Provost Betty Stewart and other administrators must have been working overtime to dig themselves out of the hole in which they’ve found themselves.
On Jan. 14, Stewart informed members of the Honors Program that MSU would be transitioning from the current program to the Redwine Scholar Program, a decision that met with a backlash from students and faculty, a backlash she was not expecting.
The anger stemmed not so much from the decision itself but from the administrators’ failure to inform the Honors Program students and faculty until the decision was already finalized. Since then, the provost and administrators have done an exceptional job of working with the Honors Program students to address their concerns about the Redwine Program. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact some administrators have developed a habit of making decisions behind closed doors.
I am an Honors Program student, and while I’m sure that some of my fellow program students agree with me, I am not writing on behalf of them, of the Honors Program Student Committee or the Honors Office. The problem that I have is not with the changes to the program but with the way the changes came about.
“I find it hard to believe that university leaders make decisions, like the one with the Honors Program, without consulting the affected parties beforehand”
I’m not claiming to know the protocol administrators must follow to make these decisions — I’m sure they followed some form of it. However, I am saying there’s something fundamentally wrong with this university’s decision-making method.
Let me clarify: the Honors Program Student Committee (made up of all Honors Program students) and the Honors faculty were not consulted by the administrators at any point during the time that the changes to the program were discussed in early fall semester. In fact, the new Redwine Program was established with application letters mailed to potential freshmen in November of 2012, and an online application was posted at least a month before the Provost had even officially announced the Redwine Program to the Honors students on Monday.
Of course, the deans and department chairs of Prothro-Yeager and Fain Fine Arts were consulted about the Honors Program changes. The Honors Program Faculty Committee members (of which none are deans or department chairs) were not. The honors students were not. When it comes to decisions like these, the people directly affected by the changes should be consulted before signficant decisions are made. Two-way communication is important.
In some businesses, communication is very hierarchial and top-down. Employees are not consulted in the decision-making process. Maybe that’s the direction senior administrators are taking the university. If that’s the case, they should look closer at the product they claim to sell — education — and the consumers of that product — the students. Faculty, not the administrators, directly provide education to students.
“Since faculty are already overworked, underpaid and underappreciated, administrators should increase morale by at least maintaining a high level of trust with professors”
At the same time, the administrators need to keep their own positive relationship with students to ensure they feel valued, as businesses do with consumer reports. If students, for instance, are not consulted about changes that directly affect them, students will not continue to enroll at MSU (retention) and won’t recommend the university to their friends (affecting enrollment).
But unfortunately, in the example of the Honors Program, students didn’t have a say when the decision to make the changes was made, and neither did Honors faculty. The administrators thought that students would be excited that the scholarship would increase from $2,000 to $4,000 a year, but they overlooked the fact that students were not just viewing the changes from a money stand-point, but from a stand-point of principle — a principle based on reciprocal trust between students and administration, a trust that was broken.
This isn’t the first example of a unilateral decision being made by the administrators. President Jesse Rogers informed the faculty in early October that summer pay would be decreased. As with the Honors Program, faculty members were not consulted about the pay cuts before the decision was made.
It’s not only students complaining about these under-the-table decisions, but the faculty as well. The administrators are breaking the trust of the people that are most vital to the university. They should not expect to have a cohesive institution to inspire learning if their students and instructors don’t trust them.
I’d also like to note that it’s fishy that the Board of Regents minutes have yet to be posted on the website for the meetings that came after January, 2012. The minutes should be posted in a timely manner (meaning within a month of the meeting, not within a year) for anyone to read at anytime. Without current minutes, the administrators appears to want to keep their ideas and decisions to themselves — an appearance they probably don’t mean to maintain.
The slogan for the university states, “It’s my university, make it yours.” I am having a hard time believing this university is mine any longer. I’m sure faculty members are having a hard time as well.
Just recently, I’ve seen flyers posted around campus for students to apply for a position on the university’s “A-team,” a group that helps promote Midwestern. I wouldn’t be able to tell high school or transfer students to “make it yours” when the university’s administrators don’t seem to want students to take the ownership that the slogan implies to give. Sure, enrollment may slightly benefit from the “A-Team,” but retention will keep slipping if decisions continue to be made behind the backs of the students and faculty.
The bottom line is that changes need to be made to prevent the implementation of unilateral decisions by administrators. All affected parties need to be consulted beforehand, even if it delays the decision-making process, so that students and faculty can trust the administrators and feel that they’re respected by this institution.
Until then, I cannot honestly say that MSU is my university or the faculty’s. The university belongs to the provost and administrators.