Sifting and Winnowing

(This contribution originally appeared as a Reader Reply on October 1, 2009 and was subsequently upgraded to an Article. – Ed.)

I also attended the “town meetings” in Science Hall on 30 September and in the Health Sciences Learning Center on 1 October. On each occasion, the Provost made a presentation and responded to questions and comments from the floor about his proposal to create a new office of research headed by a vice chancellor and to eliminate almost all research functions from the Graduate School. This would mean that the Dean of the Graduate School would no longer have the second function and working title of Vice Chancellor for Research. I agree fully with the previous post, “A skeptical audience for restructuring.”

There is pretty good evidence — from earlier presentations that were later retracted — that the Provost made an effort to push a reorganization through with no written plan and no faculty input by the end of September. Early in October he would have gone straight to UW System to get permission for his new Vice Chancellor for Research position. At that point the game would have been up.

Evidently, he got caught at it by the University Committee. Hence these “town meetings.” The University Committee has created an ad hoc committee to look into the matter and prepare a report. In my opinion, the history of this proposal might be sufficient cause for resignation of the Provost, and perhaps the Chancellor as well.

A series of “town meetings” without a written plan or serious consideration of a fully developed plan by faculty governance bodies is a sham. And given the history of his scheme, the Provost’s current performances, now professing great regard for shared governance and claiming that his proposal is only a basis for discussion, is utterly disingenuous.

This all leaves me extremely skeptical and deeply concerned, both about the role of faculty governance in the forthcoming decision whether to implement the Provost’s scheme and the future role of the faculty in governance of research activities if this reorganization or anything like it is put into place.

To be sure, there are real problems with research administration at the UW-Madison, but the current efforts of the Provost seem more likely to exacerbate than to solve them.

One of the pieces of “evidence” presented in favor of this plan was a chart showing the dual administrative structure in several (but not all) of our peer institutions. However, the chart failed to compare those institutions in regard to the strength of faculty governance, nor did it indicate how faculty governance worked under that dual structure. Under our present structure the Dean of the Graduate School is responsible to the Faculty Senate as well as to the Chancellor — this feature is notably absent from the new office proposed by the Provost. It strikes me that our faculty has a very strong interest in slowing down this process — if not ending it — through a resolution in the Faculty Senate. I suggest the following:

“Whereas the Provost’s proposed reorganization of the Graduate School has proceeded without a detailed written plan and without time for due consideration of the implications of such a plan for research and graduate education, the Faculty Senate proposes that any action to implement such a plan, e.g., through the creation of a new Vice Chancellorship for Research or changes in the functions of the Graduate School, be postponed until such time as the there is a fully developed written plan that has been reviewed and approved by the University Committee and the Faculty Senate with appropriate opportunity for comment from all members of the faculty.”

This strikes me as mild, under present circumstances.

The Provost says in his Powerpoint presentation that, under his plan, research units will have a choice of putting grants through their existing homes (in colleges or the grad school) or his new research administration enterprise. In no way can this pretend to be “streamlining” an organizational structure — three routes instead of the presently odd two choices? (One’s own home unit or the Graduate School.)

Well, that’s what the Provost’s slide show says, and that’s what he said on 30 September. But on 1 October, in response to a comment at the HSLC:

Audience member: “But what you’ve described, from the point of view of an individual faculty member, creates kind of a tripartite scheme for placing projects through the University. Right now we have two places we can go. We can go to our own school or college, or we can go the Graduate School. What you’re suggestion, at least provisionally — and the question is how that might evolve — is that there would be three places to go. That seems to me to make our lives more complicated.”

Provost: “I don’t know if you’d go to three, you’d go to two. You’d go to the one for the fall competition, and then you go through the normal research process. Right now you send that through your schools and colleges or institutes and you go through pre-award, they go through the research shop, and now through this research shop. So that I don’t see that being any different at all.The only difference is the fall competition stays where it is, you go to the Grad School for fall … ”

Audience member: “But you said that Centers could stay where they were …”

Provost: “If they choose… But when Centers submit grants, those grants are going to go through this research operation.”

Moreover, with the exception of the annual Research Committee competition and graduate fellowships, WARF funds will be funneled through the new Vice Chancellor for research. The Provost said nothing about who will decide how much WARF money goes to the Research Committee or to Graduate Fellowships. My guess is that, if this goes through, the Graduate School will get starved and it will make no sense to go anywhere other than the Provost’s new office as an administrative channel for grant submission or for supplemental research funds.

To add insult to injury, it is patent from the Provost’s presentation that he knows next to nothing about any UW activities other than those in his own research area — so I am deeply concerned about where the WARF money will go if it is largely channeled to the new office. One of the features of the plan — as it has appeared in some presentations — is that the Vice Chancellor for Research will control retention and hiring packages.

I see this as headed towards reversion to the bad old days under E.B. Fred — ended through state legislative action in the late 1950s — when no WARF moneys went to any but the “natural” sciences. In response to a question at the HSLC about the need to duplicate the existing associate dean structure (of the Graduate School) within the office of a Vice Chancellor for Research, the Provost said, “… we will clearly need, if you will, research ambassadors, and they’re going to have to manage the research agenda in different areas. How many? That’s something we get to discuss. There clearly has to be more than just a new Vice Chancellor for Research.”

As questioners pointed out in both sessions, the Provost provided absolutely no evidence that a change in organizational superstructure would solve any of the specific problems that he raised. One of those had to do with biological safety — whose relationship with organizational structure he failed to describe. The same goes for a second example, overload at RSP resulting from applications for support under the federal stimulus package. If RSP is undermanned, there would appear to be an obvious solution or two — one of which would be hiring, but well below the level of a Vice Chancellor! (The other would be to curtail RSP’s ignorant interference in normal activities of supported projects and point their staff in more useful directions.) Admitting the long-standing problems at RSP, the effect of the stimulus-induced surge in proposals is a red herring; under the best of circumstances, there would have been little opportunity to prepare for it.

Some other claims, e.g., improving our voice in Washington, appeared without any factual support, and one of them — integrating research and graduate training — visibly conflicts with the proposed separation of educational and research functions.

I am also deeply concerned about the quality and procedures of “compliance” — a term left undefined in the presentation — but apparently of central interest to the Provost, and including management of conflicts of interest. This structure is flawed even under the present scheme of faculty participation. I shudder at the thought of what may occur if this becomes a purely administrative function, as would apparently be the case if the Provost has his way.

Early in his presentation on the 30th, the Provost said that he has already talked with “all of the Center and Institute Directors” about his plan. That has not included this writer or several other Center Directors with whom I have consulted. Perhaps he meant only to refer to Centers and Institutes that are currently administered through the Graduate School, but that lapse only underscores the Provost’s ignorance about the full range of UW-Madison research activities.

I want to reiterate that the absence of a fully developed, written plan makes it very difficult to respond in more detail to the Provost’s proposal, and on that account some of my observations here may be inaccurate. But the proposal strikes me at least questionable on account of its lack of definition, on the basis of its summertime history, and, also, on the basis of the Provost’s responses to the questions raised in the “town meetings.” Those ranged from evasion — to a question about the relationship between the problems he described and his proposed solution — to the Rube Goldberg scheme of “take your project through any old administrative channel” (which appears to have disappeared between 30 September and October 1).

RMH

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Graduate School, Restructuring proposal, The UW-Madison Campus, The University System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.