Inside Iowa State
April 28, 2000
Richmond: No room for complacency in higher ed
by Anne Krapfl
Rollin Richmond hadn't expected to
be distracted by budget cuts six months into his job as
provost. But with state funding lagging behind regents
universities requests this spring, cuts look inevitable.
"I remain delighted to be here, but I really thought I was
getting away from budget problems," he said, citing state
government's and the people of Iowa's long-standing strong
support of education.
The likelihood of cuts is his biggest surprise since landing in Ames last September. What concerns him most is the time it takes to rebuild following even a single season of a budget shortfall.
"You take the cuts where line items are open. It may even happen in your strongest areas, but you have no choice," he said. "Then you rebuild over time with reallocation of funds. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to repair even one year's damage."
But perhaps the state budget crisis also can be viewed as a wake-up call for what Richmond sees as complacency at Iowa State.
"This institution is used to strong support, from both the state -- the Legislature and the governor -- and the people of the state, and that's a wonderful environment to operate in," he said. "But I believe there's a sense of complacency that comes with achievement."
Richmond said higher education is changing; it's more competitive than it has been in 50 years, especially with private corporations trying to grab a piece of what has become a $740 billion market. Schools need to become more self-sufficient and provide a larger share of their budgets, he said.
"Unless we shake ourselves out of some of this complacency, we are in danger of failing to maintain and improve the quality of our teaching and our research," he said.
The details of one of the provost's plans for improvement soon will be shared publicly. Two committees worked this winter and spring on separate, but related, strategies for funneling resources from academic units into university-wide academic priorities. The first committee, chaired by Education dean Walt Gmelch, has developed a list of academic priorities (related to the university's strategic plan) as well as parameters for making funding decisions, Richmond said. The second committee, chaired by Business dean Ben Allen, has developed a reallocation method to put money into the priorities identified by the first group.
Richmond said he hopes the groups' planning process also has reinforced a different attitude about reallocating resources.
"It's not necessarily about college deans competing for resources and it's not about Rollin Richmond's personal 'pot,'" he said. "It is, though, a real cultural shift as they'll play a significant role in how these resources are allocated. I want all deans to pull for each other. They can help each other be successful."
The academic plan calls for a reallocation of one-half of 1 percent each year for three years (thus, 1.5 percent in the third year) in units that report to the Provost Office. This reallocation would be in addition to the 2 percent university-wide reallocation currently done at the request of the Board of Regents, State of Iowa.
Richmond said he might delay implementing the academic plan if the state funding shortfall is too severe. But, he said, he hopes to at least partially implement the academic priorities planning, more for the shift in attitude it represents than any actual shift in dollars.
Other goals
Richmond said he has developed other goals for himself since arriving on campus. They include:
Strengthening informational technology. "This university has got to be at the forefront of that, not just because it's in our name, but because it's critical to what's going on in agriculture and in genetics and in English," Richmond said. "This is an old and strong institution, and of course, there's concern about disrupting what works well. However, we need to change to accommodate the needs of a society that is changing in many ways, and I think we can move ourselves much more to the edge of where the technology is. I think we're beginning to get there."
Richmond said he's hopeful that Ann Duin's arrival on campus in July (Duin helped create the University of Minnesota's virtual university and is Iowa State's new associate provost and director of extended and continuing education) will help "grow" teaching and learning technologies, including course offerings to non-traditional students.
He also said a group of faculty and staff are working on a proposal to implement recommendations that came from the spring faculty conference, at which informational technology was the focus.
Finding top administrators. Richmond noted two key positions remain open: vice provost for research and Agriculture dean. He said he hopes the new vice provost will help address complacency in ISU's research program.
"We're not as well-placed to take advantage of federal research funds as we should be," he said, adding he believes the federal government will begin to invest more in organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. One solution Richmond said Iowa State will pursue is upgrading research facilities so university researchers can be competitive in grant applications.
He is close to making an announcement about a new vice provost, he said.
Naming the next Agriculture dean will be "one of the most important things I do here, even if I stay for 10 years," Richmond said. The search committee is working hard, including seeking help from commodity groups, and will continue its work over the summer.
"There are a lot of changes happening in agriculture. Iowa State University needs to be a change agent," Richmond said.
Recruiting the best faculty and staff. "The only way to make an institution better is to increase the quality of its faculty and staff," Richmond said. "Nothing we do is more important than bringing in people who will make us think and work harder."
This includes considerations such as hiring a diverse group of employees, finding positions for spouses and creating a campus environment that makes people want to take jobs here.
"Even though Iowa's population is not very diverse, we have to make sure ethnic individuals have every opportunity to succeed here. It is a big issue," he said.
Scholarship for teachers
Provost Rollin Richmond called the faculty's new promotion and tenure
policy "an excellent document."
It does a very good job of defining "scholarship," he said -- both scholarship in a discipline and scholarship of teaching.
"My concern is that all faculty at this institution be scholars, whether of pedagogy or music or genetics, and that they demonstrate that in a way that provides some mechanism for peer evaluation of their work," he said.
Richmond acknowledged there may be a small group of faculty at Iowa State who believe that scholarship in preparation for a lecture is enough, and that excelling at classroom teaching should be satisfactory for promotion.
"I don't agree with that," he said. "Scholarship is all about finding new relationships and moving the field forward. Excellent teachers need to demonstrate their scholarship, ask questions of themselves, such as 'What are the consequences of my teaching a course online?' 'What are the consequences of my using a collaborative learning method?' They need to help the rest of us, just as a geneticist who writes a paper helps other people around the country.
"It's not an easy topic," he added. "Like most issues that are important to a society, it's one that needs to be continually discussed."
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