Resource Planning (2011 Strategic Plan)

It is critical that the academic deans, perhaps as part of an expanded Advisory Committee to the President, collectively develop short-term and long-term plans for allocating faculty lines, staff support, and resources in a transparent, clearly structured way. This requires an honest and detailed dialogue about the future directions of the College and about which areas of the academic program need assistance to meet the demands of students for courses and Divisional advisors. In order to support Hampshire’s commitment to providing a liberal arts education to all its students, an advisory body elevated to the Presidential level should always consider a holistic perspective of the campus and negotiate competing needs and interests in the service of a balanced educational mission.

Given the 30 percent growth in the student population, Hampshire’s student-to-faculty ratio in fields throughout the five schools is high. The correlation between workloads of faculty and the satisfaction of student demand requires serious consideration. A careful assessment of current and future needs and an intentional response to this issue will be vital to support all other academic program initiatives, as well as retention efforts and new student recruitment strategies.

We propose a summit, or a series of conversations, with all the academic deans and cross-school program directors, selected staff and students, to discuss the various needs and academic priorities across campus and to make decisions about the allocation of funding, faculty lines and resources that benefit the community as a whole. In a climate of scarce resources, all schools and programs suffer from “deferred maintenance” and require more and updated learning spaces, labs and studio space, equipment and staffing. A third party, for example, Jay Vogt 72F from Peoplesworth (who facilitated the visioning sessions for the college in February 2011), would facilitate this meeting. The deans could invite one person of their choice from another institution to add an outside perspective to our program balance and resource needs. All schools and programs should submit a detailed needs assessment, estimated costs and budget justifications prior to this series of meetings. All schools and programs would receive support from appropriate campus offices to develop these materials. These documents would provide the basis for discussions about how any one initiative is tied to the strategic plans for the school, program or whole college.

Comments
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 * I love the idea of the summits to further explore these important decisions. YET, because this perhaps the most critical aspect of all of the strategic planning, I want to argue that in addition to the deans, we develop some kind of program representation--that is, move towards some kind of proportional representation. The deans function as our equivalent of the Senate, with equal representation of the schools. Yet the schools are not equal in terms of the number of faculty, programs, or students served. If we are talking about something as critical as faculty lines, staff support, and resources (in a transparent, clearly structured way) lets make it truly representational and bring in voices from the programs (both school and not school based) from theatre to music to the humanities to history to environmental studies to CYL etc. Karen Koehler, Professor of Architectural and Art History
 * I also like the idea of summits, but I want to note that with only the input of selected staff and students, such summits will not be able to "consider a holistic perspective of the campus." There needs to be broad solicitation of various perspectives and viewpoints, otherwise resources will be allocated not based on what will best serve students and respect needs of faculty and staff, but based on which issues happen to come to the fore. I also think that clear processes for future decisions about resource allocaiton need to be established, so that it is not alwyas so much of a judgement call. Claire Oberholtzer, student F07
 * This is a very important issue. I also like the idea of summits.  I agree with Claire that there should be broad solicitation of various perspectives and that it would be helpful to establish clear processes for future decision-making.  Rebecca Thomas, recent alum F'07