Report of the 2nd Committee on Faculty-Administration Relations (CEFAR-2)

INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The CEFAR-2 Committee was created by a resolution of the New Brunswick Faculty Council at its October 15, 1999 meeting. This action was a follow-up to a report on the Learning Resource Centers (LRCs) by Martha Cotter, Chair of the Academic Services Subcommittee. CEFAR-2 was given the charge to: "(i) address faculty and administrative concerns regarding the LRCs and their interactions with faculty and with other academic support and retention programs, (ii) make recommendations for improving the impact and effectiveness of the LRCs, and (iii) devise and implement an effective mechanism for ongoing faculty advice and oversight of the LRCs."

In line with the first CEFAR Committee in 1997, the overall approach of CEFAR-2 was to structure an open and honest discussion of a critical policy area by groups of individuals representing relevant and visible roles in both the faculty and administration, in order: (a) to bring to light and to clarify areas of differences and conflict, on the one hand, and areas of agreement, on the other, between faculty and administration; and (b) to develop preliminary ideas for bridging the differences, resolving the conflicts, and acknowledging the agreements. This final report was written by the CEFAR-2 Committee and submitted to the focus study group members for comment. It is now being shared with the Faculty Council. It is the Committee's intention and design that, contingent upon approval from the Faculty Council, this report be widely disseminated to faculty, deans, and central administration.

CEFAR-2 planned and conducted a March 31, 2000 focus group, selecting for participation a wide variety of faculty and administrative representatives who have been actively involved in the LRCs specifically, and academic support services generally. The initial orienting questions for the group were:

1. What are examples in which faculty and administration have worked closely and productively together to achieve the goals of the LRCs? In these examples, what roles have other related units, such as the MSLCs, the Writing Center, EOF, and the TEC, played in assisting these endeavors?
2. What are examples in which there have been problems in how faculty and administration have worked together to achieve the goals of the LRCs? In these examples, what roles have other related units, such as the MSLCs, the Writing Center, EOF, and the TEC, played in assisting these endeavors?
3. Adopting a brainstorming mindset, which emphasizes a diversity of ideas without critically evaluating them: (a) What are some ways that faculty and administration might work differently in the future to enhance cooperation and mutual effort? and (b) How might a Faculty-Administration Advisory Committee (such as called for in the New Brunswick Faculty Council Resolution above) be composed, what types of issues and tasks might it undertake, and how might it function?

After a 30-minute breakfast "warm-up," the group structure and atmosphere was highly successful in eliciting a discussion in which all members actively participated and created a conversation that was simultaneously open, frank, diverse, insightful, constructive, and collegial. To capture the flow and results of the discussion, this report is in three sections. The first details the narrative process by which the dialogue evolved over the course of the two-hour meeting. The second section explores five conclusions that emerged from the discussion:

• Widely differing views on the LRCs exist among faculty and administrators.
• The LRC undertaking involves considerable complexity, diversity, and competing forces.
• There is a need for an in-depth, expert evaluation of Rutgers support programs, including the
  LRCs.
• There is a need to create a Task Force on Academic Support.
• There is a need to continue the dialogue.

The final section of the report outlines five resolutions that logically flow from the conclusions section and from subsequent discussion by the committee.

• Now is the time for an external review of the Learning Resource Centers.
• There Should Be Formed a "Rutgers-New Brunswick Task Force on Academic Support (T-
  FAS)."
• A Long-Range Subcommittee of T-FAS Should Focus on Producing a Specific, Policy-
  Oriented Report.
• A Short-Range Subcommittee of T-FAS Should Focus on Immediate Issues of Enhancing
  Coordination and Resource Allocation Among the LRCs and Other Instructional Units
  Involved in Academic Support.
• Overall, T-FAS Should Strive, In both the Short-Term and Long-Term, to Enhance
  Collaboration and Effectiveness Among Faculty and Academic Support Service Personnel.

All in all, the committee believes that the focus group has generated momentum for a very promising process by which a Task Force on Academic Support will be created with both (a) a short-term goal of constructively dealing with immediate problems of coordination and effectiveness, and (b) a long-range goal of creating an in-depth, scholarly, policy-oriented report that will make a substantial contribution not only to improving academic support programs at Rutgers, but also to improving similar programs at universities and colleges across the country.

*NOTE: THIS REPORT DOES NOT ATTEMPT TO CONVEY THE FULL ACTIVITIES OF THE LRCs. THE READER WHO WANTS TO KNOW MORE IS REFERRED TO THE LRC WEB SITE, http://www.lrc.rutgers.edu.

ANOTHER USEFUL SOURCE OF INFORMATION IS THE "PATHWAYS TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS SERVICES" SITE, http://www.pass.rutgers.edu, WHICH PROVIDES COORDINATED LINKS TO BOTH THE LRCS AND TO OTHER ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICE SITES, INCLUDING THE WRITING CENTERS; EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY FUND; ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES; THE DOUGLASS PROJECT FOR RUTGERS WOMEN IN MATH, SCIENCE, AND ENGINEERING; AND THE OFFICE OF MINORITY UNDERGRADUATE SCIENCE PROGRAMS.

 

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NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE GROUP DISCUSSION

CEFAR committee chair Dan Fishman began by reviewing the purpose and process of the committee. He called attention to the New Brunswick Faculty Council Academic Services Subcommittee report that recommended the formation of this committee and this morning's event. He stressed that the primary aims here were to try to capture the range of perspectives on the Learning Resource Centers and encourage and articulate suggestions for mechanisms to enhance relations between the LRC's and other sectors of the university population, especially academic departments and other support services. Prof. Fishman then introduced the other committee members, and explained that two of the members would be facilitating and coordinating the conversation, and the other three present (another was unable to attend because of a pressing engagement) would take notes on the discussion and produce a draft of what would ultimately become the report of the committee. Participants would later have the opportunity to review a draft of this report, which in its final form would go to the New Brunswick Faculty Council for discussion and approval of the recommendations herein.

Professor Fishman then had all participants briefly introduce themselves, and asked the Director of the Learning Resource Centers to give a five-minute introduction on the LRC's. She noted that the mission of the LRC's is to provide academic support for undergraduates. When the LRC's were introduced to Rutgers in 1992, there existed many support programs for targeted student populations, but no general support programs for the "typical" student. So the Director identified and put into place a number of general programs that had proven useful at other institutions and worked to establish an internal database to track student users. Since the basic programs and database have been in place, she and her staff have been working to serve the needs of diverse groups of students, faculty, and staff who come to the LRC. Although the LRC's have attempted to serve a number of sectors of the university, their efforts could not be characterized as "universal." The Director then briefly reviewed tutoring in the LRC's: there are presently about 150 tutors in NB; the schedule of tutoring sessions is disseminated each week via flyers and the LRC website; otherwise, there is no regular advertising done.

CEFAR facilitators then opened discussion up, asking participants to comment on contexts in which fruitful relationships have developed with the LRC's. One participant noted that in his department, very effective instructional assistance has been provided by LRC tutors. Importantly, both this professor and the Director of the LRC's emphasized that this is the case because LRC tutors are carefully screened by the department and that every fall a faculty member instructs the tutors about strategies to use in tutoring students in the particular discipline. He also observed that in the tutorial process, the students who tutor probably learn more than the students they are tutoring. Another participant stated that she has had a great deal of interaction with all aspects of the LRC programs on her campus, both as an instructor and a college administrator, and that her experience has been highly positive overall. She noted that the testing of students with special needs--for example, those who need untimed exams, large print formats, and nonscranton-designed tests--has been particularly helpful to instructors.

Other participants reported less positive experiences with LRC tutoring. One participant noted that her students don't use the LRC tutors because tutoring in her discipline is not available on the campus where she teaches (the majority of tutors in Math, Science, and Economics live on College Avenue or Busch and do not like to migrate to Douglass to work, which puts a large population of female students at a comparative disadvantage). The Director of the LRC's confirmed that providing tutoring in certain disciplines is a problem on certain campuses.

Another participant noted that his students' experiences with LRC tutoring have been very negative and that he prefers students to go to his TAs for help. He expressed the belief that this may be because his department does not work closely with the LRC's in the selection and training of tutors and suggested that faculty have to manage the relationship with the LRC's in order to make it work. And another participant claimed that in his experience LRC tutors are often simply unable to handle the problems handed to them by students; he also strongly expressed that the in-service training sessions for tutors in which he had participated were completely insufficient as a way of preparing tutors in his discipline: 1-2 hours simply could not provide tutors the skills and contexts necessary, in his opinion. And another problem, a different participant noted, was that the tutors themselves are often not mature enough to distinguish problems according to their disciplinary differences: e.g., though the student may come to the tutor because of problems in an economics course, the problem at hand may primarily have to do with math skills.

A number of participants then discussed other barriers to the effective use of LRC tutors. A faculty participant noted that faculty cannot make effective use of centralized tutoring services if they do not accept an organized approach to teaching large first- and second-year courses. Having common texts, assignments, and exams facilitate the use of tutors in large, multi-sectioned courses, but in many departments different sections are taught by different instructors in very different ways, and this makes it very difficult for the LRC tutors to provide effective help to students. Other participants noted that faculty are so overextended and tired from trying to deal with increased enrollments, inadequate TA support, and the demands of incorporating technology in their courses that they do not have the time or energy to invest in working with peer tutors. Another faculty participant noted the difficulty of getting either undergraduates or graduate students to work as tutors in his highly applied discipline, given the lack of interest of undergraduate majors in basic prerequisite courses and the busy lives and priorities of graduate students. Finally, several participants voiced the concern that tutors cannot know what is going on in a course and provide effective help to students unless they attend the course lectures.

A faculty participant noted that the Writing Program, which has a coherent, common curriculum, invests a great deal of effort in training its own tutors and that this works very well. This prompted a question concerning the use of tutors in the Biological Sciences and about the division of labor between the LRC's and the MSLC's in providing support for science courses. An administrator quite familiar with the MSLC's answered that the LRC's provide drop-in peer tutoring while the MSLC's provide a variety of types of support for specific courses: course notes and materials on reserve, space for faculty and TA office hours, special review sessions run by faculty or TAs, laboratory support for General Biology (slides on reserve) and for various Physics courses. He also noted that General Biology has a single textbook and common exams but several different lecturers. Students frequently ask questions based on the examples used in lecture; the Biological Sciences faculty therefore feel that the LRC peer tutors for General Bio need to go to the lectures. He noted that there are problems with this suggestion in terms of resources, but it seems to be the way to go.

Attention then turned to how students use, or do not use, the LRC's. One participant referred to an earlier university report by Robert Parelius that noted that students when in trouble most often turned not to instructors or tutorial services but to their roommates or friends. The LRC's, this participant averred, are probably most often frequented around midterm and final periods. The LRC Director affirmed this to be the case, and that LRC student use goes in waves, according to assignment due dates and exams in popular courses. Statistics show, she reported, that the use of the LRC's by first through fourth-year undergraduates is pretty much evenly divided according to class, with roughly one-quarter of use going to freshmen, one quarter to sophomores, and on up. She further noted that the LRC's rarely see first-year students until after midterm exams.

Attention then was focused upon the resources of the LRC's, the pressures on faculty and academic units, and resentment felt among some faculty concerning the resources at the disposal of the LRC's. One departmental administrator expressed jealousy over the resources of the LRC's, and noted that she has observed that her department office sees ten times the student traffic of the neighboring LRC. The question arises, this participant and others noted, as to the best use of university resources. A faculty participant expressed the concern that tutoring may be a bandaid that subverts the use of better alternatives involving faculty and TAs; he further suggested that a better model would be for the administration to approach departments with an offer of resources to develop programs to help students having difficulty with courses in the given discipline. A college administrator agreed that there is a lot of "space envy" regarding the LRC's, but reasserted that the attitudes toward the LRC's vary from department to department, and college to college, depending upon the particular relationship that a given unit and the LRC's have developed, or not developed. He further noted that recognizing the LRC's are here to stay, his college has successfully utilized the LRC staff on its campus as an extension of the college staff.

There then followed a more general discussion of the relative merits of centralized vs. discipline-specific academic support. One administrator-participant voiced the opinion that the value of the LRCs is not discipline-based tutoring but other programs providing help with time-management, study skills, notetaking, etc. He noted that in his college, students are actually required to go to the LRC on that campus as part of a first-year mission course and the college administration urges students in their first two years to use the LRC in the improvement of study skills and general early support. But another participant, a program director, expressed skepticism toward the concept of teaching general skills, emphasizing the difficulty of the transferability of skills: different sets of skills and discourses come into play in different disciplines, so the closer we can tailor academic support to particular disciplines and specific courses, the better. The administrator agreed that support cannot be provided in a vacuum and that basic skills must be taught within the context of a course; but he asserted that being able to "off-load" helping students with such skills as note taking was very helpful to instructors. The LRC Director asserted her awareness of the literature on transferability and her willingness to address the transferability of skills as a serious issue.

In a more general vein, one participant noted, to the approval of many in the room, that "the ground is changing under our feet" as regards developments in technology and their possible applications to teaching. While the growth of technology creates new opportunities for faculty outreach to students, learning to work with that technology takes some initial time and effort, and continuing to work with that technology also can add significantly to the tension and exhaustion of already overworked faculty. One example given is that of faculty email communication with students: while such communication undoubtedly can prove to be of real pedagogical value, how, realistically, can a faculty member be expected to reply to over 130 email messages from students in a given day? any initiatives on the part of the LRC’s as regards technology and pedagogy need to show cognizance of these challenges.

The facilitators then turned the attention of the group to the question of whether a Faculty-Advisory committee should be formed to address the issues put upon the table this morning. One participant asked what would be the purpose and function of such a committee: would it function to provide or circulate information, would it be policy setting? One facilitator responded that discussion today was precisely intended to open up those possibilities for discussion. One participant noted that his past experience on faculty advisory committees, where the program director gave a report and the committee rubber-stamped the director's recommendations, had convinced him that something quite different was required.

Another participant strongly felt that any such committee or group would need to "diffuse best practices" as well as be a policy-making body, not just an arena for opinions without real institutional results. And in order for such a group to make an institutional difference, it would need resources to carry out its work. Others agreed that this should be an "activist" committee with an on-going process and a concrete product that would have a clear administrative destination. One suggestion that was received with assent was that the Office of the Vice-President for Undergraduate Education would seem the fitting place of delivery.

One administrator participant raised the issue of the desirability of an external review of the LRC's, a recommendation that the New Brunswick Retention Committee sent up to Central Administration over a year ago with no response thus far. Another participant reminded the group that the NBFC subcommittee report from this past fall, that in fact called for this very event, also recommended an external review of the LRC's. The LRC Director remarked that in fact it was the "perfect time" to review the LRC's since they were nearing their tenth year of operation. She also said that she found this session, given the range of opinions received, quite useful.

One of the facilitators reminded the group of the issue of the LRC's in relation to other support services: concern was expressed that this relationship often works on an ad-hoc basis, and that more systemic procedures and relations ought to be considered. And one administrator raised the broader issue of what we should have as our Academic Services support system here at RU--that this is the more generic issue to be addressed, and that the LRC's should not be assessed in isolation.

A consensus seems to have been reached that a committee ought to be developed to study and assess the relations of the LRC's to other units; that this needs to be a long-term, research-oriented project with a concrete end-product; and that this committee ought to be accountable for its product and, in turn, that its recommendations need to be responded to, and that the administration needs to provide resources to carry out such a long-range project. Participants with experience in such projects estimated that this longer-range study would take approximately two years, when considering the time needed for the gathering of information, statistics, and the eventual goal of building "an on-going model for program evaluation."

While the participants in general strongly approved of the concept of such a long-term committee study, and gave considerably less support to the suggestion of a more conventional faculty-advisory committee, there was strong support as well, at the meeting's close, for more immediate changes. A few administrator participants, in fact, recommended that while the long term study should move forward, a mechanism for effecting short-term changes along the lines of suggestions made at today's meeting should be put into place.

CONCLUSIONS

1. Widely Differing Views on the LRCs Exist Among Faculty and Administrators.

It is clear that there is a wide variety of opinions among faculty and administrators concerning the success of LRC Programs, particularly peer tutoring, in meeting the academic support needs of Rutgers students. Some academic departments, like Mathematics, have had very positive interactions with the LRCs and feel that their students receive much valuable assistance from the peer tutors. Other academic departments have had negative experiences with peer tutoring and believe that the generic, non-discipline-specific training the tutors receive is inadequate to prepare them to provide effective help to students, even when the generic training in tutoring skills is augmented by one or two in-service training sessions done by a faculty member in the particular discipline. Other LRC programs such as Supplemental Instruction, individualized learning assistance, study skills workshops, and services for learning-disabled students receive more favorable evaluations from faculty, although there is some concern that centralized, generic assistance with study skills may not be effective due to problems with transferability of general skills from discipline to discipline. Representatives of the undergraduate colleges seem to have a more positive view of their interactions with the LRCs than do faculty, believing that the services provided by the LRC on their campuses augment the efforts of the college staff and extend the academic assistance they can provide to their students. Also, it was clear from the focus group discussion that for both academic departments and undergraduate colleges, success in effectively utilizing LRC services depends strongly on the unit's willingness and ability to devote time and energy to building and maintaining a strong relationship with the LRCs. On a more theoretical level, there is also a divergence of views concerning the proper balance between centralized and discipline-based academic support.

2. The LRC Undertaking Involves Considerable Complexity, Diversity, and Competing Forces.

Providing optimal academic support for Rutgers students, particularly in New Brunswick, is a very complex undertaking and there is not likely to be a single model that works well for all students and all disciplines. Rutgers students are highly diverse; increasing numbers of them appear to need "extra help" outside of the classroom; a very wide range of courses are offered in both fundamental and highly applied disciplines; and students needing academic assistance are spread out over four geographically distinct campuses. On a purely logistical level, it is difficult to meet the demands for help in a large number of subjects from students on all four campuses. The way in which help can best be provided is also highly dependent on the academic discipline involved. The kinds of problems students have in mastering introductory course material in math, in biology, in English, in psychology are all different and an academic support model that works well in one discipline may not at all well in another - as evidenced by the widely divergent evaluations of LRC peer tutoring. Moreover, the sort of approach needed to provide effective help for students in large, introductory courses also clearly depends on the philosophy of teaching such courses in the particular academic department.; i.e., a model that works well in courses in which the different sections share a common text, syllabus, assignments, etc. will probably not work well when the different sections of the course are taught by different professors using very different approaches.

Faculty efforts to provide effective help for students in their courses are also hampered by increasing demands on faculty due to increasing enrollments and the widely recognized shortage of teaching assistants and of support staff at Rutgers, leaving many faculty too overextended to be able to invest the time and effort necessary to make effective use of centralized academic support services such as the LRCs. Finally, efforts to provide optimal academic support are complicated by the rapid pace of technological change, which has left faculty and administrators alike grappling with the challenge of trying to use the technology to help students more effectively while the technology itself is constantly changing.

3. There is a Need for an In-Depth, Expert Evaluation of Rutgers Support Programs, Including the LRCs.

The complexity of the task at hand and the diversity of opinion concerning the success of current LRC programs lead to the conclusion that an in-depth, expert evaluation of current Rutgers support programs is required, with special emphasis on the LRCs due to their prominent role in providing academic support to the "typical" student. This led the focus-group participants to agree with the recommendation of the New Brunswick Retention Committee and of the New Brunswick Faculty Council that there be an external review of the LRCs modeled as closely as possible on the periodic external reviews of academic programs and departments. The external review needs, moreover, to be preceded by a comprehensive self-study carried out by a committee consisting of LRC representatives, faculty, college representatives, and representatives of other academic support programs.

4. There Is a Need to Create a Task Force on Academic Support.

The complexity of providing academic support at Rutgers also leads to the major conclusion drawn by the focus-group participants; namely, the need for the formation of a faculty-administration committee or task force to carry out a long-range, comprehensive, research-oriented evaluative study of the LRCs and other academic support services with the goals of developing a blueprint for making Rutgers a national leader in providing innovative and effective academic support to its students and developing a model for ongoing evaluation of support programs. This committee would carry out a comprehensive evaluation of current Rutgers support programs (which would serve as the self-study for the proposed External Review), study successful models for providing academic support at peer institutions, research the literature on both centralized and discipline-specific academic support programs, and devise a set of policy recommendations to provide optimal academic support for all Rutgers students. To carry out such a study, with its estimated time frame of two years, the Committee will clearly require substantial resources and assistance from the university, particularly from the Office of Institutional Research.

5. There Is a Need to Continue the Dialogue.

Finally, there is clearly a need for continuing, constructive dialogue among faculty members, college administrators, the LRCs, and other academic support providers such as the Writing Centers and the MSLCs to address, in the shorter term, some of the issues raised during the focus-group meeting; e.g., improved training of tutors, better coordination and cooperation among the LRCs and other support programs and services, and more creative use of technology in providing extra help to students. Such a dialogue was begun in the focus-group discussion and a number of the participants, including the Director of the LRCs, felt that the session was quite useful in its exploration of a wide range of viewpoints in a constructive manner. Establishment of a mechanism for ongoing dialogue between the faculty and the LRCs on a non-ad-hoc basis is particularly important since this is the missing piece in existing structures for coordinating the activities of the various academic support programs.