October 31, 2003

To: Those interested in the College of Agriculture’s Academic Plan DRAFT for the 2004 to 2009 period

From: Frank Galey, Dean

Re: Second set of comments on the plan

General:

Definition of “success” -- It seems the college mission statement should be the yardstick. Strategic Issues III states “…proactive leader in education and scholarship to cultivate healthy, sustainable systems for Wyoming’s agriculture, environment and natural resources, and rural communities.”

Reorganization of departments appears to increase the segregation of applied and basic scientists. Mixing of an excess number of disciplines leads to misunderstandings and a lack of appreciation for each other. Some disciplines will disappear over time. This will lead to an inability of the college to adapt to the continual change in research and education priorities. If departments are created around themes rather than disciplines, a theme could be a dead issue in 10 to 20 years. It seems a university has a responsibility to maintain disciplines for education purposes. Systems research requires essentially all agriculture disciplines. Frequently faculty in different disciplines cooperate better when within department stress and competition does not exist.

Should plant and animal pest management be considered as a department if reorganizaing? Should plant sciences forget undergraduate education and move to the WAES if reorganized. Perhaps the Australian and Canadian system should be considered for plant sciences in which we would move to the Wyoming Department of Agriculture.

If a department is organized to serve “Sustainable livestock and cropping systems”, it would need to contain crops, animal, weeds, plant and animal pathology, entomology, Ag Economics, range management, and soils and water faculty. We don’t believe this is possible nor do we believe it would work if it was organized in this fashion.

Focus areas – “Integrated animal and plant agricultural systems”, Better titles would be “Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems” or “Sustainable Agroecosystems.” We suggest focus areas be addressed by teams possibly using the extension initiative team model. This will allow for changes in priorities over time.

In the introduction – it appears that AP’s are expected to get grants, but they can’t advise graduate students. A double standard.

My comments focus on three major points for the plan. First, whole departmental mergers to save administrative costs may not in fact achieve the desired impacts on creating areas of distinction as laid out in the current draft. Possible alternatives are suggested. Second, creation of interdisciplinary graduate degree programs needs to be done in a judicious manner so as to actually improve student skills and not create watered down degree programs. Third, the College of Agriculture is currently underinvesting in marketing of current programs to non-agriculturally oriented students. Increased investment in advertising to non-ag students could improve enrollments rather than force us to continue to maintain current numbers or face downward trending numbers.

Given declining faculty resources, there is a proposal to merge the “current 7 departments and migrate the college’s departmental structure toward the 4 areas of distinction when and where such moves make sense from organizational, philosophical, and/or resource allocation standpoints.” Care must be taken when merging departments as there are many good reasons why discipline oriented departments exist. My premise is that a successful department is one that is productive in all three areas mandated in a land grant mission. Those mandated areas are learning (teaching), discovery (research), and engagement (extension). A department that is successful in these areas is likely one that is not spending a lot of time and energy related to non-productive endeavors and in fact functions well as a group. As such, group theory would seem to offer us some ideas about what makes for a successful group/department.

Much literature has been written about group behavior, group work and motivating groups (Hogg, 1992; Hare, 1992; Galegher, Kraut, and Egido, 1990). Knowles and Knowles (1959) provide one of the standards for defining a group. They indicated that a collection of people becomes a group when: 1) Its membership can be defined; 2) It possesses a group consciousness ; 3) It posesses a sense of shared purpose; 4) Its members have an interdependence in the satisfaction of their needs; 5) Interaction among the members is evident, and; 6) The group is able to act in a unitary manner. In essence, when a collection of individuals cannot be linked by some common identifiable characteristics it is not a group. Seaman (1981) states that not all collections of people achieve the status of a group. A collection of individuals have no coherence and shared purpose of function. In fact, people may work to negate the functions of others in a collection of individuals. With a group, the people complement and assist the functions of all other people in the group and in the achievement of the group’s shared goal or purpose.

Most groups are formed for some specific task or purpose. In a learning environment, interest in content or skills to be learned provide a shared sense of purpose ( Seaman, 1981; Gallager, Kraut and Egido, 1990). “A group tends to be attractive to an individual and to command his or her loyalty to the extent that: a) It satisfies felt needs and helps achieve goals that are compelling to the individual; b) It provides a feeling of acceptance and security; c) Its membership is congenial to the individual, and; d) It is highly valued by outsiders,” according to Seaman (1981). In an effective group every person tends to feel committed to a decision or goal to the extent that they have participated in determining it (Seaman, 1981). Another indication of a successful group is the type of role necessary for the leader to take to get tasks accomplished. If the leader must act authoritarian to motivate workers it is indicative of a collection of individuals without shared vision (Seaman, 1981). If the leader of the group can motivate workers by acting as a consultant and by making suggestions that is an indication of group cohesiveness and commitment of individuals to the shared purpose of the group (Seaman, 1981). The most common cause of failure to achieve tasks for a collection of individuals is that they do not achieve group status.

While the combination of seven departments into four offers some interesting possibilities from a resources standpoint, we must ask the question, will these combinations create effective work groups that will further the mission of the College? Seaman (1981) states that the larger a group becomes (he defines optimal size as 8 to 10 individuals) the less productive it becomes. He lists the following reasons for that phenomenon: 1) the communication patterns become more complex and indirect; 2) Organizational problems increase as the size of the group increases; 3) As group size increases, demands upon individuals becomes less stringent, and; 4) As group size increases, members are likely to obtain fewer personal satisfactions. Seaman (1981) states that group composition is extremely important to the success of the group. Seaman (1981) states that the best kind of composition seems to be that of individuals who are somewhat different in attitudes, backgrounds, skills and experiences, but not radically different. Heterogeneous skills and abilities can add to the group’s ability to perform tasks, but too much heterogeneity may lead to different perceptions of outcome (Seamen, 1981). The more diverse the group, the more likely subgroups are formed, increased hidden agendas become more prevalent in group behavior and the decreased cohesiveness of the group (Seaman, 1981; Hare, 1992; Hogg, 1992). As more subgroups are formed and more hidden agendas become prevalent, the more likely the leader must take an authoritarian role. As this occurs the group becomes a collection of individuals which no longer share a sense of purpose, vision or commitment to the original group goals (Seaman, 1981). For these reasons it would seem the sheer size and the large diversity of the groups being proposed greatly increases the probability of reduced group productivity or group failure. This will be counterproductive to the mission of the College. Thus, discipline oriented departments would seem to have a greater likelihood of success overall.

Some arguments have been made that the current divergence between discipline oriented research and outreach missions can be rectified by administrators forcing interdisciplinary mergers. Beattie and Watts (1987) provide a coherent argument as to the flaws in that approach. Their main argument stems from the fact that there is a growing trend in publication of articles that are in fact applied research, not basic research, and faculty respond very well to the incentive mechanisms within the system. Their argument indicates that learned societies have a greater chance of being served by attainment of excellence brought on by individual faculty initiative rather than academic agendas driven from the top down. The reality is that if the current system is not achieving what is desired, the incentives need to change, and faculty will respond to them. Forcing mergers creates the environment of possible disincentives from hidden agendas, in-fighting and philosophical disagreements brought on by diverse discipline orientation.

Dobbs (1987) points out that “every profession needs ongoing, strong discipline efforts if it is to maintain intellectual vitality and, indeed, to make major contributions to multidisciplinary efforts…..Agricultural economists who are pursuing and extending new knowledge in their discipline tend to keep current on theoretical and methological developments and on recent management and policy findings (p. 15).” Dobbs (1987) goes on to point out that major selective commitment to multidisciplinary projects can enrich the ability of professionals to meet the objectives of the department and college they are housed in beyond what would be the case with disciplinary work alone. Thus, there needs to be balance between discipline oriented work and multidisciplinary work both from an individual faculty member and a department’s perspective. Merging departments that have too diverse of disciplines will likely take away from this as energy taken away from discipline-oriented work can deplete the overall intellectual capital stock of the newly merged department.

Given the above discussion, the risks of actually creating dysfunctional departments that do not achieve the goals of the College and do not pursue vigorously excellence in the areas of distinction seems to outweigh the benefits of potential administrative cost savings. A better structure would seem to be one that creates incentives for multidisciplinary research in the areas of distinction and leaves structures that foster discipline oriented work and degree programs as well. My suggestions are as follows:

1) Merit raises must be, at least in part, a function of participation in and output from multidisciplinary and or regional projects related to the College’s defined areas of distinction. Moreover, the College’s AES competitive grants program should weight such proposals more highly. These are incentives that could be put in place without much cost or investment of new dollars.

2) Rather than departmental mergers, create four divisions suggested as departments in the current draft of the plan. Departments in those divisions could have a chair, which receives a small stipend for being a liason to the Division Head, which administrates the division. Thus, larger salaries are invested in Division Heads, and overall, salary savings can be invested in faculty positions.

3) As retirements or attrition occurs within upper Administration, the need for filling those positions should also be scrutinized, i.e., do we need as many upper level administrators at high salaries as the faculty numbers decline? For example, do we need three Associate Deans and two Assistant Directors? Could some of the Associate Dean responsibilities be folded into the Office of the Dean, or could one Associate Dean do the job where there currently are two? The Super Dean structure is in place at several Universities.

Literature Cited:

Allcorn, S. Workplace Superstars in Resistant Organizations. Quorum Books: New York. 1991.

Beattie, B. R., and M. J. Watts. “The Proper Preeminent Role of Parent Disciplines and Learned Societies in Setting the Agenda at Land Grant Universities,” Western Journal of Agricultural Economics. 12,2(1987): 95-103.

Galegher, J., R. E. Kraut, and C. Egido. “Patterns of Contact and Communication in Scientific Research Collaboration,” Intellectual Teamwork: Social and Technological Foundations of Cooperative Work. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers: New Jersey. 1980.

Hare, A. P. Groups, Teams, and Social Interaction: Theories and Applications. Praeger: New York. 1992.

Hogg, M. A. The Social Psychology of Group Cohesiveness: From Attraction to Social Identity. New York University Press: New York. 1992.

Knowles, M. S., and H. Knowles. Introduction to Group Dynamics. Association Press: New York. 1959.

Seaman, D. F. Working Effectively with Task-Oriented Groups. McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York. 1981.

Before we combine departments into the categories identified in the plan we need a much stronger assurance that Administration really views this as a need and is willing to support the College with two faculty FTEs for every lost administrator. Not only that we need a real expression of support by Administration that this new organization and plan is something they are willing support in the long run. (One way to do this is to request that the Administration formally meet with the Agric. Advisory Council to state their support publicly. Emails and informal conversations are not enough.) Merging will require several years of costs and adjustments affecting productivity in the short run, and may or may not yield benefits in the long term. So merging to multidisciplinary divisions needs to come with real assurances that there are benefits. If we are going to proceed with merging then I would suggest the following: Leave department structure the same but build teams (or councils) around the multidisciplinary core areas with an administrative head and rotating membership. These groups will discuss faculty hiring priorities to be proposed through the Deans office, funding, academic programming and outreach. There will be departmental representatives that will carry the departments’ preferences to the team. T&P then would be evaluated by the specific teams instead of a T&P committee.

We need to press the case with Administration that faculty and departments willing to work with IENR need to be rewarded. This is not something that IENR can do, only Administration. Rewards have to be at both the individual faculty level and at the department level. Departments that make an effort to work with IENR need to be seen as being rewarded in CPM. That is currently not the impression in or out of the College of Agriculture. Finally we need seek formal joint appointments with IENR and International Studies. To date this is solved through adjunct status which does not count. Both SENR and IS need to be able compete for faculty.

I now have a better understanding of the current administrative philosophy. I understand their concern, I just don't happen to agree with the conclusion regarding how to proceed. I would only stress then, that I think that it's critical to allow individual departments to define their own areas of strength (who

better knows?). At least in terms of our department, it seems as though this decision may have been made to some extent in a vacuum. For this reason, our genuine strengths are not currently reflected in

the academic plan. I would also note that their are plenty of objective criteria for the administration to in turn judge the honesty of our own self assessments. Namely, grant dollars and publications. Given these criteria, I think that for our own departments claim for distinction in "genetics and genomics" would

stand up to claims of "excellence" made by any other department at this university. I think it's important that this somehow gets communicated to the upper administration. Clearly, we will need to work with you to get this accomplished.

MOLB should not be viewed as a "service department". Which isn't to say that we shouldn't be generous with our time and expertise. Something we already are. For some reason there is a perception out there that molecular biology somehow isn't a field. That it's merely a set of flashy techniques. This is of course ridiculous (just ask the ten of thousands of molecular biologists in academics and industry). Molecular biology is really a knowledge base. It's the study of how all living things work at the molecular and cellular level. Asking this department to take on the role of a "service department" would be like asking the math department to be a service department for physics, chemistry, statistics, and engineering, since they all have to add two and two occasionally. English might as well be the service department for all departments that happen to use the English language. They can edit our papers for us.

Department self selection will likely lead to chaos and lack of continued faculty responsibility for their current undergraduate programs. It serves as in invite to those that are note committed to the college land-grant mission to join a different college. The college could immediately be 20 to 30% smaller. It is the faculty that will collaborate. They are excluded as written.

Areas of Distinction:

Self defined areas of excellence. Say something enough times and people might actually believe it. Never mind whether it has any bearing in reality. One thing that should be stated though, is that it is completely untrue that we cannot compete with the Yales and Harvards of the world for RO1s. (Two of our faculty members) each have two! I agree that creating a center in proteomics at Wyoming was naïve, but allowing individuals who are experts in their field to compete successfully at the national level should be a no brainer.

Practically though, we need to get something reasonable added to "the list" that will actually allow us to hire good faculty - at all levels. I think "genetics and genomics" is very workable and would fit that bill. I think getting something like this added is essential. The scariest thing I heard yesterday was that we would be confined to hires at the assistant professor level in very narrow areas. Honestly, this is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Wyoming just can't pull that off. If Harvard wants to advertise for something specific, they can probably get away with it, safe in the knowledge that everyone will apply and no one will turn them down. That won't happen here. We'll likely end up with third-rate people or no one at all. They won't be the people we want and they won't be competitive for grants. The way this department has historically managed to get good people is by casting the widest net. We can truthfully get excellent people, but only this way. We need some "area of distinction" that will effectively not hog tie us in future hires.

The items listed are as much life science as ENR. Note: Sustainable Ag is driven by Plant biology (Life Sci) and profitability. It probably belongs under life science but we realize its under ENR in MFIII.

Suggest terminology (sustainable agriculture) similar to MFIII, i.e. “Sustainable Agroecosystems”. Note: MFIII states “Interdisciplinary expertise supporting sustainable agriculture – requires further development.” Need to broaden the thinking to include the entire system. List specific areas as done in other parts of the plan.

Curriculum:

Combining undergraduate programs leads to general titles that high school students don’t identify with. Current cross-department programs are the troublesome ones. Do we want more of these?

Hiring:

Faculty position fills “will need to align with both the Areas of Distinction as well as needs identified by state constituents and student demand”. Example problems with the above statement include producer businesses continually wants new crops, new crop varieties, and new cropping systems; how continue to do horticulture instruction if horticulture is not an area of distinction; and how is the winter wheat program continued, how many programs in the college have equal or more impact than winter wheat release that continue increases in yield and disease resistance (profitability)?

Are we to stop doing the things that don’t fit the distinction criteria? We can change what we do without changing faculty. This department frequently changes discovery and engagement programs as new sustainable ag challenges surface.

“Key spotlights will be on ENR” and programs related to it. The flavor of this hiring statement is reflective of the entire plan. Life sciences needs to be placed on equal footing with ENR rather than being a subset of ENR. As written, SENR becomes the leadership and decision maker for the College of Agriculture.

Name/Image/Marketing:

At many other university programs like ours are in department of Human Ecology, or whole colleges with that name.  Human Sciences is also used.  It might be that within our college we are more familiar with the traditional agriculture side, and not on the cutting edge of other focus areas.  Our department will support a name change, and hope that we can come up with one that really does represent all of us for the 21st Century.  There are many possiblities out there, and I did like the one Dr. Wangberg proposed as well as the one from Karen Hansen.  My main goal is to see the college as a whole marketed in a more "modern" light.  I look forward to the dialog that is to come.

The term “College of Agriculture” does not accurately portray the variety of activities in the college and we should address this. I think all of us agree that we are not capturing students, particularly from urban backgrounds, many of whom may envision us as the college of thinking – sometimes obtunded – ranchers. We should retain Agriculture in the title, for historical and political reasons, and add to it so that the breath of the college’s activities is portrayed. I’d prefer something that was self evident.

I think Human Sciences is too encompassing and vague. Other programs in UW that are outside the college (WWAMI and health sciences, psychology, political science, anthropology) can argue that they represent just as well, or better, Human Sciences.

I agree that the term "College of Agriculture" does not accurately portray the variety of activities in the college.  I agree that we should retain Agriculture in title, but add to it.  That said, there are many things other than name that impose much more severe opportunity costs to the college operations.  To me this is reminiscent of the discussion of school colors.  I just saw replays of the Virginia Tech game -- the stands were full of people wearing the school colors of purple and orange (how many people look good in those colors).  The point is, the people are happy to wear purple and orange (or any other combination) when they represent a winning football team. Rather than expending time and energy focusing on names or colors, I advocate focusing first on actually doing something to address the harder issues that impede our efficiency and effectiveness. 

I don't necessarily have a problem with a name change as long as Agriculture remains in it as others have suggested.  However, I don't believe just changing the name will solve all problems in letting people know who we are and what we do.  Whether we call ourselves the College of Agriculture or something else, we still have to market ourselves and our programs.  That is something we haven't done a very good job of in the past and will always be a major need.

Currently the College of Agriculture has stable to declining student enrollments. This is likely to continue, if our main supply of students comes from traditional agricultural or rural backgrounds within the region. Non-ag students who have never been exposed to the College of Agriculture’s offerings will likely carry with them the expectation that the College of Agriculture offers the same type of training they see vocational agriculture students receiving in their respective high schools. While there is nothing wrong for students to pursue production oriented training, that constitutes a small set of the degree programs offered. It is my belief that the current marketing strategies of the College do not expose a large number of non-ag oriented students to our programs. Demographics suggest the number of high school students graduating within Wyoming’s borders will continue to decline, and structurally the shrinking number of producers suggests the number of young people growing up in production agriculture settings is declining as well. Thus, recruiting from a shrinking population will likely not provide the kind of student enrollments that will sustain the college. Serious investment should be made in television and radio advertising oriented to non-ag students about the potential opportunities found in the College of Agriculture. Broad rotator advertisement spots can be bought on television at relatively discounted prices. Often times radio spots put out as public service announcements can be sent to radio stations and will be aired for free. Such advertising should be aimed at demographics beyond Wyoming borders and on stations other than country music orientations. Perhaps an alliance between community colleges with ag programs and the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture can share the expenses of such a campaign as they will all likely benefit. We need to think beyond brochures and displays at ag functions, advertising in ag press and advertising on the Casper television station. We need to seriously invest salary savings from downsizing efforts in professional marketing campaigns to non-ag oriented students that complements our current efforts.

Corporate Marketing Plan – This means much more than pamphlets and meeting prospective students. We need a professional marketing/public relations campaign for the front range and community colleges – television advertisements, infomercial approaches, full page spreads in the Denver Post, Salt Lake Tribune, Billings Gazette, Dallas Morning Herald, etc. The farther we go from Wyoming, the more we need to stress our natural resource strengths.

Suggest recruitment become number 1 action item.

Graduate Education:

As part of the plan, mention is made of creating interdisciplinary graduate degree programs. While these seem to address concerns about potential narrowness of graduates within a discipline, again the benefits of specialization must not be forgotten. Broadness may result in lack of depth desired by potential employers. As an example, a graduate of an interdisciplinary PhD program in Natural Resources Management took a faculty position at NDSU in Agricultural Economics. His economic training was such that his research was not publishable in what was considered “top” agricultural economics journals, which ultimately almost cost him tenure. While this is only annectdotal evidence, the point is that employers may very well value the depth of knowledge that comes from discipline oriented graduate programs. Such depth does not negate the student from working on an interdisciplinary research project. This relates to Dobbs’ (1987) position regarding the need for discipline oriented knowledge by faculty when it comes to excellence in multidisciplinary research. Creating interdisciplinary degree programs only makes sense when there is some parent discipline coursework that is complemented by other coursework outside that discipline. A few courses in a number of disciplines likely creates a generalist that lacks depth and creates the potential for weak research projects from any of the viewpoints of any of the disciplines involved. Thus, graduate degrees that offer potential for depth of knowledge and demand from employers will more likely create programs with flourishing graduate student numbers than just a broad graduate degree program.
Literature cited:

Dobbs, T. L. “Toward More Effective Involvement of Agricultural Economists in Multidisciplinary Research and Extension Programs,” Western Journal of Agricultural Economics. 12,1(1987): 8-16.

Who is applying to for membership in graduate groups? Sounds like an exclusive club. GA’s allocated to only those accepted to a group. The UC-Davis experience is that these groups have become exclusive with the discipline having the most faculty in a group taking control of the program. Is this what we want? What group would accept horticulture? Graduate programs should not drive research programs if going to fulfill college mission.

Engagement:

Extension is not getting supported by local, state, and federal agencies, and is not being supported by the University. We need to recognize this and expand credit-hour programming. If our work is not counted because the metric that is used doesn’t recognize extension as an education program then we need to adapt and point out to constituencies that we are not getting the support to operate extension they way it has traditionally been expected.

How many short-term people are we thinking about hiring? Not a bad idea. Typically when hiring temporary, one obtains lower quality individual or pay a higher salary. If provide support dollars a current employee will usually attack the problem.

Suggest adding “agricultural profitability” to the end of paragraph 4.

Suspect other teams also have a tie to economic development. Maybe the Enhancing Wyoming Communities and Households Initiative Team should have responsibility to also communicate with other teams.

Discovery:

What is the AES office going to discontinue doing when taking on added responsibilities? Don’t oppose this, but adding yet another job to AES director.

Other issues and Resources:

Implies we will only support areas of distinction. Again, should we discontinue the winter wheat genetics testing and variety release program? It uses 0.25 – 0.5 technical/faculty FTE.

How is the college reorganization going to catalyze units campus-wide?