Agricultural Administration 16 (1984) 1 I-30

Strategies for the Administrative Improvement of Academic Departments*

John D. Sink

Agricultural Biochemistry Department, West Virginia University, Agricultural Sciences Building, Morgantown, WV, USA 26.506-6108

(Received: 27 June, 1983)

SUMMARY

The academic department or faculty is the fundamental organizational unit of agricultural colleges and universities, and its administrator is the critical link between faculty members and institutional decision-makers. This paper examines and discusses strategies for the administrative improvement of academic departments or faculties focusing on principal issues surrounding the setting of priorities, program evaluation and assessment, planning and budgeting, and the development or improve- ment of academic management skills.

INTRODUCTION

The public institutions created to carry out American agricultural higher education, research and extension education programs were set in place between 1862 and 1914. Yet, despite the enormous success of this unique academic complex, policy makers in the Congress, the state legislatures,

* Published as Paper No. 1836 in the scientific series of the West Virginia Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. This work was supported with federal and state funds appropriated under the provisions of the Hatch Act (as amended). The mention of a trade name, proprietary product or special equipment does not constitute a warranty by the WVAFES and does not imply its approval or endorsement to the exclusion of others that may be suitable.

17 Agricultural Administration 0309-586X/84/$03.00 c) Elsevier Applied Science Publishers Ltd, England, 1984. Printed in Great Britain

18 John D. Sink

and members of the general public are beginning to question the need for continued major expenditures and to seek explanations of what has resulted from these expenditures. g, l2 In the last several decades increased attention has been focused within the academic agricultural system on efficiency, productivity, evaluation and accountability that relate the inputs (i.e. money, manpower, facilities and equipment) to the outputs (i.e. teaching, research and public service).

In our current environment of declining resources, colleges and universities today are faced with the difficult task of developing coherent strategies for agricultural program development and administration. It is generally held in organizational theory that, as an institution becomes larger, formally devised systematic procedures will become more prevalent. This is true of academic departments or fatuities as well as private and governmental organizations. If the 1960s was the era of the student and the 1970s the era of the faculty, the 1980s might well be the era of the administrator. We will examine some of the opportunities for the administrative improvement of academic departments or faculties, focusing on principal issues surrounding the setting of priorities, program evaluation and assessment, planning and budgeting, and the development or improvement of academic management skills.

SETTING PRIORITIES

When a large, complex organization is created to handle a long-term assignment (i.e. teaching, research and public service), the one thing that the academic administrator can be sure of is that the conditions, pressures and demands on the organization will change from time to time. The level of activity will also change, as will the scale of operations. However, in the absence of unlimited resources, no organization can be all things to all people. Therefore, the planning imperative is self-evident.

The need for priority setting at the department or faculty level has always existed. However, only within recent years when the subject of retrenchment has begun to become a reality, have department heads or faculty chairs taken a more long-term interest in its impact. Many times these issues have been addressed hastily by administrative/faculty committees, usually charged with identifying areas for potential budget cuts to reach predetermined, and quite often externally mandated, dollar targets. lo The probability of rational choice among competing

Administrative improvement of’ academic departments 19

alternatives is rather low under such conditions, and the time pressures attendant on the process preclude the necessary attention to issues of long-term developmental and programmatic priorities.

Before any department can address the issue of program offerings and priorities, it must have in hand an explicit statement of mission: its educational philosophy, role and scope, and goals and objectives.r3 The educational philosophy should be defined in terms of basic values held by the department concerning the role of education in society, the role of scholarly activity and research, the meaning of academic freedom and other educational premises. The role and scope statement should focus attention on the organization by identifying the general boundaries of intellectual activity: such as the relative emphasis on graduate and undergraduate education, major constituencies to be served, the relative emphasis on teaching, research and public service, and the interrelation- ship of the department to other departments in the university or college. The goals and objectives should be stated in outcome-oriented terms to keep attention focused on the desired end results of the academic process.

The department or faculty needs to identify its external needs, opportunities and constraints. This should include the social and demographic characteristics of the discipline/service area; location in the geographical area of unique institutions or organizations, types of industry, the existence of other educational institutions, their missions, and the opportunities for collaboration; other identifiable character- istics or resources of the geographical area that may present unique opportunities and any distinguishing characteristics of the discipline/ service and/or geographical area that constrain the institution’s ability to develop certain areas of knowledge.8 In addition, many departmental programs may be constrained by long-range institutional academic planning documents, as well as the state’s board of higher education master planning process and control. The latter is especially true for public institutions, whether they be community colleges or research universities.

There are a number ofways in which a department head or faculty chair can formalize the priority setting process. One way is to create a ‘user’s’ advisory board consisting of students (associate, baccalaureate or graduate as appropriate), representatives of industry, government and other private/public institutions (including academic institutions) which utilize the programmatic outcomes (i.e. the graduated student, technical assistance, the output of scholarly activity including research results), as

20 John D. Sink

well as the representatives from the general public. All the ‘users’ are consumers of the outputs of the academic enterprise as well as providers of the financial resources that support academic programming. Obviously, other academic programs which are users within the university system should be included on this board. The advisory board should have general responsibility for preparing independent opinions on the academic department’s programming and use of resources as well as forecasting its concerns and priorities for the future. The board should meet at least annually and should be of a manageable size (not more than 15-20 people).

Another way of formalizing the priority setting process would be to establish a departmental faculty committee related to long-range planning that would seek to identify the principal issues facing the department’s programming in the 3-5 years or decade ahead. This committee should be composed of senior, as well as junior, faculty members and professional staff personnel. It should also be representa- tive of the various specialties within the general departmental discipline, as well as the functional areas of teaching, research and public service.

In addition to the above two means of identifying priorities, the department head should also review and read the relevant institutional, regional, national and professional publications that will have a bearing on the academic programs of the department. This information may also be obtained by belonging to certain professional societies as well as

TABLE 1 The Priority Setting Process

Department Head examines the mission, goals/objectives, programmatic needs and constraints and assesses the department’s strengths, capabilities and weaknesses.

User’s Advisory Board identifies and rank orders the principal programmatic issues to be addressed.

Faculty Planning Committee identifies and rank orders the principal programmatic issues to be addressed.

Department Head synthesizes the above information into a time-phased, rank ordered priorities document for discussion and debate by the department’s program faculty and staff.

The Faculty of the department discusses, debates, revises and finally accepts a time- phased, rank ordered statement of priorities to serve as the basis for programmatic planning.

Administrative improvement oj’academic departments 21

attending national, professional meetings and talking with department heads from similar, as well as dissimilar, institutions within, as well as outside, the discipline.

Finally, the department head or faculty chair should prepare a statement for the department faculty and staff that synthesizes these separate sources related to the priority setting process. In this manner, the department head will have explicitly identified appropriate priorities facing the department and provided the faculty and staff an opportunity for debate on the issues. Following suitable debate, the priorities should be recast according to the faculty’s interests, voted upon, and finally adopted as the official document for the department for a particular specified time frame (i.e. 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, or whatever is appropriate).

This priority setting process can be summarized as shown in Table 1.

EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT

Systematic evaluation of academic programs and faculty has become increasingly widespread in higher education and has received a good deal of attention in recent years,5 especially in research.14

There are a number of major types of program evaluations- accreditation, individual program review, etc. Perhaps the most useful and most widely used is that of individual program review. Individual program review can be either a self-examination by the department and its faculty, a peer review by other faculty from related disciplines within the institution, or a peer review by distinguished scholars in the discipline from other institutions. The self review is the first step in the assessment or evaluation process and must generally be performed prior to any program or institutional accreditation and/or review.

The basis for program reviews is the collection of quantitative and qualitative data related to both departmental inputs and outputs. Much of the information is based upon aggregating data related to inputs and outputs associated with the performance of individual department nlenlbers.4 Frequently, however, one review will ask for a particular type of data only to have the next review ask for the same kind of information in a much different form. With this in mind, the department head should establish some sort of management information system to assist her/him not only in data retrieval and formating, but also as an important adjunct to the formalized departmental planning and budgeting process. This

22 John D. Sink

TABLE 2 Departmental Information-Personnel

(A) Administrative Data (1) Year (academic, calendar or fiscal) (2) Individual’s Name (3) Social Security Number (4) Salary (S) (5) Assignment of Duties (in per cent)

(a) Administrative: (1) Line. (2) Staff. (b) Resident Instruction: (1) Undergraduate. (2) Graduate. (c) Student Advising: (1) Undergraduate. (2) Graduate. (d) Research/Scholarship: (1) Sponsored. (2) Unsponsored. (e) Public Service: (1) Continuing Education. (2) Other. (f) Support Service: (1) Academic. (2) Non-Academic.

(6) Employment Status (a) Type: (1) Faculty-tenured. (2) Faculty-untenured. (3) Staff--clerical. (4)

Staff-technical. (5) Student-graduate. (6) Student-undergraduate. (7) Other.

(b) Service: (1) Full time. (2) Part time (a) Fixed, (b) Variable (wage payroll). (3) Cumulative years of service.

(B) Demographic Data (1) Date of birth/age (2) Sex (3) Marital status

(C) Activity Data (1) Proposals prepared and forwarded to intended sponsors through the Office of

Grants and Contracts (number and dollar volume) (2) Professional societies and organizations (number)

(a) Fellow or member (b) Offices held (c) Committee appointments (d) Activities at meetings: (1) Papers presented. (2) Sessions chaired. (3) Symposia

organized. (3) Continuing/Extension education activities with individuals, organizations,

industry groups and the communications media (number) (4) Editorial, referee and juried activities for journals, shows, agencies, etc. (number) (5) Consulting activities/private and professional commissions (number) (6) Professional development activities/courses taken (number)

(D) Productivity Data (1) Publications (number)

(a) Refereed papers (b) Non-refereed papers (c) Patents and copyrights

(2) Creative works (number) (a) Creative writing and composition (b) Creative works of art and design

Administrative improvement oj’academic departments 23

TABLE 2-contd.

(c) Performances and recordings (d) Productions and exhibitions

(3) Graduate program (numbers) (a) Courses taught (b) Student credit hours (c) Masters’ theses (d) Doctoral theses (e) Papers or monographs in fulfillment of professional degree requirements (f) Service on graduate student committees

(4) Undergraduate program (numbers) (a) Courses taught (b) Student credit hours (c) Student advising

(5) Public service program (numbers) (a) Continuing education units (b) Informational materials distributed (c) Assistance provided: (1) To individuals. (2) To organizations (d) Institutional service provided: (1) University-level. (2) College-level

(6) Time Distribution (in hours/week) (a) Class contact (resident instruction) (b) Class preparation (resident instruction) (c) Course development/student advising (resident instruction) (d) Organized/sponsored research (e) Scholarly activity/unsponsored projects (f) Public service (continuing/extension education): (1) Instructional. (2)

Service/assistance. (3) Assistance to state government. (g) College/university service

(7) Extramural Grants obtained (number) (a) From public sources: (1) For research ($). (2) For instruction ($). (3) For

public service ($) (b) From private sources: (1) For research (S). (2) For instruction (S). (3) For

public service (S). (E) Recognition Data

(1) Prizes and awards (including sabbaticals) (2) Citations of work and/or performance (3) Invited papers, presentations, performances and lectureships (4) Invited judging of exhibitions, performances and shows (5) Endowed/named professorships and lectureships received (6) Visiting scholars/post-doctorals sponsored (7) Performance evaluations

(a) Self-assessment (b) Student’s rating (composite) (c) Promotion/tenure committee rating (d) Department head’s rating

(8) Graduate Faculty Status: Senior, Associate, Non-member

24 John D. Sink

TABLE 3 Departmental Information-Annual Profile

Inputs Budget category assignment

Instruction Research Service

(A) Manpower Resources (Full-Time Equivalent, FTE) (1) Faculty* -- _____ (2) Fellows, Scholars, Assistants* (3) Staff* ~ ___ (4) Part-Time (wage payroll) ___ ____

Total

Total FTEs

* List by individual categories as appropriate.

No. Type* Face Start Amt. amount and applicable

stop dates this year (B) Financial Resources (S)

Federal agencies* Stage agencies* ______ Industrial* Foundation* Private gifts (Gf) __- ________ University funds (Uf)* Student Fees _______

Total S - * Indicate whether appropriation (Ap), grant (Gnt), contract (C), or gift (G).

(C) Number of undergraduate students enrolled in the department majors

(1) Full Time

(2) Part Time

(D) Number of graduate students enrolled in the department majors

(1) Full Time

(2) Part Time

Administrative improucnwnt qf’academic departments 25

TABLE 3-contd.

outputs University jhds External funds

No. FTE Dollars Per cent FTE Dollars Per cent

(A) Expenditures (1) Salaries and Wages* ____ __ __ ~ __ __ (2) Other

Travel Equipment ____ __ __ - __ __ Supplies and other __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Repairs and Maintenance ___ I_ I_ __ __ __ __

Total-- __ __ __ __ __

* List by individual categories as appropriate.

(B) Student credit hours (SCH) generated (I) Graduate instruction (2) Undergraduate instruction (3) Cost per SCH (4) SCH generated per instruction FTE

(C) Number of degrees granted (1) Baccalaureate (2) Master’s (3) Doctoral

(1 1) Number of publications (PUB) generated (1) Solicited/refereed books and papers (2) Patents and copyrights _ (3) Non-refereed reports and papers (4) PUB generated per research FTE (5) Refereed PUB generated per research FTE

(E) Public Service Activities (PSA) generated (1) Continuing Education (CE) units generated (2) Cost per CE unit (3) Number of assistance calls/responses (4) PSA Generated per public service FTE

26 John D. Sink

information might be divided into at least five data categories: administrative, demographic, activity, productivity and recognition. A recommendation for some of the useful information that could be contained under each of these headings is listed in Table 2. This list is meant to be suggestive and not comprehensive or all-inclusive; specific construction and relevant tailoring will be necessary in most cases.

Shirley and Volkweini3 counsel us that a department’s program quality is dictated essentially by three important elements: faculty quality, student quality and library holdings, facilities and equipment. One might also suggest adding the quality of a department’s administration. However, the faculty is the most important element in overall program quality. For a university, the focus on faculty competency and quality should be national standards of scholarship. This is especially true of research universities. The quality of a library collection is an important supporting indicator of program quality, and the criterion for facilities and equipment is especially important for programs in the experimental sciences and in the performing and studio arts.

The major objective of the above management information data base is to identify program input and output parameters that will be acceptable to the faculty in the discipline. Academic units are expected to contribute to the college/university missions of instruction, research and/or public service; usually there is a combination of two, and frequently all three, functions. Administrative and demographic data are necessary to meet budgeting, manpower forecasting and affirmative action needs. Produc- tivity data should provide information to a department’s faculty indicating whether their program is on a plateau, or getting better, or getting worse in terms of quality and quantity, year by year. Activity and recognition data provide a basis for assessing the quality of the department’s contribution and its reputation. Following the collection of all the individual personnel data, the department head should couple this information with other data available to him and compile an annual departmental profile or annual report. A suggested format is outlined in Table 3.

PLANNING AND BUDGETING

The assessment of needed resources and costs is a complex judgemental process. Nonetheless, some attempts have been made to analyze the

Administrative improvement of academic departments 27

results of cost studies in various disciplines.’ In most cases, major considerations must be the size of the ‘gap’ between the current level of quality and program funding and that which is desired, and the relationship between costs and revenues.

In addition to looking at the program costs discussed above, the department head must also be concerned with contingency funding and thus build into the planning and budgeting process the recovery of all indirect costs associated with any gifts, grants or contracts. In most cases, with the exception of gifts, grants and contracts, the department head will generally be operating and funding the programmatic efforts of the department’s faculty on specifically allotted and/or appropriated funds. Opportunities to increase funding and/or sources of funds in these areas are based on a larger concerted effort by the institution and the association of similar institutions to influence the political process of resource allocations by state and federal agencies and legislative bodies. Therefore, the opportunities to move a departmental program forward and to provide budget flexibility will fall into two principal areas. The first is gifts, grants and contracts. In order to improve the departmental opportunities in this area, the department head must create a kind of ‘climate’ that will encourage (and obviously reward) the faculty for their singular efforts in this regard. The second area and source of income is through building the department’s endowment. Here the department head can play a significant and persuasive role by appealing to alumni and broader interest groups than a particular faculty member’s specialty. Such activities will bring monies to the department specifically and hopefully not earmarked for any donor’s project, thus increasing the revenues available for new initiatives and other departmental pro- gramming and needs.

Budgeting has always been conceived of as a process for systematically relating the expenditure of funds to the accomplishment of planned objectives. Budgetary decisions are made through the exercise of power in complex political behaviours. With the advent of financial crises, universities have been encouraged to improve the quality of their budgeting processes and to expand the faculty’s participation.16 Department heads should include faculty assistance in the program budgeting phase as well as in the program planning phase. Further, in concert with the guidelines of the institution, the department head must establish a budgeting philosophy (i.e. ZBB, PPBS, etc.) and an appropriate budget process and cycle. In all of this, care must be taken to

28 John D. Sink

ensure that the priority setting and programming decisions are ‘linked’ to, and reflected in, the budgetary process. The rationality for resource allocations should always be tested against the departmental goals.

ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT SKILLS

The department head must realize her/his lot is to serve and not command. It is all too evident that many in America’s colleges and universities do not understand this precept. So, where can a department head turn to learn and study, while on the job, the requisite organizational and management skills?

One of the best places to begin is by understanding the organization and goals of the institution itself. If the department head has been a professor in the department, it is likely that he/she will understand very well the goals of the department, and probably will have a good understanding of the purpose and goals of the college or university as well, especially insofar as those goals are reflected in the department. But, there are a number of institutional goals beyond the department which the department head understands less well, if at all, but which he/she needs to understand in order to fulfill the position responsibilities effectively. If we expect the faculty and staff to be committed to the departmental and institutional goals, the department head must begin by helping them understand what those goals are; but, first he/she must educate him/herself.

Another very good way for a department head or faculty chair to improve her/his administrative management skills is to set up a regular reading schedule from a reference library that should include such texts as Blau,’ Brann and Enlnlet,3 Drucker,6 Eble,7 McHenry and Associates,’ ’ Smart and Montgomery,” TuckerI and Welzenbach.r* Further, a department head or faculty chair should read selectively the general literature, such as Science (published weekly by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005) or Nature (published weekly by Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 4 Little Essex Street, London WC2) and The Chronicle of Higher Education (published weekly by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 133 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036) or The Times Higher Education Supplement (published weekly by Times Newspapers, PO Box 7,200 Gray’s Inn, London WC2), as well

Administrative improvement of‘ academic departments 29

as the administrative literature, such as Administrative Science Quarterly (published by the Graduate School of Business and Public Administra- tion, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853) and Agricultural Administration, for current issues and topical items. Professional societies, such as the American Association for Higher Education, the American Association of University Administrators and the Society of Research Administrators, provide meetings, workshops and publications that could benefit and assist the department head in administrative’ development.

A department head or faculty chair should also use her/his dean and fellow heads/chairs as resource persons for assisting in her/his administrative development. In fact, in some institutions formalized programs under the leadership of the dean are used for this purpose.

Finally, regardless of the program a department head or faculty chair establishes for improving her/his administrative management skills, the focus should be on the ‘people’ skills rather than the technical skills. The latter-budget management, scheduling, effective communication for decision-making, program evaluation, etc.-are important to be sure. But they are not nearly so essential as those that relate to managing self and productive relationships with others. The department head or faculty chair is the most important academic administrator for he/she is the critical link between faculty members and institutional decision-makers.

REFERENCES

1. Balderston, F. E. Managing today’s universities. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1975.

2. Blau, P. M. The organization of academic work. New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1973.

3. Brann, J. & Emmet, T. A. (Eds). The academic department or division chairman: A complex role. Detroit, Balamp Publishing, 1972.

4. Centra, J. A. Determiningfaculty effectiveness. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1979.

5. Dressel, P. L. Handbook of academic evaluation. San Francisco, Jossey- Bass, 1976.

6. Drucker, P. F. The effective executive. New York, Harper & Row, 1967. 7. Eble, K. E. The art of administration. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1978. 8. Jedamus, P., Peterson, M. W. and Associates. Improving academic

management. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1980.

30 John D. Sink

9. JCFAS. Proposed Initiatives for the Food and Agriculture Sciences. Washington, DC, Joint Council on Food and Agricultural Sciences, US Department of Agriculture, January, 1981.

10. Mayhew, L. B. Surviving the ‘Eighties. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1980. 11. McHenry, D. E. et al. Academic departments. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass,

1977. 12. Pino, J. A. & Prager, D. J. Science for agriculture. New York, Rockefeller

Foundation, October, 1982. 13. Shirley, R. C. & Volkwein, J. F. Establishing academic program priorities.

Journal of Higher Education, 49 (September/:October, 1978) pp. 472-88. 14. Shumway, C. R. Ex ante research evaluation: Can it be improved?

Agricultural Administration, 12 (February, 1983), pp. 91-102. 15. Smart, J. C. & Montgomery, J. R. (Eds). Examining departmental

management. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1976. 16. Tonn, J. C. Political behavior in higher education. Journal of Higher

Education, 49 (November/December, 1978), pp. 575-87. 17. Tucker, A. Chairing the academic department. Washington, DC, American

Council on Education, 1981. 18. Welzenbach, L. F. (Ed.). College and university business administration.

Washington, DC, National Association of College and University Business Officers, 1982.