By Mark Finney
ETC Dept.
For more than two years, Frank Novotny, Academic Affairs, has been asking for an assistant. “Depending on what you count, I’ve been doing either six or four positions. It’s a lot of work…It’s killing me.”
He explains that a year ago, when enrollments were higher than average and the Pell grant was providing robust funding for Adams State students, he and David Svaldi, President, decided that having Margaret Doell, Art, be an American Council on Education (ACE) fellow was would be good for her and good for Adams State. “The ACE application was done a year ago,” before summer enrollment plummeted and fall enrollment dropped.
He explains that the ACE fellowship expects that upon completion ACE fellows will have a “larger leadership role” in their home institutions. Because Doell was already a department chair, this meant that Adams State had an obligation to provide her with an administrative position. Novotny explains, it was “done in good faith.” In the case of Doell, a larger leadership role meant “more budget experience,” and campus-wide responsibilities.
This fall, when Doell returns from her yearlong fellowship at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, she will keep her position as chair of the Art department but instead of returning to teaching, she will take on a new position, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs (AVPAA). She will split time between these two positions for one year while the Art department conducts a search for a new chair, after which she will become full-time AVPAA.
In her first year, Doell will be responsible for “rightsizing” campus adjunct budgets and revamping the summer school program. After the position becomes full-time, Novotny envisions her responsibilities to include preparing for the HLC accreditation, which will take place during the 2016-17 academic year.
Doell’s position will be funded from the General Fund, but Novotny could not say where exactly, or what budgets would suffer a loss as a result. He speculated that the position’s funding would be offset by reserves, unfilled positions, and other savings across campus.
While Novotny sees funding for the new AVPAA position and the freeze of faculty development funds as separate issues, he appreciates that the two are related. “We wouldn’t have funded faculty development a year ago if we had known [what would happen with enrollment and Pell in the last two years].” He added, “Our predictions were off.”
But Novotny sees the new position having a positive financial imprint on Adams State. Re-working how the university conducts summer school, successful and expedient completion of the HLC accreditation, and efficiently assessing and administering adjunct budgets “will help carry us a long way.”
Critics of the new position have argued that Adams State cannot afford to create a new administrative position in these tough financial times. Others have wondered how Adams State can justify spending so much on one faculty’s development while defunding development for all others. Many have expressed concerns that this promotion, and the communication of this decision, reflects the administration’s indifference for authentic shared governance.
