Editor’s Note: Tuesday’s Daily Collegian article mistakenly interpreted the Provost’s report as being recommended by the University of Massachusetts’ faculty panel convened to analyze the possible merger of the colleges of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) into one consolidated college. The faculty on the panel have not recommended the Provost’s report, and the Collegian apologizes for any confusion this error may have caused.
Although Provost James Staros submitted a proposal to the University of Massachusetts’ Faculty Senate last month which would merge the colleges of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) into one consolidated College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS), as reported in yesterday’s Daily Collegian, members of the group which discussed potential plans for carrying out such a merger say they never were asked to vote on the plan.
While the Provost’s Jan. 21 proposal to the Faculty Senate outlining a vision and framework for creating a CHASS supports the creation of CHASS, five members of that group drafted a letter to the Faculty Senate’s Rules Committee clarifying what they saw as their role in the discussions.
In the Jan. 27 memo, the five faculty members, Elizabeth Brabec, chair of the landscape architecture and regional planning department, Chair of the Anthropology Department Elizabeth Chilton, Economics Chair Gerald Epstein, Communications Chair Lisa Henderson and John Hird, chair of political science, say the group convened six times in the fall of 2010 with dialogue centering on “a potential structure and possible motivations for a new college.” Other discussion in the meetings was focused on considering what will be critical and developing trends in academe in the near future and what could be potential themes for drafting a vision statement for the new college.
After these sessions, however, Provost Staros formed a subcommittee of three faculty to create a “vision statement” for the new college. While Provost Staros and those three faculty worked on developing this plan, “the entire working group did not vote on or otherwise formally endorse the vision statement,” according to the five faculty members’ memo.
In the letter, the five chairs do say the group believed there was a need for a concrete implementation plan, were the proposal to move forward quickly.
“There was a general consensus that an implementation plan for a final, vetted vision for the college would be a critical next step,” they wrote.
At last semester’s final working group meeting, Provost Staros told the professors he planned to submit the plan for the new college “by the first week of the semester.”
The group met for the final time Jan. 18, when it was asked to give its opinions of the proposal. Following that meeting, however, the group “was not asked to further comment on, vote on, or otherwise ratify the proposal that was submitted to the Faculty Senate.”
In addition to the memo to the Rules Committee, the chairs of SBS’ departments and the directors of its centers also sent a letter addressed to the Faculty Senate voicing opposition to the plan.
In the Jan. 31 letter, 12 faculty members, including several who were on the working group, write that the current proposal before the Faculty Senate is not illustrative of this working group or past groups’ attempts to examine the implications of merging the two colleges and that they do not support the current proposal.
The professors state that the proposal is not indicative of the views of this group or in the past, and that it also does not “propose an administrative structure or financial plan for the merged college.”
Further, the group of faculty members emphasized that since several previous committees had concluded that they did not support the merger and last fall’s group had “legitimate concerns,” that they could not support the current proposal.
M.V. Lee Badgett, director of the center for public policy and analysis and a professor of economics, was one of the endorsers of the SBS letter to the faculty senate. Badgett, who was not on the provost’s working group, said she feels the letter was meant to convey, primarily, that SBS faculty were concerned the current proposal does not stipulate how the transition to CHASS would be funded.
“The point of that statement, in my view, was that a merger of the two colleges is a large and complex undertaking, and there have been committees looking at this issue for several years now, and the problem is that the proposal as it is written doesn’t really address the costs [of the merger,]” she said.
Hird, a member of the working group who added his name to both messages to the Faculty Senate, said the members of the group wanted to make sure it was apparent what role the group played in discussing the potential merger relative to the proposal ultimately put before the Senate.
“We just wanted to clarify what the process was that led up to that memo and what role the working group played in creating that proposal,” he said.
Economics professor Gerald Epstein, another member of the working group, echoed Hird’s sentiment about why the chairs decided to contact the Faculty Senate.
“We just wanted it to be clear that this was the provost’s proposal, and that we had not voted on it,” he said by email Tuesday evening. “We thought some members of the University community would misconstrue this to think it as a joint administration-faculty proposal, which it is not.”
A committee examining the matter last spring found costs associated with the merger would involve providing more administrative staff, combining facilities, archives and payroll information, reorganizing alumni relations and fund raising departments, launching a new branding and identity effort to give the college cohesion, determining priorities for research funding, and other related administrative costs, in addition to potential costs incurred from employees learning the ropes of newly-assigned responsibilities and potential confusion about staffing.
The proposed merger’s fate remains undetermined, and this is an ongoing story. The Collegian will have full coverage of the situation as it continues to develop.
Sam Butterfield can be reached at [email protected].
