Officially Discovering What We Already Knew

There's nothing like a blinding flash of the obvious.

Last year, UNCG administered a survey known as the COACHE survey in order to make an effort to measure faculty satisfaction. Just on the off chance that outbursts, protests, letters, the AAUP survey, position statements, and general conversation didn't REALLY represent what faculty were feeling.
If there's one thing I always say about the faculty is that they are uncommunicative; it's just so hard to get them to really open up and talk...

In any case, Provost Dunn created a PowerPoint that summarizes the findings from this survey. Here are the absolutely unsurprising results:

It turns out, faculty are generally satisfied with each other and their departmental leaders (although that falls off a bit at full professor - probably not difficult to understand why that might be). Faculty are generally satisfied with tenure and promotion policies and procedures.

This next one, and this is the doozy, so let me say it clearly: FACULTY ARE OVERWHELMINGLY DISSATISFIED WITH SENION LEADERSHIP AT UNCG.

I'll give you a moment to get over your lack of surprise.

So, Brady is gone, although threatens to return to the classroom to bring her trademark wit, warmth, and wisdom. Imogene Cathey is gone, Paul Mason is gone, Edna Chun is gone, etc. etc. However, there are still plenty of sharks left over and it seems to me like it might be time to take a real long, hard look at them.

I'd say it's probably high time that anybody in executive administration didn't just get to continue to coast. The default assumption shouldn't be that they are doing fine. Instead, they should have to prove themselves, reapply for their position, demonstrate that their overwhelming failure to gain the confidence of the entire faculty isn't just something that can be brushed off as if unimportant.

And it would be difficult to imagine that a staff satisfaction survey (which was never administered) would show anything except for another section of our community that finds senior leadership to have performed well below expectations.

If an academic department, or heaven forbid a center, were to receive this kind of feedback, the entire area would be under review with the threat of closure/dismissal/defunding - why should senior leadership get a pass? That's the fat at the university and yet we act as if they are indispensable and absolutely immune.

If Gilliam wants to start from anywhere but in a hole, he's going to have to clean up this mess that was left behind before him. The message is clear.

Now, I'm just going to wait for the survey to determine if it's a nice day outside, so I can have my fill of finding out what I already know.

Hope Springs Eternal

We at UNCG have had very high hopes for our Provost (and current acting Chancellor) Dana Dunn and for Charlie Maimone, the Vice Chancellor of Business Affairs.

There have been a series of "unfortunate" events...

Other than Dunn’s spate of hysterics at the last faculty meeting in which she apparently mistook me for a character from Lemony Snicket, she generally seems to be much more reasonable than the cabal of cronies with which we have been burdened for the last seven years. People on campus still seem genuinely hopeful that she represents a kinder, gentler administration and I hope they are right.

The same sort of hopefulness was floating in the air in regards to Charlie Maimone (despite the unfortunate possibilities present when rhyming his name with “My Money”). His first strike was a vote for a totally closed search, in direct contrast to the hybrid model for which the faculty senate had unanimously voted. However, he quickly fell of the radar again amid the fireworks being set in the rest of the executive administration.

Only now, with Edna Chun’s summary dismissal and her complaint is his name rising to the surface again.

The jury is out. Chun says he created a hostile work environment and labels him as “instrumental” in the firings of Carpen, Wilson, & English (the UNCG3). Now, that’s a new twist in the plot, isn’t it?

Is this a woman desperately clawing at others as she falls from grace? Or is there something more here that needs attention?

Shockingly, Maimone has not responded to the allegations (probably he has received coaching from UNCG’s spokesperson extraordinaire Joe“no comment” Gallehugh.)

In the same allegations, Paul Mason continues to look like the bull in the china shop that everybody already knew he was, but now somebody has actually said it out loud (or in print, which is as loud as we need).  This is the first time that anybody in the upper administration at UNCG has admitted that there might have just been even the tiniest bit of wrongdoing on Mason’s part.

Those left standing in upper admin and on the board of trustees at UNCG have been repeatedly told that there needs to be some truthtelling in order for there to be reconciliation. Generally, the response has been to clamp down completely (for example, to date, the letter that faculty member Hannah Mendoza wrote to the BoT has gone unanswered).

It looks like the truth is going to come out no matter what. The only question remaining is: how badly do they want to be part of the reconciliation?

The first step to forgiveness is admitting that you have a problem.

We’re all ears.

Letter from Faculty Member

"All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer." - Thoreau

The following letter was forwarded to me last night and I wanted to share it. So many are expressing frustration with the ways in which their meager time to speak politely to those in power is treated as another opportunity for power to be exercised upon them - an abusive experience in and of itself. Those with power have forgotten the responsibility that accompanies it and that the power they hold is granted to them by US.

This was addressed to the full membership of the Board of Trustees; Dana Dunn, Provost; Charlie Maimone, Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs and member of the chancellor search committee; and Alan Boyette, Vice Provost.

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"If you have not already read the brilliantly written piece by UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Emeritus, James Moeser, I would encourage you to do so posthaste. He gives voice to the very same feeling that is the current experience of many faculty at UNCG. I say many not without intention. The unhappy are no small group of malcontents and the discouragement that is felt is growing.

Forcing through a search for which there is only limited confidence will only accelerate the flight of faculty and staff and further erode what little belief there is that our voices matter. There is no reason to proceed in such a blatantly dismissive fashion, any efficiency of speed gained by bulldozing over the principles of shared governance is more than sacrificed to the ill will created and the profound trauma visited upon the body and soul of UNCG. 

Do not waste your breath pointing out to me that there have been numerous forums, websites, and other fictions of participation. I am not stupid, I know the difference between sincere listening and the patronizing pantomime in which I have been participating. I have never once felt that my words held weight with you, never in my life have I been so plainly disregarded and so defiantly ignored. 

There is an authoritarian attitude that simply cannot stand if what UNCG has been - and could be again - is to be more than a bittersweet memory. This isn't about money or resources, I've been on losing teams before and it has only challenged me to strive harder. This isn't Raleigh or the economy, the search for the new chancellor is us: right here, right now. 

You may not know who I am, but if you had been listening, you should. I have come to numerous Board of Trustees meetings, I have been to countless forums, I have given feedback and years of my life to this institution. I am one of the little people, no Chancellor Emeritus and not even tenured, but I am furious and refuse to be dismissed. The current top down process of ramming through whatever agenda is deemed necessary is not one that history has demonstrated as sustainable. 

We need inclusiveness now.

We need collaboration now.

We need sustainability now.

We need responsibility now.

We need transparency now.

Not later, after a new chancellor, after a five year visioning exercise. Not another technical answer to an ethical or philosophical question. Not another partial mailing list, closed session, or undistributed document. 

It's your turn. Now, show me what you're made of.

Hannah Rose Mendoza, MFA
Assistant Professor, Interior Architecture

'Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

-Dylan Thomas'"

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We're waiting...