Fall 2008 Faculty Memo

Colleagues: 

Each semester I provide an update to the university community on the challenges and issues confronting all of us who provide and support the educational mission of our university.  As I begin my third year at Missouri State, I am energized and enthused by what I see occurring all over campus, and the opportunities we have immediately in front of us to “make Missouri State’s future.”  Although there are many reasons for this optimism and excitement, I want to focus on just two of them - leadership and the public affairs mission of this university.   Subsequent letters this year will focus on student success, support for and evaluation of teaching and learning, and research and creative activity.

Leadership

We recently engaged in two very successful leadership searches in academic affairs (Dean, College of Education and Associate Provost, Student Development and Public Affairs) that taught us a lot about how to bring out the best that is already on this campus.  In each of those searches the expectations for leadership were developed through extensive conversations and interactions with the involved units, and a relatively consistent picture of what was being sought developed in each circumstance.  Both in the college search and the provost office search, we were looking for individuals who could serve the university community and the individuals within it equally well.  Successful candidates would have to possess   1) the ability to understand the type of institution we are and the challenges and opportunities we confront and 2) the experience and skills to work with our people, our culture and traditions.  The goal?  To fashion a path for the future that is uniquely Missouri State.

In regard to experience and expertise, some of the most important characteristics being sought had not been listed in the advertisements, but only became clear to me and the members of the search committees after many interviews and conversations with the candidates, each other and our colleagues on campus.  We were looking for individuals who were capable of crafting a shared vision and developing a path to achieve that vision with the people and programs of this university.  “Crafting a vision and developing a path” is an extremely difficult and time consuming enterprise, but if one brings a strong set of experiences and skills to the table it is not only doable, but one of the most profoundly worthwhile endeavors in which human beings can engage.  The fundamental requirements of this ability are an understanding of the organization and community in which one is working, support and passion for the goals, values and beliefs embedded in this environment, and a willingness to listen, interpret,  share and generate ideas and proposals to accomplish these goals.

 We interviewed candidates who had passion, but no ideas; ideas, but no willingness to listen.  We interviewed people who had great plans they had implemented elsewhere, but no seeming interest or ability to try to understand this environment and what could be fashioned here building on the efforts and strengths of our people.  Luckily, and due to the efforts of all involved in the searches, we were eventually able to identify and attract individuals who possessed what we were looking for - passion, ideas, and the ability to listen and work with the MSU community-  to help us not only meet the challenges and opportunities of the future, but to embrace them.

There are now three dean searches underway and it is a good time to reflect on the role of leadership in our institution.  Missouri State is changing in many ways and one of the most important areas of change is the evolving nature of and expectations for leadership.  Program, department, college and university level leaders cannot effectively work in this environment if they construe their role as that of a bureaucrat following and delivering orders.  Our leaders must be “symphony conductors,” who work with extremely creative people in a manner that fosters the best of their talents while at the same time ensuring that the same opus is being played by all and at the same time.

 As we search for new deans, department heads and program directors across the campus, it is important that the ability to balance the “creative” (collaboratively interpreting university mission, goals and values in a manner distinctive to the people, programs and departments of the college) and the “accountable” (meeting deadlines, completing paperwork, managing tenure and promotion and other evaluation processes, etc.) aspects of working with others be uppermost in our consideration of the candidates.  We have many individuals on this campus - faculty and administration - who do an outstanding job of pursuing this balance in all that they do.   All of us deserve nothing less in those who are invited to join this wonderful university community.

The Public Affairs Mission

In 1995, when Governor Mel Carnahan supported the public affairs mission for Missouri State, we received a “living” mission that had the opportunity to forever define us.  The definition of that mission was purposely left open to interpretation by the administration, faculty, staff and students of this university, so that it could develop and grow in a manner that best reflected the vision, goals and ideals of its people and programs.  A tremendous number of outreach, public and international policy initiatives and activities developed to fulfill this mission.

The “Engaged” University

Missouri State was not alone in these endeavors. During the next decade, many colleges and universities across the country would develop community outreach programs and come to promote a wide variety of efforts to foster better engagement of their campuses with local, national and international issues.  Service learning courses and programs developed across the nation; today, there are many national organizations devoted to promoting service and experiential learning as a preeminent pedagogy.  Metropolitan and regional universities claimed community engagement and regional stewardship as their missions.  Nationally,  higher education organizations such as  “Imagining America – a consortium of universities committed to public scholarship in the arts, humanities and design, (http://imaginingamericatest.syr.edu/index.html) and the “American Democracy project (http://www.aascu.org/programs/adp/” sponsored by the American Association of State College and Universities were established to support and institutionalize best practices for such efforts.  Individual disciplines developed programs within their professional associations, such as the American Psychological Association’s “Service Learning and Civic Engagement” (http://www.apa.org/ed/slce/home.html).  The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which established the original nomenclature of institutional type, has now developed an institutional classification for Community Engagement that distinguishes two separate areas of assessment:   Curricular Engagement and Outreach and Partnerships (http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=1213).

 

The Public Affairs University

I arrived at Missouri State in 2006, drawn by many features of the institution but especially by the public affairs mission.  I had worked with a number of professional and social science programs in both curricular and partnership engagement efforts and with many of the organizations listed above, but I had never encountered a university whose state designated mission was “public affairs”.  To my knowledge we are still unique in that regard.

During my first two years here, I have been greatly impressed by the diversity, magnitude and quality of Missouri State’s outreach activities.  I will mention only two, but the list is endless.  When I arrived the Guilloz Theater was in the midst of reopening, and the College of Arts and Letters was clearly a major major player in every element of that achievement and celebration of the visual and performing arts. That college continues to be prolific in its community involvement.  The Agriculture department’s community engagement is also well established, ranging from the political to the scientific, connecting equally well to Future Farmers of America and Farm Bureau, while raising funds for the community based Darr Center.

A Question Evolves:  Do Efforts to Define Limit or Enhance Public Affairs?  

And yet as I ate my weekly lunches with the faculty in the Union Club (my treat – we begin again in October) I heard many people say that they while they were very proud of Missouri State’s mission and how we had fulfilled it, they were not quite sure what public affairs meant; some indicated that public affairs clearly meant anything anyone wanted to define as public affairs.  It appeared that while I felt we were doing a better job in many ways than any institution I had ever encountered in terms of outreach, there was great variation in program and faculty definition of and participation in the mission.  Faculty questioned - Was every internship or volunteer experience a public affairs activity?  Was every art show public affairs? If so, then every university that promoted those activities was carrying out the public affairs mission as well.  Faculty also questioned what public affairs meant in disciplines like science and math?  Did soliciting volunteers for Relay for Life qualify as public affairs, and was it equally so for chemists and sociologists?  What was being taught in these efforts and what were students learning?

Faculty Senate began reviewing a related matter in 2007, when CGEP began assessing the future of GEP 397, The Public Affairs Capstone Course.  Although there were some excellent examples of coursework taught under that curricular title, it appears that the absence of dedicated funding coupled with a requirement that the course be   interdisciplinary severely limited interest in and ability to offer the course in a manner that met its original goals.  Ultimately course content for GEP 397 was so broadly defined that virtually any topic taught and assessed in any manner could be construed as “public affairs”.  And yet there was still difficulty delivering enough sections except in the summer, when supplemental compensation provided an incentive for a limited number of faculty.

The committee reviewed a number of options to improve or replace the course; ultimately recommended only its elimination from the curriculum.  With that recommendation supported by Faculty Senate, President Nietzel agreed to suspend the course for two years pending the development of an alternative means to ensure the public affairs mission of the university was reflected in the educational experience of all of our graduates.

The Student and Board of Governors Perspective

In the spring of 2008, a Missouri state student editorial in The Standard raised questions similar to those faculty had been addressing to me and which CGEP had been reviewing.  The students asked (I paraphrase) “How is Missouri State different from any other university” in terms of our public affairs mission, since every university promotes diversity and global awareness and community/ civic engagement?”  The Missouri State University Board of Governors was asking the same thing – how does our mission distinguish us as a university and how can we communicate that mission AND message broadly?

Concepts Underlying Public Affairs – A First Step

Working with faculty, staff and students, I have tried to offer a very preliminary answer to this question.  My observations are taken from about 18 months of increasingly focused conversations with faculty, staff, students and alumni as well as Board members and community leaders, the long range plan, annual reports of departments and colleges and many other documents.  I also reviewed and discussed with these same people what was going on nationally in the organizations mentioned above, as well as what employers were telling us in higher education that we needed to do in terms of preparing our graduates for the world that awaits them (American Association of Colleges and Universities, College Learning for the New Global Century, 2008)

I tried out many “descriptors” of public affairs concepts to describe what I was seeing, hearing and reading from many sources, and found some that resonated with others and many that did not.  Two things were clear – whatever we said public affairs was had to be something that described who we are and what we do – not something different or new.  The goal was to reflect what is best about this campus and its people, not to send anyone in a new or different direction.  At the same time, whatever we described public affairs as being, had to be a real part of our curriculum, our student learning experiences.  In this era of accountability and learning outcomes, when our own students are asking how we carry out our mission, when our signature mission delivering course is being dropped from the curriculum, the concept(s) of public affairs needed to be focused and workable as part of our academic program. 

Over a period of months, I proposed three concepts as underlying our public affairs mission:   community engagement, cultural competence and ethical leadership.  I first shared these with the Academic Leadership Council (Deans, Associate Provost and Faculty Senate leadership) in the spring, asking about the fit between these concepts and what faculty and programs were doing in these areas. The concepts appeared to be workable as definitions of current understandings of public affairs, so we decided to do an inventory, collecting from the department heads over the summer more specific information about what programs were currently doing in these areas.

During the summer I also met with faculty and administrators to learn if there was interest in developing new initiatives along the lines of these concepts that could be introduced broadly to all our students or to more limited groups on campus.  There was considerable interest in doing so, and many possibilities were discussed.  It was decided that discussion groups would be formed with interested faculty in fall 2008.  When Dr. Rachelle Darabi, Associate Provost for Student Development and Public Affairs joins us at the end of this month, she will be responsible for working with faculty and staff to begin to flesh out possible ideas.

Towards the end of summer, I made a presentation to the Board of Governors and Administrative Council describing our progress (attached).  There was great interest in moving forward, both a means of clarifying the university’s message about who we are, and communicating to our students what it means to obtain a college education in an institution with a public affairs mission.  Student development personnel were also very enthused about the concepts of community engagement, cultural competence and ethical leadership and the opportunity to be more focused in working with our students.  The banners at Freshman Convocation reflected this enthusiastic endorsement.

 At the same time, our discussion at the summer deans’ retreat made it very clear that there were many, many different understandings of the concepts that had been proposed.  The program inventory also yielded vastly different interpretations of what learning outcomes might be associated with these concepts.   It was clear that little more could be accomplished until faculty returned in the fall.

 

Freshman Convocation

I had offered little in the way of definition of these concepts until Freshman Convocation, where I was expected to elaborate a bit:

Community Engagement is the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geography, special interest or similar situations to address issues influencing the quality of life (http://www.cdc.gov/phppo/pce/part1.htm).  Individuals skilled at community engagement are effective participants in the world around them – whether they are working for sustainability, better government or human rights.

Cultural Competence is obtaining cultural information and then applying that knowledge (http://www.culturediversity.org/cultcomp.htm).  Individuals who are culturally competent are culturally self aware, conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact, and able to utilize cultural knowledge effectively in communication and behavior (http://cecp.air.org/cultural/Q_integrated.htm#def).  Culturally competent individuals can interact effectively with peoples of diverse origins, perspectives and abilities.

Ethical Leadership is leadership informed by principles.   Ethical leaders know their core values and have the skills to live them in all areas of life (http://www.ethicalleadership.org/philosophies/ethical-leadership).  Communication, collaboration and consensus building are important tools of ethical leaders.  Ethical leaders bring about change, but they know that doing it the right way is as important as “getting it done.”

In summary:   We expect our graduates to have the knowledge, skills and dispositions to live, work and lead throughout the world across all cultural lines and barriers, in a manner that reflects and promotes integrity of thought and action. 

This fall, Faculty Senate is appointing a special task force to undertake a review of the general education program to ascertain how the public affairs mission should be delivered in the curriculum – if not GEP 397, then what?  I know that some of the colleges and departments would like to be able to shape how their programs integrate the public affairs mission into their discipline, and I am hopeful that we can have a preliminary idea of most department and college efforts and interests in this area by October 1.  This information will be shared with the Faculty Senate task force for use in their deliberations, with the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Governors and with the campus community at the November 7^th President’s forum (see below).

The task force will be working with a few “givens” in addition to the charge they receive from the Faculty Senate.  Any method of embedding the public affairs mission in the curriculum must apply to all students, including those who enter as freshmen and those who transfer in. There are three credits previously assigned to GEP397 are available for redistribution, either to a new general education requirement or to the academic programs or colleges or some combination of the two.  Any approach must be subject to assessment; this can be achieved through any number of means - by a specific course requirement, a broader university graduation requirement that can be met in each degree program in a different way, proficiency or portfolio requirement or even a co-curricular requirement. The capstone course was open to assessment, and it was through the routine processes of assessment that its failures led the Senate to propose its elimination.

This is an exciting time in the public affairs history of the university - we have the opportunity to, as part of our statewide mission, offer something better and more profound to our students than any other university.  We can both serve our mission, our students and ourselves by realizing our mission in a way that distinguishes us from all others.  Given some of the ideas I have already heard coming out of our programs and colleges, I have no doubt this will happen.

 Reminder:  President Nietzel’s Annual Report to the Campus is scheduled for September 22 at noon in the PSU Theater.  Three Presidential forums have been scheduled for the fall to solicit your ideas and  energy to further shape Missouri State’s mission – focusing on the challenges that confront Higher Education today (Friday September 26), the Public Affairs mission (Friday November 7) and Student Success (Friday November 21).  All sessions are 2:00 to 3:00 in the Meyer Library Auditorium, Room 101.  I encourage you to attend, helping to Imagine and Make Missouri State’s Future.

Good luck for Great New Year!!!