J. Robert Cooke, the dean of the faculty, believes Cornell and other universities are at a major crossroads and must take steps now to ensure their long-term viability.
"We're at a major turning point in higher education," Cooke said. "We have to rethink the way we do business."
Cooke has been doing just that. Since taking office July 1, he has developed a broadly based, four-point agenda that he hopes will engage faculty support and that he believes addresses concerns for the long-term viability of the university.
In a recent interview, Cooke was both passionate and realistic about that agenda. He noted that faculty governance, his fourth agenda item, means just that: The faculty as a body needs to -- and will -- set its own agenda.
"I don't want to be too strong in setting an agenda because the faculty needs to deal with issues the faculty wants to deal with," Cooke said.
Nonetheless, he added, it's the dean's job to help focus the faculty discussion, and he hopes his agenda will do just that. That agenda includes:
Cooke said concerns over university finances are nothing new, but nonetheless those concerns are not being adequately addressed. He predicts if that doesn't change there will be a real financial crisis at Cornell, as well as in higher education nationally.
He pointed out that all university employees want raises above the rate of inflation and that salary costs form the biggest expenditure in the university's operating budget. However, he noted, government support is not growing (in inflation-adjusted dollars) and a greater portion of operating monies are coming from tuition.
That has forced tuition increases above the rate of inflation, he said, despite a university resolution passed in March 1994 urging the university to restrict tuition increases to the Consumer Price Index.
"That's very unfortunate," Cooke said. "We are pricing ourselves out of the market."
Faculty must be brought on board to help create a reasonable spending plan, he said. "Basically, there's been an indifference to the economies of what we do and that must change.... It is in our own long-term interests to do this."
He gave one example: At Cornell more than 400 undergraduate lecture courses have four or fewer students. "No one is asking if that is a good use of our resources," he said.
Cooke has appointed a committee, chaired by Nobel Laureate Robert Richardson, vice provost for research, to begin looking into the future role of the research university. The committee will sponsor a colloquium late next semester in honor of Cornell President Emeritus Dale Corson, a member of the committee, on "The Future of the Research University." The colloquium, he said, will be a major national effort, "to help focus the university within the national context on what must happen in the next 20 to 50 years ... how our role must evolve and how to shift our financial patterns."
While Cooke said the financial issues facing universities, including Cornell, have sparked little sustained interest among faculty to date, he is confident that if the discussion is focused properly, "the faculty are reasonable people and will realize it is in our own long-term interests to do this."
There is a parallel with his second priority, improving the undergraduate experience, Cooke said. Surveys of graduating seniors have long indicated some level of dissatisfaction with the undergraduate experience, particularly in the area of pre-major advising and more generally with student-faculty interactions. President Emeritus Frank Rhodes and Cornell President Hunter Rawlings made improving the undergraduate experience a top priority, Cooke noted.
But faculty have been slow to embrace the concept and make changes, Cooke said, because they read that message erroneously to mean, "I want you to decrease your research to emphasize teaching undergraduates."
Cooke said that neither they nor he intends that inference. "We must excel in both teaching and research," Cooke said, and pointed to Richardson who, despite his Nobel Prize, has for 25 years enjoyed teaching an introductory physics class of 300 to 500 students each semester.
Cooke said he thinks the key issue in improving undergraduate education is not class size, as some have suggested, but rather the interaction between students and faculty. "Students have a desire to be engaged, taken seriously as mature people," he said. Something as simple as providing faculty members with photos of students in their classes would help faculty know students more quickly, he added.
His third priority, distance learning, eventually may provide part of the answer to the university's financial concerns, Cooke said. Distance learning can broaden the university's reach and impact on people worldwide -- particularly among alumni, who through electronic technology can become lifelong Cornell students. That could benefit Cornell both directly, through fees, but also indirectly by helping to improve the ongoing relationship with alumni and friends, a relationship that could pay off even more down the road.
Distance learning also can help provide solutions to two other concerns, Cooke said. A distance learning enterprise unit eventually could cover every academic discipline and provide an opportunity for faculty who are ready to retire but want to continue their work at a more relaxed pace. It also could offer new professional employment opportunities for faculty and staff spouses who currently have difficulty finding work in their field in Ithaca due to its geographical location.
Cooke linked his fourth priority, faculty governance, with the other three, saying that only through strong, effective, truly representative faculty governance can those goals be achieved.
He stressed that effective governance and real change cannot come from any separate group within the faculty, including the Faculty Senate. Rather, the senate must be representative of the faculty as a whole and be viewed as a legitimate voice for the faculty.
Finally, Cooke said, to begin the necessary broad-based conversations between faculty -- who shape the intellectual culture of the university -- and administrators -- who help determine policy -- the Faculty Senate is cosponsoring, with the president and provost, another in the ongoing Academic Leadership Series (ALS) workshops on Dec. 9. The goal of the workshop, which echoes the theme of Rawlings' annual state of the university message to trustees and alumni leaders last month, is to help Cornell become "the best research university for undergraduate education in this country."
The workshop, Cooke said, will focus on two priorities: the "Undergraduate Experience" and "Distance Learning." The topics, selected by the senate, build on themes discussed at previous ALS meetings and will help shape follow-up efforts by both the Faculty Senate and the administration, he said.
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