Divided Conversations: Identities, Leadership, and Change in Public Higher Education

1. Divided Conversations and Pathways of Connection

1 Chapter 1 Divided Conversations and Pathways of Connection As any number of analysts of higher education have noted, American academic communities are notably fractured places with “tribes” and “territories” (Adams 1988; Becher 1989) and unruly forms of governance (Eckel and Kezar 2006). Some characterize academe as a culture of complaint , one in which we can’t “just get along” (Frazee 2008). The cultures on our campuses too often frustrate change and innovation, deny access to talented potential students (and faculty), and fail miserably to keep struggling students in college when financial, emotional, academic, or family pressures make it difficult for them to continue. Centrifugal forces, including reward structures that essentially shift faculty and administrators ’ attention outside their institutions, ultimately reduce the focus on students and stymie attempts to create a more cohesive campus community . These cultures stifle both the intellectual work and the institutional commitments of both junior and midcareer faculty, cutting off a muchneeded critical perspective for change. By focusing on academic administrators’ and faculty life stories as they play out on campus, this work provides a different perspective from recent scholarship on higher education. Much has been written about the crisis in higher education, but this crisis literature has rarely touched on the lives of faculty themselves, their training, and their relationships with university administration (Bok 2003; Boyer 1990; Calhoun 2006; Ehrenberg 2006a; Hersh and Merrow 2005; Kirp 2003; Schuster and Finkelstein 2006). Nor has it delved deeply into the lives and career aspirations of senior administrators. By examining their experiences, and by analyzing the relationships between and among faculty and administrators, we provide insights into the divided conversations taking place on our campuses. 2 Divided Conversations During the course of our research, we interviewed thirty faculty, chairs, deans, provosts and associate provosts, and presidents/chancellors on eight campuses in the Northeast over a six-month period in 2008. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in person, each lasting one to two hours. The campuses ranged in size from around nine thousand students to well over twenty-five thousand students, and they varied in terms of prestige from less to more selective. The sample included both rural and urban campuses. Like most public campuses in the Northeast, all were unionized. We interviewed on several types of campuses: four flagships (which we call Large Rural Flagship, Small Rural Flagship, Big State University, and Rural Midsize U), three regional campuses (Suburban Branch, Urban Branch, and City Campus), and one master’s level comprehensive (Comprehensive U). One of the campuses was the result of several mergers. Another had been established to accommodate the surge of enrollments in the 1960s, and two others had grown up around former state teachers colleges. In several cases (Urban Branch, Large Rural Flagship, Big State U), the campuses had explicitly set the aim of moving up in the prestige rankings. We used chain referral sampling techniques, beginning with our personal contacts and moving outward from there. We do not pretend to have drawn a representative sample; nonetheless, we actively sought out respondents from a variety of disciplines and with a variety of experiences. We aimed to include both those who had relatively traditional degrees (political science, literature) and those who had experience in professional education (business), as well as those who had been in their positions a long time and those who were relatively new to their positions. We also aimed to include as many campuses in the Northeast as we could gain access to in the time allowed. Our sample included eleven women and nineteen men. Three of our administrators were African American; the rest, white. Ultimately, our sample included four who had served as presidents or chancellors. Three of these had served on regional campuses (and one had served on two such campuses). The other had served on a flagship campus . Only one of these had not gone through the faculty ranks (and did not hold a doctorate). Strikingly, three of our four presidents/chancellors were women. Of the eight provosts and two associate provosts (both of whom went on to assume a provost position), one served on a state comprehensive college campus, seven served on regional campuses, and two were from flag- Divided Conversations and Pathways of Connection 3 ship campuses. All the provosts had served in a number of administrative roles, including stints as dean, graduate dean, vice provost for research, and department chair. Two had served as...