There are a number of us "long in the tooth" that wonder why the faculty senate and aaup nuzzle up to Myron. We remember some of his actions, and faculty governance wasn't one of them. It lessens the credibility of those groups to a number of us when he emerges as a leader. But I also remember that Nixon seemed to resurrect his credibility after a time. Memories are short, and revisionist thinking is possible.

long in the tooth wrote:

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There are a number of us "long in the tooth" that wonder why the faculty senate and aaup nuzzle up to Myron. We remember some of his actions, and faculty governance wasn't one of them. It lessens the credibility of those groups to a number of us when he emerges as a leader. But I also remember that Nixon seemed to resurrect his credibility after a time. Memories are short, and revisionist thinking is possible.

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O canst thou more precise be, sland'rous rogue? No might nor greatness in mortality
can censure ’scape: back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes.

WS

long in the tooth wrote:

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There are a number of us "long in the tooth" that wonder why the faculty senate and aaup nuzzle up to Myron. We remember some of his actions, and faculty governance wasn't one of them. It lessens the credibility of those groups to a number of us when he emerges as a leader. But I also remember that Nixon seemed to resurrect his credibility after a time. Memories are short, and revisionist thinking is possible.

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I guess I will be the one that doesn't understand.  I also disagreed with some of the decisions made by Myron Henry when he was Provost.  So what?  As far as I know, he didn't violate the principles of shared governance and acted within his authority.  He is now a faculty leader who  supports shared governance and articulates faculty opinions in an elegant fashion.  He has valuable knowledge of how the administration works that allows the faculty to ask the pertinent questions. 

Just what do you mean by "nuzzle up" to Myron.  Just what do you expect the faculty to do?

 

 

LeftASAP wrote:

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long in the tooth wrote:
There are a number of us "long in the tooth" that wonder why the faculty senate and aaup nuzzle up to Myron. We remember some of his actions, and faculty governance wasn't one of them. It lessens the credibility of those groups to a number of us when he emerges as a leader. But I also remember that Nixon seemed to resurrect his credibility after a time. Memories are short, and revisionist thinking is possible.

I guess I will be the one that doesn't understand.  I also disagreed with some of the decisions made by Myron Henry when he was Provost.  So what?  As far as I know, he didn't violate the principles of shared governance and acted within his authority.  He is now a faculty leader who  supports shared governance and articulates faculty opinions in an elegant fashion.  He has valuable knowledge of how the administration works that allows the faculty to ask the pertinent questions. 
Just what do you mean by "nuzzle up" to Myron.  Just what do you expect the faculty to do?
 
 

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Mr. Henry's tenure as an administrator was not one marked by support of those principles of shared governance and he often acted outside of his authority. I know of specific incidents where senior, tenured faculty were formally reprimanded and threatened with termination without ANY sort of due process. I suppose that this is what you mean by "valuable knowledge of how the administration works". With this type of "knowledge" leading the faculty charge, no wonder you folks seem to always be stuck in neutral.

Mama Mo wrote:

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Mr. Henry's tenure as an administrator was not one marked by support of those principles of shared governance and he often acted outside of his authority. I know of specific incidents where senior, tenured faculty were formally reprimanded and threatened with termination without ANY sort of due process. I suppose that this is what you mean by "valuable knowledge of how the administration works". With this type of "knowledge" leading the faculty charge, no wonder you folks seem to always be stuck in neutral.

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I have no knowledge of your accusations about Dr. Henry, Mama Mo.  Please be more specific so faculty can determine is your conjectures are true.  Your guess as to what my reference to "valuable knowledge" is about is wrong.  I have no idea why you think the faculty are "stuck in neutral".  Care to explain?   

Mama Mo, you are entitled to your opinions, and I am entitled to comment on what you have written. Specifically, you wrote “Mr. Henry's tenure as an administrator was not one marked by support of those principles of shared governance and he often acted outside of his authority. I know of specific incidents where senior, tenured faculty were formally reprimanded and threatened with termination without ANY sort of due process.”

I don’t know the “specific incidents” to which you are refer. In every personnel case I had to deal with as provost at USM, I wrote detailed rationales for my decisions or recommendations, and the faculty members involved received timely copies of what I wrote. All personnel recommendations not involving promotion and tenure recommendations were thoroughly discussed with President Fleming. No actions were taken without his knowledge (By the way, there were only a limited number of personnel matters that I was directly involved in that were not promotion and tenure cases during my time as provost.) Formal grievance and appeals processes were always available, and no one was ever denied due process.

In promotion and tenure cases, I gave detailed written reasons to candidates for promotion and tenure for my recommendations, not just a short, abstract paragraph. Although I wrote the detailed letters to candidates and President Fleming, every promotion and tenure recommendation I made was the result of a consensus among the graduate dean, the vice president for research, and myself. As provost, I never acted outside of the authority a provost has. What authority does a provost have, anyway? He or she leads by persuasion, lobbying, engagement, coalition and consensus building, listening, and standing for the values that define the academy. But in terms of authority to make binding decisions, a provost really only has the authority a president permits him or her to have on any university issue.

Mama Mo and Long in Tooth, I take respectful exception to your assertions on shared (faculty) governance. I believe in shared governance, mutual respect that is earned and valued, integrity in administration and among faculty, and accountability at all levels. I have always embraced the principles of AAUP, and they are worth every minute faculty members in the Senate and AAUP USM have devoted to assuring that they are mainstays in the governance of our university

I believe the list below consists of clear examples of shared governance during the time I was provost. They appeared a year or two ago on this Message Board.

1. The 1999 strategic planning process was an inclusive one with feedback loops, and the resulting strategic plan reflected the diverse input.
2. The post-tenure review policy developed in the fall 1999 and spring 2000 was a partnership between the Faculty Senate and the Provost’s Office.
3. The annual planning and budget process was much more open than it is now.
4. I was a strong advocate for maintaining unspent balances within units so they could combine resources across fiscal years, for unit authority to invest some personnel savings for important purchases without risk to personnel lines, and for financial incentives for units to save resources (units benefited directly from their own savings).
5. I encouraged the Ernest Boyer approach to scholarship. That is, scholarship is a broad concept, and faculty can make maximal contributions to their units, colleges, and university in very different but equally important ways.
6. I overtly encourage units to stress the importance of diversity in appointments.
7. Major unit and program changes were discussed in timely ways with parties that would be affected [e.g., the role of USM Gulf Coast, the MBA at Stennis, and changes to the general education requirements (which I did not see through to conclusion)].

Mama Mo, feel free to call me at 6-6516 to share information on the personnel matters to which you refer. Of course, personnel matters are confidential, so we would need to be sensitive to matters of confidentiality in any discussions we might have. Also, if you call, I could offer other examples of shared governance in action while I was provost. I wish things had worked out differently for USM and me back in January 2001. But I have tried to contribute to USM in others ways during the last five years based on the values I held then and continue to hold now. I am just glad sufficient numbers of the faculty have shown enough confidence in me to permit me to serve in the Faculty Senate and in AAUP USM. I am proud to serve in both of these organizations because they are dedicated to shared governance, accountability at all levels, mutual respect, timely exchanges of meaningful information, integrity in the academy, and due process. The Senate and AAUP USM have made a difference, and I think they will continue to do so.

To Been on the Horn: as an undergraduate alum of Ball State University, I am not sure whether it was inevitable or ironic that my name has appeared so often in a posting entitled “Ball State Update.” I do hope any senior administrator who returns to faculty will become a respected and contributing faculty member.

Myron Henry

Myron,

Though I often disagreed with you as Provost, I always respected you. You were dealing with financial hard times. For a long time, I didn't realize how serious USM's financial difficulties were even then. We are fortunate to have you fighting the good fight with us.

myron--i respect your decision to respond on this board. but remember the original post was in reaction to dean pood's interview at ball state. i will respond to a few of your particulars.

you respond to mama mo on the issue of T&P indicating that you wrote detailed letters. you also indicate that others were involved. fair enough, but i'm enough of an insider to know what role they played. what you don't discuss, and has been an issue on this board in other threads, is how you weighed department, college, and decanal recommendations. since you are rightly concerned about confidentiality, let me ask the question generally. when a provost is going to overrule a T&P decision that has been supported at multiple levels, what is the role of faculty governance? in addition, if a provost thinks a college's T & P standards are too low, how do they change them to the level the provost thinks appropriate? (and i know provosts who have done that--not a popular situation)

i find your list of items to support shared governance to be little more than something a job applicant would list. governance is a process that involves a wide number of people. most importantly, those people involved in the process go back to the people that will be impacted by the process and talk to them. i guess that is what you mean by feedback loops. two of your items lacked this then.

the entire GEC process lacked, and still does by my judgment, involvement of the people involved. yes, they engage and engaged in discussion but it was "groupthink." i have a copy of the original memo from you forming the committee, and it said--this bluntly--that if you didn't believe the general education curriculum needed to be revised, you should not serve on the committee. was it broke? you thought so, apparently. i work from the assumption that shared governance means you want people who will disagree with you--don't surround yourself with "yes people." so we have a committee closed to different points of view. as the process moved along, the former deans were excluded and different points of view were as well. enough said, you wanted the illusion of shared governance--structure a commitee to support your point of view.

the Boyer model. you use that as an example of shared governance. how does that prove that? i'm familiar with that model and i don't see the link with shared/faculty governance.

and diversity in appointments? what's that got to do with "shared" governance. it's something that all people (faculty or otherwise) ought to try to work for.

long in the tooth wrote:

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 when a provost is going to overrule a T&P decision that has been supported at multiple levels, what is the role of faculty governance?

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A point often conveniently overlooked is that shared governance is not faculty governance.  An open, transparent, participative process resulting in an outcome that you may not like is not an assault on the principles of shared governance.

Thanks for acknowledging my side comment.  Your main question, directed to ex-Provost Henry, is not one I am equipped to answer.

Myron Henry wrote:

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Mama Mo, you are entitled to your opinions, and I am entitled to comment on what you have written. Specifically, you wrote “Mr. Henry's tenure as an administrator was not one marked by support of those principles of shared governance and he often acted outside of his authority. I know of specific incidents where senior, tenured faculty were formally reprimanded and threatened with termination without ANY sort of due process.”

I don’t know the “specific incidents” to which you are refer. In every personnel case I had to deal with as provost at USM, I wrote detailed rationales for my decisions or recommendations, and the faculty members involved received timely copies of what I wrote. All personnel recommendations not involving promotion and tenure recommendations were thoroughly discussed with President Fleming. No actions were taken without his knowledge (By the way, there were only a limited number of personnel matters that I was directly involved in that were not promotion and tenure cases during my time as provost.) Formal grievance and appeals processes were always available, and no one was ever denied due process.

In promotion and tenure cases, I gave detailed written reasons to candidates for promotion and tenure for my recommendations, not just a short, abstract paragraph. Although I wrote the detailed letters to candidates and President Fleming, every promotion and tenure recommendation I made was the result of a consensus among the graduate dean, the vice president for research, and myself. As provost, I never acted outside of the authority a provost has. What authority does a provost have, anyway? He or she leads by persuasion, lobbying, engagement, coalition and consensus building, listening, and standing for the values that define the academy. But in terms of authority to make binding decisions, a provost really only has the authority a president permits him or her to have on any university issue.

Mama Mo and Long in Tooth, I take respectful exception to your assertions on shared (faculty) governance. I believe in shared governance, mutual respect that is earned and valued, integrity in administration and among faculty, and accountability at all levels. I have always embraced the principles of AAUP, and they are worth every minute faculty members in the Senate and AAUP USM have devoted to assuring that they are mainstays in the governance of our university

I believe the list below consists of clear examples of shared governance during the time I was provost. They appeared a year or two ago on this Message Board.

1. The 1999 strategic planning process was an inclusive one with feedback loops, and the resulting strategic plan reflected the diverse input.
2. The post-tenure review policy developed in the fall 1999 and spring 2000 was a partnership between the Faculty Senate and the Provost’s Office.
3. The annual planning and budget process was much more open than it is now.
4. I was a strong advocate for maintaining unspent balances within units so they could combine resources across fiscal years, for unit authority to invest some personnel savings for important purchases without risk to personnel lines, and for financial incentives for units to save resources (units benefited directly from their own savings).
5. I encouraged the Ernest Boyer approach to scholarship. That is, scholarship is a broad concept, and faculty can make maximal contributions to their units, colleges, and university in very different but equally important ways.
6. I overtly encourage units to stress the importance of diversity in appointments.
7. Major unit and program changes were discussed in timely ways with parties that would be affected [e.g., the role of USM Gulf Coast, the MBA at Stennis, and changes to the general education requirements (which I did not see through to conclusion)].

Mama Mo, feel free to call me at 6-6516 to share information on the personnel matters to which you refer. Of course, personnel matters are confidential, so we would need to be sensitive to matters of confidentiality in any discussions we might have. Also, if you call, I could offer other examples of shared governance in action while I was provost. I wish things had worked out differently for USM and me back in January 2001. But I have tried to contribute to USM in others ways during the last five years based on the values I held then and continue to hold now. I am just glad sufficient numbers of the faculty have shown enough confidence in me to permit me to serve in the Faculty Senate and in AAUP USM. I am proud to serve in both of these organizations because they are dedicated to shared governance, accountability at all levels, mutual respect, timely exchanges of meaningful information, integrity in the academy, and due process. The Senate and AAUP USM have made a difference, and I think they will continue to do so.

To Been on the Horn: as an undergraduate alum of Ball State University, I am not sure whether it was inevitable or ironic that my name has appeared so often in a posting entitled “Ball State Update.” I do hope any senior administrator who returns to faculty will become a respected and contributing faculty member.

Myron Henry

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Sir, I never said that the incidents that I have specific knowledge of were related in any way to tenure and/or promotion. They were not. I will not call you at 6-6516 since I do not know what the rest of the number is and if it is a USM number definitely has caller I.D. I have very real legal reasons to not post under my name and thus do not want to be identified via caller I.D. either.

By the way the two friends in question are now both gone, both mostly to do with their T&P experience in the previous administration.  SFT does not have the market cornered on driving good people away.