Faculty Senate has good chin-wag with chair of OU's Trustee board
By Corey Ryan
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
April 17, 2008
A common complaint among Ohio University faculty about the Board of Trustees has been a lack of communication. But Monday night’s monthly Faculty Senate meeting was a veritable flood of communication.
Daniel DeLawder, chair of the Trustees board, addressed faculty representatives with a brief, conversational presentation. Then the dialogue flowed.
Faculty Sen. Willem Roosenburg, a biological sciences associate professor, brought to the chairman’s attention statistics regarding OU’s faculty-to-administrator ratio compared to peer universities: Auburn, Clemson, Indiana, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Tennessee and Washington State.
According to the statistics, OU has a 1.13 administrators to fulltime faculty. The next highest rate is Washington State at 0.71 and the lowest is Connecticut with 0.08.
“Is it apples to apples?” DeLawder said of the statistic. “Are the comparisons made equally? I have no sense about what that number should be.
“If that is the case, then we obviously have too many administrators.”
The perceived surplus of administrators has long been a complaint among faculty at OU, who question why so much of the university’s financial resources go toward administration.
DeLawder told faculty that he plans to address the issue of faculty-to-administrator ratio at the Board of Trustees’ meeting later this week.
“An answer will come from the trustees,” DeLawder promised.
The university’s chief administrator, President Roderick McDavis, was another topic of debate.
Faculty Senate Chair Sergio Lopez-Permouth called for the development of a quality evaluation process that Faculty Senate can use to rate the president.
“We do have some responsibility as Faculty Senate because we represent our colleagues,” Lopez-Permouth said. “I have no other reason than to expect the best from this group.”
Lopez-Permouth presented a first reading of a resolution regarding the evaluation. One of the questions stemming from the proposal was who additionally to incorporate into the evaluation. He said Faculty Senate has been asked to evaluate Executive Vice President and Provost Kathy Krendl and asked fellow senators if it would be appropriate to evaluate other administrators as well.
Regarding the idea of evaluating the Board of Trustees, DeLawder said he favors the idea. But he said improved direct communication between the board and faculty, often requested by faculty representatives, cannot improve to any great extent.
“It would be very difficult to get that,” DeLawder said of a call for more frequent visits by Trustees. “It’s how much is reasonable to expect of these Trustees.”
University trustees are not paid for their commitment, and DeLawder noted that in his own case, he has commitments to his paying job as president and CEO of Park National Corporation.
Currently, the Trustees are in the process of visiting each college at OU to get feedback from students and faculty.
“As a representative for the Trustees, I am open for input,” DeLawder said. “I’m afraid if you evaluate me, you would deduct my pay.”
In other business during the Faculty Senate meeting on Monday:
• John Day, associate provost for academic budgeting, presented Senate with a presentation, “Understanding Health Care.” On the Senate agenda was a resolution about the “Health Benefits Surpluses,” specifically regarding a $3.5 million carry forward in health-care cost from the past year. The money, part of which came from faculty salaries, resulted from over-budgeting of health-care costs. The Senate resolution calls for the money to “be considered compensation, as it has been until recently, and as it has been officially reported by the university, and that it be used to defray and contain health-care costs as previously promised by the president.”
• Senate heard about an impending visit from Ohio’s higher-education Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, who is visiting OU April 30 through May 1. Provost Krendl reviewed the “Strategic Plan for Higher Education,” a report Fingerhut released on March 31. Krendl said the 140-page report presents a lot of ideas, but not a lot of detail. The report is available as a PDF at the Ohio Board of Regents’ Web site. “There are a lot of questions but I think there is a lot of opportunity,” Krendl said. “We have a governor and a chancellor working together to improve higher education.”
• After Trustees Chair DeLawder left, Faculty Sen. Douglas Bolon, professor of health sciences, noted how he served on the board of a hospital before entering academics. Two or three hospital staff members served on that board, which provided insights, Bolon said. The idea of a faculty member on the OU Board of Trustees has been mentioned to DeLawder by Senate Chair Lopez-Permouth, who said he was asked to present the idea to a board committee.
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