Transcript: Second Faculty Assembly with Chancellor Ferrari 9/10/98
So having said this, let me now ask that we engage in conversation about the university.
Q: (Joe Bobich): At the last assembly, you asked for suggestions. I’d like to suggest that when we make new proposals, the first question we ask is, Who is this going to affect? We ought to put new ideas out first to those who are mostly affected by those decisions.
A: (Ferrari) I’ve received a number of comments on planning, where we as an institution want to go. I hope we’ll rethink what were doing. Our accrediting body has urged that we link much more, and intentionally integrate planning with budgeting. My own bias is that much of this still should be very much mission driven. I want to examine our mission, what our resources are out there, and where we intend them to go. I want to get more and more people involved in the conversation so that there is a wider understanding of the institution. The general impression I picked up last spring is that the university has an opportunity for much greater national recognition and prominence.
Q: (Daryl Schmidt): I just got a first glance today of your draft of University Goals for 1998-1999. How do you plan to use the University Goals?
A: (Ferrari) In mid-July a number of members of the staff met in a workshop with deans and vice chancellors to talk about the university, the highlights of the past year, our major strengths and our shortcomings, and what are those important things that we should give our attention to. What are the important things we need to do, and what are the important and urgent things we need to do. And we also recognized that those things that are less important and less urgent can sometimes become a distraction. We tried to set those aside for awhile–not too far aside–to keep ourselves focused. Out of that I asked this group what were the things we should attend to in the course of this year that will help prepare us for the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. What will position us to gain greater national stature and greater institutional vitality academically as well as financially and other kinds of ways. Out of that process came some fifteen or so goal statements. That group of statements, without a rank order, express those goals that are important and urgent that we have to address if we are going to move much further. I took those, reworked them a bit, sent back to the group for their thoughts. Last week I shared with the Faculty Senate that working paper and asked for their comments. This process is an early iteration of a process trying to get us to more clearly develop a sense of where we are headed. This is not Mick Ferrari’s agenda for change or revitalization, but I’d like to think it represents the ideas of the stakeholders of this institution. Out of that comes this list, for which I’ve asked for additional comment. I hope it will become a working document that we will use as a guideline for our actions this year and to provide some basis for discussion and feedback to faculty and staff during the course of the year. We are committed to developing a very sound, comprehensive strategic planning process, and I want to see us put some meat, some energy behind that, so that we can state what we’ve accomplished. This is all in the early stages. Down the road I’d like to think we can invite people from outside the institution into that conversation.
Q:(Follow-up by Schmidt) Any additional comment as to what will become of this list of goals as the school year goes on?
A: (Ferrari) I hope to lay out some of these thoughts before the entire university community at convocation next week, knowing that they are not all cast in concrete at the moment. During this year we will make reports to the Senate, to general staff, and the university staff on how we’re doing. I don’t see this as a static thing, but as a working document, for which there will be reactions and comments. I think we’ll need to jump into it; I can’t conceptualize it more at this point. The goals address questions of the working environment for faculty and staff, what kind of relationships we have, whether they reflect our objectives and our goals, our aspirations, if you will, program development, key priorities–a variety of things.
Q: (Joe Bobich) There’s often a correlation between the importance of a goal and the difficulty of achieving and measuring a goal. How will these be sorted out?
A: (Ferrari) I want to try to keep focused on what is important and urgent right now. I know it’s vague to say this, but I found in the course of my career in higher education that its easy to get distracted by less important and urgent goals. The academic vitality and the intellectual strength of this institution will be at the core of improving ourselves and moving up to a higher level. We need to see that the engagement with ideas and research on this campus occupy as much attention as rush! Judgments will need to be made. We need to start off by identifying a limited number of goals, say, three to six key themes or goals for us to focus on in the next year or two. That’s what I’m looking for.
Q: (Daphne Wiggins) Say more about the Diversity Council. How do you see articulating to the campus a need for a different kind of university. Changing what the campus looks like demographically is not the same as having a multi-racial, multi-ethnic community that appreciates diversity. How do people get a compelling vision of diversity?
A: (Ferrari) A good question. I attended the keynote speech the other night. The speaker encouraged students to talk with each other. It’s going to have to come, in terms of increasing diversity–building a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural environment–which is so important to preparing our graduates for the world today. The degree to which we are able in our university community to have that richness overall in faculty, staff, students, and others, will enhance, will improve, the quality of education at TCU. This is not just a question of counting. Are we demonstrating that we believe that it is vital for a university that aspires to be leading institution to build that kind of community? The Diversity Council, which will be activated shortly, will raise awareness of the importance of diversity and that it is important to learn about cultures other than one’s own. That’s what a first-rate university does. I hope the Diversity Council will have the involvement of key faculty and student leaders and others and that this will increase the awareness of the environment. We have to believe it is important; not just that it is useful.
Q: (Joe Bobich) If more emphasis were placed on financial need rather than test scores in the awarding of scholarships, would this help diversify the campus?
A: (Ferrari) It would help but I think the real question is what experiences do students of color have when they come here? Do they feel like it is their university? On the one hand, student aid programs, aggressive admissions activities, involving alumni, especially alumni who are themselves persons of color–all these things are helpful to get students here. But on the other hand, we need to ask what happens when they come here. Do they find here an environment in and out of the classroom that reinforces them, that will help them grow and develop here? The same questions must be asked of faculty or staff hires. We can provide more money to try to lure minorities to come, but what happens when they get here? Do they feel they can grow here?
Q: (Daphne Wiggins) But I do want to echo part of his question. A representative diversity on campus is important. They come with different experiences. For me its important how we create this environment. More of the service oriented jobs are held by people of color. Students need to encounter diversity in all positions across the campus. This is a change that needs to be fostered.
A: (Ferrari) I agree.
Q: (Joe Bobich) Now that affirmative action is dead, the only way you can diversify with a color-blind system is to focus on students with financial needs.
A: (Ferrari) This court ruling is a new experience for me, coming from Iowa, a state that is 97% white. How do we diversify? We need to ask if we can attract students from other parts of the country also. We have seen progress with the number of international students.
Q: (Joe Bobich) How are the international programs evaluated? Don’t we need to assess how successful these are in a systematic way?
A: (Ferrari) I don’t have the answer to that. I know we have about 44 international students. Much of our information about the international program has been anecdotal. I’ve just made the assumption all along that as a liberal arts university, we’d want to our students to have meaningful international experiences, either here or abroad.
Q: (Joe Bobich) But how do we know that they are gaining something other than a trip to Europe?
A: (Ferrari) We do need to assess that.
Q: (Bonnie Melhart) How do we capitalize on the liberal arts emphasis in the university for recruiting students for the sciences?
A: (Ferrari) (Jokingly) I’ve only been here two months! What does it mean to be a liberal arts university? Does it really make sense here? Do we know what this means? As I study TCU’s tradition and heritage, liberal arts is at the core. How does this fit us? We need to talk about this more. There are two questions. First, to what extent do we embrace a liberal arts center? What is its role in our general education? What is there about TCU that is different from A&M or SMU? The other question: our degree of urbanness. Are we an urban school? We are in a metropolitan area in growth. Some predict that in the next century Fort Worth will outgrow Dallas. What does that mean? Here we are as the only comprehensive university in the city. There are all kind of urban issues and opportunities at our back door. Does this resonate with TCU? We are a residential campus. If you want a great education, you come to our campus and we’ll teach you on our terms. What will it mean that the University of Texas is offering an MBA over the Internet. Who are we and who do we want to become? Who are we? Liberal arts, residential, undergraduate to graduate, professional education, diversity– these are tough topics.
Q: (Larry Kitchens) Where do you see universities like us going in the direction of technology in the classroom.
A: (Ferrari) I am a strong advocate of using technology to enrich classroom experience. I don’t know where we are yet and how faculty feel about this yet. I’m the type of person who, if I could announce next month that everyone coming to TCU would have a laptop computer, I’d be real happy. We need some kind of bold statement here. But I don’t know how the faculty feel about this. As I look at what is happening in higher education, the use of technology for learning is becoming more prevalent. Is Peter Drucker right that a residential campus will be an anachronism in ten years? I think the whole thing is in terrific change right now. Some faculty are really into technology; others need help. We need more investments in professional development to help them. We cannot ignore this. I don’t want to be the chancellor ten years from now if the rest of the world has passed us by.
Q: (?) What about athletics? Where are we going?
A: (Ferrari) We are committed to a Division I program. We’ve stated that. We are going to run a program with integrity, and we going to commit resources to this. I accept that at this point. We expect to be competitive. We will do everything we can to provide a program that complements our mission. But we know that the resource implications are significant. There are fifty or so institutions that have the resources to take over the environment of college athletics in the coming years. There are institutions, like Duke, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest that have done very well in recent years. What will this mean to us? I always go to Koehler on advice about athletics. I’ve spoken to Gerald Turner at SMU about these issues. We’re going to put our very best foot forward on athletics.
Q: (Follow-up) Is SMU is ahead of us because of their commitment to their new athletic facilities?
A: (Ferrari) No, that doesn’t put them ahead. I’m glad we don’t have a new athletics complex on our drawing board to distract from the issues we need to address in athletics. I think we have an athletic director who is just top flight. I have a lot of confidence right now.
Q: (David Vanderwerken) The NCAA loves to talk about institutional control. You know we have had some problems with this, along with our sister institution in Dallas. How does the new regime plan to do something different in terms of institutional control than your predecessors?
A: (Ferrari) The new regime? Do you mean me? (Laughter.) From my earliest conversations with our athletic director and a few others, I have said that we are going to run a program that brings pride to this institution, and we’re not going to tolerate anything that brings discredit to our integrity. And I suspect that we’ll be tested from time to time. We will run a program that plays by the rules, that is sensitive to academic integrity, that is financially sound and addresses equity issues. As long as we’re in Division IA, committed to IA, we’re going to do the very best job at it.
Q: (Clayton Brown) Is it outrageous to think that we could increase the size of the student body? Can we get where we want to be by staying the same size?
A: (Ferrari) My reaction is, yes, we can, especially in light of the kind of resources–human and financial–that we have. Size is not key factor in academic prominence. We are probably at an optimal size, roughly 7000. The mix may be a factor, between graduate and undergraduate, and full and part-time students. But we can achieve higher national stature without growth, and I don’t know why we would want to reduce our size. Some say we could increase quality by becoming more selective and thereby having fewer students. But I can’t get enthusiastic about this idea.
Q: (Ron Flowers) If we want to reach this next level, the use of adjunct instructors strikes me as a problem. What are your thoughts on that?.
A: (Ferrari) I don’t know enough at this point to give a thoughtful response. Generally great universities don’t build greatness on the backs of adjunct professors. Maybe we need to look at departments that need adjuncts and part-time faculty to see if more full-time faculty are needed. We are better off with full-time faculty.
Q: (Bob Frye) In your comments on academic integrity in the athletic program, what role do you see the faculty playing? We have had an intercollegiate athletic committee here for many years in the university structure. What role will this play?
A: (Ferrari) I think faculty have to be very active in this whole process. Our faculty athletic representative and our intercollegiate committee ought to make reports to the Faculty Senate. There should be a faculty presence on admissions decisions; faculty ought to play a very strong and active role. At Drake, an assistant coach wrote term papers for athletes. As a result of that we got faculty more involved. I’d like to think that we can look at faculty involvement in the program without such a crisis.
Q: (?) Having had a state of the art computing facility in 1990, doesn’t make it great in 1998. What about maintenance and repair, upgrades etc?
A: (Ferrari) We need to move to a much more regularized cycle of upgrading, whether it’s every three or four years. We need to move to more lease packages rather than purchases. But the money you dedicate to leases stays forever. We need to provide for the regular upgrading of our equipment.
Sherrie Reynolds adjourned the meeting at 4:30.