This Week’s Big Issue
There is much confusion outside of SPEA about our internal faculty organization. While many academic organizations have departments, SPEA is organized around faculty groups. I am frequently asked to explain the difference between faculty groups and departments and find that faculty, students and staff sometimes have a difficult time understanding the faculty group concept.
Since its founding, SPEA has sought to break-down traditional disciplinary boundaries by creating an environment where investigators from many applied fields working on pressing issues of the day can be encouraged and supported. Traditional disciplinary boundaries and the departmental organization found in many academic units can sometimes create boundaries that place limits on the type of research that is rewarded. Given the breadth and depth of issues covered at SPEA, departments were seen as cutting against the need for flexibility and agility.
In SPEA Bloomington, faculty groups are directed by a faculty chair. Faculty chairs have many of the same responsibilities as department chairs. Faculty chairs are responsible for leading the scholarly mission of the School by working on faculty recruitment and development, and connecting faculty members with others in their field through research seminars. The primary differences are that they are not responsible for running educational programs, dealing with student or faculty complaints, or managing departmental support staff, as is typically the case for department chairs. Since many of SPEA’s academic programs cut across our faculty groups, our educational programs are run by directors who report to the Dean’s Office. More information on our faculty groups can be found at: http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/faculty/faculty_groups/index.shtml
I suspect there are many different views on the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty group structure. Some are likely to argue it has served the School well since its founding in the early 1970s, whereas others are likely to express their disappointment that the level of cross-faculty group collaboration has been underwhelming and individual faculty members have not taken advantage of the flexibility offered by faculty groups.
Putting aside the virtues of the faculty group concept, SPEA’s growth will present challenges for how best to organize itself. Faculty groups centralize much of the decision making in the Dean’s Office. This is manageable in a smaller organization, but will present real issues as the School continues to grow on the Bloomington campus.
While Deans play a role in answering these questions, the faculty controls the decision of how best to organize our scholarly activity.
What’s Happening in SPEA Bloomington?
It was wonderful to see so many students, faculty and staff at the Indiana 9th Congressional District Debate hosted by SPEA Bloomington. We had a strong turnout (the place was packed with over 500 guests) and everyone got a chance to participate in a meaningful exchange of ideas. Brian DeLong, IU’s debate coach and new SPEA faculty member, did a great job under very difficult circumstances. He was able to minimize the cheers and jeers that go along with a passion filled political debate. Fortunately, we did not have to expel members of the audience for unruly behavior. The debate will be broadcast on CSPAN. When I have the air time, I will pass along the details. If you missed the debate, you can view it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6N25iWiR5k
SPEA’s Big Number
This week’s big (or low) number for SPEA Bloomington is the total amount of indirect cost on grants/contracts by SPEA faculty in FY2009-10: $658,622. This is a the lowest since FY1995-96.
Shout-Out to SPEA Bloomington
Please join me in congratulating SPEA (students, faculty and staff) on the recent National Research Council rankings of 5,000 university doctoral programs in 59 fields of study. Data for these rankings capture program activity between 2002 and 2006. These rankings are based on measures of doctoral program quality in a particular field, not just perceived rankings based on prestige. While the ranking methodology makes it difficult to establish a fixed order, it is fair to say that we are outranked by Princeton (between #1 and #2) and are neck-and-neck with Carnegie Mellon (between #2 and #5) and Syracuse (#4 according to both methodologies). We outrank a number of excellent schools. There are only two other doctoral programs on the Bloomington campus (Musicology in the Jacob School of Music and Folklore/Ethnomusicology in COAS) with rankings equal to or better than the rankings of SPEA’s public affairs and public policy doctoral programs. I encourage you to explore the data and see how we compare to other doctoral programs around the country. The data can be found at: http://www.nap.edu/rdp
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Welcome to Inside SPEA: A Bloomington Campus Blog!
The purpose of this new blog is to help keep SPEA faculty, staff, students, and alumni up-to-date on school-related developments on the Bloomington campus. In addition, it is my hope that it will provide a forum for us to discuss ongoing issues we face in meeting our mission.
The plan is to provide an update every other week. The format of these updates will include the following elements: 1) My take on a particular big issue facing the school; 2) A highlight from a recent event or a profile of a can’t miss event; 4) A big number that captures a school-wide accomplishment or some aspect of our work that needs our attention; and 5) A shout-out to a member of the SPEA community that deserves special recognition. The format is flexible, so please suggest other aspects of SPEA-BL life that should be a point of focus.
This Week’s Big Issue
I am frequently asked “What is SPEA?” I suspect many of you are also asked the same question. The simple response “The School of Public and Environmental Affairs” almost always results in the following-up question: “What is that?”
In November 1971, a proposal to create SPEA was submitted to the Indiana Commission on Higher Education. It stated that the goal of SPEA was to “establish a central focus for professional training and related research for the public sector of our economy….It will have a problem-solving, public service, and interdisciplinary character.” While this language describes our institutional origins and helps provide some context for the question “What is SPEA?”, it falls short of providing a meaningful description to many students, faculty and staff that are unfamiliar with what we do.
Some people think of SPEA as a school of government or a school of public policy. Clearly, some of the work we do is captured by this description but it fails to recognize the unique aspect of the school’s activities in environmental science, nonprofit management, and arts administration. Moreover, it gives the impression that we only work on matters relating to government, when many of our graduates are cultivating the knowledge and skills to launch careers that span the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.
Some think of SPEA as a school of the environment (or a school of natural resources). Clearly, this covers some of the activity/work that takes place in SPEA, but it falls short since it ignores the reality that most of our students and faculty work on topics that are largely unrelated to the environment.
Clearly, SPEA is an organization with many faces and we should embrace our intellectual and topical diversity. Perhaps there is no one correct response to the question: “What is SPEA?” Instead, I propose that the answer depends on who is asking the question. It would be short-sighted to give the same answer to a prospective student interested in public finance, and to a prospective student interested in environmental science or arts administration. These audiences have different frames of reference and we need to describe the School in terms that have meaning to the audience we are addressing. Moreover, SPEA’s vitality depends on its ability to re-shape itself as the landscape of modern life shifts from one topic or region of the country/globe to another. We do ourselves a disservice to force a single, uniform answer that is time invariant.
What’s Happening in SPEA Bloomington?
We have a number of very exciting guests scheduled to visit this fall and all are worthy of a closer look and your participation. A list of these events can be found at: https://onestart.iu.edu/ccl-prd/GroupCalendar.do?methodToCall=publicCalendar&pubCalId=GRP1558
I am particularly interested in an upcoming visit by Teresa Lubbers, the Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education. She will be visiting SPEA-BL during the afternoon of Friday, October 8th. The principal purpose of her visit is to speak at the first program of a new student group, the Education Policy Student Association (EDPOSA), which consists of graduate and undergraduate students across campus units who are interested in education policy issues.
Commissioner Lubbers will be available to hold an informal meeting for interested faculty on October 8th at 4 p.m. in the Dean’s Conference Room, where she will take questions from faculty and provide her perspective on the most important issues facing higher education at the state and national levels.
Teresa Lubbers became Indiana’s Commissioner for Higher Education in 2009, following a 17 year career in the Indiana State Senate. For more information on her background, here is a link to her professional biography: http://www.lubbersforsenate.com/biography.html
SPEA’s Big Number
This week’s big number for SPEA Bloomington is a record total number of full-time enrolled students in all of our educational programs: 2,030
Shout-Out to SPEA Bloomington
Please join me in congratulating Joseph Slaughterbeck, majoring in health administration at IU Bloomington, as a recipient of the Cox Fellowship Program. For more information about this prestigious award, please visit: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/15755.html
The plan is to provide an update every other week. The format of these updates will include the following elements: 1) My take on a particular big issue facing the school; 2) A highlight from a recent event or a profile of a can’t miss event; 4) A big number that captures a school-wide accomplishment or some aspect of our work that needs our attention; and 5) A shout-out to a member of the SPEA community that deserves special recognition. The format is flexible, so please suggest other aspects of SPEA-BL life that should be a point of focus.
This Week’s Big Issue
I am frequently asked “What is SPEA?” I suspect many of you are also asked the same question. The simple response “The School of Public and Environmental Affairs” almost always results in the following-up question: “What is that?”
In November 1971, a proposal to create SPEA was submitted to the Indiana Commission on Higher Education. It stated that the goal of SPEA was to “establish a central focus for professional training and related research for the public sector of our economy….It will have a problem-solving, public service, and interdisciplinary character.” While this language describes our institutional origins and helps provide some context for the question “What is SPEA?”, it falls short of providing a meaningful description to many students, faculty and staff that are unfamiliar with what we do.
Some people think of SPEA as a school of government or a school of public policy. Clearly, some of the work we do is captured by this description but it fails to recognize the unique aspect of the school’s activities in environmental science, nonprofit management, and arts administration. Moreover, it gives the impression that we only work on matters relating to government, when many of our graduates are cultivating the knowledge and skills to launch careers that span the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.
Some think of SPEA as a school of the environment (or a school of natural resources). Clearly, this covers some of the activity/work that takes place in SPEA, but it falls short since it ignores the reality that most of our students and faculty work on topics that are largely unrelated to the environment.
Clearly, SPEA is an organization with many faces and we should embrace our intellectual and topical diversity. Perhaps there is no one correct response to the question: “What is SPEA?” Instead, I propose that the answer depends on who is asking the question. It would be short-sighted to give the same answer to a prospective student interested in public finance, and to a prospective student interested in environmental science or arts administration. These audiences have different frames of reference and we need to describe the School in terms that have meaning to the audience we are addressing. Moreover, SPEA’s vitality depends on its ability to re-shape itself as the landscape of modern life shifts from one topic or region of the country/globe to another. We do ourselves a disservice to force a single, uniform answer that is time invariant.
What’s Happening in SPEA Bloomington?
We have a number of very exciting guests scheduled to visit this fall and all are worthy of a closer look and your participation. A list of these events can be found at: https://onestart.iu.edu/ccl-prd/GroupCalendar.do?methodToCall=publicCalendar&pubCalId=GRP1558
I am particularly interested in an upcoming visit by Teresa Lubbers, the Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education. She will be visiting SPEA-BL during the afternoon of Friday, October 8th. The principal purpose of her visit is to speak at the first program of a new student group, the Education Policy Student Association (EDPOSA), which consists of graduate and undergraduate students across campus units who are interested in education policy issues.
Commissioner Lubbers will be available to hold an informal meeting for interested faculty on October 8th at 4 p.m. in the Dean’s Conference Room, where she will take questions from faculty and provide her perspective on the most important issues facing higher education at the state and national levels.
Teresa Lubbers became Indiana’s Commissioner for Higher Education in 2009, following a 17 year career in the Indiana State Senate. For more information on her background, here is a link to her professional biography: http://www.lubbersforsenate.com/biography.html
SPEA’s Big Number
This week’s big number for SPEA Bloomington is a record total number of full-time enrolled students in all of our educational programs: 2,030
Shout-Out to SPEA Bloomington
Please join me in congratulating Joseph Slaughterbeck, majoring in health administration at IU Bloomington, as a recipient of the Cox Fellowship Program. For more information about this prestigious award, please visit: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/15755.html
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