I see that the Opening Convocation is this afternoon at 4. I've attached the program. I also see 20 new faculty members and 11 newly Tenured faculty. I have zero idea whether or not these numbers are high, low or indifferent for a school of Valpo's size.
The list of new faculty members does not distinguish between tenure track and non-tenure track. If they were all tenure-track, that would be very surprising - but my guess is that over half are non-tenure track (common for most private universities today)...which does not seem unusual.
In regards to tenure, the promotions to full professor seem reasonable (they already had tenure). In regards to being granted tenure, a tenure-track faculty member must gain tenure (through processes the University and specific to standards of his or her College) within a set period - otherwise they are dismissed. The period typically requires going for tenure at the beginning of the 7th year, though most universities granted all tenure-track faculty an additional year for COVID and grant an additional year for having a child. Thus, it was probably time for those 11 people and, if they meet the requirements, should get tenure. That said, it is a bit surprising to be granting tenure to people in disciplines with minimal demand - but it would be hard to deny tenure solely for that reason.
We should hardly begrudge the 11 pre-existing faculty members their earned tenure, when meanwhile this doc shows 69 new full-time staff.
As usual, the adminsitration has everybody very well trained to scrutinize faculty numbers (though the losses in faculty ranks are not visible here), while utterly ignoring the continued staff hiring and administrative bloat.
I would like to know if our new full-time staff colleagues in "Partner Solutions" or "University Marketing" are going to be assessed on how many declared majors or minors they are able to count to their names?
@vu84v2 Ultimately if electives or classes are still offered in low demand departments, one would like to have said professors be of a higher quality. Hence tenured staff. At least that is my thinking
Rez - I generally agree. However, a low demand department's ratio of tenured faculty members to seats filled in its classes should NEVER exceed the ratio for higher demand departments.
@vu84v2 We've been thru this a million times, and you still seem not to get it:
The ratio of faculty-to-filled-seats *would* be a much fairer metric, but that's not what the university uses... instead they use faculty-to-declared-majors in deciding all these layoffs and discontinuances.
Plenty of the departments/programs you're describing as 'low demand' are actually teaching some of the largest and fullest classes because of their roles in the GenEd or because of the popularity of the professor/class as an elective, whereas there are plenty of programs that have lots of declared majors but few students in the upper levels if they declare X but take cross-listed classes in Y to finish out the degree.
At any rate, I still think you're focusing on the wrong place to cut if you're still upset about not enough faculty getting cut, while not at all phased by the fact that the university apparently hired close to 70 new full-time staff.
VUIndiana - Just to be clear, I am very 'phased' about hiring 70 new full-time staff (which, from your comments, I assume are people who do not teach). That should be scrutinized (I suggest this is a valid activity for a Faculty Senate ad hoc committee).
Please note that the ratio I suggested gives credit for full classes because they are GenEd or popular. I have just seen cases where a department in a professional College finds a "like" liberal arts department (in which "like" is based on total number of seats filled and total number of classes offered) and the liberal arts department has three times the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty than the department from the professional College. In those cases, that liberal arts department should not be allowed to replace a tenure/tenure track faculty member who leaves with another tenure track faculty member. This does not mean that those faculty members from liberal arts who received tenure should not have been granted tenure (it is very likely that they truly deserved it), it just means a university needs to be strategic and judicious when hiring tenure track faculty.
Just to clarify: Those are 70 new employees not 70 new positions that have been hired some point in the last year, not since last summer. What percentage of those positions have always existed? Has there been a lot of staff turnover? I know I heard that in some areas (primarily athletics) our salaries are so low that Valpo is a "first out of college" or Stepping stone job for a lot of people which means lots of turn over in certain positions. I may be being testy as I know people who both teach but also work as staff at the university and I don't know that turning every position into "administrative bloat" is good either.
@beacon92 Yes, some of the 70 newly hired staff are new positions, some are existing positions getting re-filled. I agree with you that some of them are necessary positions, and have no wish to see people in integral education-related and student-serving positions get cut.
But the fact is that staff are not scrutinized nearly as much as faculty because everybody obsesses over the 'faculty-to-majors' ratio when no such metric exists or is ever applied to the staff side. A lot of administrative bloat arises in offices and roles where the staff actually see and serve no students at all; and they are never even discussed for cuts because admins, faculty, and staff across campus may not even know they exist on payroll. Here I am not thinking of the residential hall director or library staff type or facilities people, who do really keep the university running in a very concrete way, and were on the front lines of getting cut in 2020 when several hundred faculty and staff were. Rather, it is all the highly buffered and 'institutional effectivness' officers and 'assistant to the associate deans of xyz' and 'marketing professionals' who cost the university a lot scrutinizing everybody else, but are nearly invisibel since they do very little themselves to enhance the school's educational quality or student experience. That galls me, since meanwhile people question faculty-to-major ratios ad nauseum and question whether they deserve the tenure they earned after 7 years of teaching classes, day in and day out...
This year, this past Spring, the university did withhold granting tenure award letters to faculty members in programs under discontinuance review, quite blatantly explaining they had fully earned it but the university just wasn't going to award it because of the university's budget problem. As I understand it, at least one facutly member in that boat then was later awarded tenure, some months later. But, come on... The stingy unwillingness to give faculty their earned due -- when meanwhile we're buying real estate, buying out coaches, hiring staff positions at 70/year, it's unreal!
