AAUP to Investigate RPI
We're not sure which one we're getting with our AAUP investigation.
The AAUP (American Association of University Professors) announced recently that it will be investigating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for issues surrounding faculty governance, specifically the still suspended Faculty Senate.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The Ticker” had this to say:
The American Association of University Professors announced on Friday that its general secretary, Gary Rhoades, has authorized an investigation of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute over issues of shared governance. The group says the investigation by a panel of its own members will focus on the suspension of Rensselaer’s faculty senate. The office of Rensselaer’s top-paid president, Shirley Ann Jackson, suspended the faculty senate there in 2007, and it has not met since.
The AAUP’s press story is available here.
Here is another story from the Chronicle ‘07 where the AAUP publicly criticized the school.
I don’t really know what this investigation will entail, but I believe it is a step in the right direction to resolve this faculty/administration fiasco rift within our school community.
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I for one am anxious to see RPI’s reaction to this, and what emerges. Hopefully a mix of changes back to fair methods of governance, and lack of sweeping unhelpful new developments in the rest of the school.
I would be surprised, but pleased, if the Jackson administration cooperates with the AAUP investigation. Without a lot more faculty advice than the president, provost, and trustees now are getting, the administration is bound to be under- or misinformed about important matters. Any first-year management student learns that communication in organizations is a key to successful decision making; regrettably, some of our top administrators apparently never took such a course, or flunked it.
Ultimately, I blame members of the Board of Trustees for allowing themselves to be cut off from meaningful contact with students, faculty, and staff. Their information comes overwhelmingly from the president and her immediate allies — and even assuming that everyone’s motives are pure, which I rather doubt, information inevitably is filtered and distorted as it moves up a hierarchy. The only way trustees can protect against being victims of groupthink and administrative blinders is to establish direct contact with students, staff, and faculty. The AAUP investigation conceivably could provoke some of the more thoughtful trustees to realize that they have been unduly isolated.