June 1, 2006
To reorganize or not to reorganize? Committee holds first public forum
The committee charged with reviewing the organization of the UW’s schools and colleges elicited comments from a small but spirited group in its first public forum.
Committee co-chairs Kathleen Woodward, director of the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and Tom Daniel, chair of the Department of Biology, heard a variety of concerns, questions and observations in a 90-minute session. It’s clear the committee’s job won’t be easy. The original deadline of July 30 for producing a report to the Provost already has been extended to fall quarter.
Much of the discussion surrounded potential reorganization that might affect the College of Arts and Sciences. With Dean David Hodge’s departure, some saw this as the ideal time to consider structural changes, while others were suspicious that plans were already under way to break up the college.
Woodward and Daniel addressed those concerns directly. “Our committee is not beginning with any specific agenda or desired outcome,” Woodward said.
“Our job is to find out what impediments there are to student learning and faculty interaction,” said Daniel. “Is the current way of organizing things the best way of serving faculty and students? Any proposed change can’t bring just a marginal improvement — it has to be substantial. Our goal is to deliver the best education, the best research and to hire the best faculty with our constrained resources.”
Sarah Nash Gates, the executive director of the Drama School, talked about the challenge of leading the University’s largest college. “There is no divisional dean for the arts,” she said. “The divisional dean for arts and humanities is responsible for the largest number of units. Still, I believe the college has done a good job for the programs in the arts, although I’m not sure all my colleagues would agree. But I’m worried that it might be two years or more before we have a strong, permanent leader at the helm again.”
Richard Karpen, head of the Program in Digital arts and Experimental Media, said, “If there were a college of fine arts here, our program wouldn’t exist. Colleges of the arts have trouble creating future oriented programs; their curatorial functions tend to be out of balance with the new. So here, we’ve created a program that is a world leader, with a controversial source of funds, the UIF (University Initiatives Fund), and without that funding we wouldn’t exist. It also could’ve come into existence in an equally controversial way by restructuring. We can fund new things without taxes [like the UIF], but it still requires redistribution of resources.”
Galya Diment, chair of Slavic languages and literature, commented that, “the timing could not be worse. The timing, which coincides with David Hodge’s departure, supports the rumors that the committee’s work is all about the College of Arts and Sciences.”
David Notkin, professor and former chair of computer science & engineering, argued that, as an organization, the UW may change too slowly. “A process like this makes you rethink things, and the benefits of that rethinking can be high. And there’s no point in waiting for a good time to change. There’s never a good time for change.”
Nancy Kenney, associate professor of psychology and women studies, noted that years ago a consultant recommended that the Psychology Department be split. “It didn’t happen because there was no money, and it turned out this was a very good thing,” she said. “Over time, the natural sciences and social sciences groups in the department have become more intertwined. I think one goal of the committee should be to allow people to interact better across barriers, to facilitate the creation of more interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary degrees.”
Facilitating more interdisciplinary work was a second major theme of the comments.
One student, Laura Ford, spoke of her problems in receiving an interdisciplinary education. She is in a master’s program in law specializing in intellectual property. This self-sustaining program, she said, was advertised as being interdisciplinary, yet she has encountered a series of obstacles in trying to take courses in departments outside of the Law School. “This is an institutional problem in lowering the barriers to access to necessary courses for interdisciplinary and self-sustaining programs.”
No matter how the institution configures its various units, some programs will always span whatever boundaries are created, said David Secord, director of the Program on the Environment. Shelly Lundberg, director of the Center for the Study of Demography and Ecology, echoed Secord’s comments, adding, “It’s hard to mobilize resources for interdisciplinary efforts.”
As a graduate student in the English doctoral program, Cara Lane also decided to acquire a certificate in textual studies. “Most of the rewarding work of graduate degrees is in crossing disciplinary boundaries,” she said, “but in my case it required extra classes without any additional [financial] support. We have a growing population of students whose interests take them in this direction.”
Institutional barriers exist for interdisciplinary degrees, said Robert Winglee, chair of earth and space sciences. “Fixed credit requirements are one significant barrier,” he said. “It leads to a watering down of the education in the sciences just to fit our institutional boundaries.”
If the UW wants to be more efficient in linking different disciplines, it needs to spend resources to make this happen, said Don Wulff, director of the Center for Instructional Development and Research. “We’ll need to commit resources to the process of interdisciplinarity. Our current policy is support such efforts within existing allocations of resources.”
Woodward commented that, in the committee’s three weeks of existence, the issue of finding ways for units to connect across disciplinary boundaries was already emerging as a major theme.
Several speakers commented on the value of having one institutional structure for all of the liberal arts. Brian Fabien, professor of mechanical engineering, said, “The best model for engineering education begins with two years in a good college of arts and sciences. If we break that institution apart, we could have a negative effect on students.”
Winglee agreed. “As a scientist, I like being in the College of Arts and Sciences. I like the fact that we serve non-science majors. They tend to raise different questions about the subjects that we present.”
Clarence Spigner, associate professor of health services, wondered about the frequency with which the term diversity appeared in the committee’s charge and how this would be addressed in any restructuring plan.
Daniel and Woodward pointed out that they are still in the early stages of gathering information and seeking opinions. The committee’s Web site is http://depts.washington.edu/csoc/, e-mail with comments can be sent to csoc@u.washington.edu.
