Lessons from a Program Review
This past year, UNCG has undergone an academic portfolio review, a process in which the university has worked to adjust our graduate and undergraduate offerings to match our changing times. At times, it has been contentious, with a focus on the issue of shared governance. We have debated at length how the Senate as a representative body can give input into any major curriculum changes, our primary charge according to our Constitution. Recently Senate Chair Tami Draves has suggested that we review the process itself and offer suggestions about how to improve next time.
This idea has a lot of merit and I definitely support it. In my rambling through the Faculty Senate archives, I found that ten years our Senate came up with a similar idea.
In April 2012, the Senate had an Ad Hoc Committee on the Academic Program Review of 2011-2012. Biology professor John Lepri headed this committee, which drafted suggestions about what the Senate’s role should be in the future. In April 2012, Lepri presented the committee’s recommendations to the Senate, which I reprint below verbatim (Click here for the minutes).
“1. Academic Program Review (APR) should be focused on the intellectual value and quality of the academic experience and it should be directed by the Faculty.
2. The Faculty Senate, given its responsibility and obligation to guide and to assure the intellectual quality of the University experience, should be authorized to develop the leadership and structure needed for any future APR.
3. To increase the efficiency of the faculty and the administration, APR should be consolidated with existing evaluation mechanisms, including annual reviews and periodic departmental reviews. APR should be an ongoing process, with periodic all-inclusive reviews, occurring at an interval of every 7 to 10 years, or as needed, in the event of compelling changes in University direction or budgetary considerations.
4. APR should include the perspectives of external reviewers.
5. The results of APR, along with recommendations for changes, if needed, should be communicated to the Deans for further discussion with the Provost and Chancellor, these members of the administration will have primary responsibility to factor in any additional data needed to inform actions.
6. Ample opportunities for dialogue should precede any future APR and be carried forward throughout the process to invite all faculty and other university employees into the planning, review, and implementation phases.”
These words feel like the Senators buried a time capsule for us in the minutes. The document doesn’t offer easy answers, though. As we began this process last year, we as a Senate did not review these recommendations, to the best of my knowledge. I take responsibility for that. While I participated actively in the development of the rubric and Open Space forums, I did not do enough to consider the role of the Senate in final phase of APR curricular changes until the process was fully underway, and I similarly did not think to ask about what had happened in the past.
But the recommendations from 2012 are still useful to us today as we strengthen our shared governance. First, their comments help us understand how the question of the power dynamic between faculty and administrators has a long history at UNCG and in higher education. Shared governance is not a clear product, but a messy process that many people before us have tried to make useful. Second, the questions can be a template for us. Do we agree with those recommendations today? Do we have new or different insights from the previous APR process? Finally, if we do indeed have suggestions for future program reviews at UNCG, let us make sure that we go beyond just documenting them in the minutes. It will be important for us to consider how these ideas get transmitted across the years, when most of the Senators have left their positions. How might we ensure that future Senators find our recommendations more easily in the future?
