llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 293 01691 1293 This is to certify that the dissertation entitled ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE FROM THE "INSIDE" A STUDY OF UNIVERSITY OUTREACH presented by R. Sam Larson has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. degree in Educational Administration Man/Max flor professor Date 12/17 97 MS'U is un Al'fimmn w Action/liquid Opportunity Institution 0-12771 LIBRARY Michigan State University PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. To AVOID FINES return on or before date due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE whores/2 l" 1080936 (1W 20W AFR 165 "f3 (13,123; ZULM “R a b g U Q In?! 0 1 ma 11' 12" 1: JUL 0 2 70m 07 1 s 0 2f . NV! 0 8 o 7 "a '2‘ 1/98 cJCIFIC/DmeDueipes‘pM ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE FROM THE "INSIDE": A STUDY OF UNIVERSITY OUTREACH By R. Sam Larson A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Educational Administration 1997 This method to e: responded IC ‘Jnixersity a( Change initiz in two depal C0mpares fa as described members (a. docUment fr dOCUment a] dePaITmemg fatulty men university.“ Planning do This and 11mm ABSTRACT ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE FROM THE "INSIDE": A STUDY OF UNIVERSITY OUTREACH By R. Sam Larson This study uses a comparative case study design and an interpretive interview method to examine how faculty members at Central State University (pseudonym) responded to a planned change initiative -- university outreach -- as promoted by university administrators. The study examines faculty members’ responses to the change initiative through three comparisons: First, it compares how faculty members in two departments responded to the university outreach initiative. Second, it compares faculty members’ responses to the intended implementation of the initiative as described in a university planning document. Third, it compares how committee members (administrators and faculty) who participated in the writing of the planning document for the university at large believe faculty members responded to the document and the initiative to the responses of faculty members in the two departments. Overall, the university outreach initiative had little impact on the lives of faculty members in these two departments -- an observation that concurs with the university-wide perceptions of committee members who crafted the university outreach planning document. This study derived several propositions relating to planned change in colleges and universities as organizations including: (a) The View from the inside allows for observation their respor contextuali; responding infonnatior change inir members I and (fl inar This change fror with it raih Pen'ades 1h 0rgainizatio observations that cannot be made from the outside, (b) faculty members may construct their responses to an innovation through an iterative process of clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding, (c) we may not know what faculty members are responding to, (d) faculty members may have different types and amounts of information about a change effort, (e) university change initiatives may not match change initiatives at the department level, (i) it is problematic to predict faculty members’ behavior based on their own predictions/projections of their own behaviors, and (f) inaction can represent decision. This study contributes to the literature on organizational change by focusing on change from the perspectives of those who are expected to implement it and to live with it rather than only from the perspective of those who design it (the view that pervades the extant literature). This "inside view" advances our awareness of organizational change as a highly uncertain, complex, and personal process. Sex desen'e Sp: 1 \\ Dr. frank wai dilal] readings. And. 85 m; Thank you dissenarior 0r‘Qanizaric process an The iHSpiring a friends, B \flgmostad distraction: Las Momphyl j appreciate the middle What is rea COUnliesg h Jim! for all ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several groups of peOple have played pivotal roles in my dissertation years and deserve special thanks: I would like to thank my dissertation committee members for their support. Dr. Frank Boster helped me to see research as a disciplined process and teaching as a way of talking with one’s peers. Dr. Steve Weiland provided diverse ideas and readings. Dr. Kay Moore was a thorough and thoughtful reader of the dissertation. And, as my advisor, she gave me plenty of room to explore multiple Opportunities. Thank you for your support over the years. Dr. Anna Neumann directed my dissertation. Dr. Neumann helped me to see organizations and the people in these organizations in new ways. Her intellect and thoughtfulness made the dissertation process an exceptionally rewarding experience -- professionally and personally. The dissertation process, and indeed graduate school, would have been less inspiring and much less fun had it not been for the camaraderie of several good friends. Burt Bargerstock, Ruth Heaton, Gary Meyer, Susan Stewart, Karen Vigmostad, and Sanj ay Yedur provided intellectual stimulation and appropriate distractions. Thank you for being such wonderful friends. Last, and certainly not least, I would like to thank my family. Bob and Momphyl Larson kindly prodded me over the years. They are wonderful parents and I appreciate all they have done for me. Jack Spike Dearing -- my son who appeared in the middle of this process -- was the greatest of distractions and a constant reminder of what is really important in life. Jim Dearing, my husband and best friend, spent countless hours talking with me about my research and reading drafts. Thank you, Jim, for all you’ve done. iv List of Ta Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables Chapter 1: Examining Organizational Change from the Inside-Out Purpose of the Study Definitions Perspective and Need for the Study Assumptions Structure of the Dissertation Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Change in Institutions of Higher Education The Nature of Higher Education Institutions Divided Authority Diverse and Ambiguous Goals Loose-Coupling Implications for the Study of Organizational Change Framing the Study of Organizational Change Stages of Organizational Change The Social Construction of Organizational Change Implications for the Study of Organizational Change The Outreach Movement as an Innovation Research Questions Chapter 3: Methodology General Approach Interviews Document Analysis Case Study Strategy Confidentiality Research Questions Site and Case Study Selection Change Selection Site Selection Departmental Case Studies The Outreach Initiative Case Study Data Collection Protocols Entering the Field Transcripts and Notes Data Analysis and Interpretation Analyzing Departmental Case Studies Analyzing the Outreach Initiative Case Study ix \O\]O\kllb)r—I 10 ll 13 14 16 18 18 23 26 27 33 37 37 38 38 39 39 41 43 44 44 45 48 49 49 50 51 52 52 54 Chapter -‘ Chapter 5 Chapter 4: Chapter 5: Cross-Case Analysis Validity Checks Limitations of the Study Researcher Bias Generalizability Consistency Sample Size The Outreach Initiative Central State University The Development of the Outreach Initiative The Outreach Report The University’s Definition of Outreach Recommendations Outreach Committee Members’ Perceptions on the Outreach Initiative Committee Members’ Perceptions of Faculty Responses to the Outreach Initiative Committee Members’ Perceptions of Presidential Support for Outreach Committee Members’ Perceptions of the Impact of the Outreach Report Summary The Disciplinary Program Describing the Disciplinary Program The Program’s Strength: Teaching The Program’s Challenge: An Awkward Administrative Structure Faculty Relations Summary Clarifying Outreach Faculty Members’ Knowledge of the Outreach Initiative Faculty Members’ Perceptions of Administrators’ Motive for the Initiative Defining Outreach Summary Contextualizing Outreach Faculty Work Lives The Program’s Mission The Discipline’s Mission The Reward System Summary vi 54 55 56 57 57 58 59 60 61 64 72 73 77 81 82 87 89 93 98 99 101 104 106 112 114 115 119 122 128 131 131 133 135 136 141 Chapter 1 Chapter '. Chapter 5 Chapter 6: Chapter 7: Chapter 8: Outreach Decisions Departmental Decision Personal Decisions Summary The Professional Department Describing the Professional Department The Department’s Strength: Outreach The Department’s Challenge: A Changing Focus Faculty Relations Summary Clarifying Outreach Knowledge of the Outreach Initiative Motive for the Initiative Defining Outreach Summary Contextualizing Outreach Faculty Work Lives The Department’s Mission The Discipline’s Mission The Reward System Summary Outreach Decisions Departmental Decision Personal Decisions Summary Analysis: Addressing the Research Questions and Deriving Propositions Addressing the Research Questions (Plus One) Addressing a Preliminary Question Addressing Research Questions 1 and 2 Addressing Research Question 3 Addressing Research Question 4 Summary Lessons Learned: Planned Change in College and Universities as Organizations Looking Ahead, Looking Back Insights on Practice University Administrators College and University Professors Recommendations for Future Research Looking Back vii 142 143 145 148 151 152 155 157 160 165 166 167 172 174 177 179 180 181 182 183 188 190 191 195 197 199 200 201 203 212 216 221 224 231 231 231 233 235 237 Appendit Referenci Appendices References Appendix A: Appendix B: Appendix C: Appendix D: Appendix E: Appendix F: Appendix G: Contact Letter to Chairs Contact Letter to Faculty Members Telephone Protocol Faculty Protocol A (one hour interviews) Faculty Protocol B (90 minute interview) Outreach Committee Protocol Letter of Consent viii 239 241 243 244 251 258 262 263 Table l. LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Key Outreach Initiative Actions by Years with Associated Administrators 65 ix Dr hare iden These chz 19931. a r 1990 I. an. publics (e Bok.1991 a temple) Ba education; El'ems. pe institution purposefu Organizati. W110 seeks the 0rgani CHAPTER 1: EXAMINING ORGANIZATION CHANGE FROM THE INSIDE During the past two decades, leaders of higher education in the United States have identified the need to make significant changes in our universities and colleges. These changes include a renewed emphasis on undergraduate education (e.g., Bok, 1992), a reexamination of faculty priorities (e.g., Lynton and Elman, 1987; Boyer, 1990), and a transformation in the relationship of higher education and its diverse publics (e.g., Lynton and Elman, 1987; Enarson, 1989; Schuh, 1986; Boyer, 1990; Bok, 1992; Magrath, 1993). Prefacing these calls for change is a simple question with a complex answer: How do universities change? Baldridge and Deal (1983) wrote that the most important changes in educational organizations are largely unplanned, governed by a serendipitous flow of events, peOple, and karma. Even if the most important changes in educational institutions are unplanned, activities on many campuses demonstrate that change can be purposeful or planned. According to existing research, planned change in organizations typically involves what many writers call a "change agent" -- a person who seeks to modify the structure and process of an organization such that members of the organization have to learn new roles or establish new relationships (Dill and Friedman, 1979; Zaltman and Duncan, 1977). However, initiating a planned change does doll? in tethnolOEl (19731.1?- change. 11 teehnolog) stage is the innoration adapt. rede institution the hunter ol’these st: simply be Org universities individual it. Whent initiator ( 1]: Sightofho c011186. C01] facult Y autl institutiona; 2 does not guarantee that an organization will change as planned or change at all. The introduction of a change or innovation, such as a new policy or technology, to an organization is described by Rogers (1995), Berman and McLaughlin (1973), Levine (1980), and Fullan (1991), as the initiation stage of organizational change. Initiation is just one of three stages that these researchers say a policy or technology must pass through if, indeed, the organization is to change. The second stage is the implementation stage. The implementation stage denotes the entry of the innovation into the organization. Members of the organization "try it on." They may adapt, redefine, restructure, ignore, or resist it. The third, and final stage is the institutionalization stage. At this time, the innovation and the environment adjust and the innovation is (hopefully) incorporated into the routine of the organization. In any of these stages organizational members can decide to discard the innovation, or it may simply be phased out through lack of interest or attention. Organizational members may play different roles in the change process. In universities, administrators frequently initiate change in formal ways and rely on individual faculty members or collectives of faculty (e.g., departments) to implement it. When the control of and responsibility for the change process shifts from the initiator (the administrator) to the implementer (the faculty), the initiator may lose sight of how organizational members implement the innovation. This shift is, of course, complicated by the unique structure of higher education institutions where faculty authority may supersede that of administrators (Clark, 1987), where institutional and departmental goals are often diverse and ambiguous (Birnbaum, 1991 t. an identity (I and how i ignoring. I goremanc administra plausible ( 381. 10h "black b0) implement Change an. assume th; and €Xperi inaeti0n5_ Thi inferenCeS. [he inPuts uniVersity 3 1991), and where departments as loosely-coupled units act to preserve their own identity (Weick, 1976). Consequently, administrators are not likely to know whether and how faculty members and departments are adapting, redefining, restructuring, ignoring, or resisting the changes that they, perhaps with the support of faculty governance committees, initiated. As Birnbaum (1991) writes, university administrators "often see only the inputs and the outputs and then have to make plausible (but often untestable) inferences about the relationships between them" (p. 38). To better understand how change occurs in universities we need to open the "black box" between inputs and outputs to observe how those charged with implementing a change -- often faculty members -- respond to an expectation for change and how they interpret issues of authority and responsibility. In this study, I assume that studying such responses entails examining faculty members’ perceptions and experiences, both of the call for change and of their own and others’ actions and inactions. Purpose of the Study This study sets out to examine what Birnbaum (1991) calls "plausible inferences" and what others may call the "black box." In a sense, this study compares the inputs of an organizational change with its outputs. The input in this study is a university administrative policy in the form of a report from the chief academic officer. The output is how faculty make sense of this report and how they, as individual report. I Outreach Th research i' at C 81’ id matched 1 audiences. initiative - members scholarshi departmer Cr faculty mg COmmittee Which 1 re members ; Reponds a implement \ lCentra] g 1 iCemraI s mstlillilon 4 individuals, and as collectives or departments, respond (or plan to respond) to the report. The report at issue is the Outreach Report (1993) which was written by the Outreach Committee, a group of faculty members and university administrators. This study takes place at Central State University (CSU)'. CSU is a large research intensive, land-grant institution. In the early 19905, university administrators at CSU identified a need to make the university more responsive to society. They matched this need with a new model for extending university resources to external audiences. University administrators labeled this model "outreach."2 The outreach initiative -— that is, the new policy or change effort -— sought to encourage faculty members to extend their work to audiences outside the university as part of their scholarship and regular responsibilities by making outreach an important part of each department’s mission and the institution’s mission. University administrators (the initiators) introduced the outreach initiative to faculty members and academic departments (the intended irnplementers) through a committee and their report. The chief academic officer convened the committee, which I refer to here as the Outreach Committee, a group of about twenty faculty members and university administrators. The Outreach Committee wrote the Outreach Reportj, a document that defined outreach and made recommendations for implementing it. The chief academic officer and the Outreach Committee jointly sent 1Central State University (CSU) is a pseudonym. 2Outreach at Central State University is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. 3 Central State University documents have been retitled to protect the identity of the institution. the Outrei 1h Central St administrz responded recommer faculty mi administrz initiative 1 inferences Organizari. Th initiative r CSU10 St: needs OfS knowledge Outreach 3 Th: i; 5 the Outreach Report to all academic department chairs through campus mail. The purpose of this study is to examine how two groups of faculty members at Central State University responded to the outreach initiative promoted by university administrators. The study also considers the differences and similarities in how faculty responded to the outreach initiative compared to how the Outreach Report recommended that faculty should or might respond to it. By comparing how selected faculty members at CSU perceived and experienced the outreach initiative with how administrators and other faculty leaders envisioned the implementation of the outreach initiative (as indicated in the Outreach Report), we can see how or if the "plausible inferences" made by administrators mirror what goes on in the black-box of organizational change. Definitions This study relies on specific meanings for several words. The outreach initiative refers to a set of strategic efforts undertaken by university administrators at CSU to strengthen the university’s extension and application of knowledge to the needs of society. Outreach and outreach activities refer to the actual extension of knowledge to society by university faculty. The outreach initiative and a definition of outreach are detailed in Chapter 4. This study focuses on faculty responses. I use the word responses to cover a wide range of faculty comments about how they, their colleagues, and their department interpret : an implen faculty in to it. TI practitioni Whether 0 study Will responded decisions 16:580118 16; administrg Smdl’ Offe OTICe ll 13 exacdy th. at “US 01h€r3 C0“ itamed Ih Fat 6 interpret and make sense of the outreach initiative. This study also sometimes refers to an implementation stage. This refers to the period during the change process when faculty members "try on" the outreach initiative and decide whether or how to respond to it. Perspective and Need for the Study This study is directed at three audiences. One audience is administrative practitioners. The administrators who initiate planned change initiatives may not know whether or how faculty members adapt, redefine, restructure, ignore or resist it. This study will help illuminate for administrators how two groups of faculty members responded to one such change by focusing on those experiencing the change and their decisions regarding the change. On campuses where similar endeavors are under way, lessons learned from this study could inform implementation efforts or lead to administrators deciding to discard particular change efforts. For other campuses, this study offers suggestions on introducing a particular kind of change and what to expect once it is introduced. I do~ not anticipate that what happens at CSU will happen in exactly the same way at other universities. But I do believe that a deep and close look at CSU’S experiences -— from the inside -- can yield valuable insights and lessons for others contemplating related efforts. In a sense, this dissertation represents lessons learned through experience and especially through reflections on experience. Faculty members comprise a second audience for this study. In the process of being eng may beer) a change. This expe in particu Sc this study field of h: Perspectiy implemen Organized adopters ( Processes members [he sights listening ( making St "illSIde.0u 7 being engaged in this study as research participants, or in reading it, faculty members may become more conscious of how they and their colleagues construct and respond to a change, thus moving them to articulate their voices, needs and interests as faculty. This experience may lead to a better understanding of what keeps them from changing in particular ways, including what they value and what they may not desire to change. Scholars of organizational change in higher education are a third audience for this study. The literature on organizational change is extensive and growing within the field of higher education. Many of these studies, however, assume an "outside-in" perspective. Researchers using this perspective seek answers to questions of implementation failure, adaptation, and success by looking at the structure of the organization, characteristics of the innovation, and/or characteristics of the potential adopters or users. This study suggests that to understand change, and implementation processes in particular, we must go "inside" organizations and discover what their members see, think, learn -- in short, what they experience -- and how they respond to the sights and sounds around them. My method assumes that we can do this by listening carefully to organizational members as they tell of their personal efforts at making sense of the organizational events around them. This perspective assumes an "inside-ou " approach to research. Assumptions I have made several assumptions in thinking about and developing this study. first. indi The Outri outreach. be addres faculty in To quote 3 COUTSC ( appropria- members homes of emphasis 01111 CaCh ( mans Us the issue ¢ university the Unive campuses Universitie facu'ly, st example 1 8 First, individual faculty members are an appropriate unit of response and analysis. The Outreach Report (1993) called upon faculty, staff and students to participate in outreach. Further, this report suggested that the problems, needs, and opportunities to be addressed through outreach should be situated as closely as possible to individual faculty members. It is faculty who are critical to the success of the outreach effort. To quote Michael Fullan ( 1991): "In the final analysis each individual must decide on a course of action for herself or himself" (p. xii, emphasis added). A second, related assumption of this study is that the department is an appropriate unit of analysis for the study of faculty members. Though faculty may be members of institutes and centers, departments are the professional and intellectual homes of faculty and "the building block of faculty hegemony" (Clark, 1987, p. 154, emphasis in original). A third assumption is that outreach is an important tOpic of study. Not only is outreach of concern to Central State University, but it is being actively discussed on many US. campuses. According to a survey conducted by the Outreach Committee, the issue of outreach and/or university and community relationships has been discussed university-wide at Arizona State University, Cornell University, Iowa State University, the University of Minnesota, Oregon State University, Utah State University, and other campuses (Background Papers, 1993). Further, higher education leaders are urging universities to be more responsive to and better serve society by applying the talents of faculty, staff, and students to the social and economic needs of communities (see for example, Lynton and Elman, 1987; Boyer, 1990; Bok, 1992; and Magrath, 1993). WWW Tl problem. the organ administr Chapter I Chapter 3 Chapters initiatiye, Outreach to the ini‘ resPonder Depanme Spanning re311011563 Study 0f( administr; implemen Structure of the Dissertation This dissertation consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction to the problem. Chapter 2 reviews literature I used to frame this study, including writings on the organizational structure of universities, organizational change, and the nature of administrative innovations (with particular attention to the outreach movement). Chapter 2 concludes with a list of the research questions that guided this study. Chapter 3 discusses methods of data collection and analysis used in this study. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are case studies. Chapter 4 is a case study of the outreach initiative, presenting the evolution of the initiative, including the content of the Outreach Report, and Outreach Committee members’ perspectives of faculty responses to the initiative. Chapter 5 is a case study of how faculty in a Disciplinary Program responded to the outreach initiative. Chapter 6 presents how faculty in a Professional Department responded to the outreach initiative. Chapter 7 provides an analysis spanning the three case studies and directed at further exploring the question of faculty responses to the initiative. Chapter 8 presents recommendations for future academic study of organizational change in higher education and recommendations to both administrators and faculty in universities currently experimenting with the implementation of outreach and related efforts. ln develop r institutior include. coupling the proce organizar -initiatio Change fr COHSImCI SOClal Cor as an adrr University CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUALIZING CHANGE IN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION In this chapter, I review the literature that I used to frame my study and to develop my research questions. I begin by discussing features of higher education institutions that may affect how, or if, universities and colleges change. These features include: dualism of control or authority, diverse and ambiguous goals, and loose— coupling as a feature of organizations. Next, I discuss two frameworks for examining the process of organizational change. The first framework views change from an organizational perspective and posits that organizational change occurs in three stages - - initiation, implementation, and institutionalization. The second framework views change from the user’s perspective. This framework suggests that individuals construct the meaning of change; that is, it views organizational change as a process of social construction. I then briefly discuss the outreach movement and situate outreach as an administrative innovation (I discuss the outreach initiative at Central State University in Chapter 4). This chapter concludes with my research questions. 10 Bimbaun unn‘ersin when stu distinctio unn'ersin higher ec conflictir educatior aut0n0m( (Weick, Organizat 11 The Nature of Higher Education Institutions Many researchers and scholars (e. g., Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, and Riley, 1978; Birnbaum, 1991; Bergquist, 1992; Clark, 1987) have described colleges and universities as distinctive organizations. Some of these distinctions may be important when studying how planned change does, or does not, occur in universities. One such distinction is that administrators and faculty share authority or control in colleges and universities (Etzioni, 1964; Corson, 1960; Clark, 1987). Another distinction is that higher education institutions operate with diverse and often ambiguous or even conflicting goals (Birnbaum, 1991; Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, and Riley, 1978). Higher education institutions are also loosely-coupled organizations where relatively autonomous units (especially academic departments) often maintain unique identities (W eick, 1976; Birnbaum, 1991). I discuss these distinctions and their implications for organizational change in higher education institutions below. Divided Authority The administration of colleges and universities presents what Corson (1960) described as "a unique dualism in organizational structure" (p.43). Corson was referring to the existence of two systems of control or authority in universities and colleges -- the administrative and professional system. Higher education institutions do not operate under the principle of administrative authority associated with a power hierarchy or bureaucracy as many business organizations do (Birnbaum, 1991). In colleges with autl unit'ersit' said that the instit ddHllIllSll Etzioni‘s Clark l l‘. administt 152 l ore and resea 0f their c “'Oflx' der and Univ: academic aUlOUOmt administr m0“? autl universit3 In 12 colleges and universities, both faculty, or professionals, and administrators are vested with authority. In this sense, faculty and administrators share authority in the university. However, this authority may not be equally distributed. Etzioni (1964) said that it is the professionals -- the faculty —- who carry out the major activities of the institution. Administrators in colleges and universities serve the function of administering means to the major activity carried out by professionals. Thus, in Etzioni’s View, administrative authority should be second to professional authority. Clark (1987) also stated that faculty or professional authority may supersede that of administrators. He described faculty members as having "sheer personal control" (p. 152) over their work. For example, faculty members individually supervise teaching and research assistants, they supervise their graduate assistants, determine the content of their courses, and choose their own research projects. In Clark’s view, academic work demands personal control. Faculty authority is also linked to the role of academic departments in colleges and universities. Alpert (1985) said that academic departments are the key units of academic life and are virtually autonomous in their decision making. The relative autonomy of departments may result in departmental leadership directing central or administrative leadership (W eick, 1982a). However, some departments may have more authority or control over their own decisions, and may be able to influence university decision’s moreso than other departments (Clark, 1987). In higher education institutions, administrators and faculty members share authority or decision making roles. However, this distribution may be uneven or blurred. some issv Diverse a can mane ends in a l97Si 1 goals. m2 universiti diverse (] 311d everv goals of 2 Change b: and mile of Oven ( GI (1991)“, “umber 0 diVerge g may readi Orgaanafi 13 blurred. Faculty and departments may have more authority than administrators on some issues and less authority than administrators on other issues. Diverse and Ambiguous Goals Traditional views of organizational theory suggest that organizational leaders can manage or control institutional change by stating clear goals that link means and ends in a logical and straightforward manner (Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, and Riley, 1978). This View of change, where leaders can manage change through organizational goals, may not fit, or fit well, with the organizational realities of colleges and universities. In higher education institutions’ organizational goals are often highly diverse (Birnbaum, 1991). The university has its own goals, as does each department and every faculty member. According to Alpert (1985) and Birnbaum (1991), the goals of a college or university depend on the reality of the interpreter and may change by individual, department, or college. The result may be that each department and college, and each individual faculty member, operates with their own distinct set of overt or latent goals. Goals in higher education institutions are also often ambiguous. Birnbaum (1991) stated that higher education goals typically suggest a range of options with a number of potential solutions as opposed to specifying exact outcomes. As long as diverse goals are left ambiguous and abstract, members of universities and colleges may readily agree to them. But when these goals are concretely specified, organizational members might see them as conflicting with their own goals or those of their dep sense of function lBirnbau -are like link mea the diver college initiators 14 their department (Baldridge et al., 1988). To avoid goal conflict and still create some sense of coherence among the diverse and ambiguous goals, colleges and universities function by having participants agree on means (processes) rather than ends (outcomes) (Birnbaum, 1991). In colleges and universities change initiators —- either faculty or administrators - - are likely to develop change goals that are process oriented and that purposely do not link means with ends. In this way, change initiators may reduce or avoid conflict with the diverse goals across campus -- goals that may change by individual, department, or college. Perhaps, then, by keeping change goals somewhat ambiguous, change initiators will experience less resistance to the change effort. Loose-Coupling Weick (1976) described universities as "loosely-coupled" organizations. A loosely-coupled organization consists of coupled systems or events that are responsive to each other but also preserve their own identities and some sense of separateness. Loosely-coupled units, then, are often fairly autonomous. Loosely-coupled systems meet professional needs for autonomy, preserve novel solutions, facilitate local accommodations (W eick, 1982a), and are relatively unconstrained by centralized policy (W eick, 1982b). However, in loosely-coupled systems organizational members may also have difficulty in coordinating activities across units (Birnbaum, 1991). In loosely-coupled systems traditional managerial communication tools that rely on a chain-of-command for diffusing information (typically found in tightly-coupled systems) informat to the de coupled 2 occur thr departure friends a infonnati L colleges , coupling COllpling makes de depanme develop t the Organ of 00mm Uneven it Will Hort initiative \ 1 are likely feature of 15 systems) often do not work (W eick, 1982b). Thus, in colleges and universities information may not filter down directly or efficiently from the president to the dean to the department chair and then to faculty members (Birnbaum, 1991). In loosely— coupled systems, communication, or the diffusion of information, is more likely to occur through social or professional networks. That is, faculty members in certain departments are likely to hear and learn about university news and events through their friends and colleagues in other departments or in university administration. Thus, information is usually allocated unevenly in loosely-coupled systems (W eick, 1982b). Loose-coupling implies that departments and other units and collectives in colleges and universities generally operate independently of each other. Thus, loose- coupling can help faculty members meet needs for professional autonomy. Loose- coupling also facilitates distribution of authority because each unit or department makes decisions somewhat independently of central administration and other units or departments. Because departments are relatively autonomous, they are likely to develop their own goals, which may differ (to one extent or another) from the goals of the organization. It seems, then, that loose-coupling facilitates and encourages dualism of control and ambiguity of goals. Further, the observation that information flow is uneven in loosely-coupled organizations implies that departments and faculty members will not have the same information about university events -- such as a planned change initiative. 1 1As we shall soon see, even when faculty members do share information, they are likely to interpret it diversely -- a phenomenon that intensified the loose-coupling feature of academic organizations. lmplicati planned that. givi changes likewise certain c importan llllt‘t’l‘s‘i.‘ on each hamperir ambiguit Will] one initiative Conflict ‘ individug may ion or Sugger members initiamr' initiator 1 16 Implicitions for the Stud_v of Organizational Change The distinctions just discussed may have serious implications for how, or if, planned change occurs in a university or college. The division of authority suggests that, given a particular change initiative, university administrators may be limited in changes they can make among individual faculty or within collectives of faculty. Likewise, faculty members, as individuals and collectives, may not be able to force certain changes on the university administration or the institution. Perhaps what is important here is that, as stated in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities (1966), faculty members and administrators are inescapably interdependent on each other -- even as they exist apart from each other. The goals in colleges and universities are diverse and ambiguous. Rather than hampering the operation and management of a college or university, this diversity and ambiguity make it possible for many goals to be met -- even goals that may conflict with one another (Birnbaum, 1991). It is likely, then, that the goal of any one change initiative will conflict with other goals in the university. A change initiative goal may conflict with another university goal, the goal of a department, or the goal of an individual faculty member. To reduce potential goal conflict, the initiator of a change may focus the goals of the change on means (processes) rather than ends (outcomes) or suggest a range of options and solutions. However, goal ambiguity could also lead members of the institution to interpret the change in ways never intended by the initiator. In addition, institutional members may read too much goal ambiguity as the initiator being unclear as to what they mean or want by the change. I impact 0 academic may tho initiated members initiative and/or fr about ch faculty n departme Sputadicz lr Planned I reSpond 1 faculty it different At times, 80mg deg “I‘ll/emit; each dep; 17 The loosely-coupled View of higher education institutions also has significant impact on understanding how, or if, universities and colleges change. Because academic departments are relatively autonomous, the faculty within these departments may choose and carry out local initiatives -- which may be different from those initiated by university administrators for the university at large. Further, faculty members are likely to have different amounts and types of information about change initiatives. Departments where faculty members are loosely-coupled from each other and/or from other academic departments and university administrators, may not hear about change initiatives or only know scant details about the initiatives. Thus, how faculty members interpret a change initiative is likely to change within and between departments. As Weick (1982b) says, change diffuses unevenly, discontinuously, sporadically, or unpredictably if it diffuses at all in a loosely-coupled system. In summary, a college president or university faculty member may initiate a planned change and may have his/her own idea of how others in the university should respond to the change. However, we should expect departments (and other units) and faculty members -- each with their own sense of authority, their own goals, and different information -- to develop their own unique response to a change initiative. At times, what administrators expect and how faculty members respond may align to some degree; at other times, however, these may not align. The "black box" of university change is not, then, one uniform black box, but many black boxes -- one for each department and, perhaps, one for each faculty member. like all c organiza‘ changes organizer and Hub thinking scholars Rogers, level or; Organizat Birnbaum the OUtsir from the MM Fr identified mObiliZat 18 Framing the Study of Organizational Change The most stable thing about educational organizations, ironically, is that they, like all other organizations, change (Baldridge and Deal, 1983). The study of organizational change tends to focus on either (1) the antecedents or consequences of changes in organizational forms or administrative practices, or (2) how an organizational change emerges, develops, grows, or terminates over time (Van de Ven and Huber, 1995). This dissertation adopts the latter focus. As such, it requires thinking about organizational change as a process. From an organizational level, scholars have described the organizational change process as occurring in stages (e.g., Rogers, 1985; Levine, 1980; Berman and McLaughlin, 1973). From an individual level or a user’s perspective, scholars of organizational change have described organizational change as a process of social construction (e. g. Eveland, 1986; Birnbaum, 1991; Gioia and Chittepedi, 1991). Organizational change as viewed from the outside (i.e., the stages of change perspective) and organizational change as viewed from the inside (i.e., the social construction perspective) are discussed below. mes of Ogamzatml Chflgg Fullan (1991) synthesized several organizational process change models and identified three stages of change. The first stage, variously labeled initiation, mobilization or adoption, consists of the process that leads up to and includes a decision by all, some or just one organizational member to adopt or proceed with a change ( first exp final. sta refers to the svste lornatzk at differ: sequence are llOII‘ conceptu decision decision (1995, p, innovatic few indiv 1995) [ Ellen an r 19 change or innovation.2 The second stage, typically called implementation, involves the first experiences of attempting to put an idea or reform into practice. The third, and final, stage called continuation, incorporation, routinization, or institutionalization, refers to whether the change becomes part of the system or whether it disappears from the system. These stages are not necessarily time-ordered. Previous research (e.g., Tornatzky et al., 1983) suggests that different parts of an organization are likely to be at different "stages" in the change process at the same point in time. Further, these sequences may appear as overlapping and disorderly (Pelz, 1983). That is, the stages are not necessarily linear. Initiation. The initiation stage involves all of the information gathering, conceptualizing, and planning for the adoption of an innovation, leading up to the decision to adopt an innovation (Rogers, 1995). Rogers defined adoption as "a decision to make full use of an innovation as the best course of action available" (1995, p. 21). Members of a system may decide to initiate a change, or adopt an innovation, by consensus among the members of the system, or it may be made by a few individuals who possess power, status, or technical expertise in a system (Rogers, 1995). In colleges and universities, one person, the entire university community, or even an outside source may be involved in this decision process (Levine, 1980). Three activities take place during the initiation stage: Identification of a need 2Rogers (1995) defines an innovation as "an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption" (p. 11). or a nee need vvit envnonr tadstoz another the orga from tra \lanv c that mig identifv l l98 l ) n precede match a innovanr Organizer SOlt‘ing l innOVatit Stage of I Pdonuzi l°tntn 20 or a needs assessment, a search for an innovation or solution, and the matching of a need with an innovation. Organizational members typically recognize a need when environmental change makes existing boundaries unworkable, when the organization fails to achieve desired goals, or when they think that they can better satisfy goals in another manner (Levine, 1980). Once an organizational member(s) recognizes a need, the organization may seek a way to satisfy the need. If the solution is a departure from traditional practices, then the solution is considered an innovation (Rogers, 1995). Many organizations have people who look for new ideas in the external environment that might be beneficial to the organization. However, organizational members may identify solutions, or innovations, before they recognize a problem or need. March (1981) noted that solutions often drive change in organization, that answers often precede questions. That is, members of an organization may scan for innovations and match a promising innovation to one of the organization’s current problems. Once organizational members identify a need and a possible solution or innovation, they match the two. Matching is a kind of reality test in which the organization’s members attempt to determine the feasibility of the innovation in solving the organization’s problem at a certain point in time (Rogers, 1995). If the innovation. seems feasible, the innovation may proceed to implementation, the second stage of organizational change. The initiation process, then, consists of organizational members identifying and prioritizing needs and problems, searching the organization’s environment to locate potentially useful innovations, and conceptually matching the need with the innovation to see if an innor change 1 "need-II l actions, (Rogers. clarifyin confront this poi; effects a modify 1 organiza lDflOVtttlr That is’ the 3th mutual a and in tl adaption perfeCtly l 21 to see if or how well they fit. The identification of a need may prompt the search for an innovation, but it may also be the identification of an innovation that launches the change process -- or perhaps that launches the "realization" that there is, indeed, a "need. " Implementation. The implementation process involves all of the events, actions, and decisions involved in putting an innovation into use in an organization (Rogers, 1995). The implementation process typically consists of two activities: clarifying and adapting. Clarifying occurs when the members of an organization confront the innovation, and the meaning of the new idea becomes clearer to them. At this point, organizational members can identify misunderstandings or unwanted side- effects and take corrective actions. Adapting occurs when members of an organization modify or reinvent the innovation to accommodate the needs and structure of the organization more closely, and modify the organization’s structure to fit with the innovation (Rogers, 1995; Berman and McLaughlin, 1973; Leonard-Barton, 1988). That is, innovations adapt to existing organizational arrangements, and they transform the structure and practice of these environments (Van de Ven, 1986). This process of mutual adaptation (Leonard-Barton, 1988) underscores that changes in the innovation and in the organizational structure may occur simultaneously. The process of mutual adaption is necessary because an innovation ahnost never fits the organization perfectly, and organizational members must realign both to assure a good fit. The implementation phase, then, is a trial period whereby organizational member redefine member structurr and it b lnstitutir McLaug routinizr McLaug Stage as McLaug innovatir failure” P Stages Or Peeple 0 need 0r 1 Organiza. metmbers 22 members "try on" the innovation (Levine, 1980). Organizational members may adapt, redefine, restructure, ignore, or resist an innovation. At the same time, organizational members might adapt, redefine, restructure (to the extent they can), or leave the structure of the organization "as is" in response to the innovation. Institutionalization. If the members of an organization approve the innovation and it becomes part of their routine, they institutionalize it (Levine, 1980). Institutionalization occurs when the innovation ceases to be "new" (Berman and McLaughlin, 1973), loses its separate identity (Rogers, 1995), and becomes part of the routinized behavior or regular activities of organizational members (Berman and McLaughlin, 1973', Rogers, 1995). Discontinuance can occur in the institutionalizing stage as it can in any of the stages. As noted by Rogers (1995), Berman and McLaughlin (1973), Levine (1980), and Fullan (1991), the decision to reject the innovation can occur in any stage. In fact, "the implementation process often ends in failure" (Rogers, 1995, p. 401). People outside the organization may view organizational change as a series of stages or phases. The stages begin when someone in the organization (a group of peOple or one individual) initiate a change, perhaps as a result of an organizational need or perhaps because an innovation becomes available. Once initiated, organizational members consider implementing the change. During this phase the members of the organization "try on" the change to see if or how it fits. If the innovati ammo member thine dnmd mnvn person r 0f peop ilOll'et'e] lmplemr Organize ”insiders View ()[1 23 innovation "fits" the members of the organization, then these members might adopt and institutionalize it. If, however, the innovation does not "fit" the organizational members, they might adapt the innovation, and/or adapt the organization’s structure, so that the innovation does "fit." However, organizational members may choose to discard the innovation at any time during the change process. This perspective is helpful in illustrating that change is a process that involves many members of an organization. For examme, this perspective illustrates that the person or group of people initiating the change may not be the same person or group of people implementing the change. What this perspective does not typically do, however, is focus on how members of the organization who are initiating or implementing the change think or feel about the change. To examine how organizational members "try-on" the change and make sense of it -- that is, how "insiders" experience the change -- we can use a social construction perspective to view organization change. The Social Construction of Organizational Change Focusing on how an innovation moves through an organization is useful, but it may obscure how individuals make sense or find meaning in a change. Eveland (1986) wrote that we need to know the meaning of an innovation from the perspective of the recipient. Though he wrote about agriculture, the need to focus on the recipient or the implementer of an innovation applies to subjects other than agriculture. Eveland said: Accord: a phenc underst; thought Organiz; to them exPresse behaviori cOmpltur inVOlVec rescarch FUllan ( exlierien 24 ...there has been a consistent tendency to focus on the content of the change rather than on the meaning of the change for those who are changed. If one’s research is being sponsored by seed companies, it is reasonable to concentrate on the seed as the central focus -- but it is fundamentally limiting to let the meaning of the seed expected from the users to be defined entirely by the meaning as perceived by the developers/sellers. Only by taking an oblique look at the problem ~- from the point of View of the recipient systems —- are we likely to be able to take our understanding of technological innovations to its next productive stages (p. 309). According to Eveland (1986), the problem of innovation implementation is essentially a phenomonological one -- that is, one of understanding how people think about, understand, and feel about change relative to their lives and interests, and how their thoughts and feeling lead to human action. Rogers (1995) said that when organizational members first encounter a new idea or innovation it has little meaning to them. He stated: Through a process of the people in an organization talking about the innovation, they gradually gain a common understanding of it. Thus their meaning of the innovation is constructed over time through a social process of human interaction (p. 399). The need to understand change from the "implementer’s" perspective is also expressed by Van de Ven and Rogers (1988). They remarked that innovative behavior, or the social construction of an innovation, is a highly uncertain and complex behavior which can be best understood from the point of view of the actors involved in the process. It is unfortunate, they continue, "that little interpretive research has investigated the innovation process in organizations" (p. 63 8). Further, Fullan (1991) stated that it is the lack of understanding of how people actually experience change, as distinct from how it might have been intended, that is at the bean ot wmuw mama mdmh ueme.r Nwmm particip; wmmm Ogmnn nan. Smsh 25 heart of failed educational reforms. Underlying these perspectives is the belief that change is a process of social construction. Social construction is a view of the world as created through human interaction, where reality is created rather than discovered. Applied to organizations and related settings, social construction posits that organizational members actively create, or enact, the reality they inhabit (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). According to Neumann (1995), social construction examines the habits and changes of mind of the participants, "including what they know and how they learn, individually and in communion" (p. 4). This perspective is in keeping with scholars who View change and organizations from cognitive and affective perspectives (see for example Daft and Weick, 1984; Isabella, 1990; Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991; Neumann, 1992; Gioia and Sims, 1986). An example of social construction applied to the study of change in higher education institutions is a study conducted by Gioia and Chittepedi (1991). They studied how university administrators, and in particular the president, and faculty members, as well as other stakeholders, constructed the meaning of a strategic change effort in a large, public university. Gioia and Chittepedi described the construction of the change efforts as a process of sensemaking and sensegiving efforts. This process began with the new president seeking to develop a strategic vision for the university (sensemaking) and then engaging in sensegiving where he communicated his vision to the university stakeholders and constituents. His intent was to provide a viable interpretation of a new reality and influence stakeholders and constituents to adopt it as harm mmso propose in it vvc mmmt smmg' reahzed 1mm these st; make se adntinig Underste focus or 561186 of focus or Mdmm Study .. 011 the u are 111081 26 their own. Next, stakeholders, many of whom were faculty members, engaged in their own sensemaking processes. These stakeholders tried to construct the meaning of the proposed vision or strategic plan, what its effect on them would be, and what their role in it would be. They sought answers to questions about what this change would mean in terms of behavior, process, and structure. Then the stakeholders engaged in sensegiving by responding to the proposed vision and attempting to influence its realized form. Impligrtions for the Study of Organizational Change In this study, I view organizational change as occurring in three stages. Within these stages, however, one can look more closely at how those in the organization make sense of this change. During the initiation phase, the focus could be on how administrators or innovators construct a need or an innovation, and how they came to understand these needs and innovations. During the implementation phase one can focus on how those charged with using or otherwise enacting the innovation make sense of it. Should the innovation become routinized or institutionalized, one could focus on how persons reconstruct their understanding of their work, their workplaces, and themselves as workers relative to the innovation. This is what I explore in this study -- for faculty members, in particular -- relative to the outreach initiative at CSU. If the focus of an administratively led change initiative in higher education is on the user, then it is the stage identified as "implementation" where faculty members are most likely to engage in sensemaking activities. That is, faculty members make sense 0 lives an through the inst ambigUr structun tvill imp decide t meaning nature (3 influenc IOpic th: Society faCUltY, identitle. Centers, 27 sense or socially construct what a change means to them and how it may impact their lives and the actions of the department. Faculty members construct this meaning through human communication and other means of interaction —- relative to the change, the institution, and their own lives. Higher education institutions have a dualistic authority structure, diverse and ambiguous goals, and consist of loosely-coupled units. Given this organizational structure, it seems unlikely that administrators can direct how any single department will implement an innovation or change initiative. Even i_f departments and faculty decide to adopt or implement an innovation, they will construct and interpret its meaning differently and, thus, create a different form of the initiative -— this is the nature of social construction. The particular characteristics of an innovation may influence how faculty members construct, and perhaps re-construct, an innovation -- a topic that I discuss next. The Outreach Movement as an Innovation Outreach can be defined as the transfer of knowledge from the university to society. Outreach initiatives are the different ways that universities encourage their faculty, staff, and students to become involved in outreach activities. Fear (1997) identified four types of outreach initiatives. One type of initiative uses institutes, centers, or programs that maintain connections with external constituents. A second type re. restruct elimina changes overall memm l 1989) technolr med such as or a nev are no t adminis SYmboli “5110mm, 3 Clear I inl’Olver I973). . OI prod“ 28 type realigns and connects outreach with teaching and research. A third type restructures the institution to better meet the needs of constituents, perhaps by eliminating or combining departments, shifting investments and budgets, or making changes in the faculty reward system. The fourth approach positions outreach as an overall mission of the university and uses outreach as a means to "make its mar " in the marketplace of higher education. Each of these outreach models represents what Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole (1989) describe as an administrative innovation. These authors classify innovations as technological or product innovations and administrative innovations. Technologocial or product innovations are associated with a tangible item —- a hard device or product such as a new computer system or software, a new piece of equipment or machinery, or a new chemical or drug. Administrative innovations are intangible in nature; there are no tangible or hard devices, products, or prototypes associated with an administrative innovation. The "products" of administrative innovations are verbal or symbolic in nature - a law, a contract, a new organization form, or a set of new reporting relationships (Van De Ven, Angle, and Poole, 1989). Technological or product innovations typically possess clear and specific goals, a clear relation between treatment and outcome, passive (on the whole) user involvement, and a high level of certainty of outcome (Berman and McLaughlin, 1973). Thus, the developer (or initiator) of a technological or product innovation has some control over how a user implements the innovation. Consequently, a technology or product innovation is usually somewhat constant in its meaning from one context or individ' 1989). adminis innovat adminis \‘lclau; negotia mav va control l 1997 ), it is a F adminis interpre activitie 1992; a: PTOblerr t0 socie ”1936 le. greater, that the hemm, 29 individual to another (Berman and McLaughlin, 1973; Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole, 1989). The same is not true for administrative innovations. The outcomes of an administrative innovation are largely uncertain, the relationship of an administrative innovation to the overall institutional goal is typically unclear or unspecified, and administrative innovations require active user involvement to define them (Berman and McLaughlin, 197 3). Administrative innovations require the user to interpret and negotiate the innovation (Van de Ven, Angle, and Poole, 1989); thus, their meanings may vary from one user and context to another, implying that the initiator has little control over how a user implements an administrative innovation. The outreach movement, and the types of outreach initiatives described by Fear (1997), are administrative innovations. An outreach initiative is not a tangible product; it is a policy or organizational form. Consistent with the characteristics of an administrative innovation, scholars and leaders in higher education hold different interpretations about the need for institutions of higher education to engage in outreach activities. Proponents of outreach (e.g., Lynton and Elman, 1987; Boyer, 1990; Bok, 1992; and Magrath, 1993) have said that higher education needs to address the problems that really concern people outside of academe -- to serve and be responsive to society by applying the talents of education to social and economic needs. Many of these leaders have also described the need for knowledge by society as becoming greater, more pervasive, ubiquitous, and continuous. As such, they have concluded that the traditional approaches to transferring university knowledge to society through the direct educational work of teaching students, undergraduate and graduate, or througl based 5 univers Scholar as a fur Bover‘s facultv. Well. it teaching discipln mOVemr universi be harm ”PTOfess any, to t and Cot. Which ti t0 acade between members 30 through publications are no longer meeting the needs of our contemporary knowledge— based society. What these higher education leaders have called for are new ways for universities and colleges to meet the needs of the public. Many of these same proponents often apply the thesis of Boyer’s work, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990), to outreach: That is, as a function of the university, outreach is a form of scholarship. Consistent with Boyer’s work, Dearing (1995) described outreach as activities that integrate university faculty, staff, and students. Dearing also said that when outreach is done especially well, it is a scholarly activity that "cuts across" the traditional university functions of teaching, research, and service, and plays an important function of integrating diverse disciplines at the university. Not all scholars and leaders in higher education embrace the outreach movement. In his critique of land-grant colleges, Wendell Berry (1977) suggested that university attention to local needs and local problems is unrealistic and may actually Ebe harmful to local communities. Academic specialists, he said, would rather be "professionally reputable than locally effective, and that they pay little attention, if 5any, to the social, cultural, and political consequences of their work" (p. 148). Cote \. and Cote (1993) wrote that the potential costs of campus/corporate relationships -- which they described as an economic development outreach activity -- include "threats to academic freedom, less open exchange of information, exacerbating the split between campus "haves" and "have nots," conflict of commitment among faculty members, and subordination of fundamental institutional purposes" (p. 57). Jacoby (1991) public Americ ot ecor tor-itse researcl Elman. harming Linden: \l’alsho benefits abstract need to essence, PTOblem 31 (1991) suggested that it is a thin line between the transfer of knowledge and the use of public resources to subsidize private gain. He argued that university links with American enterprise may subvert education by shifting the focus to applied questions of economic interests to business, and thereby shifting the focus away from learning- for-itself or the asking of "big" questions. A tension arises between those who advocate that knowledge gained through research be more relevant to specific economic or social objectives (e. g. Lynton and Elman, 1987) and those who see academic linkages with the community as potentially banning academe (e.g. Cote and Cote, 1993; Jacoby, 1991; and Berry, 1977). Mary Lindenstein Walshok speaks to this tension in Knowledge Without Boundaries (1995). Walshok stated that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake has had enormous social benefits. She said: If we overly encumber the knowledge development process with advance claims for relevancy and no longer allow researchers and scholars to freely pursue their own creative ideas, we could endanger the expanding knowledge base and ultimately our ability to address real human problems and further our competitive position in world markets (p. 27). However, Walshok also said that we need to overcome the remoteness of abstract and intellectual knowledge from society as a whole. She suggested that we IAneed to provide more outreach to more potential beneficiaries of basic research. In essence, we need to find new ways to connect university knowledge to societal problems but not let the creation of knowledge be directed solely by an "applied" research agenda. prograr so in p to hovv are fair prograr departr process vvbat t) beyond an app] at C SL? outreac the ask The cor membe Program 32 When a faculty member purchases or "adopts" a new word processing computer program, it may change the way that he or she accomplishes a given task, but it does so in predictable ways. That is, the way that one professor uses the program is similar to how another professor will use the program, and the outcomes of the program’s use are fairly constant across professors.’ The outreach initiative is not like a computer program. The outreach initiative at CSU, and other universities like it, requires departments and faculty members to interpret and negotiate its meaning. In the process of constructing a meaning for outreach, faculty members at CSU may question what type of role universities and colleges should play in transferring knowledge beyond the university campus. Some faculty at CSU may see the outreach initiative as an appropriate way for the university to address the problems of society. Other faculty at CSU may, however, see the outreach initiative differently. They may see the outreach initiative as potentially harming academe, perhaps by diverting attention from the asking of "big questions" to the economic interests of business at the public’s cost. The controversy that surrounds the outreach movement may, then, affect how faculty members at CSU interpret and negotiate the meaning of the outreach initiative. 3Of course faculty will differ in how efficiently or effectively they use the program, and perhaps how often they use the program. process and the assume is likel admini outreac themse and tub individ' Even if Way the sites .. and fro COmmi depann the Chi. lmplem. greater 33 Research Questions Based on what we know about the structure of higher education institutions, the process of organizational change, and the characteristics of administrative innovations, and the outreach movement in particular, as presented in the literature, we might assume the following: First, the implementation of an outreach initiative on a campus is likely to be a local effort as well as a highly personalized effort. Second, administrators may not be in a position to demand or require departments to adopt an outreach initiative. Rather, faculty members in each department will decide for themselves if the department needs to respond to a particular administrative request and whether or not outreach is consistent with their goals, collectively and individually. Finally, how people interpret outreach is likely to matter a great deal. Even if all the departments in a university were to decide to implement outreach, the way they implement it -- the meaning that they construct for it locally in their unique sites -- will vary from department to department, from faculty group to faculty group, and from faculty member to faculty member. At Central State University, university administrators and an Outreach Committee" designed and initiated a model for instituting outreach, but academic departments were charged with its implementation. The purpose of this study was to 4The Outreach Committee is a group of faculty and administrators convened by the Chief Academic Officer at Central State University to develop a vision and implementation strategy for outreach activities. I discuss the Outreach Committee in greater detail in Chapter 4. examin t0 the r membe expect Specifi Sane l departr ohm: pnness hovv fa looked betvvee damn hmhy onn departr relatin the Oil MBthOr initiativ 34 examine how selected groups of faculty members at Central State University responded to the outreach initiative promoted by university administrators (and some faculty members) and to examine how faculty members’ responses compare to the expectations expressed in the Outreach Report and by Outreach Committee members. Specifically, this study explored how faculty members in two departments at Central State University made sense of and responded to the outreach initiative. One department had a strong association with an academic discipline and showed little evidence of a prior commitment to outreach activities. The other department had a professional orientation and a long history of engaging in outreach activities’. In this study I opened the "black boxes” of university change. I first examined how faculty members in two departments responded to the outreach initiative. I then looked for similarities and differences among faculty responses both within and between the two departments. Next, I looked at how the implementation of the outreach initiative, as described in the Outreach Report6, compared with observed faculty responses. Lastly, I compare how Outreach Committee members’ perceptions of faculty members’ responses compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments. My purpose in making this range of comparisons was to explore the relationships between what Birnbaum (1991) refers to as the "inputs" -- in this case, the Outreach Report (which represented the university outreach initiative) -- and the ’The rationale for choosing the two departments is discussed in Chapter 3: Methodology. . 6The Outreach Report is the official document that details the outreach initiative at Central State. It is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. “outpu and to the Ou have it OW“ w. they m ‘erStio kndw a exIlene 35 "outputs" of organizational change -- here, the faculty responses in two departments -- and to examine the plausible inferences the initiators of this change, as represented by the Outreach Committee, make about this relationship. Accordingly, this study asked the following questions: 1. How do faculty members in two departments respond to the outreach initiative? What patterns are evident in their responses? 2. To what extent do faculty members in two departments respond similarly to the outreach initiative? To what extent do they differ? 3. How do administrative expectations of faculty members’ implementation of the outreach initiative, as expressed in the Outreach Report, compare to the responses of the faculty members in the two departments? 4. How do Outreach Committee members’ perceptions of faculty members’ responses compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? These questions are purposely broad. The procedure of this dissertation was to have faculty members discuss the outreach initiative and outreach activities in their own words, and for me then to describe through their words as much as possible, how they made sense of this change initiative. I believed that by keeping the research questions broad, I would hear and learn things that I might otherwise not come to know and that would help me to interpret how these faculty members have experienced this administrative effort to plan organizational change. 36 Earlier in this chapter I wrote: The most stable things about educational organizations, ironically, is that they, like all other organizations, change (Baldridge and Deal, 1983). Scholars from many fields have explored and continue to explore how colleges and universities change. Currently, educational organizations, like all other organizations, are experiencing change at a very rapid rate. Some of these changes are unplanned, but many are planned. Many of these planned changes come from within the university -- from administrators, faculty members, or students -- and others come from outside the university -- from politicians or local citizens. Regardless of who initiates the change or where the impetus for the change comes from, one fact remains constant: a given change will likely mean something different for each member of the institution and each member is likely to respond differently to it. To paraphrase Eveland (1986), to move our understanding of organizational change to its next productive stage, we must look at change from the View of the recipient. I hope this study contributes to our understanding of how people think about, understand, and feel about change relative to their lives and interests, and how their thoughts and feelings lead to human action. inner and he Report membr The in issues the We inner ( lBOgd; lhtCI‘pr social analyn making CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY General Approach This was a study of how faculty members in two departments at Central State University responded to an outreach initiative promoted by university administrators and how their responses compared to the expectations expressed in the Outreach Report and by Outreach Committee members. To construct the responses of faculty members and Outreach Committee members I conducted a qualitative research study. The main objective of qualitative research studies -- in particular, those concerned with issues of social and personal construction —- is the development of an appreciation of the world as others experience it (Crowson, 1987). Such research "illuminates the inner dynamics of situations -- dynamics that are often invisible to the outside" (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992, p. 32). I used an interpretive approach in this study. An interpretive approach to inquiry asserts that there is no world of given and irnmoveable social facts "out there" waiting for an inquirer to observe, record, describe, and analyze. Rather, the inquirer constructs a close and careful reading of the meaning- making processes of people he or she studies (Geertz, 1973). 37 lntervf not to respon pieces gain. i respon that l . throug contac activiti ethnOg about; they 11- that 0i: /C7 0 2 =2 this Stt plannir deVClol 38 Interviews I collected most of my data through open-ended personal interviews. I chose not to conduct quantitative surveys (i.e. surveys with fixed-item, precategorized- responses) because they often obtain inforrnation that is "fragmentary, made of bits and pieces of attitudes and observations and appraisals" (Weiss, 1994, p. 2). I needed to gain, in the words of Weiss (1994, p. 2), "coherence, depth, and density" from respondents. That is, I needed to investigate the person and the context. I believed that I could better meet this need through open-ended or qualitative interviews than through closed-ended or quantitative surveys. I could have gained coherent, deep, and dense descriptions through extended contact with a given community or through direct or indirect participation in local activities -- methods used in ethnographic research. I chose not to conduct an ethnographic study because I needed participants to tell me how they felt and thought about an event that occurred ahnost one year prior to my entering the field and how they lived, in the present, with their knowledge of the past. Accordingly, I believed that open-ended. personal interviews were an appropriate means of data collection. Document Analysis I also collected and analyzed departmental and university documents as part of this study. I used departmental external review documents and university required planning documents to assist in a general description of the departments. However, I developed a deeper understanding of context by asking faculty to discuss the depart Case 5 investi met bj memb a "cast life co define €Xplair hovv ti hovv tl bl" fac membr “Hirer: the Uni pselldg Pl0l€S§ 39 department’s strengths, challenges, and faculty relations. gag: Study Strategy I chose to present my data as case studies. I did so because I wanted to investigate the outreach initiative within its real-life context -- a condition that is well met by the use of case studies (Yin, 1989). The real-life context for many faculty members is their academic department. Therefore, I used the academic department as a "case" for studying faculty members’ responses to the outreach initiative. The real- life context of the university-level outreach initiative itself is less clear and harder to define as a "case." However, I decided that an outreach initiative case study should explain how previous events in the institution helped to shape the outreach initiative, how the initiative was presented to faculty (i.e., through the Outreach Report), and how those involved in the development of this initiative perceived its implementation by faculty members. Confidentiality In order to protect the identities of the faculty and Outreach Committee members who participated in this study, I decided not to reveal the identity of the university. Thus, I have used the pseudonym Central State University (CSU) to denote the university. To further protect the identities of study participants, I assigned pseudonyms to the two departments of study —- the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department. In descriptions of these two departments I omitted any infom or aut l'nivc docun Paper Repor hear n study pseudr and in maske identit be kc; C0mm Partici Presen iItdivic' membr how g dhcnn making 40 information that might reveal the identity of the department‘. In addition, if the title or author of a report or document could lead to revealing the identity of Central State University, I assigned a pseudonym to these documents. In particular, the following documents titles are pseudonyms: Continuing Education Report (1973), Background Papers (1994), Central State C00perative Extension Service (1989), and the Outreach Report (1993). I assigned pseudonyms to all faculty and Outreach Committee members that bear no resemblance to their actual names. I also chose not to reveal the gender of study participants as an additional step to assure confidentiality. I assigned pseudonyms to participants prior to the first interview. I then labeled cassette tapes and interview notes using the pseudonyms. In writing the case studies, I deleted or masked specific elements that might identify speakers or lead others to guess their identities. These steps seemed reasonable to assure that participants’ identities would be kept confidential. I also masked the local names of institutional processes, committees, and other bodies to avoid identification. In the initial contact letter (see Appendix A and B), I informed possible participants that I would treat all data collected for this study confidentially and present it in a manner that would not permit the identification of any individual. I 1The decision to shield identities of the departments helps to ensure that individual faculty identities are also protected. This decision to protect faculty members does, however, limit the study in some ways: I had to omit discussions about how the disciplines with which the departments affiliate, and how the specific disciplinary work of faculty members, play out in faculty sensemaking and decision making with regard to outreach. zdso h and dc by an: inforn repeat .kpper lnvolv Reviev revievv Federe diffcre Posed I‘\J 41 also included in this letter assurance that I would assign pseudonyms to participants and delete identifying characteristics. I also added that my study was not being funded by any office or person at Central State University or elsewhere. I repeated this information to each participant prior to the interview (see Appendices D, E and F). I repeated much of this information in the consent form that participants signed (see Appendix G). Prior to the collection of any data, the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS) approved my study. UCRIHS is an Institutional Review Board at Michigan State University (my degree granting institution) which reviews and approves all research projects involving human subjects as required by Federal and University regulations. Research Questions The research questions listed in Chapter Two, and here below, are slightly different from the research questions asked in my dissertation pr0posal. The questions posed in the dissertation proposal were: 1. What do university administrators perceive that faculty members are doing with outreach? That is, what are their plausible inferences about the implementation of outreach? 2. How do faculty members respond to outreach? What patterns are evident in their responses? proce: during relatic l. 42 3. How do administrators’ perceptions of the implementation of the change (i.e. among the faculty) compare to the responses of the faculty members themselves? What are the implications of differences and similarities in administrators’ perspectives and expectations on the one hand and faculty members’ expressions and experiences on the other? I made subtle changes in my research questions during the data collection process. I did so because I wanted to expand the analysis to reflect what I had learned during this study. Below I have listed the revised research questions and their relationship to the original questions. 1. How do faculty members respond to the outreach initiative? What patterns are evident in their responses? (Same as original question #2) 2. To what extent do faculty members in two departments respond similarly to the outreach initiative? To what extent do they differ? (A new question that focuses on between—case analysis). 3. How do administrators’ expectations of faculty members’ implementation of the outreach initiative, as expressed in the Outreach Report, compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? (Similar to original question #3). 4. How do Outreach Committee members’ perceptions of faculty members’ responses compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? (Similar to original question #1, adjusted to reflect the new composition of the administrative case study). focuse selectr (see d concer origin. percer analys memb Outrer admin decide Repor might eXperi this cl 1 discr 43 One substantive change in these questions was the addition of question two that focuses on a between-case comparison. This was a logical question to ask given that I selected the departments based on the expectation that faculty responses would vary (see discussion below under case study selection). The other substantive change concerned the composition of the administrator case study (new question four). As originally envisioned, I wanted the case to include university administrators’ perceptions of faculty implementation of the outreach initiative. After extensive analysis of the study site, I decided to include the perceptions of Outreach Committee members who would not necessarily be university administrators. I realized that the Outreach Report (a product of the Outreach Committee) was the closest thing to an administratively endorsed policy statement on the outreach initiative. Accordingly, I decided to restructure the administrative case study to focus more on the Outreach Report and Outreach Committee members -- faculty members and administrators who might have informed and interesting perceptions of how faculty members at CSU experienced and responded to the university outreach initiative. UCRIHS approved this change. Site and Case Study Selection I had to make a series of decisions about what and whom to study and where. I discuss below how I made these decisions. g2 g i chose reason is. the outrea one-yr Still h; and re indivir \vould interes faculo COmm how fi faculty Centre I Chos 44 Change Selection New policy, and changes in general, occur regularly on university campuses. I chose to study the outreach initiative rather than another change initiative for two reasons. One reason was that the outreach initiative was temporally convenient. That is, the Outreach Committee and the Chief Academic Officer had introduced the outreach policy (the Outreach Report) to the university community a little less than one-year prior to the collection of my data. Thus, it was likely that the policy would still have currency with faculty members -- they would be able to recall the initiative and respond to it. Further, the time lapse seemed sufficient for faculty members as individuals, and as collectives in a department, to consider what, if any, action they would take in response to the initiative. A second reason for studying the outreach initiative is that I am personally interested in the ways that universities try to connect themselves -- meaning the faculty, staff, and students who are members of the university -- to external communities. The outreach initiative, then, afforded the opportunity to study in-depth how faculty members in two departments reacted to a policy designed to encourage faculty members to work with community groups or external constituents. Site Selection As mentioned in Chapter 1 of this study, many other universities, including Central State University, had or were discussing outreach initiatives on their campuses. I chose Central State University to study because I had had previous experiences in the insun thenr intera admit study interv dean ] dean . IteWsl. Outrea wnht th de reason mOre . 45 institution and knew who to approach about conducting the study and how to approach them. Further, I believed that I knew enough about the institution such that I could interact comfortably, perhaps more like an insider, with faculty members and administrators. Departmental Case Studies Due to design constraints, I had to limit the number of departments I would study and the number of faculty members within each department that I would interview. I discuss below how I chose the departments and the faculty members. Selecting the Dgpartments. I selected two departments in a college where the dean had been vocal in his/her support of the outreach initiative. I reasoned that a dean who was verbally supportive of the outreach initiative, as evidenced in college newsletters and university publications, would likely have shared information about the outreach initiative With his or her faculty and perhaps encouraged its adoption. I met with the dean of the college to discuss the study and the dean endorsed it. I selected two departments that I predicted would vary in responses. I varied the departments on their normal (or pre-initiative) orientation to outreach activities. I reasoned that departments with a history of engaging in outreach activities would be more comfortable with the outreach initiative and therefore make sense of it differently thanc depan as has not he appro. Depar pseud outree pardc the de time v Chahs associ institu cases - Partici telth. had so with 0 study. 46 than departments that did not have a history of engaging in outreach departments? I asked the dean of the college to describe the outreach commitments of each department in the college. The result was a list of departments the dean characterized as having a prior commitment to outreach and a list of departments he/she identified as not having a prior commitment to outreach. From each list I chose one department to approach for inclusion in this study. I assigned the pseudonym the "Professional Department" to the department with a history of outreach engagement and the pseudonym "Disciplinary Program" to the department that did not have a history of outreach engagement. I mailed a letter to the two department chairs inviting them to participate in the study (see Appendix A). I met with both chairs and they agreed to the department’s involvement in the study.3 Selecting Interviewees. After gaining access to the departments, I met a second time with each chair to discuss the full-time faculty members in their department. The chairs described faculty members by their rank in the institution (assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor), the number of years they had been at the institution, and their involvement in research, teaching, and outreach activities. I then 2My choice of departments is an example of theoretical replication -- expecting cases to vary for predictable reasons (Yin, 1989). 3In the Professional Department, the chair tentatively approved the department’ 3 participation but required me to get permission from a faculty advisory committee. I telephoned the chair of this committee and sent this individual a copy of the letter I had sent to the department chair. The chair of this committee shared this information with others on the committee and they approved the department’s participation in the study. asked specil intere depar his/he inforr favor: outree TeaSOI infom depan their ( to par teleph intere: facuhj faculq the or mEmb in the 47 asked the chairs which faculty they thought I should interview for this study, specifically requesting a list of faculty members who would represent the varied interests of the department. I also met with a faculty department informant in each department and asked this individual the same questions about faculty members in his/her department. I did not interview the informant for this study. Based on informant and chair responses, I selected faculty members from all three academic ranks and faculty members who expressed different interests in academic work (some favored teaching, others research, and in the Professional Department, some favored outreach). I also decided to interview the department chairs for this study. I reasoned that the department chairs would have played an important role in sharing information with faculty members about the initiative, and as leaders in the department, they would have given some thought to the outreach initiative relative to their department’s future. I mailed a letter to each faculty member describing the study and inviting each to participate in the study (see Appendix B). One week after sending the letter, I telephoned faculty members to ask if they had received the letter and if they were interested in participating in the study (see Appendix C). I set interview times with faculty members if they were interested in participating in the study. I contacted seven faculty members in the Disciplinary Program (including the department chair). Two of the original seven opted not to participate. I replaced them with two other faculty members of the same rank with similar interests. I approached eight faculty members in the Professional Department (including the department chair) and all agreed to pmfic Irogn thedc about M ones nudn \anet Iheor ones monk 0f0ut the to Para Wouh were ; Wat] Office Comn 48 participate in the study. In each case, I interviewed about half the faculty in the program or department. I believed that interviewing about half the faculty members in the departments would provide balance and variety and sufficient opportunity to learn about the departments’ responses to the outreach initiative (Weiss, 1994). The Outreach Initiative Case Study I developed a third case study that is quite different from the two departmental case studies. The third case study (which actually precedes the departmental case studies in this report) is the outreach initiative case study. In this case study I used a variety of documents and personal interviews to construct the history and context of the outreach initiative at Central State University. In a way, the outreach initiative case study represents how key institutional leaders (administrators and faculty members) made sense of the outreach initiative. This case study consists of a history of outreach at Central State University, aspects of the Outreach Report that focused on the role that faculty could or should play relative to outreach activities, and the perceptions of several Outreach Committee members about how faculty members would or had responded to the report. The Outreach Committee consisted of twenty members, about half of whom were administrators (either college or university level) and the other half of whom were faculty members. In addition, four persons affiliated with the Chief Academic Officer’s office served as "adjunct" members. I interviewed seven Outreach Committee members as part of this study. In keeping with the composition of the comn half \ choos inten prori. inenfl pnflor Appei Uansc 49 committee, about half of the people I interviewed were administrators and the other half were faculty members. I chose members using a similar logic that I employed in choosing faculty members to interview in the two departments: I believed that interviewing these seven committee members would provide balance and variety and provide sufficient opportunity to learn about the perceptions of Outreach Committee members about the implementation of the outreach initiative (Weiss, 1994). Data Collection Data collection consisted of developing and testing two open-ended interview protocols (one for faculty and the other for Outreach Committee members, see Appendices D, E, and F), entering the field, conducting the interviews, and making transcripts and recording field notes. I discuss these activities below. Protocols I deve10ped two semi-structured, open-ended interview protocols, one for Outreach Committee members (Appendices D and E) and one for faculty members (Appendix F). I tested the Outreach Committee protocol with one administrator who was not a member of the study sample but who was a member of the Outreach Committee. Based on feedback on this protocol by the Outreach Committee member and an initial review of the data, I made revisions and developed my final Outreach Committee protocol. The Outreach Committee protocol consisted of 21 questions \lllll respc the h dust Depa hid] notp Versh two ( accor €XC€I backg depar Unite achvi proto. than 1 lhrou: 50 with additional probes. I wrote questions designed to elicit comments about the respondent’s background, the outreach initiative, faculty perceptions of outreach, and the institutionalization of outreach at CSU (see Appendix F). I also developed, tested and revised a protocol for faculty interviews. I tested this protocol with two faculty members who were not members of the Professional Department or Disciplinary Program. I revised the protocol and tested it a second time with the faculty informant from the Disciplinary Program (a faculty member who was not part of the study). I revised the protocol a second and final time. I made two versions of the final protocol. I designed one version of the protocol to accommodate two one-hour interviews (Appendix D). I designed the other version of the protocol to accommodate one ninety-minute interview (Appendix E). The protocols were identical except that the ninety-minute protocol omitted the re-introduction process. I designed the faculty protocols to elicit comments about a faculty member’s background, his/her professional values and beliefs, his/her impressions of the department, his/her impressions of CSU, how he/she learned of events in the university, his/her thoughts about the outreach initiative and how to structure outreach activities, and his/her perceptions of the future for outreach. The faculty interview protocols consisted of 48 questions with additional probes -- a much longer protocol than used for Outreach Committee Members. Entering the Field. As discussed earlier, I contacted each respondent first through a letter and then by telephone. I scheduled all interviews in the respondents’ offia of tilt begin also : inten durin malft At ih faeuh for m Outre Decei inten confu rerun the ta tfans: bounc dUIlnl 51 offices. At the outset of the interviews, I reassured participants of the confidentiality of their responses and their right to decline participation at any time. Before beginning each interview, I asked participants to sign a consent form (Appendix C). I also asked permission to tape record the interview. All respondents agreed to have the interviews taped. I then told them that we could turn off the tape-recorder at any time during the interview. I made notes during the interviews in case the recorder malfunctioned. On several occasions faculty wanted to make comments off the record. At these times, I turned-off the tape recorder and did not take notes. I scheduled faculty interviews for one-hour (if the participant wanted to be interviewed twice) or for ninety-minutes (if the participant wanted to be interviewed only once). I scheduled Outreach Committee member interviews for one-hour. I conducted interviews between December 1994 and March 1995. Trmrmwd Notes. I hired a typist to transcribe the audiotapes as the interviews were completed. The typist signed a form agreeing to protect the confidentiality of the subjects. The typists stored all of her work on a diskette that she returned to me. Upon receiving each transcript, I reviewed its accuracy by listening to the tape while reading the transcript. I made necessary edits and printed final transcripts. At the end of each interview, I made notes about the interview in a spiral- bound notebook. When the notes were about the interviews or observations made during or immediately after interviews, 1 labeled them "OB" for observation. As the inten H0165 data ; also < Some COIldl own analy noteb 101n§ (1994 tram depar 52 interviews progressed I made "AN" or analytic notes in the same notebook. These notes often focused on emerging themes and my own learning process. Data Analysis and Interpretation Data analysis for the departmental case studies was somewhat different from data analysis for the outreach initiative case study. And, analysis across the cases was also different from the analysis of the case studies. I discuss below the approaches I took in conducting these different analyses. Analyzing Departmental Case Studies Data collection occurred over a relatively brief time (less than three months). Sometimes I conducted two or three interviews in one week, and on occasion I conducted two interviews on the same day. Because of this short time period, and my own inexperience at conducting this type of research, I did not engage in a full-scale analysis of the data while I was in the field, but I did make analytic notes in my notebook on a regular basis as questions and observations bearing on analysis occurred to me. I based my analysis process on a format suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994). I began the analysis with data from the Disciplinary Program. I reviewed transcripts using a start-up list of codes. The codes focused on two areas: the department’ 3 context and the outreach initiative. Codes for the department’ s context and t Strau for 61 abstn and-r entrie devel initia code< themi devel Profe lilera that t Profe Pattei betw< I W01 ftOm elem 53 and the outreach initiative were developed using a grounded approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). I began by reviewing data line by line and identifying possible codes for entries. I then reviewed the codes and developed a second set of slightly more abstract codes that would include several of the first order codes. Next, I grouped codes into concepts or themes. I sorted the data through a cut- and-paste process on the computer so that I had one document for each theme with all entries I had labeled with this theme. I then fit these themes into a framework I deve10ped based on the three stages of organizational change I discussed in Chapter 2: initiation, implementation, and institutionalization. Using this framework and the coded data, I wrote my initial case study for the Disciplinary Program. Next, I coded data from the Professional Department using the same codes and themes I identified from the Disciplinary Program data. The codes and themes I developed from the Disciplinary Program data appeared to also fit the data from the Professional Department. However, when I tried to organize these themes using the literature based initiation, implementation, and institutionalization framework, I found that the framework that worked for the Disciplinary Program did not fit the data in the Professional Program. I stepped-back from this framework and searched for cross-case patterns among the codes (Eisenhardt, 1995). I found similarities and differences between the cases that helped me to see the novel and common patterns in each case. I worked with the two sets of department data until a different framework emerged from the data themes. The framework that I developed consisted of three main elements: Clarifying Outreach, Contextualizing Outreach, and Outreach Decisions. I capni (see 1 mt hfiha polic: hark UlllVr recon Chang these assem 54 captured the uniqueness and similarities of both departments within this framework (see Chapters 5 and 6 which use this framework as an organizing rubric). Analyzing the Outreach Initiative Case Study I used university documents and personal interviews to develop the outreach initiative case study. As I read the university documents I paid particular attention to policies or recommendations that would impact how faculty members conducted their work. I used these passages to construct a history of outreach at Central State University. In selecting portions of the Outreach Report to focus on, I chose recommendations and passages that called for faculty members or departments to change or alter how and what they do. I concluded the outreach initiative case study with an analysis of interview data gathered from Outreach Committee members. I began this analysis by reviewing data line by line and identifying possible codes for entry. I then reviewed the codes and developed a set of themes that would include several codes. I did not deveIOp a framework for these codes. Rather, I used the themes directly to present data in the case study. Cross-Case Analysis I analyzed the three sets of case study data using my research questions. Using l these questions, I sorted data using matrices (Miles and Huberman, 1994) that l assembled descriptive data from the cases in a standard format. I then looked across the n thent sense asse outre chh the a anah' day l the at hrhh the (l; and c hthh inteng The\ $5? /5_. Check 55 the matrices for points of agreement and disagreement. That is, I looked for common themes and themes of difference. These themes focused primarily on what and how sensemaking happened. From these themes I then developed statements (which I label "assertions") and propositions about faculty members responses to the university outreach initiative and planned change in colleges and universities as organizations (which I discuss in Chapter 7). My analysis of the data, as described above, may seem "straightforward." But the analysis of this data was not bound to one discrete phase of research -- that is, the analysis was not one part of a larger linear research process. The analysis began the day I started collecting data, culminating in the repeated writing of chapters. I pushed the analysis of this data and fine-tuned it by writing, and re-writing (and then re- writing some more) each chapter of this dissertation. Often, changes in my thinking of the data during the writing of one chapter, would require me to go to another chapter and conduct further analysis and make changes. It has been my writing, and re- writing, of dissertation chapters, moreso than the coding of the data, that has been the intensive period of analysis for me. As my dissertation chair told me many times: The writing is the analysis. Validity Checks Validity is a concern of every study. In this study I engaged in several validity checks suggested for qualitative research (Miles and Huberman, 1994). I relied on face ‘ plaus lookr emery held comf comf focus point initia‘ easy feelirt In an: me 34 0f tilt the C( reseat 56 face validity, asking myself if the accounts made sense, and seemed convincing or plausible. I also searched for negative evidence. That is, when a theme emerged I looked for situations where that theme did not emerge or where a competing theme emerged. Finally, in the presentation of the data I showed the variations in the views held by faculty to illustrate that faculty did not share a single, cohesive perspective. Yet another way to think about validity is whether or not faculty members felt comfortable in telling me their "truths." I tried to make the interview situations comfortable for each respondent as well as for myself. The first part of the interview focused on personal history that I believed put the respondents at ease. Usually at the point in the interview where we started talking about the department and the outreach initiative, the respondent and I had developed a rapport. I believe this rapport made it easy for faculty members to talk with me and to share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Also, the statement I made in the protocol that my study was not connected in any way with any office at CSU or elsewhere may have helped the respondent see me as an independent investigator -- not as an agent of the administration or proponent of the outreach initiative. Limitations of the Study This study has several limitations most of which are limitations associated with the conduct of qualitative research. I discuss these limitations -- related to possible researcher bias, generalizability, consistency, and sample siz -- below. R_e§§ state and: dhnl bhue hand nhgl than thy ahdt beyOt and c POpu 57 Researcher Bias All researchers are affected by observers’ biases (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992). I stated my biases in a letter that I wrote to myself as I developed the proposal for this study. My dissertation chair suggested that I write this letter to clarify my own thinking about the outreach initiative. I then used this letter as a way to check my biases as I collected data. For instance, I reviewed my protocols with this letter in hand to see if my questions were leading faculty members to make statements that might confirm my biases or favor them somehow. As I spent more time in the field talking with faculty members, I began to see changes in my biases. By the time I had finished collecting data I could understand why it might not be in the best interest of faculty members, departments, universities and external constituents to have all universities or all segments of any one university (and particularly all faculty members) engage in outreach activities. It is this more balanced perspective that I brought to the analysis -- most of which occurred after all the data had been collected. Thus by being continually conscious of my observer’s bias, I limited it, though I never eliminated it. Generalizability Generalizability usually refers to whether the findings of a study hold up beyond the specific research subjects and the setting involved. Qualitative research, and case studies in particular, may be generalized to theoretical propositions but not to pOpulations or universes (Yin, 1989). This is a study of faculty members in two depa Facu eohe on e "gen resea (ther phen thyse to be isint (liver COnh. 58 departments. These are two departments (of 85) in one college (of 15) in CSU. Faculty responses may be different in other disciplines, other departments, and other colleges at CSU. This is a glimpse but certainly not a promise of what may be going on elsewhere in CSU. That is, the observations from this study cannot be "generalized" to other to other parts of CSU. It is possible, however, that this research could illuminate my own and others’ understandings of related phenomena in other sites, serving as an entry point for thinking about related (though different) phenomena in other sites. Overall, this study offers general value to the reader and myself, but does not focus on issues of generalizability in the traditional sense. Consistency Although Miles and Huberman (1995) describe the need for qualitative research to be consistent and reasonably stable over time and across researchers and methods, it is important to recognize that times change, that researchers learn and change, and that diverse methods can "change" what it is that researchers see. Nonetheless, a standard of consistency is a valuable consideration in such research. The use of a pre-set protocol may have increased the consistency of this study. In the analyzing of data, I looked for instances where a respondent may have contradicted himself or herself as a check on the consistency of their responses.4 I also did not rush respondents through the interviews and I encouraged them to explain further their responses to ensure that I 4I do not mean to imply that contradictions are "bad" -- sometimes contradictions are valuable data. undt reali core facu diffe not : conc didn that hour from rely inter thou of th tesot 0f it 59 understood them. However, I am aware that I could never fully grasp the full "lived realities" of these respondents. This is a natural limitation of this study. Sample Size This study took place at one university, focused on only two departments, and covered just one innovation or change. It also focused on just one aspect of the faculty member’s life. The meaning of the outreach initiative may be embedded in different aspects of the faculty member’s life that I did not probe. For example, I did not ask faculty members if they were concerned with their own tenure or promotion, a concern that could help to explain their responses to the outreach initiative, and I didnot probe deeply into their reasons for choosing academic careers. The boundaries that were necessary to establish and to conduct the study, and within the substantive boundaries established by the research questions, limited the scope of this study. In the following chapters I present a view of the Luiiversity outreach initiative from the perspective of the institution and two academic departments. In this study, I rely on the perceptions of those experiencing the change. Nonetheless, the interpretation is ultimately my own as I try to make sense of the respondents’ thoughts, feelings, and understandings. I believe that respondents and other members of the two departments and the Outreach Committee would find much of this study to l resonate with their own perceptions, however, they would not find agreement with all I of it as each of us would find something different in the data. t airne need petSI to a that perst how third disse bOdlt the f asth CEnt Critic Back the ( CHAPTER 4: THE OUTREACH INITIATIVE The outreach initiative at Central State University is a set of strategic efforts aimed at strengthening the University’s extension and application of knowledge to the needs of society.1 This case study examines the outreach initiative from several perspectives. One perspective is historic and traces the outreach initiative of the 19903 to a continuing education initiative launched in the early 19703. The Outreach Report, that defines outreach in the present day and offers recommendations for strengthening the connection between the university and society in the future, provides another perspective on the initiative. Outreach Committee members, speaking primarily about how faculty members have responded to the university outreach initiative, provide a third perspective of the initiative. These members wrote the Outreach Report and disseminated it across campus to university administrators, university governance bodies, deans, chairs and faculty. A fourth perspective of the outreach initiative, and the focus of the following two chapters, is that of faculty members in two departments as they consider how, or if, to respond to the initiative. This case study begins by situating the outreach initiative within the context of Central Sate University. I then discuss the development of the outreach initiative, the 1A number of sources, presented here as pseudonyms (see Chapter 3), were critical to the development of this chapter: Continuing Education Report (1973), Background Papers (1994), Central State Cooperative Extension Service (1989), and the Outreach Report (1993). 60 Outreach . CS Annually. enroll in ( almost 10( Ce: grant insti‘ emphasize arts within instruction PtOgrams, In leadership had tWo v: institution program it 61 Outreach Report, and Outreach Committee members’ perspectives of the initiative. Central State University CSU is one of the largest institutions of higher education in the United States. Annually, over 30,000 undergraduate and approximately 10,000 graduate students enroll in CSU. It has approximately 15 colleges, about 85 academic departments, ahnost 100 centers and institutes, and offers more than 200 major fields of study. Central State University was founded in the mid-18003 and designated a land- grant institution under the Morrill Act in 1863. Until the early 1900s, the University emphasized a land-grant and service mission in the areas of agriculture and mechanic arts within the state. Shortly after the turn of the century, CSU began to add instructional programs in the arts and sciences. CSU grew gradually, adding faculty, programs, and students until the early 19403. In the mid—19403 CSU began a rapid period of change, much due to the leadership of CSU’s President Paul Smith.2 President Smith, hired in the mid-19303, had two visions for the institution. One vision was of an enhanced land-grant institution that would serve the state and its people through an inclusive extension program whereby all departments and units would work with the Cooperative 2As discussed in Chapter 3, all names are pseudonyms that bear no resemblance to their actual names. Extension class resea colleges tr Smith real Associatio nation’s tr an all-incl Th mission st statement. public ser statement System -. university intellectuz the public informal . The land. health, an settings a Si rarid cha 62 Extension Service. The second vision was to make Central State University a world- class research institution. To this end, President Smith encouraged departments and colleges to emphasize research and hire research faculty. During the 19603, President Smith realized the latter vision as Central State University achieved membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) -- an organization recognizing the nation’s top research institutions. President Smith did not realize his vision of CSU as an all-inclusive extension university. The work and beliefs of President Smith are still evident in CSU’s current mission statement, written and adopted in the early 19803. According to this mission statement, CSU strives to fulfill a three-pronged mission of research, teaching and public service by seeking, teaching about, and preserving knowledge. The mission statement acknowledges that CSU holds a unique position in the state’s educational system -- it is a research and teaching university @ a land-grant institution. The university fulfills its research and teaching responsibilities through a commitment to intellectual leadership, and by developing and conveying knowledge to students and the public. The university meets its land-grant responsibility through formal and informal educational programs, in basic and applied research, and in public service. The land-grant charge now involves fields such as business, education, communication, health, and government, as well as agriculture, and extends to urban and international settings as well. Since the late 19803, CSU, like many of its peer institutions, has experienced rapid change of a different kind —- instead of the expansionist change under the leadership period of numerous was cont: Service. ' Another 5 different ( research. education academic requireme regularize The com enhance t Finally, tl EdllCEttion Ill lite ear rtquirenn 0. emphasizt unllS to It Changes I 63 leadership of President Smith and several of his predecessors, CSU has experienced a period of internal review and retrenchment. University administrators have convened numerous committees to review a variety of institutional activities. One committee was convened to review and recommend changes for the Cooperative Extension Service. Recommendations from this review resulted in organizational restructuring. Another strategic planning effort of the late 19803 and early 19905 resulted in four different committees reviewing undergraduate education, graduate education and research, institutional diversity, and lifelong education. The review of undergraduate education resulted in the disbanding of several departments, the creation of new academic centers, and a general restructuring of core undergraduate educational requirements. The review of graduate education and research recommended a more regularized review process of graduate education and additional funding for research. The committee on institutional diversity developed guidelines and recommendations to enhance the institution’s commitment to equal opportunities and student access. Finally, the outreach initiative, discussed later, grew out of the review of lifelong education. CSU also underwent a change from a quarter system to a semester system in the early 19903. This change required all academic departments to revise program requirements, and curriculum content and format. Over this entire period (from the mid 19803 to the early 19903) the university emphasized the need to reduce academic and administrative budgets, often requiring units to reduce staffing, supplies, and services. Furthermore, CSU experienced changes in administration -- with a president and chief academic officer leaving the institution Tl thereby it committet a researcl revamped reviews 0 Changed 1 And. the initiative. OVer the j developm the follov the name: Pe initiative President, members 64 institution during this period and being replaced by new individuals in those positions. This overview of Central State University suggests that the institution, and thereby its faculty and staff, is dealing with multiple agendas. The institution is committed to two social/institutional roles: that of a land-grant university, and that of a research and teaching university. The faculty and staff have recently revised and revamped undergraduate and graduate education programs in response to formal reviews of undergraduate education and the change to semesters. CSU recently changed both top administrative positions -- the president and chief academic officer. And, the faculty and staff of the university have had budgets reduced. The outreach initiative, then, is just one of several large issues to which faculty and staff attended over the past ten years. The Development of the Outreach Initiative Administrators of Central State University have taken the lead in the development of the outreach initiative. Listed in chronological order in Table 1, on the following page, are some key actions related to the outreach initiative along with the names and titles of administrators associated with them. Perhaps the earliest administrative action linked to the current outreach initiative is the convening of the Continuing Education Committee appointed by CSU’s president, Dr. Stewart, in the early 19703. This committee consisted of over twenty members and included university administrators, deans, faculty, students, alumni, and early 197 early - In mid 198C late 1980 late 1930 early 199 Table 1 65 Key Outreach Initiative Actions by Years with Associated Administrators’ Years Outreach Initiative Actions University Administrators early 19703 early - mid 19803 mid 19803 late 19803 late 19803 early 19903 ‘ Convening of the Continuing Dr. Stewart, President Education Committee that writes the Continuing Education Report. Dismantling of the central Dr. Vendlinski, CAO continuing education division. Responsibilities for continuing education are moved to colleges, departments, and schools. A multiyear strategic plan that Dr. Heaton, CAO continues the review of continuing education begins. An Outreach Office is created and Dr. Heaton, CAO Dr. Burns appointed as COO. The definition of continuing Dr. Burns, COO education is expanded to outreach. The COO becomes responsible for leadership, coordination and support of the outreach mission. The Outreach Committee is Dr. Heaton, CAO convened and charged with Dr. Burns, COO articulating a conceptual foundation for outreach and recommending how to strengthen university outreach. Key: CAO = Chief Academic Officer; coo = Chief Outreach Officer 3All names here and throughout the chapter are pseudonyms. communit Committe ln definition institution education say that a programs. Continuin institutior M mOdlfying immnec Particular recomme, responsib- alltl depal Continuing e[Wale (x Commfilet conductor 0Verseein 66 community representatives. President Stewart asked the Continuing Education Committee to recommend strategies for revising continuing education. In response to their charge, the Continuing Education committee offered a new definition of continuing education and made recommendations for changes in the institutional structure to support this definition. The report defined continuing education as a process of learning that continues through life. The report went on to say that a system of continuing education should include formal and informal programs, on and off-campus programs, and problem-focused public service programs. Continuing education, then, was an educational service offered to individuals and institutions (Continuing Education Report, 1973). Most of the recommendations in the Continuing Education Report focused on modifying and expanding administrative activities and institutional structures to increase continuing education opportunities at Central State. Two recommendations in particular targeted academic departments and faculty members. The first recommendation stated that the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) should assume responsibility for continuing education and that academic units (e.g., colleges, schools and departments) should bear primary responsibility for initiating and conducting continuing education activities. The committee argued that this reorganization would elevate continuing education as an institutional and departmental responsibility. The committee hoped this recommendation would result in continuing education being conducted by regular faculty in academic departments instead of a centralized office overseeing a separate teaching staff. The should be faculty hir education . education ‘ increase th education The Report on the mixer: burgeoning from the ( then Chief the Contin Dr. Eldministra dismantlin Dr. Vendli Education. EdUCation SpeCIfiCall‘ \ 4pc 67 The second recommendation stated that continuing education responsibilities should be part of the regular faculty workload. It further recommended expanding faculty hiring criteria to include continuing education activities, including continuing education activities in reward criteria, increasing faculty expertise in continuing education through special opportunities and allowances, and undertaking efforts to increase the involvement of faculty members with relevant expertise in continuing education projects (Continuing Education Report, 1973). The immediate impact -- that is, in the 19703 -- of the Continuing Education Report was minimal. According to one Continuing Education Committee member“, the university was struggling with an expanding undergraduate curriculum and a burgeoning research mission and was not yet ready to implement recommendations from the Continuing Education Report. In the mid-19803, however, Central State’s then Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Vendlinski, said it was time to implement some of the Continuing Education Report’s recommendations. Dr. Vendlinski implemented recommendations that focused on restructuring the administration of continuing education. In particular, Dr. Vendlinski sanctioned the dismantling of the Continuing Education Division, previously a separate unit at CSU. Dr. Vendlinski made colleges, departments, and schools responsible for continuing education. Dr. Vendlinski also eliminated the position of Dean of Continuing Education and he assumed oversight for continuing education. Dr. Vendlinski did not specifically address the Continuing Education Committee’s definition of continuing 4Personal Interview. education programs. at times at In of a new t had been : Academic Heaton. a continuing definition defined 01 teaching, , benefit of €Xpertise. more €sz Continuing applied re introduce public m] In admlnlSlr; 68 education as formal and informal programs or problem-focused public service programs. The emphasis remained on making campus instructional programs available at times and in locations convenient to adults. In the late 1980s, continuing education once again changed under the direction of a new Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Heaton. Dr. Heaton appointed Dr. Burns, who had been a member of the Continuing Education Committee, as the Assistant Chief Academic Officer for Continuing Education. Dr. Burns, with the backing of Dr. Heaton, assumed control of the administrative effort to redefine and reposition continuing education. Dr. Burns expanded upon the Continuing Education Report’s definition of continuing education and called the concept "outreach." Dr. Burns defined outreach (as differentiated from continuing education) as the extension of teaching, research and professional expertise of the university and its faculty for the benefit of individuals, groups, and the larger society. The inclusion of professional expertise, or service, and, particularly, research in the definition of outreach signified a more expansive set of activities than did continuing education. The definition of continuing education as off-campus instruction expanded to include such activities as applied research and technical assistance to clients, demonstration projects that introduce new techniques and practices, or policy analysis to help shape and inform the Public policy process (Background Papers, 1994). In support of the new definition of outreach, Dr. Heaton made additional administrative changes in the late 19803. Consonant with the change in definition was a change in title: Dr. Burns’ title became Chief Outreach Officer, replacing the title of Assistant t brought it“ position e: outreach r Outreach 1 changes ir (Backgron lns external a foundatior strategies. Competitit initiative ; 0f the lat OUtreach I SuPPOrt c2 Service ll This Stud} \ Sr University Clifon‘ Tl academic d€Ve10pin The inSllt program 69 Assistant Chief Academic Officer for Continuing Education. The change in title brought with it a direct reporting line to Dr. Heaton and the responsibilities of the position expanded to include leadership, coordination, and support of the overall outreach mission. A small staff supported Dr. Burns and together they constituted the Outreach Office. The Outreach Office recommended to the chief academic officer changes in university policies and procedures to enhance the campus outreach mission (Background Papers, 1994). Institutional support for the outreach initiative in its early stages came from external and internal sources. In the mid-19803, a multimillion dollar grant from a foundation provided funds for the development and support of several outreach strategies. These strategies included the creation and funding of an internal grant competition, the hiring of staff, and the direct funding of outreach projects. The initiative garnered some internal support from the strategic planning review committees of the late 19803 and early 19903. Several of these reviews discussed the university’s outreach mission and recommended additional support for it.5 Additional internal support came from a comprehensive study of the Central State Cooperative Extension Service that underscored the need to strengthen the outreach mission of the university. This study recommended integrating the Extension Service more fully with the rest of 5The review of undergraduate education described the connection of the university with K-12 education as a form of outreach and called for strengthening this effort. The graduate education and research review recommended that the chief academic officer should clarify and strengthen the role of university outreach by developing guidelines addressing outreach responsibilities of faculty and departments, The institutional diversity review called for the continuation and support of outreach Programs that advance diversity within the university community. the carnpu faculty (C administre Outreach domain of to act as E communit In Outreach Unitersity committee recommer twenty co the rest 0- Chief Ac; Chief Our and budg. Tl During 1h aSSignIIIei \ 6c and Alpe: 70 the campus, and strengthening links between Extension Service and the university’s faculty (Cooperative Extension Service at Central State University, 1989). With the administrative structure in place, the Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Heaton, and Chief Outreach Officer, Dr. Burns, needed to diffuse the outreach initiative into the academic domain of the university. Thus, they formed a committee -- the Outreach Committee -- to act as an outreach conduit between university administrators and the academic community. In the early 19903, Dr. Heaton and Dr. Burns convened and charged the Outreach Committee to assess the progress made in advancing outreach within the university and to chart a strategic course for the future. The charge called for the committee to articulate a conceptual foundation for outreach and to make recommendations for further strengthening university outreach. Dr. Heaton selected twenty committee members, a little more than half of whom were faculty members and the rest of whom were college or university administrators. Several members of the Chief Academic Officer’s staff served as liaisons to the committee -- including the Chief Outreach Officer, two of this officer’s assistants, and a member of the planning and budget staff. The Outreach Committee met for over eighteen months during the mid-19903. During the first ten months that the committee members met they read key assignmentsé, engaged in discussions about these readings, interviewed campus faculty . 6Committee members read several documents pertaining to how institutions of hlgher education are organized and managed (e.g., Keller (1984) Academic Strategy and Alpert (1995) Performance and Paralysis: The Organizational Context of the and acade interriewr organizati Committe a final rej conceptua strengther Committe communi' and possi \ American SCholarsh directly v Unit‘ersjp Indit‘idua 7C outreach Potential criteria in W e abot 0Pinion 1. exemplar COItimuni interface identified 8( public ag 9/ CircLllate enCOurag pOSSlbly 71 and academic staff, reviewed similar outreach-related efforts at other universities, and interviewed approximately 100 key constituents8 across the state about their organizations, communities, and regions and how CSU could assist them in the future. Committee members spent the next six to eight months writing, reviewing, and editing a final report -- the Outreach Report. The report consists of two major sections, a conceptual foundation of outreach and a set of recommendations for further strengthening the role of outreach at CSU. Upon completing the report, the Outreach Committee sent it to university administrators (e.g., the president) and to the university community (e.g., governance bodies, faculty, academic staff, students) for discussion and possible action9. American Research University), documents which discuss an expanded notion of scholarship (e.g., Boyer (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered), and documents which deal directly with outreach (e.g., Lynton and Elman (1987) New Priorities for the University: Meeting Society’s Needs for Applied Knowledge and Competent Individuals). 7Committee members asked faculty and staff about the current status of outreach at CSU, the value of outreach for an institution of higher education, and the potential and vision for outreach at CSU. Committee members used the following criteria when selecting faculty and staff to interview: open-mindedness; good thinkers; care about CSU and its future; hold key faculty, staff, or administrative positions; are opinion leaders; are historically more, as well as less, involved in outreach; do exemplary work; represent tenured and untenured faculty members; represent the community of outreach practitioners; and represent those who hold positions that interface with the public on a regular basis. Nearly two hundred persons were identified and the committee interviewed over 100 of them. 8Committee members interviewed constituents representing private industry, public agencies, community organizations, and educational institutions. 9According to the Outreach Report, the expectations of the Committee was to circulate the document throughout the university with the intent of stimulating and encouraging an informed and lively debate about outreach, from which actions might possibly follow. The nature and type of these actions are not specified in the report. As incubating continuing handled it convened implemen after its p education Officer. v- outreach . involved Outreach initiative introducii Report is 72 As seen, then, from an historic perspective, the outreach initiative has been incubating for about 20 years at Central State University. It began as a review of continuing education in the early 19703. At least four university administrators have handled what I refer to as the outreach initiative : Dr. Stewart, President, who convened the Continuing Education Committee; Dr. Vendlinski, CAO, who implemented recommendations for the Continuing Education Report about 10 years after its publication; Dr. Heaton, CAO, who called for a review of continuing education and convened the Outreach Committee; and Dr. Burns, Chief Outreach Officer, who expanded the definition of continuing education to what is now called outreach and who oversees the newly formed Outreach Office. Faculty have been involved in the outreach initiative as members of the Continuing Education and Outreach Committees. The Outreach Committee formalized, more or less, the outreach initiative through the Outreach Report. The report, then, became a tool for introducing the outreach initiative to the larger university community. The Outreach Report is the focus of the following section. The Outreach Report The Outreach Report is perhaps the most comprehensive and most widely communicated strategic effort associated with the outreach initiative. It consists of two parts. The first part of the report embodies a detailed discussion of the university’s definition of outreach. The second part consists of nearly twenty recommendations for strengther definition directly at M It the intelle outreach i Outreach the direct Accordin; PetSpectit scholarsh audiences Central S Q SCholarsh 1“ delimit Work of l Priming SChOlargh integtatic 73 strengthening outreach at Central State University. In this case study, I review the definition of outreach and those recommendations included in the report that most directly affect faculty members. The University’s Definition of Outreach The definition of outreach found in the Outreach Report is what the report calls the intellectual foundation of outreach (Outreach Report, 1993). The report defines outreach as a form of scholarship that cuts across teaching, research, and service. Outreach consists of generating, transmitting, applying, and preserving knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences consistent with university and unit missions. According to the report, the new definition sets outreach apart from traditional perspectives of extension and service. It does so by focusing on outreach as scholarship, outreach as a cross—cutting activity, outreach as a direct benefit to external audiences, and outreach as a university and unit mission. I discuss these aspects of Central State University’s definition of outreach below. Outreach as Scholarship. The report says outreach has the same potential for scholarship as the other academic functions (e.g., research, teaching) of the university. In defining outreach as a form of scholarship, the Outreach Committee drew from the work of Ernest Boyer (1990) and Ernest Lynton (1992). In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Boyer (1990) redefines and broadens the meaning of scholarship by describing four scholarly functions: the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. In Scholarship Recognized, Ernest Lynton (1992) saj constitute is more tl into new these idea generating Q associatec teaching. alone as ; outreach rePort de: teaching, teaching; Campus 11 Solving n PTOgram OUtreach. COmmuni ESSentiall research) 74 (1992) says outreach is an integral part of the professional work of a scholar and constitutes as much of an intellectual challenge as does research. Lynton says outreach is more than the transmission of information, it is the transformation of information into new knowledge and this, he says, is the essence of scholarship. Building from these ideas, the committee defined outreach as a scholarly activity consisting of the generating, transmitting, applying, and preserving of knowledge. Outreach as Cross-cutting. As discussed in the report, outreach is often associated with the "service" dimension of the tripartite mission of the university -- teaching, research and service. The new definition of outreach says it does not stand alone as a separate and conceptually distinct form of scholarly activity. In this way, outreach is not a replacement for the service mission of the university. Rather, the report describes outreach as an activity that cross-cuts the university mission of teaching, research, and service. That is, outreach is either a form of "outreach- N teaching," "outreach-research," or "outreach-service. For example, courses taught off- campus in the evening are a form of outreach-teaching. Collaborative, problem- solving research with external clients, such as evaluating a community planning program or preparing a feasibility study for a government agency, are examples of outreach-research. Medical services provided through a clinical plan or advising a community group in the area of one’s expertise are examples of outreach-service. Essentially, the cross-cutting aspect of outreach refers to the direct extension of one’s research, teaching, and service to an external audience. Tl outreach : and non-c that facul Tl research. for it fror universit) coherencr _D_ outreach university 311d grou] conveniei ii. The r by Offeri] instructio The repo exaltiple the study non‘0utrt aCiiVitieS OUtreach 75 The report acknowledges that not all research, teaching or service is an outreach activity“). The report also acknowledges that linkages exist between outreach and non-outreach activities. For example, non-outreach research may lead to research that faculty later transmit to users through outreach-teaching and outreach-service' 1. The Outreach Report says scholars often engage in outreach-teaching, outreach- research, or outreach-service but do not recognize it or receive appropriate recognition for it from their peers. By defining outreach as cross-cutting the missions of the university, then, the committee says outreach may add value to and bring greater coherence to the lives of many, if not all, scholars. Direct Benefit to Extern_al Audiences. According to the Outreach Report, outreach directly benefits individuals, groups, organizations, and society external to the university. The Outreach Report says the university extends itself to these individuals and groups by making knowledge resources accessible to those not living nearby, at convenient times and places, and in format and approach appropriate to those who seek it. The university extends itself for direct benefit to external audiences, for example, by offering evening graduate programs and off-campus undergraduate degrees, by 10According to the report, an example of non-outreach teaching is the instruction of undergraduate students on-campus, Monday-Friday, 8 am. to 5 pm. The report identified non-outreach research as disciplinary research. It gives as an example of disciplinary research a study defined solely by the researcher and results of the study being shared only with academic audiences. Also according to the report, non-outreach service would include serving on a university comrrnttee. 11The report uses as an example of linkages between outreach and non-outreach activities non-outreach research that is later transmitted through outreach teaching or outreach service. pmndmg research : O madhh (i.e.. dep; whose dcpartme mmmor practice. activities knovvledt some“ activities mount these ex1 uIiiversit mission universit reiiect r} 76 providing noncredit instruction for professionals, and by providing for collaboration on research and development projects with business, industry or community groups. University and Department Missions. The Outreach Report also says that for an activity to be considered outreach, it must be compatible with university and unit (i.e., department) missions”. According to the report, outreach is a mission of the university. And since department missions interlock with the university mission, department-level missions must also address outreach as a primary function, not as a minor or ancillary function or a function recognized in rhetoric but minimized in practice. In sum, outreach, as defined in the Outreach Report, consists of scholarly activities that involve the generating, transmitting, applying, or preserving of knowledge. Further, outreach as a mission of the university is not a substitute for the service mission, but cuts across the research, teaching, and service missions. Outreach activities benefit individuals, as well as groups and organizations, outside the university through direct application of scholarship to problems and issues faced by these external constituents. Finally, since outreach is part of the mission of the university, it is also a mission of the departments. l2At Central State University, each department is expected to develop its own mission statement -- which must be compatible with the mission statement of the university. Departments are encouraged to develop their own mission statements to reflect the values and goals of their disciplinary affiliation. m presents r lhiversit formally should cr enhance ‘ many of focus eve conduct t outreach calls for clearly v both belt D ‘ Primary . i3, facult Outreach take plac r016 exte departmE faculty n 77 Recommendations In addition to the conceptual framework for outreach, the Outreach Report presents recommendations for further strengthening outreach at Central State University. Recommendations include the following: That the university should formally adopt the report’s conception and definition of outreach, that the university should create a measurement and evaluation system for outreach, and that it should enhance technology and leadership to stimulate and support outreach activities. While many of these recommendations touch upon faculty work, two other recommendations focus even more directly on the roles of academic departments and faculty in the conduct of outreach. One recommendation states that the primary responsibility for outreach should reside at the academic department level. A second recommendation calls for the members of academic departments to develop guidelines and criteria that clearly value outreach when making merit, tenure and promotion decisions. I discuss both below. Department Level Responsibility. The Outreach Report recommends that the primary responsibility for outreach should reside at the unit or department level. That is, faculty members should make decisions at the department level about how much outreach they should conduct and with respect to what subject, where outreach should take place, how outreach should be calibrated (i.e., measured and rewarded), and what role external constituents should play in outreach. The report also states that each department is expected to engage in outreach, but not necessarily each individual faculty member. Further, the report says that the chief outreach officer, the deans, and other cen role in er college It It the unive universit individue outreach faculty 21 outreach be calibr among f; 1y impacts develop PTOmotic Participa The rcpt h t0 hav as a legi report a, 78 other central administrators, as well as external constituents, should play an important role in encouraging and supporting outreach-related activity at the university and college level. In making this recommendation, the report acknowledges the tension between the university as an institution concerned with financial and political viability and the university as a community of scholars -- as faculty members pursuing their work individually and in groups. The report suggests managing this tension by having outreach activities grow out of, or at least closely match, the interests and expertise of faculty and academic staff. Further, the report recommends that decisions about outreach at the department level (e.g., where outreach should take place, how it should be calibrated) should be reached through an open, continuous, and interactive dialogue among faculty and academic staff at the department level. Merit. Tenure and Promotion Decisions. A second recommendation directly impacts faculty members and departments by calling for academic departments to develop guidelines and criteria that value outreach in making merit, tenure and promotion decisions. The report states that the valuing and rewarding of faculty participation in outreach is the centerpiece for advancing university outreach at CSU. The report acknowledges that some faculty question the value of outreach and consider it to have limited scholarly value. The report also states that outreach is often rejected as a legitimate activity when making tenure decisions for junior faculty members. The report argues these points, saying outreach is a scholarly activity and, therefore, it can and should serve as a way for junior faculty to build a scholarly foundation. Tr come tog: strategy f the report regarding strengthe State Uni are to me definitior (i.e.. rese “his anc “PM 812 the unit 1 School, ii across th issue of; mentionf patticipa CSU. It lillkpins 79 To address these concerns, the report suggests that faculty and academic staff come together at the department level to discuss and create a shared vision and strategy for satisfying the outreach obligation at the department level. According to the report, an outgrth of these discussions would be the establishment of guidelines regarding the role and value of outreach in the faculty evaluation and review process. The Outreach Report states that the overall goal of the outreach initiative is to strengthen outreach by making it a more central and integrated dimension of Central State University’s mission. In reading the document, it appears that it is faculty who are to meet this goal. The report defines outreach so faculty (called scholars in the definition) will find outreach compatible with their work, especially their scholarship (i.e., research, teaching). The recommendation section of the report states in different ways and places that faculty are central to the outreach initiative. For example, the report states that it is faculty members who should make decisions about outreach at the unit level. The report also states in several places that each unit (i.e., department, school, institute and center), although not each individual faculty member, should work across the spectrum of the mission, including outreach. Further, when addressing the issue of rewarding outreach, the report references rewarding faculty members. As mentioned earlier, the report states that the valuing and rewarding of faculty participation in outreach represents the centerpiece for advancing university outreach at CSU. It seems, then, that the outreach initiative intends faculty to be the catalyst or linkpins for strengthening outreach at Central State University. It define at recomme: a form of service It outreach recomme outreach The reco: recognize departme Outreach outreach T iIttlicate t at Centra least the the Outrr 0Utreach members What Sen 80 To summarize, the authors of the Outreach Report of the 19903 strived to define a conceptual foundation for outreach. The report itself makes specific recommendations for strengthening outreach within the university and casts outreach as a form of scholarship. It also emphasizes that outreach is not a substitute for the service mission —- outreach cross-cuts the three missions of the university such that outreach is a form of outreach-research, outreach-teaching, or outreach-service. The recommendations place departments in charge of deciding what and how much outreach to conduct -- that is, departments should develop their own outreach visions. The recommendations also state that departments should develop guidelines that recognize and reward outreach. Both recommendations say that decisions at the department level should occur through faculty discussion and debate. Finally, the Outreach Report designates faculty members as those persons central to strengthening outreach at CSU. The key events and players in the development of the outreach initiative indicate that it evolved from an effort to restructure and redefine continuing education at Central State University. The Outreach Report tells us where the university, or at least the Outreach Committee, would like to see the outreach initiative go -- that is, the Outreach Report represents a hoped-for outreach future. The history of the outreach initiative and the Outreach Report tell us little, however, about how faculty members or university administrators perceive and experience the outreach initiative -- what sense they make of it and how they experience it. The rest of this case study examines j and the 0; members i 011 of the larg outreach a State Univ policy tha hand. they hand how COinntittei those not Th Persons at members. diVlded fa 8l examines perceptions of Outreach Committee members about the outreach initiative, and the Outreach Report in particular. The following two chapters show how faculty members in two academic departments perceive the outreach initiative. Outreach Committee Members’ Perspectives on the Outreach Initiative Outreach Committee members have a unique View of the Outreach Report and of the larger outreach initiative. On the one hand, they developed a definition for outreach at CSU and recommended strategies for strengthening outreach at Central State University. In a sense, then, they have helped university administrators craft a policy that has the potential to impact many faculty across campus. On the other hand, they are members of the university, as faculty or administrators, and can see first hand how their colleagues (as well as themselves) respond personally to the report. Committee members, then, may provide insights into how the initiative is perceived by those not involved in its design or creation but who are expected to enact the initiative. The Outreach Committee consisted of twenty members. In addition, four persons affiliated with the Chief Academic Officer’s office served as "adjunc" members. I interviewed seven Outreach Committee members as part of this study divided fairly evenly between administrators and faculty members. As that the 0 CSI'. Th of outreac committei any. imp: university of contin even the faculty n engaged asked C0: Outreach Personal tCWaI-d S: \ l3 Oiltleach l4 reElsonab 82 As I discuss below, the comments of these seven committee members'3 suggest that the outreach initiative may resonate with some faculty, but not with all faculty at CSU. Their comments also suggest that the Outreach Report, eSpecially its definition of outreach, may not resonate with the views of the current president of CSU. Finally, committee members’ comments imply that the Outreach Report has had modest, if any, impact on the university community in the three years since its distribution to the university community. Committee Members’ Perspectives on F aculfl Responses to the Outreach Initiative The various strategies associated with the outreach initiative -- the restructuring of continuing education, the allocations of money from the large foundation grant, and even the Outreach Committee and Outreach Report -- are meant to encourage more faculty members to engage in outreach activities or for those faculty members already engaged in outreach, to engage in what the Report calls "meaningful"l4 outreach. I asked committee members what kind of reaction faculty generally might have to the outreach initiative. They suggest that faculty responses are contingent upon the personal interests of faculty members and institutional characteristics such as the reward system and fiscal resources. 13I use the term committee members in this chapter in reference to the seven Outreach Committee members whom I interviewed. The use of this term is not meant to infer a view shared by all twenty members of the Outreach Committee. 14Although the Outreach Report does not define "meaningful" outreach, a reasonable interpretation may be outreach that embodies a scholarly component and that is connected with the faculty members’ research, teaching or service activities. [a motivatio suggest tl professior outreach and not i‘ outreach to being faculty "1 groups. . COhtmitte COmmitt Who: Similar] meInbers Setting, . going to inhiatiVe 83 Faculty Interests. Committee member lmblum says, "I think individual faculty motivation is the primary driver [in implementing outreach]." Committee members suggest that faculty members who will be motivated to engage in outreach will have a professional interest in working with external clients, and that faculty not interested in outreach will be more oriented toward basic research that is grounded in the discipline and not intended for a larger, public audience. Committee member Kumar describes faculty who are inclined to engage in outreach as "persons that probably have a general curiosity and a general commitment H to being associated with people. Committee member Nebashi suggests that these faculty "tend to be people who are good at it, feel comfortable interacting with client groups. . . . and who feel a need to serve the profession or the community." Similarly, committee member Moxon says such faculty "have to be willing to deal with people." Committee member Lindblum says the initiative will resonate with faculty members who: ...like to communicate and talk and be with people who aren’t in their area or expertise, to share their ideas with them. . . . They [faculty] like to see some results of what they do applied or put into practice. Similarly, committee member Hetrick says the initiative will have meaning to faculty members "who are interested in moving their research into more of a real world setting. . . . And that the research they do needs to be done in the real world if it’s going to have any effect." According to committee members, not all faculty members will find the initiative appealing. Committee member lmblum says outreach is not what many faculty se university ortn disc: Committr and diffe outreach vvho wan And corn out what to outrea faculty \1 involved commim activities more int h faculty r institutic member: liIlllt fac 84 faculty see "as their primary reason for being in a university or being at this university." Committee member Kumar says that some faculty are "focused on their own disciplinary questions" and would find it difficult to conduct outreach. Committee member Moxon says some faculty feel "awkward dealing with strangers and different views" -- conditions he associates with outreach. Moxon also says that outreach is not compatible with faculty members who are "sort of a precise researcher who wants to develop an idea fully, think theoretically -- there’s just no time for that." And committee member Hetrick says that some faculty would find it "hard to figure out what to do." In summary, committee members see some faculty members as being receptive to outreach and other faculty as not being interested in outreach. They described faculty who are receptive to outreach as enjoying working with people and being involved in a real world setting. These faculty members, as described by the committee members, sound as though they may already be engaged in outreach activities. Committee members describe faculty members not interested in outreach as more interested in theoretical work or as not being comfortable with "strangers." Institutional Barriers. Personal motivation is not the only factor likely to affect faculty responses to the outreach initiative. Committee members also say that institutional barriers discourage faculty involvement. For example, committee members lmblum, Nebashi and Hetrick imply that institutional financial resources will limit faculty involvement in outreach. lmblum says: Well, in the simplest, crudest sense, resources [stop faculty participation]. That’s it. Basically, I think we’ve got great readiness l a1 Committ that a hu outreach support t h impleme particula serious I outreach Olltstand Lindblv o—g»—< n ’-l. Along t1 5 i c 1 1 faculty 1 activitje hhheacl 85 and interests . . . but not resources, mostly to enable it. Committee member Nebashi says it "takes support, resources to do outreach" and notes that a huge resource stream would encourage a lot more faculty to be involved in outreach. Committee member Hetrick also says the university has "no money" to support outreach. Most committee members suggest that the reward system is a barrier to faculty implementation of the outreach initiative. They say that the reward system, particularly the tenure process, does not value outreach activities -- a particularly serious problem for junior faculty members. Committee member Hetrick says that outreach "is not rewarded." Committee member Lindblum says "you can do an outstanding job at teaching and an outstanding job at outreach and nobody will see it." Lindblum continues this thought saying of himself: I am still a pretty firm believer that early in one’s career doing things that get you off of research very far is not very smart . . . So I’m reluctant to create a reward system that early on would drift people off of research too far. Along the same line, committee member Kumar says: Some people feel very strongly that faculty -- junior faculty -- should be protected from doing outreach until their disciplinary credibility is established . . . there may actually be a penalty for getting too involved. Committee member lmblum echoes a similar comment saying that junior faculty may have to wait until they get tenure before "branching out" into outreach activities. Committee member Moxon puts it in a slightly different way. He says outreach requires being broad-minded and willing to try new things and "that’s a conflict : expertise counter l receptive and wan the facul Committ disciplin hard to i categorit these cat Want to, COmmlyr System 3 member reWardir see pers ehghgttn 86 conflict for young research faculty because you learn: Stay focused. Develop your expertise. Stay focused on that topic and that’s the route to success. So this advice is counter to outreach." In sum, committee members describe faculty members most likely to be receptive to the outreach initiative as enjoying interaction with external constituents and wanting to apply their work to real—life situations. It is plausible to suggest that the faculty who fit that description are already engaged in outreach activities. Committee members describe faculty who are unlikely to engage in outreach as being discipline focused and perhaps less interested in working with the community. It is hard to imagine, however, that all faculty members at CSU fit into one of these two categories. Not discussed, then, are faculty members who fall somewhere in between these categories, faculty who do not currently work with community members but may want to, or faculty who engage in disciplinary research that does involve the community as a place or topic of study. In addition to personal interests, committee members also identify the reward system as a barrier to faculty engagement in outreach, especially among junior faculty members who need to go through the tenure process -- a process not known for rewarding outreach. It is not clear from committee members’ comments whether they see personal interests or the reward system as the strongest pull or push for faculty engagement in outreach. CAO vvi Heaton’s hoyvever as exprc about or that cros . . . A . . . m . Pi€Siden 87 Committee Members’ Perceptions of Presidential Support for Outreach The current outreach initiative had received the support of Dr. Heaton, the CA0 who convened the Outreach Committee. Committee members also say that Dr. Heaton’s predecessor supported the outreach initiative. Committee members say, however, that the current President of CSU does not share their definition of outreach as expressed in the Outreach Report. They suggest that the president defines or thinks about outreach as continuing education, service and extension and not as scholarship that cross-cuts research, teaching and service. Committee member Kumar says: I hear the president use the word outreach very rarely. So if the university is represented by the president, which I think it must be, in the statement that he makes he will talk about service. The word that he uses is service . . . it is not the definition of outreach that exists in the committee report . . . The president will call it "service" because he’s not clear about the definitional components as the outreach report reconceptualized what this area of activity, what this area of faculty and staff effort might mean for Central State. Committee member Johnson corroborates Kumar’s statement. Johnson says the president appears supportive of outreach -- but not outreach as defined in the report: I think that [the president] would say . . . there is no bigger supporter of outreach on this campus than the president. And I think that he would be absolutely right. And then I would say, but that’s not what I view as outreach. Committee members Hetrick, Moxon, Nebashi, and lmblum express views suggesting that the president’s definition or understanding of outreach is more traditional than what the report offers. Hetrick says the president is "talking about cooperative extension, which is an image of the university involved at a very local level, and a fairly unsophisticated level." Committee member Moxon says the presiden ( the repo Q -—-«‘_m t€H11 0tl1 represer 0f outre the com about es With the the Viev Uanersi mmmn pUbllC 5 member 88 president has a traditional view of outreach as continuing education. Committee member Nebashi says that the definition of outreach presented in the report may not be fully incorporated in the president’s view of outreach: The intellectual foundations [of outreach here at CSU] to [the president] are less important . . . But I think generally there’s agreement that it would involve more than instruction, more than what used to be called life-long education. Committee member lmblum also implies that the president does not use the term outreach as it is expressed in the report: [The president uses the term outreach] in the broadest general sense . . . probably our little definitional nuances don’t really come into play. And I think it’s sort of the person-on-the-street kind of use and understanding. As described by committee members, the president’s use of the term outreach represents the very thinking that the Outreach Report tried to replace -- the expression of outreach as a replacement for the public service mission of the university. Most of the committee members interviewed suggested that the president may be drinking about extension, continuing education, or service -- all activities typically associated with the public service dimension of the university -- when he uses the term outreach. The difference between the portrayal of outreach in the committee report and the view of outreach that the president espouses might give out the message that the university -- as represented by the president -- is not fully behind the outreach initiative. This is something that some committee members read into the president’s public statements and conversations with them. In the words of one committee member: noninvo and outr long-tin. committ regard t presider report. institutii the pres discoun- rep0rts and em then f0] that thy: little Ch Of these 89 I don’t believe that under this particular [president’s] administration that Central State will move forward in gigantic leaps and bounds on the basis of the report. It is conceivable that by virtue of his recent history at CSU and relative noninvolvement in past institutional efforts to rethink continuing education, extension and outreach, that the president has a different understanding of outreach then do many long-time members of the institution, especially those individuals who wrote the committee report and who, thereby, became well versed in the university’s history with regard to outreach. This may result in a view, among faculty generally, that the president is not fully supportive of the committee’s propositions as written in their report. They may therefore be hesitant to recognize the outreach initiative as an institutional priority or as a priority for themselves. That is, if faculty members see the president as not in-step with the language and meaning of the initiative, they may discount the importance of the initiative. Committee Members’ Perspectives of the Impact of the Outreach Report In the preface of the Outreach Report, the Outreach Committee writes that reports do not make policy. Rather, the role of the report was to provoke, stimulate and encourage debate about the ideas in the report with the intent that actions would then follow. One years after the dissemination of the report, however, it is not clear that this has happened. The faculty members on the committee say they have seen little change at CSU over the past two years with respect to the Outreach Report. One of these faculty committee members says: Another anythin another report. that Ce of the t the rec. hasn’t Hintelle ih Whit the Wa Unit/er: 90 I don’t think a whole lot has changed. At least from the kind of world I live in . . . I haven’t had anyone outside yourself and others on the committee, even mention it [the outreach report] to me since it existed. Nobody has ever said a thing about it. Nobody that I hang out with, have lunch with, or anything, knows it exists or cares. So that indicates to me not a whole lot has happened. Another faculty committee member echoes a similar sentiment: "I don’t know if anything has changed . . . I don’t see major shifts as a response to the report." Still another says the report was supposed to lead a corporate transformation: The outreach report as a report is dead . . . Let me qualify "dead." The intention was to take that document and do something with it in a holistic way. That was the intention. . . . Now, as a document that would lead a corporate transformation, I believe it’s dead . . . I just don’t think it’s being implemented. These faculty committee members, then, see little change resulting from the report. In contrast to the faculty views, the administrators on the committee suggest that Central State University has experienced subtle, yet important changes, as a result of the Outreach Report. One administrator committee members says "if you look at the recommendations within the outreach report and say what has changed and what hasn’t changed . . . we’ve made minimal progress." This person also says that the "intellectual framework [of outreach at CSU] has... indirectly challenged the basic way in which the university is organized." This interviewee continues: The thing that the outreach report has changed is the line in the sand that probably we’ll never cross back over again. It has made outreach an expectation as part of the responsibility of the entire place. Two other administrators on the committee say they have noticed a change in the way people talk about outreach, that is, that outreach is becoming part of the university rhetoric. One administrators says: y—q r—Oo—O-l' o—o Still an outreacl adminis Outreac say that surroun talking Commi differin peer gr. membe 91 I think the rhetoric is different . . . I think outreach or service, or whatever, is much more real now. It may not be an equal partner with teaching and research, but it is more than a throw away. And I think that in some ways the university has gone so far in its public rhetoric that it is kind of committed to doing something now. Still another administrator notes that the way people within the university talk about outreach has changed: I feel that the term outreach has been embraced far more universally than I expected. I don’t hear lifelong education much any more . . . I hear people talk a lot about outreach. They may mean different things but I hear them talking about it. I feel that the term outreach has been embraced far more universally than I expected. Committee members who are faculty members and those who are administrators present different perceptions of how the university is responding to the Outreach Report. The administrators suggest the report has had some impact. They say that outreach has become an "expectation of the place" and that the rhetoric surrounding outreach is changing (e.g., more people are talking about outreach and talking about it differently). In contrast, the faculty members on the Outreach Committee say the report has had no impact on the university. These seemingly differing opinions may be reflective of the differences emerging among colleagues or peer groups. That is, the faculty members most likely interact with other faculty members and see little change among their colleagues; therefore this is what they report in interviews. The administrators most likely interact with other administrators, and perhaps they hear of administrative changes such as changes in faculty reporting forms or the hiring of outreach office staff. Thus, each person reports what he or she sees and hears based on his or her everyday interactions. It may be, then, that changes hjfl 0C1 faculty 1 commur seeing t know th suggests want to member offered preview appealir or facul preview initiativ. outreacl hill (10 s PYCSider and 0th. mean, 5 the sam 92 pm occurred, but perhaps more so from an administrative perspective than from a faculty perspective. In sum, listening to committee members talk about how the university community, and in particular faculty members, perceive the outreach initiative is like seeing movie previews -- you get a sense of what is going on but cannot be sure you know the plot. Committee members’ comments provide a preview. That preview suggests that some faculty will be receptive of the outreach initiative -- those who want to interact with external clients or community members. Possibly, these faculty members already engage in outreach activities and would welcome the validation offered by the initiative, an idea brought forward in the Outreach Report. The preview also suggests, however, that some faculty may not find the outreach initiative appealing, perhaps faculty who are not interested in working with external audiences or faculty who are not interested in research with immediate applications. The preview also suggests that faculty seeking promotion, especially tenure, may find the initiative uninviting because promotion and tenure criteria may not reflect a valuing of outreach. Yet, even faculty members who might be inclined to embrace the initiative may not do so because they may not see the president as supportive of it. What the president may be encouraging, if anything at all, are continuing education, extension, and other service activities. The defining of outreach as a scholarly activity was meant, in large part, to encourage faculty members to see it as an activity worthy of the same or similar attention they give to teaching and research. initiativ had. at they ha the rcpt rhetoric implem faculty the outr initiativ initiativ one thii down a UltiVerg membe t€Struct that the beCme 93 It seems reasonable to say that if the Outreach Report represents the outreach initiative, then a number of Outreach Committee members think that the initiative has had, at best, minimal impact on CSU. Faculty committee members I interviewed say they have not seen changes in faculty behavior or departmental policies as a result of the report, and committee members who are administrators say the change is in the rhetoric of the institution. What neither group points to is change due to the implementation of the report’s recommendations or a change in faculty behavior and faculty thinking. Summary This is a study of faculty responses to an administrative policy. The policy is the outreach initiative. This study requires, then, an understanding of the outreach initiative. The outreach initiative of the 19903 builds on the continuing education initiative of the 19705. These initiatives parallel each other in important ways. For one thing, university administrators initiated both; in this sense, both represent top- down administrative initiatives. For another, both initiatives were presented to the university community through reports developed by committees composed of faculty members and administrators. Both initiatives also resulted in organizational restructuring at the university level. But perhaps the most important commonality is that the goal of each initiative is for the activity (continuing education or outreach) to become part of the work lives of regular faculty members. view the the rew: similar ‘ to see 0 Thus. tl which. i and serr out of f academ and hm virtue u would 1 Presum: 0f facu} it could Univers wagon 94 The Outreach Committee, like the Continuing Education Committee, stated the view that for outreach to become part of the faculty work life, it must become part of the reward system of the university. They also stated that to become valued in ways similar to research and teaching in promotion and tenure decisions, faculty would need to see outreach as a form of scholarship and not as a substitute for public service. Thus, the Outreach Committee reconceptualized continuing education as outreach which, in turn, they defined as a form of scholarship that cross-cuts teaching, research, and service. The Outreach Committee also recommended that outreach should grow out of faculty interests. Further, it should be faculty members as collectives (i.e., academic departments) and not the university who should decide what outreach to do and how much to do. Committee members appear to have crafted a report that, by virtue of the representation of outreach as cross cutting teaching, research and service, would help faculty see outreach as compatible with their work lives. In this way, presumably, faculty members would be more likely to adopt it. Is the outreach initiative moving toward the goal of outreach becoming a part of faculty work lives? The history of the continuing education initiative suggests that it could take years to see such change. After all, it took more than 10 years for the university to implement recommendations from the Continuing Education Report. One reason for the delay was that the university had other pressing concerns to handle. And, too, this may be the case at CSU today. Numerous review committees, the Change to semesters, fiscal concerns, and changes in administration are issues that the university, and faculty, have been and are confronting. Outreach, then, becomes one more issue c Ultin outreach init however, be members are other facull or preview t faculty pers Changed am changed wit SUggest that who are adr become a P in activity - of CSU. H mean outre: research, 1e. extension, 3 CSU. Fuitl CSU Which \ lSTh "rhetoric" l 95 more issue on an already busy agenda. Ultimately, it is faculty members themselves who can tell us whether or not the outreach initiative has changed their work lives. Outreach Committee members may, however, be able to provide a preview to faculty perceptions. These committee members are connected to both the history and content of the initiative as well as to other faculty and administrators. Thus, committee members may provide a window or preview of what is, and what is not, changing relative to the initiative from the faculty perspective. When asked, these committee members suggest that little has changed among the faculty. Committee members who are faculty say nothing has changed with regard to faculty behavior and departmental policies and they also suggest that they have not seen changes at the university level; committee members who are administrators say the rhetoric of the institution has changed and outreach has become a part of the institution. But a change in rhetoric15 may not lead to a change in activity -- and it may not even indicate a change in thinking. Consider the president of CSU. He uses the term outreach but, according to committee members, he does not mean outreach as they construe it -- that is, as a scholarly activity that cross-cuts research, teaching and service. Instead he appears to be talking about public service, extension, and continuing education as these terms were used earlier in the history of CSU. Furthermore, the change in rhetoric does not extend to the mission statement of CSU which says that the mission of the university is research, teaching, and public 15The term "rhetoric" has several meanings. In this study, I use the term "rhetoric" to refer to the language that people use. service and Non appealing lt community prefer not t not be an a of the crite The in administ Perspective 10 the initiz ranks. Hot history Orj Work, althe Wh department Chapters, ’ Strong disc Outreach ir Would not 0Utrcach ir Who CuITeI 96 service and which does not include outreach as defined by the committee report. Nonetheless, committee members suggest that the outreach initiative may be appealing to faculty members who already enjoy working with external clients or community members. They say it may be of less interest to faculty members who prefer not to work with external groups. Further, they say that outreach will probably not be an activity that junior faculty will be drawn to because it is not usually a part of the criteria used in tenure and promotion decisions. The outreach initiative, then, is a complex initiative requiring not only changes in administrative structure, but changes in what faculty members value. If the perspectives of members of the Outreach Committee are a preview to faculty responses to the initiative, then one would not expect to see significant change in the faculty ranks. However, it is conceivable that members of departments with an established history or interest in outreach may see the outreach initiative as a way to validate their work, although their work would not change. Whether or not the outreach initiative might be making an impact on academic departments and faculty members is the subject of the following two case study chapters. The first case study focuses on how faculty members in a program with a strong disciplinary basis -- and which I call the Disciplinary Program -- respond to the outreach initiative. Based on the comments of most Outreach Committee members, we would not expect faculty members in the disciplinary department to adopt readily the outreach initiative or to engage in outreach activities. But how will faculty members who currently engage in outreach activities or who are housed in academic department: question, tl department Disciplinarj responses c Departmen‘ 97 departments or disciplines that support outreach activities respond? To answer this question, the focus of the second case study is the Professional Department -- a department that has a history of faculty engaging in outreach type activities. The Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department are in the same college. The responses of faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department form the basis for the following two case studies. Thit Disciplinar sections fOl as they cor university t initiative 0: Second. fat their work 0f outreacl learned of 0WD terms, members f discipline’: CHAPTER 5: THE DISCIPLINARY PROGRAM This case study consists of four sections. The first section describes the Disciplinary Program from the perspectives of seven faculty members. The next three sections focus on these faculty members’ responses to the university outreach initiative as they consider the implementation of the initiative. I collapse these responses to the university outreach initiative into three phases. First, faculty1 members clarify the initiative or the outreach policy by articulating or interpreting it for themselves. Second, faculty members contextualize outreach by looking at it within the context of their work lives. Third, faculty members discuss decision(s) about the implementation of outreach. In the clarifying section the seven faculty members describe how they learned of the initiative and what they know about it, and they define outreach in their own terms. The contextualizing section focuses on how compatible these faculty members find outreach activities to be with their own work, with the department’s and discipline’s missions, and with the department’s reward system. 1I use the term faculty in this chapter in reference to the seven individuals I interviewed from the Disciplinary Program. The word "faculty" should not be construed as representing the views of all faculty in the Disciplinary Program. Further, the word faculty may suggest a collective singular body with a single cohesive view, thereby masking variations in views among individuals, a lexical and cultural pattern that is problematic in much organizational research (Frost, et a1 1991 and Martin, 1992). I try to correct for this by presenting the variations in views held by the seven faculty members interviewed though I (and they) often use the collective term faculty. 98 The decisir response wr outreach iii The Department faculty met description; discipline. knowledge for the Dis discipline" academic f Program as SUbscribe 1 DiSCiplinar Practical a] PFOgram l5 \ 2 analySis Ct to Present 99 The decision section discusses what these faculty members think the department’s response will be to the university outreach initiative and their own responses to the outreach initiative.2 Describing the Disciplinary Program The Disciplinary Program is one of several programs in the Academic Department. The other programs are professional programs. Interviews with seven faculty members in the Disciplinary Program are the basis for the discussions and descriptions in this case study. All seven faculty members affiliate with the same discipline. The Academic Department may be characterized as focusing primarily on knowledge creation (vs. knowledge utilization). The author of a planning document for the Disciplinary Program describes the program as a "theoretically inspired discipline" that seeks excellence in research and teaching. Using descriptors of academic fields developed by Biglan (1973), I would describe the Disciplinary Program as representing more than one paradigm; that is, not all members of the field subscribe to the same body of theory. To continue with Biglan’s distinctions, the Disciplinary Program is more concerned with knowledge generation than with the practical application of knowledge. Finally, in Biglan’s terms, the Disciplinary Program is concerned with life systems (e.g., plants, people, microorganisms) and not 2The clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding framework emerged from an analysis of data in the two departments. As such, I consider the use of this framework to present the two department case studies as part of my overall analysis. with nonlift Ano about the A Disciplinarj number of faculty mer professors. primary an Ove been teachi credit hour. the Aeaden engages in budget for about 10 pt Uni detailed f0] is also hou along Sever and the de] informatior Disciplinar 100 with nonlife systems (e. g., engineering, computers). Another way to describe the Disciplinary Program is through institutional data about the Academic Department -- that is, the larger department of which the Disciplinary Program is but one part. The Academic Department has about the same number of faculty positions -- about 30 -- as it did ten years ago. Almost half of the faculty members are full professors, and the remainder are assistant and associate professors. Nearly one-half of the faculty members in the Academic Department have primary appointments in the Disciplinary Program. Over the past few years, faculty members in the Academic Department have been teaching more, as indicated by an increase of about 20% in the number of student credit hours produced. Nearly one-third of the students taught by faculty members in the Academic Department are from other colleges -- suggesting the department engages in significant service instruction for units outside the college. The university’s budget for the Academic Department was about $2 million in 1994-95, an increase of about 10 percent over a five-year period. University administrators, among others, use such data (although in more detailed form) to describe the Academic Department and the Disciplinary Program. It is also how many university administrators learn about the department’s productivity along several dimensions (e. g., student credit hour productivity, student enrollment), and the department’s resource base (e.g., budgets, external funding). But such information by itself tells us little about the context in which faculty members in the Disciplinary Program work and live, and how they experience their work lives. By talking witl however, v their eyes. that l descr Fac Generally, many other busy, and i Performant little of tht Characteris lives and \ initiative a members’ p I r p l akaard a (3) faculty as the deal dlSCuSS the 101 talking with and listening to seven faculty members in the Disciplinary Program, however, we begin to see these faculty members’ program and department through their eyes. It is their descriptions of the program and the department and their work that I describe in this case study. Faculty members describe the department in both general and specific terms. Generally, faculty members describe the department in ways that make it sound like many other departments at Central State University. Faculty members say they are busy, and they complain about work loads, university expectations, and student performance. However, these same faculty members also say they would like to see little of their work change. These faculty members also describe specific characteristics of the department that seem to moderate how they experience their work lives and which may, in turn, affect how they experience the university outreach initiative and change in general. These specific characteristics include (1) faculty members’ identification of teaching as the department’s academic strength, (2) an awkward administrative structure that challenges the way the department operates, and (3) faculty members relations’ with each other and with university administrators such as the dean of the college, the university’s chief academic officer, and others. I / discuss these three characteristics below. / The Program’s Strength: Teaching Most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program say its strength is teaching. The most enthusiastic endorsement for the department’s teaching comes from Professor Fried: l W( the r dept cert: mus Professor ( 1 th‘ I kr skil teac Pro: undergradu undergradu undergradu improving 1 th we und will whi Pro department department I th teat rese DOC hav Fried: 102 I would say we are an incredible teaching program . . . we are really in the classroom and all of us teach courses. . . .. I would think of any department that puts out the amount of [student credit hours] and certainly the quality of large lecture instruction in the university, we must be right on top. Professor Casey also sees teaching as the department’s strength: undergraduates but he "still has some concerns in that area. undergraduates, is the strength Professor Doty mentions. Since the department does I think the department probably teaches about as well as any department I know. I think that it has amassed a group of people who are fairly skilled teachers and that we do a better than average job therefore in the teaching area. Professor Alvarado believes the department’s strength is teaching undergraduate instruction so well, Professor Doty reasons it can now move on to improving its research: I think [we] give the university a good teaching side. In other words, we cover so many seats and service courses to the university for undergraduate education. I think we do a good job in that area and we will maintain it . . . [And] now we can focus on the graduate part, which is the research. Professors Erdmann and Brown acknowledge teaching as one strength of the department and research as another strength. Both imply, however, that the department has room for improvement. Professor Erdmann comments: I think the [department] is best at a combination of research and teaching. I think it’s fair to say we are not the most prestigious research department in the . . . United States, but we’re far above being poorest . . . [A]nd we do take a lot of pride in our teaching, always have for as long as I have been here. " Teaching, particularly of Professor E Wel prin picl< Unf year rese rece Col output. Pr ...or peo wrc ther on doi: Fac Cuniculum Comment t affected ot Concern lh research p; COmmitme rewarding a determir 103 Professor Brown suggests the department’s teaching and research may be in decline: output. Well, we’re a rather traditional department that has been I think noted primarily for teaching and research. I don’t know which of those to pick. This is, I think, a reasonably good teaching department... Unfortunately, we’ve had two or three retirements in the last couple of years and those were some of the best [teachers]... In terms of research, for a while there we were on an upscale... that has declined in recent years. College demands for teaching may compromise the department’s research Professor Doty describes the demands from the college: ...our own college has sent a number of memos and so on reminding people about the importance of research and I don’t think that’s really wrong, except that we were already heavily engaged in teaching and then these things come. And they ask you for much more productivity on the research area on top of the already heavy teaching that we are doing. So that becomes a problem. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program have spent much time rewriting curriculum and courses due to a recent semester conversion. Several faculty members comment that the amount of time and energy spent on instructional activities has affected other department activities. In particular, several faculty members express concern that the focus on instruction and course preparation has come at the cost of research productivity. Faculty members did not, however, suggest reducing their commitment to instruction. Indeed, most faculty members find teaching to be the most rewarding aspect of their work. Most faculty members also report that teaching plays a determining role in merit, promotion, and tenure decisions. The Proggat The programs. the Diseipli faculty mer implication move f01'Wt from all of collaboratit the discipli majors that or eliminat UHanimous merger_ p; was "not i Pro Place ten y programs ( l [Th upc to i Inu not 104 The Prchram’s Challenge: An Awkward Administrative Structure The Disciplinary Program is the largest and oldest of the department’s three programs. About ten years ago, a small number of professional programs merged with the Disciplinary Program which had, until that time, been its own department. The faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were unsure of the long-term implications of the merger as initially proposed, but two arguments persuaded them to move forward with it. First, they would gain new areas of study. Faculty members from all of the programs saw the new areas of study as extensions of existing collaborations between the units. Second, the merger offered security, particularly for the disciplinary program. The professional programs brought with them many student majors that, during a period of fiscal constraint, offered a buffer to future budget cuts or elimination of the Disciplinary Program. The disciplinary faculty voted unanimously for the merger. Yet, the vote did not reflect unanimous support for the merger. Professor Brown suggests faculty members did not initiate the merger and it was "not a happy occasion; it was sort of forced on us from above." Professors Brown and Erdmann experienced the merger and, although it took place ten years ago, they suggest relations between the disciplinary and professional programs continue as a concern even now. Professor Brown says of the programs’ relations: [Those] programs over there viewed us as trying to impose our will upon them and we viewed them as recalcitrant people who didn’t want to get on board the train. Those relations have never improved very much in 11 years. . . I wouldn’t say it’s an unhappy situation but it’s not a compatible situation. Professor E tensions rel ..w toge ano prot in t: extr yet. The Erdmann i: Professor l ourselves r merger dic Thi 311d events Of a new c aPPOintme 0f the dep chair Will OVer the 11 Coneems. COneerns t diSCiPlinat the admin 105 Professor Erdmann is more specific about why relations have not improved, citing tensions related to intellectual differences: ...we’re not sure it’s going to work. I mean you can jam people together administratively. Whether they work together intellectually is another question . . . You’re putting together the discipline with the profession and I don’t think any of us understood quite what that means in trying to get people under the same tent. So I think that’s been an extraordinarily challenging experiment [for] which the results are not in yet. The department’s response to the issues raised by Professors Brown and Erdmann is an administrative rule, a principle of autonomy, which says, according to Professor Brown, "those programs pretty much run themselves and we pretty much run ourselves over here." In other words, the programs combined administratively, but the merger did not result in a single, cohesive unit. This principle of program autonomy is limited, for some departmental issues and events require all programs to cooperate. One such event was the recent election of a new department chair. Traditionally, the department chair has held a tenured appointment in the disciplinary program, but the newly elected chair has tenure in one of the department’s professional program. Most faculty members believe the new chair will do a good job but several faculty members indicate that they are concerned over the need to choose a liaison to the chair to represent disciplinary program concerns. Previously, the professional programs needed a liaison to represent their concerns to a chair tenured in the disciplinary program. Some faculty members in the disciplinary program believe the need for a liaison to the chair will further complicate the administrative structure. Rec past ten ye the prograt building. a Some facu merger by members i joint resea more unity Frt internal m programs reporting academic Consisting faculty m. meessim Feature Fe imPortant DiSCiPlin: 106 Reconciling the merger among the programs has progressed slowly over the past ten years. In part, the slow progression may be due to the physical separation of the programs from each other. The Disciplinary Program is dispersed through one building, and the professional programs are together in a building across campus. Some faculty members work across program boundaries, which helps to fuse the merger by increasing professional and personal interactions. For example, faculty members from each program recently applied for, and received, a grant to conduct a joint research project. A few faculty members say this grant project may result in more unity between the programs and the faculty. From a university administrator’s perspective, the Academic Department’s internal merger is complete, and the department appears as a coherent unit: The programs are combined under the leadership of one chair, with one budget and reporting line from the department to the college clean to the university’s chief academic officer. From the faculty perspective, however, the department appears as consisting of separate units. The operating principle of autonomy has made it easy for faculty members in the Disciplinary Program to maintain a distance from the professional programs. Faculty Relations Faculty relations with each other and with university administrators represent an important and interesting component of how faculty members experience life in the Disciplinary Program. The faculty members in the Disciplinary Program describe their relations wi relations ev university 2 relations as R_el: department ...w a dt son pro Similarly, we get alo- Which is h 1 ti eve pro for TCSt Re} more SUbS Way facult eat res Th PrOfCSSOr 107 relations with each other as cordial, but several mention an interest in seeing these relations evolve into something even more substantive. Faculty relations with university administrators appear strained and several faculty members describe these relations as intrusions into their work lives. Relations among Faculty. On the surface, faculty relations within the department are congenial. Professor Glass says: ...we do generally get along well.... [And] we’re all very busy so it’s not a department where people are all going out to lunch together or something like that. But I think that’s okay. I think it gives it a professionalism. Similarly, Professor Erdmann believes "it’s a relatively congenial unit and in that sense we get along. People show up, they come to work, they don’t hide out in their homes, which is healthy." And Professor Brown says: I think personally they’re [faculty relations] really quite good... everybody seems to get along on a personal level quite well. I think professionally there are differences of opinions that... have been there for 20 years and have never been resolved and probably never will be resolved. Relations may be congenial, but some faculty members express a desire for more substantive relationships. Professor Alvarado would like to see a change in the way faculty members interact. He describes faculty members as: afraid to challenge each others’ ideas... I’d like to see us talk... about each other’s research but there seems to be a fear that if I put my research out before my colleagues I might be ridiculed in some way. There just seems to be a lack of interaction in that regard... Professor Alvarado also says faculty members are reluctant to work together. He says: i rigl son agr cor Pro Erdmann I ...d risl risl rea Fat sharing idt politics an concentrat mal’be eve imPOrtant Prt ideas as a and tenure Wt qu‘ fee ant Prt a group at explains; 108 it seems like the reaction to anything you bring up is "Yeah, you’re right! Let’s do something about it." "You mean I have to do something differently?" So there seems to be a general sense of agreement on it, but when it comes to posing suggestions, when it comes down to practical solutions, support for anything gets very shaky. Professor Alvarado may be looking for a more collegial atmosphere. Professor Erdmann partially explains the absence of a collegial atmosphere: ...despite appearances, academics are pretty insecure people... we’re not risk-taking people. One of the reasons we’re where we are is we’re not risk-takers. And a nice way to avoid criticism, to avoid negative reactions, is you keep your mouth shut and do your business. Faculty meetings can be an important forum for developing collegiality and sharing ideas, but as Professor Brown says, the conversations are "almost all [on] politics and policies in the department." Professor Erdmann also notes the concentration on politics saying: "Dialogue typically is about departmental politics, maybe even less so university politics. But, frankly, you don’t sit down and talk about important ideas, important values." Professor Casey offers an example of the faculty’s reluctance to wrestle with ideas as a group. He says faculty members fear addressing issues such as promotion and tenure criteria: We have always, in my history here, shied away from addressing these questions [promotion and tenure criteria]. I think out of a number of fears. One of them is measurement. Another is fear of alienating one another, destroying what might be a collegial atmosphere here. Professor Fried is less generous in describing faculty efforts to resolve issues as a group and of the willingness of faculty members to be more cooperative. He explains: Y01 the} son indi bec to s doe At Program a Professors the Discipi ideas beyo administra administra making. 1 administra members : work live: anOlt/ed i managed l 109 You put 10 or 20 people in a room together that all have high I.Q.s -- they’ve all got big egos. Now you expect them to try and come to some sense of resolution? And you have a context in which each individual wants to do their own thing and to hell with the whole because there’s no leadership and there’s no sort of community spirit, so to speak. Then everybody is just pulling in the opposite direction and does their own thing. At issue seems to be whether or not faculty members in the Disciplinary Program are willing to discuss more than departmental matters with each other. Professors Alvarado, Brown, Casey, Erdmann, and Fried perceive faculty members in the Disciplinary Program as afraid or unwilling to share with each other thoughts and ideas beyond departmental matters. Relations with Universng Administrators. Faculty relations with university administrators appear strained. Several faculty members say that university administrators are increasingly becoming involved in department and faculty decision making. Faculty members do not specify what types of decisions university administrators are making, nor which administrators are making them. Rather, faculty members speak in general terms about university administrators imposing on faculty work lives. Professors Erdmann, Fried and Doty say university administrators are too involved in faculty decisions and that faculty members in the department are micro- managed by them. Professor Erdmann remarks: I don’t think there is any question that authority is moving up and it’s been recognized for the last 4-5 years as far as I can tell and that trend will continue... What seems to be going on at the present time is an effort, and I gather from what I’m told a deliberate and conscious effort, on the part of central administration to try to micro-manage my life and that’s worrisome. Professor 1 department At figl are Professor l cost of fac ...it rep ext edt 0P] Prt about the says the ii iii. the [hi Prt decision It 1eadership 110 Professor Fried also views university and college administrators as micro-managing the department: At the moment there is this adversarial relationship and tension between fighting the administration, your dean. And the dean and administration are trying to micro-manage the departments. Professor Doty sees the demands made by university administrators as coming at the cost of faculty members and student needs: ...lots of your time is taken by requirements that the university has, reports [e.g., planning and budget reports] and so on, that to some extent, I believe, are not directly related to your main function as an educator. [It’s] mostly related to the needs of central administration as opposed to the needs of the faculty and the students. Professor Fried indicates that some decisions made by university administrators about the work of the faculty may be harmful to higher education. Professor Fried says the university is run by: a lot of bureaucrats who are not academics. They know nothing about the scientific process... the problem is they are making decisions that are actually harming the very, I think, the very essence of a [higher] education system. Professor Alvarado suggest that university administrators are not tending to the decision making process that they should -- that is, educational administration or leadership. Professor Alvarado says: I would like the administration if they’re going to lead, they should lead and not ask us to debate the ideas. We’re not here to debate the ideas of educational administration as far as I see it. We’re here to debate the ideas of [the discipline] If the administration wants to do something differently, then they do what they can to get us to do that. And I don’t think it’s our position to debate that. They’re probably debating it over in the administration building. And that’s where it ought to be debated, not taking up faculty time with debating these issues. Gi\ respond to when he t2 ...e to l yor Fat intruding i speak abor sense of it administra departmen working a service. ] Camel wht legs in the not new, cam] is j Or Fawlty m faculty mt l l 1 Given these concerns about university administrators, how do faculty members respond to demands fi'om them? Professor Erdmann may have this question in mind when he talks about faculty responses to shifts in the demands made by administrators: ...each time there is a somewhat different twist on what you’re expected to do. And so you try to discern what’s real and what’s not and what you respond to and when you kind of keep doing business as usual... Faculty members speak in general terms about university administrators intruding into the work lives of faculty members. That is, faculty members do not speak about any one decision or any one university administrator but of a general sense of intrusion. Perhaps what faculty members are responding to is a sense that administrators are making more decisions about what faculty members and academic departments ought to be doing. Meanwhile, faculty members see themselves as working as best they can at what it is they should be doing -- teaching, research, and service. To use an old parable, perhaps faculty members see administrators as the camel who has not only gotten his nose under the tent, but now has its neck and front legs in the tent. As Professor Erdmann implies in his comment, such intrusions are not new. Faculty members may cope with these intrusions by waiting to see if the camel is just looking around or trying to come into the tent. On the surface, faculty relations in the Disciplinary Program seem good. Faculty members say they are cordial and professional with each other. Yet, some faculty members describe their relationships with each other as often superficial. They say they do not engage in discussions about ideas, values, or controversial topics. Perhaps fa want to m cause dish to have th As their relati relationshi suggest th couple of abilities o m Fa 0f the dc; Faculty m teaching, teWarding faculty m. Tl. the facult: Several pr DiSCiPline 112 Perhaps faculty members shy away from more personal and intense topics because they want to maintain cordial relations with each other and these topics, if discussed, could cause disharmony. Or perhaps they avoid these conversations because they are afraid to have their ideas, values or opinions challenged or criticized by their colleagues. As faculty members describe it, their relations with each other are better than their relations with and administrators. Faculty members indicated that their relationships with administrators are somewhat conflictual. Several faculty members suggest that university administrators are intruding in faculty work lives. And a couple of faculty members question the academic (i.e., research) and administrative abilities of university administrators. Summary Faculty members describe the Disciplinary Program through their perceptions of the department’s strengths and challenges, and faculty members’ relationships. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program say the strength of the department is teaching. Most faculty members take pride in their teaching and find it to be a very rewarding aspect of their work. Teaching, however, consumes a great deal of time and faculty members suggest that it may affect their abilities to conduct research. The department’s administrative structure is a challenge to the department. As the faculty members describe it, a decade-old merger of the Disciplinary Program with several professional programs has not resulted in a single, cohesive unit. The Disciplinary Program and the professional programs Operate under a principle of autonomy themselves departmen the incohe Mc one facult well." Bu interested faculty mt members 333’ng the members. Fa environm. the (hymn ShortcOmi cOniinue 1 Work env Ollileach ‘ 113 autonomy where, as one faculty member remarks, "those programs pretty much run themselves and we pretty much run ourselves over here." The recent selection of a department chair from a professional program appears to remind faculty members of the incoherence and awkwardness of this union. Most faculty members say that their relations with each other are cordial. As one faculty member says, "everybody seems to get along on a personal level quite well." But a couple of faculty members suggest that faculty seem unwilling or not interested in sharing their ideas and thoughts with each other. Relations between faculty members and university administrators appear strained. Several faculty members express a general sense of intrusion on the part of university administrators saying that administrators are "micro-managing“ or trying to direct the work of faculty members. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program describe a less—than-perfect work environment. Nonetheless, faculty members say they would like to see little change in the department. It may be that faculty members recognize the tensions or shortcomings in the department, but are able to navigate around these conditions and continue to do the work they want to do. It is within this seemingly less-than-perfect work environment that faculty members will be making sense of the university outreach initiative -- a topic I discuss next. Fat study. Th of an orga sensemaki lives. Ba activities: faculty me personally alongside discipline members and how 1 Ti. not neces: UniVersity and then . LikerSe, deCiSion. Clarity of Case Silld‘ 114 Clarifying Outreach Faculty responses to the university outreach initiative are the focus of this study. These responses shed light on what can be viewed as the implementation phase of an organizational change model. The implementation phase is a trial period of sensemaking when faculty members "try-on" outreach to see how, or if, it fits in their lives. Based on faculty responses, trying-on outreach appears to consist of three activities: clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding. Clarifying activities include how faculty members seek or discover information about the initiative and how they personally define it. Contextualizing involves faculty members placing outreach alongside their other activities and responsibilities, the department’s and the discipline’s mission, and, within the reward system. Deciding covers how faculty members anticipate they personally will respond to the university outreach initiative and how they perceive the department will respond to the initiative. These actions are not necessarily time ordered. That is, faculty members do not necessarily first clarify, next contextualize, and then reach a decision about the university outreach initiative. It is possible that faculty members form a decision first and then contextualize the decision in such a way as to support their decision. Likewise, faculty members could seek (or not seek) clarification which supports their decision. However, for organizational purposes, I retain the linear order to enhance clarity of presentation. These three activities are the topics of the remainder of this case study. I begin here by discussing clarifying activities. As attempt to Program 5 university the univer why unive time. Fac document M university newspape "Pieces 0: they look make use OWeach Outreach faculty tr. attention. Ti With the 115 As faculty members come in contact with the university outreach initiative they attempt to clarify both its content and purpose. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program seek information from university sources and from each other to clarify what university administrators expect from them. They also rely on their understanding of the university as an organization and of external environmental conditions to clarify why university administrators are promoting the university outreach initiative at this time. Faculty members also define outreach activities by referring to university documents and to personal experience. Faculty Members’ Knowledge of the University Outreach Initiative Most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program found out about the university outreach initiative "in dribs and drabs," from faculty and student newspapers, speeches by high ranking administrators, university committees, and "pieces of paper that come across my desk." Six of the seven faculty members say they looked at the Outreach Report for information about outreach. Faculty members make use of the report in various ways. Some faculty members recognize the Outreach Report as the "primary articulation" by administrators of the university outreach initiative, others reference it for a definition of outreach, and still other faculty members only know the document exists but have not given it a great deal of attention. These various information sources are helpful in acquainting faculty members with the university outreach initiative, but faculty members still find the outreach initiative tt not clearly faculty. P because. " really mee Prt comments Professor because .. does it be Y. YC 8.1“. Professor Would de T: "One of. faculty, i members They ha, (ltipartme 1 16 initiative to be ambiguous. Faculty members say that university administrators have not clearly defined or communicated clear and consistent outreach expectations to the faculty. Professor Erdmann does not know what administrators are looking for because, "I don’t think it’s ever been fully announced or defined what the university really means by outreach." Professors Fried and Glass share a similar sentiment. Professor Glass comments, "I don’t think they [administrators] know what it means," and continues: ...I did look at it [Outreach Report] for a definition of outreach... and it’s very, very broad....a lot of us consider that what we’re doing that’s more traditional could very easily be put under that broad definition of outreach provided by central administration. Professor Fried does not "really fully appreciate what the university means by outreach because it can present itself in such a myriad number of ways and forms. Where does it begin and end?" He says of the administration’s definition: You can make of it what you like. This is an amorphous animal. And you can call whatever you like "outreach." And I can twist practically anything I do into being outreach. Professor Alvarado says "I could probably give you a definition of outreach which would define what I do so that I could defend that as outreach." The ambiguity of the definition is a problem according to Professor Brown: "One of our problems is that we’ve never... had a common understanding in this faculty, in this department, about what outreach is." To reduce this ambiguity faculty members in the department have generated their own information about outreach. They have done so through three communication events or episodes within the department. One event involves clarifying university administrators’ definitions or use of the terr university university down hert acourset departmer departmer according F2 departme: were. or surprised IlObOdy e Same sen We had. 117 of the term outreach. The faculty formed a committee to investigate the various ways university administrators use the term outreach. This committee went through university literature and synthesized it "down to a few pages so that us poor folks down here could understand it," says Professor Brown. The committee did not suggest a course of action or propose a single definition of outreach. The purpose of the departmental committee was to develop a document to share with other faculty in the department. Faculty members discussed this document in a faculty meeting and, according to Professor Alvarado, "everybody has been in on the conversations." Faculty members also discussed outreach at a faculty retreat. At the retreat the department chair asked faculty members to list any outreach activity in which they were, or had been, involved. Professor Brown comments that "everybody was rather surprised at the length of the list. I didn’t know half of that stuff was going on and nobody else knew the other half was going on. Professor Erdmann expresses the same sentiment, "We surprised ourselves that we had done as many things like that as we had. It just isn’t something we talked about or thought about." A third communication episode is more unusual. It consists of a series of open memoranda sent by Professor Casey to other faculty members. Professor Casey sent memos to his colleagues asking "whether or not we are being appropriately mindful of the people we are meant to be serving. And heavy in that question is the whole issue of outreach." The memos focus on changes Professor Casey has made in his own thinking about the professoriate’s responsibility to society, a topic he closely associates with outreach. Prt absolutely its agt i0 ab to A couple content of Ti Report -- outreach 0f outreac that using as outreat administr faculty n: the unive exPerient members administt 118 Professor Casey describes the sending of "open memos to my colleagues [as] an absolutely revolutionary step around here." The memos arise from a need: to talk to my colleagues and I was not pleased with the level of opportunity that I had. Meetings were too infrequent, or structured by agendas. And we did not sit down -- this department does not sit down to talk about things that are important, in my opinion. We tend to talk about action items, not about what we think about things. So I decided to try and approach it from a different angle. A couple of faculty members have spoken directly with Professor Casey about the content of the memos, but the department has not formally discussed them. The information provided by the university -- in particular, the Outreach Report -- serves the purpose of informing faculty members about the university outreach initiative in a general way. In particular, faculty members find the definition of outreach in the Outreach Report to be ambiguous. Several faculty members say that using the administrative definition of outreach, they could define anything they do as outreach. Faculty members are not certain, however, about what university administrators expect of them. Rather than ignoring or accepting this ambiguity, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program have sought additional information on the university outreach initiative, often relying upon each other’s perceptions and experiences to clarify what university administrators expect from them. Faculty members also seek to clarify the university outreach initiative by exploring university administrators’ possible motives for initiating it, a subject discussed next. facultLM Far introducin -- a respo: relations. Se external r attacks or are based outreach Professor "public d Sr pressures Wants to c0mpetir. the unive fit—l CCO‘D 119 Faculgg Members’ Perceptions of Administrators’ Motives for the Initiative Faculty members suggest that the motives or reasons for administrators introducing the university outreach initiative to the organization are primarily political -- a response to external pressures, a desire for more state appropriations, or public relations. Faculty members also express skepticism about who supports the initiative. Several faculty members say the university outreach initiative is a response to external pressures. Professor Doty says the outreach initiative is, in part, a response to attacks on higher education across the country. These attacks, Professor Doty asserts, are based on misperceptions of what universities do. Professor Casey believes outreach is driven by "initiatives and proddings at the local legislative level." And Professor Glass believes the current university outreach initiative is a reaction to "public demand, changes in our population." Several faculty members see the university outreach initiative as a reaction to pressures and interests within the university. Professor Alvarado says the university wants to improve its image in the state and position itself as being different from a competing university in the state. Professor Fried says administrators are "pushing" the university outreach initiative as a means to garner more state appropriations: This university is a tOp-down institution. It’s very politically driven... I would think that one could speculate that it’s partly a response to the legislature. The institution is always saying to the legislature it wants more money appropriated [because] we’re a land-grant. And they go back to this root and we do all this work for the communities. It [CSU] wants more money appropriated... They [administrators] want to say we’re becoming integral in the communities. Prc internal in says: Se in the des Alvarado questions 120 Professor Erdmann says the university outreach initiative is a reaction to two internal interests: public relations and the university mission. Professor Erdmarm says: Some would say cynically that the primary reason [for initiating outreach] is PR, public relations. And the nature of CSU is such that its funding, its ability to recruit students, its general receptivity by the citizens will be enhanced to the extent that it’s able to demonstrate that it can do good things for the people who pay the bills -- the taxpayers. But I suspect there’s another dimension to that which is a little less cynical than that. I think there’s probably in the mind of many people a fairly sincere conviction that, at least a certain part of CSU, can in fact assist, help, heal, create, solve on behalf of the people of [the state]. Several faculty members express doubt or cynicism about faculty involvement in the design of the initiative and administrator support for the initiative. Professor Alvarado voices concern about faculty involvement in the initiation of outreach and questions the intent of administrators: Faculty have a right to be cynical about initiatives like this, although I suppose there was a lot of faculty input at various stages along the way. But I think the initial response to something like this from the administration is going to be cynical, it is cynical... what are they [administrators] trying to do, who are they trying to please, and what money pot are they after, what political egos are they trying to stroke? Professor Brown says he does not "know much about the motivation for pushing [outreach] from the administrative level." Professor Brown also questions faculty involvement in the university outreach initiative: "1 think the new push for outreach... is not necessarily bad. It’s just that nobody down here was consulted about it." Professor Casey has misgivings about administrative support for the university outreach initiative, "I hear more being said about it then I used to hear. I don’t know whether it this [the c statements I l we ll (12 ad Pr and the p president Er—l IZOD—CI F initiative '—-mr—-—r(1 _' 121 whether it’s rhetoric or not." Professor Alvarado wonders about "the extent to which this [the outreach initiative] is rhetoric." He continues by noting contradictory statements by university leaders: I hear from [the chief academic officer]...we are going to do outreach, we are going to study outreach, we’re going to put our emphasis there. Then our Dean says our major emphasis is bringing in research grants. (laughs). Clearly two contradictory statements from THE administration. Professor Erdmann, who is generally knowledgeable about the outreach effort and the politics of university administration, expresses doubts about the support of the president and chief academic officer for the initiative: What is a mystery to me, and maybe in this case I am not well informed, I am not clear in my own mind as to where [the president] and [the chief academic officer] come down on this. To the best of my knowledge... they have not officially endorsed that report. Professor Fried is the only faculty member to raise a philosophical concern about the university’s involvement in outreach: The difficulty I have is much more philosophical. And that is, should an institution, a [research] institution like CSU which offers PhDs and so on, be involved in this business? In other words, is it a constructive use of people’s time and effort to do this sort of work? Ought it to be done by other people? I’m not really clear if the university really has an obligation to do this type of thing -- outreach. Is this really what the university is funded for? Professor Erdmann relates the university outreach initiative to other university initiatives as he reflects on previous administrative efforts: ...ideas come and go. And for those of us who have been here a while... I’ve been exposed to four or five presidents and three or four [chief academic officers], three or four deans, and each of them brings an agenda. And part of those agendas have worked out and been institutionalized and a lot of them haven’t. Where outreach fits into that Fa the initiat member 1 faculty or faculty m is, people faculty rr Only Pro engage ir initiative acConntet Cmnpusr The less in the Di administr the outr. different 122 I’m not sure... I think that people are a little skeptical that that’s this decade’s emphasis and that in 1996 we’ll change gears again and we’ll be back to some other push in some other direction from on high... Faculty members seem skeptical of the university outreach initiative. Most see the initiative as an administrative action motivated by politics. Only one faculty member related the initiative to the university’s mission. At the same time, some faculty members are skeptical of administrative support for the initiative. A few faculty members suggest the university outreach initiative exists only in rhetoric -- that is, people talk about it, but no one seems to be doing anything. For the most part, faculty members do not speak out in opposition to the university outreach initiative. Only Professor Fried challenges the initiative, saying the university may not need to engage in outreach. Also, only one faculty member associates the university outreach initiative as being developed, in part, by faculty when, in fact, faculty members accounted for half of the Outreach Committee membership and faculty across the campus were interviewed and gave feedback on various drafts of the Outreach Report. The less than enthusiastic reception to the initiative may suggest that faculty members in the Disciplinary Program see the university outreach initiative as belonging to administrators and as an idea that will, as Professor Erdmann says, "come and go." Defining Outreach Faculty members in the disciplinary program rely on personal experiences and the Outreach Report to define outreach. Each faculty member defines outreach differently, but many of the definitions share ideas in common. All faculty members describe c also descr members university E it as conr members by saying induidua activities H extensior outside t] COnjuncti problems descripti. :3ch Like Prc oulSlde i uniVersit 123 describe outreach as the external application of knowledge. Several faculty members l also describe outreach as a cross-cutting activity. Another term used by some faculty members is social benefit. Most faculty members also equate outreach with other university activities such as extension, applied research, and service. External Application. When defining outreach, each faculty member describes it as connecting university/faculty activities or knowledge with clients or community members external to the university. Professor Alvarado expresses this understanding by saying, "I can see that outreach is any activity that has a direct impact on the individuals or organizations outside the university." Professor Fried says certain activities are outreach activities because "you’re having contact with the community." Professors Brown, Casey, Doty, and Erdmann concur that outreach is the extension of university knowledge and faculty expertise to individuals or organizations outside the university. Professor Brown says outreach is an activity performed "in conjunction with outside agencies and folks, pe0p1e trying to solve real-world problems with the expertise found here at the university." Professor Casey offers this description: Outreach is work that benefits people directly who are not university affiliates... it’s work the university can do, often which extends university generated knowledge directly to the lives of pe0p1e who are not university affiliates. Like Professors Brown and Casey, Professor Doty understands outreach as going outside and applying "our knowledge to try to help communities outside the university." Professor Erdmann simply states that outreach is the extension of "the resources of the university to the citizens of [the state]." Qt] activity. '. and servic problem-s credit cou clinical 56 the univer reference: 124 Cross-Cutting. The Outreach Report describes outreach as a cross-cutting activity. That is, outreach involves -- and is not separate from - teaching, research, and service. Accordingly, one can conduct outreach-research (e.g., collaborative, problem-solving research with external clients), teaching-outreach (e.g., off-campus credit coursework), and service-outreach (e. g., medical services provided through a clinical service plan).3 Several faculty members make reference to this component of the university definition when personally defining outreach. Professor Brown references the Outreach Report when he describes outreach as: ...cross-cutting teaching, research, and service, so that you can do non- outreach teaching and outreach teaching, and etc.... And personally I agree with that. Professor Erdmann also references the cross-cutting aspect of the outreach definition. He says outreach is a: cross-cutting activity extending from community service through the educational function, teaching function. Both formal and informal right into the research domain... And I think that’s a fairly reasonable definition of the activity of outreach. Professor Alvarado refers to the Outreach Report when he says outreach is defined as "outreach-teaching, outreach-service, and outreach-research." Professor Glass does not reference the Outreach Committee Report but says: I think there’s a couple of different kinds of outreach... So there is outreach such as cooperative extension service... applied research outreach, and... outreach as education. These faculty members do not give specific examples of cross-cutting outreach . 3The cross-cutting component of the report’s definition of outreach is detailed 1n Chapter 4. activities they seen g memos. articulate discussio Program. as to wh serving, to what ' welfare . Professo mindful 0r one’s n€€d f0] PTOfeSsr 10 consi HCareeri 125 activities and they do not discuss in detail what they mean by cross-cutting. Rather, they seem to use the language provided in the Outreach Report. Social Benefit. Another outreach characteristic emerges from Professor Casey’s memos. This characteristic, social benefit, is not as clearly articulated, nor is it articulated by as many faculty members as the other characteristics. Nevertheless, discussion of social benefit elicits interesting reactions. Professor Casey sent several memos to his colleagues in the Disciplinary Program. These memos, according to Professor Casey, speak to "the whole question as to whether we are being appropriately mindful of the people we are meant to be serving, and heavy in that is the whole issue of outreach." This attitude runs counter to what Professor Casey sees as ”careerism... a trend to place unit survival above the welfare of those audiences we are supposed to be servicing." The concept raised by Professor Casey is more than contact with external constituents, it means being mindful of the people who benefit from one’s work, perhaps at the cost of one’s own, or one’s unit’s, survival. Outreach, from Professor Casey’s perspective, includes the need for the activity to be socially relevant. Professors Erdmann and Brown have strong, and different, reactions to Professor Casey’s message of social benefit. Professor Erdmann agrees with the need to consider the social benefit of outreach but does not sense the existence of "careerism" in the department. He says: as I came to understand better what Professor Casey was or was not saying, I found [myself]... agreeing with the perspectives he was advancing... I don’t sense the same kind of behaviors that I think Professor Casey is concerned about... But, putting that aside, his ideas about the things we ought to be thi ml Pr outreach. he believt bill he dr outreach I a P a F receives agree wi agree w- PFOfeSSc SllppOI-t "What i SOcial b 126 thinking about and talking about and asking ourselves -- I think are pretty much on the mark. Professor Brown agrees with the emphasis on social benefit in a definition of outreach, but does not agree that everything has to have a social benefit, a point that he believes Professor Casey is making: ...he [Professor Casey] has reached a conclusion that the work that he does ought to be socially meaningful... And that’s how he’s defining outreach and that’s okay. And he seems to be urging that point of view on other faculty. And I don’t know why he’s urging that point of view on people like me because I don’t disagree with it. But I will take the point of view that I don’t think everything has to be, and I think that he’s reached a conclusion that everything you’re going to do ought to be socially relevant out there. Professor Fried does not respond to the substance of Professor Casey’s memo, but he does support Professor Casey’s effort to ask faculty challenging questions about outreach activities: There are a few people who are broaching the issue [outreach] and asking the question [why]... He [Professor Casey] is one of the few people who is prepared at the senior level, who is prepared to stand up and say "what are we actually doing?" Professor Casey’s belief that outreach activities should be socially beneficial receives mixed support from the faculty. Professors Erdmann and Brown seem to agree with the outcome (outreach activities should be socially beneficial), but do not l agree with all of the assumptions made by Professor Casey (e.g., faculty careerism). l Professor Fried neither supports nor opposes the social benefit concept, but he does l support the effort by Professor Casey to engage faculty members in a discussion of "What is outreach?" and "Why should we engage in outreach activities?" So, although social benefit may not be a shared characteristics of outreach, a couple of faculty members outreach Q applied r and Prof Professor ”outreacl about me applied t that will Professo applied 1 most lik Where ti f With ext an "outr What the is "rese: Professr Erdman of the l? 127 members are discussing it and it may yet play a more important role in shaping outreach activity. Outreach as Applied Research. Most faculty members identify outreach with applied research. Professor Glass describes an "applied research outreach" program and Professor Erdmann sees outreach-research as primarily "applied research." Professor Brown distinguishes "pure theoretical kinds of things [research]" from "outreach kinds of things, problem solving in the real world." Faculty members talk about many outreach examples that fall under the rubric of applied research -- research applied to or involving field problems or settings. Professor Brown describes a project that will take him into an urban setting to collect data using a model he has developed, Professor Doty mentions a similar type of project, and Professor Alvarado also sees an applied project or technology transfer as the type of outreach activity in which he is most likely to engage. Professor Erdmann and Professor Casey describe projects where the findings have application to government agencies. Outreach as Extension Activities. Four faculty members associate outreach with extension, or the land-grant mission of the university. Professor Casey refers to an "outreach-extension" function of the university. Professor Glass sees outreach as what the "cooperative extension service does," and distinguishes professional work that is "research-teaching" from professional work that is "research-outreach." Similarly, Professor Brown talks about an extension person as an "outreach specialist. ” Professor Erdmann says outreach is a natural activity to be doing if you have ”adopted a vision of the place that some have as a land-grant institution." This professor later refers to the "land- Q with serv where fat Professor mixed up equates t I’ it s In descri akin to s agency I decision: Sum i Outreach outreac about th definitic lo the Sr 128 the ”land-grant side, the outreach side" of the institution. Outreach_a_s Service Activities. Several faculty members also link outreach with service activities (e.g., activities that do not have a direct academic outcome or where faculty engage in non-academic activities with groups or individuals or both). Professor Brown says, "I don’t know, we used to call it service, and that term gets H mixed up with outreach these days I think in some people’s minds. Professor Fried equates traditional service activities with outreach: I’ve given talks all over. From professional organizations all the way through to Boy Scouts and things. I suppose all of these are outreach in some way. In describing an outreach activity both Professors Casey and Glass describe activity akin to service. Professor Casey made a presentation at a conference for government agency personnel, and Professor Glass sits on a statewide committee that makes policy decisions in Professor Glass’s area of expertise. Summary Faculty members4 in the Disciplinary Program are aware of the university outreach initiative, having heard and read about it from multiple sources, including the Outreach Report. But the content of these messages leave faculty members unclear about the university outreach initiative. For example, faculty members find the definition of outreach in the Outreach Report unclear and ambiguous, which to them 4As a reminder to the reader, I use the term faculty in this chapter in reference to the seven individuals I interviewed from the Disciplinary Program. may mea same fact ambiguitj the unive Outreach reduce tl initiative depattmt to We his colle reducing outreach clarify V Conclud. and not 1 the initi Eldminis most pa redefini 129 may mean that administrators are unclear as to what outreach means. However, these same faculty members do define outreach for themselves. Perhaps the uncertainty and ambiguity is not in reference to their understanding of outreach as an activity, but of the university outreach initiative as represented by university administrators and the Outreach Report. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program have been active in trying to reduce the ambiguity, as they sense it, associated with the university outreach initiative. As a department, faculty members have discussed the initiative in department meetings and in a retreat. They have assigned a group of faculty members to review outreach-related documents. One faculty member has even sent memos to his colleagues to discuss the role of outreach in the department. Perhaps instead of reducing ambiguity, these clarifying efforts have led faculty members to question if outreach is "this decade’s emphasis." In other words, through the process of trying to clarify what university administrators mean by outreach, faculty members may have concluded that the university outreach initiative is one more in a series of initiatives and not something that they should take seriously —- yet. Faculty members are skeptical of the university outreach initiative. Most see the initiative as a political response to legislative pressure, a desire on the part of administrators for more legislative funds, or even as a public relations tool. For the most part, faculty members do not see the university outreach initiative as a way of redefining or revitalizing the university mission. Wh they seem share a sin definitions faculty rne define wh: it is found involves c equate ou One facul members, beneficial Cc applicatio research. activities, being a S- pelSOn’g Outreach, applicatir 130 When faculty members discuss outreach, rather than the outreach initiative, they seem more clear and certain about what outreach means. Faculty members do not share a singular definition of outreach, but they do share one characteristic across definitions -- outreach activities involve the external application of knowledge. Most faculty members also describe outreach as being cross-cutting -- although they do not define what they mean by cross-cutting. Rather, they reference the use of this term as it is found in the Outreach Report which states that outreach is not separate from, but involves or cross-cuts research, teaching and service. Most faculty members also equate outreach with other activities such as applied research, extension, and service. One faculty member defines outreach as offering a social benefit. Other faculty members, however, are less certain that outreach activities need to be socially beneficial. Common, then, to all faculty definitions of outreach is the reference to external application of knowledge. All but one faculty define or describe outreach as applied research. Less common to all definitions is outreach as cross-cutting, as extension activities, and as service activities. Only one faculty member defines outreach as being a socially beneficial activity although several faculty members respond to this person’s views. Clearly, faculty members do not share a common definition of outreach, but they do appear to share a sense that it involves application or -- external application of knowledge and applied research. F2 the conte outreach departme promotio has been less clear disciplin generallj Sl’Stem t Rant C0mpati his worj Professr Professt dE-frne ( 131 Contextualizing Outreach Faculty responses to the university outreach initiative extend beyond clarifying the content, purpose, and definition of outreach. Faculty members also respond to outreach activities within the contexts of their work lives, the missions of their department and discipline, and the institutional reward system -- especially tenure and promotion decisions. Most Disciplinary Program faculty members say outreach is, or has been, compatible with aspects of their research and teaching. Faculty members are less clear as to how compatible outreach activities are with the department’s and their discipline’s missions. Faculty members agree that the reward system does not generally acknowledge outreach, but they are not interested in making changes in this system to accommodate outreach in better ways. F acultv Work Lives Most faculty members indicate that outreach, as they define it, is sometimes compatible with their work. Professor Brown says outreach is quite compatible with his work since much of his research has an applied or outreach component to it. Professor Alvarado says outreach is compatible with his work in "some cases." Professor Glass says outreach is compatible with his work depending on how you define outreach. He comments: Certainly the type of outreach... that is applied research is totally compatible. When I do my research it’s very applied... What’s not compatible given my current work load is something that’s more on the extension model where I have direct contact with the citizens in [the with thei outreach compone says: "I audience past one links. A but now A _a 4 h A‘ fllture. Work; 132 state] and plan some sort of program, a teaching program, or what not, that’s on a continuing basis, that’s in-depth, that really gives these people substantive new knowledge. That’s not compatible with what my current work load is. Professors Doty, Casey, and Erdmann talk about outreach being compatible with their work at different points in their careers. Professor Doty does not find outreach to fit with her current research or teaching, but it has been an important component of her teaching in the past. Professor Casey looks back over his career and says: "I think some of the work that I did could have been targeted to outreach audiences..." Professor Casey says his perspective has changed "radically" over the past one-and-a-half years and he anticipates his future work will have strong outreach links. And Professor Erdmann says outreach was once very compatible with his work, but now he is more interested in traditional research and teaching: future. work: I don’t see myself being involved in that [outreach] work. But there was a point in my career where I think I was extensively involved in it.... I don’t see any of my activities that I’m doing at the present time as really outreach in nature. They’re much more traditional in- classroom instruction and what some would call more basic research and writing... I have no problems with it [outreach]. Probably could get back into the business if I wanted to. But it’s just a matter of personal disposition. Outreach is not compatible with all faculty members’, work -- past, present, or Professor Fried is clear in his message that outreach is not compatible with his It’s going to waste my time if the university is going to come along and say, "Well, now, as a successful researcher, we want you to spend 20 percent of your time doing outreach." Well, that’s crazy. Y professio work the faculty a outreach members their per says if c work. I as comp depends in their the disc with th. departn POintin; in a pa departn clear 0- 133 Yet, even Professor Fried says he conducts some outreach as part of his professional work. Most faculty members identified aspects of their past or current work that are compatible with outreach. It may be that outreach is compatible with faculty activities at different points in a faculty member’s career. Or, it may be that outreach is compatible with faculty work but not a central aspect of what faculty members view as their work. Also, how faculty members define outreach may affect their perceptions of its compatibility with their interests. For example, one professor says if outreach is defined as basic research then he views it as compatible with his work. If, however, outreach is defined as continuing education, then he does not see it as compatible with his work. The Program’s Mission Faculty perceptions of outreach’s compatibility with the department’s mission depends, in part, on whether or not faculty members include the professional programs in their definition of the department. Professors Alvarado, Brown, and Doty refer to the disciplinary and professional programs when they consider outreach’s compatibility with the department’s mission. "We’re doing it," says Professor Alvarado of the department’s involvement in outreach. Professor Alvarado substantiates this claim by pointing out the amount of community-oriented work performed by faculty members in a professional program. Professor Brown says the disciplinary side of the department does outreach, and "when you throw in the professional programs" it is clear outreach is central to the interests of the department. Professor Doty says outreach disciplin: h P [r it outreach Disciplit with the core to beyond coopera Program and the thereby missior PTOfes: does n 134 outreach is very consistent with the goals of the professional programs but in the disciplinary program: It’s not going to be easy to do lots of outreach... because of the pressures of publication, to get prestigious funding, to do lots of research. Those are the things that the faculty have made a commitment to excel on. When Professors Glass, Casey, and Erdmann talk of the compatibility of outreach with the department’s mission, they are talking about the department as the Disciplinary Program. These professors are less certain that outreach is compatibility with the department’s mission. If outreach is defined as applied research, then it is core to the disciplinary program according to Professor Glass, and so is teaching beyond the classroom. If, however, outreach is "something that somebody hired in cooperative extension service does," then it is not core to the department. Professor Casey is uncertain of the applicability of outreach to the disciplinary program largely because he sees a dividing line between the agenda of the discipline and the agenda of the institution. He suggests that the Disciplinary Program, and thereby faculty members, line up with the discipline’s mission not the institution’s mission: I see it [outreach] as not being a central interest of this department in terms of the way most faculty think of it.... I think faculty here [in the disciplinary program] traditionally define the department’s success in terms of academic achievement. Their agendas are driven by the discipline instead of by the university mission. Professor Erdmann also doubts outreach is central to the Disciplinary Program and does not believe it will become a central activity of the program: .QEF-l V departme outreach consider as inclut professi compat with th discipl Olltrear ProjeCt PYOfes Chunk 135 I don’t think outreach is, or will become, a central activity of the [Disciplinary Program]. Its primary mission is teaching and research. Teaching on campus. Research, which in most cases frankly has an applied implication... but that’s not the primary reason it’s done. When faculty members discuss the mission or central interests of the department in reference to the Disciplinary Program only, they seem less likely to see outreach as compatible with these central interests. Outreach is more likely to be considered compatible with the mission when faculty members define the department as including the disciplinary and professional programs most likely because the professional programs already engage in outreach. The Discipline’s Mission Professors Erdmann, Brown, Casey, Glass, and Alvarado believe outreach is compatible with their discipline. Professor Erdmann says outreach is very compatible with the discipline: Oh sure, very much. I don’t think there’s any incompatibility and I think the historical record of the discipline shows that. There’s been a natural affinity to the application of [disciplinary] research to service, to government, to societies, and so forth. That’s been a long part of the discipline. Probably will remain so. Professor Brown also says outreach is an important component of the discipline. He says one specialty group within the professional organization is "pure outreach. It is doing research, reporting on results, etc., etc. Very much applied projects out there in the real world." Professor Brown also comments that "the profession is, I would say, 50 percent [outreach]." Professor Casey says a "sizable chunk of [disciplinary faculty] are involved in applied work," although, he continues, "they fee P it. And the disci' J mF-S'T'jr'fl Hfi l interests assist p: You can discipli: discipli discipli become discipli Promo 136 "they feel that their needs are not well served" by the major academic association. Professor Glass says the discipline "has a huge applied research component to it. And outreach can be that." Professor Alvarado says outreach is compatible with the discipline but implies that the fit may not be perfect: Yeah, to some extent [outreach] is compatible [with the discipline]. But the best jobs go to those who do research. There are a lot of people out there doing outreach types of things in [the discipline]. In my undergraduate program, that’s what the faculty did. It was rewarded at their institution. But if they wanted to move to a place that was more prestigious, or higher paying, or a Ph.D. program, all of those things then [shakes his head no]. Professor Fried is doubtful about the compatibility of outreach with the interests of the discipline. He suggests that they types of decisions the discipline can assist people with "are really not too critical. In the long term it may be critical... but you can waffle for a long time." Most faculty members say that outreach is compatible with the mission of the discipline. Being compatible is not, however, the same as being central or core to a discipline. Several faculty members who say outreach is compatible with the discipline also say that the discipline may not reward or acknowledge outreach. This becomes a problem when faculty members apply for academic positions in the discipline at other universities. he Reward Svstem Faculty members also consider the fit of outreach activities with tenure, promotion, and merit criteria. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program develop these crit relative i or both. promotic Most, he importar outreach change 1 value an ”coheag Professr Where t r€Specte llllS dis legitim difficu] determ 137 these criteria, which the discipline and university also influence, to measure the relative importance of activities when reviewing faculty performance or productivity, or both. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program generally agree that current promotion, tenure, and merit criteria downplay the importance of outreach activities. Most, however, do not support changing the criteria so that outreach plays a more important role in making promotion, tenure, and merit decisions. Professor Casey is the only faculty member to argue for the legitimization of outreach through changes in promotion and tenure criteria. He says, "[We] have to change the mind-set around here, get people seeing that outreach is legitimate. It has value and should be rewarded." He says change will be difficult because of his "colleagues’ reluctance to move beyond academic research as a measure of merit." Professor Casey describes his colleagues as having an "attitude of ivory towerishness... where the most important thing is to be respected in the discipline rather than be respected for what we’re doing for students, for the users who are not necessarily [of this discipline]." At least three faculty members illustrate Professor Casey’s observation that the legitimatizing of outreach in the Disciplinary Program by faculty members will be difficult. A junior faculty member comments on the importance of the discipline in determining rewards: the administration itself doesn’t have a whole lot of influence unless outreach is seen in the broader disciplines as being important... because I know that I can leave if I do research. And if I do outreach I’m afraid that I won’t be able to leave and go anywhere I want. So that, in some sense, the university is at the whim of national trends within the discipline. Professc OIl OUll'E l i l One prt guideli record takes a faculty do a 1( and pr faculty their c fonh." lhe cri lust ( 138 Professor Erdmann, who has had a long career at the university, explains that a focus on outreach may put a faculty member at risk within the discipline: If you march to the drummer of Central State in its purest form, which is particularly the land-grant side, the outreach side, in certain academic areas you’re going to put yourself at risk for professional advancement because that’s not what the profession or discipline pays off on, that’s not how you get your reputation, its not how you get a better job offer to another institution. One professor with experience at another institution agrees with Professor Erdmann: One of the things I don’t think we would ever permit here is for an assistant professor to take on outreach as a major component of their program. If you should, you really have limited your job roles in any discipline. [Our discipline] no more or less than others. Consistent with these comments are departmental promotion and tenure guidelines that encourage junior faculty members to develop a strong research track record and not to focus on outreach activities. The chair of the department says, "It takes a long time to set up a research agenda, to get going on research for a new faculty. So it wouldn’t be a good use of their [junior faculty] talents to ask them to do a lot of outreach." In fact, the chair continues, it just might "j eopardize their tenure and promotion." Professor Erdmann says that the department is "advising younger faculty not to get involved in particular ways with outreach activities and to develop their careers as, I guess, what one could say is more conventional scholarship and so fort ." Professor Fried, a junior faculty member, says outreach should not be part of the criteria for tenure and promotion decisions. Professor Fried describes outreach as " just communicating information" and doubts it "is a useful investment of highly paid ——____ tenured mi—Oxh v—o to make Profess< be men guidelir annual l0 ”obj. guideli: merit p outreac criteria reSpect the m( Criteri; merit . 139 tenured faculty." He states: What are you going to do with somebody who spends most of their time doing community outreach as opposed to somebody who’s bringing in a five million-dollar grant to the university to do research? Are you going to say they’re equal and they must both have the same merit [e.g., reward] increase? Most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program are not inclined at this time to make any changes in the promotion and tenure guidelines to legitimate outreach. Professor Glass summarizes the sense of these faculty members saying, "outreach may be mentioned at a promotion and tenure meeting but that’s about all." In addition to promotion and tenure criteria, faculty members use merit guidelines, developed by the Disciplinary Program over ten years ago, to determine annual salary increases. The merit guidelines, according to Professor Brown, attempt to "objectively define research, objectively define teaching... and service." The merit guidelines consist of a point system in which research accounts for 50 percent of the merit points, teaching 40 percent, and service 10 percent. Professor Casey supports expanding the merit criteria to more fully recognize outreach activities (Professor Casey also supported expanding promotion and tenure criteria). Professor Casey says the merit criteria do not provide outreach with the respect and reward they could and "that it does provide for teaching and research in the more traditional sense." Although faculty members generally acknowledge merit criteria do not promote outreach, only Professor Casey supports making changes in the merit criteria. As Professor Erdmann notes: You can imagine any kind of merit salary point system will routinely attract ideas for change and objection and so forth and so on. But to Professo describe push frc Brown 1 llOl IlCCt Profess change lOle in DlSCip Criteria that d: 140 come back and say adjustments for outreach? Yeah there have been routine... visiting of that in the context of saying, "Maybe there’s more to what [the discipline] ought to be doing than publishing articles and teaching in the classroom." To that extent, when you start talking about these other activities, sure it’ s come up. And different folks say we ought to reward more for that. We haven’t done it but it’s been visited. Perhaps changing merit criteria does not receive more support because, as Professor Brown comments, the criteria do not exclude outreach. Professor Brown describes efforts to change the merit document as "ill defined," and as an unsuccessful push from a few individuals that is "resisted by the bulk of the faculty." Professor Brown believes the current merit criteria support outreach, and, therefore, changes are not necessary. He says: ...some people think that doing outreach work... [is] not academically productive, and, therefore, they’re not being rewarded for it. Well, I don’t agree with that... we reward any kind of publication, it can be a research report or a report to a company or whatever. I get rewarded for that. So I don’t have any problem with that. Some people rebel against that. Professor Brown also does not believe changes in the merit criteria will lead to changes in faculty behavior: I don’t think that the creation of, or the implementation of, or the changes of that merit document has greatly increased anybody’ s behavior in any direction. I think people do pretty much what they want to do. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program say outreach plays a marginal role in promotion, tenure, and merit decisions. Only one faculty member in the Disciplinary Program supports changing promotion, tenure, and merit decision-making criteria to be more rewarding of outreach activities. Most faculty members suggest that decisionmaking about promotion and tenure is mindful of what the discipline rewards. member: I develOpt merit cr Professc member the con good it with fa engage questio Faculty Acader the D1: discipl and te: COnsid 366mg 141 rewards. A different orientation might put faculty members, especially junior faculty members, at risk for professional advancement. Faculty members base decisions about armual salary increases on merit criteria developed by the department. Faculty members are also not interested in changing merit criteria to be more inclusive of outreach activities. Perhaps this is because, as Professor Brown says, the criteria do not exclude outreach. Or perhaps faculty members want merit criteria to be more in line with disciplinary reward criteria. Summary Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program are "trying on" outreach within the context of their work lives. Outreach is not a perfect or, in some cases, even a good fit for most of these faculty members as they see it. Outreach’s compatibility with faculty work seems to depend on the types of activities faculty members are engaged in -- and these change over time. Faculty members seem divided on the question of whether or not outreach is compatible with the mission of the program. Faculty members suggest that outreach is more compatible with the mission of the Academic Department (including the professional programs) than with the mission of the Disciplinary Program. Most faculty members say outreach is compatible with their discipline, yet faculty members are reluctant to acknowledge outreach in promotion and tenure decisions. They say that to add outreach to promotion and tenure consideration at CSU could put faculty members at risk in the larger discipline. This seems to be especially important for junior faculty members or for faculty members who mig Prograrr used in suggests member but not commu the (her have 1i departr do eng not Ch: Accort urliver 142 who might want to move to another institution. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program acknowledge that outreach is not an important part (if any part) of the criteria used in making promotion, tenure, and merit decisions. Only one faculty member suggests that it should be part of these decision criteria. Clearly, most faculty members do not see a reason or need to change these criteria. It may be that outreach is compatible with the work lives of faculty members, but not of central interest to them, either personally or relative to their disciplinary community. Outreach Decisions If the decisions of the faculty members I interviewed reflect decisionmaking at the department level, then it would appear that the university outreach initiative will have little impact at the department level. Most faculty members indicate that the department will, in some way, acknowledge outreach activities when faculty members do engage in them. At the individual level, it seems that most faculty members have not changed much in their own thinking and behavior in regard to outreach. Accordingly, faculty members seem to be taking little action in response to the university outreach initiative. whhing‘ feelhtg rewarda "positiv we null and grc encourz cohech (hassi "some cunent have'H condut Recess Gnu/D Profes 143 Departmental Decision Professors Casey, Doty, Erdmann and Glass say the department will be more willing to acknowledge outreach activities in the future. Professor Casey says his " gut feeling is that [outreach] will be accorded more respect in the long run. Be more rewardable." Professor Doty says the department’s response to outreach will be H "positive in the long run. Professor Erdmann believes "collectively, as a department, we will probably wind up saying that outreach activities are appropriate for individuals and groups of individuals to engage in and that they should be rewarded and encouraged." But Professor Erdmann adds that he "doubts that the department collectively is going to assert that this is a primary mission for all of us." Professor Glass is certain outreach will continue at least at its current level, and expects to see "some people who have expressed an interest in outreach doing more than they currently have." Professor Glass, like Professor Erdmann, doubts outreach will ever have "a focus equal to teaching and research." Professor Alvarado and Professor Brown say that the department is already conducting outreach and what it needs to do is acknowledge these activities, not necessarily engage in more of them. In particular, they suggest that the department only needs to change how it records and advertise existing outreach activities. Professor Alvarado says: I don’t see us needing to change at all... One thing that people came to is we already do outreach. Let’s just make it known how we do it as a unit... We’ve come to the conclusion that...for us outreach means keeping count when we do have a direct impact, not necessarily changing the mission. further see the Profess: membe: to adve until or univer: beYOm Casey, 0f outr memb Simon 144 Professor Alvarado comments he does not think outreach is "going to get much further than being a minor component" of the department. Professor Brown does not see the department needing to increase or change its current mix of activities. Professor Brown believes the department is already conducting outreach, and faculty members just need to keep better count of outreach activities and the department needs to advertise what they currently do. Professor Brown says: [The department] is not at odds with what the administration would like to have departments doing... We’ve been doing it for years... we’re just not recognized for it very well... It’s more a problem of advertising and portraying what people are doing in the outreach realm rather than doing more of it.... we’re just not very visible about it. I think we’d be better off if we were more visible. The administration would appreciate us more. Professor Fried does not expect any changes in the department, at least not until outreach becomes a mandatory activity. Professor Fried says: I think it [the department] is going to muddle itself along until or unless people say, "this is what outreach is and this is what we expect you to do." It’s either voluntary or it’s not... The point is that pe0p1e are only going to respond to this, I think apprOpriately so, if there’s some formal directive. Faculty members’ expectations of how the department will respond to the university outreach initiative vary slightly, but no one seems to expect much change beyond some type of informal acknowledgement or better record keeping. Professors Casey, Erdmann, Glass and Doty say the department will probably be more supportive of outreach (e.g., reward outreach) in the future. Earlier comments by faculty members suggest, however, that they have no intentions of changing the reward structure. Professors Alvarado and Brown say the department already conducts outreacl activitie univers: the dep Person: their pt Erdma: spend indirec will gt nation outrea requir. Profes in out outrea 145 outreach and it needs to change how it reports and advertises current outreach activities. Professor Fried does not expect any changes in the department unless the university mandates change. Overall, faculty members suggest that little will change at the department level in response to the university outreach initiative. Personal Decisions Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program say they do not intend to change their professional behavior in response to the university outreach initiative. Professor Erdmann does not see himself engaging in outreach because "of the way I want to spend the remainder of my career." Professor Doty views her future work as being an indirect form of outreach such that communities can use the knowledge and tools she will generate, but she does not anticipate engaging in direct outreach activities. Professor Glass expects to continue serving on statewide policy committees and national committees, but that is the extent of Professor Glass’s planned involvement in outreach activities. Professor Glass says a personal commitment to outreach would require release time, at least a reduction in teaching load, and perhaps a year off. Professor Brown does not anticipate changing his behavior because he already engages in outreach: "Personally, if someone came and told me that I was supposed to do outreach, I’d say I already am, and so what else is new?" Outreach will play little role in Professor Alvarado’s work. He says: [I’m] more aware of what outreach is and obviously the university administration thinks it’s important. And if I do any outreach I’ll maybe make a note of it. But as far as I understand it, I was not hired here to do outreach, and I have not heard otherwise, and so I will not Professt don't th in outrt need ft SUppon Profess and "n. far mo gOlng t Changi Doty. with t] Cunen admin outrea 146 do anything different. Professor Alvarado further comments that "If I don’t have anything to offer, then I don’t think you should require me to do it." Professor Fried also does not expect to change his behavior. He comments: I try to stay away from this outreach thing. I just do my own professional stuff as best I can and serve on committees, national committees and...pe0ple ask me to give public talks and I go and give public talks. It’s just part of the game... Professor Casey is active in his pursuit of becoming more personally involved in outreach activities. It is Professor Casey who circulated the memos discussing the need for greater social relevance in faculty members’ work. Professor Casey also supports changing promotion, tenure, and merit guidelines to support outreach. Professor Casey stresses, however, that his decision was prompted by his own thinking and "not because of any incentive provided by the unit. I personally think outreach is far more important than we here formally recognize it to be. So any changes that are going on have gone on in my own mind." Professors Erdmann, Doty, Glass, Alvarado, Brown, and Fried do not anticipate changing their current faculty activities to be more inclusive of outreach. Professors Doty, Glass, and Brown suggest they already conduct some outreach and will continue with these efforts. Professors Erdmann, Alvarado, and Fried imply they are not currently engaged in outreach activities and will not be in the future -- unless, perhaps, administrators mandate it. Only Professor Casey is interested in conducting more outreach, and that decision appears unrelated to the university outreach initiative. departtr that is, Doty sz Profess activiti them." Profes Obllgt Pattie but tl colle: 147 Consistent with these individual faculty responses is a general sense in the department that the responsibility for outreach should stay at the department level -- that is, individual faculty members should not be responsible for outreach. Professor Doty says: I think the strategy of having each faculty do the same, I wouldn’t think it is a wise strategy. I think the department as a whole should have an outreach responsibility. And that may vary from faculty to faculty. But if the department as a whole is, in fact, effectively doing outreach, I think that should be enough for administration. Professor Erdmann says: "I think it [the Outreach Report] amplified for me the set of activities that are worthwhile endeavors. But it didn’t say everybody has to do all of them." Professor Glass comments: [T]here are people who work in extension service and do quality programs and should be doing that [outreach], and that shouldn’t necessarily be faculty members who are also supposed to do everything else. Professor Alvarado, says: ...people don’t have time to do everything. If you’re going to evaluate people on how well they do everything, then either you’re going to have mediocre teachers, researchers, and outreach specialists, or you’re going to have somebody who’s really good at something and not get promoted because he didn’t do the other two... [We] ought to allow some flexibility. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program support outreach being the obligation of the department but not of each faculty member. Perhaps this is because particular faculty members do not want to make a personal commitment to outreach but they are accepting of other people, perhaps other faculty members or other types of colleagues (e.g., extension workers), doing so. That is, some faculty members may be supporti obligati- questiox Or will already endeavi Summz Progra enactIr Discipf in the policy all but person Casey, Persor. Will c] about UlllVe1 148 supportive of a collective responsibility for outreach because it can then be the obligation or commitment of individuals other than themselves. But this leaves us to question who specifically will commit to outreach? Will it just be Professor Casey? Or will the obligation be addressed through better articulation of "outreach" that is already being done, as opposed to the development of new and different outreach endeavors? Summary It seems that the seven faculty members interviewed in the Disciplinary Program anticipate very little change at the department level with regard to the enactment of outreach productivity. Some of these faculty members suggest that the Disciplinary Program may be more willing to recognize outreach in reward decisions in the future, but it does not seem that these faculty members expect the departmental policy to encourage or legitimate faculty involvement in outreach activities. Similarly, all but one of these faculty members say they do not anticipate increasing their personal commitment to outreach activities. Only one faculty member, Professor Casey, is open to becoming more engaged in outreach activities, yet he uncouples this personal decision from the university outreach initiative. Overall, it appears that little will change in the Disciplinary Program as a result of the university outreach initiative. The seven faculty members in the Disciplinary Program appear knowledgeable about the university outreach initiative although they are unclear about what exactly university administrators expect of them, and, relatedly, they find the Outreach Report definition 2 outreach a< across the work. Th2 during the outreach a part of the Disciplina appears as members : involveme these facu of the inir In as an acti' Outreach ; in the uni the SOUICI manage" Change, a members ambigum 149 definition ambiguous. These faculty members share a common understanding that outreach activities involve the external application of knowledge and that outreach cuts across the mission of the university. Outreach appears compatible with some faculty work. That is, outreach seems part of most faculty members’ work at some point during their academic careers at Central State University. These faculty members view outreach as compatible with the mission of the professional programs that constitute part of the department, but do not view outreach as part of the mission of the Disciplinary Program. Moreover, in most of these faculty members’ views, outreach appears as compatible with the discipline’s mission, but not central to it. Faculty members further acknowledge that the reward system does not promote faculty involvement in outreach, but they show little interest in altering it to do so. Finally, these faculty members suggest that little will change at the department level as a result of the initiative; even less seems to be changing at the personal level. In summary, it seems that faculty members find some agreement about outreach as an activity: they define it in similar terms and all say they have engaged in outreach at some point. Yet, faculty members also seem hesitant about or disinterested in the university outreach initiative. Perhaps these faculty members are skeptical about the source of the initiative. Several describe administrators as trying to "micro- manage" their lives, they are doubtful of administrators’ reasons for initiating the change, and they question administrator support for the initiative. Or perhaps faculty members find the outreach message confusing. They indicate that the definition is ambiguous, and despite efforts to clarify the initiative among themselves, they are still unclear abc fits poorly discipline 1 members 5 this chapte change. Wl perhaps m faculty liv case study responded 150 unclear about what administrators expect them to do. But it may also be that outreach fits poorly with established norms of what it means to be a professor, both within the discipline represented here and the Disciplinary Program. Or it may be that faculty members see no advantage to engaging in outreach. After all, as indicated earlier in this chapter, faculty members seem to like their work and would like to see little of it change. What can we learn from all of this with regard to change in universities and, perhaps more importantly, with regard to change in faculty work, and concomitantly, faculty lives? I will take up this question in Chapter 7. Next, however, I present a case study of how faculty members in a more professionally oriented department have responded to the university outreach initiative. Th: Program c Departmei sections v study, hor Discipline Professior the outrea the depar Professio: not direct seem to 1 departme A \ lI intervie“ Study, th faculty i1 COllectiv. views an Organiza- by Prese though I CHAPTER 6: THE PROFESSIONAL DEPARTMENT This case study is organized into the same four sections as the Disciplinary Program case study. The first section describes the context of the Professional Department from the perspective of eight of its faculty members. The following three sections view outreach from the perspectives of these faculty members. This case study, however, is different from the Disciplinary Program case study. In the Disciplinary Program faculty appear to be responding to the outreach initiative. In the Professional Department, however, faculty members do not seem to be responding to the outreach initiative. Rather their comments appear to be in response to changes in the department that may impact the role that outreach has traditionally played in the Professional Department. Thus, though their responses are outreach-related they are not directed at the outreach initiative as in the previous case. Rather, their responses seem to be directed at a departmental research initiative that may threaten the department’s historic commitment to and engagement in outreach activities. Although faculty members1 in the Professional Department seem to be 1I use the term faculty in this chapter in reference to the eight individuals I interviewed from the Professional Department. As I indicated in the previous case study, the word "faculty" should not be construed as representing the views of all faculty in the Professional Department. Further, the word faculty may suggest a collective singular body with a single cohesive view, thereby masking variations in views among individuals, a lexical and cultural pattern that is problematic in much organizational research (Frost, et a1, 1991 and Martin, 1992). I try to correct for this by presenting the variations in views held by the eight faculty members I interviewed though I (and they) often use the collective term faculty. 15] responding three-phase clarifiz the know abor members c activities 2 discipline’ discusses ' personal r Tl United St institutior emPhatsis The Profi members descriptir for OVer T kHOthledi 152 responding to something other than the outreach initiative, their responses also fit the three-phase framework I described in the preceding chapter. First, faculty members clarijjz the outreach initiative, discussing how, or if, they have heard of it, what they know about the initiative, and how they define outreach activities. Second, faculty members contextual ize outreach activities by discussing how compatible outreach activities are with their own work, with their department’s mission, and with the discipline’s mission, and with the department’s reward system. The decision section discusses what these faculty members say the department’s response and their own personal responses will be to outreach activities in the future. Describing the Professional Department The Professional Department is among the oldest departments of its type in the United States, and one of a small number of such departments at a land-grant institution. Since its inception, the department has maintained a strong academic emphasis on professional education within the context of a broad liberal arts base. The Professional Department consists of one program. Interviews with eight faculty members in the Professional Department are the basis for the discussion and description of this case study; some have been at CSU for only a brief time and others for over 20 years. The Professional Department may be described as focusing primarily on knowledge utilization (vs. knowledge creation). In a document prepared by the Profession and as cor says that t technical < academic education. Us describe t. all memb. Biglan’s < applicatio Program, with non] Tl The Prof. 15 -- as i Professio faculty h taught b3 Suggestin COmmihr houses tl 153 Professional Department, the author describes the department as being interdisciplinary and as combining research with practice. In another department document, the author says that the department is not a professional department that provides only a narrow technical education -- rather, it is a professional department that maintains strong academic interests and stresses the importance of a broadly based liberal arts education. Using descriptors of academic fields developed by Biglan (1973), I would describe the Professional Department as having more than one paradigm; that is, not all members of the field subscribe to the same body of theory. To continue with Biglan’s distinctions, the Professional Department seems concerned with the practical application of knowledge. Finally, the Professional Department, like the Disciplinary Program, is concerned with life systems (e.g., plants, people, microorganisms) and not with nonlife systems (e. g., engineering, computers). The Professional Department can also be described using institutional data. The Professional Department has about the same number of faculty positions -- about 15 -~ as it did ten years ago. About half of the faculty are full professors. The Professional Department has slightly increased the number of student credit hours faculty have taught over the last two years. Approximately 20 percent of the students taught by faculty members in the Professional Department are from other colleges -- suggesting the Professional Department does not have as high a service instruction commitment to units outside its college as does the Academic Department (which houses the Disciplinary Program). The university’s budget for the Professional Departmer five-year} As use such c university dimension resource t study, suc Professior with and _ We begin dePartmer Li faculty m more Con the Disci] interview little of tl F 2 their dep; faculty rr 154 Department was about $1 million in 1994-95, an increase of about 10 percent over a five-year period. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, university administrators, among others, use such data, but in more detail, to describe the Professional Department. Many university administrators learn about the department’s productivity along several dimensions (e. g., student credit hours, student enrollment), and the department’s resource base (e. g., budgets) using these data sources. But, as in the previous case study, such data tell us little about the context in which faculty members in the Professional Department work and how they experience their work lives. By talking with and listening to eight faulty members in the Professional Department, however, we begin to see their department more through their eyes. It is their description of the department and their work that I describe in this case study. Like faculty members in the Disciplinary Program, the Professional Department faculty members are busy, although they complain less about their workloads and seem more concerned about meeting the needs of undergraduates than faculty members in the Disciplinary Program. Overall, like the Disciplinary Program faculty members I interviewed, the faculty members in the Professional Department would like to see little of their work change. Faculty members in the Professional Department describe specific features of their department which seem related to how they experience outreach. These eight faculty members identify outreach as the department’s strength. These faculty members also describe a situation which is challenging the department: a new emphasis members members discuss th The Depa Al strength 2 PI m in Professor with com publicati< 155 emphasis on basic research, publications, and grant writing. Finally, these faculty members describe their department and collegial relations as friendly, but some faculty members would like to have a greater amount of interaction than currently exists. I discuss these three characteristics below. The Department’s Strength: Outreach All faculty members in the Professional Department speak of outreach as the strength and as a defining characteristic of the unit. Professor Radakovitz says: Probably what [the department] does best is outreach I think probably more than any other [unit]... is we’re out there in the community more in the sense that people are calling us and asking us about stuff. Professor Wu says outreach is the department’s strength and links outreach to working with communities directly and indirectly through applied research and professional I publications: I think [the department is best at] outreach... [The department] really extends into the community... While other programs in the country target primarily academic journals, the faculty in this program do not limit themselves to academic journals. They do a lot of applied research, they have a lot of publications in professional magazines. Like Professor Wu, Professor Tully believes outreach is the department’s strength and expands outreach to include the preparation of students: [The department] probably does best in serving the practitioner community by providing people for them to hire... But it also includes doing research for [the practitioner community], doing other kinds of services for them. We’re very externally oriented. Prc faculty me involving "individua think that Prt departmer Professor of work V faculty m l . engaging identify ( mission 5 deranme also Says interactic prOfessiO fllture. 156 Professor Whalen says what is most noticeable to him is the "connectedness" of faculty members with the "outside world in terms of people’s research projects involving agencies, state government, things like that." Professor Preston says that "individual faculty members do best in outreach activities." But he adds, "I don’t think that the department, as such, has any one thing that it does best." Professor Shefner and Professor Vigmostad did not identify a single departmental strength, but both discuss the commitment of the department to outreach. Professor Shefner says, "Faculty are very practitioner oriented... they have done a lot of work with communities in terms of outreach." Professor Vigmostad compares faculty members here with those in her graduate program: It just seems like here most members of the faculty seem to want to get involved with the community, with agencies. At [my graduate institution] I just didn’t see that much at all. I chose the Professional Department as a case study because of its history of engaging in outreach activities. It is not surprising then that most faculty members identify outreach as the department’s strength. This finding is consistent with the mission statement of the department that says outreach is an integral component of the department and helps to set it apart from other areas of study. The mission statement also says outreach reinforces the professional model of faculty and community interaction that the department advocates as the cutting-edge approach to the profession’s education. However, the department’s strength may be shifting in the future. .1— The Depa Ea departmer grant writ departmer a new bat to define research 1 toward re outreach outreach, T toward n because l of the dg things w and gen-j 157 The Department’s Challenge: A Chm Each Professional Department faculty member that I interviewed said that the department is changing, that the department is focusing on research, publication and grant writing more than it has in the past. Professor Radakovitz describes the department as "moving in a direction that is probably you can say less applied... that’s a new ball game." Professor Whalen comments, "one of the challenges to the unit is to define itself and get moving. Particularly, perhaps, with respect to showing greater research productivity." Similarly, Professor Preston says the department is moving toward research and external funding. Professor Tully comments, "We started as just outreach and we’ve shifted slightly by becoming more balanced in terms of research, outreach, and teaching. ” The chair of the department plays an important role in steering the department toward more basic research activities. He took on this administrative position in part because he wanted to see the department more involved in research: I think the department was at a real turning point. Most other departments of [the discipline] had built their research agendas and become much more sophisticated in research and were hiring people from other schools... For whatever reason, we hadn’t really made that transition. And I felt pretty alienated from the direction we were taking. And I sort of felt if I wasn’t chair I would continue to feel pretty alienated and I would not see the department developing the way I wanted it to. Newer faculty members say they were hired to facilitate the new research focus of the department. One new professor says, "That [basic research] was one of the things we were brought here for. I guess to gear the department more toward research and getting external grants." Another new professor comments, "It’s very clear why I’m here! increases Radakovi‘ Nt wr dc A in more 1 not fit all personal] - p—c 99‘??? But Prof gFOUp of fade-out l With gre 0rientati Stress Or imprOVe l C k r C 158 I’m here! Because [research productivity] is an area where my presence automatically increases their [the department’s] statistical showing of what they’re doing." Professor Radakovitz says of the newer faculty members: Now we have younger faculty coming in and they know about grant writing, they’ve been trained in that. But also, they’re more trained in doing primary research as opposed to applied research. A few faculty members welcome the change in focus to a department engaged in more basic research, but several faculty members note that the new direction may not fit all faculty members -- and this challenges the department. Professor Wu personally supports the change in focus saying: I think it’s time to capture some of these changes and then be a leader in that rather than saying "we have traditionally been this for so long, we should continue to do this. " I think we should move away from that kind of a concept, that we should think in terms of "okay, why can’t we be leaders in something that’s happening now. Why can’t we grab that and run with it?" But Professor Wu adds, "these changes can be not very pleasant for some... it’s a new group of people and the department is changing and [some faculty have] kind of a fade-out feeling. " The fade-out feeling mentioned by Professor Wu seems to affect those faculty with greater seniority. Professor Tully acknowledges that the department’s new orientation (i.e., the department’s new emphasis on research and publication) places stress on more senior faculty members, but sees the shift in focus as necessary to improve the reputation of the department: [The department’s reputation wasn’t] great in the past in terms of being seen as a valid, important place where people did really good research, and good teaching, and that sort of thing. And it may have been be so: jut Professor invested. new peop difficult a the past. In members departme field. Pr Professor Other sch A reliance . Performe PTOfCSSic eXternal 159 because we had some problems in those areas, and we went through some real difficult times in the past. But now we have faculty that are just as good as any other faculty and doing just as much. Professor Tully also says, "It’s been real hard to keep the... more long standing faculty invested... But they really, in some ways, speak a different language from some of the new people." He goes on to say the history of the department makes the change more difficult and "for some of the senior faculty there’s been a lot of stress about losing the past. A lot of stress." In addition to the possible stress on senior faculty members, a couple of faculty members are concerned that the change in focus will eliminate what makes the department special (i.e., outreach) and it will become like other departments in the field. Professor Radakovitz says: You don’t want to be all applied, you don’t want to be all straight academic, then we’ll be no different than [another institution] We have a special place. So the thing is... how do you say to the new hires "this is the way this department works" and pull it [the department] in the direction toward the middle. Professor Tully comments, "we need to really preserve our identity as different than other schools of [the discipline], but at the same time we need good, sound research." Another aspect of the focus on basic research and publication is an increased reliance on specialists to perform duties, particularly outreach duties, once primarily performed by faculty members. In a recent document prepared for the university, the Professional Department reports that it is building a cadre of specialists to obtain external funding for outreach and to deliver that outreach. O departme Professor the field Professo: commun 1 member: writing 1 Tully sa Finding indicate womm outreacl perform and the that it i future ( fElCulty 160 Only one faculty member, Professor Ohashi, dismisses the claim that the department is under pressure to develop a stronger basic research component. Professor Ohashi says the department already has "a strong reputation in working with the field as well as doing good research.“ Perhaps the change in focus does not affect Professor Ohashi whose curriculum vitae indicates he serves the practitioner community and maintains an active basic research and publication agenda. The Professional Department seems to be in a period of transition. Faculty members say the department is focusing more on basic research, publication, and grant writing than it has in the past. The Professional Department may be, as Professor Tully says, "becoming more balanced in terms of research, outreach, and teaching." Finding a new balance has created tension in the department. Faculty comments may indicate that the new balance is being met, in part, by a reduction in the commitment to outreach as evidenced by the hiring of new faculty members who are not oriented to outreach and the hiring of outreach specialists to conduct outreach work once performed primarily by faculty members. It seems that recently hired faculty members and the chair are very supportive of the new direction of the department. It also seems that it is primarily the more senior faculty members who are concerned about what the future direction means to the department’s commitment to outreach. F acultv Relations Faculty relationships represent an important and interesting dimension of faculty life in the Professional Department. Faculty members in the Professional Departme describe t more intc Departure administr l3 appear tc faculty 11 "wonder members say it’s r P decently I c S Pr0fessr member aSaniI 161 Department, like the faculty members interviewed in the Disciplinary Program, describe their internal relations as friendly but several faculty members would like more interaction amongst themselves. Faculty members in the Professional Department made few comments about their relationships with university administrators. Relations among Faculty. Faculty members in the Professional Department appear to be on friendly terms with each other. Professors Whalen and Vigmostad say faculty members get along very well. Professor Wu describes faculty relations as "wonderful. At a personal level they are very cordial to each other." Faculty members travel a good deal according to Professor Ohashi, but "when we’re here, I’d say it’s very social." Professor Tully says the culture of the department which "is to treat people decently" and this is not always true in other departments. Professor Tully says: I’ve heard things about other departments where peOple actually yell at each other or yell in faculty meetings, or they won’t talk to people. There’s nobody on this faculty who behaves that way. I would just be shocked if anyone would not talk to someone. Professor Shefner finds faculty relations to be supportive: Faculty stOp by and see how you’re doing, and always seem to have some encouraging word. And supportive, some of the faculty have actually offered to read some of my manuscripts. Several professors would like to see more collaboration among faculty members. Professor Preston who enjoys collaborative work, sees the reward structure as an impediment to faculty collaborations: Departme: describe t more inte Departme administr & appear to faculty n "wonderf members say it’s r P decently l e 1 s Professo membel as an in 161 Department, like the faculty members interviewed in the Disciplinary Program, describe their internal relations as friendly but several faculty members would like more interaction amongst themselves. Faculty members in the Professional Department made few cements about their relationships with university administrators. Relations among Faculty. Faculty members in the Professional Department appear to be on friendly terms with each other. Professors Whalen and Vigmostad say faculty members get along very well. Professor Wu describes faculty relations as "wonderful. At a personal level they are very cordial to each other." Faculty members travel a good deal according to Professor Ohashi, but "when we’re here, I’d say it’s very socia ." Professor Tully says the culture of the department which "is to treat people decently" and this is not always true in other departments. Professor Tully says: I’ve heard things about other departments where people actually yell at each other or yell in faculty meetings, or they won’t talk to people. There’s nobody on this faculty who behaves that way. I would just be shocked if anyone would not talk to someone. Professor Shefner finds faculty relations to be supportive: Faculty stop by and see how you’re doing, and always seem to have some encouraging word. And supportive, some of the faculty have actually offered to read some of my manuscripts. Several professors would like to see more collaboration among faculty members. Professor Preston who enjoys collaborative work, sees the reward structure as an impediment to faculty collaborations: Nc pe so: ter Pr is beginn: individua encourag members "indepen P does not ( With the Socializ the nev flit the 162 Now with the research and writing, some people take a dim view when pe0p1e collaborate on projects. That if you write something with someone else it doesn’t count as much as if you do it yourself. So there tends to be an organizational isolation of people. Professor Tully sees a greater need for collaboration and says the department is beginning to use a "team approach" whereas the department used to have "sort of an individualistic approach, like everyone just does their own thing. And the prior chair encouraged that." Professor Preston, however, sees a loss of collegiality among faculty members over the past several years. He says faculty members are now more like "independent contractors" than they were before. Professor Radakovitz sees differences of opinions among faculty members, but does not believe these are major problems: Right now there is a healthy difference of opinion on anything from how this department should operate to... what kind of operation should this be.... But there are no enemies here. Everybody speaks to each other.... I don’t see major problems. I see ideological differences. One new faculty member said he/she would "really appreciate more interaction with the faculty," particularly social and professional interaction: Although there’s a lot of interpersonal interaction in the office, I think I would appreciate more social interaction. On a professional level, I don’t think anybody has given a colloquium... a brown bag, something like that. I think more of that would be a good thing for the department to do. The chair of the department is sympathetic to this professor’s desire for more socialization, "I don’t think most faculty socialize very much outside of here. In fact, the new faculty complain that we don’t do it enough. " The chair offers an explanation for the limited social interaction among faculty members: the spt lot lur Professor relationsh F2 in dc And Prof 163 there is no time. I mean, most people here are working much more than 40 hours a week. And then when you do have time you want to spend it with your family or by yourself. And so there’s not a whole lot of people outside seeing each other very much. Or even going to lunch together, or something like that. Professor Radakovitz also mentions time as a barrier to developing more personal relationships: Faculty just don’t have time to sit down.... [I]f we could sit down once in a while and say "hey, what are you doing" or "here’s what I’m doing"... that kind of information would make us closer. And Professor Radakovitz adds to this: [Faculty] would like to [socialize] but there’s no initiative set up. Now that’s not the chair’s job. I don’t think it’s anybody’s job. It’s our job, any particular person’s job, I think it’s our job to do that. Not all faculty members seek more interaction with their colleagues. Professor Whalen says faculty operate "pretty independently," but that is fine with him because he does not "really want to do joint projects." Professor Whalen prefers to work alone and seems content with faculty contacts that "tend to be much more focused on administrative or curriculum matters in the unit." Relations with University Administrators. Faculty members in the Professional Department speak very little about college and university administrators. One faculty members says of the college dean, "I think our dean likes to micro-manage." The chair, however, seems to respect the dean, saying he is "grea " and that he shares information about the university with the chairs from the college’s departments. The chair says: We have a great dean, although one of the criticisms of him that we [other chairs] have is he talks too much, tells us a lot. So every other week we have ln Professior administr faculty m departme the chair‘ came to ‘ vary amt positive . him. I’p he’s full his persc college t faculty 1 and that 1 their re] interacti finding Departn 0PiniOn 164 a chairs’ meeting and the dean talks a lot, tells us everything he knows about what’s going on in the university. In discussing relations between faculty members and administrators, Professional Department faculty members have few comments about central administrators such as the president or chief academic officer. However, several faculty members comment on the department chair. Faculty opinions-of the department chair varies. Newer faculty members are more supportive of the chair and the chair’s focus for the department. One recently hired faculty member says she came to the university in large part because of the chair. Opinions about the chair vary among more established faculty members. One professor says he feels "very positive about him." But he also says, "You’ll find some people feel negative about him. I’m not sure why. I know a lot of reasons why I’m positive about him. I think he’s full of energy, and he’s organized, and he’s got ideas, and he’s pushy... That’s his personality." Another faculty members says that the chair relies too much on the college dean for decision making and not enough on what faculty think. A third faculty members says that the chair has had little experience in dealing with people and that this has created a "tremendous learning experience for all of us to deal with." Faculty members get along well in the Professional Department, describing their relations as friendly. Some faculty members would like more socialization or interactions among their colleagues, but a couple of faculty members suggest that finding the time to socialize is difficult. Faculty members in the Professional Department have little to say about central administrators but do vocalize differing opinions about the chair as an administrator. Newer faculty members are more likely to be sup Stunmarr identify . focus of activity i of the dc outreach academit new facr may me: Or that 1. relations is, senio efforts a at the c] the Char outreac} 165 to be supportive of the chair and the Chair’s focus for the department. Summm The Professional Department is in a period of transition. Faculty members identify outreach as the strength of the department, but outreach is not the current focus of attention in the department. The chair appears to be encouraging faculty activity in the area of basic research, publication, and grant writing. The two visions of the department -- one held by more senior faculty members which emphasizes outreach and the other held by the chair and newer faculty members for a more academic (research) orientation -— creates tension within the department. The hiring of new faculty members oriented towards research and the hiring of outreach specialists may mean that in the future fewer tenure-line faculty members will focus on outreach, or that less of any one faculty member’s time will be spent on outreach, or both. While the shifting focus in the department seems to create some tension, faculty relations remain friendly, albeit limited. Perhaps the tension is more personal. That is, senior faculty members who have built careers on outreach activities may see their efforts as devalued. And the tension apparent in some faculty voices may be directed at the chair, who is leading this transition, and not towards colleagues who embrace the change. This description of the department may help in interpreting faculty responses to outreach, especially as outreach relates to the department’s research initiative. response: however, Instead, ‘ likely to Faculty 1 but as it universit categorit faculty 1 different Part frar differenr do not e they do Contextt \ faculty COntexu were 111'. activity1 166 Clarifying Outreach The previous case study of the Disciplinary Program focused on faculty responses to the outreach initiative. In this case study of the Professional Department, however, faculty members do not appear to be responding to the outreach initiative. Instead, they appear to be responding to a departmental research initiative that seems likely to threaten the department’s historic commitment to and engagement in outreach. Faculty members, then, are responding to the department’s commitment to outreach, but as it relates to the department’s research initiative and not as it relates to the university outreach initiative. Although this case study deals with a different initiative, I use the same categories of clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding to organize and describe how faculty members in the Professional Department talk about outreach.2 Given the differences, however, in what it is that faculty members are responding to, the three- part framework of clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding is oriented somewhat differently in this chapter. In the clarifying section I point out that faculty members do not engage in information seeking activities about the outreach initiative, although they do suggest motives for its initiation and they do define outreach. In the contextualizing section I discuss how faculty members respond to outreach activities as 2I "discovered" the departmental research initiative by coding responses from faculty in the Professional Department into the three-part framework of clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding. Through this framework, I was able to see that faculty were unfamiliar with the outreach initiative, yet very familiar with outreach as an activity, and that outreach appeared to be a topic of concern among some faculty. they con departmt discuss t will rest i ordered. departm then rea define a retain tl of the r know a‘ With or initiatir Shefner Shefhej 167 they consider them relative to their other activities and responsibilities, their department’s and discipline’s missions, and the department’s reward system. I next discuss the decisions of individual faculty members and how they think the department will respond to the university outreach initiative. As stated in the preceding case study, these activities are not necessarily time ordered. That is, as faculty members appear to reassess the role of outreach in the department, they do not necessarily clarify outreach, first, next contextualize it, and then reach a decision. They may, in fact, reach a decision about outreach and then define a context that supports this decision. However, for organizational purposes, I retain the linear order to enhance clarity of presentation. These phases are the topics of the remainder of this case study. I begin here by discussing what faculty members know about the outreach initiative and outreach activities. Knowledge of the Outreach Initiative Although the faculty members in the Professional Department are very familiar with outreach activities, they have only a vague understanding of the outreach initiative that is the focus of this study and which I described in Chapter 4. Professor Shefner, Preston, Vigmostad and Ohashi have heard of the initiative. Professor Shefner knows about: different seed outreach grants. That if you have some ideas that can essentially involve the community or impact the community in very direct ways, you can get some seed grants to develop this idea. In terms of their [university administrators’] other efforts... I don’t actually know very much. In. P the dista1 know tht [adminis outreach I it is l or do outre Outreac know w Profess admi ni 168 Professor Preston says the "part I know something about on a university level is the distance education that we’ve been working on." Professor Vigmostad says: "I know that distance education is something that is very important to them [administrators] right now. And I don’t know whether I would have thought of that as outreach, but I guess it is." Professor Ohashi says of the initiative: "The formal effort, what I know about it is I occasionally hear something about it. That’s about it. I hear words like gotta do outreach." Professor Ohashi was the only faculty member to mention the Outreach Report. Professor Ohashi had just received a copy of the report but did not know who sent it: And I got the [outreach] report. I don’t know if you were instrumental in having it sent to me’, but I got the report for some reason just in the mail one day. I have no idea why. I mean, it wasn’t like it was sent to everybody because it had a little post-it note on it saying "thought you might be interested." So I don’t have a clue who it came from. That’s how I knew about the [chief outreach officer], because I just by some reason got that in the mail. Other than that I just hear words thrown around. A couple of faculty members say they are not familiar with the initiative. Professor Wu remarks: I’m not familiar with the particular project. If there’s some information on it I didn’t, I guess I didn’t read it.... I think there have been some memos from one of the offices about describing and defining what outreach is. Professor Radakovitz is not aware of an outreach "push" by university administrators and suggests the faculty members may not be getting information about 3I did not distribute any information regarding the outreach initiative. the initiz during t member in the P of "Gos were nc member outreacl Only P] membe initiatit Campus outreac faculty examp] 169 the initiative: Maybe we aren’t getting the information... I don’t see us getting it at the unit level or even at the college level.... Maybe it’s around, I just don’t hear it. That could be my own fault that I just don’t hear about it. I know it’s touted a little. Two recently hired faculty members say they discussed the outreach initiative during the university orientation program for new faculty. One of these new faculty members says he discussed the outreach initiative with the other recently hired faculty in the Professional Department. He says that these conversations were along the lines of "Gosh, what will this outreach mean to us?" He also adds that these conversations were not so much a discussion as "musings about the issue." The second new faculty member says that the new faculty orientation was the only time she discussed the outreach initiative: Well, aside from all those introductory seminars we had, I have not actually discussed it [the outreach initiative]." Only Professor Ohashi said he has discussed the outreach initiative with a faculty member from outside the department: Professor Ohashi discussed the outreach initiative with another faculty members from another academic unit while jogging at a campus facility. Most faculty members in the Professional Department know little about the outreach initiative. Only one faculty member references the Outreach Report, and two faculty members said they have never heard of the initiative. Faculty members who are aware of the outreach initiative may have different information about it. For example, one faculty member associates the initiative with distance education while another member activitie the outrr departm member outreacl initiativ orientat during I about tl are not The ch' interna] and hi interest menrbe 170 another faculty member associates it with seed grants. Perhaps this is because faculty members in the Professional Department do not engage in information-seeking activities to learn more about the outreach initiative. According to faculty responses, the outreach initiative has not been a focus of discussion in any subcommittees, department meetings, or retreats in the Professional Department. Thus, faculty members are not engaged in efforts aimed at building a common understanding of the outreach initiative. Finally, what information faculty members have about the outreach initiative may come from sources external to the department such as the new faculty orientation, and, as I will discuss later, from information that I shared with them during our interviews. The lack of information seeking and sharing in the Professional Department about the outreach initiative might reflect a decision by the chair that such discussions are not necessary: We toyed with [an outreach committee member] coming to our annual retreat or a faculty meeting. But it never really seemed to matter. I guess that I don’t really see a big need to discuss externally what outreach is. The chair says he will discuss efforts to "codify our outreach... But that will be an internal discussion and not handled through a big deal but through little committees and through my review process." The chair also offers an explanation for why faculty members may not be interested in or attuned to the outreach initiative. According to the chair, most faculty members are disinterested in paying attention to issues other than their work: r-O» (n H 5-1-1 unacqua and knc knows 2 faculty faculty which r inform; engaget has oth initiatir initiatit faculty DEthan membe (Illestic 171 Frankly, I don’t think most faculty here spend a whole lot of time thinking about it [the outreach initiative]. When I wasn’t an administrator, I didn’t. Basically, they [the faculty] are just trying to do their work under pretty stressful conditions. In summary, faculty members in the Professional Department are relatively unacquainted with the outreach initiative. Some faculty members have heard about it and know a few details, and one faculty has seen the Outreach Report. The chair knows about the outreach initiative but says he does see a need to discuss it with faculty members. The chair has not distributed copies of the Outreach Report to faculty members (and faculty did not indicate that they had read a copy of the report which was printed in a faculty and staff newspaper). Perhaps the chair has not shared information about the outreach initiative because he already sees faculty members as engaged in outreach, making the outreach initiative a moot point. Or perhaps the chair has other messages that he is trying to communicate to faculty and the outreach initiative is not consonant with them. The one conclusion that we can draw from faculty responses about the outreach initiative is that efforts by central university administrators to communicate with faculty members about the outreach initiative appear to have failed in the Professional Department. And this leads to an important question for this case study: If faculty members are largely unaware of the outreach initiative, why is it that they seem to be questioning the role of outreach in the department? Motive Departr perhaps for the promot for the beheve politica light to like Pl‘l univers resourc admini, Cr eat i0 Acader. grant f Depart: a“Swer 172 Motive for the Initiative As part of most interviews, I told faculty members in the Professional Department about the university outreach initiative.4 Based on this information, and perhaps on other information, several faculty members did identify possible motives for the development of the initiative. Most faculty say that administrators are possibly promoting the university outreach initiative for political reasons: Outreach is a way for the university to garner more resources from the state legislature. Professor Tully believes university administrators are supporting the outreach initiative "because politically they think that’s what they’ve got to do to define the university in a positive light to get money from the legislature and to get state support. " Professor Shefner, like Professor Tully, links the initiative to money coming from the legislature for the university. Professor Shefner says: I think it [the initiative] is partly political. I think the university is a landgrant university and it’s getting some money from the state. And the state wants more concrete evidence of what the university is actually doing. And [outreach] is a way to present the university as doing something that’s really essential to the community. Professor Ohashi says the motive for the outreach initiative is "for garnering resources." Professor Preston links the motive to a need for the university to justify its 4 I read to each faculty member: One of the things going on here at CSU is an administratively led eflort to strengthen university outreach. This eflort includes the creation of the oflice of the Chief Outreach Oflicer and a report fiom the Chief Academic Oflicer ’s Outreach Committee. This eflort was encouraged in part by a grant from [a large, national foundation]. At times, faculty in the Professional Department would ask questions about the outreach initiative and I would try to answer them. expendit universit initiative knowled [side of initiated that tak< knowlec Professi reasons. universi resourcr extensk and tha 173 expenditures and to develop better public relations: People [need to] feel that their money spent on education is being returned to them in some helpful and meaningful way. Also, reputation in that the university is on top of issues and problems -- the university is attempting to work with the people as well as the problems, and that education is a good investment. A couple of faculty members see the outreach initiative as a way for the university to express the land-grant mission. Professor Ohashi says the outreach initiative helps the university define a "niche from the perspective of translating knowledge as a responsibility, I’d look at that as the responsibility from the land-grant [side of the university]." Professor Whalen thinks university administrators have initiated the outreach policy ”because [the university] is the only institution in America that takes the land-grant tradition seriously." Even with little knowledge of the university outreach initiative, or with knowledge just acquired through the interview process, most faculty members in the Professional Department say administrators are promoting the initiative for political reasons.5 Several faculty members say that the outreach initiative is a way for the university to garner more resources from the state or that it is a way to justify state resources allocated to the university. Two faculty members suggest that outreach is an extension of the land-grant mission of the university. 5It is possible that my interview ”educated" faculty about the outreach initiative and that, in part, they are responding to the information I shared with them. Defining experien outreacl some in member to the C Departr. consiste differer outreac faculty temllllt and so do not in botl extern. releva; eXterr descri 174 Defining Outreach Faculty members in the Professional Department rely primarily on personal experience with outreach activities and the department’s historic commitment to outreach to define outreach. A couple of recently hired faculty members draw on some information from the university orientation to define outreach. Unlike faculty members in the Disciplinary Program who sometimes quoted from or literally pointed to the Outreach Report when defining outreach, faculty members in the Professional Department do not refer to the Outreach Report’s definition of outreach (which is consistent with their not being aware of it). Each faculty member defines outreach differently, but several themes emerge across their definitions. One characteristic of outreach all faculty members mention is the external application of knowledge. Most faculty members describe outreach as cross-cutting, although they do not use this terminology. Most faculty members also describe outreach as having a social benefit and several faculty members describe outreach as being interactive. These responses do not differ significantly from those in the Disciplinary Program. Faculty members in both the Professional Department and Disciplinary Program define outreach as the external application of knowledge and as a cross-cutting activity that may have social relevance. External Application. Each faculty member describes outreach as involving the external application of university, department, or faculty knowledge. Professor Wu describes outreach as "the transfer of knowledge from the classroom or academe to the commun agencies outreach "applied that we describe Vigmos with ag researcl definiti label. other a interco Outree exam] 175 community." Professor Tully says outreach involves the use of "our expertise" by agencies and advisory groups. Professors Ohashi, Radakovitz, and Shefiier describe outreach as applying knowledge to "real world settings," "the community," and "applied settings," respectively. To Professor Preston outreach is "taking the things that we do best in the university and taking them to the field." Professor Whalen describes outreach as involving agencies outside the university and Professor Vigmostad says outreach consists of faculty members working with "the community, with agencies." Cross-Cutting. Most faculty members describe outreach as connecting to research and teaching. This characteristic is similar to the Outreach Report’s definition of outreach as cross-cutting, but faculty members do not use this word or label. Faculty members in the Professional Department see outreach as attached to other activities and not as a stand-alone activity. Professor Ohashi describes this interconnection as "synergistic": I truly see research, teaching, and outreach all very balanced and synergistic... [Outreach] helps me in my research... helps my writing... It integrates together. Outreach is a "unified activity" says Professor Tully: If you asked me "What’s your outreach activity, what’s your teaching activity?" my response would be the same things. They are in some ways combined, interlinked with each other. Professor Shefner says outreach "is my work. You can’t really divide it.... For example, our research is in many ways outreach or is relevant to outreach." Professor Wu alsc Professr see out: there’s separat- togethe work ti SOmetl. the cor activitj comm. Profes how 1} 176 Wu also links outreach to research: The interesting thing about research is that the things that I’m doing now are in some ways outreach as well. So in that sense, with one attempt you actually cover different areas. Professor Preston links outreach to teaching: We get to bring into the classroom the problems of the field. We get to bring in the progress of the field. We get to bring in the pulse and we get to pass that on to the students... In thinking about outreach, Professor Vigmostad comments that some people see outreach as "kind of a separate thing. There’s outreach, and service, and then there’s research, and then there’s teaching." Professor Vigmostad does not believe this separation is necessary and says "there’s no reason why you can’t tie all those things together." Social Benefit. Most faculty members describe outreach as faculty members’ work that benefits society. Professor Vigmostad says outreach involves "setting something out to help people" and Professor Wu says outreach activities are "where the community benefits." Similar is Professor Tully’s discussion of outreach as an activity "to help [communities]... make things better" and Professor Whalen’s comments that outreach should provide "benefits" to those external to the university. Professor Preston describes outreach as activities where faculty "teach the community how to do their jobs better... working with them to improve their professional status." l the com solution Profess Whalen problen emphas conduc Ohashi initiati retreat; is awa Openly discus: based deans! 177 Interactive. Several faculty members describe outreach as interactive -- that is, the community helps to define the problem for study or works with faculty to find solutions. Professor Wu says outreach is a "dialogue" with the community and Professor Tully says outreach is a "partnership" with the community. Professor Whalen used to define outreach as "taking research and using it to solve societal problems." This definition has changed, says Professor Whalen, to a definition emphasizing more interaction: I’m conceptualizing it [outreach] more broadly in terms of ways in which university people... can provide perhaps more general and even less tangible benefits by just having contact and interaction with the outer world rather than just narrowly thinking about research aimed at a problem. Summary Most faculty members in the Professional Department have many experiences conducting outreach. Yet, except for the chair, and to a lesser degree Professor Ohashi, faculty in the Professional Department are uninformed about the outreach initiative. Faculty members have not discussed outreach during faculty meetings or retreats and only one faculty member mentions the Outreach Report. The chair, who is aware of the initiative and who did receive a copy of the Outreach Report", has not Openly shared it with the faculty and has decided not to convene a department-wide discussion about the initiative. Nonetheless, in response to my questions, and perhaps based on the information I shared with them, faculty members did identify possible 6Copies of the Outreach Report were mailed to all departm%t heads (chairs), deans, and other unit administrators. the cor solutio Profes: Whale. proble: empha Sim condu Ohash initiat retreat lS aw; Openh discus based deans. 177 Interactive. Several faculty members describe outreach as interactive —- that is, the community helps to define the problem for study or works with faculty to find solutions. Professor Wu says outreach is a "dialogue" with the community and Professor Tully says outreach is a "partnership" with the community. Professor Whalen used to define outreach as "taking research and using it to solve societal problems." This definition has changed, says Professor Whalen, to a definition emphasizing more interaction: I’m conceptualizing it [outreach] more broadly in terms of ways in which university people... can provide perhaps more general and even 5 less tangible benefits by just having contact and interaction with the outer world rather than just narrowly thinking about research aimed at a problem. Summary Most faculty members in the Professional Department have many experiences l conducting outreach. Yet, except for the chair, and to a lesser degree Professor / Ohashi, faculty in the Professional Department are uninformed about the outreach / initiative. Faculty members have not discussed outreach during faculty meetings or retreats and only one faculty member mentions the Outreach Report. The chair, who is aware of the initiative and who did receive a copy of the Outreach Report", has not ' Openly shared it with the faculty and has decided not to convene a department-wide discussion about the initiative. Nonetheless, in response to my questions, and perhaps based on the information I shared with them, faculty members did identify possible ’Copies of the Outreach Report were mailed to all department heads (chairs), deans, and other unit administrators. motives a way t land-gr: with it, the abs in the ' definit single examp knowl memb Most and St with t initia‘ Dopa ways abou- cOmr this i 178 motives among administrators for initiating the outreach change: They see outreach as a way to garner more money from the state legislature and as a way to extend the land-grant mission. Faculty members define outreach by relying on their own personal experiences with it, or by drawing on the department’s long history of outreach activities. Even in the absence of the Outreach Report and discussions of the outreach initiative, faculty in the Professional Department define outreach in ways that are similar to the definition incorporated in the initiative definition. Faculty members do not share a single definition of outreach but their definitions overlap in significant ways. For example, all faculty members describe outreach as the external application of faculty knowledge to agencies in the community or to the community itself. Most faculty members describe outreach as cross-cutting, although they do not use this exact term. Most faculty members also say that outreach activities should result in a social benefit, and several faculty members add that outreach involves interactions or partnerships with the community. It seems that faculty members do not need to be familiar with the outreach initiative to be familiar with outreach. The faculty members in the Professional Department are well acquainted with outreach and define it, and perhaps conduct it, in ways proposed in the Outreach Report. If faculty members were more knowledgeable about the outreach initiative, they might see it as a validation of their historic commitment to outreach, perhaps even seeing their department as being exemplary on this dimension. But it seems that this is not the message that the chair feels propelled to send to outre the chic to focus In fact, agenda into les departr person: be at : differ: public resear focus. numl: Profe outre 179 to send to the faculty. Perhaps the chair is championing the department’s commitment to outreach in meetings with the college dean or through administrative forms sent to the chief academic officer. Or perhaps, as I suggested earlier, the chair has chosen not to focus on the outreach initiative because he is focusing on other arenas or activities. In fact, as the opening of this case study suggests, the chair does have a different agenda -- one that promotes more faculty involvement in research which may translate into less faculty involvement in outreach. How might the chair’s issue -- the departmental research initiative -- impact the role of outreach in faculty members’ personal and departmental lives? Contextualizing Outreach The Professional Department, as described by eight of its members, appears to be at a cross—roads. The future that these faculty members project seems to look different from the past. The orientation of new faculty members to basic research and publication, coupled with the Chair’s efforts to redirect the program towards more research, is creating a new research context for a department that historically has focused on outreach. New faculty members are from other universities7, and the number of new faculty members is gradually catching up to the number of full professors, who are beginning to retire. Further, the department has hired several outreach specialists to conduct what was once faculty outreach work. These changes 7The Professional Department often hired its own graduates in the past. may be outreac reward membe beginn: Depart: departr encour finding Facult depart consic and p: with ] is the W0tk: 1 80 may be altering the context in which faculty members consider how compatible outreach is with their work, their department’s and discipline’s missions, and their reward system. Outreach activities are not new to most faculty members but faculty members appear to be reconsidering how outreach fits within a department that is beginning to look and act differently. Most faculty members in the Professional Department continue to see outreach as compatible with their work and with their department’s and discipline’s missions. The reward system does not, however, encourage junior faculty members to conduct outreach. I discuss these and other findings below. Faculty Work Lives As described earlier, most faculty members identify outreach as the department’s strength. It is not surprising, then, to find that most faculty members consider outreach compatible with their work. Professor Shefner says outreach is "part and parcel of my work and my research too." Professor Tully makes a similar point: "It [outreach] is my work." Professor Wu says outreach is "highly compatible with what I do." Likewise, Professor Vigmostad says outreach is "very compatible" with her work. Professor Ohashi laughs when he says outreach is "probably compatible" 1, with his work since most of his time is spent on outreach activities. Professor Whalen / is the only faculty member who suggests that outreach may not be compatible with his /, work: This is an extra burden of what you have to do.... [I]t’s in an environment in which it takes a fair amount of planning and diplomacy r C I What P‘ politics Profess that he work a to how howev is their M it isa missir the dc With .' it [on Com}: Perh 181 about which agencies you deal with.... And the whole thought of having to engage in diplomacy for some of us is an extra burden. What Professor Whalen seems to suggest is that outreach involves organizational politics and this is something he personally finds burdensome. This comment by Professor Whalen is consistent with his earlier statement about faculty relations, that is, that he does not "really want to do joint projects." Perhaps Professor Whalen likes to work alone and sees outreach, which seems to always involve other parties, as contrary to how he prefers to work. Most faculty members in the Professional Department, however, find outreach to be compatible with their work, and several say that outreach is their work. The Department’s Mission Knowing that faculty members identified outreach as the department’s strength, it is also not surprising that faculty members View outreach as compatible with the mission of the department. All faculty members say that outreach is consistent with the department’s mission, and most faculty members voice an opinion in agreement with a comment made by Professor Whalen, "This unit is all about outreach so I think it [outreach] is very consistent with the mission." Professor Preston says that the main interests of the department are very compatible with outreach but that the department has other interests too: I think there’s a lot of different commitments in this department... There doesn’t appear to be any single focus of outreach. " Perhaps some faculty members, such as Professor Whalen, see outreach as the central dimens Prestor missior with tl outreac Profes simply the di conse. meml campi duck Depm anoth gradu meml may depai 182 dimension of the department’s mission, while other faculty members, such as Professor Preston, see outreach as one of many dimensions that are central to the department’s mission. Regardless of the number of central interests a faculty member may identify with the Professional Department’s mission, faculty interviewed in this study identify outreach as compatible with the department’s mission. The Discipline’s Mission Faculty members say outreach is also consistent with the discipline’s mission. Professor Vigmostad says outreach is "definitely compatible [with the discipline] simply because of the applied nature of [the discipline]." Most faculty members say the discipline has an orientation to applied research and agency involvement; consequently outreach is an important component of the discipline. Several faculty members note, however, that not all professional departments at other university campuses [that is, the departments on other campuses that are aligned with the same discipline at the Professional Department] are as outreach-oriented as the Professional Department. Professor Radakovitz describes the same professional area of study at another university as "straight academic." Professor Vigmostad says when she was a graduate student at another university but in the same disciplinary area, faculty members did not engage in outreach; rather they concentrated on basic research. It may be, then, that the Professional Department is more active in outreach than similar departments at other universities. as very discipl membe departr Tully : central not all Presto howex centra M the P1 his or meml jointly to the may i interr 183 Overall, faculty members in the Professional Department appear to see outreach as very compatible with their professional work, the department’s mission, and the discipline’s interests. Most faculty members, and particularly the senior faculty members, sound as though outreach is a fundamental part of their work, and of the department’s and discipline’s missions or central interests. For example, Professor Tully says outreach "is my work." But not all faculty members say that outreach is central to their work. Professor Whalen describes outreach as "an extra burden." And not all faculty members say that outreach is the focus of the department. Professor Preston says the department does not have "any single focus on outreach." Overall, however, faculty members suggest that outreach activities are compatible, and even central, to their interests, and the missions of the department and the discipline. The Reward Svstem Recently revised faculty career plans guide promotion and tenure decisions in the Professional Department. Each faculty member develops a career plan that sets out his or her plan for teaching, service, and scholarly activity. In this career plan, faculty members must address a list of six expectations -- outreach and service are listed jointly as the sixth item. Faculty members must formulate a set of expectations related to the dissemination of knowledge in service and outreach activities. Such activities may include department training activities, seminars, workshops, consultation, or international activities. necess ACCOII what 2 tenure and pl profes way 0 activit are be comir Profe Acco effort 184 For assistant professors, the career plan takes into account the accomplishments necessary to achieve promotion to associate professor and the granting of tenure. According to most faculty members in the Professional Department, outreach is not what assistant professors need to emphasize in order to be promoted and receive tenure. Faculty members say that the Professional Department emphasizes research and publication when assistant professors apply for tenure and promotion to associate professor. Professors Ohashi, Preston, and Radakovitz suggest that the department, by way of written documents such as promotion guidelines, purports to value outreach activities when making tenure and promotion decisions, but in practice these decisions are based on research, publications, and, to a lesser extent, teaching. Professor Ohashi comments: Assistant professors should have some effort toward outreach, but we don’t expect too much. For promotion, they better have their publications down. Better show up for classes... But papers and publication and some kind of outreach. But even that’s pretty minimal. The reality is, to promote [e.g., tenure] you better darn well have some publications and research. Professor Preston offers a similar view: We tell people as they’re being reviewed each year on their way to tenure and promotion that they ought to be working with the field in outreach activities. But in all sincerity, we can’t really push or force them because we know it’s going to be dysfunctional if they do something outside and don’t get the points necessary inside. According to Professor Radakovitz, the college is not going to recognize outreach efforts in their review of tenure: I don’t see them [the new faculty] getting perks for it [outreach]. That is, the college is not going to say "You’ll get tenure if you do a lot of service [outreach]." They’re gonna say "You’ll get tenure if you Profess that he COIlCCI'. public on as profes Where facult 185 publish a lot." Professor Shefner, an assistant professor, concurs with the above comments. He says that he needs to focus on research now, and, perhaps in a few years, he will concentrate on outreach: I am new and they want me to concentrate of my research first -- research and teaching -- and perhaps outreach, maybe, in a few years from now. I retain it in my mind that I should not worry about that [outreach] right now. So I don’t. The chair of the Professional Department also indicates that it is research, publication and teaching, and not outreach, that faculty members need to concentrate on as they work towards tenure and promotion. The chair’s advised one assistant professor during a tenure preparation meeting to focus on publications because that is where the department could use help: He [the chair] did not manifest much concern about my outreach... He said he viewed all these things as being a unit level thing to present to the dean and that different people had different strengths and that my strength is obviously publication. That’s an area in which the department could use help and so I should just keep publishing. I need to do something to indicate a cognizance of outreach, but he did not express any specific expectations. Of a similar promotion and tenure preparation meeting with the chair, another faculty member says: I wanted to know what the expectations are at different levels [assistant to associate to full]. And it was very clear that as much as outreach is part of the expectations, the most important thing one needs to keep in mind when they come up for tenure -- that is, from assistant to associate -- is the publishing record will be looked at more closely than the outreach. ofan progrr qu pi hke t assoc says: Profe engai Tenu becai that‘ 186 The chair also says that outreach is not important in the first five to six years of an assistant professors’ work in the department, but that outreach become progressively more important as faculty members move up in rank from associate to fiill professor. He says: During the first five or six years, we don’t stress outreach. And we don’t assign to committees like by-laws and that stuff. I think that’s reasonable because you can’t just expect everyone to jump in and excel at everything at once. For me, that’s a reasonable way to look at it. But I’d be equally concerned that someone as an associate or full professor locked themselves in the office and said, "I’m sorry, but I’m doing theoretical writing and I don’t want to help in any way any of the department’s efforts in outreach. I really don’t want to relate to the practitioner. " I think that would be a disaster. The department may not expect assistant professors to engage in outreach, but, like the chair, a couple of faculty members suggest that the department expects associate and full professors to engage in outreach. Along these lines, Professor Wu says: . . . the promotion from associate to full clearly, clearly must have a good balance in all three components [teaching, research, and outreach]. In other words, they have to step-up outreach if they didn’t do much before they came up for associate. Professor Preston also comments that it is associate and full professors who tend to engage in outreach: Outreach tends to be done more by the associate or full professors. People who already have tenure because they can afford to do it. Tenured faculty members can afford to do outreach, Professor Preston explains, because they are not bound to a reward system (e. g., promotion and tenure decisions) that value research and teaching above outreach. is not facult witho in the IECEII invol' and t Profe seem Critei aetiv 187 Although faculty members in the Professional Department indicate that outreach is not an important activity when making promotion and tenure decisions, only one faculty member says that an assistant professor could "get by" the reward process without engaging in any outreach. He says: ...the things that count are the research, the publications, the teaching, and the involvement in the department, the university. And a person could get by without doing any outreach and not be penalized for it. Outreach was not always overlooked in making promotion and tenure decisions in the Professional Department. Professor Preston says that, in the past, outreach had received much more attention, and he attributes his promotion to full professor to his involvement in outreach activities. He says: Fifteen years ago I think outreach received a lot more reward, a lot more recognition... If outreach were not important I would have never gotten promoted to a full professor. But outreach and contacts and bringing students in -- ftmded students from the military, from business, from government -- was important. And I helped do that and therefore that was a part [of the tenure and promotion criteria], along with the minimum requirement of research and writing, publishing. But I don’t think anybody could do that now. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program distinguished between promotion and tenure decision criteria and merit award criteria, but this is not so in the Professional Department. Faculty members in the Professional Department do not seem to distinguish between the criteria for promotion and tenure decisions and the criteria used for making merit decisions. Only Professor Ohashi remarked on outreach activities as a component of merit decisions: For merit, which is just a departmental decision as opposed to promotion and tenure which goes beyond the department, I think we’ll reward outreach reasonably well. But there better be some other things Perha] mom for de listed comn meml publi proct resea disci acti\ of tl thin; Cent lnde and 188 in there obviously. But I think for merit if you excel in any two areas you’re probably going to be treated pretty right. Perhaps the criteria used for merit decisions in the Professional Department are the same as those used for tenure and promotion decisions. As faculty talk about the relative unimportance of outreach when making promotion and tenure decisions, it seems to me that the rank-order of the criteria used for developing a career plan has meaning. That is, outreach, coupled with service, is listed last among six criteria. Perhaps the career plan guidelines and the Chair’s comments indicate that the Professional Department acknowledges outreach as a member of the cast, but when it comes time for the curtain call, it is research, publications, and teaching that take center state while outreach waits in the wings. Summm In the Disciplinary Program case study, faculty members seem to be in the process of placing outreach alongside or within their other professional work (i.e., research, teaching, publishing) and the interests or missions of the program and the discipline. What faculty members in Disciplinary Program suggest is that outreach activities are not very important to the lives of the faculty, or of the life, if you will, of the department. Faculty members in the Professional Department appear to see things differently from their colleagues in the Disciplinary Program. Outreach appears central to the work of many of the faculty members in the Professional Department. ft Indeed, outreach is integral to some professors, work -- intertwined with their research l and teaching. Outreach also appears to be integral to the department’s mission and to the dis to the makin] Profes memb memb organ? outrea activi‘ perce] depar assoc profe label: label. their refla 189 the discipline which seems attuned to working with people and organizations external to the university. Why, then, is outreach not considered an important activity when making promotion and tenure decisions? Perhaps the answer to this lies in the way that faculty members in the Professional Department classify their activities. As I just mentioned, some faculty members see outreach as intertwined with their research and teaching. Faculty members, then, may be involved in research activities that involve persons or organizations external to the university, but rather than classify these activities as outreach-research, per the Outreach Report’s definition, faculty may classify these activities as simply research. Such an explanation would account for the faculty perception that outreach is oftentimes central to their work and the interests of the department and discipline, but it is research that advances an assistant professor to associate professor. The issue here may be one of classification -- when an assistant professor is working to advance to associate professor, his or her activities may be labeled research, but once he or she is tenured, the same (or similar) activities may be labeled outreach. It may be that faculty members in the Professional Department see their work as research-outreach rather than outreach-research. The dual labeling may reflect a temporal ordering relative to career stage. decun adnni Inakn Depa Inay the d gene] pubh Facu unfit facul depa atth Olltrt with rese Vvod 190 Outreach Decisions Although faculty members in the Professional Department are not engaged in decision making about the outreach initiative as defined and described by university administrators and the Outreach Report, they do seem to be engaged in decision making about the future role of outreach within their department. The Professional Department has had an historic commitment to outreach, but this historic commitment may be lessening due to an effort, seemingly led by the department chair, to redirect the department’s activities more toward research, publications, and grant writing. In general, faculty members seem to be saying that the new emphasis on research, publications, and grant writing displaces attention historically given to outreach. Faculty members seem to see recent hiring decisions as a means to displace outreach. What is the future role of outreach in the Professional Department? And within faculty member’s lives? Most faculty members, and especially the senior faculty members, say that unless new faculty members are socialized into outreach, the department may lose its strength in this area. This idea may be borne out by decisions at the personal level. Faculty members who have traditionally been committed to outreach plan to continue to conduct outreach, but junior faculty members, who are without outreach experiences, and who themselves say they were hired for their research skills, express less certainty about the role that outreach will play in their work. active comn but 0 expre outre depa: Prof: Came other men Prof Prof 191 Departmental Decision Although most faculty members in the Professional Department are currently active in outreach, several faculty members say that the department’s historic commitment to outreach as central to the department could change in the future. All but one of the several tenured faculty members I interviewed, in this department, expressed doubt about the future commitment of the department to the traditional outreach orientation. These faculty suggest that the future of outreach in the department depends upon new faculty members. Professor Preston remarks: I think it [future of outreach] is good for the near future. In the distant future we’ve got to establish where we want to go and what we want to do. And it will make a difference with the people we hire. This will determine how outreach is going to survive or progress, I guess. Professor Wu says that in recent faculty hiring discussions, outreach "really never came up as an issue to either ignore some candidate or encourage some kinds of others." Professor Ohashi and Professor Radakovitz comment that if the new faculty members are to continue the outreach tradition, then they must be socialized to do so. Professor Ohashi says: I think we’ll continue it [outreach]. I mean continue with the same interest. Depends on how the character of our department changes in terms of new faculty and how they’re socialized. Some of the schools... our newest faculty members came from... emphasize the theoretical side much more than the outreach side. And unless they’re socialized into the outreach mode here, then it might wither some. Professor Radakovitz remarks: We have bright-eyed, bushy tailed new faculty coming in here who were never trained the way I was. I mean trained in the sense of... depan for or in the facul nott Says: deve goor VVho men 192 service... They never had to do [applied research]. So they’re young, they’re well educated, they come in with another point of View and they have to come into this framework. Now, how does that work out? . . Maybe in five years if they’re not oriented here, or even if they are, they may say, "We’re going to change this." The tentative voice used by the senior faculty members is not present in the department Chair’s voice. He is optimistic about the future of outreach. The future for outreach he says is, "Great! I think everyone here values it." He continues: [The new faculty] know their goal is to get tenure, they’ve got to publish and do research... and we don’t expect a lot of outreach. But they don’t seem to be saying, "This idea of outreach is crazy. I don’t ever want to do it. Or I don’t ever want to interrelate."... I think the newest faculty may do different types of outreach in their future than the about-to-retire faculty. But I mean that’s pretty much just changes in the field, the times. Senior faculty members’ uncertainties about the future importance of outreach in the department may be supported by the views of several junior (i.e., not tenured) faculty I interviewed. The consensus among these junior faculty is that outreach does not have to be a part of every faculty member’s work. One junior faculty member says: I don’t think that each individual faculty should be responsible for it [outreach]. I think there are some people that really don’t want to get involved with the community very much... So, I really don’t think that every faculty member has to be responsible for a certain amount. A second junior faculty member says some faculty are good at writing and developing theories while "some people are good at outreach... so it would probably be good that some faculty who are good in that [outreach] are devoted to that, and some who are good at something else, do what they are good at." Another junior faculty member says the department expectations for outreach should vary by faculty member, but me makes some shoulc [facul‘ all fat the cl aPPEE perfo welcr Speci Prof worl and facu outr invc fact 193 but maintains "it’s useful to have all the faculty think about outreach... I think it makes sense to have some consciousness so that people will make some effort to have some involvement." Only one tenured faculty suggests that not all faculty members should engage in outreach. This tenured faculty member says, "probably not everyone [faculty] should be doing outreach." All other tenured faculty appear to suggest that all faculty members should engage in some outreach. Another indication that the future role of outreach may be de-emphasized among faculty members is the hiring of outreach specialists. The department, under the Chair’s direction, hired outreach specialists to conduct outreach activities. It appears that most of the outreach activities now performed by specialists used to be performed by faculty members and adjunct faculty members. Not all faculty members welcome the hiring of specialists for outreach activities. Professor Ohashi says of the specialists: ...essentially that [outreach] is what their job is. They do training and dealing with things like that. And you’re not necessarily relying on your faculty expertise... there’s not the communication, there’s not the interaction with the faculty. Professor Ohashi suggests that outreach specialists and faculty members are not working together and, therefore, outreach specialists are not drawing on the expertise and knowledge of faculty members. In talking about a particular instance when faculty members were not included in conversations with the community about an outreach program, Professor Preston seems to suggest that faculty members want to be involved and be part of the outreach efforts undertaken by outreach specialists, but that faculty members seem sometimes to be excluded from such efforts. He talks about a meetin (301111111 special betwee betwee faculty changi The cl. Profes: 0f Spet Enactet haS his 194 meeting between the chair, two outreach specialists and a members of the professional community where faculty members were not invited: The people out in the field said "Where is Professor X, Y, and Z? Won’t they be teaching in this distance education program?".... Now it’s a process of going back and picking up the faculty who were ready, willing, and able to do it but were never asked before. And now having to sort of say "Gee, now we’d like you to be involved." And so it’s a little bit of "Yea, we’ll help you out, but ghee whiz why didn’t you ask earlier on?" Professor Preston says of this particular situation that faculty members and specialists are trying to work together but he implies that there are hard feelings between the two groups and that it’s "tough" for them to work together. The chair, however, offers a different interpretation about the relationship between faculty members and outreach specialists. He says that specialists tried to get faculty input, but faculty members were reticent, although that does seem to be changing. He comments: In the training area I keep pushing the specialists to... get faculty input. That’s been very complicated because they will ask for faculty input, and now they do seem to be getting it, it does seem to be getting better, but there’s been a lot of resistance because they were seen as being brought in by me... The chair attributes faculty resistance to the specialists to the fact that he hired them. Professors Ohashi and Preston, however, suggest that faculty concern about the hiring of specialists is linked to the potential loss of faculty—community interactions. The department’s research initiative, led primarily by the department chair and enacted, in part, by hiring outreach specialists, may be changing the role that outreach has historically played in the Professional Department. Recently hired outreach speciali: member have no outreacl faculty The de future 1 membe a differ Depart outrea: contin; more r emphe Persor COHdU COntir says 1 anoth 195 specialists seem to be conducting outreach activities once conducted by faculty members. Most of the senior faculty members say that the junior faculty members have not been socialized in an outreach culture and that without this socialization, outreach may "wither" in the department. Junior faculty members indicate that not all faculty members should engage in outreach -- which may reflect plans of their own. The department chair is more optimistic than other senior faculty members about the future of outreach in the department, saying that he believes that the new faculty members do value outreach and will conduct outreach in the future, although it may be a different type of outreach. Decisions about the role that outreach will play in the future of the Professional Department do not seem to be the result of shared decision making or an articulated outreach plan. Rather, the decision about the role of outreach in the department seems contingent upon another decision made by the chair -- that the department will focus more on research and publication which, then, may impact the importance and emphasis placed on outreach in the department. Personal Decisions Concerning Outreach The tenured faculty members I interviewed say they plan to continue conducting outreach activities in the future. One tenured professor says he plans to continue to engage in outreach, but may slow the pace. Another tenured professor says he will continue to conduct outreach "as long as I’m able to do that. " Yet another tenured professor says he can see himself "engaged in more projects either strictly organiz in outre regardi: the futr work: Anoth unles 10 wri tenure about lOWarr may i Will e 196 strictly research or research reports that individual units can use, individual organizations can use." The remaining tenured professors plan to continue to engage in outreach activities, saying outreach is integral to their work. Newer faculty members are not of one opinion about their future plans regarding outreach. One new professor sounds certain about engaging in outreach in the future: Well, I really haven’t had a chance to do much [outreach] yet, so probably the obvious answer is I’ll be involved a lot more in projects that are involved in community settings or that are involved within an agency. So I see it [outreach] becoming more prominent in the next few years than it is now. Another new professor is less clear about the role of outreach in his future work: I am new and they want me to concentrate on my research first. Research and teaching, and perhaps outreach maybe in a few years from now. I retain it in my mind that I should not be worrying about that right now. So I’m not. Another new faculty member implies outreach will probably play little role in his life "unless I have something that really strikes my fancy in the outreach sense, I’m going to write. Cause that’s what I like to do." Those faculty members who already engage in outreach, all of whom are tenured, plan to continue to do so. Junior faculty members are split in their views about engaging in outreach in the future. Junior faculty members lean rather strongly toward continuing to engage in research. However, what one plans for one’s future may not always be realized. Perhaps new information about the outreach initiative will encourage or persuade junior faculty members to conduct more outreach. Or perhaps adopt st conduc initiatii difficul Discipl unawa' Report departr and fa them the int a polir extens know] activi: mem] view 197 perhaps a new or different initiative will encourage faculty members at all ranks to adopt some non-outreach activity. Then again, it may be that faculty members will conduct those activities that are of greatest personal interest to them regardless of what initiative they or the department is subjected to. In summary, I suggest that it is difficult to predict faculty outreach behavior in the Professional Department, or the Disciplinary Program, based only on their projected expectations. Summa_ry In summary, faculty members in the Professional Department are largely unaware of the outreach initiative. Only one faculty member mentions the Outreach Report, and only a couple of faculty members have heard of the initiative. The department chair decided not to engage the faculty in a discussion about the initiative and faculty members have not generated conversation about the initiative amongst themselves. Nonetheless, based on their scant knowledge of the outreach initiative and the information I shared with them during the interview, most faculty members ascribe a political motive to the initiative, and two faculty members say the initiative is an extension of the land-grant mission of Central State University. All faculty members describe outreach as the external application of university knowledge, and most faculty members describe outreach as an extension of other activities -- similar to the cross—cutting concept found in the Outreach Report. Faculty members say that outreach activities are compatible with their work. Faculty also view outreach as compatible with the department’s and discipline’s missions, although they SCI of a rol outreac profess coheag outreac is bifur careers on res and pr reSpon outrea faculty Junior and SC heap PUblic balant POint 198 they see the mission of the department as possibly shifting and outreach as playing less of a role in department activities than it has in the past. Faculty acknowledge that outreach is not a tenure requirement and that colleagues up for promotion to associate professor should have a record of research. However, faculty members say that when colleagues go up for promotion to full professor they should have a record of outreach. At the department level the role of outreach may be changing. The department is bifurcated with respect to outreach. Many of the senior faculty members built their careers on outreach. Newer faculty members, however, are building their early careers on research and publications -- the activities that are necessary for achieving tenure and promotion of associate professor. At the department level, is appears that the responsibility for outreach may also be shifting as outreach specialists conduct outreach activities once preformed by faculty members. At a personal level, the senior faculty members who have histories of engaging in outreach plan to continue to do so. Junior faculty members are less certain of their future plans with regard to outreach, and some do not see themselves as engaged in outreach in the future. Outreach may be a part of their lives, but it may not be. The Professional Department is changing. It is focusing more on research, publications, and grant writing. Perhaps this focus is necessary to bring research into balance with outreach. What is unclear is whether or not the balance will shift to the point that research outweighs outreach. departr by uni compa Comrr Chang. resear modi four Study both two - CHAPTER 7: ANALYSIS —- ADDRESSING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DERIVING PROPOSITIONS The purpose of this study was to examine how faculty members in tow selected departments at Central State University responded to the outreach initiative promoted by university administrators and to examine how these faculty members’ responses compare to the expectations expressed in the Outreach Report and by Outreach Committee members. Although, the larger purpose this study was to examine planned change from the perspective of individuals expected to enact it, the more specific research questions that guided data collection and analysis were’: 1. How do faculty members in two departments respond to the outreach initiative? What patterns are evident in their responses? 2. To what extent do faculty members in two departments respond similarly to the outreach initiative? To what extent do they differ? 1As described in Chapter 3, these research questions reflect two minor modifications to the research questions originally proposed for this study. Question four was modified to reflect a change in the composition of the outreach initiative case study from university administrators to Outreach Committee members (which included both administrators and faculty). A second modification was the addition of question two that requires a between-case analysis. 199 and dz data, 2 part 0 based learne Organ not a what 200 3. How do administrators’ expectations of faculty members’ implementation of the outreach initiative, as expressed in the Outreach Report, compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? 4. How do Outreach Committee members’ perceptions of faculty members’ responses compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? These research questions guided the data collection, case study development, and data analysis. The first part of this chapter focuses on patterns I identified in the data, and which I state as assertions relative, to these four questions. In the second part of this chapter I present several propositions, derived from these and other data- based patterns, about organizational change. These propositions represent what I have learned from this study about planned changed in colleges and universities as organizations. Addressing the Research Questions (Plus One) Before addressing my research questions, I address a fifth question that I did not anticipate in advance of data collection but which is critical to this analysis: To what are faculty members responding? Adda outrea differt unive How the u Depa empl COSt. [BSpc the u admi IESpt 201 Addressing a Preliminm Question T 0 what are faculty members responding? Although I framed this study as an examination of faculty responses to outreach, in fact, faculty members in the two departments were responding to two different things. Assertion One: From the perspective of this study, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were responding to the university outreach initiative. Faculty members in the Professional Department were not responding to the university outreach initiative but to a departmental research initiative that had implications for the role of outreach in the department. In the Disciplinary Program, faculty members appeared to be responding to the university outreach initiative as I have described it in Chapter 4 of this study. However, in the Professional Department, faculty members were largely unaware of the university-promoted outreach initiative. What faculty members in the Professional Department appeared to be responding to was a departmental research initiative that emphasized the role of research and publication in the department -- perhaps at the cost of outreach activities. Thus, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program responded more directly than did faculty members in the Professional Department to the university outreach initiative as presented through the Outreach Report and other administratively-led efforts. In a sense then, this study was about faculty members’ responses to multiple initiatives and not just the university outreach initiative. Assert incons Theu depan memt depar ounet encor outre: respo than facul look: COUp ahoc Such 202 Assertion Two: The university outreach initiative was not only diflerent from but inconsistent with the research initiative in the Professional Department. These two initiatives support different activities on the part of faculty members. The university outreach initiative aimed to weave outreach into the mission of departments such that outreach would be the responsibility of regular academic faculty members (but not necessarily all faculty members in the department). Ironically, the departmental research initiative in the Professional Department was "un-weaving" outreach from regular faculty members: These academic faculty members were encouraged to spend more time and effort on basic research and publication while outreach specialists who were not faculty members assumed departmental outreach responsibilities. Assertion Three: Information about the university outreach initiative was allocated unevenly across the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program had looked at or read the Outreach Report, discussed outreach at a departmental retreat and in at least one faculty meeting. Only one faculty member in the Professional Department said he had looked at the Outreach Report, and most faculty members knew very little, and a couple knew nothing, about the university outreach initiative. The uneven flow or allocation of information across the two departments may be due to key intermediaries, such as the department chairs. In the Disciplinary Program, the department chair shared discus: initiati chairp initiat? need 1 initial with ‘ Wllhll lWOC merr toN to U 203 shared copies of the Outreach Report with faculty members, made outreach an agenda discussion item at the faculty retreat, and encouraged discussion about the outreach initiative during at least one faculty meeting. In contrast, the Professional Department chairperson seemed to have chosen not to share information he had about the outreach initiative with the faculty members in the department. This chair said he did not see a need to discuss "externally what outreach is." Although faculty members in the two departments were responding to different initiatives, in the context of the interview they all grappled, to one extent or another, with the question of what role, if any, outreach would play in their own lives and within their departments. I discuss the outreach responses of faculty members in the two departments as I address the research questions below. Addressing Research Questions 1 and 2 How do faculty members in two departments respond to the outreach initiative .7 VWtat patterns are evident in their responses? To what extent do faculty members in different departments respond similarly to the outreach initiative? To what extent do they differ? I begin my discussion of these research questions by focusing on how faculty members across the departments responded to outreach as an activity (Assertions Four to Nine). I then discuss how faculty members in the Disciplinary Program responded to university outreach initiative and why they may have responded that way (Assertion Ten a1 depart xvidi a Thirte perce idea < Profe were Disci what long Dept Prof: 204 Ten and Eleven).2 Next, I discuss a difference in how faculty members across the departments talk about their respective initiatives (Assertion Twelve).3 I conclude with a discussion about departmental change in the Professional Department (Assertion Thirteen). Assertion Four: Outreach is not an innovation for faculty members in the Disciplinary Program or the Professional Department. In Chapter 2 of this study, I defined an innovation as an idea or practice that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. Outreach is not a new idea or practice for most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program or the Professional Department. Most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program said they were or had been engaged in outreach activities. For example, Professor Brown in the Disciplinary Program said that he was already engaged in outreach activities and "so what else is new?" And in the Professional Department, most faculty members had long histories of engaging in outreach. Professor Shefner in the Professional Department said that outreach was "part and parcel of my work and my research too." Professor Tully made a similar point: "It [outreach] is my work." Outreach, then, was 2I do not include the responses of faculty members in the Professional Department in Assertions Ten and Eleven because these faculty members appeared to be responding to the departmental research initiative and not the university outreach initiative. 3In this chapter I sometimes use the phrase "respective initiatives" to refer to the university outreach initiative in the Disciplinary Program and the departmental research initiative in the Professional Department. HOlaI memb knowd Most cuttin outre. appez mem Perh: 0f 01 defil facu outr 4ol 205 not a new idea or practice for faculty members across the two departments.4 Assertion Five: Faculty members across the two departments defined outreach in similar ways. In the Disciplinary Program and Professional Department, most faculty members described outreach as an activity that connects university/faculty members’ knowledge with clients or community members who are external to the university. Most faculty members across the two departments also defined outreach as cross- cutting5 or as linked with their research and teaching. It is interesting that faculty members across the two departments define outreach similarly given that the faculty members in the Disciplinary Program appeared to rely upon the definition provided in the Outreach Report while faculty members in the Professional Department were unfamiliar with the Outreach Report. Perhaps part of the definition of outreach found in the report emerged from definitions of outreach already in use at CSU. 4What may be "innovative" about the university outreach initiative is the definition of outreach as a scholarly activity. But as I discuss later in this chapter, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program (who were familiar with the university outreach initiative) appear not to define outreach as a form of scholarship. 5The term cross-cutting is found in the Outreach Report and defined in Chapter 4 of this study. "som: meml depar comp disci] most their Depa disci the e IneH degr 206 Assertion Six: Faculty members across the two departments say outreach is compatible with their work and the interests of the department and disciplines. However, they difler on the relative imporLan_ce_ that outreach plays in their work and the interests of the department and discipline. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program said that outreach was ”sometimes" compatible with their work, but, as Professor Casey said, most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program did not see outreach as "a central interest of this department." Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program also said that outreach was compatible with the interests of the discipline, particularly with the applied side of the discipline, but that the discipline "paid-off" on research and not outreach. In contrast, most faculty members in the Professional Department defined outreach as m to their work and the department’s mission. Most faculty members in the Professional Department also said that outreach activities were an important component of the discipline. Across the two departments, faculty members agreed on what outreach was ~- the external application of knowledge that cross-cuts research and teaching. Faculty members also viewed outreach as compatible with their work, but they differed in the degree to which outreach was central to their work, the department, and the discipline. Assertion Seven: Outreach is not a criterion for making promotion and tenure decisions in the two departments. highlj to ou may depai the t: Profc outre you ‘ Disc valul -- b1 rese disc ina}: app Pro: 207 Faculty members across both departments said that their department did not highly value outreach in the making of tenure and promotion decisions. With regard to outreach activities, Professor Glass in the Disciplinary Program said that "outreach may be mentioned at a promotion and tenure meeting, but that’s about all." In both departments, the chairs and other faculty members advised junior faculty members on the tenure track not to get involved in outreach activities. Professor Ohashi in the Professional Department said; "Assistant professors should have some effort toward outreach, but we don’t expect too much. . . . The reality is, to promote [e.g., tenure] you better darn well have some publications and research." Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program discussed changing the promotion and tenure criteria to better value outreach, but decided not to make any changes. Assertion Eight: Outreach activities may be more compatible with or central to faculty members’ work at certain points in their careers, but less so at other times in their careers. Faculty members in the Professional Department and the Disciplinary Program -- both senior and junior -- said junior faculty members needed to have a record of research and publication for tenure, and, therefore, junior faculty members were discouraged from engaging in outreach. Outreach, then, may be a disadvantageous or inappropriate activity for junior faculty members. Is outreach, then, a more appropriate activity for senior or tenured faculty members? Professor Wu in the Professional Department said that tenured faculty members could afford to engage in outre also 1 Yet, mem being think activ whet offer outr: mop outr men 3.8: Char 208 outreach because they did not have to worry about promotion and tenure decisions and also because they had more time to engage in outreach than junior faculty members. Yet, outreach may not be a desired or appropriate activity for all tenured faculty members. Professor Erdmann, a tenured faculty member, said, "I don’t see myself being involved in that [outreach] work. But there was a point in my career where I think I was extensively involved in it. " At what point in faculty members’ careers and lives is outreach an appropriate activity? Perhaps outreach is an appropriate activity for faculty members to engage in when they believe they have something to offer external audiences and when the offering of that something does not interfere with promotion and tenure efforts. Assertion Nine: Faculty members in both departments said that their commitment -- however large or small -- to outreach would remain about the same in the foreseeable future. Although faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were more aware of outreach activities and the need to document them, they did not anticipate engaging in more outreach activities in the future. Only Professor Casey hoped to engage in more outreach activities but he did not tie this decision to the outreach initiative.6 Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program planned to continue those activities that they saw as central to their careers and jobs work -- research and teaching. 6 Professor Casey said his decision to engage in more outreach was a result of changes in his "own mind" and not due to the university outreach initiative. Profe Chang Depa Junio and t resea admi the c admi Outrr finar than Pr0g the < 209 Like the faculty members in the Disciplinary Program, faculty members in the Professional Department did not anticipate that their engagement in outreach would change in the immediate future. Senior faculty members in the Professional Department who engaged in outreach activities planned to continue these activities. Junior faculty members in the Professional Department, hired to engage in research and teaching, were not involved in outreach activities and planned to continue to research and teach. Where, or if, outreach would fit in their future was unclear. Assertion Ten: Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program generally responded in one way to outreach activities and in another way to what they saw as the source of the university outreach initiative. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program doubted that university administrators, such as the president and the chief academic officer, really supported the outreach initiative. Faculty members were also skeptical as to why university administrators were promoting the outreach initiative. Faculty members saw the outreach initiative as a response by administrators to external political and internal financial pressures. Faculty members’ perceptions of the initiators were more negative than their perception of the initiative. Overall, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were much less supportive of the source of the initiative than they were of the outreach activities. adnnr work planr unidt facul mem he h: expe uniy Prog then Disc long how 0W 210 Assertion Eleven: In the Disciplinary Program, faculty members’ responses to the initiators (university administrators) appear to stem, in part, from previous experiences faculty members have had with university administrators. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were unhappy with university administrators whom they saw as intruding into the department’s and faculty members’ work. A couple of faculty members remarked that administrative requirements like planning and budget reports took too much time and that these activities, and other unidentified activities, did not relate to the responsibilities of an educator. Other faculty members said that university administrators were "micro-managing" faculty members and departments. One of these professors said that for the past several years he had observed university administrators becoming more authoritative -- a trend he expected to continue. Another professor described faculty members’ relationships with university administrators as "adversarial." Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were also skeptical of university actions that, as one professor described them, seem to come and go with new administrators. Perhaps faculty members in the Disciplinary Program saw the university outreach initiative as one more initiative in a longer stream of endeavors led by university administrators aimed at "micro-managing" how faculty members do their work and what constitutes that work. Faculty members in both departments talked differently about their control or "ownership" of their respective initiatives. Asset owwe [fisci urnrr resea nnenr reset oppc in th rese: inin nren outs I)is nrer oft 211 Assertion Twelve: Faculty members in the Professional Department express some ownership of the departmental research initiative whereas faculty members in the Disciplinary Program speak of the university outreach initiative as belonging to university administrators. Faculty members in the Professional Department talked about the departmental research initiative as a decision that came from within the department. Many faculty members in the Professional Department promoted and encouraged the departmental research initiative, and even those who did not promote it, suggested that they did not oppose it -- they just wanted their opinions and concerns addressed. Faculty members in the Professional Department appear to have felt some ownership of the departmental research initiative. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program, however, talked of the outreach initiative as one more administrative action forced on the department. These faculty members, for the most part, associated the university outreach initiative with interests outside the department and individual faculty members. The faculty members in the Disciplinary Program suggested that the outreach initiative was neither of the faculty members nor 3); the faculty members -- and they did not express a sense of ownership of the initiative. Assertion Thirteen: Changes in the Professional Department were achieved by changes in hiring practices rather than by changes in the orientations of current faculty members. hnpk depar oune nnsn beha rnon Profi ofiw chan and CXpr lln 212 The Professional Department, as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, was implementing the departmental research initiative, and faculty members said that the department was changing -- research was becoming more central to the department and outreach was possibly becoming less valued or less central to the department’s mission. This change in the department does not appear to be due to changes in the behavior of faculty members, but to changes in hiring practices. Newly hired faculty members were more oriented toward the conduct of research. Further, the chair of the Professional Department hired outreach specialists to conduct outreach activities, some of which faculty members had once performed. The Professional Department was not changing, then, as a result of faculty members altering their commitments or behavior -- but because it changed its hiring practices. Assertions Four to Thirteen focus on faculty members’ responses to outreach and their respective initiatives. How do their responses compare to how administrators expected or hoped faculty members would respond to the university outreach initiative as it is represented in the Outreach Report? This is the topic of Assertions Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen. Addressing Research Question 3 How do administrators’ expectations of faculty members implementation of the outreach initiative, as expressed in the Outreach Report, compare to the responses of faculty members in two departments? As described in Chapter 4, the chief academic officer at Central State University charged the Outreach Committee to develop a strategic plan for the future ofout Oune effint facuh 0fth< gene teacl that defii ouh' to e exte not the defi 213 of outreach at Central State University. This plan was the Outreach Report. The Outreach Report was the most comprehensive and most widely communicated strategic effort associated with the outreach initiative. Therefore, it most likely represented to faculty members the university’s strategic plan for making outreach a more central part of the university’s and departments’ missions. Assertion Fourteen: Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department did not define outreach as it was expressed in the Outreach Report. The Outreach Report defined outreach as a form of scholarship -- the generating, transmitting, applying and preserving of knowledge -- that cuts across teaching, research, and service, and which directly benefits external audiences in ways that are consistent with university and unit missions. According to the report, this definition set outreach apart from extension and service. It did so by focusing on outreach as scholarship, outreach as a cross-cutting activity, outreach as a direct benefit to external audiences, and outreach as a university and unit mission7. Faculty members across the two departments did define outreach as the extension of knowledge and as cross-cutting research and teaching (although they did not usually include service) -- dimensions of the concept of outreach as presented in the Outreach Report. However, faculty members across both departments m define or give examples of outreach as the eneration of knowled e and t_h_e 71 discussed this definition of outreach in Chapter 4. [)ICSE outre Depa mem said UIllVl outre the L acro: actiy deci with be c play Dep Cone anyt 214 preservation of knowledge. In fact, a couple of faculty members suggested that outreach was not a scholarly activity. Most faculty members in the Professional Department defined outreach as part of the mission of the department, but faculty members in the Disciplinary Program did not. Lastly, the new definition of outreach said that outreach was not a replacement for the service or extension mission of the university. However, most faculty members in the Disciplinary Program equated outreach with service and linked outreach with extension, or the land-grant mission of the university. Perhaps the most important observation about how faculty members across the two departments defined outreach is that it was oftentimes not seen as an activity equal in scholarship to research or teaching. Assertion Fifteen: Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department were not implementing recommendations made in the Outreach Report. The Outreach Report recommended that faculty members should make decisions at the department level about how much outreach they should conduct and with respect to what subject, where outreach should take place, how outreach should be calibrated (i.e., measured and rewarded), and what role external constituents should play in outreach. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department were not deciding at a department level how much outreach they would conduct or what roles external constituents would play in outreach activities. If anyone was making such decisions, it was probably the department chairs. devel prorn prorr teacl discr OUllt prox disc Cert; cont occr 13in 11166 mer 215 A second recommendation in the report called for academic departments to develop guidelines and criteria that valued outreach in making merit, tenure and promotion decision. However, faculty members in both departments said that their promotion and tenure decisions were based primarily on research, publications, and teaching, and did not include outreach. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program discussed the possibility of changing these criteria to better reward and recognize outreach activities, but they decided not to make any changes in these criteria. Assertion Sixteen: According to the Outreach Report, adopting the definition of outreach and implementing the recommendations requires a type of discourse among faculty members that does not appear to occur in the Disciplinary Program or the Professional Department. The Outreach Report states that the purpose of the report is to "stimulate, provoke, and encourage an informed and lively debate in the best tradition of scholarly discourse." From such discourse, the report continues, "appropriate actions will certainly follow." The two recommendations in this study also call for "open, continuous, and interactive dialogue. However, such conversations do not appear to occur often, if ever, in the two departments. Although faculty members in the Disciplinary Program discussed outreach at a faculty retreat and in a departmental meeting, "scholarly" discourse about outreach appeared limited to Professor Casey’s memos. univ com was outr witl inf Pro this Dis Cor out pro dor ant 216 In the Professional Department, faculty members had not discussed the university outreach initiative as a group. The chair considered having an outreach committee member come to an annual retreat or a faculty meeting, but decided that it was not necessary to talk about how others in the university defined or thought about outreach. Faculty members in the Professional Department describe their relations with each other as cordial, but they did not suggest that faculty interactions were "informed and lively debate."8 Addressing Research Question 4 How do Outreach Committee members’ perceptions of faculty members’ responses compare to the responses of faculty members in the two departments? Were the responses of faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department unique to them or might the pattern of "little impact” in these two departments have more pervasive in the university? We can have but a glimpse at this very important question by comparing faculty members’ responses in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department with the views of Outreach Committee members who were watching faculty all over the university respond to the outreach initiative. 8Though I did not explore this in this study, it is possible that the discourse problem portrayed here with regard to outreach pervades, to some extent, other domains of faculty work including teaching and research, but this is a question for another study. imp; that or a Out outr the Dis init me] facr did on dis apt We int. 217 Assertion Seventeen: Outreach Committee members ’perceptions that the Outreach Report had little impact on faculty and faculty work at CS U closely matches the responses of faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department. Outreach Committee members viewed the Outreach Report as having minimal impact on the university community. For example, committee member Lindblum said that not "a whole lot has changed" and that "nobody I hang out with, have lunch with, or anything, knows it [the Outreach Report] exists or cares." The only change Outreach Committee members mention is a quantitative change in the rhetoric of outreach. That is, they had heard the term outreach used more since they disseminated the report. This view closely matches the view expressed by faculty members in the Disciplinary Program. The Outreach Report, and even the university outreach initiative, had little if any impact in the Professional Department where faculty members were largely unaware of the report’s existence. In the Disciplinary Program, faculty members had read the report and discussed it, yet their definition of outreach did not include concepts such as "outreach as the generation of knowledge" or "outreach as scholarship," and they had not implemented the recommendations discussed in this study. The two departments, and individual faculty members, did not appear to be changing in response to the university outreach initiative, although they were more aware of outreach and, perhaps, using the word more. What is especially interesting is that in the eyes of Outreach Committee members, the same was true thror on d Pro] Pro; acti‘ Out said in t tear IlOl 218 throughout the university: As they saw it, the outreach initiative itself had little impact on departments and on individual faculty members within them. Assertion Eighteen: Outreach Committee members’ perceptions dijfer fiom Disciplinary Program faculty members’ responses when these groups discuss personal characteristics of faculty members that may discourage or stop professors fiom engaging in outreach activities. Outreach committee members suggested that outreach would not match the professional interests of many faculty members and, thus, these faculty members would not be interested in outreach. Some faculty members in the Disciplinary Program would agree with this assessment. Yet, faculty members’ preferences for one activity over another may be part of a larger issue that faculty members mention but Outreach Committee members do not -- faculty members in the Disciplinary Program said they did not have enough time to engage in outreach activities. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were already engaged in rewriting the curriculum, teaching, research, student advising, faculty meetings, and other activities and could not see how they would find the time to engage in (more) outreach activities. Committee members’ perception that faculty members prefer other professional activities over outreach activities may only be part of the story -- faculty members may not have time to conduct outreach along with their other responsibilities. the r relat the 1 men with defi: the ' undu adn kno end [on facr fact Sllp Ou 219 l Assertion Nineteen: Outreach Committee members’ perceptions that the l outreach initiative lacked university leadership support closely matches the views of faculty members in the Disciplinary Program. The Outreach Report states that deans and other central administrators, such as the president, should play an important role in encouraging and supporting outreach- related activities. However, several Outreach Committee members questioned whether the president of CSU supported the outreach initiative. Several Outreach Committee members also said that the president’s interpretation of outreach was not consistent with the report’s definition. According to several committee members, the president defined outreach as continuing education, service, and extension. The way, then, that the president spoke about outreach suggested that he may not have supported or understood the university outreach initiative as the Outreach Report represents it. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program also expressed doubts about top administrative support for the initiative. One professor said that "To the best of my knowledge . . . they [the president and chief academic officer] have not officially endorsed that report." Another professor said that he heard more "being said about it [outreach] then I used to hear. I don’t know whether it’s rhetoric or not." Leadership support for the outreach initiative may, then, make a difference in faculty members’ beliefs that the initiative is important (or not) to the university. If faculty members see the president or chief academic officer as offering only rhetorical support -- and especially if that rhetoric is inconsistent with the language of the Outreach Report -- then faculty members may see the outreach initiative as unirr may beb dep pro Prc pro par Co fat fat lhl 220 unimportant or of passing interest to the university. As one professor said, outreach may be "this decade’s emphasis" and the university will "change gears again and we’ll be back to some other push in some other direction from on high . . . " Assertion Twenty: Outreach Committee members’ perceptions that the department reward structure did not support outreach activities closely matches the responses of facul ty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department. Outreach Committee members commented that the reward systems in departments across the campus did not appear to acknowledge outreach in their promotion and tenure criteria and that this could deter faculty members from engaging in outreach activities. As discussed earlier, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department said that their departments’ tenure and promotion criteria did not extend to outreach activities. The reward structure, and particularly the criteria used for promotion and tenure decisions, may, as Outreach Committee members and faculty members in the two departments implied, discourage faculty members from engaging in outreach activities. Overall, it seems that members of the Outreach Committee had a view of faculty responses university-wide that parallelled the responses of faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department. Though the study is limited in its ability to make assertions about outreach university-wide, it is cone and pant put, Egg: FaCl ouu rest outr in r uni nut [)6] not 0111 221 conceivable that the more detailed patterns we see at play in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department may be pervasive in the university. In sum, these patterns suggest that the university outreach initiative was an innovation that, simply put, did not take. Summm This chapter began by asking: to what are faculty members responding? Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were responding to the university outreach initiative. However, faculty members in the Professional Department were responding to a departmental research initiative that had implications for the role of outreach in the department. They were responding to two different initiatives because, in part, faculty members in each department had much different information about the university outreach initiative -- faculty members in the Disciplinary Program knew much about the outreach initiative while faculty members in the Professional Department were unfamiliar with it. In addition, the university outreach initiative was not consistent with the Professional Department’s research initiative. Across both departments, faculty members responded in similar ways to outreach activities. They did not talk about outreach as a new idea or practice -- that is, outreach is not an innovation in these two departments. Faculty members in both departments defined outreach as the extension of university knowledge to society and as an activity that links with or cuts-across research and teaching. These faculty members also agreed that outreach was compatible with their work, but they differed in tl thei Grit: wer moi bot adr ske uni our De Fir ch: Prr the ho 222 in. that faculty members in the Professional Department said outreach was central to their work. Faculty members in both departments said that their promotion and tenure criteria did not value outreach activities. Not surprisingly, junior faculty members were not encouraged to engage in outreach. Perhaps, then, outreach is an activity more appropriate for senior or tenured faculty members. Overall, faculty members in both departments indicated that they would not change their current level of commitment to outreach -- faculty members engaged in outreach would continue to engage in outreach, and those not engaged, did not plan to become engaged in outreach. In the Disciplinary Program, faculty members questioned university administrators’ support for and motives behind the university outreach initiative. Their skepticism may stem from previous experiences these faculty members have had with } university administrators. So, too, may the perspective expressed by faculty members in the Disciplinary Program that university administrators were directing the university i outreach initiative _a_t faculty. In contrast, faculty members in the Professional Department expressed a sense of ownership of the departmental research initiative. Finally, changes in the orientation of the Professional Department appear to be due to changes in hiring practices and not changes in faculty members’ behavior. With regard to the Outreach Report, faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department were not defining outreach or implementing the outreach initiative as it was expressed in the Outreach Report. Faculty members in both departments did not define outreach as a form of scholarship. Faculty members in tl ther mer disc defi uni‘ me] any uni als: acl: ten fin Prr CO] act 01] SU 011 223 in the Professional Department were largely unaware of the Outreach Report and, therefore, could not implement recommendations they did not know existed. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program were familiar with the Outreach Report and had discussed the definition and the recommendations, yet, they chose not to adopt the definition or implement the recommendations. Outreach Committee members’ views of faculty members’ responses to the university outreach initiative were fairly consistent with the views expressed by faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department -- little, if anything, had changed in the department or in their professional lives as a result of the university outreach initiative. Faculty members and Outreach Committee members also noted that the outreach initiative lacked university leadership, and both acknowledged that outreach was not part of the criteria used in making promotion and tenure decisions. Outreach Committee members said some faculty members would not find outreach to be of professional interest while faculty members in the Disciplinary Program suggest that their personal decisions about outreach had to do with time constraints -- they were already engaged in teaching, research, advising, and other activities and did not have time to do more. In summary, the university outreach initiative appears to have had little impact on the faculty members in the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department - - a finding that probably would not surprise the authors of the Outreach Report, who I surmise, would likely indicate that the patterns evident in these two units reflect, to one degree or another, larger university patterns. resp edu stat: kno par ho: ex] me ins De the for 11C 224 Lessons Learned: Planned Change in Colleges and Universities as Organizations The patterns I just described -- of how faculty members in two departments responded to the university outreach initiative -- lead me to extend the views of higher education organization and innovation that initially framed the study (see Chapter 2). I state these extensions below as propositions aimed at improving our existing knowledge of higher education organizations and how researchers might study them, particularly with regard to issues of change: Proposition One: The view from the inside allows for observations that cannot be made from the outside. In Chapter 3, I suggest (based on my literature review) that to open the black box of organizational change, we need to go inside the change to learn how the people experiencing the change respond to it. This study provides a small (but, I believe, meaningful) amount of empirical evidence in support of this assertion. Had I not gone inside, I would not have uncovered that faculty members in the Professional Department were responding to outreach as an important topic in their lives, but M to the university outreach initiative. I may have also interpreted Professor Casey’s new- found commitment to outreach as a response to the university outreach initiative when, by his own admission, this new commitment is due to change in his own thinking and not to the university outreach initiative. Finally, and perhaps most important, the facu] IhCHl van unce proc char inst But the yvh; frat dec are vvh be “1 225 faculty members’ interpretations of their respective initiatives did vary by faculty member, although common themes did emerge. The inside view illustrates that, as Van de Ven and Rogers (1988) remarked, the social construction of change is a highly uncertain and complex behavior. To this I would add that it is also a highly personal process. Proposition Two: We may think of faculty members as constructing their responses to an innovation, in this case outreach, through an iterative process of clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding. Initially, I tried to fit my data with the established model of organizational change that defines stages of change as initiation, implementation, and institutionalization (e. g., Rogers, 1985; Levine, 1980; Berman and McLaughlin, 1973). But this literature-based framework forces an analyst to look at the organization from the outside rather than at how people in the organization experience change which is what I wanted to do. When the focus is on those who experience the change, a better framework to describe the change process may be: clarifying, contextualizing, and deciding. This framework, emerging from this study, suggests that faculty members are "trying-on" an innovation _a_nd that they are "trying-on" the initiator as well. That is, faculty members base their responses to outreach, in part, on their perceptions of why the initiator is promoting the initiative at this time, including the credibility and believability of that initiator. This framework also suggests that faculty members are trying-on outreach atop a full wardrobe that includes the history of the institution and the d not 1 whe wor mei De] res] Prc inir per bt ta 226 the department, faculty relations within the department, the discipline’s interests and 7 not least, their personal and professional interests and goals. Proposition Three: In studying change, we need to be sure we understand what it is that people are responding to. My assumption on entering this study was that faculty members in a college where the dean has been vocal in his/her support of the university outreach initiative would be familiar with and responsive to the university outreach initiative. But as I mentioned earlier, this assumption was incorrect. Faculty members in the Professional Department were responding to the role of outreach in their lives, but they were not responding to the university outreach initiative. What faculty members in the Professional Department appeared to be responding to was a departmental research initiative that emphasized the role of research and publication in the department —- perhaps at the cost of outreach activities. Proposition Four: Faculty members may have diflerent types and amounts of information about a change eflort. I expected faculty members to have different types and amounts of information, but I did not anticipate just how different the allocation of information would be. Faculty members in the Disciplinary Program received copies of the Outreach Report, talked about the university outreach initiative at a faculty retreat and a department meeting, and, as Professor Alvarado said, "everybody has been in on the COIl ver fac1 the Ou abc dif 227 conversations." In contrast, faculty members in the Professional Department knew very little about the university outreach initiative. Professor Radakovitz said that faculty members in the Professional Department may not be getting information about the outreach initiative. Only one faculty member said they had received a copy of the Outreach Report, and the department chair decided that faculty did not need to talk about what outreach meant outside the department. In addition to the information differentials, people varied in how they made sense of the information they did have. Proposition Five: University change initiatives may not match change initiatives at the department level. In Chapter 2, I noted that loose-coupling facilitates academic departments making decisions somewhat independently of central administration and as developing their own goals, which may differ (to one extent or another) from the goals of the organization, as well as from the goals of individuals and small groups of faculty within departments. This study lends support to this description of colleges and universities as organizations. The goals of the Disciplinary Program and the Professional Department were different from the goals of the university outreach initiative.9 The departmental research initiative’s goals in the Professional Department and the university outreach initiative’s goals appear to be moving in opposite 9It is possible, however, that the goals of the two departments were compatible with other university goals not discussed in this study. For example, a university goal that departments increase the amount of externally funded research projects would be compatible with the goals of the Professional Department. dire 1116f. autc 0011 the pre 110 EX the dc 228 directions. How is this possible? It is possible because department chairs and faculty members (who as professionals and intellectuals exercise, of necessity, a great deal of autonomy over their work) can make decisions relatively independently of central control. This is a distinguishing feature of colleges and universities as organizations (e.g., Birnbaum, 1991; Clark, 1987). Proposition Six: It is problematic to predict faculty members’ behavior based on their own predictions/projections of their own behaviors. Faculty members in this study predicted how they would respond (or not) in the future to the university outreach initiative. Though about the future, these projected expectations are based on the here-and—now; they are made in the here-and- now. That is, given their current conditions and current interests, faculty members expect to respond to an innovation or change in particular ways defined in terms of their current states and their current thoughts about those states. However, conditions do not remain constant; professions and thoughts evolve and change. Faculty lives are not on predictable trajectories. As new opportunities and interests arise, and as departmental, disciplinary and university conditions change, so too might faculty members interests and involvement in the innovation at hand. Proposition Seven: Inaction can represent decision. In Chapter 2, I said that organizational members may adapt, redefine, restructure, ignore, or resist an innovation. I would add to this list that organizational men Prog initi the indi just pre IDS WC an BX 011 31 re SC 229 members may choose not to act, which is what faculty members in the Disciplinary Program appear to have chosen. These faculty members did not ignore the outreach initiative -- in fact, they held several discussions about it. They also were not resisting the initiative; no one was speaking-out or acting-out against the initiative. Rather, individual faculty members, and the department as a whole, appear to have decided to just not to respond to the initiative. Their inaction represents a purposive decision. I conclude this study by noting that the inside view of organizational change presents a much different view than that from the outside. When faculty members’ responses to change are captured in their own words (and when researchers use these words to develop frameworks for understanding), actions and inactions, which may appear unreasonable or illogical viewed from outside, begin to make sense. For example, we may learn that faculty members are responding to a different initiative -- one that may be parallel to or in conflict with the planned change being studied. We may also see that organizational requests which seem "reasonable" from the outside, are not reasonable for those inside the organization. Outreach may appear to be responsive to the needs of society, but it may also challenge the very reasons that some faculty members are drawn to academe -- such as the freedom to engage in intellectual and creative work of their choosing. An inside View is likely to increase our understanding of what people are responding to and why they respond as they do. We can also see that information plays an important role in what people understand about a change. But the inside Vlel alsc dec reS] org the dc} 230 View also acknowledges that the importance of information can be overstated if we also consider how faculty members interpret this information. We can also see that a decision not to act can be a purposeful decision and that it can represent a legitimate response to a planned change. Finally, because we get "close" to the members of the organization when we go inside, we realize that their responses are reflective of how they think now. Their perceptions and responses will likely change as they, their departments, and their disciplines grow and evolve over time. IIICI ant bot als 1C} [‘1 CHAPTER 8: LOOKING AHEAD, LOOKING BACK In the previous chapter, I identified patterns in the study regarding how faculty members in two departments at CSU responded to the university outreach initiative. These patterns led me to extend some of the literature on higher education organization and innovation that initially framed the study (Chapter 2). This closing chapter looks both forward and backward. I offer insights on practice for university administrators and faculty members that may help them navigate institutional change in the future. I also look back at some of my earlier writing which helped set the course for the study -- a connection of which I was unaware until the end of this study. Insights on Practice Universig Administrators The observations and inferences derived from this study may be of interest and use to university administrators who are thinking about or trying to implement ‘ outreach initiatives on their own campuses. In thinking about the initiation of a change effort, university administrators need to consider that some initiatives may require faculty members to redefine their work, to redefine their reasons for being university professors, and to redefine their understanding of scholarship. Such changes require a great deal of time and effort to realize -- if, indeed, they can ever be 231 rea €111 ch: C the fae ad. pn C0 111] at CC re in 232 realized. Accordingly, I recommend that university administrators not try to diffuse initiatives or innovations that require such fundamental, personal changes across an entire campus and that they be careful even in localized initiatives. Though some change may be possible, not all kinds of changes are possible and it is important to realize the difference between what can be altered and what cannot. If university administrators want to encourage changes at the department level, they might think about influencing the hiring at the department or program level of faculty members already committed to the change in question. University administrators could also talk with faculty members in specific departments or programs, or to clusters of faculty within programs about the change. These conversations could inform faculty members about the change and serve to inform university administrators about the professional and personal interests of faculty members, which may or may not include the innovation at hand. However, university administrators should realize that they may not be the best or most appropriate "messengers" for such the initiatives. If faculty members distrust administrators or see them as lacking credibility, faculty members may transfer these impressions to the initiative itself, thus damaging the change initiative from the start. University administrators should carefully consider who communicates the initiative and how it is communicated. Finally, university administrators need to rely on data other than departmental reports if they want to make "plausible inferences" about the implementation of an initiative. University administrators need to get "inside" their campuses and explore hm Ad list COl llll rol m: 233 how faculty members think about and make sense of change initiatives. Administrators need to become active learners, which includes attentive, sincere listening. Short of conducting departmental case studies, university administrators could hold debriefing sessions at which they listen to and talk with members of the university community (perhaps including faculty members who have played important roles in the development of the initiative). University administrators could also use e- mail to initiate discussions with faculty members and, of course, they can always meet in-person with faculty members to learn how faculty members experience a given change initiative. College and University Professors In this study, faculty members in the Professional Department did not know about the university outreach initiative. This finding should alert faculty members to the possibility that often they may be overly dependent on one or two people to provide them with information about events and conditions in the university. If faculty members are unaware of initiatives, they cannot voice their concerns about or support for it. If faculty members would like greater access to information about the university, they could increase their contacts with people outside their department or program. Not all faculty members want to be engaged in conversations about the university with their colleagues. Indeed, some faculty members may feel overwhelmed by too much information and too many initiatives. A department chair may serve as g8 me me ini Fa [)6 be to th in 234 "gatekeeper" of information whereby he or she "protects" his or her faculty from messages that he or she perceives as superfluous or unimportant. In this way, faculty in the department can focus on salient issues confronting the department, faculty members, staff, and students. Faculty members could also consider becoming more involved in the design of initiatives that may affect not only how they do their work, but what that work is. Faculty members can become involved in planning committees, or use e-mail and personal phone calls as a way to provide input into the work of planning committees. If faculty members want more control over what their work will be, they need to become more-involved in the events that may affect their work. Finally, faculty members are sometimes the initiators of organizational change. As initiators, they need to be mindful of the same (or similar) comments I made above for university administrators. That is, faculty members who want to initiate organizational change may want to start by engaging the "implementers" (receivers of the change) in discussions of the change, they may want to focus their efforts on implementers who are receptive to the change, and they should attend to issues of who communicates information about the initiative and how it is communicated. And, of course, they need to keep in mind that the change may mean different things to different people. Overall, faculty members and university administrators should both realize that organizational change is a highly uncertain, complex, and personal process. Each faculty member "tries-on" innovations atop their own wardrobe, and what they try on maj ICE rm de re e: 235 may look different on each person. It may also feel different to each. Recommendations for Future Research This study examined how faculty members in two departments at a major research university made sense of a university outreach initiative designed and promoted by university administrators. My examination of how faculty in two departments responded to this initiative and my consideration also of how Outreach Committee members saw other faculty throughout the university responding to it, provides a glimpse, not only into how other professors throughout CSU may have been responding, but more importantly, into why they may have been responding as they were -- in brief, why the outreach initiative may not have taken hold as administrators expected and hoped. In my View, a major reason for this was that the outreach initiative was not compatible with the goals, values, or interests of most faculty members and of the two academic departments I studied. The outreach initiative may, then, reflect the goals, values, and interests of its initiators -- namely, university administrators -- but not as clearly those of faculty members. Still, I acknowledge that, given my study design, this is only a glimpse. A more complete picture of how faculty members at this particular university responded to the university outreach initiative could be gained by repeating this or a similar study in different departments. This study could, of course, also be repeated, perhaps in more expanded form, at a different university and with a different initiative lO' sug CH 01] de cl‘. to W 236 to explore change dynamics more broadly. Such studies would add to our larger understanding of how faculty members construct responses to organizational change. I suggest that we pay particular attention to distinctions between change initiatives that emerge from within faculty members’ values and interests and those that emerge from outside them as this difference strikes me as important. In addition, I wish to suggest that future research use the clarifying, conceptualizing, and deciding framework that I derived through this study as a point of conceptual beginning for studying other change initiatives, or the introduction of innovations more generally, to see if it helps to illuminate how faculty members make sense of the change they experience in their workplaces. This study took place about one year after the university outreach initiative was introduced to faculty members across the campus of study. Therefore, I was not able to observe how the initiative was developed or how faculty members initially responded to it -- including who provided what information about the initiative to them. A future study might focus on why and how initiators develop a change initiative and then follow the innovation into the university community to observe how faculty members learn about it, how they respond to it, and how, as individuals and collectives, they make sense of it and how, or if, they share this sense making with the initiators of the change -- including whether they are encouraged to do so. Such a study could also examine the extent to which the initiators (i.e., administrators) are aware of faculty members’ responses and how the initiators themselves respond to faculty members’ responses. tha' pro spe to 00‘ pe: 237 In Chapter 2 of this study, I quoted Van de Ven and Rogers (1988) as saying that it is unfortunate "that little interpretive research has investigated the innovation process in organizations" (p. 638). Van de Ven and Rogers are researchers who have spent much of their careers examining change from the outside. We need to continue to do so. But, as they suggest, we also need to see organizational change, like outreach but also other changes as well, from "the inside," that is, from an interpretive perspective that explicitly takes into account the thinking and feeling of those charged with doing something with the change, and hence to live with it. Perhaps by looking from the inside-out we can move our understanding of organizational change to a different level. Looking Back A couple of years ago, my dissertation director asked me to co-author a book chapter with her. The title of the chapter was "Enhancing the leadership factor in planning" (Neumann and Larson, 1997). I recently reread this publication. I was surprised to find that what we wrote about leadership and planning applies to what I have learned in this study. A central theme of our work was that institutional change involves changes in what people know and how they know it. We suggested that institutional leaders "come to grips with the more personal, internally driven values and aspirations that lie within their institutions and within the lives of the people in them, even when these do not connect well with environmental imperatives" (p.193, emj "cc dia ins L111 CX sa IE lC 238 emphasis in original). We suggested that institutional leaders and planners might "come to grips" with the personal side of change by initiating and maintaining dialogues between the administrators and other institutional members, and among institutional members themselves. For such conversations to be genuine, all participants would have to have opportunities to talk, they would have to try to understand what others are thinking, and they would have to be open to question and exploration. Whether we call them forums, dialogues, or case studies the idea is the same -- if we really want to create meaningful institutional change -- or for that matter, to understand why change that is presumably desired is not taking hold -- both researchers and administrative practitioners need to listen to, to appreciate, and to try to understand how faculty members and other institutional members perceive of and experience the change. Appendix A: Contact Letter to Chairs Ifijftr Appendix A Contact Letter to Chairs Date Dr. Smith, Chair Department Department Address CSU Anytown, USA 44444 Dear Dr. Smith: I would like to invite you and the Department of X to participate in a study examining faculty members’ responses to administratively led change. This study, Faculty Responses to Change: A Study of University Outreach, is the basis for my dissertation for the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State. This study seeks to describe how faculty members at Central State University experience "outreac ." The study also considers how administrators think of outreach and how they perceive faculty members experience outreach. Faculty responses will be studied in two departments. I would like X to be one of those departments. I have chosen X because it is within a college that is purposely deliberating the role that outreach can play and its mission appears to be compatible with many aspects of outreach. Outreach in this study refers to both an activity and an administrative initiative. As an activity, outreach refers to how faculty think of the extension of university knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences. As an administrative initiative, outreach refers to efforts by central administrators to more fully integrate outreach activities into the mission of the institution. My interest in this t0pic is provoked by calls from within and outside of academe for changes in our institutions. The organizational change literature emphasizes the roles of leaders and administrators in creating change, but without sufficient attention to what amounts to meaningful change in the eyes of those experiencing change, and what does not, and why. This study focuses on faculty members as they experience 239 I C 01 c rt 1 .1 [ll 240 outreach. It does so by trying to understand how, or if, faculty members view outreach relative to their work and responsibilities. I hope what comes from this study is an appreciation of the complexity of faculty members’ decision to adopt, adapt or reject an administrative change initiative such as outreach. This study should be of interest to faculty members who may begin to reflect on their involvement in and responses to outreach. It should be of interest to administrators who introduce change, and outreach in particular, as they reflect on how to support or retract their efforts. Finally, it should be of interest to those who study organizational change as it suggests a potentially more complete way to think about change. Participation in this study by the Department of X would consist of two 60 minute interviews with you and approximately seven additional faculty members in the department. I would ask for a copy of curriculum vitae from each faculty member as background information and I may ask for departmental information (if publicly available) such as promotion and tenure guidelines, planning documents, or committee meeting notes. I want to assure you that all material I collect for this study will be treated confidentially and presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being fimded by any office or person at Central State University or elsewhere. I will call you within the next two weeks to discuss this project further, including your interest in participating in it. If you would like to speak with me before that time, please feel free to contact me at the address, telephone number, or E-mail location listed at the bottom of this letter. I look forward to talking with you soon. Cordially, Ms. R. Sam Larson Appendix B: Contact Letter to Faculty Members I ] ] ‘I‘ 1. Appendix B Contact Letter to Faculty Members Date Dr. Smith Department Department Address CSU Anytown, USA 44444 1".“ Dear Dr. Smith: I would like to invite you to participate in a study examining faculty members’ responses to administratively led change. This study, Faculty Responses to Change: A Study of University Outreach, is the basis for my dissertation for the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State. This study seeks to describe how faculty members at Central State University experience "outreach." The study also considers how administrators think of outreach and how they perceive faculty members as experiencing outreach. Outreach in this study refers to both an activity and an administrative initiative. As an activity, outreach refers to how faculty think of the extension of university knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences. As an administrative initiative, outreach refers to efforts by central administrators to more fully integrate outreach activities into the mission of the institution. My interest in this topic is provoked by calls from within and outside of academe for changes in our institutions. The organizational change literature emphasizes the roles of leaders and administrators in creating change, but without sufficient attention to what amounts to meaningful change in the eyes of those experiencing change, and what does not, and why. This study focuses on faculty members as they experience outreach. It does so by trying to understand how, or if, faculty members View outreach relative to their work and responsibilities. I hope what comes from this study is an appreciation of the complexity of faculty members’ decision to adopt, adapt or reject an administrative change initiative such as outreach. 241 242 This study should be of interest to faculty members who may begin to reflect on their involvement in and responses to outreach. It should be of interest to administrators who introduce change, and outreach in particular, as they reflect on how to support or retract their efforts. It should also be of interest to those who study organizational change as it suggests a potentially more complete way to think about change. Your participation in this study would consist of two interviews, each lasting about 60 minutes. I would also ask for a copy of your curriculum vitae as background information. I want to assure you that all material I collect for this study will be treated confidentially and presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being funded by any office or person at Central State University or elsewhere. I will call you within the next two weeks to discuss this project further, including your interest in participating in it. If you would like to speak with me before that time, please feel free to contact me at the address, telephone number, or E-mail location listed at the bottom of this letter. I look forward to talking with you soon. Cordially, Ms. R. Sam Larson Appendix C: Telephone Protocol Name _ Date/Ti Hello, I to invitl adminis Do you what yt Your p copy 0: will no Are yo Yes 5 If yes: Date‘ Time‘ Locatit Notes/ Appendix C Telephone Protocol Name Phone Date/Time Dept/Title Hello, Dr. . My name is Sam Larson and I recently wrote to you to invite you to participate in a study that I am conducting on faculty responses to administratively led change. Did you receive this letter? Do you have any questions that I might be able to answer about the subject of the study or what your participation might entail? Your participation in this study would include two-one hour interview with me this fall and a copy of your vita. The interviews and vita will be treated confidentially and your identity will not be revealed in any draft or final reports. Are you willing to participate in the project? Yes No Think about it. Call back date Thank you Call back time for your Call back number time. If yes: Would you like to arrange a time now for our first interview? Date Time Location Notes/Comments 243 Appendix D: Faculty Protocol A (one hour interviews) All the and any pen res; a p: rec< Thi CS] inte The Bel Ba< Appendix D Faculty Protocol A (one hour interviews) FACULTY INTERVIEW - FIRST INTERVIEW Introduction My name is Sam Larson. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Administration. My dissertation study is concerned with how faculty members experience and respond to change that is planned and/or conducted by central administration. The Department of is one of several units that I will be studying. I have chosen faculty members from this department to try and ensure representation by rank, tenure, years at the institution, gender, as well as to reflect the people’s emphasis on teaching, research, and service. All material I collect for this study will be presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being funded by any office or organization at CSU or elsewhere. I will be taking notes during our interview, and I would also like to ask your permission to tape record our conversation to ensure that I accurately reflect your responses. May I tape record this conversation? If you would prefer not to respond to a particular questions, please just say so. Also please feel free to turn off the tape recorder or to ask me to do so. This interview will deal primarily with your views and experiences in academe and CSU in particular. It should take about 60 minutes. I will also conduct a second interview with you within the next 2 weeks that focuses on particular change activities. That interview will last about 60 minutes. Before we begin, are there any questions you have about this study? Background information I would like to begin by asking some general questions about your position and activities. 244 245 1. According to my information you are currently an: ast/asc/full professor - is that correct? 2. In addition to the Department of , are there any other units on campus that you have an appointment or affiliation with? 3. How many years have you been at Central State? 4. About how many total years have you been in academe? 5. Where did you go to graduate school? 6. How did you end up at _(grad school) ? 7. After you graduated from _(grad school) . where did you go? 8. What were the first few years like as a professor at (name of school) ? 9. Why did you decide to become a university professor? 10. How did you happen to come to Central State University? Professional Information, Values and Beliefs 11. How would you describe the nature of your work here at CSU? (probe on teaching, research, service, advising/mentoring and committee work) 12. What do you particularly enjoy about your work? 246 13. Could you tell me about a specific activity or incident that you particularly enjoyed? 14. What are some of the challenges that you face? 15. Is there a specific incident that you think typifies these challenges? 16. How would you like to see your job evolve or unfold over the next 5 to 10 years? [Probe on why] Department 17. What kind of activities do you engage in within your department? (probe for committee work, collaborating with colleagues, socialization) 18. How do faculty members get along in your department? What are their relationships like? 19. What do you think your department does best? 20. What are your major concerns about this department? Organizational Values and Beliefs 21. 22. 23. In your opinion, what is Central State about? That is, what are the values or purposes of CSU? What do you think CSU does well? What are your major concerns about CSU? 24. 247 Are there any experiences that you consider indicative of how the administration at State works? Organizational Communication and Change 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. How do you find out what is going on around here? That is, how do you know about events, activities, or plans in your department? How do you find out what is going on in the University? How do you express your Opinions or ideas about what goes on in your department? In the university? What do you think happens with your feedback? One of the things going on here at CSU is an administratively led effort to strengthen university outreach. This effort includes the creation of the University Outreach Office and a report from the Outreach Committee. This effort was encouraged in part by a grant from [a large foundation]. What can you tell me about this administrative effort to strengthen university outreach? [Probe for anything they have heard and the source of the information] Finally, university outreach brings into question the type of relationships and responsibilities higher education has to the public - those external to the university. In your opinion, what is higher education’s, and CSU in particular, responsibility to the public? Thank you for your time. I’d like to set up a time for our second interview. Would you like to do that now? FA( Intr It’s that a m: assig stud l wi perr resp ICCC This rem Befi disc The Del 248 FACULTY INTERVIEW - SECOND INTERVIEW Introduction It’s nice to see you again. Before we begin this interview I would like to remind you that all material I collect for this study will be confidential and it will be presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being funded by any office or unit at CSU or elsewhere. I will be taking notes during our interview and I would also like to ask your permission to tape record our conversation to ensure that I accurately reflect your responses. May I tape record this conversation? If you would prefer not to respond to particular question, please just say so. Also please feel free to turn off the tape recorder or to ask me to do so. This interview will take about 60 minutes and I may also contact you later to clarify remarks. Before we begin, are there any questions you have about this study or our last discussion? The Outreach Initiative 1. At our last interview we left off talking about change, and in particular outreach, at Central State University. Over the past few years, university administrators such as the president, provost, and vice-provost for university outreach have been encouraging colleges, departments, centers, and faculty to engage in outreach. What do you think these administrators mean by "outreach?" 2. What reasons can you see for these University administrators to encourage this outreach initiative? Defining outreach 3. I’d like to move away from what the university thinks and does and focus on your thoughts and opinions about outreach. I’d like to begin by asking you... What is your definition or concept of outreach? 1C 249 Could you describe an activity that you have engaged in that you would consider to be an outreach activity or as having an outreach component? (If they can’t describe one of their own, ask if they can describe an activity that another faculty member has engaged in or one that they would hope to engage in.) To what extent is outreach, as you personally define it, compatible with your faculty work? (Probe for research, teaching, service, consulting) Who have you discussed outreach with and what are these discussions about? (Probe for on and off campus) What would encourage faculty members like yourself to engage in (more) outreach? [Probe for benefits of outreach] In your opinion, what kind of concerns or issues might faculty have about engaging in outreach? If the Dean of the College came to your department tomorrow and said "Outreach is our number one priority. I want every faculty member engaging in outreach!" How would you respond? (Probe if necessary: Would you do anything different?) Organizational Structure and Commitments 10. There are, perhaps, three different ways that outreach could be incorporated into the university. One way is to incorporate outreach into the faculty role so that outreach becomes the responsibility of each faculty member. A second way is to incorporate it into the department structure, such as designating certain faculty as having an outreach dimension to their work or hiring an outreach specialist. Yet a third way is to fit outreach into the structure of the College or of the university, such as having a special outreach division. Which of these options would you support and why? 15. Inst 18. p11 at 11. 250 On occasion, faculty members might work with cooperative extension personnel who are hired specifically to work within [the state] counties. Have you ever worked with cooperative extension personnel? [Probe if YES, describe the nature of the work and how often. Probe is NO, would you be interested? why or why not?] 12. To what extent do you see outreach as consistent or inconsistent with what you consider to be the central interests or commitments of your department? 13. Has your department made any decisions about outreach in the past couple of years? (probe for changes in promotion, tenure, merit, hiring procedures or criteria) 14. Do you consider outreach to be compatible with the interests and commitments of your field or discipline? 15. In your view, is outreach consistent with your own idea of what higher education is or should be about? Institutionalization 16. What do you think the future for outreach is in your own department? On this campus? 17. Do you see a future for outreach in your own life? (Probe: please tell me about that) 18. Are there are any additional comments you would like to make about outreach and its relation to your work or to the university in general? Thank you for participating in these interviews. If you should have any questions, please call me or contact me through e-mail. If I have questions, may I call you back at a later time? Appendix E: Faculty Protocol B (90 minute interview) the am an' Appendix E Faculty Protocol B (90 minute interview) FACULTY INTERVIEW 90 Minute Introduction My name is Sam Larson. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Administration. My dissertation study is concerned with how faculty members experience and respond to change that is planned and/or conducted by central administration. The Department of is one of several units that I will be studying. I have chosen faculty members from this department to try and ensure representation by rank, tenure, years at the institution, gender, as well as to reflect the people’s emphasis on teaching, research, and service. All material I collect for this study will be presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being funded by any office or organization at CSU or elsewhere. I will be taking notes during our interview, and I would also like to ask your permission to tape record our conversation to ensure that I accurately reflect your responses. May I tape record this conversation? If you would prefer not to respond to a particular questions, please just say so. Also please feel free to turn off the tape recorder or to ask me to do so. This interview will deal with your views and experiences in academe, CSU in particular, and your thoughts about university outreach. It should take about 90 minutes. Before we begin, are there any questions you have about this study? Background information I would like to begin by asking some general questions about your position and activities. 251 252 According to my information you are currently an: ast/asc/full professor - is that correct? In addition to the Department of , are there any other units on campus that you have an appointment or affiliation with? How many years have you been at Central State? About how many total years have you been in academe? What program did you get your doctorate from? (school and discipline) Why did you choose [disciplinary degree) ? After you graduated from (grad school) , where did you go? What were the first few years like as a professor at (name of school) ? How did you happen to come to Central State University? Why did you decide to become a university professor? Professional Information, Values and Beliefs ll. 12. How would you describe the nature of your work here at CSU? (probe on teaching, research, service, advising/mentoring and committee work) What do you particularly enjoy about your work? 15. 253 13. Could you tell me about a specific activity or incident that you particularly enjoyed? 14. What are some of the challenges that you face? 15. Is there a specific incident that you think typifies these challenges? 16. How would you like to see your job evolve or unfold over the next 5 to 10 years? [Probe on why] Department (17 deleted) 18. How do faculty members get along in your department? What are their relationships like? 19. What do you think your department does best? 20. What are your major concerns about this department? Organizational Values and Beliefs 21. In your opinion, what is Central State about? That is, what are the values or purposes of CSU? 22. What do you think CSU does well? 23. What are your major concerns about CSU? 24. Or: 25. 26. 27 28 254 24. Are there any experiences that you consider indicative of how the administration at State works? Organizational Communication and Change 25. How do you find out what is going on around here? That is, how do you know about events, activities, or plans in your department? 26. How do you find out what is going on in the University? 27. How do you express your opinions or ideas about what goes on in your department? In the university? 28. What do you think happens with your feedback? The Outreach Initiative 29. One of the things going on here at CSU is an administratively led effort to strengthen university outreach. This effort includes the creation of the University Outreach office and a report from the Outreach Committee. This effort was encouraged in part by a grant from the _ Foundation. What can you tell me about this administrative effort to strengthen university outreach? [Probe for anything they have heard and the source of the information] 30. Over the past few years, university administrators such as the president, chief academic officer, and vice-academic officer for university outreach have been encouraging colleges, departments, centers, and faculty to engage in outreach. What do you think these administrators mean by "outreach?" 31. What reasons can you see for these University administrators to encourage this outreach initiative? 33. Li.) (A) 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 255 Defining outreach I’d like to move away from what the university thinks and does and focus on your thoughts and opinions about outreach. I’d like to begin by asking you... What is your definition or concept of outreach? Could you describe an activity that you have engaged in that you would consider to be an outreach activity or as having an outreach component? (If they can’t describe one of their own, ask if they can describe an activity that another faculty member has engaged in or one that they would hope to engage in.) To what extent is outreach, as you personally define it, compatible with your faculty work? (Probe for research, teaching, service, consulting) Who have you discussed outreach with and what are these discussions about? (Probe for on and off campus) What would encourage faculty members like yourself to engage in (more) outreach? [Probe for benefits of outreach] In your opinion, what kind of concerns or issues might faculty have about engaging in outreach? If the Dean of the College came to your department tomorrow and said "Outreach is our number one priority. I want every faculty member engaging in outreach!" How would you respond? (Probe if necessary: Would you do anything different?) 0r} 256 Organizational Structure and Commitments 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. There are, perhaps, three different ways that outreach could be incorporated into the university. One way is to incorporate outreach into the faculty role so that outreach becomes the responsibility of each faculty member. A second way is to incorporate it into the department structure, such as designating certain faculty as having an outreach dimension to their work or hiring an outreach specialist. Yet a third way is to fit outreach into the structure of the College or of the university, such as having a special outreach division. Which of these options would you support and why? On occasion, faculty members might work with 000perative extension personnel who are hired specifically to work within [the state’s] counties. Have you ever worked with cooperative extension personnel? [Probe if YES, describe the nature of the work and how often. Probe is NO, would you be interested? why or why not?] To what extent do you see outreach as consistent or inconsistent with what you consider to be the central interests or commitments of your department? Has your department made any decisions about outreach in the past couple of years? (probe for changes in promotion, tenure, merit, hiring procedures or criteria) Do you consider outreach to be compatible with the interests and commitments of your field or discipline? In your view, is outreach consistent with your own idea of what higher education is or should be about? Institutionalization 45. What do you think the future for outreach is in your own department? On this campus? 46 47 4E 257 46. Do you see a future for outreach in your own life? (Probe: please tell me about that) ' 47. Finally, university outreach brings into question the type of relationships and responsibilities higher education has to the public - those external to the university. In your opinion, what is higher education’s, and CSU in particular, responsibility to the public? 48. Are there are any additional comments you would like to make about outreach and its relation to your work or to the university in general? Thank you for participating in these interviews. If you should have any questions, please call me or contact me through e-mail. If I have questions, may I call you back at a later time? Appendix F: Outreach Committee Protocol Appendix F: Outreach Committee Protocol Appendix F Outreach Committee Protocol OUTREACH COMMITTEE INTERVIEW Introduction My name is Sam Larson. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Administration. My dissertation study is concerned with how change is conceptualized and experienced by faculty members and university administrators. The change in this study is university outreach. You are one of several participants on the University Outreach Committee whom I will be interviewing. I am interviewing faculty members in two departments. All data I collect for this study will be presented in a manner that will not permit the identification of any individual. Pseudonyms will be assigned to each individual and identifying characteristics will be deleted. Also, this study is not being funded by any office or organization at CSU or elsewhere. I will be taking notes during our interview and I would also like to ask your permission to tape record our conversation to ensure that I accurately reflect your reSponses. May I tape record this conversation? If you would prefer not to respond to a particular question, please just say so. Also please feel free to turn off the tape recorder or to ask me to do so. This interview should take about an hour and I may also contact you later to clarify remarks. Before we begin, are there any questions you have about this study? Background information I would like to begin by asking some general questions about your position and activities. 258 10. ll. 12. l3. 14. 15. 16. 259 According to my information your current position is . Is that correct? Do you have any other appointments or affiliations with units on campus? How many years have you held this position? How many years have you been at Central State? What did you do prior to your current position? [Ask for some detail on the nature of the position] [If an administrator] Have you ever held a full-time faculty position in an academic department? (If YES) What department were you in and how long were you there? About how many total years have you been in academe? How would you describe the nature of your work in your current position? That is, what do you? How would you describe your role or participation on the University Outreach Committee? How would you describe your current involvement with the effort to strengthen university outreach? What reasons can you see for the university to encourage outreach? Why now? Prior to your involvement on the Outreach Committee, what did the term outreach mean to you? What does the term outreach mean to you now? When CSU’s President uses the term outreach, what do you think he/she means? What about [Chief Academic Officer]? What do you think he/she means when he/she uses the term outreach? Did the committee discuss how to best communicate outreach to the university community, particularly to departments and faculty members? What did they consider? [press for issues of content and medium] How do you think faculty members have learned about outreach, if at all? 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 260 What did the committee think would encourage or persuade DEPARTMENTS to engage in outreach? What about faculty members? [Probe to see if their ideas are any different] What kinds of concerns or issues did the committee think DEPARTMENTS might have about engaging in outreach? What about faculty members? [Probe to see if their ideas are any different] Imagine that faculty were given the following choices on how outreach could be incorporated into the university. There are, perhaps, three different ways that outreach could be incorporated into the university. One way is to incorporate outreach into the faculty role so that outreach becomes the responsibility of each faculty member. A second way is to incorporate it into the department structure, such as designating certain faculty as having an outreach dimension to their work or hiring an outreach specialist. Yet a third way is to fit outreach into the structure of the college or of the university, such as having a special outreach division. Which do you think most faculty members would chose and why? Some faculty members on campus are probably more supportive of outreach than others. What are some of the characteristics you might associate with faculty who are more supportive of outreach? (probe for personal characteristics, socialization, department environment, discipline, relationship to existing work) On the other hand, there are some faculty who are probably less supportive of outreach than others. What characteristics would you associate with faculty who are less supportive of outreach? (probe for personal characteristics, department environment, discipline, relationship to existing work) There are just a few more questions. 22. 23. What do you think has changed as a result of this report and of the larger outreach effort? In particular, has anything about the faculty life or role changed? What do you think the future for outreach is on this campus? (probe for why) 261 24. In your view, is outreach consistent with what higher education is or should be about? 25. Are there any additional comments you would like to make? Appendix G: Letter of Consent Appendix G Letter of Consent I agree to participate in the research on faculty members’ responses to and administrators’ perceptions of an administratively led change (outreach). I have read and received the letter from Sam Larson dated December 29 which summarizes the purpose and procedure of the study and includes her address and telephone number in case I have any questions regarding the study or my participation in the study. I understand that my participation is limited to one 60-minute interview and a copy of my curriculum vitae. I have been informed and understand that all interview and documentary data will be treated with strict confidence. Neither my name nor any identifying statements or characteristics will be used in any draft reports or final reports of the study. 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