Washburn University Accreditation - Public Comments
March 10, 2008
Failure to Provide Adequate Resources to Support the Academic Mission
1. Lack of response to annual program review reports
The annual program review reports indicate the failures to adequately address the need for more resources, both budgetary and facilities. The reports also include various faculty concerns and student issues that should be addressed, not the least of which is cancellation of upper level courses due to low enrollments.
The accreditation report indicates that the budget decision-making process could be more transparent to University faculty and staff. It is more likely that the “budget decision-making process” is a misnomer, since very little action has ever been taken based upon the information contained in the annual review reports.
This administration must be held accountable for the deterioration of core programs while squandering funds on non-essential items. While many of the academic program needs remain unaddressed, the University has managed to build a $100,000 water feature and to fund the new $850,000 Transformational Experience graduation requirement.
2. Failure to adequately address faculty development
University officials continue to boast about the spectacular faculty development programs available at Washburn University. The $11,000 budgeted for faculty development grants are awarded at the generous rate of $500 per grant request. While administrative employees venture off to their annual meetings with no budget restrictions, faculty members are expected to pay out of pocket for their travel expenses that exceed the $500 grant amount.
Most faculty members find themselves financially limited when considering attendance at annual conferences, subscribing to trade journals, or participating in other workshops sponsored by their professions,. although other funds are available to supplement conference costs for some faculty, most notably in the areas of Business and Law, If the administration was serious about faculty development, the faculty would have the same generous travel reimbursement policy enjoyed by the administrative staff and operating budgets that support the increasing costs of staying current in their respective professions.
The failure of this administration to provide realistic general fund budgets for faculty development and reasonable operating budgets for maintenance, supplies and academic journals really demonstrates a lack of support for the academic mission of this institution.
3. WU Technology – The Loss of Academic Computing
Core Component 2b states:
- “The organization’s resource base supports its educational programs and its plans for maintaining and strengthening their quality in the future.”
Support for this assertion includes the claim that Washburn University uses its resources to create a high quality learning environment with, among other things, a strong technology infrastructure.
An IT Organizational and Staffing Study conducted by Elert & Associates in the fall, 2004 reported that WU was in the bottom 25% of similar institutions in regards to strategic planning. Although the former Electronic Technology Committee (ETC) was a flawed funding mechanism, replacement of this process with the administrative Technology Steering Committee was a huge step backward. The lack of technological expertise is overrepresented on the Technology Steering Committee which has been charged with spending the $400,000 to $600,000 annual technology budget. Merely adding two faculty members to this committee is a woefully insufficient response to the “perception” that innovative teaching and learning in the most efficient and effective manner has suffered due to changes mandated by the Technology Steering Committee.
There is no doubt that considerable resources are being spent on technology at WU. Over a five year period of time, the IT staff grew from 18 to 37 full-time staff positions. At the same time, the annual operating budget increased astronomically from $886,000 to almost $2.8 million. Almost the entire focus of the IT operating budget has flowed to administrative computing, including disparate salary variances that have favored administrative over academic computing personnel. Serious turnover in this area is indicative of the woefully inadequate and painfully misguided management of these critical resources.
The best evidence of the political overtones associated with technology interfering with academic computing exists in the most recent FY07 $300,000 innovation grant awarded to a multi-disciplinary faculty group to create a High Performance Academic Computing Environment (HiPACE). The annual report due to the Board of Regents in May, 2007 regarding this grant has not been written. The equipment was purchased but has not been put to its intended use, pending resolution of a territorial dispute between academic and administrative personnel regarding this academic project.
The 1998 evaluation team specifically encouraged initiatives in student faculty research and the acquisition of technology for instructional as well as research purposes, and also suggested interdisciplinary course offerings. While the faculty certainly took this to heart in the proposal of the HiPACE project, the administration set up a nonsensical roadblock to this academic initiative. And the stand-off continues.