Many of the suggestions for improvement can be grouped under an “improve internal communications” heading. It appears that the dean’s office is not succeeding as well as it should at helping faculty and staff in the college understand what is going on and why it is going on. Some of this may be related to frustration with changes that are occurring at the University level (e.g., the evolving changes in health insurance), but I can also see, in hindsight, some instances where fairly large changes in the college were poorly explained. Perhaps the best example of a college-level change where communication was suboptimal involves the work that went into refining our model for student recruitment and retention and for the development and coordination of undergraduate and graduate studies.
During the spring and summer of 2014, the dean’s office worked closely with the department heads to refine this model and agreed to adopt a much more flexible approach coupled with the provision of new resources to each department for implementation. The new model was announced in a lengthy memorandum I distributed in the summer of 2014, and I can see now that this was a poor communication strategy. I suspect very few faculty and staff members read the memorandum last summer, and I suspect that very few are aware of its contents, even today.
The memorandum is now posted on the internal college webpage for faculty and staff and can be found at:
http://www.ed.psu.edu/internal/model-for-student-recruitment-and-retention-and-the-development-and-coordination-of-undergraduate-and-graduate-studies
This posting helps and makes the relevant information more accessible, but a simple posting like this will not resolve the communication difficulty. I am planning to seek additional opportunities to explain the refined model when I meet with departments and in my interactions with the Faculty Council.
As part of the effort to improve internal communications, I am working with our director of communications, Annemarie Mountz, to restructure our Connections newsletter. We had reached a point where Connections was distributed quite infrequently. Because so much information accumulated between the infrequent appearances of Connections, each issue of Connections became quite large. My suspicion is that at best faculty and staff just glanced at each issue and that we were falling down badly in our efforts to communicate internally. With Annemarie’s guidance, we have moved to a Connections format where the issues will be more frequent, shorter, and more user friendly. The new Connections recently began to appear. Bridges, our external newsletter, has also moved to a more frequent, shorter, and more user-friendly format.
We are in a season of major change at Penn State and internal communication challenges will no doubt persist. The new LionPath initiative, as well as the numerous changes in human resource practices and policies, are good examples of major changes that are occurring and where bugs in the new systems will surely arise and create frustration, as well as rumors and misinformation. We will all need to pull together to understand what is going on and why, and I welcome your ideas and suggestions about how to improve communications.
An additional (and related) finding in the review concerns a perception that the dean’s office sometimes either ignores or opposes the views of some members of the faculty. While I think some of this concern can be dismissed because decisions need to be made and it is simply not possible to please everyone, I also think there is a signal here suggesting that more needs to be done to create a climate where transparency is valued and is real and where there is a willingness to listen and to answer questions that surface. The new format for Connections will include a “Glad you asked ... ” section where a substantive question will be posed and an answer will be provided. I encourage you to submit questions to the column by emailing them to edrelations@psu.edu.
I will also be working with our Faculty Council to help all members of the faculty realize that the Faculty Council provides an open forum that is available to them to explore issues of concern. Ideas for additional steps we can take to foster transparency and a culture of mutual respect are very welcome.
In my response to the provost, I pointed out that I am quite proud of how our Faculty Council is functioning. I called attention to four communications on timely topics from the Faculty Council that I think are particularly noteworthy. We recently changed the internal faculty and staff webpage to give greater visibility to these peer-to-peer statements (please see: http://www.ed.psu.edu/internal) on important issues such as workload expectations, extended absences from campus, syllabus development, and (most recently) advising expectations. I see the Faculty Council as a major vehicle for improving communications with all members of the faculty.
The review also included suggestions for improving relations with staff members in the college. We have experienced considerable turnover in staff over the past few years, and we have lost a great deal of institutional memory as long-serving staff members have retired. We have made great hires, but the magnitude and quickness of the change have created challenges. We are taking steps to address these issues, including the recent professional development activity at Gettysburg for staff and faculty. Roughly 30 members of the college attended, and I think this was a good team-building activity. I will also begin to meet regularly with the lead administrative assistants and other staff members in the college and will become more engaged with the relevant issues. Suggestions for additional steps to be taken are welcome.
Finally, there was some feedback about the level of service being provided by the dean’s office and the suggestion was made that we consider adding resources to the dean’s office. I was a bit surprised by this suggestion, as my general sense is that faculty and staff members are suspicious of adding resources to an administrative unit, but I think the suggestion is borne out of a desire for support coupled with some misunderstanding about the support structures that are already available. For example, we have taken several concrete steps in recent years to strengthen research infrastructure support, such as the appointment of Dr. Yoonkyung Oh to provide research methodological consulting for PI’s preparing proposals for external funding. I will be working with the other deans and department heads to pay attention to what additional types of support are needed as we look to the future.
These are exciting but challenging times for higher education, and it is clear that Penn State and its component colleges and campuses will be affected. We need to think clearly, pay attention to the evidence, and communicate effectively. I look forward to the years ahead where we will assign a high priority to thinking clearly about the evidence and communicating successfully, and I welcome your guidance and engagement. These are worthy endeavors to embark upon as we move more deeply into the new academic year.
— David H. Monk,Dean, College of Education