By Dave O’Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
September 11, 2007

Kent State University’s Faculty Senate overwhelmingly passed two resolutions Monday decrying a suggested reallocation of graduate studies funding that could doom the university’s history doctoral program, supporters say.

Both measures urged university president Lester Lefton, provost Robert Frank and Dr. John West, vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, to fight what critics say is a Gov. Bob Taft-era mandate from the state to put more money into funding graduate studies in the sciences at the expense of a true liberal arts education.

. . .

On Monday, faculty senator Robert Twieg, a chemistry professor, held up what he called a “doctoral program hit list” of programs that would suffer from cuts in funding.

Jerry Feezel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said “there was never a proposal to eliminate the history doctoral program” and if there was, it was the first he had heard of it.

Read full article here.

By Sarah Kliff

Newsweek

Sept. 10, 2007 issue

One week into his premed classes at Washington University in St. Louis, Ryan Jacobson was rethinking his plan to become a doctor. His biology and chemistry classes were large, competitive and impersonal—not how he wanted to spend the next four years. “Sitting in a chemistry class, I knew it wasn’t the right place for me,” he says. Jacobson found the history department, with its focus on faculty interaction and discussion, a better fit. But he had no intention of leaving his medical aspirations behind. So Jacobson majored in history while also taking the science and math courses required for medical school. When he graduated last spring, he won the departmental prize for undergraduate thesis for his work on the history of race relations in Tulsa, Okla. He started medical school at the University of Illinois last month. “Historians are supposed to integrate information with the big picture,” he says, “which will hopefully be useful as a physician.”

Even as breakthroughs in science and advances in technology make the practice of medicine increasingly complex, medical educators are looking beyond biology and chemistry majors in the search for more well-rounded students who can be molded into caring and analytic doctors. “More humanities students have been applying in recent years, and medical schools like them,” says Gwen Garrison, assistant vice president for medical-school services and studies at the Association of American Medical Colleges. “The schools are looking for a kind of compassion and potential doctoring ability. This makes many social-science and humanities students particularly well qualified.”

The number of science majors applying to medical school has been steady for the past decade—about 65 percent of applicants major in biology or another physical science. What’s changing is who gets in. When Gail Morrison, who runs admissions at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, sorts through the school’s 6,500 yearly applicants, she is not looking for students who spent their undergrad years hunched over biology and physics textbooks. “It doesn’t make you a better doctor to know how fast a mass falls from a tree,” she says. Approximately 40 percent of the students that Penn accepts to its medical school now come from nonscience backgrounds. That number has been rising steadily over the past 20 years. “They’ve got to be happy and have a life outside of medicine,” says Morrison, “otherwise they’ll get overwhelmed. We need whole people.”

In 1999, a national survey of first-year medical students found that 58 percent took a social-science class for personal interest. In last year’s entering class, the number was more than 70 percent. Humanities students also fare better on the MCAT, the standardized test for medical-school admissions. Among the 2006 applicants to medical school, humanities majors outscored biology majors in all categories.

Michael Sciola, who’s been advising premed students at Wesleyan University for the past 13 years, has seen liberal-arts majors become more attractive to medical schools. And he’s not surprised that those who stray from science are finding success. “Medical schools have really been looking for that scholar-physician in the past few years,” he says. “We’re living in an increasingly complex world, and the liberal arts give you the skills to understand that better.”

The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York has a program designed to attract nonscience majors. Each year, Mount Sinai accepts about 30 college sophomores from around the country through its humanities and medicine program. The students do not have to take the MCAT, but they are required to pursue a humanities major as undergrads before starting at Mount Sinai. “The students who come in with a humanities background see patients more as a whole patient,” says Miki Rifkin, the program’s director. She says that these students often outperform their peers, with higher rates of competitive residency placements.

Andrea Schwartz, a third-year medical student in the Mount Sinai program, attended Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary and has a dual degree in history and Bible studies. “Having such a varied experience has given me the opportunity to appreciate different angles,” says Schwartz, who is interested in geriatrics. “The intense text study I did as an undergrad helps me when I’m taking patients’ histories. It taught me to be a better listener.” That sort of training may be just what the doctor ordered.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

Source 

A few of our members were in attendance. And after the governor’s comments, we talked to a number of reporters and other interested individuals. We welcome and thank any visitors to the page, and we encourage you to scan through the past blog postings, to sign our guest book (link on the right), and to contact key politicians and university officials (link at the top of the page). Also, please contact us (link above); we would be more than happy to provide you with quotes and information for news items.

Senator Tom Sawyer, who was in attendance, went out of his way to come talk to us and to offer us encouraging words. He did the same for us this past spring at President Lefton’s inauguration. We gladly thank Sen. Sawyer for his continued support and for the work he is doing on our behalf in the state government.

I also had the chance to shake the governor’s hand, and we quickly exchanged pleasantries before he parted.

~Matt Phillips

1.) “Lefton said he also anticipates new programs and shifting faculty funds to align student interest with community need. He said it is important for students not to take courses in areas they will not get jobs. For example, he said, alignment with Third Frontier fronts (science, technology, engineering and math) is important because 5,300 jobs in computer-related fields are available in Northeast Ohio alone.”
Comment: Kent State University itself has Liberal Education Requirements (LERs) as part of its core; students must take certain liberal arts classes as part of a well-rounded education.

2.) “Lefton said changes will not be easy, but rationality and following a set process are important in making the changes. ‘The university doesn’t like change,’ he said. ‘Nobody likes change. Change is hard for everybody.’”
Comment: Does this mean that people who don’t want things to change for the worse are irrational and afraid of all change? (Hopefully I’m misreading this.)

3.) “In the future, he said the university will have to make a number of difficult decisions, for example, shutting down programs or turning down someone who wants a specific program in place. ‘We can’t continue to do what we’ve always done just because we’ve always done it,’ he said.”

Sources:

Daily Kent Stater: “Lefton says new provost will make things happen,” by Christina Stavale, July 11, 2007. Click here to view.

Daily Kent Stater: “Lefton sees ‘new energy and new morale,’” by Christina Stavale, July 11, 2007. Click here to view.

Presented by Michael Mikusa, Mary Stansbury, Robert Twieg, and Donald White at the Faculty Senate
May 14

*These will be voted on at the Faculty Senate meeting in July.*

Resolution Regarding the Doctoral Reallocation Process

Whereas the Innovation Incentive Program (IIP), or Doctoral Reallocation, is inherently misguided and will produce irreversible harm to higher education in the State of Ohio;

Whereas, the admirable IIP goal of increasing support to STEMM disciplines and Third Frontier projects should be accomplished via new investment and with an expected high rate of return in terms of external funding;

Whereas, the rate of return on investment in STEMM and Third Frontier initiatives should negate the need for other programs to donate to such investment and, in any case, it is appropriate that existing prosperous programs support kindred weaker programs towards achieving excellence, and not vice-versa;

Whereas, “Excellence in Action” is not attained by crippling or eliminating those areas deemed to not be excellent, but rather by providing the comprehensive support necessary for all areas to rise to the desired level of excellence;

Whereas, all Kent State doctoral programs are productive and yield significant benefits to the University in diverse and unique ways;

Whereas, contributions of some programs are often undervalued and others have been outright ignored by the current IIP evaluation process due to the emphasis on external funding, publication of articles, and program size and the minimization of the importance of other contributions such as performances or publication of books;

Whereas, the difficult evaluations of programs by the IIP Steering Committee were seriously compromised due to metrics biased toward laboratory sciences, ambiguous instructions given to units regarding submission of data, inconsistency in interpreting submitted data among committee members, and other factors;

Whereas, the IIP Steering Committee made no recommendations to the Acting Vice President for Research or to the Provost regarding the ultimate specific sources or the destinations of the reallocation, but did, in any case, recommend meeting this year’s reallocation requirements via nonacademic funds;

Therefore, be it resolved that the Faculty Senate urges the President, the Provost, and the Vice President for Research to make STEMM investments in an objective and unbiased fashion and to resist the efforts of the Ohio Board of Regents to fund the investments via donations from and possible elimination of other programs;

Be it further resolved that the Faculty Senate urges the Vice President for Research, in consultation with the IIP Steering Committee, to revise the metrics and the process used in the IIP evaluations to more accurately reflect the diverse contributions of all programs and to ensure that all relevant data is collected and interpreted in a manner that is as accurate, consistent, and fair as possible.

View as .pdf: Resolution Regarding the Doctoral Reallocation Process

Resolution Regarding Effects of the Doctoral Reallocation Process on the History Doctoral Program

Whereas, the Provost has announced plans to significantly reduce allocations to the History doctoral program and, in fact, to eliminate this program in the near future;

Whereas, the Innovation Incentive Program (IIP) threatens to make the History doctoral program only the first of several programs to be decimated or eliminated;

Whereas, the IIP evaluation process leading to these plans is flawed and leads only to further polarization and isolation amongst all academic programs by promotion of selected laboratory sciences and demotion of the humanities and the arts;

Whereas, it must be a priority of the University and the State of Ohio to support basic research in all fundamental disciplines, regardless of their potential for obtaining external funding or patents;

Whereas, it must be a priority of a credible University to provide a truly liberal education, including the humanities, social sciences, and the arts;

Whereas, History is a fundamental and indispensable component of a liberal education;

Whereas, the loss of the History doctoral program would have serious adverse effects on the University’s mission of educating undergraduate students due to the loss of qualified graduate assistants and the inevitable loss of high quality faculty;

Whereas, the University’s goal of “Excellence in Action” is best achieved not by eliminating programs judged via some arbitrary process to be underperforming, but rather by providing the support necessary for all programs to attain the desired level of productivity and excellence;

Therefore, be it resolved that the Faculty Senate strongly urges the University Provost (current and incoming) and President to embrace the ideals of liberal education and basic research, to abolish plans to decimate or eliminate any current doctoral programs, including the History doctoral program, and instead to constructively engage in a process to provide appropriate aid and support to any program judged to be underperforming so as to improve its performance to the desired level of excellence.

View as .pdf: Resolution Regarding Effects of the Doctoral Reallocation Process on the History Doctoral Program

Matthew Phillips
May 5, 2007

History matters to Kent State President Lester Lefton. After all, the theme for his inauguration was “Witness History.” “A presidential inauguration is a time for faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of the university to celebrate yet another milestone in our impressive history as one of Ohio’s senior public universities,” President Lefton declared in April 23rd’s e-Inside. Delivering his inaugural address during his inaugural ceremonies Friday, April 27th, at Kent State’s Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center (MACC), Lefton made clear his belief in the importance of history. He praised the efforts of past presidents Carol Cartwright and Michael Schwartz and then provided a sort of great moments in KSU history—from the visionary efforts of the university’s first president, James McGilvrey, to Chemistry professor Dr. Glenn Brown’s innovative liquid crystal research in the 1950s, to Anthropology professor C. Owen Lovejoy’s formulation of a possible grand unified theory of early hominid evolution, and so on. Lefton has indeed benefited from a study of the past, finding inspiration from those who have come before him: He quoted Mark Twain, Alan Kay, William Shakespeare, W. E. B. DuBois, and Aristotle; he referenced George Washington Carver, the Wright Brothers, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. He lectured on the world’s trend toward globalization and the university’s role in a world process that has been centuries in the making.

As Lefton pressed the Kent State community to look to the future, he sounded like a history professor, reminding us that looking to the future requires an appreciation of the past. While he expressed utmost enthusiasm for the sciences, he asserted that “classrooms – and universities as a whole – [are] “organic” entities that live and breathe ideas; that keep us thinking about the larger issues and the big picture.” In this vein, he proclaimed, “We need today’s faculty to conceive the innovations of the future in the fields of the future – from nanoscience to neuroscience, from molecular biology to media psychology. And we need them to continue exploring our rich past in architecture, archeology, and art.” Perhaps the History Program might be helpful in this exploration of the past, no?

Lefton continued, declaring that a university’s mission is to seek “truth” in the sciences, humanities, and arts, no matter how subjective, because the effort is vital to society’s well-being—“one of humankind’s highest callings.” “As W. E. B DuBois wrote in 1903,” the president noted, “‘The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.’” This is a president who gets it, one would think—one who sees a university not as a corporation but as an institution of knowledge, something of central importance to civilization. And, he recognizes the interconnected value of all academic endeavors: “The search for truth occurs in laboratories, libraries, studios, and stages.”

The irony was nearly crippling. As Lefton inspired those inside the MACC with his thoughts on the past, present, and future and the worth of the sciences, humanities, and arts, seven History Department graduate assistants—MAs and Ph.D.s, including myself—were gathered outside delivering a very similar message—but with one crucial difference: Lefton and other university officials want to scrap the History Department’s doctoral funding. From 1:30 pm (an hour before the inauguration ceremony commenced) until the ceremony let out around 4 pm, the History graduate assistants stood in the rain, sleet, and wind, discussed the department’s situation with interested passerby, and held signs with such slogans as “May 4: Without History, Just Another Day” and “Erase History, Erase the Future.” (A sidenote: We did not talk to uninterested passerby or try to hand anything to them, but rather let curious people come to us. Interestingly, it appeared to us that university employees were directing arriving inauguration attendees around us and toward alternate MACC entrances.)

The reaction of those exiting the building—after hearing Lefton’s stirring address—was especially dramatic. When we informed them that the History doctoral program was on the chopping block, they were shocked, incredulous. “Do you know what we just sat and listened to for the past hour-and-a-half?” they asked us. “That doesn’t add up!” This is when we learned just how much Lefton had been praising the pursuit of knowledge not only in the sciences but also in the humanities and arts—and that he had quoted several historical figures; we were outside, after all, unable to hear his message.

While discussing the situation with people, we also pointed out the domino effect that cutting History doctoral funding would have. The university requires all students to take certain survey courses in World or American History; this Liberal Education Requirement preceded Lefton’s presidency and is in accordance with his desire for a search for truth informed by the humanities, critical and creative thinking, and reflection on the past. Yet, without doctoral teaching assistants, the History Department—because of the sheer number of undergraduates taking its survey classes—would be unable to provide the best possible education for the student body. Essay-based examinations, research papers, and primary source discussions teach students vital skills transferable to any calling and to life in general: critical thinking, writing proficiency, and an understanding of the world. Professors left with hundreds of students and no teaching assistants to help them out would have little choice but to rely on other assessment methods, particularly multiple choice. If essays, research papers, and primary source discussions provide students with critical thinking skills, writing proficiency, and an understanding of the world that help them in life and in any career, multiple-choice exams lead to little more than trivial knowledge that prepares students for little except maybe Jeopardy—and deprives them of an adequate understanding of the world. In other words, cutting doctoral funding for History undercuts the organic search for truth that Lefton so champions.

After discussing the department’s straits with interested individuals, we asked them to contact university officials to tell them that cutting History’s doctoral funding would be a disgrace, counter to an institution of higher learning’s calling, and a detriment to the university. We ask you to do the same; contact information appears below. If you call or write President Lefton, perhaps you can begin by praising his address and then asking, “Is history an important part of the pursuit of knowledge that you so enthusiastically advocate?”

See the text of his address here.

KSU delays doctoral funding decision

Christina Stavale
May 1, 2007

Doctoral programs at Kent State previously thought to be in danger of losing funding due to Ohio’s Innovation Incentive Program will now have more time.

This is the latest development in the state-mandated shift in doctoral funding that went into effect last spring. The Innovation Incentive Program requires all universities receiving doctoral funding from the state to donate money from some doctoral programs to those programs aligned with the Third Frontier, or science and technology.

In a statement sent to the Ohio Board of Regents yesterday, Peter Tandy, acting vice president for research at Kent State, specified where the money would go, but not where it would come from. . . .

Continue reading the story at the Stater Online by clicking here.

April 13, 2007

In 1966, Kent State University established a doctoral program in History—one of the first four doctoral programs. In forty-one years of existence, the program has produced 170 scholars, third in the state overall behind the programs at The Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University, established in 1925 and 1896 respectively. Since its inception, Kent’s program has become the eighth most productive program in the nation. In all measures of a History doctoral program, by American Historical Association (AHA) guidelines, Kent’s program meets the national norms. Yet despite this, the university administration believes that the History doctoral program needs to be dismantled.

A recent proposal would remove this vital program, based on shaky logic. To shift graduate research capabilities to Biomedical Sciences and the Liquid Crystal Institute, the History doctoral program will be eliminated by starving off funds. No other department in the university is being called on to sacrifice its doctoral program. Why has History been singled out for attack?

Other humanities and social sciences are not similarly threatened. The administration conducted an evaluation of all doctoral programs at the university, and other departments received low evaluations. Those doctoral programs are not in jeopardy because the administration considers them fundamental and essential to the university. Is the administration suggesting that History is not fundamental to education? A brief glance at Kent State University’s core curriculum would show this is not the case—all students in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) are required to take courses in humanities to successfully complete their degrees.

Furthermore, the CAS mission statement declares that it wishes to foster “the skills of critical reasoning, writing, reading and deduction …a commitment to rigorous questioning of principles and practices, intellectual integrity, community responsibility, and diversity of perspectives in the pursuit of truth and social justice.” The History department plays an essential role in facilitating this objective. The current proposal would inflict irrevocable harm on the university overall, rather than just on the History department.

Undergraduate education would suffer a lack of instructors as a result of the proposal. Many doctoral students, as they finish their dissertations, work as adjunct faculty for the university, and this reservoir of instructors would be depleted. History courses provide essential training applicable to all areas of research. By diminishing the History department’s capacity to function in accordance with university goals, this proposal threatens the undergraduate students’ ability to achieve their academic potential, putting them a step behind in the job market or for future employment opportunities. It seems incomprehensible that the administration would want to hinder their students’ academic success, but that is the likely outcome if this proposal comes to fruition.

The Kent State History doctoral program has shown itself to be one of the better programs in the state (and nation), and the university recognizes the fundamental nature of History in their undergraduates’ studies. Why must the History department bear the full burden of reallocation? What prevents the administration from distributing the burden of expansion equally across the whole of the university? What other options have been overlooked in this rush to judgment? If the History doctoral program is terminated, what prevents other essential departments from being gutted in similar fashion, contradicting the mission statement? The university should not eviscerate the History doctoral program, killing a forty-one year old institution without answering these questions.

• Letter drafted and signed by Carole A. Avella, Erika L. Briesacher, Mathew T.M. Brundage, Nathan L. Fry, Denise E. Jenison, Jeffrey O’Leary, Lisa Riley Lazear, Melissa A. Steinmetz, Andrew T. Tremel, and Thomas B. Weyant—all KSU History Teaching Fellows—and published in shortened form as a letter-to-the-editor in the April 23, 2007, Daily Kent Stater.