Newsletter Feature Article
An Inside Perspective on Humanities Program Review
By William D. Dyer, Minnesota State University
Part One
From 8.3 (Spring 2005)
[This article is the first of two parts; due to space considerations, the “outsider’s perspective” provided by Lee Ann Westman will appear in the fall newsletter—Ed.]
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PROGRAM REVIEW. Always mandated by accrediting agencies. Often perilous, time-consuming, and work-intensive given the need for collaboration to complete it. But almost always useful, particularly when the program submitted to such scrutiny may be teetering on the brink of uncertainty-or worse, possible extinction as a consequence of administrators' questions concerning size, relevance, or duplication.
And, as I prepared to submit my little Humanities Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato (no full-time or permanent part-time faculty, save in-load contributions by faculty from the English Department; no independent program status; no real operating budget beyond an $865 for materials and equipment), I knew our continued existence was in doubt. Don Larsson, the former director of the program, had suggested as much, both in conversations with me and in program reports he'd completed over nine years. Our university's budget was growing increasingly tight, he'd told me; funding from the legislature had been falling far short of administration requests over the past couple of biennia. A new president and academic vice president were now on board. Perceived fat and instances of programmatic duplication would need to be trimmed, we were told. At our fall convocation of 2003, our president intimated cordially that everything was on the table for a full and careful audit on the way to making us a more lean, mean, and efficient organization. Be afraid. Have a nice day.
Back in February at NAHE's conference in Richmond, Lee Ann Westman from Ferris State University and I reported on the results of our collaboration on my little program's successful review process. Our perspectives on that process were very different. My "inside" vantage point sought to gather data that would help me determine whether the program could or even should survive at its present size, be absorbed into the much larger English Department, or commit to growth leading to independence. Lee Ann, at my invitation and after some considerable research (some of that suggested by Lee Ann), entered our program review process as "outside evaluator." The only remotely fortuitous aspect of the process was how well we complemented each other's work. And, given the care with which we communicated and confirmed our several responsibilities as well as the details of my little program's self-study, we removed luck from the equation.
We concluded our presentation with a series of recommendations about how to conduct a productive and comprehensive review of a small humanities program. And, in so doing, we noted that there is essentially no ending to the process-I'll continue to implement Lee Ann's short-term and long-term recommendations for strengthening our program through the balance of the five-year review process, at which time the cycle will begin anew. For those about to embark on such a process, we'd like to share briefly those recommendations. We claim no special expertise here. However, we think our experience illustrates the importance of preparation and the reflexive relationship between inside and outside program perspectives.
1. Dyer-The Inside Perspective
The program review process can't yield anything meaningful without a thorough self-study. For me, that meant research into the history of the program. Particularly important for me in this welter of information were two items: (1) obstructions to program growth and independence; and (2) recent developments that contributed to the program's uniqueness and academic quality.
No small part of our self-study entailed the development and circulation of surveys for several populations, the results of which needed to be analyzed and reported upon. Those populations included all faculty teaching in the program; students taking our courses for General Education credit; our program majors and minors; and our "alumni" who had graduated with a Humanities major or minor during the last eleven years. The construction of these surveys was equally important and required the input of our Humanities Advisory Board.
But the driving force of the self-study was the "preface." Those few pages described the current state of the program, the director's sense of the program's greatest assets and liabilities, and concluded with several questions that meant to focus not only the program's self-study but also the direct engagement and responses of the outside evaluator who, after being sent and having read the self-study, would visit our campus, conduct interviews of all interested parties to our program, observe all courses underway at the time of her visit, and submit a written report to us including her recommendations within a month of her visit.
No small part of the process involved finding a compatible outside evaluator. For me that meant reviewing every humanities program that had received a write-up in the Blue Book of American Colleges and Universities. But it also meant finding someone who could give us an objective and fresh look without being us. My search ended with our agreement on a contract for Lee Ann's services over a two and a half-day site visit in late February 2004 and a detailed itinerary of meetings and observations and interviews with everyone/anyone significant to our program.
To be continued...
