Vol. CXXII Issue 16

the

eporter Vol. CXXII Issue 16

Stetson University | DeLand, Fla.

Faculty Dissatisfied?

Leaked satisfaction survey reveals low faculty morale Q&A with President Wendy Libby Page 4 Katie Dezes Editor-in-Chief A copy of the the Stetson Faculty Senate’s 2014 Faculty Satisfaction Survey, along with its results and analyses, were obtained by The Reporter from a faculty member who wishes to remain anonymous.

After receiving these documents, The Reporter reached out to two people for more information: Dr. Joel Davis, Associate Professor of English and Chair of The Faculty Senate, and Dr. Richard Kindred, a recently retired psychology professor and this year’s Senate representative for Senior Professors and Retired Faculty.

The results of the survey communicate faculty dissatisfaction with their treatment and workload, as well as the actions and priorities of the administration.

The survey was distributed to all fulltime faculty members on the DeLand and Celebration campuses. Out of the 228 faculty who received copies, 138 responded.

Participants were asked to answer 41 questions on a Likert scale (1-5, with 1 standing for “Strongly Disagree” and 5 for “Strongly Agree”). “Don’t Know” and “Not Applicable” options were also available.

In addition to these questions, participants were invited to include comments.

86 percent of faculty did not agree that “the overall relationship between the faculty and the administration is trusting.” Similarly, only 26 percent agreed with the claim, “I can speak up and challenge a current or proposed way of doing something without fear of retaliation.”

89 percent did not agree to the statement, “I think that faculty morale is good,” and 71 percent did not agree with the sentence, “Overall, I believe Stetson is heading in the right direction.”

The results also signify that faculty are significantly more satisfied with the relations between their faculty colleagues and the leadership of their Dean and Department Chair compared to the leadership of the President and the Provost.

In the detailed comments attached with the survey, faculty described the reasons for the high levels of dissatisfaction reflected in the survey’s results. The issues discussed, which express many student concerns as well, include the decreasing quality of students; the large sum of university money

Comments from Dr. Nylen

funding athletics, marketing, landscaping, and other ventures like “The Rock”; the lack of support for scholarship work; miscommunication between administration and faculty; the overwhelming amount of service work required; and inadequate pay and other benefits, especially in reference to contingent faculty and adjuncts.

The Provost received the results and analyses of the survey along with all fulltime Stetson faculty when they were sent out via e-mail.

“The links to the survey results were e-mailed to me by the Senate Chair,” said Dr. Beth Paul, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “I have expressed my interest in discussing the results with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, but I have not yet been invited to do so.”

The idea to conduct the survey arose in the early fall of this academic year within the Faculty Senate. The project was then handed off to the Faculty Welfare Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate.

A member of that subcommittee, Richard Kindred, who taught at Stetson for 40 years before retiring in the spring of 2013, led the process of creating the survey, distributing it to faculty, and collecting and analyzing the results.

“One reason why I thought it [the survey] was important and why I was willing to spend a very substantial amount of time on it —I've been associated with the university since 1973,” Kindred said. “We've been through some pretty hard times. Sometimes that affects faculty morale and sometimes it doesn't. It seems to me, just casually, that faculty morale is lower than I've ever seen it.”

“I felt like it was worthwhile to know whether that was just an impression based on very limited exposure or whether it wasn't, and if there were issues, to be able to identify and breakdown what are the concerns and who is concerned. That seemed to be worth doing,” he added.

When asked why morale is so low among faculty, Dr. Davis stressed the heavy workload and amount of service work, which leaves little time to focus on scholarship and creative work.

“Time is the killer,” Davis said. “It takes us more time to teach because we have more students. We have raised expectations on ourselves, rightly, to become more prom-

Continued on Page 2

A Farewell to Seniors, Throwback, and more!

Academic Integrity vs.

Corporate Bureaucracy

Page 8

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“I think that faculty morale is good” NA : 0 NR : 0 DK : 2 SD : 23 SA : 1 A : 9

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SD - Strongly Disagree D - Disagree N - Neutral A - Agree

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Comments from the faculty satisfaction survey These comments have been grouped according to subject.

More faculty comments and the full results of the 2014 Faculty Satisfaction Survey are available to view online at http://www2.stetson.edu/reporter/.

About the survey: “I appreciate the opportunity to express my dissatisfaction with this administration, but it will only be meaningful if my and others’ concerns are addressed in a non-defensive manner.”

Overwhelming Amount of Service Work: “I feel over-extended by commitments that feel utterly pointless and leave no time to do work—my scholarship—that gives me sustenance.”

“We are ‘met to death’ here. I’ve never been at an institution where so many damn meetings occur!

“I have more of my time wasted by meetings here than anywhere else I’ve been. It’s not only ridiculous and counter-productive but incredibly insulting and demoralizing too.

‘Meeting’ seems to be the answer to everything around here, and I’m beyond fed up with it.”

Quality of Students Decreasing/Academic Rigor Weakening: “We do not have the support of the administration in our sincere efforts to help students excel academically. It seems that we are supposed to treat students with kid gloves and not anger them in case they leave Stetson.”

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NEWS

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inent professionally. But our amount of service work is out of hand. So, time is what faculty need more than anything else.

What we often get is extra meetings and extra workshops, and we find it frustrating.”

Davis said this frustration can impede communication: “I do think we’ve got a trust deficit on this campus, and some of it is unearned. Some of it, we’d do much better to trust each other more and try to work together. It’s just difficult; it’s a very long term relationship among a whole bunch of people. It stores up dysfunction the way that a family does, so you have to find ways to compensate for those things.”

Davis also explained some of the unavoidable divisions among faculty, such as generational differences. Those who are left in the dark about an issue and do not see any context for a decision are more likely to be upset when change occurs.

“We all move around in our own little bubble,” Davis said. “The farther away you are from sources of information, the more frustrated you get.”

“What happens when a new administration comes is they change things,” Davis added. “And people don't like change, and they don't like being told what to do. You always have some trauma that comes from that.”

Those who feel like they don’t have a say in important decisions become even more frustrated. 84 percent of the participants of the faculty survey did not agree that “faculty has significant voice in regard to important institutional matters.”

“Nothing is more frustrating than spending a year working on drafting a report in response to this that and the other thing, and then having it disappear into the ether, and no one ever speaks of it again,” Davis said. “It's just infuriating.”

When asked whether the quality of students has decreased as a result of increased enrollment, Davis explained that the university “creates a blind spot” by allowing prospective students who are applying to Stetson to say whether they want their standardized test scores to be considered in the enrollment decision.

“About a third of the students that apply say, ‘no, don’t consider it,’” Davis said.

“So, when the university reports to faculty the average incoming SAT score, it’s the two thirds that chose to report. So, we have a blind spot, and it’s one third of students coming in.”

“And then you have pressure on lower division classes, and you have students you know are not going to make it,” he added. “Our retention rate first-to-second year is 78 to 79 percent. So, that's one in five students—poof, gone. In a department like English, it's putting huge pressure on us to staff sections of 101, for example. And who staffs them? Well, they're not tenure-track faculty, by and large. So, these are folks that have the training, but they don't have the resources. They are paid very poorly, they share office space, they often have two or three different jobs, and that causes problems.”

The survey is not an annual occurrence. This year’s survey was its third iter-

“The faculty has significant voice in regard to important institutional matters” NR : 1

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Quality of Students Decreasing/Academic Rigor Weakening (continued): “I do not believe the University is picking the best students to come here and it shows.”

“I have more accommodations than ever, with more students who simply cannot function in a college level classroom as they should be able.”

“I’ve taught in some, shall we say, un-elite educational parts of the nation during my considerable time as a professor, and I find our students as a rule to be among the worst—if not THE worst—I’ve seen.”

“The current incoming students, as represented by the students in my first-year class, are simply unprepared for college work, and for college thinking, at least as we have been defining it, and as we express rhetorically. They are almost aggressively passive, as paradoxical as that sounds, and they not only show little ability to analyze material, but also little sense of why one would even want to do that.”

University Spending: “ I also believe that the football program is a money sink. It does not seem to have been a profitable venture.”

“The landscaping around Stetson is far too expensive. I have heard students make the same comment. Which brings me to “The Rock”—one big pile of wasteful money that is not at all worthy to be called a monument.

Faculty to Administration Ratio: “Also, it seems like we have more vice presidents and directors and other administrators than faculty. The University is getting too damn top heavy.”

Mistreatment of Contingent/Adjunct Faculty: “Contingent faculty teach the same courses, have the same number of students, and perform the same amount of work for a fraction of what faculty earn per course. According to the Stetson website, each credit hour is $1,195, so assuming a 3 credit hour course, $3,585 per student. An adjunct typically makes less per class than one student pays.”

“There is zero chance for promotion or tenure, nor does there seem to be any plans for anything similar. There are contingent faculty who have been here for many, many years.”

“I HAVE BEEN AT THIS UNIVERSITY FOR 13+ YEARS. I WILL LEAVE AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY. FACULTY ARE NOT ONLY UNDERVALUED, OVERWORKED AND UNDERPAID (RAISES ARE AN INSULT!), BUT THEY ARE ALSO TREATED WITH BORDERLINE CONTEMPT FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES TO THE PRESIDENT AND COUNTLESS OTHERS OF THE MYRIAD OF ADMINISTRATORS AT THIS UNIVERSITY.” Miscommunication Between Faculty & Administration: “Lack of transparency and the disenfranchisement of faculty influence is a major fault of the current administration.”

“Do not feel valued by the administration on any level.”

“There exists a distance now between all levels of administration and faculty. ‘Cooperative’ probably exists; if that means everyone does what administration thinks faculty should be doing...The idea of cooperation here is now similar to ‘cooperation’ at a corporation like IBM. A president’s cabinet that does not have the deans of colleges on it takes the president out of the academic life of SU. It also distances the Provost from the deans, and the deans from the faculties.”

“Strong impression that administration already knows what it wants and then lets faculty “talk.”

“Faculty moral is at the lowest point it has been since I joined Stetson.”

Concern for Well-Being of Students: “This administration seems more concerned with numbers and statistics than they do with the well-being of our students...It is unethical for us not to provide adequate housing for our students and then kick seniors out of our residence halls because we know they have the most to lose by leaving Stetson and probably won’t.

“The cafeteria (no longer a ‘commons’) is a joke of an operation. The prices for meals are outrageously high for non-faculty/staff, and the quality is no better than it was with Sodexo. Chartwells employees are complaining about the way they are treated.”

“This administration seems more concerned about marketing than substance. This administration seems more concerned about reporting the bottom line to the Board of Trustees than whether or not our students feel appreciated and anything more than just a source of revenue.”

“I would also like to know why the administration hired a full-time staff person to administer SGA which is supposed to be a student-led organization.”

“The lowering of admission standards has meant that our better students feel frustrated that class discussions have sometimes degenerated due to the enrollment of poorer students at Stetson.”

Dropping in National Rankings: “How in the hell do we have a functioning Office of Marketing and have our national reputation decrease?”

“The comment in the rank descriptions of schools that Stetson is a good place for ‘B’ students because they can get help from a caring faculty is not an endorsement that places us in the category that we historically occupied. At best, it is a backhanded compliment.”

“I was under the impression that Stetson is a good liberal arts college which takes academic rigor serious. But we have received mixed messages...Stetson’s annual drop in the US News rankings may not matter to some in the administration, as was evident from the President’s message during a university faculty meeting, but it is hardly a sign that our school is heading in the right direction.”

N : 14

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Editor-in-Chief A & E Editor SD D N Katie Dezes Garen Freed Managing Editor Web Editor Samuel Votaw Michael Galvez News Editor Layout Design Editor Sarah Dean Sarah Dean Sports Editor Layout Designer Sean McKnight Colleen Palmateer Opinion Editor Layout and Web Designer Michael Van Oppen Ethan Deal

AFaculty SAAdvisor DK

Andy Dehnart Staff Writers Amber Cox Caroline Williams Madison Akins Business Manager Hallie Smith Circulation Manager Jacob Helwig

Staff NA Photographers NR meta-chart.com Nicole Frechette Shadee Rios Staff Contributors Kaley Fulton Joel Davis Staff Advisor John Sheehy

Mission Statement We are committed to you.

We will deliver content that’s fair-minded and respectful of the diverse opinions and viewpoints of our readers. We are responsible for covering the Stetson community and providing our readers with consistent, accurate, and factual information in new and

creative ways. We will maintain the standards expected of a professional and credible news organization, which includes a serious commitment to honesty, transparency, and growth.

We are conscious of our influence, holding ourselves accountable to our readers and to our own standards of journalistic integrity.

NEWS

May 1, 2015

Letter From the Editor

I would not have created this issue if I didn't love Stetson. It will always be a part of me, and I will always cherish my experiences here. What many people don’t realize is that concern often stems from care.

I never expected to be Editor-in-Chief of The Reporter. After contributing to the paper a few times my sophomore year, I was pleasantly surprised when I was asked to be Arts & Entertainment Editor. After a year in A&E, it was time for the paper to hire a new editor-in-chief. By the time I considered applying, I realized I had missed the deadline. I soon found out that I wasn't alone; not one person submitted an application for the position.

It was then that I decided to step up to the challenge.

Although the position basically fell into my lap, it quickly became my "white whale" (for all of those Moby Dick fans out there). On urbandictionary.com, this is defined as "Something you obsess over to the point that it nearly or completely destroys you." It's "An obsession that becomes your ultimate goal in life—one that completely encircles and defines you." While this

may be a little too dramatic, it's the best way I could think of to articulate my commitment to this paper.

It became my priority. I was determined to improve the paper as much as possible in one year's time, which meant setting a standard that I had to live up to. The hours I once put into classwork and spending time with friends became consumed with planning new issues and editing articles. Although I wasn't exactly sure why at the time, what I was doing felt important.

While I was working to improve The Reporter's quality of content and overall reputation, I was also transforming as a person. The position sharpened my focus and strengthened my drive. Now, I feel ready more than ever to take on the world that awaits me after graduation.

The Reporter was the capstone to my growth here.

I know I'm not alone in this transformative experience. As cliché as it may sound (it's brought up at least once in every graduation speech), Stetson transforms lives. I am a different person than I was when I enrolled here, and I know many other people graduating this spring feel the same.

The Special Edition: Just as The Reporter is going through a process of change, and we as students have changed during our college careers, many changes have been made to Stetson as a whole: the beautification of the campus landscape, the increased number of students, the growth of athletic programs, as well as housing, food, and curriculum changes. Most notably, I have seen a change in communication and overall morale…which brings us to the purpose of this issue of The Reporter.

From what the results of the Faculty Senate’s 2014 Faculty Satisfaction Survey convey, as well as what we have all heard from students, faculty, and staff during our time at Stetson, there is a growing fear, paranoia, and even a little resentment in regard to decisions made by the administration. Whether these feelings are justified is for you to decide.

Rather, this issue was created simply to open communication between all parties. By sharing the opinions of faculty expressed through the faculty survey—since many are too afraid to speak without the protection of an-

Continued from Page 2 ation, and minor alterations have been made each time it was conducted. The most recent survey of its kind was completed in 2012.

Dr. Davis said the survey first arose when the faculty were in fear that Dr. Wendy Libby, the current president of the university, was going to close programs.

“It arose in a period of a lot of conflict—well, in fear and paranoia,” he said. “So, over the past two iterations, some of the most aggressively defensive, I suppose—the most pointed questions—have been weeded out, but we’re keeping as many questions as we can exactly the same so we can compare apples to apples over time.”

Many more faculty members responded to the 2014 survey (138) than to the 2012 survey (73), an 80 percent increase.

Dr. Kindred was chosen to lead the survey process due to his relevant experience. He taught psychological testing and measurement courses for 12 years and helped conduct other university surveys before the development of an institutional research office on campus.

After drafting a preliminary version of the survey and receiving feedback, Kindred presented a modified version that was

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approved by the Senate on Sep. 29.

Dr. Kindred was especially concerned with preserving faculty anonymity and took several steps to ensure it. For instance, faculty were asked to complete the surveys by hand, rather than online; a copy was delivered to each faculty member’s mail box and returned in an envelope to Dr. Ramee Indralingam, Secretary of the Faculty Senate.

“Doing it by hand would provide the most security,” Kindred said. “I wanted to honestly assure folks that their anonymity would be protected.”

Faculty could also choose not to answer any or all of the four demographic questions. Those people are referred to as “Unspecified” in the analyses.

After the results were collected, analyses by academic unit (school or college), academic rank, sex, and the number of years at Stetson were completed.

The overall responses were also presented together with the results of the 2012 survey.

Kindred once again ensured anonymity by avoiding overlapping categories of analysis. For example, Kindred said, “You could see the results for assistant professors, but there would not be any analysis

that presented the results of assistant professors in the School of Business.”

“That was an effort to ensure we didn’t have such a small subcategory that pointed to just a few people,” he said.

In a letter attached to each copy of the survey sent out to faculty, it was explained that it was “intended to provide a better understanding of issues affecting faculty morale and satisfaction at Stetson."

“It seems to me that it's important to have more than just casual opinions about whether the faculty are or aren't generally supportive of or happy about different aspects of the functioning of the university,” Kindred said.

Throughout this article, when it is stated that [blank] percent of faculty did not agree with a particular statement in the survey, this is calculated by adding the percentage of faculty who responded in any way other than "Agree" or "Strongly Agree.” Similarly, when it is stated that only [blank] percent agreed with a statement, it is referring to the percentage that responded with "Agree" or "Strongly Agree."

onymity—I am helping their concerns be voiced. Since many of these concerns reflect and echo those of the student body, I am also providing students with an outlet for their questions to be answered. And finally, by speaking to the President and the Provost, I have given administration the opportunity to respond directly to these questions and concerns.

Like many others who have expressed their concerns in this paper, I am worried about the future of Stetson, and I do not believe things will improve without open dialogue, transparency, and the valuing of one another's concerns. I can only hope that this issue will help spark discussion that leads to change.

The Future of The Reporter: I also hope that our last issue of the year proves that The Reporter is capable of much more than movie reviews and recaps of events.

We are also a voice and a means for change.

Although there is still a lot more to be done, we have improved a lot this year.

However, The Reporter will not be able to continue this forward progress without support from all who make up the Stetson community: the students, faculty, staff, and administration. We can't do it alone.

I get it; people love to hate the press. However, I hope that you will realize that we are so much more than that. People are so quick to judge and criticize the paper, yet so few are willing to help. People seem to forget that the paper is volunteer-based, and anyone is welcome to contribute.

Since we exist within such a small, tight-knit community, we are one of the best means by which students AND FACULTY/STAFF can have their voices heard and promote positive change. So please do! Offer constructive feedback. Write articles. Submit questions or concerns. The Reporter is your paper.

It terrifies me to pass on my white whale to someone else next year. But I know it is in great hands. I can’t wait to see what you create next year, Sarah Dean.

Sincerely,

Katie Dezes

The Rock: “Really? A pile of rocks? Then they give chalk to students who are angry about the rocks and expect them to begin a meaningful tradition. How could they not know that students would draw penises and other obscene things on the rocks? We hired a full-time person who came up with this asinine ideal.”

“The enormous negative reaction to The Rock is indicative of still more campus issues—it is indicative of a reaction to the campus direction in general.”

Endowment: “When President Libby was a candidate for her current office, she was presented as someone who would be a great fundraiser. Has there been an increase in donations?

The salaries have gone up, but the revenue for that may have come from the increase in enrollment?”

“I can speak up and challenge a current or proposed way of doing something without fear of retaliation”

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4 NEWS

“An Embarrassment of Success” Q&A with President Wendy Libby Katie Dezes Editor-in-chief When the faculty survey was first mentioned, Dr. Libby said: “Well, you’ll find I’m not going to engage in responding to them [faculty, i.e., the faculty survey] through the student newspaper. I’m just not going to do that. If they want to have a conversation with me, they can have a conversation with me, but we don’t need an intermediary. And so, you may get answers from me in that regard, or you may not.”

If you had to pick one thing, what do you believe Stetson's main priority or goal should be right now?

Oh, that's really easy to answer. It's clearly to make sure that our students have an outstanding education in a place that's really supportive, and that helps them to understand the values that the university stands for.

What would you say is the most difficult aspect of your job?

That's not easy. *laughs* For me, my most difficult job is managing my time so that all the constituencies that I need to spend time with get to hear what I think and to interact with me to help influence where the university is headed.

Have you seen the results of the faculty satisfaction survey?

No. That's why I won't engage in a conversation about it.

Students and faculty have expressed concern over the possible consequences of increased enrollment: the growth in class sizes, inadequate housing, parking space, etc.

What is the reason for increasing enrollment? Are there currently plans in motion to grow in infrastructure to adjust for this change?

Now, the other piece of this is the student-faculty ratio, which has drifted upwards from around nine or so (the Provost would give you the accurate number) to 12.6. And we'll probably let it go as high as 13. But I would certainly argue that a 13:1 ratio is not harming the academic program or our students.

And the infrastructure?

Oh, the infrastructure. We did a study very early on. We knew that we were going to be crunched for faculty offices and science space, but we knew we had enough classrooms. Now, the reason that we were crunched on student housing was because in the fall of 2013, we had many more students than we had planned for. That's why we had to put some students in what's now called The DeLand Inn. But that was kind of an embarrassment of success in many ways. And we have enough spaces on campus right now that we can fit all of our students.

I don't think we have an infrastructure problem with student housing now that we own Stetson Cove and The University Inn. We also recently bought another housing complex on the north side of campus that will be ready in the fall of 2016.

“Well, you’ll find I’m not going to engage in responding to them [faculty, i.e., the faculty survey] through the student newspaper. I’m just not going to do that.”

So, our original goal was 3,000 undergraduates by the fall of 2016, and because we've become so popular, that is probably going to be fall of 2015.

There were many reasons to grow the university.

Part of it was that I believed, and my staff believed, that a student body of 3,000 enabled us to have a more diverse student body, which meant that the classroom and the living experience would be a much richer one, and that was clearly what drove us.

But on the other hand, we also know that we had a campus and a faculty that could support many more students, and we weren't making full use of that. Growing the student body enabled us to do that.

But we knew all along that we were going to have to grow the faculty substantially to accommodate the number of students that we were bringing in, and that's why you've seen approximately 60 new faculty in the last two years.

“

It’s a sore point when people draw conclusions without knowing anything, and in an academic environment, we really ought to be more diligent than that.”

Several faculty members claimed that the quality of their students is decreasing or Stetson's academic rigor is weakening in the comments of the faculty satisfaction survey. This concern has also been expressed by students. An increase in enrollment and reduced admission standards have been the speculated reasons for this problem.

Do you believe Stetson's standards are softening? If not, why do you believe faculty members are claiming that they are?

I have heard virtually everywhere I've ever been, faculty talking about that. It is flatly incorrect here at Stetson.

I would imagine that once somebody says it, somebody repeats it, and therefore, they think it's accurate.

If you look at the GPAs and SAT scores—even though we are SAT-optional—if you look at the scores from our students, they are as high as they've ever been, and they're higher…I should really edit that comment. If you look at those scores, they're higher than they were six years ago when I started. So, I'm at a total loss to see

“

Photo credit: Katie Dezes

I don’t even look at the U.S. News rankings except the day it comes out, and I go “Ugh, that’s the way life is.”

why some of our faculty say that.

Now, we know that in this country and in Florida in particular, there are some real issues around high school preparation and the whole K-12 preparation. So, it may in fact be that the students that they're seeing have some lack of preparation from earlier. But from everything we see and the credentials that are presented to us, our students are really the top of what we've seen in at least the last six years since I've been here.

I've also heard that the retention rate is falling. Is that correct?

No, the retention rate has gone up five points in the last six years. It would be nice if the people who have opinions would get the facts.

And just for your information, we publish, and it's on the web—it's about 300 pages of stats about us every single year. If somebody wants to know what is accurate, they are welcome to look at the data. It's on our planning website.

What's it called?

It's called The Planning and Resource Guide. It's available in our institutional research office.

Yeah, a lot of people just don't know where to go, and so they— So they listen to people who don't know the answers and quote people who don't know what's accurate. It's a sore point when people draw conclusions without knowing anything, and in an academic environment, we really ought to be more diligent than that.

In 2012, Stetson was ranked third among the South's Top regional universities by U.S. News & World Report. We are currently tied for 6th. These particular rankings seem to be brought up time and time again.

Why do you believe our national reputation is falling? And what can we do moving forward to prevent it from doing so even more?

May 1, 2015 5

NEWS And you want me to answer that in one sentence? Good luck.

I do not believe our reputation is falling. I believe that our ranking has gone down. And you would have to look at how that ranking has developed to understand it.

First of all, the retention data in there is seven years old. The class that came in in 2007 is the class that is being reported on. So, it has nothing to do with our current student population.

Secondly, there was a new piece introduced a couple of years ago, which was predicted graduation rate and actual graduation rate. That again refers to classes before most of us got here.

We are bringing in a class with a much higher predicted graduation rate and our students graduate at around that rate. I'll put my students up against the students in some of those places that got higher rankings in that category any day. So, some of this is just a figment of the way the data goes. Richer institutions are also ranked more highly because they have more money available for faculty resources.

So frankly, I don't even look at the U.S. News rankings except the day it comes out, and I go "Ugh, that's the way life is." I don't think that it's key. Students look at them at the beginning, but they don't come here and say "Oh wow, should I go to Stetson or James Madison?" They go to the place that's right for them.

Yeah, people always wonder how these rankings are actually calculated.

We know. We have the 72 page PowerPoint from U.S. News, and so we know exactly how they're calculated.

And the second part of your question—what are we doing about it? We don't play to the rankings. We're doing the right thing for the university, and if U.S. News wants to put a new factor in there and measure something in a way that we don't think is appropriate, we have no control over it.

But we are working very hard to get the national reputation of the university out more fully, which will raise the peer reputation score, which is 22.5 percent of the entire score. That's the only piece of it that we're really actively doing some things to deal with.

According to the Faculty Senate's reallocation proposal, in the 2014 Student Satisfaction Inventory, the factors students rated highest for contributing to their satisfaction at Stetson related to academics and faculty performance, while the factors rated least important referred to athletic opportunities. However, athletic spending has increased in recent years.

What do you believe is the payoff for increasing investment in athletics?

As we looked at the strategy for how to grow the student body here, we had two of many, many strategies. One of them was to start club sports, and we thought that was really important because some people enjoy it. We thought it would help keep our campus more vibrant on the weekends. And so, we went from zero club sports athletes to almost 400, and I think that it has accomplished a lot within the university spirit and has given students more things to do here.

Another thing that we looked at was building our Division I teams, and that meant bringing in women's sand volleyball, women's lacrosse, and football. I have no doubt

in the survey echoed these opinions in the satisfaction survey— It seems to me you're only talking to the same six faculty members for all of these questions.

Well, actually these questions weren't based on the opinions of specific faculty members.

And in fact, it had very little to do with the athletic program itself. It had more to do with bringing us diverse students from all over the country. Most of the data says that if you bring in an athlete in one of those sports, in football for example, just having that sport here will give you another two students along with the person who is playing the sport. So, it wasn't really about the sports, although people think it was. It was about bringing more students here, and because the football team doesn't get athletic scholarships, those students on average pay us what everyone else does to come here. So, we actually bring in over a million dollars additional income by having football here.

Students have often criticized certain aspects of university spending, such as landscaping, the football program, and "The Rock." Some faculty comments

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Which 138 people responded to.

Uh-huh.

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—However, the administration continues to advertise and speak about all of these things as successful ventures worth funding.

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Does this indicate that the administration's values differ from student and faculty values?

No, and I want you to see this picture. This is one of my very favorite pictures from last weekend from Hatter Saturday. *Shows me a picture on her phone of “The Rock” on Hatter Saturday.* (See Page 9) Don't tell me that students aren't going to love those rocks.

Well, did people organize that to— I have no idea. I woke up in the morning, and it was there. I have no idea. But students are painting them, they're putting slogans on them, they're sitting on them, they're studying on them. Ten years from now, when you come back for a reunion, you're going to say "Hey! Let’s get our picture by the rocks."

And of course, it was a student funded initiative in large measure from alumni groups, from some student money. Our Board of Trustees had their photo taken on the rocks. It's like the victory bell; it will become part of things that people remember when they come back on to campus.

So, I don't have any issue with the rocks. I really don't have any issue about our spending on athletics.

And if you were to look at what we've done to improve faculty salaries over the last six years through salary increases where there had been none three years before and through merit increases to bring faculty salaries up commensurate where they should be against our peer group, I think that you would probably find that we have spent a lot more on instruction and supporting our students and our academic programs than we have on any of the other things you mentioned.

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it would have a lot more to do than some narrow issue related to our endowment.

Now, I have done a lot of fundraising. One of my chief roles here is to raise money for the university, but that's not because there was an endowment problem.

That's because the university benefits by having a larger endowment.

Right. So, in the time that you've been here has it increased?

Well, it's increased dramatically because the stock market has turned around dramatically. So, we've gone—and these are only approximate numbers—we've gone from a low point of I want to say under around 125 million (you ought to check that number because I don't know it) to a high of cresting it around 210 million. A portion of that is because the market just grew, but we've raised about 65 million dollars in the last two and a half years. Not all of it has gone to endowment, but a substantial portion of it has.

The results of the faculty satisfaction survey show that only 10 percent agreed that "Faculty morale is good.

About The Rock, when someone wrote an article about that in The Reporter, they explained that the funding for it—because I know it was part of the senior gift—supposedly, the seniors didn't know what it was going toward.

Why do you believe spirits are so low?

Well, that's because the students who were deciding on that didn't communicate well. That's my presumption. I guess the administration does not tell the seniors what to give money for.

Only 19 percent of faculty respondents agreed that "Faculty input is valued by the administration," and 14 percent agreed that "The overall relationship between the faculty and the administration is trusting”—

I know that was one of the reasons, from at least what I've heard from students, why they were angry. They just didn't give students a heads up or—

Yeah, so Katie, what I want to say about these questions, if you're going into a series of them, is I've not seen the document, and I did not see the questions that actually formed the questionnaire. So, I don't know the reliability or the validity, if you've ever taken statistics, of the questions. So, I'm really not going to comment. I think this is the sort of thing—

I didn't know anything that.

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Oh, I know. It was the survey.

“Don’t tell me those students aren’t going to love those rocks.... It’s like the victory bell; it will become part of things that people remember when they come back on to campus.” that there are people who misunderstood why we did

“I am satisfied with the leadership provided by the President.”

I would say I don't really believe that spirits are low, and I think the faculty, the Provost, and I can have that conversation.

about it. I thought, "Wow, what are we excavating that we found all these rocks”?

I could provide you with them [the documents] if you wanted.

I've heard that one of the reasons you were selected as President was a perceived endowment crisis and your ability to turn that around. That just was hearsay—

Well, I'm leaving town tomorrow for ten days, so it's not going to help you to provide me with them.

Wow! I thought I was selected because I was the best person for the job.

Oh, well no! I said one of the reasons. *laughs* No, there was no endowment crisis. The stock market had taken a precipitous dive in late 2008 and early 2009, and I do have a chief financial officer background.

I have an MBA in finance, but I've been a university leadership person for 30 years. So, I would think if I had been a president for six years before here, I would think

Do you WANT to see them, though?

I will see them from the faculty when the Faculty Senate is ready to share them. I'll see them then. And I'd be very happy to engage them in a conversation with our Provost about them, but I'm not interested in engaging in that conversation through the student newspaper.

Listen to sound clips from the interview online at www2. stetson.edu/reporter/.

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6 NEWS

“Everyone’s Purpose is You” The Provost responds to concerns expressed by faculty and students

Q&A with Dr. Beth Paul Katie Dezes Editor-in-chief If you had to pick one thing, what do you believe Stetson's main priority or goal should be right now?

There is no question to me that Stetson's main priority all the time is student learning and student success.

What would you say is the most difficult aspect of your job?

I think what's challenging is keeping everything in balance so that the focus can be on student learning and success.

So, setting some priorities and collaborating throughout the university on advancing. That is my orientation every day.

So, can you elaborate a little bit on what you're balancing exactly?

Well, you're certainly balancing the economic model of the university. It's become a very, very challenging part of running a university, and while sometimes we are resistant to thinking about a university as a business—in having a business model—the truth is, if I don't look at that, I'm not going to be able to do the work that we're supposed to do.

So, a lot of it has to do with trying to get that economic model working in such a way that supports the things that we should be supporting.

It [the university] is a very complicated organization with all different kinds of constituent groups. So, how do you create an integrative community so that people really are focusing together on the priority, which is student learning and student success? Making sure that everybody has a place and everybody has a role, and everyone feels valued and feels supported in doing that work.

Photo credit: Katie Dezes

I think another priority is getting the institution to be the right size. We are a very diverse institution in terms of geography, as well as in terms of the kind of programs that we have, and it's very hard to support that with a very small student population. So, we've made the decision to grow our undergraduate population and we are also reinvigorating our graduate program.

That means we've been hiring new faculty. We've also been investing in some areas like student success to make sure that we're supporting the students that we bring in. So, I think those priorities are very clear.

What's the most difficult thing about managing faculty morale specifically?

Well, I think of my job as driving the mission of the university and welcoming people in the collaboration of driving toward that mission. It has included a lot of dynamic change, and I think dynamic change is hard for any organization to go through. We're human beings, and we differ.

So, I think some of the challenges come from communicating often and well about why we're doing what we’re doing. And for me, it really truly does all go back to the mission.

I am a very mission based leader. It does mean making choices, and making choices is hard sometimes because it inevitably leads to some disappointment.

So, I don't know how to answer your question directly, but that's how I think of my job; it’s to try to inspire people about the mission of the university and to find ways for us to work toward continuing to better that. I think we all have different relationships with that, in terms of our place in that project.

I think of my daily job as helping people to remember what the mission is. You know, keeping the mission in front of us and remembering that there is a reason that we do what we do. We are employed here, and there is a purpose I'm hired to fulfill—everyone here. Everyone's purpose is fulfilling the mission. Everyone's purpose is you. Everyone's purpose is helping to educate the students.

“I appreciate that you’re communicating.

I think communication is good. I think any communication is good, and I think it’s getting harder...I get 280 emails a day. It’s just overwhelming. So, I think continually telling the story of what our focus is is really important, so I appreciate you doing that.”

It's a lot of moving parts to keep that balanced. That's partly what's challenging. That's also partly what's so exciting—it is this big, diverse organization and there are a lot of people here who contribute to the university in all sorts of different ways, and there's tremendous value in that. So, how do we support that in moving forward?

So, do you think our priorities are currently straight, or do you think we need to work on some areas?

Well, I think that we've been increasingly returning student learning and student success to the center of the institution over the last few years, and that's been very deliberate—to really refresh our sense of our mission. Our mission hasn't changed. Our mission has been stable over time, but to refresh the community's understanding and focus on our mission and, this is a funny way of saying it, but re-celebrate the fact that we really are a place that cares about student learning and student success.

I think there has been appropriate prioritization of some of the support areas that needed to be addressed and that hadn't been addressed for a long time. One of those big chunks has been compensation of the people who work here, and that is the faculty, but also the staff. The institution fell behind over a long period of time. So now, it is taking us several years to get that back to where it should be.

The results of the faculty satisfaction survey show that only 10 percent agreed that "Faculty morale is good."

Why do you believe spirits are so low?

Well, I don't know. Any survey is a snapshot of a subsection of the people. I think the survey had a good response,

but it's not everyone.

I don't know. I don't know what might be contributing to that. You know, I suspect part of it is that we've been a work in progress over the last several years. There have been a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of ways we are trying to advance the institution. And so, for some people, I'm sure that that feels stressful, or it may feel overwhelming. Other than that, I don't know.

I think that there is a lot of respect for faculty here. And I believe that the staff play a very important role as well, but faculty are the core of what is driving the center of this university.

Several faculty members mentioned feeling bogged down by service work. They feel like they are attending so many meetings and workshops, they have little time for anything outside of teaching, including scholarship and creative work. Only 20 percent of faculty agreed with the statement, "I have adequate time outside of teaching and service to do my scholarship/performance work."

Has there been an increase in service work under the new administration? If so, what is the reason?

That's a great question. I'm going to take you in two directions in answering it.

I believe there has been an increase in service work. I don't know that for sure because I wasn't here before. But, we are deliberately advancing the institution, and in order to deliberately advance the institution, it takes the involvement of all the different constituent groups.

I believe that there has been some really important involvement of faculty, staff, and students in identifying, for example, the strategic plan of the institution. There's also been some great work done in terms of clarifying some academic policies. I honestly can't say whether it's more or less, but I do believe there has been important service that has had to be done.

“

I think of my daily job as helping people to remember what the mission is. You know, keeping the mission in front of us and remembering that there is a reason that we do what we do...Everyone’s purpose is fulfilling the mission.

Everyone’s purpose is you. Everyone’s purpose is helping to educate the students.”

May 1, 2015 7

NEWS I think that there is good work to be done in terms of taking a fresh look at our committee structures, which is some of what the Faculty Senate has been working on. We have sort of a historical accumulation of different committees and different groups and things like that. So, taking a fresh look at that and making sure that they are contemporarily relevant and the best way to organize things—that's just smart to do every now and then. Sometimes you find that you carry some committees along that with fresh eyes you might see, we probably don't need to do it that way anymore; we probably could do it this way, and it would be more efficient. We really do believe in having a collaboration among people in doing things. Sometimes that's hard.

I think the other thing is, I have never, ever, ever heard of a faculty, myself included, who has ever felt like they have enough time and who has never thought that time was a most pressing issue. And I think there are a couple of realities to that.

First of all, the job of a professor really kind of never ends. This was always true for me. I've been a professor for a long time, and it's not like a job where you have to show up at nine and you go home at five. It's a much different job, and it doesn't really end. It's very permeable around the outsides, especially now with the way that communication is and how readily people can communicate with one another in different ways. I don't stop working. I even sit there in my bed at three o'clock in the morning, and I'm still working, you know? And I was always like that as a faculty member. I just believe that it is a very holistic and full job. It takes discipline as an individual to organize your time and to manage your time in such a way that you build in time for those other things.

Some of my colleagues, I really admire them because they get up in the morning, and for two hours every morning they write, and then they come in and deal with all of this other stuff. So, there are strategies people can use to organize their time.

But I also think that it's made worse by a society that has really embattled higher education. I think higher education is absolutely under the gun, and I think that's very stressful for faculty. I think that increasingly faculty do not feel regarded by society and that there is a lot of suspicion and misunderstanding about what faculty do. I mean, the number of times people would walk up to me and say, "Oh, you get the summer off!" or "Oh, you only work 18 hours a week," because you're in class that time. It's just not true. So, I think that makes it stressful too. I'm not trying to be dismissive of it because it is a legitimate hard issue with the role of faculty. It is a very hard thing to do.

But you don't think you're requiring too much? You just think it's the issue everyone has of managing their time?

I don't think we're that different from other institutions, no.

I don't. We have some challenges of just being at a point in time where we had some making up to do. We had some work that we had to do to get ourselves to move forward. I think there are some things that contribute to our feelings here, but I don’t think we’re that different from what other faculty at other institutions feel. There are some institutions right now that are really, really struggling, and those are really tough environments.

“I am satisfied with the leadership provided by the Provost.”

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I don’t think we’re there anymore. So, I’m grateful for that. But, I really do think it [being a professor] is a hard role, and it’s misunderstood by society.

Contingent and adjunct faculty receiving adequate pay and being welcomed into a comfortable working environment is an issue at universities across the country. This problem was also raised several times within the faculty comments.

Are there any changes or plans being made to improve the treatment and pay of contingent and adjunct faculty at Stetson?

Yeah, we have been doing careful study over the last few years of all compensation and all categories, so that includes our non-tenured track, full time and part time faculty. We've been doing careful research of all of that and trying to benchmark our salaries against market targets.

The hard thing with adjuncts is that it's more of a regional market. When we look at the regional competitors that we have in this area—the other institutions—we're actually at or a little bit above the market compensation for adjuncts in our region. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, but in terms of our strategy of compensation, which is to try to be appropriate to the market, we are. But we've been looking at it very carefully because maybe we shouldn't be right at market. Maybe we should be a little above market, and so, that's what we've been trying to do.

We're going to try really hard within our budget to move a little bit on that this year.

But it's going to be a process over a few years because you have to fit it in with all the different priorities, and we're still trying to write the faculty salaries for our fulltime faculty too. So, it becomes a lot of different demands on a pool of funds. What I think we're going to try to do is sort of move methodically forward in each one. We've got other things to do in terms of benefits and cost of living in the area and stuff like that.

So, that becomes part of the conversation as well.

“

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Only 19 percent of faculty respondents agreed that "Faculty input is valued by the administration" and 14 percent agreed that "The overall relationship between the faculty and the administration is trusting."

Why do you believe faculty has this perception of the administration? Is this relationship damaged?

I believe that we have to establish a new normal of how communication happens, and how the work of committees—faculty committees—moves forward to effective decision making and then, implementation. I believe that communication is really hard in this day and age. We think that it's gotten easier because there are so many different methods. I think it's actually gotten harder.

I think that a lot of it is just allowing ourselves the time to get to the point where there is a new normal. And what I mean by that is that there is an expectation of the process by which something happens so that there isn't room for suspicion or things like that. It's been hard for me here to not have a clear path in terms of the way that the work of faculty committees moves forward and then gets heard by a bigger group of faculty, and then moves forward to decision. It's not been clear here. So, when things aren't clear, it feels insecure, you know. So, I think

I remain really committed to the mission of this place, and I really believe in it. So, I’m not stopping. And I have been one of the most vocal advocates of shared governance at this university, and I remain committed.”

Several faculty members claimed that the quality of their students is decreasing or Stetson's academic rigor is weakening in the comments of the faculty satisfaction survey. This concern has also been expressed by students. An increase in enrollment and reduced admission standards have been the speculated reasons for this problem.

Do you believe Stetson's standards are softening? If not, why do you believe faculty members are claiming that they are?

No, I don't believe that Stetson's academic standards are softening, and I don't believe the data supports that. If you look at the data, they've actually been slowly increasing over the last few years. So, no I don't believe that that is what's happening. I do believe, like every institution across the country like us, we do have a diverse student body in lots of different ways, including the differing abilities that they bring to the university. It's challenging to work in a classroom where you have a broad range of students. I think some of our programs vary in terms of how we're adapting to that or how rigorous we are.

But no, I don't think that's true. I think that we have been steadily increasing in terms of the quality of our students, and I really believe in a rigorous academic program.

A lot of what we're doing now in terms of refreshing areas of our curriculum is making sure that we are engaging students in as effective ways as we can. That's ongoing, and it should always be ongoing.

But no, I don't agree with the premise.

In 2012, Stetson was ranked third among the South's Top regional universities by U.S. News & World Report. We are currently tied for 6th. These particular rankings seem to be brought up time and time again.

Why do you believe our national reputation is falling?

And what can we do moving forward to prevent it from doing so even more?

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statistics are like six years out.

And then there's just the politics over that whole thing.

We like to say that rankings are—we love to hate them and we hate to love them. But it's a game that ends up being played. I don't think it's ever good, whether you're number one or whether you're somewhere else. I don't think it's ever good to overemphasize the rankings because I think that there are so many other things that don't go in there that say a lot about an institution.

But, that's a very complicated question that has a long answer. *laughs* But, I should say, I'm not worried that the university is slipping.

That is such a complicated question. I don't even know how to answer it in a short way.

It is in part due to methodology changes. It is in part meta-chart.com due to the fact that there is a lag in terms of graduation statistics that are included in there. The last few years, the graduation statistics that are included in there are from students that were here in the mid-2000s. In other words, some of the advancement we've put in place, we won't see the proof of that for a little while because the graduation

if we can keep on moving toward the point where we really have a clear path—you know, someone may disagree with a decision that gets made, but you can see how it got made—you can see how people had input, and it was expected that it went through this process. I think that we're slowly moving toward that, but I think it's going to take us a little more time to get there.

Some faculty members express that they do not feel comfortable speaking out and voicing their opinions.

75 percent do not agree that they “can speak up and challenge a current or proposed way of doing something without fear of retaliation."

Why do you believe this is?

I really don't know. I find my own experience of this community is that, in general, it is a community where there is hesitancy sometimes to have critical dialogue, and I don't understand that. In a liberal learning environment, I don't understand it. I wish I did.

Only 30 percent of faculty agree that "The Provost shows a significant commitment to shared governance with faculty," and 59 percent did not agree with the statement, "I am satisfied with the leadership provided by the Provost."

I just wanted to give you the opportunity to respond to that.

I think what I would want to say is, I remain really committed to the mission of this place, and I really believe in it. So, I'm not stopping. And I have been one of the most vocal advocates of shared governance at this university, and I remain committed.

Is there anything you would like to add or tell the Stetson community?

I appreciate that you're communicating. I think communication is good. I think any communication is good, and I think it's getting harder...I get 280 emails a day. It's just overwhelming. So, I think continually telling the story of what our focus is is really important, so I appreciate you doing that.

8 NEWS

Academic Integrity vs. Corporate Bureaucracy Dr. William Nylen comments on the direction of the university under its current administration Kaley Fulton Staff Contributor Dr. William Nylen is a Professor of Political Science.

He is a Senator on Stetson’s Faculty Senate and a Senate Representative for the University Athletics Committee. He came to Stetson in 1992 after being a teaching assistant at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at Northeastern University.

Do you think that the administration values the opinions of faculty in a general sense, and especially when making decisions about the long-term goals and future of Stetson?

This administration wants faculty to be “on-board” [with the decisions and long-term goals] so that we’re presenting a united front in what they understand to be the fundamental restructuring of the institution. When making decisions, they present their information, their charts, and diagrams.

There is some recognition of faculty concern.

They recognized that faculty salaries here are lower than at our peer institutions, but they also came in with a certain attitude about Stetson’s past.

The financial situation that Stetson was in was terrible, and restructuring was necessary. That’s why we essentially hired a Chief Financial Officer as President, rather than an intellectually and academically-minded President. While finances were a problem in the past, many faculty got the impression that they were lumped in by the administration with the problematic past; they felt that they were part of the problem.

The administration operates using a corporate model that means that performance must be concretely measurable with data, diagrams, etc. This data is used in assessing tenure, promotions, and merit pay [but it doesn’t give the full picture]. In senior exit interviews, the faculty and the student-faculty relationship were consistently noted as the most valuable part of the Stetson experience. We’re doing our job and we’re doing it well. Students are being placed in jobs and are being accepted at noteworthy institutions.

[Despite our value], faculty often feel that we’re being talked at, rather than communicated with, and that the committees in which we serve are busy work, with the final decisions being made by the administration.

about now. The administration has tried [to allow time for research and writing], but the corporate model of governance [under which the administration operates] is a much more insidiously-directed model. We have to assess far more than we ever did; we have to analyze ourselves and what we do.

The numerical values of student evaluations generate much more concern now [than they once did]. Professors have to ask themselves, “What weight will the activity be given in my assessment?” rather than asking questions like, “Do I like this activity? Does it help my students?” The administration might say, “We need objective criteria to evaluate performance,” to which I would respond, “The two deans I worked under knew what I was doing. I worked really hard.” I would rather receive a student evaluation that says, “I had to work hard, but I learned a lot; the professor is fair as an evaluator” rather than any number value evaluation of my performance. We can’t put it into a diagram, but who cares?

Do you generally agree with the future goals and direction of the university? What is your biggest concern about the long-term objectives of this institution?

I think that this institution needs a demonstrative academic leadership, not a financial leadership. This institution will rise or fall based on the reputation it has had for multiple generations as an academically challenging and rewarding institution. Many of us believe that we’re losing that and once it’s lost, it will be hard to re-capture.

The absolutely non-intellectual, non-academic leadership sends the wrong message to students. We are not socializing students that come here to think of this as a place that is supposed to create a mind-opening, barrier-breaking experience. Instead, we’re trying to make everyone happy in this cheerlead-y way, which is antithetical to who we were, are, and should be. We have faculty who come from the world’s best institutions and who publish great research. We have great students and those who are capable of being great, but the ethos that we have here, the culture here, doesn’t suggest that university is a transformative experience.

The ethos should be “We are going to knock you down, rock your world.” What does that mean? That means that we are going to make students work hard and challenge their preconceived notions about the world. If we try to do that we get told were doing it wrong and that we’re “not making our customers happy.”

I believe in the transformative capacity of university to take privileged children and make them into open-minded, curious adults, but I worry about our ability to do that [with such a cooperate and profit based culture].

“

For whatever faults Doug Lee had in financial stewardship, he was committed to multicultural education and transformative education— not for profit, but because it was the right thing to do. He didn’t always know how to turn his passions into programs, but he relied on the faculty and supported the faculty without bureaucratic crap.”

If you could change one thing about Stetson, what would it be?

The campus culture. Not among faculty, but the message that we send to students and parents. Marketing, admission numbers, sports, and student life drive the message we currently send. It should be driven by academic leadership and faculty.

“I think that this institution needs a demonstrative academic leadership, not a financial leadership. This institution will rise or fall based on the reputation it has had for multiple generations as an academically challenging and rewarding institution. Many of us believe that we’re losing that and once it’s lost, it will be hard to re-capture.”

What is the biggest challenge to you as a professor?

It’s always been time management. We’re expected to be the best teachers we can be. Most want to be teaching. I always knew I wanted to go to a small liberal arts school. But in addition to being teachers, we are trained to be scholars and researchers. Plus, we have the normal and necessary duties that come with the co-governance of an institution: management responsibilities, meetings within our school [for example, the College of Arts and Sciences], and department meetings. In the end, between publishing, meetings, family obligations, and grading papers, time management is tough.

The general perception of faculty is that the service workload has increased alongside the increase in the number of administrators. I’m not a junior faculty member, but they are being asked to participate in seminars and other types of meetings that are not necessary, as far as I’m concerned. Junior faculty need time to write.

I come from a tradition or a place where academic research and writing is a solitary endeavor. Just let me do my work; I don’t need assistance with it. I feel like I got that 20 years ago, [I was allowed to devote my time to my work as a junior faculty member]. I don’t know

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How has the relationship between the faculty and President changed since you’ve been here?

I’ve operated under two presidents: Dr. Lee and Dr. Libby. The two were very different. For whatever faults Doug Lee had in financial stewardship, he was committed to multicultural education and transformative education—not for profit, but because it was the right thing to do. He didn’t always know how to turn his passions into programs, but he relied on the faculty and supported the faculty without bureaucratic crap. He seemed to believe in the motto of what we used to call, “The Stetson family.” He was a personable and likable human being. He and his wife were absolutely sincere; they honestly loved and lived Stetson.

Without wanting to get too critical of the current President, that’s just not her. She’s good at what she does, and I’m sure she wants to help the university, but the faculty doesn’t believe she’s committed to Stetson in a real personal way. It seems forced.

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May 1, 2015 9

OPINION

Dialogue and the Living University Joel Davis Staff Contributor

Joel Davis, Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Faculty Senate, discusses what we can take from both the Faculty Senate’s 2014 Faculty Satisfaction Survey and the 2014 Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory to set goals for the university’s future.

To begin, I’d like to congratulate The Reporter staff for placing third in their “Best in Show” category at the Associated Collegiate Press National Journalism Convention. The Reporter has engaged in substantive coverage of Stetson this year, including some investigative pieces that demand accuracy and entail risk. Reporting on issues that have invested stakeholders is hard work—the kind of work that (dare I say it?) dares to be significant.

Stetson students and faculty both care more about academic quality than any other aspect of the university, according to 2014 surveys of Stetson faculty and student satisfaction. Many factors contribute to academic quality, but the bottom line is that we’re all striving to graduate students with the vision, the confidence, the knowledge, and the skills they need to thrive. We’re a very good university. By even relatively crude measures of our success

like graduation rates, we’re well above national averages—but our ambition is to be better still. The fact that we have been able to grow by nearly one thousand students on our DeLand campus and yet maintain our graduation rate is a testament to our students, faculty, administration, trustees, and alumni.

We differ among ourselves over how to improve, how to hang onto the progress we’ve made, and which weak points need to be addressed first. Those differences are healthy: a community that cultivates many points of view can grasp its environment much more comprehensively than a community dominated by a single voice or only a few. We’re less susceptible to group-think, and less vulnerable to blind spots, than a less engaged university.

The great enemies of productive dialogue are defensiveness, suspicion, fear, and denial. It hurts to learn that you’re wrong about something or that no one supports your point of view, and that pain intensifies when you make that discovery in public. It’s difficult not to get defensive. However, if we commit ourselves to the principles of inquiry that have organized universities for nearly a thousand years in the west, we can overcome defensiveness and fear. Our disciplinary habits of thought have developed to help us pursue knowledge wherever it leads us. Institutional imperatives, most especially Academic Freedom, exist to cultivate the conditions necessary for productive dialogue.

What should we do with our surveys of satisfaction?

The Faculty Senate thinks that Stetson ought to make some modest changes in its budget priorities in order to better support the research and creative activity of students and faculty, and also to improve the working conditions in which classes are taught here. We base our recommendations on survey data generated at Stetson and on peer-reviewed studies published in prominent national journals.

Stetson students really want to be pushed hard academically, as long as they have sufficient support and access to faculty. Students’ engagement is one big reason I love being here at Stetson.

We should also note trends in our surveys. Faculty report greater satisfaction with high-ranking administrators in 2014 than they did in 2012, and they report greater satisfaction with the support they receive for their work.

However, they continue to report having insufficient time for their academic work (in the classroom and in their professions); committees, meetings, and paperwork seem to get in the way.

Among items that students deem very important, their satisfaction with campus safety, billing policies, and faculty accommodation for different kinds of students has improved, but registration is causing significantly greater problems, and students report needing greater access to computer labs. Likewise, faculty report lacking sufficient time for advising students well. I think students need to prioritize setting goals for themselves more highly than they do in the advising process. Advising is about a lot more than helping students to register for classes: it’s about understanding lives and careers, and about shaping them in response to the wider world.

Finally, I want to urge everyone who reads The Reporter to talk openly about our goals and the challenges we face, and to overcome impulses to get defensive. We have a larger and more diverse student body and faculty than we did several years ago, and the students reading this paper have been a part of that transformation. New points of contention have arisen, but the good news is that students and faculty continue to hold the same social, institutional, and academic goals.

We face a turning-point in Stetson’s history right now. Over the next few years we can build on what we have started, or we can operate as selfish and myopic individuals and tear apart our university. That means all of us, students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and trustees, must advocate our ideas and fight for them, with both real passion and mutual respect. Above all else, we must fight for the ideals we hold in common, and hold each other accountable to those standards.

“This rock sucks big balls” Before Hatter Saturday

During Hatter Saturday

Katie Dezes Editor-in-chief

A Few Hours After Hatter Saturday

Photo credit: Katie Dezes

By Leonidas Dezes

Facebook.com/ Stetson Reporter

10 SENIOR SPECIAL

So Long, Farewell Bidding adieu to Stetson’s 2015 senior class

What’s Next?

Daniela Cadavieco, marketing major, Venezuela

Robert Prutte, math major, Fleming Island, Florida

“I’m actually moving back to KIssimmee where my family is. I’m going to help them out with some marketing; they really need it. Eventually, I want to start my own nutrition club out there.”

“After Stetson I am working for the Peace Corps to teach math in Mozambique.”

Elizabeth Sullivan, chemistry major, Seminole, Florida

“Right now my plan is to study medicine at USF, hopefully in the masters program for biomedical sciences.”

Graphic credit: businesswire.com

SENIOR SPECIAL

May 1, 2015

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In Heaven in ‘11: Throwback to Freshman Year

Elyssa Riviera, theatre major, Deltona, Florida

Robert Spellman, communications major, Romeoville, Illinois

Seirra Smith, business management major, Raleigh, North Carolina

“I met one of my best friends while working in The Commons. We would always sing along to Disney music, and everyone would judge us, but we wouldn’t care because they would be really entertained.”

“I definitely enjoyed playing on the soccer team.

Coming in, it was a really great introduction to the school.”

“My favorite memory from freshman year is when we had to form the 2015 thing [photo] when we first came in. That was really exciting, and it’s kind of crazy how fast time has gone by. Like four years? It seems like it just got pressed into one.”

Memorable Campus Experiences

Pop Culture Highlights of 2011-2012

Songs: Rolling in the Deep (Adele), Otis (Jay Z & Kanye West), Super Bass (Nicki Minaj), Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People), Somebody That I Used To Know (Gotye), Friday (Rebecca Black), Bangarang (Skrillex), Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen), Gangnam Style (PSY)

Elizabeth Fuller: “Things that were cool = Free drinks in the commons”

Movies: War Horse, Super 8, Fast Five, The Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi, The Hunger Games, Drive, Pitch Perfect, 21 Jump Street, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part: 2

Carley Fockler: “Things I loved - walking around campus and enjoying it including the spray of the fountain. Not to mention to puppies running around (something that encouraged me to live on campus for two years) [I miss] THE HAT RACK HAVING GOOD FOOD! VIVA LA NEWTONS”

Buzzwords/Memes: “Winning” (thanks Charlie Sheen), “Planking,” “Tebowing,” “Peplum,” “Selfie, “YOLO”

Margie Ellison: “Being able to sit in the commons without paying! NEWTONS!!! STETSON BURGERS AND WINGS” Sean Michael Cahill: “When the coffee shop had couches everywhere instead of uncomfortable airport furniture.”

Veronica S. Casal: “Chicken bruschetta at the hat rack, karma and good company ragers, and back then we were the largest incoming class #2011.”

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G IN

N N WI “Because the people who are crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do.”

— Steve Jobs

In The News: •

Occupy Wall Street movement begins

•

President Obama announces plan for troops to leave Afganistan

•

Penn State Child Abuse Scandal (Jerry Sandusky)

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Apple Iphone 4S is released

•

Death of Steve Jobs

•

Execution of Troy Davis

•

Lance Armstrong stripped of titles after drug scandal

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Downloading site Megaupload.com is shut down

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Mitt Romney is chosen as Republican Presidential candidate

•

President Obama officially announces support of same sex marriage

•

Kim Kardashian gets divorced from Kris Humphries after 72-day marriage

•

World population reaches 7 billion according to UN

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