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Chancellor Woodson: Well, welcome to the Chancellor’s Forum.
We’re glad you’re all here. Strategic planning is a very exciting topic.
And we’re pleased to have this time with everyone to talk about the ideas that are
emerging from the plan. And we certainly will provide a lot of opportunities for feedback.
This is part of the continued effort to receive response to the Task Force reports that have
all been posted on the web. We’ve had a number of meetings since then. And the Steering
Committee is busy finalizing plans from those submitted. Also, I think it’s very clear
that we’ve got a lot of issues on our plate.
We’ve …I’ve talked a lot in the last week or so about the budget challenges facing
the state of North Carolina. And North Carolina’s not alone in this. In fact there’s a long
list of states across the nation that are experiencing some of the largest budget deficits
in many, many, many years. So, we want to do everything we can to ensure the strength
of this university going forward by being strategic in our thinking. That’s why you
know a lot of people have said to me “Chancellor why do a strategic plan when there's no resources?”
Well frankly that’s when it’s the most critical to think strategically, because when
you have to make critical decisions about how to keep the university strong in going
forward, you need clearly defined priorities and strategies and that’s what this is about.
With regard to budget, I know that most of you have (see my recent video)…it’s the
most popular YouTube video around. I think you’ve heard the message from the Chancellor.
We’ve got a lot of activity right now looking at the issues that are outlined in that, with
the goal of trying to get some early recommendations submitted to my office by mid-March. And I’ve
outlined in those comments the core principles under which any budget reductions that we
have to take as a university would be, we abide by. And first and foremost is protecting
the academic strength of this institution and in assuring that we’re doing everything
possible to help our students be successful and preparing them for the workforce. Our
second principle, I’ve said many times, is we’ve got to have a strong faculty to
be an outstanding university to accomplish goal one, to protect our students. And goal
three, you all know we are a world class research institution. That’s important for North
Carolina. We want to be the economic engine that brings this state out of the current
recession. We believe we are. And so we want to protect the strength of our research core.
We also have a campus that is extremely well maintained. A campus, although we do have
deferred maintenance, Charlie Leffler would be quick to tell you, and I’m looking at
a few department heads that would also be quick to tell you, David Threadgill. But we
have a great campus. We have a campus that we work *** to ensure the safety of our
students, and the productivity of our faculty and staff. We want to continue that. Finally
we want to do everything we can to make sure NC State remains one of the best values in
higher education. Not just by the quality the education we provide, but by the affordability
of that education. And we’re proud of, along with our colleagues in Chapel Hill, to always
be on Kiplinger’s list of best buys. And also best returns on investment. So, we are
in the midst of strategic planning, and we are there because it’s important for us
to be there. Particularly in an environment where we’re trying to protect the core of
this university. And as we go through the conversation, Provost Arden and Dr. Overton
will provide leadership to the discussion on where we are with planning. And then we’ll
certainly want to do everything we can to answer questions as we know the answers to
those related to the budget going forward. So, with that I’ll bring Provost Arden up.
Provost Arden: Thank you Chancellor. Good afternoon everyone
and thanks for coming out this afternoon. This is a great turnout to have a campus-wide
discussion on some of the many many issues that are important to us. One of which is
strategic planning. I’m sure there are a number of other closely related issues that
are on your mind today. Let’s go over a few slides as a quick overview to begin the
discussion. Then I’m going to ask my colleague Dr. Overton to come up front with me and we’re
going to direct the discussion. We wanted to remind you of what the task forces
were. There are nine task forces that were formed at the beginning of last fall. There
are Undergraduate Student Success; Graduate and Postdoctoral Program Development; Faculty
Excellence; Research and Scholarship; Comprehensiveness and Interdisciplinarity; Global Engagement
and Competitiveness; Partnership, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship; Campus Culture and Community;
and Resource Strategies. Now I can tell you the task forces have been working extremely
hard particularly over the fall. We’ve had a hundred and sixty faculty members, students,
and staff working on those task forces. Everybody’s put a lot of work into those. Hopefully, you’ve
had a chance to look at and review the white papers that were put up earlier this week.
We’ve still got a fair bit of work to do in terms of drawing the essential elements
out of those task force reports and weaving them into a coherent and concise strategic
plan. That is what is going on at the moment. But at this stage it is critically important
for us to get your input on the thoughts that have been put forward today on each of those
issues.
Just going back very quickly and giving you a timeline of where we are and where we’ve
been, we began last summer. During the fall, the task forces were at work as I’ve said.
They met with multiple different internal constituents and external stakeholders. They
formed the task force reports. During December, the task forces presented their reports to
the Strategic Planning Committee. And we had several extensive discussions in the later
part of December. The Strategic Planning Committee began to identify key ideas in late December
and key themes which would advise the formation of the Strategic Plan.
Here we are in January. The Strategic Planning Committee has been working on beginning a
draft Strategic Plan. The task forces submitted their final white papers and they were posted
online on January 21st. Here we are today, the Chancellor’s Forum. Throughout February,
we had hoped to have a draft of the Strategic Plan by very early in February. It’s now
going to be probably more middle to third week of February, as we move through this
process. So the February-March time period is going to be very, very critical receiving
your input here today. Continuing to receive your input directly and over our website.
And then for you to have a look at the draft Strategic Plan during March, the later part
of February and March. Give us your feedback so that we can modify that again before we
deliver it to the Chancellor, incorporate his input and then hopefully have it to the
Board of Trustees by April.
Remember that today’s forum is just one of several opportunities for input and comment.
We’ve had multiple forums before. There is the website to go to to give continued
input and of course Margery, I, and the task force chairs are always open to further input
by e-mail or direct comment. And we do generally welcome and appreciate that feedback and commentary.
With that I’m going to ask Margery. You want to stay seated or come up Margery? Ah
yes. Of course I need your help. And we’re just going to try this fairly informally.
So that everybody can be heard, I am going to ask that if you have a question to come
up to one of these three microphones so that everybody can hear your questions. And then
most of the questions that we have, if it’s specific to a specific area of a task force
report, I’m going to direct them to the task force chairs to respond to. And the task
force chairs, which are mostly seated up front, will you please stand up and wave. Everybody
I’m not going to go through and name the task force chairs for each task force. But
one back there. Okay. And then if there are general questions related to uh (unintelligible)
or otherwise that relate more generally to issues of the university, Charlie Leffler
our Vice Chancellor of Business and Finance is here along with the Chancellor and myself
to respond to those. But the focus of today is the task force reports. It is the strategic
plan. (Unintelligible) reports so we’re going to try to keep the focus as much as
possible on that. Alright, questions, let’s start.
(Unintelligible talking) Provost Arden: If you have a question please
come forward to one of the microphones. Audience: I’ve never been known to be shy.
David Zonderman, I’m the associate department head in history. Just two observations and
if you want to respond that’s fine. But the first is I absolutely agree with what
the Chancellor said about now more than ever we’re facing challenges we haven’t seen
since the great depression. We do need to think strategically. I would urge you, when
we think about the strengths of this university, the strengths are not just our so called historic
strengths which lie in engineering and agriculture, but of course we truly are a comprehensive
university now. And I think we really have to always acknowledge that virtually across
the campus there are some tremendous strengths. And obviously I speak somewhat for the humanities
and the social sciences on that. The second point I would make is I actually
did go through all the white papers. And I’m really intrigued by, there seems to be a lot
of synergy from about four or five of the reports about developing kind of focus areas,
especially in research and graduate education. And I guess my comment on that is I very much
as a researcher, I think there are some tremendously exciting ideas about it. And as someone who
also does the graduate education, I’m a little concerned that we need to think a little
more, to put it crudely, about how the market functions. The example I will make is several
of these reports talked about perhaps developing a doctorate in humanities. While that sounds
interesting, given the cruel job market right now, I don’t know where a doctorate in humanities
would find employment if that man or woman particularly wanted a job in the academy.
So, I would urge, and if that idea is going forward especially in the graduate education
side, I would urge that the committee look more closely at sort of the current potentially
future employment impact patterns. Because I worry we could end up with a sort of, what
looks like an intellectually exciting degree that no one can get a job with. Thank you.
Provost Arden: Thank you very much for those comments. There were, as you’ve mentioned,
a lot of comments throughout the task forces that had common themes. One was developing
focal areas for the university and prioritized focal areas and other related several comments
related to developing graduate areas of study, more interdiscipline graduate areas of study.
Do any of our task force chairs want to comment on either of those areas?
Audience: So, I’m Barb Sherry, the chair of Graduate and Post-doctoral (Provost Arden
hands her the mic.) I’m Barb Sherry. I’m co-chair of the Graduate and Post-doctoral
Program Development Task Force. I just want to say that we’re very aware that one size
does not fit all. We were not proposing that there would be something that would go across
all of the different graduate programs at the university. And some people might be surprised
to hear that some of the science disciplines were also concerned about losing the name
and the specificity of their doctoral degree. So, we’re thinking that for some programs,
like sciences for example, this might work very well. For other programs it would not.
So we we welcome the feedback. Provost Arden: Thank you.
Audience: Hello. Hello Provost. I have a question mainly for you or perhaps the Chancellor.
A number of times recently in recent days I’ve heard reference to closing down programs,
closing down departments, maybe low enrolled small departments. And I wondered specifically
what you each have in mind regarding the faculty members and those departments.
(laughter) Provost Arden: He just threw it right back
to me. (unintelligible comment from the audience and laughter) No I think if you’ll look
at the uh…and just to be clear here for a moment we have three (unintelligible word)
processes going on. We have a strategic planning process which is really geared towards long
term planning, five to eight years for this university. Is not blind to but is not geared
to solely getting us from this budget year to the next year. And that is really critical
for us, for a university to have that kind of vision and plan. We have a usual annual
budgetary process that we go through which is proving a little more problematic this
year than most years, but not extreme by some standards around the country. And then most
recently of course the chancellor has asked the Vice-chancellor of Business and Finance
and myself to focus on looking at overall strategies to increase efficiency and effectiveness
within the university. Under that, one of those is to do a review of low enrolled programs,
low enrolled courses and see if there’s anything there where there are efficiencies
to be gained. If we were to act on those they wouldn’t be unilateral actions. They would
certainly involve discussion and faculty and develop a plan to move forward. At this point
in time, we’re simply going back and looking at the data and reviewing those programs.
With respect to elimination of whole programs as you’re discussing and larger units and
the role of faculty, there is not at the moment a discussion within the UNC system, this would
be a system wide discussion not a university or campus discussion about release of faculty,
tenured faculty, contract faculty or otherwise. That is not a discussion that has gone in
any great direction at this point in time, and is highly unlikely to be something that
will happen over the next several months. So, what we’re really focused on at the
moment are efficiencies that could be gained either by potential elimination of some low
enrolled courses in academic programs or alternately efficiencies that could be gained by combining
programs or even administrative units. And we’re really not focused on displacing faculty
or contract faculty who are in our (unintelligible) positions at this point in time. Many of the
efficiencies that would be gained would be gained over a prolonged period, with some
of those kinds of organizational or structural changes, but we have to think about their
implementation now. Now is the right time to begin thinking about their implementation.
Okay. Come on, this can’t be it.
Audience: I’m piggybacking onto that question from the staff side. There have been talks
of kind of a centralization of the business functions at service centers. What would that
look like for departmental and college staff who currently are in those functions and what
kind of feedback would you guys welcome or you know what kind of process would be involved
in making those decisions?
Provost Arden: Another point that the Chancellor has to look at is whether or not there can
be efficiencies gained within our system by looking at the way we provide some of our
business functions, HR functions, at the moment. We’re very, very early on in that process.
So, actually probably the best is if I asked the Vice Chancellor of Business and Finance,
was that a nice pass, to comment. Vice Chancellor Leffler: Thank…thank you
Mr. Provost. There are a number of campuses across the country, as some of you may be
familiar with, that have looked at these kinds of processes, this kind of streamlining of
service centers typically called shared service centers in this regard. And I think we’ve
got a lot yet to learn about how to apply it here at NC State. How it might make a difference
here. And that’s what we’re really going to be trying to do as part of this presentation
to the Chancellor in March. So we have a lot left to sort through in terms of what we’ve
seen out there and how it might apply to NC State. But I think what we have said, and
what the Provost said this morning just to the deans, was as you, you know, as you think
about how will it deal with potentially a 15 percent budget reduction, what might we
be doing inside of our units right now or in collaboration with others, there’s nothing
that keeps us from taking those steps right now. And they should be part of our thinking
in terms of the 15 percent plan. And we are certainly going to be looking at that when
those plans are submitted here at the end of this month it just…next Monday in terms
of what is already on their minds in terms of ideas that are coming out of the campus
as we look at this model across the entire campus and that will no question influence
how we think about that and how we suggest something forward to the Chancellor. Did that
get to your question? Thank you sir. Provost Arden: Okay, more questions?
Audience: I’m Chris Gould. There are many interesting suggestions in the Student Success
Task Force. I wonder if you or they could comment on how broadly applicable they would
be to the whole of the campus and over what kind of time frame one could sort of see an
impact on that in terms of success rates, type of degree, so forth. I don’t know if
that’s a comment for you or anybody from the task force.
Provost Arden: I’ll start out and then once again very quickly punt it. This issue of
student success is absolutely critical. We have held several forums and discussions on
this, you know. As an institution we do okay, but we’re not where we want to be. We can
do better. And that’s why such a critical part of this discussion is how are we going
to focus our limited resources, which are likely to become even more limited as we move
forward, on insuring the success of our students. I think this particular task force, all of
our task forces did a great job, this task force really outlined a schematic for how
we would impact on students both as they first enter the university and the later parts of
their career to optimize success. So, as one of our task force chairs on our student success…I’m
looking directly at Jo-Ann (Cohen) she knows that - like to comment further on that?
Audience: Given the fact that we see each other everyday, it’s interesting that he
(Chris Gould) would come up with that question today here. If you look at our five recommendations
and I’ll talk about them one by one. The first is on Summer Start, which is a program
for incoming students that we started last year. It was incredibly successful. We’re
expanding that this year. So I expect that there will be an expansion of that as we continue
on. The highest priority for us was this new advising model where we have proposed that
there will be professional advisors for our incoming students that would be hired in the
departments and in the colleges in which the students reside, who would be trained in the
cross-curricular issues across campus and would be working closely with the faculty
to help students best quickly identify their best career fit and their best academic fit.
There are professional advisors across campus. So, DUAP certainly does have some professional
advisors, but so do other colleges. CALS has some. CHASS has some. PAMS has some. They’re
scattered. So although we’ve proposed a 120 to 1 advising model, we already have a
lot of these folks. So, I would hope that when resources become available, that that’s
really the first place that we start putting in additional resources.
We proposed an expansion of the First Year Inquiry program and if you’re aware of this
program, these are courses that are small courses. Helps students to quickly connect
to peers and to faculty in that critical first year. These courses help students to develop
their critical thinking skills and their communication skills. And currently about 10 percent of
our incoming students take a First Year Inquiry course. So, we propose that that figure be
100 percent. And we know that will take some time. We proposed a funding model. Again there
are lots of funding models. But we were hoping to get that up and running at full capacity
in about five or so years. We talked about the living and learning communities.
So, currently we have nine living and learning communities on campus. About seventy-five
to eighty percent of our incoming students live in our residence halls and about twenty-five
percent of our incoming students live in the living and learning communities. And if you’ll
read the report you’ll see some data on the success that these communities have on
retention, grades, and on academic performance. So, we proposed to go from that twenty-five
percent of all incoming students in living and learning communities to fifty percent
to the development of three to four new communities. And up through the expansion of existing communities
as appropriate. So, we gave the Chancellor and the Provost our first step which is to
renew our efforts to establish an environmental living and learning community. So, again that’s
something that can be phased in across the years.
And the last recommendation was on high impact educational practices and we propose that
we really do establish a requirement that all students have one of five experiences
-- a study abroad experience, a service learning experience, a capstone experience, an undergraduate
research experience, and an internship or a co-op. So, that’s something that I again,
I would hope that we would be putting resources into undergraduate research, and service learning
and the other categories so that we can give them budget considerations and implement that
within the next five or six years. Provost Arden: Thanks Jo-Ann. And I do want
to illustrate that that’s an excellent example of where the strategic planning process and
the process that the chancellor has asked us to undertake really interdigitate or fit
together. It’s very clear when you look at the numbers our six year graduation rate
of our undergraduates at the moment is about seventy-one percent. It’s very, very clear
when you look at the data and ask some questions, why do our students not graduate in a timely
fashion or why do they leave all together, that there are different reasons for different
campuses but in general the non-academic reasons are just as important as the academic reasons.
So when we then step back and look at it from a structural perspective or an organizational
perspective, all the greater reason that we really have to look at coordinating our academic
programs and our student support programs. And so we are looking at structural changes
that would lead to greater interactions between those programs. We do have, at the moment,
multiple complicative programs on the academic and non-academic side of the house. All geared
toward assisting and helping our students. But we sometimes have to step back and say
how do we integrate this? Yes, there may be some cost savings but more importantly how
are we to deliver these support services both academic and non-academics to our students
in a more effective manner? I think that’s a really good example of how these processes
fit together. Audience: I’m Becky Rufty with the Graduate
School and I would be remiss if I didn’t say publically what I said to you and to the
Chancellor in private and that is that this particular task force, understandably so,
has focused on undergraduate student success. I think that the university needs to look
at graduate student success just as much as undergraduate student success. The completion
rate for doctoral students at NC State is sixty percent. And the cost of doctoral education
is exorbitant. And if we’re going to be a prominent research extensive or very research
extensive university, we have to do better in terms of doctoral completion, doctoral
student placement. So as you move forward I hope that the conversation will also include
graduate students. Thank you. Provost Arden: That’s an excellent point
Becky. A lot of the time, when we talk of about completion rates and graduation rates,
we are talking about undergraduates as Becky says. Across the university our completion
rates of our doctoral programs are about sixty percent, actually varies from program to program,
from about thirty percent low, thirty percent up to about around ninety percent. And if
you want to talk about effectiveness and efficiency and effective utilization of resources -
to have a doctoral student in a program for three or four or five years on our limited
graduate student support plan in dollars and not graduate, it is a major issue both for
the individual and for the university. So thanks for bringing that up. Does anybody
from the Graduate Student Task Force want to comment any further?
Audience: I’m Mary Tetro. I work in the Office of Advising Support Information Services,
and as Dr. Cohen was talking about the primary focuses that are going to support undergraduate
education she started with the Summer Start Program. My understanding that one of the
huge benefits of that program was the extensive tutorial support that was a part of it and
the tutors which are critical for success. So if I’m going to add professional advisors
within the colleges, I personally would like to see more in the what I would call the consolidated
place of advising. But if you are going to add advisors, I would hope that we also consider
increasing the tutorial support system to the entire undergraduate campus. Because good
advising is only one part of the success that was a part of the Start Program and all students
need additional tutorial support in many areas especially since we’ve lost all that, I
believe we aren’t supporting it anymore, excuse me in the foreign languages. So, not
that that’s a critical place but I think the tutorial support for undergraduates has
to go hand in hand with academic advising. Thank you.
Provost Arden: Thank you Mary, that’s an excellent point. President Ross visited the
campus the other day. I specifically warned him of the budgetary impacts on our tutorial
advising programs. And so we’re keenly aware that those programs are going to be integral
to student success as we move forward. So, we’re going to be challenged on the financial
front on the next couple of years. But that is an issue that we really have to pay attention
to and make sure that we focus the resources that we have available to that end. Thank
you. Audience: Good afternoon. I’m Barbie Honeycutt
with the Graduate School and I just have one comment for you to think about. There’s
a population here on campus that exists and we are EPA professionals who are not faculty.
We’re not tenure track, and we’re not staff. So we’re a group that’s sort of
missing. And I didn’t see us mentioned anywhere in any of the reports. I think I saw one paper
that mentioned EPA. But I just want to challenge you and the Chancellor and the Task Force
to really think about what we can bring to the institution in terms of our skills and
expertise and experience. For example, I hold a Ph.D. and I am in the position in the Graduate
School to do research that crosses across all disciplines. And I already engage in that
with several graduate students who then turn around and offer services to the campus. And
so if you’re looking at interdisciplinary programs and you’re looking for resources
that already exist here, you might want to tap into the EPA staff here. I don’t know
what to call us, EPA professionals who are not associated with faculty or staff because
we could bring a lot to the table if we were to convene in some way. And you did mention
that a little earlier and I did talk with our colleagues at UNC Chapel Hill to see what
movements they were making in this area and I think we could bring a lot to the table.
So, I just want to thank you. Provost Arden: Thank you Barbie. Appreciate
that. You know the non-faculty EPAs on this campus contribute in huge ways, both in our
institutional research and our engagement missions. We have almost two thousand non-faculty
EPA on campus and they are an integral part of our mission. So, thank you for reminding
us and bringing that to our attention. Audience: Hello. I’m (unintelligible) from
the department. Picking up and going back to someone who made a point about valued education.
And I was just wondering in this very moment this moment of very harsh economic, uh, here
in dire straits, what’s happening with the Ph.D. in Hispanic studies. Are you still going
for it? Is it going to remain stagnant, or is there still interest among the (unintelligible)
for the constitution and the plan of implementation of the program?
Provost Arden: You know I can’t speak extensively to the Ph.D. in Hispanic studies other than
what I will tell you is that you know that we have a couple of additional doctoral programs
in the pipeline and it has been very, very difficult over the last several years in getting
new academic programs and specifically new doctoral programs through GA approval. One
that is currently approved for planning is our Ph.D. in Public History. Another that
is being approved at the local campus level that has not yet gone to disciplinary panel
is the Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics. The Ph.D. in Hispanic studies has not progressed to
that level. Uh, I’m just going to be honest with you. Will it progress or will it remain?
Provost Arden: I will, well I’m going to be honest with you. I think that there is
going to be tremendous scrutiny across the University of North Carolina System on new
academic degree programs that is not going to change. And in fact, President Ross has
asked our former chancellor Jim Woodward to do a review of potentially overlapping or
duplicative programs throughout the system. So, I honestly can’t tell you that we’re
going to put forward or successfully put forward a lot of new doctoral programs in any specific
discipline in the short term. I think because of the budgetary challenges, because of tremendous
scrutiny that there’s going to be on potentially duplicative programs and new programs in general,
I think that you’re going to find that we’re going to have to really give this a lot of
scrutiny and a lot of prioritization as we go forward over the next several years. So,
I know I didn’t answer your question specifically other than to just say that I think the likelihood
of three approved doctoral programs going forward in the Humanities and Social Sciences
in the next several years is not high. I think there is going to be tremendous scrutiny of
those programs. And I think it would behoove us as an institution to make sure that we
step back and that we think critically about, first of all, programs that we do have and
secondly, prioritization of the way we put programs forward and how they either compliment,
overlap or interact with other programs across the UNC system. I think we’re going to have
to pay far more attention to that as we go forward.
Thank you. Audience: I’m Mary Tetro again. I’ve been
an academic advisor since 1984 in a position as an EPA professional and an instructor.
So, I absolutely identify and support what Barb, what Dr. Honeycutt, was saying with
regard to the EPA staff. And as I looked at the success five points that Dr. Cohen’s
group made I looked and realized that, and trust me I respect the faculty with every
bone in my body, and I served on the faculty senate. However, I am an EPA professional.
And each of these units, if you look at them there, if you add professional advisors to
the colleges it’s going to be an EPA position for the most part. Currently three out of
the five bullet points for the additional high impact practices come out of places that
are staffed with EPA professionals. The tutorial centers EPA professionals. The start program
was supported by EPA professionals. First year living and learning communities in residence
life is staffed and supported a lot by EPA professionals. So, my point is actually funding
and salaries. And because if you look across the board at the individuals who serve in
those positions, the salaries vary greatly both by years of service but also by start
dates. So, I would hope that I know we are in a tight budget but I hope that we would
also look at that. I would probably have retired by then, but for the future professionals
who serve in that area I think it’s really important to look at those salaries. Thank
you. Provost Arden: Thank you Mary. Just to again
repeat the point of Barbie’s point is that you know our EPA professionals are an absolute
integral part of our mission. We know that and we know that to make an impact on many
of these issues that we address particularly student success we’re going to have to pay
attention to that. Now I want to be blunt though. Number one, we are going through very
difficult budgetary times here. We are looking potentially at losing fifteen percent of our
budget which is eighty million dollars. We are going to have to pay a lot of attention
to the balance of personnel here at the university as we move forward. And if we are going to
be and remain and become a truly extraordinary research extensive university, it’s going
to be very very critical to pay attention to that balance. Yes EPA non-faculty are critically
important. So are our almost four thousand staff critically important. But the one thing
that we really lag behind on at this university over the last several years is faculty positions,
particularly tenure-track faculty positions. We’ve only grown our tenure-track faculty
positions by a few percent over the last ten years despite about a forty-five percent increase
in graduate student numbers. So, yes that’s an important issue, but we really need to
pay attention to how we focus on the balance of our personnel in terms of delivering really
really tightly coordinated services to our students and stakeholders.
Audience: I’m Harald Ade. I’m director of graduate programs in Physics and as such
I’m very familiar with the issues of retention and graduation rates only at the graduate
level. What I find there that’s most important for us is actually that we do an excellent
job at the admissions process. Now the corollary of that is I also teach introductory physics
courses for many years and in the last couple of years I’ve seen a very long trail of
students that either were not advised correctly to get into these courses too early or simply
should not be on campus. And so if we have very limited resources, one way to fix a number
of these problems including graduation rates is to make absolutely sure that we have the
right students on campus. And just to put this in perspective, the performances in physics
hasn’t changed for many, many years and we give multiple choice questions and the
scores were as low as twenty percent out of a hundred on multiple choice tests where it
had five questions. So they essentially guess and can’t get anything right and I just
haven’t seen that before and it just greatly concerns me.
Provost Arden: Any comments from the graduate student group? No I’m looking right behind
you at the graduate student spokesperson, Chancellor.
Audience: Thanks. I’m Barb Sherry again. We understand everything you’re saying.
We think of excellence in graduate education as a cycle. We like to bring in strong students.
It’s important when they get here that they’re in strong programs where there’s excellent
faculty mentoring and together then that we can graduate students so that they can be
successful in whatever they choose to do with their degree and then that will in turn recruit
new excellent graduate students to our programs. So it’s a cycle. Anywhere we can intervene,
anywhere we can intervene is a chance for us to make that cycle stronger. We agree that
we need to be paying attention to our applicant pools and being careful during our admission
process, but what we’re hoping is that by intervening here at the stage of the graduate
programs we can attract stronger applicants, and so we can maintain or increase our enrollment
but also increase our quality. So, two important components that go into that are the two that,
they’re multiple components that go into that, but one very important one is faculty
mentoring. So, to get back to what Provost Arden was talking about, it’s important
that we have sufficient high quality faculty, that they can mentor these graduate students
through these programs because that’s a very important part of the equation. Not just
the students that are admitted but what happens to them once they get here. Leave it at that.
(Unintelligible question with no mic present) Provost Arden: Thank you. Thank you for those
comments. Additional questions or comments for our Task Force chairs?
Audience: Hi. I’m Jessica Jameson from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Communication. And I noticed in the discussion of success in undergraduate
education, the comments on high impact pedagogical practices. And I just want again, as sort
of a reminder to everyone, that we used to have on this campus a Center for Excellence
in Curricular Engagement, which was a place that could help provide faculty development,
connect faculty and community and students to really help us do things like excellent
service learning and engaged practices which feed both our academic mission and our our
land-grant mission and I think that that’s just so important and I think it’s really
devastating to our campus that we lost that center. And I hope that as our strategic planning
moves forward and we think about things like these high impact pedagogical practices that
we figure out a way to help faculty to be able to use those pedagogies and that might
mean through collaborations with extension with some of the EPA professionals around
campus, with community members. But when we’re being pushed as we should be in a research
extensive or intensive… sorry I can never remember which is the correct word anymore
-- a university to publish a lot of good research and sound research there’s only
so many hours in a day as we know. And so I really hope that you’ll think about how
to make that sustainable and something we can achieve.
Provost Arden: Thank you. Any comments from our Task Force chairs? Okay. What else have we got?
Audience: My name is Ellis Cowling. I’m a faculty member in CALS, in Natural Resources,
and one of the things that we’ve observed in the last several years is the influence
that Erskine Bowles has given to asking all seventeen of our institutions to embrace the
UNC Tomorrow Initiative. Erskine Bowles has certainly done an effective job of increasing
the efficiency of the UNC system. And that’s been I think well chronicled and the UNC Tomorrow
Initiative has challenged all of the institutions to undertake many of the kinds of things that
relate to the needs of the people for educational preparation and research, innovations, and
so on. And the seven goals of the UNC Tomorrow Initiative I think are splendidly attractive
for what our faculty and our staff and our students are to be aspiring to contribute
to. So I wondered if you or Margery or any of the Task Force chairs might illuminate
us more fully about how they see or you see the UNC Tomorrow Initiative that Erskine Bowles
I think thinks of as one of his major two contributions, efficiency and the UNC Tomorrow.
Could we speak about what UNC Tomorrow means for North Carolina State University?
Chancellor Woodson: You know Ellis, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to say all
seven of them. But I think when you look at the UNC Tomorrow report, there’s probably,
and I hesitate to say this but I will, I don’t think there’s an institution in this state
that embodies the principles of that report more than NC State. A part of the report that
I think in terms of what we do for the economy. In terms of what we do for the people of North
Carolina, the alignment of our programs with the critical economic needs of the state of
North Carolina . So, I feel extremely good about NC State’s delivery against those
goals. One aspect of the report that I think that we need to pay some attention to and
hasn’t come up today, but it’s one of the task forces is internationalization and
preparing this state and our students to compete in an increasingly complex global economy.
And so one of the things that I’m hoping that we get clarity in our vision and clarity
in how we invest in this university is how we will internationalize. We are a very international
campus, you know this. But how we will continue to make our students aware of the global marketplace
that we work in. We’ve talked about Study Abroad, but that’s only one aspect of it.
How is our research and how’s our engagement effort helping the state and the citizens
of North Carolina envision the competitive environment that we’re all living in? So,
that’s the part we are, I think, right in the sweet spot as they say of UNC Tomorrow’s
recommendations. Provost Arden: Thank you Chancellor. And thanks
for the question. I think if you look at the tone of this, these Task Force reports and
the Strategic Plan, you’ll see that it’s perhaps a little more inwardly focused than
other strategic plans and that’s deliberate. And that isn’t because we’re turning away
from the UNC Tomorrow Study or the North Carolina State response to the UNC study or our previous
strategic plan, it’s because we’re building on those strengths. Now I think we’ve spent
a lot of time as an institution looking outward and saying where are the really important
issues that we need to impact on for North Carolina and beyond. And I think that we got
a pretty clear vision of what those are and what our impact is to this state. This plan
is building on that and is really a little bit more focused in terms of how are we going
to go about our business so that we can be most effective in the way that we deliver
those impacts. And it turns out that we made that decision, you know six or seven months
ago, knowing full well that we were going to have some budgetary challenges. And it
is very timely that we targeted the plan in that way. I think to have a grandiose plan
that was full of a lot of wish lists that were going to be very difficult to achieve
in a challenging budgetary environment might have been difficult for us at that point in
time. But because we’re really moving along the pathway of a plan that is focused on how
are we going to more effectively do our business. How are we going to graduate students in a
more timely fashion with a better experience? How are we going to support our faculty more
fully? How are we going to support our staff and create a campus culture which is number
one in the country? How are we going to engage with our partners and stakeholders in a more
efficient and more effective manner? I think this is a very timely time for the task force
report series and for a strategic plan that has that overtone to it.
Audience: Gary Blank in the College of Natural Resources. Thank you Chancellor for reminding
me of something I wanted to say. Pardon me. I got a little bit of a tickle in my throat.
Ellis started the point, you responded in regarding the internationalization on campus
and I’ve made this point on other occasions. If our alumni want us to internationalize,
if our corporations in the landscape of North Carolina want us to internationalize, if we
want to internationalize it’s going to take money. My suggestion is our development offices
and all of our colleges, you and your efforts make it a point to get a portion of every
endowment donation to go to the internationalization of this campus. Now it’s hard to use state
money for international travel. Up until 1998 I had not been off this continent as a faculty
member of this university. I live in a college where everybody goes everywhere. Very few
of us go on state dollars. We go with endowment funds, with research grant monies that we’ve
generated. If we want our students, if we want our graduate students, if we want our
faculty to travel, learn, and bring back information from the world, we need to figure out how
to pay for it and paying for it through endowments, through alumni who give us money to do that
is the only way I see it’s going to work. I said I hadn’t been off this continent
until 1998. I’ve been sixteen times off this continent since then. Not one of those
trips was paid for with state money. Not one of those trips was paid for with money that
the taxpayers of North Carolina gave us. It was through endowments, through research allocated
funds and that’s the way we got to do it. Provost Arden: I’m looking at my colleagues
here from the Globalization Task Force. You agree says Dan. (Background speaking) You
agree. Your Associate Dean says “We agree.” Other questions, task force reports, budget,
anything? Audience: Sorry. Who am I Gary…I agree with
Gary and I have been fortunate to have participated and now I’m going on my fourth alternative
service break with the Center for Student Leadership and Ethics in Public Service just
to study the issues of world hunger with the director of Stop Hunger Now, Mike Giancola
and fourteen students, each of whom has had to raise all the money to take themselves
on this trip. Now it’s a frugal trip, so to those of you who don’t know it we do
it entirely including air fare for the last three years for less than seventeen hundred
dollars which is very little money if you’re spending one week in Rome, Italy. So I’m
thinking once again, money for faculty, absolutely. But if what you’re building is students,
then Study Abroad scholarship money for students who would like to go. I’m not, you know,
I don’t know favorites here, how much money is available in that are to encourage students
to study abroad. The service trips, of course we want the students to be committed to go
so they do raise some money. They raise all their money to go except for the leaders,
but yet again here’s another population of individuals who are doing international
travel over spring break for service for the university, benefitting the university, the
benefit of the people that they are working with and then of course for themselves on
an international level. So it’s another level of international engagement that is
based in student activity. Thank you. Chancellor Woodson: So, I think when you look
through a lot of the priorities of the university, all of us recognize that the priority as we’ve
said for NC State -- involve the entire campus community. We can’t aspire to be a world
class university that seeks to have students that are successful with their education without
EPA, SPA, non-tenure track, tenure track, it is as Hillary Clinton says “It takes
a village.” And when we look at the critical needs of this university to internationalize
the experience for our students, to ensure students move throughout the university, to
be successful and to move from one college to another we know that this cannot occur
without the support of our professional staff, advising staff, etc. But at the end of the
day, we have got to figure out how to structure this place to be successful in the long haul.
And we know that this state has a serious budget crisis and that it has historically
supported higher education in a very, very generous way, which has built a university
system that is second to none in the country. But it’s under tremendous stress right now.
And we need to do our part to work through it as a campus community to set our priorities
so that we know we’re investing our dollars in ways that pay back to the state, pay back
to the students, etc. So, we’re going to work through all of this. And I can guarantee
this is a university that has tremendous assets. In fact President Ross was here just earlier
this week and described us in the strike zone, using a baseball analogy, for the economic
needs of the world. And we are. And we are comprehensive. And we do produce an educational
environment that our students…the students here are absolutely amazing. And you know
one of the things that’s amazing about them is their commitment to service learning that
you just pointed out which is inspired by people like Mike Giancola, an EPA professional
for the university. So, we’re going to do everything we can to get through this. But
we’re going to work, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions and we will do
it in a transparent way. But we have to do…we don’t have a lot of time to prepare ourselves
for the coming onslaught or the lack thereof of funding. So, we’ve got to work through
it in the course of the next few months. And then we’ll have a longer implementation
phase to make sure that the kind of programs that we’re putting in place are reducing.
There’ll be plenty of time to work through those those longer term issues. This is not
about closing out programs to remove faculty. This is really about keeping this university
strong for the future. And we got some great ideas in the strategic plan that a lot of
people have worked awfully hard for. And there’s some transformative big ideas in there that
we’ll be pulling together in the final report and it it’ll give us a clear roadmap for
our investments going forward. You’ve got a…you’re dying for a question.
Is it that obvious? Chancellor Woodson: Well I mean (unintelligible)
Audience: My name is Jeff Dalton. I hold a Master’s Degree from this fine university,
and I wish it’d remain a fine university. In addition, my wife is also a business officer
in one of the largest departments on campus, one of the largest in the nation. So, we’re
stakeholders in this process. First I’d like to associate myself with the comments
of Dr. Honeycutt. The certificate of accomplishment in teaching of which I am an awardee, a certificate
holder, is one that I would like to mention in Preparing the Professoriate is another
program that needs our support. First concerning input, I want to make sure that the campus
community gets all the opportunity for input that it can. And I know that we have more
time leading up to the decision points, but we need to take online comments, e-mail, mail,
in person, smoke signals if we have to to make sure that this campus is heard. Cause
nothing is more, would be worse at this critical time than the campus not feeling that their
opinions were heard. Second, concerning cutting salaries and positions, anyone who’s had
any time at this university knows that we need to start at the top and then work our
way to the middle. There are many vice-chancellors, associate vice-chancellors, deans, associate
deans, that frankly and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, need to move on. And we
need to look at that seriously. And some people in here are too kind to say it. I haven’t
evolved that far yet. I will say it. Chancellor Woodson: It’s a process.
Audience: Okay. You can, you can applaud. There’s no shame in it. Okay and so that’s
on the table. And Chancellor I’m taking a wait and see approach on you. I’ve been
that way from the beginning. I’m still there. But seriously, I wish you luck and I wish
all of us luck in this difficult time. Chancellor Woodson: There were some folks
taking a wait and see, but well never mind (laughter).
Audience: Chancellor I’m taking a see and wait approach to it. Ah let me follow-up on
the…my name is Walt Wolfram and I’m a professor at this fine institution. Let me
follow-up on the comment about the Ph.D. proposals which I considered to be part of moving forward.
My frustration as one of the authors of the is not with you and your office. You’ve
been very supportive. My frustration is with GA. You know. We welcome the scrutiny. We
just can’t seem to get their attention. We can’t get on the agenda. You know every
month Duane Larick gets an e-mail from me that says “Where are we?” in terms of
the agenda. And he writes back and says “We’re waiting for the transition of GA with the
Ross administration. We’re waiting for changes in their leadership.” And so my feeling
is all along that we’ve got to do things and we have to do them in a hurry. I totally
concur with the need for scrutiny. How do we urge and encourage GA to give us the kind
of scrutiny that we would like to have? Can you help us?
Chancellor Woodson: Yeah. Audience: Can you help me?
Chancellor Woodson: Of course Walt. Audience: Can you help this university?
Chancellor Woodson: Yeah, but you just said you’ve taken a see and wait. I think the
Provost has accurately portrayed the challenge we have right now. There’s an enhanced scrutiny.
One of the things, one of the ideas and I forget who said it earlier, I couldn’t agree
more that, that Ph.D.’s have a certain value based on the degree program. I mean that is
association with a certain degree program. But I think as an institution we have an opportunity
to think a little differently about how we structure our Ph.D. programs to be more flexible
and nimble and responsive to the expertise of our faculty and to the merging opportunities.
It doesn’t work in all disciplines. But I think the Graduate Task Force, the Faculty
Excellence Task Force, it was pointed out in a number of opportunities where we can
perhaps structure fields of study to be more nimble. Now I’m not sure if that applies
to socio-linguistics. In fact, I’m sure you’re going to tell me it doesn’t, because
I can count on that Walt. But I’ve said this every place I’ve had a chance, to be
a world class research intensive university you need to afford the faculty the opportunity
to be deeply engaged in graduate education and so we’re going to keep fighting these
battles. But we may have to think differently about how we do it.
Audience: Hi I’m (unintelligible) from the College of PAMS, and one of the committees,
it was the Culture and Campus Community Committee, they talked about having a class for students,
which basically taught them how to engage with one another. I was looking for Dr. Picart
while I’m looking out, how to engage with one another in a civil way. And basically
you know when you think about diversity issues and it’s not simply having a diverse group
of people but it’s them interacting with one another, learning from one another and
being inclusive. And I just hope that not only will we have a something kind of like
this academic opportunity for our students to learn from one another and engage with
one another, but also with staff and faculty as well because you know when I got my position…and
I know there’s something on the Task Force about this, you know, the orientation part,
I think Dr. Picart spoke to us for maybe an hour about diversity and that was about it.
And you know we have some opportunities, cause we have some wonderful faculty here, to come
and talk about issues of diversity and things like that, but I would just you know hope
that we are more intentional and engaged on all levels. And not just the student level,
but faculty and staff, because you know, I know we all have room to grow. So just to
be a more supportive, inclusive, you know, university.
Provost Arden: Anybody from the Campus Culture and Community Task Force want to comment?
Audience: Hi. I’m Carolyn Argentati, co-chair of that task force. I just want to say thanks.
You know I’m glad you read the report and that those recommendations in our discussion
of both representation of diverse groups on our campus in terms of faculty and staff and
student composition and also that authentic interaction where we really have meaningful
dialogue, that those points came through and that you also agree that they’re valuable.
So, we would love to hear more, you know from the e-mail, as we move forward. But I think
that we did hear from a lot of staff and faculty and students throughout the university who
really reaffirmed the value of diversity. Also in terms of how staff and employees are
managed in their units too. And it ties into a whole bunch of things making NC State a
best place to live, work and learn as well. That’s in our report. Thanks.
Provost Arden: Thanks Carolyn Audience: Hi. My name is Christine Grant and
I’m a professor in Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering. And I’m also an associate dean
in the College of Engineering. And so I’m going to show my…maybe I missed something.
But because I’ve missed things before that don’t get on my calendar. And this was one
of them today. So, I don’t know if it was…and I was on one of the task forces. So, I don’t
know if I missed a memo that came out or not. But anyway, what I wanted to say was I was
under the impression that we were actually going to hear reports from the task forces
today. And I was reluctant to get up, because I didn’t want to want to say something that
was controversial. But you know that’s not anything I ever do as you know. But I was
talking to some of the people around me and they seem to think that that was maybe going
to be the format. And so I guess what that challenges me to go back and read the report.
But there may be some other people in the room that were kind of under the same impression.
I see some people shaking their heads. So I just…yeah a lot of people shaking their
heads. So, I just wanted to throw that out there, because while I think this was a very
good opportunity to have these questions, I would have challenged myself to read the
reports before I came here, thinking that I was going to get a summary and there might
be another opportunity to actually make me go back and read the report. And then kind
of do something like this again. So, I just wanted to throw that out there and my people
around me…I did it. Okay. Thank you. Provost Arden: Thanks Christine. I appreciate
those comments. You know the problem with doing task force reports in sort of a one
hour forum is that we have nine task forces. And trying to get through nine task force
reports or even very brief summaries of nine task force reports in an hour, let alone leave
time for some input is extraordinarily challenging. We have had some sessions in late December
where we did have the task forces report out to the combined Strategic Planning Committee
and to get through nine task force reports took us five hours. So, what we really wanted
to do, seeing we had a limited amount of time today, was to get the Task Force reports out
at the beginning of the week, giving you the opportunity to look at them, and use this
most importantly as a forum to take comment and input to inform us in the process as we
as we move forward. Versus simply standing up and getting nine task force reports together.
So, if you haven’t had a chance to read those reports or read them in depth I really
encourage you to do that. As I’ve said at the beginning this isn’t a one shot deal
in taking input. We want your input as we work through this process. Please give it
to us either by the Strategic Planning website, in e-mails directly to myself, to Margery,
to Karen Helm. This is really a critically important time, this next four or five weeks
especially as we try and extract the central and core elements out of those task force
reports and build our overarching Strategic Plan. So, on that we’re going to close out.
We really appreciate you being here today, and thank you for your questions and comments.
Margery did you have anything to close? Margery Overton: Just an encouraging note
on reading those reports, because I think the committees did a great job and spent a
lot of time. They are in length from three pages, we can all do that, to forty-seven
I think. So, that one might be a little more challenging. But if you read them in some
entirety you will begin to see themes across and some gelling of ideas. And in spite of
what we’re facing I think some enthusiasm for changing in very, very positive ways.
So, go back and read them and send us your comments. Thank you.
(Applause).