coe-staff: Town hall follow-up

[Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann]

The following message is sent on behalf of Dean Randy Kamphaus:

Dear Faculty and Staff,

Thank you to those of you who participated in last Friday's Townhall. The decision to cease operations of the EMPL department is unprecedented for our college and university, and as such, has required years of study and consultation. The expressions of concern about faculty governance, opposition to this decision, and lack of clarity about how the academic programs will be situated in anticipation of the upcoming year were all valuable. Every piece of information helps me better serve the decision-making requirements of our elite institution.

I am writing you today because so much activity has transpired in this past week. The EMPL faculty have made great strides toward envisioning a better future. They have also made progress toward identifying their preferred personnel units and locations for their academic programs. Given the amount of work they have accomplished to date, I am confident that the faculty and their programs will be settled by graduation. In sum:


  *   Most EMPL faculty have identified their tentative preferences for a new academic unit affiliation
  *   Most EMPL faculty have also identified their tentative preferences for administrative structures to house the following academic programs:

     *   EDLD - Master's program, administrator leadership
     *   EDLD - DED program
     *   EPOL - MS program

  *   Faculty preferences for administrative structures for the following programs are pending:

     *   QRME - PhD Program
     *   Educational Data Science - graduate specialization

I will abide by these EMPL faculty preferences should they become the ultimate faculty choices. To move these preferences forward, I will be working directly with these faculty along with any impacted department heads to determine the most transparent way forward.  In addition, our faculty services group will be charged with deploying all digital marketing, web site enhancement, contracting and cross-campus agreements, development, and human resource expertise needed to position the faculty and their academic programs for success.

Finally, I will recommend deactivation of the LEADS minor in the interest of preserving faculty resources for the remaining academic programs. If agreed upon by the EMPL faculty, this proposal will move through the college curriculum committee process.

I have attached my PowerPoint slides from Friday which are also posted on the governance site<https://coedocs.uoregon.edu/display/governance/COE+Town+Hall+Meetings> (along with the recording of last Friday's Town Hall meeting). The slides provide examples of unit, program, and project closures that we have made in the past seven or so years. I ceased operations for some because of academic or operational problems and others for financial challenges, but all were compromising our college's progress in some significant way. In the case of EMPL, as you also heard from the Provost, departmental metrics were making it increasingly difficult for us to advocate for TTF faculty positions in the IHP process. Our college TTF headcount has decreased from about 53 a few years ago to 48 currently.

As we look to the future, we do need to revise and clarify our curriculum policies. For example, I have noted that policies of this ilk at other institutions suggest the formation of either an ongoing committee, curriculum committee or other structure, for routinely reviewing academic program performance indicators and recommending closures. We can work through any necessary clarification starting with the reinstatement of our policy review committee that was empaneled to both update our governance policy and to create a sequenced timeline for updating many of our college's relevant policies.

Finally, I'll share with you my aspirations for these academic programs. I hope that five years from now we will have leadership and policy programs with emerging national reputations, strong student demand, and recognition as the most important provider of leadership personnel to the state and region. I hope that our educational policy programming expands to include higher education policy, and perhaps human services policy. I hope that our enrollments expand and allow the hire of additional faculty to serve overwhelming national and international student interest. And I hope that we are among the first in the nation to offer master's programs in education data analytics and undergraduate coursework in educational statistics and research methods, and that we are nationally sought after to increase the number of graduates of our QRME Ph.D. program.

With much appreciation to the EMPL faculty and staff,

Randy





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