Faculty speak out

This is the second part of a four part series, allowing individuals to voice what they want in the next president. The next installations in the series will be published in consecutive weeks.

Part I: What do students want?

Now that we’ve looked at what the students want, we asked the University of Toledo faculty the same question: what do you want in the next UT president? After talking to a few professors, these were their responses:

Administration/Faculty relations

Sharon Barnes, interim chair and associate professor of women and gender studies, said she thinks the relationship between administration and faculty is one of the biggest challenges the new president will have to face, despite the progress she said Interim President Nagi Naganthan’s administration made.

“We need a leader who can listen, and who is willing to work with the faculty,” Barnes said. “I think we’ve just had a situation where a lot of decision-making was top down.”

According to Barnes, there have been times when the faculty identified issues early on, but “getting word back up through administration rarely resulted in a change that was productive.”

Karen Hoblet, president of faculty senate and assistant professor of nursing, said one issue many faculty would like to be addressed is the faculty hiring contract.

“I think one of the biggest challenges is that there’s not an agreed-upon contract in place with the faculty,” Hoblet said. “That’s going to be a challenge. And it might be a challenge even getting someone to come here, if the collective bargaining agreement is not finalized with faculty.”

According to Linda Rouillard, executive member of faculty senate and associate professor of French, another way for administration to improve relations with faculty is by showing appreciation for them.

“[The new president] can be committed to compensating faculty fairly and equitably. They could make an effort to understand better what it is that faculty do for our students, as opposed to assuming that what happens in the classroom can simply be put on a computer,” Rouillard said.

Finances

Rouillard said she thinks the economic situation of UT and the country is “going to create challenges for the new president.”

According to Barnes, one source of financial tension stems from the recent lack of state funding to the university.

“Stepping back from the faculty perspective, I think the lack of state support for education is just creating a lot of financial pressures,” Barnes said. “We are a public, state institution, but we do not get a lot of state support, and so it makes it really hard.”

Vijaya Devabhaktuni, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, said the handling of budget cuts has been a financial issue in the past, and is one he thinks faculty will continue to be interested in researching.

“In the last couple of years, when Lloyd Jacobs was president, there were a lot of cuts at the colleges,” Devabhaktuni said. “The effect was that when we lost faculty to retirement and relegation to other places, we couldn’t replace those positions.”

Devabhaktuni said the important questions to ask are what will happen next and how the new president will handle the cuts.

Enrollment

While university enhancement includes many different topics, several faculty members had very specific ideas on aspects of the university that could be improved upon, such as enrollment numbers.

“I think we need to look at our structures; who’s succeeding in increasing or maintaining enrollment? Who’s not?” Hoblet asked. “Are students wanting to come to the University of Toledo? Yes or no? And why do they want to come here?”

Hoblet said UT needs to decide what this institution is best at and promote it more.

“We need to capitalize on community relationships and other relationships that extend far beyond our state borders,” Hoblet said.

Devabhaktuni said enrollment has been declining gradually since 2008; however, he thinks that if enrollment increases, it will result in “an extremely healthy university academically and financially.”

At higher levels of enrollment, Devabhaktuni said, “we could again start hiring faculty, we could open up more services for our students that have been closed, we can spend more resources on instructional facilities, scholarships.”

Collaboration

Rouillard said one of the most important qualities for the new president to possess will be the ability to collaborate with faculty.

“I hope that the new president will make a concerted, genuine effort to listen to faculty, to take counsel from faculty regarding the direction of the institution,” Rouillard said.

Her view is shared by Hoblet, who said there are numerous ways for the new president to include not only the faculty, but also the students in the decision-making process.

“I think they need to hold faculty forums, talk to faculty, meet with Faculty Senate, involve Faculty Senate and faculty in committee structure that they create within the university,” Hoblet said.

Barnes said the recent faculty and administration relationship “wasn’t too good,” which makes collaboration between these two groups essential.

“We’re all here for educational purposes but that it’s really important that we work together, that it’s not ‘my way or the highway,’” Barnes said.

Student-centeredness

“I would like to see someone who is interested first and foremost in the welfare of the institution, the students and the faculty and staff,” Rouillard said. “That’s not a given, because we have certainly seen in the past how administrators come and go, and use the institution and its resources for their own career purposes.”

Barnes said she wanted someone who understood and appreciated the diversity of UT’s community.

“We want the president to be culturally aware of the needs of our student community, and faculty and staff too, but especially our students,” Barnes said. “Somebody sensitive to diversity and interested in what positive, productive things happen out of the strange and glorious mix of people we have here.”

Devabhaktuni said another way for the president to be more student-centered is to work on creating more jobs off-campus for students.

Decisiveness

One quality Devabhaktuni would like to see in the new president is for him or her to prioritize the university’s problems.

“The newcomer has to set our priorities such that when they address those priorities, all our problems are solved,” Devabhaktuni said. “But you can’t have a hundred priorities; if you have a hundred problems, by setting five priorities, you cure a hundred problems.”

Hoblet said the presidential candidate must have a good ethical compass, as well as the ability to make decisions with a level head. She said the president must “involve people, be transparent about decisions and make hard, difficult decisions that often need to be made.”

She said the new president must be able to act decisively, rather than getting caught up in details.

“When there are problems, don’t get mired in paralysis from analysis; otherwise, you analyze the Dickens out of something and can’t make a decision or act upon data,” Hoblet said.

More about the search

“I think the job that the search committee has done receives my highest congratulations and accolades,” Devabhaktuni said. “This candidate pool is a five-star pool of candidates.”

On the other hand, Rouillard voiced her concerns about the performance of the search firm hired by the university.

“Many of us are concerned that the search firm that was hired to do this search could only bring to us 29 viable candidates for this position,” Rouillard said.

Some faculty, Barnes said, were surprised to see that Naganathan was not one of the finalists.

“I think some folks have been disappointed,” Barnes said. “I didn’t know Nagi really well, but my sense was that the atmosphere on campus was a lot better this year, and so in that sense I’m disappointed.”