed out that while the stated principle of tenure is similar from one institution to another, there is considerable variability in how the principle is applied.  At IU, for example, the principle has been applied quite flexibly.  The practice of granting tenure has often included considerations of a balanced set of criteria and capabilities.  IU faculty work toward a performance level rather than against a quota and some three quarters of candidates achieve tenure.

The Teacher-Scholar Model: David explained the teacher-scholar model. He quoted Dean Subbaswamy’s formula: “Excellence in research is indispensable and uninspiring teaching is no longer tolerable.”  David suggested that this model, which does not suggest the possibility of tenure with less than outstanding research, gives a more accurate picture to new faculty of the standard route to a successful tenure review, at least in the College.  Shouldn’t new faculty at a research university be told explicitly that excellence in research is the sine-qua-non for tenure?

The University-Centered Model Ben Brabson argued for the recognition of faculty who contribute to the mission of the university in a variety of ways. University faculty are asked to be good at several things at the same time.  Being excellent researchers is not enough, in his view.  Faculty are asked to establish a research program, to lecture, to mentor both undergraduate and graduate students, to enhance the curriculum of their departments, to provide outreach for their students, to participate in the governance of the institution, to write letters of recommendation, to serve on university wide and departmental committees, and to work for the betterment of  their profession--all at the same time.

In the sciences excellent researchers often find  themselves at the  national  laboratories  where research alone is sufficient.  What tenure criteria best give new faculty the message that they are expected to contribute to the university mission in a variety of ways?  How, exactly, do new faculty develop the habit of contribution to all aspects of an excellent university?

Flexibility in Building a Faculty:  Susan Eklund made the case that a bargain is struck between the university and its faculty.  The university agrees to provide a secure employment environment where academic freedom protects novel and heterodox views.  In exchange, the faculty provide responsible research, teaching, and service conducted in an exemplary manner.  Though the usual tenure situation is research excellence, exceptionally COAS and the professional schools grant tenure at IU on the basis of the balanced case or excellence in teaching or service.  Susan provided some actual numbers. For example, some 15% of the cases in the Business School are granted on the basis of the balanced case, and even in the College, 4% of successful tenure cases are granted on the basis of the balanced case.

Extensive dossiers:  How do our elaborate procedures and extensive dossier expectations--designed to protect candidates and let them exhibit their strengths--actually shape our junior colleagues' career development and campus experience?  While David Zaret held in one hand the slim folder of a tenure dossier of the 1960s, Susan Eklund showed pictures of  trunk-size dossiers submitted this year.  Comments from members of the audience focused this part of the discussion.  The ideal dossier should reveal the “quality of mind” and an “understanding of the elements of a research program.”  Can we persuade our new faculty to present only their best work and can we convince ourselves that that is sufficient to allow us to assess their potential?

Collegiality: How should Bloomington respond to the growing national debate on whether “collegiality” should bear on tenurability?  Though most agreed that non-collegial behavior rising to a level that obstructs excellence in teaching, research, and service is unacceptable, there was deep concern about identifying collegiality as a separate category for tenure.  Given the vagueness of criteria for collegiality, such a category could be subject to abuse and become a threat to academic freedom.

Summary: Bob Eno closed the discussions with three observations: First, that campuses in the IU system have significantly different missions and that our criteria for tenure as stated in our Academic Handbook must be broad to be flexible enough to serve these different missions.  Second that by keeping our criteria broad, we are able to keep the people we really want to keep and construct a diverse and balanced faculty.  And third, if we want to build a faculty that can accomplish the complex mission of the campus, we must find ways to guide junior colleagues to develop as campus citizens, accommodating their needs to develop as teachers and grow into roles in the campus community as they establish the quality of their research.

- Ben Brabson, Physics

Faculty and Trustees

For a number of years, the Bloomington AAUP has strongly backed legislative bills that would mandate faculty trustees for all Indiana institutions of higher education.  While previous bills have been killed without hearings by the state Senate leadership, despite bipartisan House support, this year, strong lobbying by the AAUP State Conference and sponsorship by influential Senate Republican Murray Clark brought the bill to a hearing in Senate Committee, where it was defeated by a single vote.  Mark Kruzan, author of previous faculty trustee bills, attached the bill to a different bill concerning residency requirements for IU trustees.  As this bill approached conference committee, very strong lobbying against the bill by state college and university administrations led to the removal of the faculty trustee language.

During this process, members of the University Faculty Council asked President Brand to enter into dialogue on the merits of the bill and the concept of faculty trustees.  President Brand explained his personal opposition, which he said could be subject to rethinking,  and stated that  although a member of the IU university community had spoken against the bill in hearings and our institutional lobbyist had made similar statements, IU was taking no position on the bill, and had declined to join with other institutions in a letter of opposition.

During UFC discussions with President Brand, he proposed a change of formal policy at IU that could produce many of the benefits the AAUP foresaw in having faculty trustees while avoiding what President Brand sees as the danger of boards losing the effectiveness of their public advocacy role by including as members institutional employees.  In recent years, it has been traditional that the senior co-secretary of the UFC (alternately the Faculty Council president of IUB and IUPUI) be invited to attend the executive sessions of IU trustee meetings, President Brand proposed that official policy be drafted providing that the co-secretary be included in all sessions by default, with certain limited exceptions, such as sessions or portions of sessions dealing with personnel, collective bargaining, or litigation issues, where, in many cases by statute, non-trustees cannot be present.

In March, the current UFC co-secretaries met with IU’s University Counsel to work out details, and President Brand has now proposed such an arrangement to the trustees, asking the UFC for prior endorsement.  It is understood by all involved at IU, that this arrangement is intended to serve as a state model.  If it broadly adopted, significant goals of the faculty trustee bill may be accomplished.

- Bob Eno, EALC

A Conversation with the Chancellor

Faculty who attended the April 9 Spring meeting of the AAUP-Bloomington Chapter were treated to a frank and open discussion with Chancellor Brehm regarding her experiences and perspectives on academic freedom and faculty governance. Noting that some faculty will always have unpopular positions, Chancellor Brehm asserted that the university must protect all university citizens' right to express those positions, following the example of Herman B Wells’ defense of the right of Kinsey researchers to conduct human sexuality research in Indiana. While stressing the centrality of the principle of academic freedom to the business of the university, however, she gently probed some of the more challenging and interesting complexities that arise when the principle is applied to real-life situations. She explored some of the difficulties inherent in defending the rights of all people to express opinions, referring to some responses to the recent Benton mural controversy where individuals strongly supported the right and responsibility of the university to continue showing the mural as an expression of free speech while simultaneously expressing intolerance for the right of others to argue that the mural should be removed.      

Chancellor Brehm described her experiences with faculty governance and her commitment to it. To indicate the importance of shared governance, she noted that although in her view a campuswide general education curriculum would benefit Bloomington, if she cannot persuade faculty to endorse it, she will not follow the lead of some other institutions by mandating it.  Control over the curriculum is one indispensable feature of strong faculty governance.

The Chancellor urged the AAUP to work to influence decisions that will make the university a free and inviting community that will entice faculty to come and stay. She acknowledged the tremendous pressures on pre-tenure faculty, and asked the AAUP chapter to participate in the socialization process of junior faculty to understand their role in faculty governance following tenure. She also spoke of the importance of family-friendly policies to attract and retain the best faculty to IU, expressing admiration at the recent passage of Domestic Partner Benefits at IU. She asked the AAUP to help institute family-friendly policies, and referred the group to the 2001 AAUP policy, "Statements on Principles of Family Responsibilities and Academic Work".

- Julie Bobay, Library

New Lecturer & Clinical Policies

Since the mid-1990s, faculty governance at IU has been struggling to develop policy to regulate non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty teaching appointments in Clinical and Lecturer categories.  Last year, the UFC created and the Trustees adopted new systemwide policies for NTT appointments.  The purpose of the new policies was to improve terms and conditions of employment and strengthen academic freedom protections for non-tenure-track colleagues, and to reduce incentives to expand NTT ranks for primarily financial reasons, at the expense of tenure-track slots.  Although rapid growth of NTT faculty is a national trend, the rate of growth at IU has been slower than elsewhere, and remains relatively modest in Bloomington.

The new policies have been used on other IU campuses to convert substantial numbers  of  part-time  NTT positions to regular ones governed by the favorable terms of the new regulations, part of a three-year program of conversion mandated by the Trustees.  This Spring, the Bloomington Faculty Council adopted campus procedures to regulate promotion, teaching loads, service expectations, and other facets of NTT appointments in Bloomington, in the spirit of the UFC provisions.  Key features include a cap of six courses per year, expectations of substantial professional development, and a campus review process for promotion and appointment to long-term contracts.  Individual schools have drafted relevant policies this year, and while adjustments will be required in some cases to conform with system and campus provisions, the long process of developing appropriate policies to regulate NTT appointments has moved several steps closer to completion.
- Bob Eno

IU Domestic Partner Benefits Policy Adopted

Freedom of Speech at IPFW
A Conversation With State Legislators
AAUP State
e Conference

On September 14, the Board of Trustees adopted a resolution providing for full health and other benefits for same-sex domestic partners of IU faculty, staff, and students.  The decision reversed a resolution passed by the trustees in 1994.  In that year, the BFC sent a domestic partner benefits resolution to the trustees, but the trustees emphatically foreclosed such a step.  The reversal represented a major victory for IU faculty on a strongly held matter. 

    During the period following 1994 there was a general belief that the clear position the trustees had taken made it useless to press the point further.  However, last year COAS assistant dean Steve Sanders decided to explore the possibility that negative attitudes towards domestic partner benefits (DPB) were softer than faculty assumed.  Sanders assembled a task force composed of faculty, staff, and students on multiple IU campuses to develop a background paper on DPB that could dispel misconceptions of fact that may have underlain the trustees’ action. 

      The approach of the task force rested on two major principles: that exclusion of domestic partners from benefits eligibility was discriminatory, and that the exclusion put IU at a serious disadvantage in recruitment and retention of quality faculty and staff.  Sanders and other task force members also recognized that it would be necessary to respond to two important arguments against DPB: that a DPB policy would cost IU more than it could afford, and that it would generate negative publicity and a backlash against IU.  As it pursued research, the task force learned that same-sex DPB policies at institutions comparable to IU had not, in fact, entailed significant costs; total health care cost increases ran well under one percent. The task force also assembled evidence that DPB policies were increasingly being adopted in the private sector in Indiana, and that surveys on the issue indicated a shift in Hoosier attitudes

      Task force members began a year-long process of contacting members of the university community.  Jim Sherman, then President of the BFC and an active advocate, asked the BFC Fringe Benefits Committee to initiate new BFC action.  Dan Dalton, dean of the Kelley

School of Business, was among the earliest and most active members of the task force, and his advocacy helped generate broad administrative support.  President Brand expressed support for the task force’s goals at an early stage, and helped bring other members of the university community into the discussion.

      The initial proposal had come solely from Bloomington, but any change in benefits eligibility must, by law, be systemwide.  The 1994 BFC resolution had not taken this into account, and had been purely Bloomington based.  This time, BFC leaders contacted Paul Galanti, IUPUI faculty president, to discuss moving a new DPB resolution simultaneously through the faculty councils of both the IUPUI and Bloomington campuses.  Galanti mobilized the IUPUI Fringe Benefits Committee, which worked with the Bloomington committee to draft identical resolutions.  It was clear that trying to move through the very different faculty governance structures on all eight campuses was not feasible, but faculty council leaders on every campus were contacted, and in a telephone conference late in the summer, regional leaders indicated that support for a DPB policy was strong throughout the system; they unanimously endorsed proceeding with a “two-campus strategy,” based on formal approval by the two large campus faculty councils.

      The IUPUI Faculty Council adopted the DPB resolution on September 7 by a unanimous voice vote, a forceful indicator of the strength of support beyond Bloomington.  Four days later, amidst the confusion of the September 11 events, BFC members gathered in an abbreviated meeting of considerable drama and approved the resolution by a vote of 51-0.

      As trustees were alerted that a new DPB resolution was forthcoming, their responses were unexpectedly receptive.  The task force report was effective in answering key questions, and the engagement of faculty on all campuses was clearly important to the trustees.  It became evident that there was, in fact, strong underlying support among the trustees for the principle of non-discrimination and sensitivity to the arguments for recruitment and retention – John Walda, a long-time member of the Board, stated that he had for years looked forward to a reconsideration of the trustees’ 1994 action. The faculty resolution had called for DPB benefits to be extended to both same and opposite-sex partners, but because no firm cost estimates could be made for the inclusion of opposite sex partners, the trustees elected to adopt a resolution that applied only to same-sex couples, and request further cost study of the broader option.  In that form, a DPB resolution was adopted by the Board.  The vote was unanimous.

      Domestic partner benefits has been an issue of major concern to the Bloomington faculty for many years.  A comparison of the 1994 and 2001 outcomes makes clear that effective faculty governance must, at times, go beyond the BFC itself and involve coalition building with other groups and other campuses.  It also suggests how important contact between faculty and trustees can be in creating a context of frank discussion where shared views can be discovered and differences negotiated.            

      In the years prior to 1994, faculty-trustee contacts were discouraged, a policy that has changed dramatically.  While it may not be likely that any process could have brought about a DPB policy in 1994, it is very possible that a framework for faculty-trustee discourse more flexible than communication-by-resolution could have softened positions then and led much earlier to an agreement and to tangible benefits for affected colleagues.  The adoption of a DPB policy with unanimous faculty and trustee votes in 2001 reflects a marked improvement in faculty-trustee relations. We should take every opportunity to build on that by seeking ways to broaden the contact of faculty governance with the trustees, and to extend the presence of faculty governance in patterns of normal communication throughout the university.

Bob Eno, EALC

AAUP Supports Freedom of Speech at IPFW

The AAUP weighed in on the side of academic freedom this fall when a controversial play was scheduled for production on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW).  As soon as word that Corpus Christi, a play critiquing Christianity in reference to the homophobic slaying of Matthew Shepard in Texas, would be directed by a student in partial fulfillment of his degree requirements, IPFW’s Chancellor, Michael Wartell, and the chair of the theater department, Larry Life, began receiving hate mail and threats, including threats by Indiana legislators who promised financial retaliation against the campus if the play were allowed to go on.    

Chancellor Wartell responded in a variety of venues, including a guest column in which he wrote, “The protection of this production exemplifies the essence of the First Amendment and academic freedom.  It is in these instances, as with “Corpus Christi,” where opposition rises to the level of moral outrage, that the principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom are most sorely tested.  They must prevail against the very understandable impulse by those who wield power to stifle or chill that which they would prefer not to hear.”          

 When a group led by Indianapolis attorney John Price filed a lawsuit against the school, the AAUP filed an amicus brief in support of IPFW.  Judge William Lee found in the University’s favor, and the play opened to highly positive reviews and rancorous, often ad hominem protest from a small group of hecklers.  In the middle of an extended and sold-out run, the university hosted a forum with a panel composed of three community members opposed to the production and two community members plus a faculty member who favored allowing it to proceed.

 Jack Nightingale, an Associate Secretary on the AAUP’s national staff, flew in from  Washington to attend, and Joe Losco, President of the Indiana Conference of the AAUP, joined him. Both spoke out very effectively on behalf of academic freedom, emphasizing the right, indeed the responsibility, of the academic  community to explore,  analyze,  and evaluate subject matter, including art, no matter how controversial or unpopular it may be.

      The play completed its run without incident, though demonstrators continued to shout homophobic slogans and insults at patrons as they arrived and departed.  In spite of the fact that the play was over, Judge Lee’s ruling was appealed.  A three-member panel of the Indiana Supreme Court upheld his finding, leading to yet another appeal, this time a request to have the case heard by the entire seven-justice court.  It too was denied.           

     During its annual meeting, this year at the University of Indianapolis, the Conference presented a forum on academic freedom and IPFW’s experience.  Professor Life described the harassment he, the cast, and the student director suffered and outlined the pressure public opinion and legislators had exerted in an effort to censor the play.  Subsequently, in recognition of their immediate and unwavering support for academic freedom, the Conference presented its Academic Freedom Award to Chancellor Wartell and Vice-Chancellor Hannah, and its Excellence of Educational Coverage award to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.                 

Rick Ramsey, English; Vice-President, AAUP-IPFW

A Conversation with Our State Legislators

Each fall for the past few years we have met with our state legislators to exchange ideas and express concerns concerning the welfare of Indiana University and its faculty.   This fall the AAUP Executive Committee met with Mark Kruzan and Peggy Welch, who gave us a clinic on how to get our concerns heard in the Indiana State Legislature.  They stressed three main points.

           1.) Legislators listen to their constituents. Only  legislators from Bloomington and West Lafayette, are certain to be strong supporters of funding for higher education; they are only six of 150 members of the two legislative houses.  We in higher education have a grass roots representation problem. Higher education funding is in direct competition with all other state funding, including competitors with broad grass roots organizations. K-12 education, for example, has a vocal and effective base of support throughout the state. 

           2.) Legislators need to see clearly the direct consequences of action or inaction. Legislators are immediately made aware of the “disastrous consequences” of any anticipated reduction in funding for K-12.  Welch and Kruzan stressed that we must clearly define for legislators the benefits to the state from their support and the potential “fallout” from under-funding.  Hearing this from the External Relations people at IU is important, but they also need to hear it from their constituents.  This is where IU’s eight-campus system can help.

           3.) Legislators need to hear how their constituents will benefit from our advice. Many IU programs of great potential value to the state are seen only as projects that bring international prestige to IU without direct benefit to Hoosiers. An example of a highly successful IUB interaction with the legislature was IU Cyclotron’s proton therapy initiative, where the benefit to cancer patients clearly connected the university to state needs. Examples of IU programs with similar potential impact on the state include Pervasive Technology, Genomics, and Informatics, but the connections are not yet clear to legislators. Faculty involved in innovative research and teaching are often most effective in explaining the importance of their work to legislators.  Making the connections between IU innovative programs and the people in the state is crucial.

           Mark and Peggy emphasized the appeal of the governor’s new Community College program. Legislators have in mind close collaboration among all components of the state’s higher education system and see the seamless transfer of course credits from one school to another for all Indiana students as a direct benefit to the sons and daughters of their constituents. 

           But, are these general observations useful to the AAUP here in Bloomington?  Our issues are not limited to the welfare of the university as a whole but extend to concerns for academic freedom and faculty welfare.   In the discussion of the Community College initiative, do these new CC faculty have academic freedom?  Will they have long-term contracts with fringe benefits?  Is CC pay sufficient to attract high quality colleagues into this part of the Indiana higher educational system?  How do our colleagues at the IU regional campuses fare in competition with funds for the new CC system?  How do we fare?

            It is certainly true that in Indiana AAUP chapters represent the faculty from a large number of institutions of higher education.  Kruzan and Welch suggested that we take advantage of our own grass roots reach.  Our chapters are broadly spread throughout the state and constitute an informed faculty who can speak out on issues of importance to the AAUP, especially those issues of academic freedom. Following the advice of Kruzan and Welch, the AAUP needs to use its grass roots reach to communicate with legislators throughout the state on issues that are important to us.  Their advice is good. We should use it to accomplish the exceedingly important goals of AAUP, namely the strong support of higher education faculty and their academic freedom.

Ben Brabson, Physics

Issues From the AAUP State Conference

Three members of our IUB AAUP Executive attended the fall meeting of The Indiana Conference of the AAUP, held on October 20 at the University of Indianapolis. The meeting heard a report on the IPFW defense of academic freedom, detailed by Rick Ramsey elsewhere in this AAUP Fall Report. Two other issues addressed at the conference were: 1) faculty trustees for Indiana colleges and universities, 2) the appointment of a new faculty member on the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE).

          Joe Losco, president of the Conference, gave the history of and plans for legislation to establish non-voting faculty representation on college and university boards of trustees.  Last year the House bill, jointly sponsored by Representatives Adams, Kruzan, Munson, Kersey, and Bardon, passed the Indiana House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support of 80 to 11,  the leadership of both parties voting in favor.  An identical senate bill was introduced by Senator Craycraft and promptly placed in the Rules Committee by President Pro Tem, Robert Garton (R-Columbus). The Rules Committee is a repository for bills that will not be granted a hearing.  Losco has been working with Republican Senate leader, Murray Clark, who is in a position to guide next year’s bill to the senate Education Committee.  Senator Clark gave the luncheon address at this year’s AAUP Conference meeting.

          The Indiana Commission for Higher Education is a fourteen-member public body created in 1971 to define the educational missions of public colleges and universities and to plan and coordinate Indiana’s state-supported system of post-high school education.  As a coordinating agency it makes recommendations to the governor and to the legislature on addition or removal of programs. Professor Otto Doering, a public policy specialist at Purdue University and member of the AAUP has recently been appointed to the CHE as its faculty representative.  It is encouraging that the governor has looked to the AAUP for both for its two most recent faculty representatives, Doering and his predecessor, Dan Reagan, of Ball State.

Ben Brabson

 


Why Are We Worried?  What Should We Do?

Report on Committee A
Revised Academic Appointments Policy
AAUP Systemwide

The year now ending has been marked by concern about the direction in which the Bloomington campus is headed and the significance of the near-total administrative transition that is underway.  To give voice to faculty views on these matters, the Bloomington AAUP devoted its Spring Forum, held on January 30, to consideration of these issues.  Three colleagues initiated the discussion: Vic Viola (Chemistry and Physics), Jeff Wasserstrom (History), and Don Gray (English).  About 100 others joined the forum in the Law School Moot Court Room.

The initial themes addressed by speakers included Bloomington’s disappointing position in this year’s national rankings, growing divisions on campus, both generational and disciplinary, and the effects on campus community of basic trends concerning hiring, tenure, and faculty participation on the campus level.

Vic Viola focused on the issue of rankings, and highlighted the gaps between our reputation, which remains very strong, and persistent and growing problems that threaten to diminish that reputation in the future.  Among the problems Vic pointed to were, in the research area, sharply declining federal grant funds, relative to inflation, and a substantial net loss in prominent senior faculty; in the teaching area, Vic pointed to high numbers of large classes and a student body SAT profile about 100 points lower than top-ten ranked public institutions, which would make this campus seem far less attractive to outstanding potential applicants and their parents.  More generally, Vic noted that while state dollars to IU, adjusted for inflation have not been declining, central administration assessments on units to cover administrative and non-instructional service costs have increased to the point where units are in deficit before the first student enrolls.  Vic also pointed to Bloomington’s unfavorable salary scale for junior colleagues, relative to Big Ten institutions, and contrasted this, and the low salary increments of recent years, with unusually high increments for upper level administrators this past year. 

Comments during and after Vic’s presentation noted that Bloomington’s disappointing ranking in some key areas may be a product of its unique profile as a campus with great strength in arts and humanities, but without medical or engineering schools, units which typically have large positive impacts on research funding and salaries.  Other points included the argument that central administration assessments on units include substantial funds for tuition discounts designed to attract out-of-state students, ultimately increasing unit tuition revenues.  High out-of-state enrollments may be a significant indicator that Bloomington’s national reputation continues to be a strong draw for potential applicants and their families.  On issues of salary and faculty raiding, it was noted that part of the reason for low salary increments is aggressive retention offers to prevent the loss of outstanding colleagues.

Jeff Wasserstrom, who came to Bloomington in 1991, noted that since he has been here there has not been a single year where average salary increments were significantly in excess of inflation; a “merit increase,” even for very productive faculty, has come to mean little more than breaking even.  Moving up in salary has become tied to outside offers and negotiated retention, at the cost of salary funds available for colleagues who do not seek or receive outside offers.  This pattern reinforces a growing tendency in academics towards individualistic professionalism and free agent attitudes, which undermines loyalty to the institution and campus community, even for those who are persuaded to remain, and creates sharp divisions among faculty.  Another area of division, increasingly important in Bloomington, is the division between the pre-1989 “18/20 generation” and those who arrived on campus too late to participate in the legacy of Herman B Wells’s policy of unusual generosity.  To the degree that the security provided by 18/20 reinforced a strong existing sense of campus community, that sense of community is weaker for an increasing sector of the faculty.  Jeff went on to point to other sources of campus division, such as the tendency of RCM to create or widen divisions between units.  Now that the living symbol of Herman Wells is not present on campus, it will be much harder to encourage junior colleagues, who are “professionalized” in their disciplines at increasingly early stages of their graduate careers, to see the rewards of collegial participation on the campus level.

Don Gray came to Bloomington in 1956.  He contrasted the campus now with its features in the heart of the Wells era, when faculty shared cramped offices with no amenities, taught four classes a term to students passing minimal admissions standards, and earned truly meager salaries.  Despite these factors, the campus was entering an era of enormous growth in student numbers and federal funding, and faculty were optimistic and devoted to the community.  Plenary faculty meetings on campus issues were not uncommon; they were well attended and intellectually substantive.  Don pointed to some specific decisions – not necessarily unwise – that are part of the background of the weaker sense of community today, such as the decision to halve teaching loads and so double class size.  Most central has been the change in tenure standards.  Where standards were once flexible, there is now less of a sense that there are many ways to contribute to a campus like Bloomington.  The extreme difficulty of earning tenure leads us to protect our junior colleagues by keeping them isolated from full campus participation, a type of prolongation of graduate school.  After ten or twelve years of taking care of themselves, how reasonable is it to expect colleagues to be ready and anxious to join a conversation about the campus?  These processes have contributed to a faculty “back on our heels,” overmastered by the complexity of the challenges that face us in guiding the direction of the campus.  In restoring a campus space for faculty interaction and discussion, Don stressed the important role of the AAUP, as the only campuswide professional organization, and one that keeps in view that fact that academics do many things, and are not simply researchers or teachers, or unintegrated composites.

The long and active discussion that followed responded to the ideas of the speakers and also introduced new issues.  A number of colleagues questioned the current effectiveness of faculty governance, both the Bloomington Faculty Council and BFC committees.  Others pointed out that if governance is weak, we are responsible for that situation; the administration in Bloomington has a strong record of responsiveness to faculty governance policies and decisions.  A number of comments focused on the need to create more forums for campuswide debate among faculty and between faculty and administrators, whether through a strengthened faculty senate, or through faculty meetings on key issues.  The fact that decisive initiatives, such as the establishment of Informatics, have passed without such campuswide debate, indicates that we have allowed campus divisions and increasing pressures of research and teaching to loosen our engagement in the campus community for which we are responsible. Without a conscious effort to guide junior colleagues to do a better job of rebuilding campus community than we have so far done, we are unlikely to reverse these trends and prevent the complex issues we face from overmastering us.  

Bob Eno, EALC

Report on Committee A

Providing advice and support to faculty with grievances that raise issues of academic freedom and due process is one of AAUP-IUB's most important functions. Committee A, the Committee on Academic Freedom, is the organ of the chapter Executive Committee responsible for this task.

This has been a busy year for our Committee A; the number of colleagues asking for assistance this year prompted us to add a third member to the committee. The increase in faculty coming to Committee A for assistance may be both a cause and an effect of our chapter's increased membership and visibility.  Our general approach has been to help colleagues explore options for formal or informal mediation as a first path, and help guide them through the often complex and stressful procedures of appeal, in the event that administrative action makes that necessary.

In acting as advocates in appeal contexts, Committee A protects structures essential to academic freedom by monitoring full implementation of due process for faculty. Due process procedures are important for fairness, and also for requiring administrators to account for their actions. Our consistent monitoring of due process ensures that administrators and departments will be less likely to take action against faculty on pretext of misconduct where the motivation may really be the faculty member's expression of views protected by academic freedom. Committee A’s regular role in these matters establishes a safeguard that benefits all members of the university.

Among the interesting and important issues that have arisen in this year's cases are appropriate processes for handling misconduct charges that arise in the context of promotion and tenure cases and the process due to faculty in salary grievances.  The chapter leadership is interested in pursuing these sorts of matters beyond the specific cases, to determine whether these experiences may allow us to help develop better procedures or find ways to implement existing procedures that better protect academic freedom.  Our role in an Associate Instructor's grievance last year has led, through the efforts of colleagues in faculty governance, to proposals currently before the BFC for improved standards for managing AI employment and grievances.

In general, for better and worse, we observe that, while the new Bloomington faculty misconduct procedures have yet to be formally invoked, they are in mind and influencing behavior of faculty and departments as they manage the grievances they have against each other.

Ed Greenebaum, Law

Revised Policy Governing Academic Appointments

The University Faculty Council has approved revisions in the policy governing academic appointments, with particular attention to the structure of non-tenure-track faculty appointments. The policy statement has been strongly recommended to the Trustees by President Brand, and approved by the University Policies Committee.  It is expected that the Trustees will act on the policy at their May meeting.

This is the culmination of five to six years of work in the faculty affairs committees of the various faculty councils. Bill Burgan led the efforts in the early years and Ed Greenebaum has been instrumental in developing the current policy statement.  We are very fortunate to have colleagues such as these.

The main focus of the work has been to create a home within the faculty classifications for those whose activities are focused on teaching and service.  This is done by creating a classification and developing regulations for appointees in a lecturer category, who would have access to long-term contracts following a probationary period.  The policy also extends academic freedom protection to lecturers.

The policy requires faculty in each school to specify the minimum percentage of tenured and tenure-eligible faculty allowable on an FTE basis.  This is a substitute for the “cap” feature of the current clinical appointee policy.  Irrespective of this specification, in units where clinical and/or lecturer appointees participate in faculty governance, the tenure-track faculty must retain at least 60% of the voting weight.

In many ways, the clinical and lecturer classifications are parallel, both focused on instructional and service activities.  Given this, it is expected that units will make appropriate choices when filling non-tenure-track faculty lines, reserving clinical appointments for those cases where work is “primarily in the clinical setting”.  At present it seems that a number of the clinical appointments on the Bloomington campus are questionable from this point of view.

A final version of the policy should soon be posted on the University Faculty Council website, at http://www.indiana.edu/~ufc.

Ted Miller, SPEA

AAUP Systemwide

Members of AAUP chapters from five IU campuses convened at the April meeting of the Indiana AAUP State Conference.  Representatives from IUPUI, Bloomington, IU-East, IU-Northwest, and IU-South Bend shared views on a number of issues that have impact on membership across IU campuses. The principal items concerned the still incomplete process of revising campus provisions for faculty misconduct or post-tenure review and the draft IU strategic plan for distributed education.

Post-tenure review issues remain unresolved on many campuses.  Currently, only Bloomington and IUPUI have adopted procedures that have been approved by the Board of Trustees, and discussion focused on campus specific issues that have delayed this process elsewhere.

The impact of distributed education will affect all our campuses, with profound implications for matters of workload, compensation, intellectual property rights, all with impact on our academic mission and issues of academic freedom.  As the new Office of Distributed Education’s planning document approaches Trustee consideration, faculty on all campuses need to intensify their scrutiny of DE decisions and decision making.