#271
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:08:17 EST
From: Sue Baldwin <Suesball@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: HEDIR-L Digest - 24 Feb 2008 to 25 Feb 2008 (#2008-50)
** Congratulations to Dr. James Price
** 2007 AAHE Scholar
** Be at his presentation in Fort Worth!
**
** The HEDIR RSS
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Hi
My colleague and I have been through some very rough times under our department's former leadership. That leadership was removed a year ago and entirely removed from the department in January of this year. We find ourselves putting out many fires that were created by this past leadership. Two of these fires still linger with a fierce flame:
1) movement to a school (school of the professions) away from the school of natural and social sciences (FNSS) - this move was made by the former leader without the faculty vote in the matter...we were told by the former leader that the move was mandated by the President! A couple of weeks ago we found out that this was a blatant lie. Now this move could be tolerated, but we find ourselves under a dean who does not understand our discipline - health and wellness. The Dean's background is Speech, Language, Pathology. I've taken the path of trying to educate the Dean, but find that he/she sees insists that we not use the word EDUCATION/EDUCATORS when we refer to ourselves as HEALTH EDUCATORS and that our business is HEALTH EDUCATION! In addition he finds not link to SCHOOLS in COMMUNITY HEALTH (just two glaring issues). Which leads me to the second fierce flame......
2) the Dean is going to move our department in March (we've heard
unofficially) to two offices in an annex trailer on the opposite side of campus! This move takes us away from our home of an office suite that houses 2 full-time and 4 part-time instructors (these individuals will loose office space), conference room attached to an exercise lab, a CPR lab, student computer lab, access to the fitness center, locker rooms, pool, 2 gymnasiums, indoor track, outdoor track, and connections with office departments housed in that same building (recreation and athletics). Our major is very student oriented and we fear loosing that connection and pulse of the students, if such a move were to occur, would be detrimental to our program. One of the special aspects of our program is that our student interns facilitate the operation of our campus fitness center. It is considered a teaching station and when the fitness center was planned it was the intention that to help defray costs my department's role was to cover the manpower of running the center via student interns.
I was made aware of this agreement that occurred prior to my arrival in January of 2008 and have responded to meet all requests by the center (the former leadership really dropped the ball on this agreement and never put the students in place!) The move is going to occur to allow Criminal Justice faculty to have our office spaces as they have 15 faculty and about 400 majors and their faculty are crunched for space. The Health and Wellness Department has about 160 majors.
We are beginning to prepare for SABPAC program approval and have lots of work to do. We need to rebuild and are eager to do so. How do you rebuild with
such a move? How do you recruit future professionals? How do you honestly
face students?
Some of the avenues that I've explored to prevent this move include:
approaching the college senate leadership, discussion with the former Dean (FNSS) - who is about to retire, asking SABPAC (J. McKenzie) for a letter of support outlining SABPAC guidelines for facilities for program approval, discussions with the current Dean (although he will not take appointments with us recently), attempted appointment with the Provost (he will not take appointment either), and discussions with regional union representatives. On the positive side we do have an interim chair from another department (Dietetics and
Nutrition) who supports us and who has indicated he that he is fighting to stop this move. Oh yeah did I mention I'm up for reappointment in the Fall of 2008!
Is there anything else that anyone can think of to prevent this move from actually taking place? Please let me know if you have any other ideas. Help!
Thank you
Sue
716-523-9669