Triggle addresses Faculty Senate
Provost cites need for universities to move quickly in development of new programs

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

Universities must learn to adapt to change and begin to work together in order to succeed in the 21st century, Provost David Triggle told the Faculty Senate at its meeting Tuesday.

In his first major address to faculty since assuming the position of provost in January, Triggle said that universities have to be "more nimble on their feet" in the way they conduct business. "The need is to be responsive to what is upcoming and respond quickly, so that one can, in fact, not always be a follower, butŠbe a leader in the development of new programs and generate that area of competitive advantage."

But higher education faces a dilemma in trying to move quickly, Triggle said, because the academic decision-making process is notoriously slow.

And because of this, "we often miss that area of competitive advantage because it's slipped by" because valuable time is taken discussing the process by which to make the decision, rather than arriving at the actual decision itself, he said.

"We're going to have to tackle this in the future because it will be a death knell."

Moreover, institutions tend to make too many "individual" decisions, he said. UB must "show a great deal more cooperation" with its neighboring institutions, most notably Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Buffalo State College, he said.

Triggle related that when state education Commissioner Richard Mills was in town several years ago, he remarked that he was "pleasantly surprised" by all the academic talent in the Buffalo area and that if all the major educational institutions would just sit down together, "we would actually get a great number of things done."

"Increasingly, the mission of the future is to try to work far more closely together," Triggle said.

The provost noted that performance indicators will become much more important in the future with the increasing profile of higher education in society. State governments worry about how state institutions spend state tax dollars. And consumers have become more skeptical about the role of higher education and more concerned about the rising costs.

UB has been going through a variety of program evaluations and will undergo many more in the future, Triggle said. These evaluations must ask several critical questions, including: What is the mission of the program being evaluated? Is the program still worth providing? Would UB offer the program if it weren't already part of the structure and history of the institution?

"These are some of the questions we have to address very seriously over the next several years," he said.

Triggle told senators that enrollment continues to be the issue that is "first and foremost" on UB's short-term agenda.

"For better or for worse, it drives most of what we do in terms of budget, in terms of programs, in terms of our ultimate interests and reputation to the outside world," he said.

Failure to meet enrollment targets results in "fairly draconian consequences," such as loss of state operating revenue and loss of revenue from the tuition those missing students would have brought in, he said.

Failure to make the overall 1998-99 enrollment targets will cost UB about $2.5 million - $1.1 million in tuition revenue and $1.4 million in state tax support - "a very significant reduction," he said. The deficit is due to declines in enrollment at the graduate and professional levels, "which are significantly below (the targets) in both the fall and the spring," he said, pointing out that this decline is part of a nationwide trend and UB is not unique in this regard.

He noted that the institution has spent much time and resources on undergraduate education in order to increase student retention, including offering merit scholarships, providing honors programs and providing services designed to make life easier for students, such as improved registration procedures and access to grades.

Retaining students is particularly important, he stressed, because upper-division students are much more "financially valuable" to the institution, especially because as many as 50 percent of entering freshmen express an interest in pursuing a graduate degree at UB.

"We have an enormous opportunity here, if we can capitalize upon it with the right programs, to move students from undergraduate programs into graduate programs," he said.

Moreover, UB has room to grow, since the institution is at its lowest enrollment in a number of years - as many as 3,000 to 4,000 fewer students.

"We must make the institution an attractive place for students to enter and enroll, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, whilst we examine our priorities in the coming decade and look toward reorganizing a number of programs that I think will set us on the track to where we will want to be in the 21st century," he concluded.

In response to a question from Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Triggle said there were several notable problems in trying to deal with the decline in graduate enrollment:

- Inadequate graduate stipends, particularly in science and technology fields. UB does not have the resources to increase stipends, and efforts to have the state legislature include money in the budget for that purpose have been unsuccessful, he said. The university has allocated money to the Woodburn and Presidential fellowship programs, and Triggle said he would like to increase that amount over the next year. "But that money will have to come from somewhere else," he said. "It's going to be a priority decision we're going to have to agree upon; if this is an important issue, we accept the consequences of taking the money out of something else. Because you can't have it both ways."

- Failure to make programs as "attractive as they could or should be." UB has "too many small programs, too many invisible programs, too many programs that are seen as the personal prerogative of a small number of faculty" who haven't been concerned about graduate applications because the applicants had always been plentiful, he said. "Times have changed; we have to pay more attention to the clients of our programs."

- Students looking for programs that span a greater breadth of disciplines, and UB must develop programs that offer this variety.

- Many students want to earn a graduate degree, but UB only offers a doctorate in many fields because, like other American universities, it has "downgraded" the role of master's degree, which often is considered to be the "consolation prize for dumb Ph.D. students." But the master's degree "has a very real role to play" in many areas, and serves as the terminal professional degree in such fields as engineering, Triggle said.

In other business at Tuesday's meeting, the senate postponed until its April meeting a proposal to amend its charter to provide the senate greater authority over graduate- and professional-degree requirements. The charter already gives the senate clear authority over the undergraduate curriculum.

A proposal to modify the charter was brought before the senate in December by William George, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who lamented that while most members of the Faculty Senate were from units that have no direct responsibility for undergraduate programs, the senate spends most of its time on business related to undergraduate education. The body "has only limited responsibilities" for graduate and professional programs, he said.

George proposed that the charter be modified to include a paragraph stating that "The senate shall discharge the powers and duties of the voting faculty regarding graduate and professional degree requirements. These include, but are not limited to, educational requirements and other matters of academic policy common to the graduate and professional programs of the university."

The wording of the proposal parallels that in the charter that gives the senate authority over the undergraduate curriculum.

The senate's Bylaws Committee, chaired by Judith Hopkins, technical services research analysis officer for the University Libraries, had recommended that no change to the charter be made since the document does give the senate the right to review and make proposals concerning degree requirements and curricula for graduate and professional programs "if it chooses to exercise that right." However, Hopkins noted, the current text is "broad in scope" and gives the senate less power than it has over undergraduate education.

The senate voted to replace George's original resolution with one, studied as an alternative but not recommended by the Bylaws Committee, that would drop all distinctions between undergraduate-, graduate- and professional-degree programs when outlining the senate's authority. Senators agreed to postpone discussion of the revised motion until April to give senators more time to consider what many view as a crucial change to the body's responsibilities.