Faculty Forums Call
for Clarification, Changes

Jon Ingram
Campus Life Editor

Throughout this school year, there seems to be a growing amount of miscommunication and angst between the administration and the faculty at our university over some issues and policy changes. There seemed to be an overall question about the morale of the faculty over the school year.

This past week President Dr. Mescon held a series of open forums with the faculty of all of the colleges of the university about specific issues with their colleges as well as some overall university issues. On Tuesday, President Mescon held one of these open forums for the College of Letters and Science. This forum was especially important because in addition to the overall university issues, notably tenure and promotion, this college was, more importantly dealing with a dean search and the problems of "Shared Governance" coming from it.

After the College of Arts and Letters split and the College of Arts moved downtown, the College of Letters and Science was created and the previous Dean of the College of Science Dean Stokes became the Interim Dean of the CoLS until the dean search committee, President and Provost had agreed on one to hire.

At the beginning of this open forum, President Mescon gave a quick speech about the University and opened the floor for questions and comments. The faculty of the College of Letters and Science quickly called for the end of the Dean search for the College to not only save $100, 000 that the search calls for, but also on the basis that Dean Stokes is a worthy of the position.

The Dean search committee has been enacting their duties since the College of Letters and Science was created. During this process they came up with somewhere around 45, of who they thought were exceptional and acceptable, candidates. The Provost, Dean Levi, and President Mescon did not accept this list of candidates saying that the was "unacceptable."

The faculty felt this to be a deterrent on the practice of shared governance at our University. The Higher Education Program and Policy Council defines shared governance as, "a set of practices under which college faculty and administration participate in significant decisions concerning the operation of their institutions."

Within this definition, shared governance states that the Faculty has the primary role in interviewing and recommending candidates for academic appointment to the faculty, in the Universities case the Dean search. The faculty felt that the President and Provost were wrong for overruling the candidates presented but Shared Governance also states that, "Administrative overrule of these decisions should be rare and for compelling reasons, given in writing, and be subject to individual and collective response."

It is unclear if reasons for overrule were given in writing, but in an interview President Mescon stated that he felt that the diversity of the list of candidates presented was too narrow. The candidates were all, as he said, "older white males who looked like me and one older white woman," which he felt to be unacceptable. In addition to this lack of diversity, and in the President's defense while dealing more specifically with Interim Dean Stokes, President Mescon wants the faculty to have a passionate pursuance of scholarly publication and feel Dean Stokes doesn't share in this image. This is an understandable view from President Mescon, who is expecting and pursuing a higher level of academic excellence on all facets, but the question is "why not stop the search and save $100,00?" "It's a matter of academic excellence," he says.

The other issue at hand in the forum was the policies of tenure and promotion. The bulk of the policies of tenure and promotion were not stated in the meeting but the one of importance in the meeting was the pursuance of submitting scholarly research in peer reviewed publications or publishing a book of scholarly material within the seven year probationary period prior to one applying for tenure.

This is the standard that is present at any of the larger and more accredited colleges and universities across the nation. The problem that the faculty stated to President Mescon was that they were not advised or forewarned about the changes in the tenure policies and standards. Some faculty members who were up to receive tenure and were being considered for acceptance after putting their application in were told they could not receive it due to their lack of published scholarly research. The anger from the professors was that President Mescon let these faculty members expect to get tenure on the previous standards only to find out that they had changed without their knowledge.

The faculty are finding the new standards acceptable but find it, yet again a deterrent on shared governance, for the faculty has primary role in the recommending of candidates for tenure. However the administration still has the right to overrule it on the basis of compelling reasons. When asked in an interview of his reasons for the change in standards and denying faculty members tenure, President Mescon simply said again, "It's a matter of academic excellence and you must be prepared to involve yourself in it."

A great level of change is coming to Columbus State University and it is more than just the obvious construction that one sees everyday. President Mescon repeated a quote by acclaimed educator Endicott Peabody saying, "The trend of civilization is forever upward." In Columbus State's case what can be said is that, "the trend of education is forever upward." The question is, "Are you ready to ride this trend?"