This website has been created by the UH Hilo Faculty Congress to collect feedback and suggestions on a draft "UH Hilo Community-Anchored Strategic Vision for 2030" that is posted below. After reading it, please post your comments about this document and the future of UH Hilo.
Saturday, July 24, 2021
UH Hilo Community-Anchored Strategic Vision for 2030
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Thank you to the Faculty Congress Ad Hoc Committee and to the Community members who put their time into this wonderful, thorough document, that provides such a positive vision for University of Hawaii at Hilo.
It is very easy for anyone to dream of a beautiful UH Hilo and then complain when others don't do the work required to create that dream. I would be far more impressed if there were actions outlined that Faculty Congress was committed to undertaking themselves as a force for positive change. I see a lot of actions for other people to do. I would also like to know who served on the ad hoc committee so that we know that the writers are community-engaged teachers and researchers and speak from experience, and which community members contributed to this vision.
As a current UH Hilo faculty member, I feel this plan, while overall good, has two important limitations:
1. One of the things that makes UH Hilo stand out from other universities in the UH System as well as other schools across the country is the combination of affordable tuition with close, personal relationships between students and faculty members. Neither the new official UH Hilo 2021-2031 Strategic Plan nor the Community-Anchored strategic vision mentions student-faculty interaction as one of the the core tenants of our vision going forward, which is distressing to me. In my opinion, setting a goal of 7,000 students enrolled, and a goal to have many fully online courses and programs undermines this unique quality. In my own online teaching, I have witnessed many more students getting left behind despite my best efforts to the prevent it. Supporting disadvantaged and first-generation college students requires faculty who are willing to help the student and form deep connections with them, for instance by tutoring them personally, involving them, in research, stopping them in the hallway to ask how they are doing, etc. We need to ensure faculty are adequately incentivized and rewarded for offering this kind of personalized support, which I feel is best accomplished in person rather than online. If we move away from this, it might yield increased immediate return due to do more students enrolling online, but long-term it will do significant harm to the university: why take impersonal online classes from us when students can live on island and take impersonal classes from a much more prestigious university online instead?
2. Although "ensuring workforce loss only through natural voluntary attrition" sounds good in theory (we don't have to make hard decisions about who is laid off!), the reality is that this essentially lets a random process decide how the university evolves - in the worst case, if faculty leave from successful and in-demand programs, this could cause great harm to the university. We desperately need a rapid process for ensuring that when a faculty leaves or retires, the department is allowed to hire a replacement (even during a budget crunch or pandemic). We also need to ensure that new tenure-track positions are allocated in a timely fashion to departments that are unable to meet their current level of demand can do so. Right now, if someone is to leave there is no easy way to replace them, and then the position is "swept" and essentially forgotten about, even if there is a dire need for that position to be filled. Another problem is that timing of faculty searches must be aligned with the academic hiring season, otherwise departments (even if allowed to hire) will be unable to attract quality candidates - for instance, starting a faculty search in March or April will not result in a quality candidate in many disciplines.
4 comments:
Thank you to the Faculty Congress Ad Hoc Committee and to the Community members who put their time into this wonderful, thorough document, that provides such a positive vision for University of Hawaii at Hilo.
It is very easy for anyone to dream of a beautiful UH Hilo and then complain when others don't do the work required to create that dream. I would be far more impressed if there were actions outlined that Faculty Congress was committed to undertaking themselves as a force for positive change. I see a lot of actions for other people to do.
I would also like to know who served on the ad hoc committee so that we know that the writers are community-engaged teachers and researchers and speak from experience, and which community members contributed to this vision.
As a current UH Hilo faculty member, I feel this plan, while overall good, has two important limitations:
1. One of the things that makes UH Hilo stand out from other universities in the UH System as well as other schools across the country is the combination of affordable tuition with close, personal relationships between students and faculty members. Neither the new official UH Hilo 2021-2031 Strategic Plan nor the Community-Anchored strategic vision mentions student-faculty interaction as one of the the core tenants of our vision going forward, which is distressing to me. In my opinion, setting a goal of 7,000 students enrolled, and a goal to have many fully online courses and programs undermines this unique quality. In my own online teaching, I have witnessed many more students getting left behind despite my best efforts to the prevent it. Supporting disadvantaged and first-generation college students requires faculty who are willing to help the student and form deep connections with them, for instance by tutoring them personally, involving them, in research, stopping them in the hallway to ask how they are doing, etc. We need to ensure faculty are adequately incentivized and rewarded for offering this kind of personalized support, which I feel is best accomplished in person rather than online. If we move away from this, it might yield increased immediate return due to do more students enrolling online, but long-term it will do significant harm to the university: why take impersonal online classes from us when students can live on island and take impersonal classes from a much more prestigious university online instead?
2. Although "ensuring workforce loss only through natural voluntary attrition" sounds good in theory (we don't have to make hard decisions about who is laid off!), the reality is that this essentially lets a random process decide how the university evolves - in the worst case, if faculty leave from successful and in-demand programs, this could cause great harm to the university. We desperately need a rapid process for ensuring that when a faculty leaves or retires, the department is allowed to hire a replacement (even during a budget crunch or pandemic). We also need to ensure that new tenure-track positions are allocated in a timely fashion to departments that are unable to meet their current level of demand can do so. Right now, if someone is to leave there is no easy way to replace them, and then the position is "swept" and essentially forgotten about, even if there is a dire need for that position to be filled. Another problem is that timing of faculty searches must be aligned with the academic hiring season, otherwise departments (even if allowed to hire) will be unable to attract quality candidates - for instance, starting a faculty search in March or April will not result in a quality candidate in many disciplines.
Great plan!
The one action that should be reconsidered is the merger with HCC. There may be financial repercussions for students receiving federal aid.
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