MissionC3

·  Curriculum revision:  Department planning for streamlining the BA/BS degrees needs to be completed to provide flexibility for students and increase efficient use of faculty teaching expertise. 

·  Assessment is undergoing revision

·  Adequate program space is an urgent issue

·  Museum planning.  Financial support is needed for museum operation and programming in light of the planned expansion in Dean Hall.  We will need an additional staff person to organize the move of the collections, installation in Dean Hall and future museum program work.

·  Balance undergraduate and graduate teaching.  This challenge is related both to faculty workload and to curriculum.  Despite our commitment to all faculty teaching at all levels of the curriculum (a commitment that is generally kept) it is challenging to keep from having too much adjunct replacement at the introductory level.

·  A related issue is the difficulty of keeping an adequate adjunct pool.  

·  Our budget is increasingly reliant on funds we bring in ourselves through internal and external processes.  Part of our goods and services and salaries for office assistants (students on work study, usually) are paid for out of our supplementary budget, which comes mainly from indirect on contracts and grants.

Challenges
     · Budget constraints

     · Filling open faculty lines expeditiously

     · Facing deficit in faculty

     · Meeting challenges of diversity in art history course subject offerings

     · Mentoring of new faculty

     · Retention of new faculty

     · Foundation programs

Meeting Challenges:

     · Maintaining B.F.A. enrollments

     · Creating collegial community

     · Collegial support for programs and individual accomplishments

     · Establish salary line for non-western art historian

     · Coordination between faculty for baseline syllabi and goals

     · Develop service programs (i.e. Fashion and Interior Design basic design course); develop course in Challenges

     · Budget constraints

     · Filling open faculty lines expeditiously

     · Facing deficit in faculty

     · Meeting challenges of diversity in art history course subject offerings

     · Mentoring of new faculty

     · Retention of new faculty

     · Foundation programs

Meeting Challenges:

     · Maintaining B.F.A. enrollments

     · Creating collegial community

     · Collegial support for programs and individual accomplishments

     · Establish salary line for non-western art historian

     · Coordination between faculty for baseline syllabi and goals

     · Develop service programs (i.e. Fashion and Interior Design)

1. Insufficient staffing and staffing instability

Over the past 11 years Aviation has employed 19 full-time faculty (TT & NTT) to fill 5 positions at Ellensburg and a new (2006) position at Moses Lake Center; 14 have come and gone since the spring of 1996. This year we are searching to replace both the Ellensburg position and the third person for the Moses Lake position since it’s inception in fall, 2006. Despite aggressive nation-wide advertising, applicant pools habitually yield low numbers (5-15) with even fewer qualified applicants (as low as one). This inability to recruit and retain qualified faculty is related to the inability to compete with industry salaries. Many faculty have left for airline jobs and doubled or even tripled their salaries. Although Aviation has been listed as a high demand program and new enrollments increased by 100% over last year, there has been no staffing increase.

2. Excessive administrative workload for faculty and staff

The continued need to conduct faculty searches means existing faculty and staff spend an inordinate amount of time in the search process, as well as training new faculty on simulators and FAA requirements. The increased layer of oversight from Federal Aviation Administration compliance as well as administration of the contract with our flight training provider means programmatic and administrative functions are continuously taxed. Additionally, the faculty advise every student every term, as classes are by permission only. This greatly enhances the student's success, but also takes a large amount of time on the part of faculty, particularly with the current increase in enrollment and vacant faculty position. Sometimes instructional programs lack continuity because the department has had to rely on teaching overloads and adjunct instructors to compensate for vacant positions and the high amount of administrative work.

3. Non-existent facility – The new facility is slated to be in place by the end of 2008. In the interim, the department does not have enough room for all it’s faculty and staff and has no facilities for student labs.

4. Aging Simulators (FTDs) – the new FTDs are supposed to be in place by the end of the year. In the interim, some classes have been canceled due to maintenance on the existing devices. The high costs of repairs and unavailability of parts (because they are obsolete) may prohibit the department from using the old devices and student’s classes will have to be put on hold until the new machines are in place and faculty trained, probably by Spring term, 2009. This may affect some students’ ability to graduate on time.

5. Faculty salaries are below mean salaries at similar universities (CUPA data from over 200 comprehensive universities. This inhibits the department’s ability to recruit and retain qualified faculty.

6. No computer upgrade and replacement plan – some faculty have been trying to replace these via grant funding requests

7. Funding and finding time for faculty professional development is challenging. Funding varies from year to year, and time constraints are a function of the high administrative workload related to FAA regulatory compliance and contract maintenance that is shared by faculty in the department

1. We continue work on core curriculum issues and course requirements in three areas of specialization. 

2. Continue work on developing an assessment program that better measures the effectiveness of our programs.
 
3. Increased funding, especially in goods and services, is critical for the following reasons: 

     a. Van replacement and/or for van rental from motorpool
     b. Equipment maintenance and replacement
     c. Replacement of computers and software upgrades
 
4. This year the department is faced with finding and appointing a new chair. 

5. Over the next two years, the department will likely have to find replacements for two tenure-track faculty, two phased retirees, and at least one staff member. 

6. The department will seek funding for two additional, half-time staff: a computer/website technician (50/50 biology & chemistry), and a curator of collections.

1. Growing the graduate program in the face of low graduate stipends. The current graduate student stipend at CWU is the lowest in the state by a considerable amount.

2. Reassigned time for research. Faculty need release time to develop and maintain their laboratory-intensive research programs.

3. Research space for new faculty. While the department believes that it is critically important to add more tenure-track faculty, limited laboratory research space in the science building restricts the ability to recruit new hires. Every room designed for faculty research is in use, and some faculty have reconfigured laboratory-teaching space for their research needs.

4. Maintaining instrumentation. Athough we have hired 1.75 FTE Instrument Technicians shared with Biology and Geology to maintain and repair the sophisticated instrumentation necessary in our laboratory teaching and research, we, as a university, have not committed to a plan of replacement and upgrade as instruments depreciate. Several hundred thousand dollars of equipment purchased when the Science Building was new may be nearing the end of its useful life without upgrade. The deparment continues to work with the administration to put a instument/equipment repair/replacement in place.

5. Insufficient budget allocation for Teaching Assistants. The chemistry department is efficient in offering multiple, concurrent laboratory sections, however, this efficiency depends on hiring teaching assistants (T.A.s). The department’s T.A. budget allocation has been $9,214 for the last dozen years. Over the last three years the Provost has supplemented our TA budget by $10,000 which still does not cover the entire cost. An annual budget increase rather than one-time investments would support our program goals.

January, 2008
This section will look at the perceived challenges of the Computer Science Department and a look at what has been and is being done to meet these challenges. It is divided into two sections (1) students and curriculum and (2) staff.

Students and Curriculum

1. Due to the ever-changing nature of computer science, the greatest challenge is to maintain a solid core set of courses and to augment these courses with a strong set of supplemental courses to meet the diverse desires and needs of our students. The department will continue the annual review process. The department will also continue to commit development resources to keep faculty active in issues related to curriculum development, particularly in national and regional conferences and special interest groups.

2. The department is experiencing the effects of the national trend with decreasing major enrollment. The department is working with the Admissions Office to develop a recruiting strategy. Components of the strategy will include high school and community college visits and promotion of our scholarship and undergraduate research programs.

3. The preparation and general level of the incoming students is of continuing concern to the faculty. Through the recruiting efforts described above, we hope to help increase the level of incoming students. The introduction of the CS 112, Foundations of Computer Science course has helped increase students' preparedness. Programs like the mentoring program with Computer Science Scholarship recipients have also been useful in addressing these concerns. One objective would be to identify resources to help expand this program.

Staff

4. Over the last five years, the department has added a major research lab, and has added and expanded several instructional labs; yet the department still has a single systems engineer to keep these systems running. The department will work to hire a student assistant. This is less than an ideal solution. With the size of the labs, it is time to look for resources to share the hiring of an additional engineer.

The DOE faces some significant challenges in the areas of recruitment, hiring, and retention of terminally qualified faculty. An inadequate salary structure of the university is often an obstacle for making competitive offers to qualified candidates.  Faculty members of the DOE also have the incentive to look elsewhere for better compensation. Hiring faculty at the Ellensburg campus is difficult because Ellensburg offers few job opportunities to the spouse/partner of a faculty member. In combination, these two factors remain challenging constraints for making this an attractive living environment for many promising academics. 

In the face of changes and emergent needs which are inevitable institutional realities, the challenge of adhering to the twin principles of “maximum flexibility for all” and of assigning tasks with attention to “comparative advantage” will remain.

1.	Keeping up with education reform and accreditation requirements related to teacher education; we have reviewed and revised our assessments for Washington State English/Language Arts Competencies.

2.	Integrating visual rhetoric into teacher preparation program; we have designed and approved a new course which focuses on reading and viewing strategies in the context of critical theory.

3.	Teaching loads for non-tenure track faculty. We have been committed in the past to assigning no more than three courses per quarter to NTT faculty because the courses they teach are writing-intensive, and more than three courses would exceed standards established by disciplinary organizations.  Because our courses are all four credits, this has made it difficult to implement full-time NTT contracts under the current interpretation of the CBA.  Since research is no longer recognized as part of the assignment for our FTNTTs, we have only been able to implement full time contracts with heavy service loads.

4.	Addressing negative pedagogical implications of room scheduling procedures; we are working with the Dean and Associate Dean of CAH to better understand and plan for the limitations and possibilities of facilities management, and to find ways to factor pedagogy and technology into the software’s room management capabilities.

5.	Seeking more stable and predictable support for general education course instruction; we have discussed and will continue to work on better models for accurate annual predictions of general education course needs with the Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Studies.

Personnel. Other than Spanish and American Sign Language, the rest of the languages have only one dedicated FIE faculty instructor.

1. American Sign Language instructor turn-over.

2. Insufficient staffing in ASL, Chinese, German, and Russian with one dedicated faculty member per language.

3. Management of the workload requirements that conflict with the expectations and demands at the college and univesity levels. Faculty are expected to produce research at increasing levels in terms of both quantity and quality without administrative support through reduced teaching loads and increased financial and organizational resources.

4. Increased amounts of administrative work being pushed down into the departments. Examles of this include professor produced reports via the Safari system, recording of grades via professor, the removal of registration holds on student accounts, etc. all of which used to be handled by others. Add to this the implementation of assessment and accreditation reporting which is adding so much new work to our schedules that in order to be adequately implemented release time from other duties is imperative.

5. Chinese. A chronic and ongoing problem has been the lack of continuity in Chinese language instruction due to the expedient of staffing the program with exchange professors from Chinese universities.

Enrollment. Another of the more perplexing challenges of the past three years faced by the department has been change in enrollment patterns.

6. Class Size. Large Spanish classes, particularly in upper division sections of composition, conversation, and literature degrade the quality of that program. This has caused significant frustration among not only the faculty, but among some of the students as well.

The Geography & Land Studies department has continued to face a number of challenges over the past five years. Some of these we can do something about, and some are beyond our control and efforts at amelioration. We have proceeded through a number of new hires, mostly as a result of faculty resigning their position here and taking a position elsewhere. The challenge to find replacements for these positions was a keen one, requiring a lot of time and energy on the part of numerous faculty members in the department. During these searches, we were most pleased to find that our department successfully competed with much larger departments in our quest to recruit quality applicants. In the end, we have been greatly rewarded by our earnest efforts in recruiting and screening applicants for our faculty vacancies, and are most satisfied by the results.

Likewise, as more of our regular faculty members obtain external funding and buy out teaching time in their faculty workloads, or have been awarded research leaves and sabbaticals, it has been the department’s responsibility to sustain the level and quality of curricular offerings. This has entailed searching for qualified personnel to assume the role of on-demand lecturer or to fill temporary one-year faculty positions. We have been most fortunate in being able to rely on the trusted services of several long term lecturers, and currently we could not be more pleased with the professional caliber of our two visiting assistant professors.

By far the single most critical challenge facing the department over the past five years has been the cramped quarters of our physical space. Our program has grown in terms of both students and faculty, and in terms of both teaching and research, but the allocation of space within our building has actually been diminished by the competing needs of other departments. This has left us at a clear disadvantage in attracting and retaining majors, and this is perhaps reflected in the downturn in those numbers. It is also detrimental to faculty and staff morale, and has resulted overall in a counterproductive teaching and learning environment.

UPDATED JANUARY 29, 2008
1. Facilities: Department personnel are housed in at least three buildings, and equipment is divided among an additional two. Thus, because of inadequate facilities, program fragmentation is of the most critical challenges we face. Aging facilities also present challenges in accommodating state of the art analytical and computer laboratories. Lack of space is also an acute problem; we currently lack adequate office space for all department personnel.

2. Budget: Inadequate funding for goods and services, and particularly instrument and laboratory maintenance presents a continuing challenge that moderates how we can deliver the curriculum.

3. Time demands on faculty and staff: Increased oversight and tracking, which has translated into relatively large increases in paperwork without concomitant increases in staff, impacts the department’s ability to address student needs. Relatively large service and teaching loads impact faculty abilities to pursue scholarship, including research with students.

4. Graduate student pool: One of our longer-term goals is to increase the number of graduate students applying for admission. A challenge we face is the relatively low stipend paid to graduate assistants; the stipend is not competitive with other universities, and hence application and acceptance rates are lower than we would prefer.

5. Technical support: Despite the hiring of two instrument technicians, both of whom are excellent, we continue to have inadequate support for the complex analytical instrumentation in our department. Additional support is a priority for the department.

1. In order to help graduate students finish their degrees in a timely fashion, we are now requiring that a prospectus be written and approved in the fourth quarter of study.

2. In order to provide our Ph.D.-bound MA students with  greater depth as well as breadth in subject matter, we are encouraging focused readings credits in major fields. 

3. We found student writing skills to be weak, so we steered students to the writing center on campus, initiated our own “writing days,” and committed to requiring papers and essay exams in all history courses. 

4. We found SEOIs to be inadequate for feedback to faculty so one faculty member launched a campaign to revamp student evaluation forms.  This process is now stalled in the Faculty Senatee sub-committee.

5. We needed discretionary monies for student gatherings and receptions for candidates for jobs.  We were delighted that Dr. Paul LeRoy's endowment yielded interest for that purpose.

6. Technology available does not keep up with the times.  We will continue to argue for additional equipment.

7. Profs needed chunks of time for research that daily 50 minute classes did not allow, so we experimented with alternative scheduling.

Budget Constraints. Budget constraints have necessitated changes in the department.
We have met some of these budget challenges.

1. Twelve sections of IT101 are now taught by one faculty (historically we needed 3 faculty to teach these twelve sections). This was done by developing an on-line course.

2. We ask yearly to have our administrative assistant position returned to full-time. We also use department money to pay for student helpers.

3. We use some of our summer profit from summer classes to pay for computer lab updates, even though the labs are for general student use – not for the exclusive use of our ITAM students.

4. Through department restructuring in 2004, four faculty position were moved from the ITAM Department; three positions to another department and one position was dissolved. We were able to secure a new faculty line, based on our high demand program - which leaves us two positions short. This lose of faculty positions has effected our ability to offer enough sections of courses to graduate our students in a timely fashion. The result has been many course substitutions to accommodate students, which reduces the effectiveness of our curriculum and our students.

Curriculum. Because of the fast-paced information technology field, challenges exist with curriculum development and implementation, including:
1. Providing professional development opportunities for faculty

2. Teaching constantly to changing industry standards and certifications

3. Increasing enrollment demands, with no supporting monies

4. Covering classes for faculty reassigned and retraining leaves.

Department Image. Because our program grew from the “secretarial training” program, challenges surrounding our image exist:
1. While our students and industries that hire our interns and students are not confused about where information technology fits in the curriculum (versus, for example, computer science or information systems), many faculty and administration still do not understand what we teach. This lack of understanding translates into a lack of support through faculty salaries, faculty professional development, and outdated technology resources.

2. This general misunderstanding by the administration of what we teach has greatly affected the salaries of faculty in this department. For example, the ITAM Department is still classified by the administration with the CIP Code Secretarial Services, rather than the correct Information Technology CIP Code.

Uncontrollable Challenges. Some of our challenges are not controllable, but must be dealt with.
1. Changing leadership in the ITAM Department, CEPS, and CWU. Changing leadership has meant a new focus on research, changing mission and goal statements, and a general reeducation of administration on the role of information technology.

2. The College of Business continues to scrutinize our course offerings under the guise of their attempts to become AACSB acreditated and on several occasions have thwarted our attempts to provide relevant, current IT offerings to our students.

1. Establishing stable internal leadership in the Chair position. During the five year review period there were three department chairs, including one faculty member from outside the department. There were also two interim and one “permanent” College of the Sciences Deans. One of the causes of the instability is that the demands on the Chair have greatly increased over the years, while the rewards/benefits have largely remained the same. In terms of professional progress, it does not make sense for an Associate Professor to take on this responsibility. They have to largely give up their research agenda, while still being held accountable for research. Changes in the reward/compensation structure would help to foster junior faculty to take on this significant position.

2. Creating more frequent, effective communication/exchange between faculty about their professional activities, teaching issues and community service. Given the fact that nearly half the faculty are off the main Ellensburg campus, face to face meetings have been rare. Faculty meetings are generally done via telephone conference. The Center Directors must act as quasi-chairs of their respective sites, and have little time for collegial meetings with other faculty. There are, on average, only two face to face meetings each academic year of the entire faculty.

3. Operating our program with a large proportion of adjuncts remains a challenge. As the data indicates, in 2007-2008, 38% of classes were taught by non-tenured/tenure track instructors. Given the large proportion of non-tenured/tenure track faculty, the department remains very vulnerable to downturns in the economy. When staff is cut, it is first those that are non-tenured/tenure track. This was experienced by the department in the early part of this decade. Therefore, since we have a higher proportion of such instructors than other COTS programs, we remain most vulnerable in terms of economic crisis.

4. The role of center directors has been challenging since their responsibilities have not been formalized in employment contracts or through separate service contracts. Although their work is recognized departmentally, there are concerns about their status at the college and university levels since these added responsibilities do not allow faculty time to do what a traditional on-campus faculty member would be doing in order to gain tenure and promotion. While we now have full-time tenured/tenure track professors at all four centers, their ability to move forward in terms of professional research obligations remains problematic. This is particularly so in terms of promotion. Like the position of Chair, there is a great deal of administrative demand, but little formal recognition of this in terms of promotion criteria.

5. The department needs a full-time tenure track position on campus with a focus on law enforcement. Although approximately 40% of our majors focus in this area, we rely almost exclusively on adjuncts to teach these courses. The need for mentoring, advising, and career counseling, besides teaching, is great. Law enforcement is in high demand. While we have over 300 majors on the Ellensburg campus, we do not have a full time faculty member devoted to this specialty. We have had to rely on part-time faculty, who have full-time law enforcement positions.

There are a number of important challenges for the department over the coming years. The following are some of the critical challenges.

- There is a growing demand for on-line courses. As noted elsewhere in this report, the department has offered some web-based courses and in every instance these are very popular with students. However, there is also a powerful argument that our strength is in face-to-face instruction, with small classes taught by a professor and not a graduate student. These competing modes need to be reconciled in a way that benefits students while building on our strengths as a program.
- While our offerings of classes have been relatively stable, there are obvious benefits for students and faculty if we could plan our schedule of classes one or two years in advance.
- The department has yet to develop a unique sense of purpose or direction separate from that determined by the old Business Administration Department. While the CB has a clearly articulated strategic plan there is an opportunity for the department to plan how it will support the broad plan while building on its unique strengths.
- There are several constituent groups in the region that the department and the college have yet to establish a meaningful working relationship. In particular the agricultural industry, the wine industry and the Hispanic-owned businesses. The faculty in the department have skills and expertise that could benefit these industries.
- Over recent years, there has been a steady increase in the number of Hispanic students in the CB. In the majority of cases these are first generation students who would benefit from programs, initiatives and mentors tailored to their particular needs.
- While a number of new appointments have been made in recent years, the impact of these appointments is that there is a high level of salary compression and in some cases salary inversion. We currently have the situation in which Assistant Professors are being brought in on salaries equal to or greater than Associate Professor salaries.
- Even with the above mentioned salary problems we still face problems with salary competitiveness. While other conditions such as teaching loads, research expectations, and professional development support are competitive, salaries continue to be a problem. On a regular basis we have candidates for positions indicate salary expectations well above what we have been paying.
- Developing new principles of management and principles of marketing classes for non-business majors and new classes for business students creates some opportunities for innovation but also challenges. These classes need to be different while ensuring both groups are introduced to the major concepts and issues in these disciplines.

Space remains the primary challenge. Since being listed as a critical issue in the review, the Math Department has gained another 2 tenure-stream faculty and a new office assistant. The result is that four faculty are now housed in old music practice rooms in Hertz and one faculty member is housed in Black. We still lack space for storage of portable technology and finding appropriate classroom space is becoming more difficult.

Increased Faculty Expectations are starting to create difficulties. Increased enrollment without an equivalent increase in faculty positions has led to increased teaching responsibilities (as classes grow in size and overloads are required) as well as limiting the possibility of piloting innovative teaching methods. Scholarship requirements have increased and faculty are now expected to remain highly productive throughout their entire career. This makes it difficult to find faculty members willing to focus on service activities (that would normally fall on more senior members of the department). Finally, the service load has increased with new expectations on the level of assessment that is conducted by faculty.

The bureaucracy continues to expand at CWU. Examples of this include: attempts to obtain funding for conference travel; reappointment, merit, performance review, salary adjustment, annual activity reports all request similar but differing requirements; scheduling is now done so far in advance, that “last minute” changes are almost a necessity.

The department will need to find a way to administer an off-campus program at Lynnwood. This presents challenges both in supervision as well as balance workloads (as excess work at Ellensburg cannot be distributed to the center at Lynnwood).

Both SAFARI and the CWU Website continue to be difficult to use and information that should be easy to find cannot be accessed in a reasonable manner. Examples of problematic issues are as simple as looking up a student using both the student’s first and last name. As the CWU Website becomes more important to faculty (through the Workload Plan and the Annual Activities Report), resources should be allocated to hire long-term programmers (as opposed to using work study students).

Many of the weaknesses of the program relate to the inadequacy of instructional and financial resources.
1) FTTT positions are inadequate to support the current student population and programs (see data presented on pages 5 and 6). The department believes that the program is thriving, but the inadequate number of faculty and staff has led to a number of weaknesses in the program:

a) The workload of TT faculty is increasingly devoted to applied music, leaving the instruction of core academic classroom courses to adjunct faculty. This year, with the TT composition position occupied with an adjunct faculty member teaching on a per-credit, part-time basis, all but one of the six core theory sections, upper division theory and two core music history sections are being taught by part-time faculty. This problem is also coming to the fore in other areas. The trombone instructor, also hired as Associate Band Director, now has a very strong trombone studio, but can continue directing a band only by assuming an untenable overload.

b) TT faculty average 1.8 contact unpaid overload workload units per quarter, resulting in annual average loads of 37.81 (36 instructional credits are the norm). The overload assumed by the faculty as a whole is equivalent to 3 full-time TT faculty members, close to the number of faculty short of national norms as suggested by HEADS data provided on page 5).

c) Additional instructional staff would permit the department to enlarge and enrich general education offerings, currently only two courses per quarter. Part of this problem lies with the system of reward for credit generation in the university. All credit dollars generated by courses do not revert to the department but to a general fund.

d) Instructional pressures and the dedication of the faculty to the needs of the students result in overloads, only some of which are officially acknowledged, that compromise the faculty’s ability to focus on their own professional development and scholarship, and to department program development.

e) Many elective and required upper division courses are dependant on the availability of qualified part-time instructors

f) Small-studio applied areas taught by adjuncts are vulnerable to the lack of consistent instruction, the difficulty of attracting highly qualified instructors and impossible recruiting conditions.

2) Based on the current department size, funding for the operational expenses of an active music program, including equipment, instruments, recruiting, ensemble music, ensemble touring, student help, administrative work, scholarships and performing expenses is inadequate.

3) Based on the size of this department, staff support is inadequate—not even equal to national averages for music units half the size of this department.

4) Scholarship availability, which at $26,000 is only 1/10 the average for comparable music units, pales even in comparison to the average of public music departments of 101-200 majors ($148,788). This puts the department at an enormous competitive disadvantage for recruiting talented high school students.

5) The administration’s stance on Professional Leaves has resulted in far fewer sabbaticals taken by music faculty than in any other discipline. That is, many faculty have unique competencies that are not duplicated by other faculty, particularly in applied music areas (e.g., violin, clarinet, flute instructors,). With no means of replacing these instructors with faculty of equal expertise, Professional Leaves in these areas will result in personally recruited students not getting the instruction promised, and potential immediate deterioration of a studio--which would have disastrous results in department ensembles.

a. Enrollment meeting the demands of an expanding student population and diminished resources. 

b. Facilities. The current facilities do not accommodate the current level of pedagogical courses, activity courses, university athletics, club sports, and recreation and intramurals. 

c. Curriculum. The adoption of the State’s Health/Fitness teaching endorsement, much of the Health Education and Physical Education endorsement curriculums have had to be eliminated to meet certification requirements in both Health and Physical Education. There are courses within teacher education and the Health-Fitness Endorsement area with overlapping course content. 

d. Technology. The department, college, and university are fiscally unable to keep current software and hardware for faculty and students.

e. Scholarship. As the University has evolved from a teacher preparation college to a comprehensive university over the past few decades, the demands to produce scholarly works has increased. 

f. Morale: Maintaining enthusiasm for exemplary performance and high morale in light of relatively poor salaries.

1. We are two disciplines (Philosophy, Religious Studies) in one department with a small number of T&TT faculty. We have a lot of territories to cover and many interdisciplinary programs to support, and have been spread too thin. The number of upper-division course offerings for majors has been very limited (former majors have commented that this was the reason why some of them did not continue their study at CWU). We have attempted to maximize utilization of our offerings in many ways; our Religious Studies Specialization incorporates appropriate philosophy courses as required and electives; our faculty have routinely cross-listed Senior Seminar in Philosophy with Special Topics so students can take these courses for different purposes.  (A drawback of cross-listing these courses is the underreporting of the actual class size because the FTEs are split into two classes, and it gives the false appearance that faculty are teaching some very small classes.)  

2. The nature of our disciplines requires relative small class size in order to engage students to serious inquiry in fundamental issues taught in class. But the class size has been increasing due to limited resources. Now most of our classes have about 40- 55 students. This causes difficulties particularly for faculty whose pedagogy is interactive and personal in nature. We have tried to deal with this problem with class techniques like small-group discussion and even taking student pictures to help in getting to know our students. But this difficulty cannot be adequately resolved with without reducing class size. A large percentage of our majors do not have adequate writing skills. Faculty members have tried to give students more opportunities to improve their writing skills. But the large class size has made it difficult to produce significant improvement. All our GEN ED courses for “Philosophies and Cultures of the World” are designated as carrying the “W” (“writing”) requirement. Faculty make enormous efforts to ensure that students are writing a minimum of seven pages of evaluated writing, but struggle with the balance between providing effective feedback and getting papers back to our students in a timely manner. This is primarily due to the fact that the current class-size is at 40 students, making it difficult to effectively teach writing.  
We have been having an average 32.4 Faculty FTEs/Student FTEs ratio, much higher than the college average of 18.6 and the university average of 20. In that way, our faculty bear a heavier teaching load than faculty in most other departments. This enormous productivity in teaching is carried out along with a very high load in service and research. This unusually high Faculty FTEs/Student FTEs ratio has put an unfairly large share of burden on our faculty. This challenge cannot be addressed by the department alone; it has to be resolved with solutions from the college or/and the university.   

3. Despite its mission as a teaching institution, the university does not adequately recognize the time and effort required to generate new courses and significantly revise existing ones.  Without this time and energy, pedagogy becomes stale and students do not learn about current developments in the field.  Yet there seems to be little support from the university for such crucial activity.

4. Only half of our 10 faculty FTEs in the department are T&TT faculty. This situation limits our ability of operation and hinders our program growth. While our department is involved in a variety of programs and operations in the university, we do not have enough faculty to go around for university service and to represent us. Most of our T&TT faculty have been on multiple committees. With so few T&TT, it is difficult for us to recruit and retain majors. We have also invited NT&TT faculty to teach upper-division courses in their specialties.    

5. Although our Goods and Services budget has increased recently, it is still inadequate to cover the basic operation of the department for the academic year. The annual funds for Goods and Services typically run out in February, barely covering half of the academic year. We have been able to generate revenues from our summer sessions to fill the holes. In addition, we do not have a common space at the department where faculty and students can hold informal gatherings for the purposes of information exchange and community-building. Our workroom is too small for such purposes. We have not been able to find a way to remedy this problem.

1. The cost of running the department has increased while the Department’s goods and services budget has remained static. Along with the cost of maintaining the laboratory equipment and computers (both hardware and software), there are increased costs associated with recruitment, research supplies, etc..

2. Staffing issues limit the effectiveness of the Physics program. This includes tenure-track positions and office staff. Physics faculty members have been very active in college-wide interdisciplinary initiatives such as STEP, Science Honors Program and Science Education. But, this has left the Department unable to offer elective courses for its majors, expand its general education offerings (such as adding a 300-level general education course for the CWU centers) and adequately fill the growing needs in its service courses. In addition, the Department has a secretary with only a half-time, nine month appointment. The ability to acquire and tabulate assessment data is difficult without further resources.

3. Serious deficit of facilities. Teaching: although the Department is interested in using current (and proven) pedagogical teaching techniques, the teaching facilities are inadequate and insufficient. Research: no research space is available for new faculty and the observatory needs significant upgrades; Service: no space is available for a variety of outreach programs. For example, the new Department Chair has performed physics and laser light shows for 150 – 200 students per show. There is no facility nearby to accommodate this program. This is not only a deficiency in Lind Hall, but a deficiency found throughout campus.

4. There is a significant lack of equipment for the upper-division physics courses and the new general education courses. It is difficult for students to have a technological edge while using equipment that is over a quarter of a century old!

5. Although the number of graduates per year is comparable to the national average in physics, the Department would like to see an increase in the number of majors.

Challenge 1. Faculty and support personnel staffing suffers from lack of continuity/stability and inadequacy to cover needs when changes occur.

Challenge 2. Difficulties in delivering program and meeting diverse demands: The Department is so stretched covering lower division and general education courses, that we are unable to offer regular upper division courses as part of the major (and general) electives as regularly as we should.

Challenge 3. Faculty are overtaxed, and find it difficult to balance competing professional demands on their time and energy.

Challenge 4. Senior Assessment: while we have a clear assessment regime, the 489 course, which is the only feasible mechanism, we continue to struggle with the best way to accurately measure our students’ skills, knowledge, and learning.

Challenge 5. Lack of Institutional Appreciation for Department and its role, discipline, and challenges, coupled with lack of political power on campus.

Challenge 6. University Expectations challenge Department’s traditional and primary mission of undergraduate education. We are asked to do more research and publication, without commensurate increases in institutional support; we don’t have a graduate program, and indeed are too small to legitimately offer one, yet are expected to publish on par with larger departments that have graduate research and teaching assistants; university emphasis on undergraduate research, while admirable, is usually unrealistic given our student abilities, and in any event in political science is unlikely to produce peer-review quality material, since there is a large gap in the field between graduate and undergraduate education.

Challenge 7. Faculty Development and Reward: Faculty feel there is a lack of institutional support for faculty development and appropriate reward structure
Challenge 8. Curricular Limitations: we have no prerequisites for upper-division courses, which might help teaching and learning at the upper division/elective level.
Jan. 08

(January 2008)
• Curriculum: Our Master of Science in Organization Development program was suspended during a program review. Despite generally favorable results of the review, the program is no longer active. There were some positive effects of this outcome, but our graduate enrollment has declined as a result.  

• Staffing: Vacancies created by retirements and resignations were filled by non-tenure track appointees for one or two years, impeding progress in instruction, curriculum, student advisement, and scholarship.

• Regional Service: Developing a major at one or more university center has moved forward slowly. 

• Physical Facilities: Our 1972 building is increasingly mismatched to the requirements of our evolving academic program. Our experimental animal labs need to be updated to IACUC standards. Human lab spaces need to be reconfigured from the original relay-based equipment design. Presentation technology should be standard in all classrooms. We have no informal faculty gathering area. We have no distance education technology classroom in the building and are not able to conveniently include centers students in our classes or faculty in our department meetings.

1. We are facing challenges in meeting organizational and professional expectations when it comes to conducting research.
a. We lack a graduate program and dedicated social scientific survey research facility which are necessities when competing for external research grants. The department has made requests to college and administrative officials for such a facility. Although we would like to offer a graduate program, we lack the instructional resources to field one.

b. We have attempted to fund scholarship through our summer profits. However, this source of funding is inadequate and we have experienced challenges when attempting to locate other internal funding mechanisms. Currently one must apply for internal funds at multiple locations (the college, the Faculty Senate, and multiple university levels) in order to maximize opportunities for CWU support. Presuming a coordinated procedure and clearinghouse for internal support for research could be developed (we do not know whether it is possible to cultivate the interest or funding to take on such a Herculean task), a streamlined process would no doubt prove beneficial to all faculty and departments.

2. We would like to put more energy into sustaining a student community (e.g. an active and engaging student club) in the department.

3. Electronic facilities are needed in all classrooms.

a. Drs. Dugan and Johnson applied for a grant but did not receive the resources.

4. Create a physical environment that supports teaching, research and thinking by reducing noise and temperature fluctuations in the classrooms and offices. Most faculty members are forced to use supplemental heaters in their office in order to feel comfortable.

a. These changes have been repeatedly requested but they have been ignored/denied.

5. The Ethnic Studies Program will require further expansion in order to meet the needs of our students, region and state. When Dr. Pichardo was hired half of his instructional load was expected to be in Ethnic Studies. He has moved away from that overtime due to needs/opportunities to teach other courses such as Political Sociology, Social Movement, and Sociology of Education. Dr. Cleary is the other faculty member with half of her instructional load in Ethnic Studies. Her participation in the new American Indian Studies program has reduced the number of courses she teaches in ETS.
a. We plan to request additional faculty (with appropriate specializations) in subsequent years.

6. Employ and retain qualified adjunct faculty on the Ellensburg and extension campuses.

7. Oversight of adjunct faculty at remote sites is problematic. Perhaps our department is unique in that our current adjunct faculty at the centers are funded by the Provost’s Office to provide service courses for other majors; we do not have our own programs at the centers. In any case, oversight for adjunct faculty is not funded in our budget.

QUESTION: MissionC3