A Statement on Infrastructure Issues
at Rice University

December 1996

To Malcolm Gillis, President
David Auston, Provost
James Kinsey, Dean
Michael Carroll, Dean

From the Steering Committees
for Strategic Planning in the
Brown School of Engineering and the
Wiess School of natural Sciences

This document was compiled from multiple meetings, conversations, and documents from inside and outside the Divisions. Statistics on faculty, staff, and grant support were provided by the President's Office.

Kathleen Matthews
Ken Kennedy
Chairs, Steering Committees
for Strategic Planning
December 1996


INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES ON THE RICE CAMPUS

In gathering information for the Strategic Plans for the Divisions of Engineering and Natural Sciences, concerns emerged from a wide range of faculty, staff, and students that were sufficiently serious to merit separate consideration from the Strategic Plans for the divisions. Within the last decade, Rice has gained tremendous momentum, moving forward to reach new heights in national prominence. Exciting though this progress has been, these achievements have meant more and harder work for almost everyone in the community with accompanying escalation in stress level, frustration, and disaffection. While aspects of the issues covered here may be reflected within recommendations to emanate from the Strategic Planning efforts, their insinuation in the planning process was perceived to inhibit creative and visionary thoughts necessary to propel the university into the future greatness that we all desire. For this reason, this document devoted to infrastructure has been prepared to delineate the issues and offer some potential remedies. The consensus of the concerns is that our campus infrastructure is functioning in a manner that often inhibits efforts to realize our mission. Tension, in some cases significant, exists between the administrative and service organizations on campus and the faculty, staff, and students who are performing the essential functions of the university: education and scholarship. This document attempts to articulate concerns, identify underlying issues, and to make specific recommendations that may address the problems. This effort was undertaken with the understanding that all of us at Rice University are seeking the same ends - realization of our mission - and in the spirit of finding effective long-term solutions to the problem that now frustrates many in our midst. We must rely on the long-standing atmosphere of good will in this institution as we explore new ways to conduct our business and achieve our goals. With that good will, there are no insoluble problems.

We are immersed in significant transformation, both in higher education generally and at Rice University in particular. Rice's aspirations are higher than ever before; we have more faculty and staff than ever before; and we are in a position to have considerable influence and gain exceptional distinction over the next decades. We arrive at this opportunity in the midst of considerable distress in higher education and during a crisis in government and foundation funding for research, education, and scholarship. In part to prepare us for just such a leap into the future, efforts are being made to transform us from an "amateur" status in administration to a more "professional" rank. With this shift comes not a little chaos, distinct and often vocal distress, and considerable frustration. From our discussions among faculty and departmental/divisional staff, the current level of frustration appears to be beyond that to be expected from the major transformations underway. Our considered opinion is that identifying the heart of the problem and addressing it effectively is, in fact, crucial to realizing our future potential.

The Problem

The perception of many faculty and departmental/divisional staff is that the central administrative systems do not effectively serve the mission of the university. Reports of intense frustration are common, more diffuse disappointment is pervasive, and frank anger is not unusual. In order to execute the activities required for teaching and scholarship, sometimes heroic efforts are required to accomplish tasks that should be automatic in an optimally functioning system. Historically, in the era of "amateur" administration, the individuals supervising these offices were available to the faculty, often were faculty, so that the prevailing ethos honored by virtue of direct experience the needs and values of the academy. While sometimes irritating and inefficient - a state often accorded the administrative role in any organization - these systems were found to be accessible and responsive, even if not consistently fair, thorough, or efficient.

As we have shifted administrative tasks to a more business-like system, an approach necessitated by increased governmental regulations and the complexity of the times, these administrative functions have come to dominate the University: "You can't do that." "You must do this." "You can't use that form." "You can't spend those funds that way." "This office does not handle that." "I can't answer that." "You'll have to ask..." What has become lost in our attempt to use our resources effectively and to comply with outside forces that impinge on the university is a strong infusion of mission to guide these efforts. Our resources (people, facilities, funds) and our processes to manage these resources (our administrative structure and research and teaching activities) must be grounded in and guided by why we exist as an institution. What we are doing must be measured against how and to what degree it honors our mission. If a specific activity does not honor the mission, it must be changed (see Addendum 1 to this Appendix).

At the same time that central administrative functions have expanded, faculty are expected to do more than a decade previously - teaching undergraduates and graduate students more (and more complex) information, incorporating computing and other constantly evolving technology into these efforts, writing many more grant proposals in order to maintain funding for research and scholarship, serving on University committees (both standing and ad hoc), participating in expanding outreach efforts and planning, et al. Each of these activities demands a significant expenditure of time and energy, and the combination places notable stress on faculty. A concomitant growth of staff at the departmental level has not been coupled with this expansion of duties and the numerical growth of the faculty (Addendum 2 to this Appendix). Attempts to perform the functions crucial to fulfilling our mission with over-worked departmental staff and often without staff of appropriate expertise have generated a deep sense of frustration.

The frequency and severity of the problems articulated across the departments and divisions speak to a pervasive and long-standing problem rather than a specific set of issues. Listening carefully to the nature of the concerns indicates that the missing quality is fundamental attention in all of our processes to the reason that we exist as an institution. Although a number of "stories" - experiences of deans, faculty, department administrative staff, coordinators - have been included below to illustrate the types and range of problems encountered, it should be emphasized that merely "tweaking" the system here or there to address specific issues will not generate optimal function. A more global shift in how we manage the tasks that undergird pursuit of our goals will be essential. What is the purpose of the policy, the procedure, the rule, the form? How does it advance teaching? Scholarship? Outreach? If a given person, fund, system, or procedure does not advance our purpose, how can it be changed to do so? If a governmental regulation impedes our mission, how can we comply with minimal impact on efforts to reach our goals? Our daily, moment to moment activities must be realigned with the purpose of the institution.

Although this document arises from the experiences of the faculty and departmental or divisional staff, this perspective does not imply that no additional effort will be required of us, nor does it mean that there is not an equivalent frustration on the administrative side of these transactions. Faculty and departmental staff must ask the same questions and answer them with clarity and honesty. Faculty can be demanding, insensitive to staff, and we do not always act in the pursuit of our mission. We can be wrong in our understanding of why a particular policy exists as it does and expend significant energy and frustration to no useful end. The path to realigning our system will require patience and effort from every member of the Rice Community, continually reminding ourselves why we are here and inquiring what action or attitude honors that purpose.

The problems that Rice faces are not unique. The growth, dominance, and inertia of university administrative structures have been noted (Kidwell, J. & O'Brien, D. (1995) Exec. Strategies 3, 1). From the experiences of other institutions, we can gain significant insight and even guidance in our own approach to the problems we face. In this national context, we also have the opportunity to serve as a model for other universities grappling with similar issues. However, some cautions should be interjected at this juncture. Increasingly, corporate models are being applied to institutions of higher education. Indeed, corporate experience can provide wisdom and information that is useful as we chart our course. However, the distinct and important differences between corporations and universities must not be ignored in making the translation. Forcing academic institutions into a corporate mold may in the end damage the academy beyond repair. It is in the crucial area of mission that these distinctions are most important. In general, corporations have a single, over-riding purpose: to enhance shareholder value. While many aspects of universities have analogies to the corporate world, the fundamental differences in mission must be considered carefully and thoughtfully when applying models developed in a different setting. Any administrative structure must be measured against the degree to which it supports and facilitates realization of education, scholarship, and outreach efforts of the university.

In the following paragraphs, specific problem areas are identified and described in more detail.

1. Attitude

The experience of a significant portion of our community is a negative attitude in many campus service offices. Central administrative offices, by and large, are experienced as "controlling" rather than "serving." To the degree that such attitudes impede our progress, the purpose of the institution is undermined. Apocryphal versions of policies and statements made by office personnel are often outrageous and may be inaccurate in substance. However, the persistence and wide-spread existence of such "stories" (see below) points to an underlying problem. The perception is that actions and policies in administrative offices are often more for the convenience of the office rather than driven by external requirements, governmental or otherwise. A prevalent view is that outside grant and foundation funds, support that is difficult to obtain and often marginal for the task at hand, are being "taxed" systematically. These behaviors are perceived as inhibitory rather than facilitative, obstructionist rather than helpful, in pursuing our purpose.

2. Management Structure

The current management structure impedes and frustrates effective solutions, yields contradictory directions, and appears unable to communicate effectively among its component parts. Central administrative staff report to a supervisor and are answerable only to that person rather than being answerable to the community that is served. While supervision is certainly important and required, the consequence of the current system is that there is no sense of responsibility to the recipients of the service, nor is there any opportunity for the "user" or "customer" to evaluate the performance of the individual in the actual process of performing his/her assigned function. The structure is layered and often cumbersome for facile response and effective management of complex problems that arise regularly. Furthermore, the users are often not consulted in constructing the mechanisms that are used by various offices. The consequence is instruments and systems that are not supportive of the educational and scholarship efforts at the departmental level.

3. Local Staff Support

The deleterious effect of minimal staff support in the departments on teaching and scholarship functions was noted repeatedly in our discussions. This dearth of effective support currently hampers achieving our goals and is a serious concern in any planning for the future. Particular problems with insufficient research support staff were noted. Staff expansion in the divisions has been minimal over the past decade (see Addendum 2), while our research support (including indirect cost funding) has almost tripled and the tasks demanded from the departments, in part from administrative offices, have expanded significantly. The recent OMB directive forbidding support of office staff on federal grants further diminishes resources available, with particularly serious effects on the divisions of Science and Engineering. At the same time, the experience at the local level is that the central administrative system has become less responsive, less supportive, and more demanding. The local staff are, at least in some cases, stretched to the limits of their capacity to respond effectively. The "professionalization" and expansion of central administrative staff without a parallel increase in local staff and without a perceived improvement in service provided, indeed in many cases a diminution, have resulted in considerable frustration and distrust.

4. Coordination and Communication

Duplication of efforts in multiple sites on-campus impedes progress and wastes resources. Circuitous approval routes slow progress. Our efforts must be coordinated within the divisions (and across the university) to make the best possible use of our resources. Considerable time is wasted on concerns and activities that do not fulfill the mission of the university. The basis for specific policy decisions (e.g., explanation of the government regulation involved) should be made available routinely; why we have chosen a particular form or course of action should be made known to the community served by a particular office. If an onerous policy makes sense to the "victim," compliance is much more facile. Concerns about how decisions get made, what our priorities are, what is valued, how resources are allocated are all questions that can be addressed effectively and clearly and will enhance our efforts toward fulfilling our mission.

Goals and Recommendations

By examining our present problems in terms of a systemic model (Addendum 1), we can identify ways to change our approach to the necessary tasks of administration that support teaching, scholarship, and outreach. In particular, we must begin by reminding ourselves of the mission of Rice University, recently articulated in our Strategic Plan:

This mission must pervade all our actions and guide our efforts. To infuse mission into our activities, we have identified specific goals in each of the problem areas identified by faculty and staff in the divisions. To accomplish these goals, recommendations are made that can be incorporated into the function of administrative offices and that can also be adopted by the faculty and staff within the divisions. It is imperative that each person in the community be made aware of and become committed to our mission. Each action must be measured against the degree to which it allows us to accomplish that mission.

1. Attitude

Goal: To create a service-oriented attitude in the administrative and support offices on the Rice University campus that facilitates the educational, scholarship, and outreach efforts of the university.

Recommendations:

  1. Mechanisms should be developed to improve the level of service within the administrative and support systems and minimize the "controlling" aspects. Where "control" is necessary (e.g., based on governmental requirements), the underlying regulations should be articulated effectively to faculty and staff, and creative input into minimizing the impact of such regulation on educational and scholarship activities should be sought.

  2. An attitude that is creative, supportive, trusting, and helpful in achieving a particular goal that serves the teaching and scholarship effort should be fostered throughout the University, and rigid, resistant, or discounting attitudes should be discouraged.

  3. Communication between faculty/staff/students and administrative and support offices and among the latter offices should be improved. Administrators from different offices should spend time in the divisions to become better acquainted with the problems faced by faculty, staff, and students and thereby better able to provide effective solutions.

  4. Administrative policies should be designed to facilitate achieving our strategic goals. Where there is tension between policies and goals, revision should be made to bring them into alignment. Where there are governmental or other external regulations that are inhibitory, creative mechanisms for compliance that minimize impact on our mission should be sought in a cooperative fashion.

2. Management Structure

Goal: To establish a management structure that is flexible, responsive, and designed to realize the mission of Rice University.

Recommendations:

  1. The personnel serving in administrative and support offices at Rice University should be evaluated not only by their supervisor within the reporting structure but also by the community served. A system for obtaining feedback from the community served by each administrator and employee should be established. [Note that faculty are evaluated both by their Chairs and Dean and by their students. Departmental staff are evaluated by the Chair with input from faculty and students regarding performance.] This information should be used as part of the overall evaluation process for salary and/or promotion.

  2. The management structure should be reconsidered to simplify decision processes, to clarify responsibilities at each level, to expand local authority and responsibility, and to facilitate speed and minimize effort required for decisions. Significant restructuring may be required to generate optimal function. We must develop a system that streamlines management and provides direct and effective performance feedback to the management structure.

  3. We must examine our processes to determine the ways in which we should organize the flow of authority and information to optimize our educational, scholarship, and outreach efforts.

3. Local Staff Support

Goal: To provide sufficient support staff at the divisional and departmental levels to meet the needs dictated by our mission of education, scholarship, and outreach.

Recommendations:

  1. Support staff at the local levels should be expanded to provide effective assistance in undertaking the multiplicity of activities that our strategic goals require.
  2. Careful attention should be given to mechanisms for recruiting and retaining excellent staff at all levels. The quality of support personnel that are brought into the academy is as important as the quality of the faculty, and careful attention must be given to mechanisms for recruiting and retaining excellent staff at the university level, the divisional level, and the departmental level. Staff must be made aware of our mission and be responsive to the community they serve.

  3. Where a full-time staff person may not be utilized effectively by a single department, hiring among departments with similar needs should be coordinated to optimize the utilization of staff.

4. Coordination and Communication

Goal: To create effective channels of communication across the divisions, among administrative offices, and across the entire university regarding our goals, our resources, and our processes.

Recommendations:

  1. Modes of effective coordination and communication should be established university-wide.

  2. The underlying reasoning for specific policies and procedures should be articulated clearly in an accessible manner.

  3. Mechanisms to find common interests and to encourage cooperative actions among diverse elements of the community should be developed (e.g., integrating planning processes).

  4. Mechanisms for effective and regular feedback from the Deans, Provost, and President to departments and their faculties and from the faculty to the administration should be developed.

No system ever functions with perfection, but the more balanced the internal workings of the system, the more optimally its purpose can be realized to the benefit of the participants. This document is a plea to the entire Rice community to take responsibility for bringing balance to our system by honoring our mission as a guide for all of our activities.

Specific Examples

This final section is included with trepidation, because there is the risk that this set of examples will be seized as the whole of the problem, each discounted for one reason or another, and this effort will have missed its mark. These narratives should be read to glean a sense of the depth of frustration, not to identify and address each individual problem, although some areas clearly require attention and correction. But it is the pervasiveness and passion with which such problems are described that speaks to the problem. Only by addressing the "meta" level, the systemic issues, will we find effective solutions.

[NOTE: The set of specific examples provided for President Gillis and Provost Auston were to illustrate the problems and were derived from information provided by a wide range of sources. To prevent any misunderstanding, these examples have been deleted in this version of the document.]


Infrastructure Statement - Addendum 1
Social Process Model - An Analysis to Guide Actions

The Social Process Model was elaborated by the Institute for Cultural Affairs in the 1970s as a tool for understanding the dynamics of a properly functioning system and mechanisms that eventuate in dysfunction. Three poles of influence are identified generally as the Cultural, which arises from the ideals of the group; the Political, which arises from the processes utilized by the group; and the Economic, which arises from the substantive or real resources of the group. Three sets of paired dyadic interactions describe the interplay between each of the three potential pairings. Optimal functioning occurs when the three sources of authority are individually robust in their interactions with one another to generate a balanced system. When the three branches of power are not evenly matched, one pole becomes dominant, a second loses its independence and actually supports the dominant pole, while the third pole collapses and becomes weak and powerless. When such an imbalance occurs, the overall function of the system is transformed from optimal to less functional.

The three primary functions forming the poles for Rice University are Mission or Purpose (goals, ideals), Resources (faculty, staff, students, alumni, board, endowment, grant funds, physical plant), and Process (the things we do to manage our resources and accomplish our mission). Resources form the "real" basis upon which our Process must operate; they support Process. Process orders our Resources and becomes the means by which Resources are deployed and maintained. Resources ground Mission by requiring that the Mission apply in the "real world" of everyday life and not merely in the abstract or philosophical, while the Mission informs us as to the meaning, the purpose, and the reason behind the Resources. Processes guard the Mission/Purpose by providing the systems to protect and secure the goals to which we aspire, while the Mission directs the application of these Processes so that they function to enhance some higher purpose.

 If one pole is "collapsed," efforts should be expended to enhance the power and authority of this pole relative to the other two with the goal of returning the whole system to a dynamic balance. In our system, Mission is only weakly directing our Process and does not effectively give meaning to our Resources; therefore, Mission is identified as the collapsed pole. Resources appear to have been recruited to a supportive and collaborative role in maintaining the ascendancy of Process. The lack of balance in functions and power among these crucial areas frustrates efforts to act on our purpose, whether in teaching, scholarship or research. To bring a skewed system into balance, instinct moves us to put greater energy into the expanded pole (more policies, more staff in central administrative offices, more detailed procedures, reorganizing what we are doing), which merely serves to further enhance its power and diminish that of the other poles. Alternatively, effort is put into the partner (or ally), in our case the Resources pole. If we improve our faculty and students, hire more staff, or obtain more funds, the system will be put into balance. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches is effective in regenerating a system that functions optimally to achieve its purpose. In contrast to our intuition, the collapsed pole, in our case Mission or Purpose, is the target for bringing balance into the System. By bringing our Process and Resources into alignment with our Purpose, the University can achieve a balance that would enable us to move vigorously into the 21st century.


Infrastructure Statement - Addendum 2

Category FY 1986 FY1994 FY1997
Number of Full-time Faculty 427 463 495
Number of Part-time Faculty 31 51** 45
Number of Total Staff 601 895 999
Number of Divisional Staff 181 193 208
Total Research Support $16,144 $37,355 $41,704

**The Jones School added 14 part-time faculty during the 1986-1994 period.

Strategic Plan

This page is maintained by Rachel Miller (mail to: rmiller@rice.edu)
Created 24-Mar-97
Updated 06-Jun-97