To: WPI Community
From: Diran Apelian, Provost
Re: Organizational Changes and Related Issues
Earlier this year, President Brown asked each of the officers of the College to review their respective operations in an effort to reduce administrative overhead. In order for us to attain financial stability and to invest in our future growth, we need to reduce our cost structure by lowering administrative overhead, eliminating duplication, increasing efficiency and, of course, increasing revenues. The educational mission of the College should be our highest priority.
Over the last four years, some reduction in the number of faculty has take place (from 207 to 188, approximately 9%); at the same time, our enrollments have kept up and, in fact, we have gained market share during an adverse demographic period. Faculty productivity, measured by any index - courses taught, projects supervised, research expenditures, etc. - has shown a marked increase. In brief, our Faculty have responded valiantly to the revenue squeeze by increasing workload and by demonstrating educational leadership through developing new programs and ensuring that the WPI student's learning experience is innovative, challenging and exciting. Our faculty's dedication to WPI's educational mission is one of our most precious assets. President Brown and I agree that any further reduction of our operational expenditures must be derived principally from our support functions (administrative functions) in both academic and non-academic sectors of the College. Such reductions must contribute to lowering bureaucracy, but must also ensure that the "core business" which has retained our market share in difficult times over the last decade is preserved and nurtured.
It is the case that in academic affairs significant reduction in our cost structure by eliminating administrative personnel cannot be achieved at once because academic department heads, the Deans and the Provost are tenured members of our Faculty. However, by shifting positions from administration to faculty wherever it is possible and by examining the value added of our processes, we may be able to increase efficiency and reduce redundant work.
The purpose of this memorandum is to inform the WPI Community of the organizational changes which are being made.
1. The positions of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Dean for Graduate Studies and Research will be consolidated into one position, entitled Dean of Academic Affairs and will report to the Provost. The intent is to bring increased synergy between Undergraduate and Graduate education. William Durgin will be appointed Dean of Academic Affairs beginning the Academic Year 1995-96. Francis Lutz, who is tenured in our Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, will be on a leave for the academic year 1995-96 to pursue professional interests.
2. Undergraduate and graduate scheduling and registration for all academic activities (including Summer School and projects) during the entire academic year will be combined into one office, The Office of Project and Enrollment Services, to be headed by Kari Blinn, who will report to the Dean of Academic Affairs.
3. The Projects Office functions will be redistributed with all current services transferred to other offices and faculty. Chuck Kornik will continue administrative support for all projects. Administrative coordination of undergraduate projects with external sponsors will be provided, along with the administration of sponsored research, educational, and other projects, by the newly named Office of Sponsored Programs to be headed by Douglas Johnston, also reporting to the Dean of Academic Affairs.
4. Our part-time graduate enrollments have decreased significantly over the last five years. This past year we witnessed the benefits of a small investment we have made in marketing our graduate programs. In this vein, through resource reallocation, we are expanding the position for marketing our graduate programs and this position will report to the Dean of Academic Affairs. Continuing Education will also report to the Dean of Academic Affairs.
5. Lance Schachterle will be appointed Assistant Provost for Special Programs effective July 1, 1995. The Massachusetts Academy, school-college collaborative, the Frontiers/Strive Programs and Academic Advising will report to Professor Schachterle. In addition to these administrative responsibilities, Professor Schachterle will continue his teaching and scholarly activities in the Department of Humanities and Arts, and in the interdisciplinary and global programs.
6. Carol Garofoli will be appointed Director of Academic Operations (effective July 1, 1995) and will manage budgetary and administrative activities of the Academic Affairs Division. She will work closely with academic department heads in the coordination of the above. As Director of Academic Operations, she will report to the Provost.
7. The Office of Multicultural Affairs will continue to report to the Provost. This office oversees initiatives to diversity our campus and assist in our outreach efforts.
8. The administrative relation of the College Computer Center (CCC) is under review. Academic Computing, the Library and information management functions provide increasingly important support for our academic departments. These functions must be well coordinated. The CCC must, of course, continue to support all of the administrative needs of the campus. However, many of theses needs can be decentralized, enabling administrators to access essential data and carry out analyses on their own terminals rather than requiring custom tailored programs for each new request. Empowering of our workforce requires that essential information (the knowledge base) be directly accessible to all of our unit managers. The Provost's Office will play an increasing role in the coordination of these important support functions in the future.
9. All academic department heads will continue to report directly to the Provost. In an effort to decentralize, our department heads will take on additional administrative responsibilities in academic affairs particularly related to enrollment, marketing and outreach. We also need to decentralize at the departmental level. All academic department heads are asked to have in place these standing committees, which already exist in some departments:
-Curriculum Committee
-Operational Committee
-Professional Development and Tenure Committee
-Research, and (if applicable) Graduate Committee
Faculty members should be elected to these committees so that it is a representative body. There are benefits of having some uniformity in the infrastructural framework within our academic departments and of decentralizing departmental activities at the "grass-roots" level. In addition, collaboration among committee chairs across departments will be encouraged. Such a model will parallel our Faculty Governance structure which serves the faculty as a whole.
10. In an effort to reinforce shared governance, I am proposing that an academic implementations team be formed whose core members will include: Registrar, Scheduler, Director of Academic Operations, the Dean of Academic Affairs, COG chair, CAP chair, CGSR chair, CAO chair and the Secretary of the Faculty. It is envisioned that this group will meet biweekly or twice a term to review relevant operational issues, as a means of bringing together around one table administrative support functions and faculty governance. This group which brings together the various constituencies should address operational issues, whereas the Department Heads' Committee focuses more on strategic issues.
11. It would be beneficial for us to have a closer collaboration among the Departments of Mathematical Sciences, Computer Science, Biology and Biotechnology, Chemistry and Physics, particularly now as we are critically reviewing the first year experience. A workshop is proposed for the Chairs of the Curriculum Committees and interested faculty of these five departments with student government participation to establish dialogue, strengthen communications and develop a mutual perspective for the first year experience. Funding for this effort will be provided by the Provost's Office. There is much merit in looking at the first year experience from the perspective of customer-supplier relationships.
12. A larger presence is envisioned for undergraduate Biomedical Engineering on our campus, particularly as interest in Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering is growing. A Task Force headed by Professor Allen Hoffman of Mechanical Engineering has been established to guide this process. Their charge is to:
Facilitate the establishment of a Biomedical Engineering Program which will broaden programmatic offerings to our undergraduates, strengthen the Pre-Health initiative, and highlight the strengths of our faculty in various different departments. They must advise us on the implementation of a distributed system.
The benefits of an Associated Faculty model are evident when we consider the full range of bioengineering strengths of our faculty distributed among many of our academic departments. The Associated Faculty model is akin to a matrix management concept wherein we can bring together the needed human resources to carry out a variety of tasks or initiatives, as necessary. Such a model works well and reduces the need to establish a new department whenever an interdisciplinary area of importance emerges. It will definitely be to our advantage to expand our Biomedical Engineering activities by having more faculty involved.
13. The faculty currently associated with the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division will be asked to define a specific charge for the continuing role of the IGSD, with input from the whole community. The goal will be to define a support mechanism for global and ID/IQP programs that will be effective in enlisting support across campus for those programs. We are fortunate to have in place a talented and dedicated staff which can continue to serve our Global programs. Professor Hakim and other faculty members are diligently working to create a framework and procedures which address the following set of questions:
-What are the criteria for establishing an international project center?
-What are the procedures and criteria for selecting faculty who will be involved at a given project center?
-What are the procedures and criteria for selecting students to attend a given project center?
-What are the expectations and responsibilities for both faculty and students involved at an international project center?
By the end of D Term, Professor Hakim and the Advisory Board working with him will bring to us formal recommendations addressing the above issues. Administration and Faculty Governance will be asked to review these recommendations. An associated faculty model may well be the approach we want to adopt. The concept of a Project Board to have oversight of the IGSD activities also has some merit. It is reasonable to anticipate that we will have in place a well structured program with clear procedures and guideline by Fall of AY 95-96. Once this is in place, the Director of IGSD will be a half time administrative position.
There are other issues which have arisen during our analysis and strategic planning. Several years ago, the Freshman class' profile was 75% engineering and 25% non-engineering. Today, that percentage has shifted to 59-60% engineering. We have responded well to the interest shift, and the work of our faculty to broaden WPI's academic programs has served us well. In this context, we need to invest in human and capital assets to further build and develop our Humanities and Arts as well as Management Departments. The physical set up of these two departments is not optimal and we need to plan for their future. I have raised the question whether it is more advantageous to keep SSPS as a separate unit or whether there are merits to bringing Management and SSPS together as two departments under the rubric of a School of Management, Social Sciences and Policy Studies. Another option is to expand the Humanities and Arts to include the Social Sciences (thus a Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts) and to expand the Management Department to include Policy Studies (thus a Department of Management and Policy Studies). The intent is to strengthen, and not to dilute, our commitment to the SS requirement and to the IQP project learning experience. These are critical issues which must be discussed with the faculty of the departments of SSPS, Humanities and Arts and Management, and I look forward to those discussions.
In closing, I want to thank every one of you for your commitment and dedication to our students and to WPI.