Strengthening Staff, Staffing, and Operations

We have spent three years hiring faculty at a pace not seen since the 1970s and 80s.  Why?  Our faculty define the upper limits of our academic excellence.  Now we need to strengthen our staff.  Why? Because our staff facilitate the ability of our faculty and students to achieve the highest levels of academic excellence necessary to maintain and advance our field.

I am well aware of how stressful our recent faculty hiring activities have been for many of us.  We began at 31 tenure-related faculty in 2014 and nearly doubled that number by hiring 20 additional tenure-related and career-instructional faculty in the space of 3 years.  Our faculty experienced “search fatigue”, our students and staff bore the additional burden of serving on search committees, and our human resources, finance, operations, communications, development, facilities management and other staff have devoted considerable time and expertise to getting the job done. My gratitude goes out to those who contributed to building and furnishing new offices, moving staff and faculty, processing seemingly innumerable personnel changes and the host of other critical activities that ensure that our new colleagues are brought onboard as seamlessly as possible.

It is abundantly clear that all of this effort was worth it.  Our new faculty have collaborated with and inspired our faculty already in place, and they are driving our level of academic excellence even higher, ensuring that the College of Education (COE) will continue to be a field leader for decades to come.

With three faculty searches this year, our faculty hiring seems “light.”  This is not the case.  We are simply returning to a more normal pattern of hiring.  The three scholars that we bring in in the next academic year will also play a big part in determining our College’s future.  These hires are just as high stakes as the others have been and we must keep our standards high.

There have been stressors along the way.  Some staff members have lost private offices to our new faculty hires, our staff census has not increased and in fact has decreased slightly, and I understand fully the importance of perceptions.  The clear valuing of new tenure-related faculty hires may have left others feeling less central to our work.  Nothing could be further from the truth, so we have to find new ways to value our staff and ensure that their work circumstances are reasonable and rewarding.

In the absence of adequate tuition funds to increase staffing we have to find ways to reduce some of the workload and stressors experienced by our current staff.  As I have mentioned with concern many times before, we are a “transaction heavy” institution.  This is due in part to legacy practices that need to be automated (e.g., accreditation data collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis), different staff carrying out the same duties in different ways and with differing levels of intensity (e.g., travel reimbursement may be 10% of the workload for some and 90% for others, making the work more time consuming for the staff member who performs a particular duty only on occasion), and we have many boundaries, barriers, and walls that require fiscal or other transactions to surmount (e.g., four academic departments housing a relatively small tenure-related faculty of 50, and several Ph.D. programs with different prefixes, signage, forms, application and admission procedures, student manuals, etc.).

In order to address the subset of challenges that burden our staff unnecessarily I have asked several staff members to offer solutions.  They are fourfold.

First: Where possible, we will be increasing staffing (i.e., about 40 hours a week) in reception areas with UO student workers.  There are numerous benefits to this staffing pattern.  This model allows us to support our students financially while reminding everyone who enters our area, and all of us, why we are here.  Our students are impressive and contribute in important ways helping faculty with the many duties often requested from staff — duties such as unlocking rooms, copying materials, sorting mail, running errands, converting files and numerous other miscellaneous tasks that keep our machine running. In return, our students are able to gain and polish skills that support and enhance their learning in their chosen discipline. To fill these roles in our college, students will require more training and supervision and our business managers are prepared to deliver both.  Lisa Fortin and Maggie Bosworth are available to assist if needed given their experience gained in the dean’s office.

Second: We will accelerate our efforts to automate and better manage and coordinate much of the work we do.  Automation is a key theme of the university and the COE needs to be at the forefront on these efforts. A few examples:

• Human Resource hiring practices, for example, are newly digital this year within the MyTrack system. This, in time, will save us considerable work during the faculty hiring process.
• Our Director of Institutional Assessment, Julie Wren, is providing consultation aimed at creating improved record keeping that will serve us well with current and future accreditation efforts.
• Our Finance and Accounting Manager, Melynn Bates, has created templates for budget planning that save our college time through consistency and analysis, allowing us to centrally address Johnson Hall and Budget and Resource Planning (BRP) questions for the college since these inquiries have greatly increased in the recent budget climate.
• Similarly, our Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Equity, Krista Chronister, will be working with Department Heads and others to coordinate our course scheduling activities to ensure that curricular decision-making is informed by activities that are occurring throughout the college.

The university is now requiring forecasts and regular updates from colleges on variances within their budgets.  These changes in our processes will allow us to quickly and consistently view our budgets, evaluate our progress and answer Johnson Hall inquiries while improving the workflow to the benefit of our faculty and students.

Third: We will ensure that staff have a focused set of job duties.  Some staff, for example, have entirely too many duties while others focus their efforts on a few.  In our refined model, we plan to let travel specialists perform the majority of the travel-related duties, business managers concentrate on financial decisions and program administrative operations, and grants and contracts specialists continue to do their fine work supporting the mechanics of our research.  I have tasked Chris Krabiel and Melynn Bates, in collaboration with business managers, to refine our staffing structure to accomplish this goal.

Fourth: I will empanel a group of faculty to study our departmental, academic program, and other structures with an eye toward streamlining and reducing transactions between units.  We must streamline or have fewer boundaries and barriers between units.   Fewer barriers and greater collaboration will reduce the number of transactions conducted by our staff.  This work will begin in the Fall when our faculty are back on contract.

In the face of limited state support, new accountability standards, and our collective desire to reach the highest levels of academic excellence, adaptation and change will always be a constant.  I appreciate everyone’s efforts to help us in the daily work of building an ever more accomplished College that will serve as a model for others, and I look forward to the work ahead.

Regards,

Randy

 

The Oregon legislature took up the issue of Dyslexia and teacher training again last week.  The new bill, SB 221 (see attachment), is in response to earlier feedback from many groups, including our ad hoc work group of Gina Biancarosa, Sylvia Thompson, Ilana Umansky, Beth Harn, and others working behind the scenes last Fall.  We were contacted the day before a legislative hearing on March 30th and asked to respond to the revised bill.   Julie Wren and Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann worked with me to create and submit the letter attached.  We will keep you informed.

• SB221_COE_Letter
• Introduced-SB221

When William James was reflecting on his work with contemporaries to create the new academic field we now call psychology, he noted how opportunities to create new fields, disciplines, and academic programs were commonly found in the penumbra; the “white space” between existing disciplines.  In the example of psychology, philosophy and biology are commonly cited as root disciplines that, when combined or considered jointly, created the new discipline.  There are numerous examples of how disciplines combined, changed, or otherwise varied to create what is recognized as a new one; quantitative chemistry out of the disciplines of mathematics and chemistry, neuroscience out of biology and psychology, and human ecology out of sociology, geography, economics and other disciplines.  All of these new disciplines have created heretofore unimaginable possibilities such as the conduct of chemistry experiments without the usual laboratory equipment, the ability to study the reciprocal relationships between brain and behavior, and a better understanding of the effects of culture, habitat, and other community factors on human health.

As a research university, it is part of our mission to create new disciplines, areas and methods of inquiry, and academic programs that create the new types of scholars needed to produce the new knowledge bases of tomorrow.  We are embarking on this work in the college by creating one of the first doctor of philosophy programs in the country in Prevention Science, which is another fast growing amalgamation of prior disciplines.

We need to do more of this work because we are better prepared to do so than our peers.  In other words, as one of the leading colleges of education in the world, strengthened by 16 new tenure track faculty hires in the past two years alone, we have the intellectual depth, and now, breadth, to create or further develop new disciplines.

New disciplines take years, if not decades to create.  New courses and academic programs, on the other hand, can be created in a couple of years or less, and they may serve as the building blocks of new disciplines.  Our faculty have already begun this work by exploring the nexus of engineering, computer science and education, education and journalism, and special education and tribal culture to name but a few.

This year of academic planning represents an opportunity to hasten this experimental work, where differing academic traditions and disciplines are studied jointly to see if more interesting and important work can be conducted in the penumbra between them.  I welcome all faculty and staff to participate in this exciting challenge to think beyond the comfort of our existing disciplines and to explore the new territory that lies just beyond their borders.

Developing Academic Leadership Capacity

 

We begin the academic year welcoming new members to our leadership team. I am pleased to begin working with Edward Olivos, new Department Head of Education Studies, and Laura Lee McIntyre, the new Department Head of Special Education and Clinical Sciences. We also have Leslie Leve beginning her term as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development. Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann will direct our college-wide strategic planning efforts next year, and the list goes on.

 

We have a reputation in academia for not taking leadership development seriously. New department heads/chairs, associate deans, vice presidents, deans, academic program coordinators, and other administrators are often left to learn on the job, with few formal training opportunities provided to them. While most academic administrators perform admirably, their successes could be hastened, and stress reduced, if they came to the post equipped with foundational knowledge about effective academic leadership strategies and skills.

 

I am committed to our college doing better. Laura Lee and Dianna received administrative training sponsored by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education in Portland last month, and Lauren Lindstrom launched an inaugural orientation for new faculty for the first time last year (which we will offer again this year).

 

We can also foster leadership capacity in our college by inviting more individuals to participate in academic leadership roles, for either short or multiple year appointments. Broad-based participation in leadership produces long-term gains for our institution because leadership roles provide faculty and staff with new knowledge, skills, and perspectives to bring to their work. In this way, leadership participation is not unlike a “life changing” study abroad experience. We often hear that study abroad experiences are high impact, provide us with new insights, and make us “better individuals.” Similarly, I am convinced that participation in leadership experiences makes us better faculty and staff members.

In the interest of keeping you informed of the range and depth of commitment of your colleagues, I write today to make you aware of our recent involvement in equity and related work. In addition to the daily activities in which all of us reflect our shared commitments to social justice, equity, and inclusion; the pace of our college-wide work has hastened considerably as we close this academic year.

For example, I am at the National Summit on Teacher Diversity today (see photo), Friday, May 6, 2016 at the United States Department of Education. The purpose of this convening was given in the invitation as, “You have been nominated by an individual or organization because of your interest in or ability to contribute to a nationwide effort to address the lack of diversity in our teaching force…” The meeting is being hosted by our newly appointed US Secretary of Education, John King. On a personal level, it was a pleasure to see friends and colleagues from the African American community of Atlanta, and see luminaries again such as Marian Wright Edelman, all of whom have dedicated their lives to this work.

The panel of five students, when asked by Dr. King how universities should be training teachers, gave the following advice, “teachers should encourage students that they can do anything, teach students to believe in themselves, see us as people, inspire students, be available to students, they must be “human”, be ready to teach in urban schools, be honest and open, it’s easier to learn when you “keep it real” with your students, and be comfortable enough to teach in the classroom.” Overall, strong relationships with students were the focus of student remarks.

Other data presented included; Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which constitute 3% of American universities, nevertheless train 50% of African American teachers. Two Hispanic Serving Institutions prepare 90% of Hispanic teachers. Additional funding for minority serving institutions was called for by two speakers.

This morning, the Department of Education released a new data report at www.ed.gov entitled, “The State of Racial Diversity in the Teacher Workforce”. Some data points from the report shared by speakers included investigation of the teacher pipeline.

1. University enrollment – 62% of Bachelor’s students in US are white.
2. Enrollment in ED programs – 73% of education majors are white students.
3. Post-secondary completion – African American students have a lower graduation rate in education majors than other fields of study.
4. Alternative prep students are more diverse but they constitute only 10% of the entire teacher pipeline.
5. Who’s getting hired? – 78% of new teachers are white.
6. Teacher retention – 85% of white teachers stayed in the same schools, the highest retention rate of all ethnicities.

I was pleased to learn that Kent McIntosh will be meeting with secretary King in a couple of weeks. He will be presenting the results of their equity work, including outcomes from his and his colleagues’ equity research in Portland.

The State of Oregon is simultaneously engaged in efforts to diversify the teaching workforce such as the institution of the Educator Equity Advisory group of the Chief Education Office. Among many initiatives, I served on the planning committee for the Educator Equity Conference held at Parkrose Middle School on Friday, April 15. The invitees included representatives from the 30 poorest school districts in Oregon, and from our college included Nancy Golden, Julie Heffernan, Lillian Duran, Krista Chronister, Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann, and Sylvia Linan Thompson (See photos attached). I will forward the outcomes from this conference to you as soon as they are available. Governor Brown lent her support by offering opening remarks (See photo).

 

                

The evening before, April 14, we held the joint College of Education and School of Journalism conference on giving voice to educators and students. The panel of journalists and educators produced a rich dialogue that provided insights into the relationship between teachers, teaching, and the media. Ed Madison, conference organizer, did an outstanding job of working with Lisa Fortin to bring educators together to interact with journalists for OPB, KATU TV, and the Oregonian (See photo of the educator and journalist panel).

Dale Russakoff of the Washington Post gave an engaging account of the Newark NJ school’s reform effort and associated expenditure of $1 Billion by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in support. Her New York Times bestselling account, “The Prize,” documents the many false starts and unexpected outcomes, and provides insights about how such efforts might be conducted to greater effect. The student panel was riveting. Student journalists from Grant High School and our own Springfield High School, gave compelling witness to the value of involving students in all aspects of our work. Videos will be available shortly.

Finally, Krista Chronister, Julie Wren, and I met with the academic subcommittee of our UO Board of Trustees to describe the penultimate draft of our Educator Equity in Teacher Preparation Institutional Plan required by Oregon HB 3375. I was impressed, again, by the commitment and insights of our board, which has resulted in our working on yet another draft of the plan. Please see the final plan submitted to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC), and the related article by the Daily Emerald (both attached). I will address the plan again on May 11th at the HECC meeting at Western Oregon University.

I close by echoing the sentiment expressed at the summit in DC this morning. We have yet to significantly move the outcome – the diversity of our educator workforce. One data point offered by Secretary King was that only 2% of teachers are African American males. With these data in mind, I am convinced that we will have to make unprecedented efforts to do better.

In the interest of your time, I hope that this message gives you a glimpse of some of the work that occurs outside your typical realm of operation. I am grateful for the skill and dedication that you, and all, are bringing to these initiatives.

UO COE DIVERSITY PLAN 2016

Daily Emerald Article