By Michael Napolitano
It has been more than a year since Faculty Senate chair Carol Glod said at a senate meeting that some members felt they were being marginalized by senior administration.
Yesterday’s meeting took a more unified tone, as President Joseph Aoun urged both faculty and administration to work together on issues facing the university including the financial crisis, the future of experiential education and Northeastern’s national position in the higher education world.
“When I see the collaboration happening between schools, between deans and faculty – this is a culture we have to preserve,” President Aoun said.
At his visit last fall, Aoun spent much of the time easing tensions between himself and the Senate, and laid to rest rumors that he had planned to disassemble the Senate, as reported in an Oct. 29 article in The Northeastern News. Among the complaints presented by Glod last year was that the administration moved the modern languages program under the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, now called the School of Professional Studies, without a faculty vote and appointed an athletics committee chair without the required senate approval.
Aoun’s address yesterday largely focused on Northeastern itself, and he called the meeting a “brainstorming session.”
While Aoun did not mention a reevaluation of the co-op program as had been mentioned in the Oct. 15 State of the University addresses by himself and Provost Stephen Director, Aoun said co-op will remain one of the school’s primary focuses.
“More than ever, experiential education and co-op is our ticket to the world,” he said. “We need to continue to focus on that, which means that whatever we see … that is not conducive to help experiential education and co-op has to disappear.”
Aoun said that in addition to continually strengthening the co-op program, Northeastern must keep its focus on “knowledge production.”
“We have to look at the way we are building our research, the way we our building our Ph.D programs, for example,” he said. “We have the practice of transnational research, which means that whatever we do is relevant for the real world, from companies to NGOs [non-governmental organizations]. And we need to take advantage of that.”
Throughout the meeting, Aoun urged faculty members to confer with school deans on a variety of issues and often asked professors who posed him a question if they had talked it over with the leader of their department or college. He said the collaboration between faculty, deans, the senate and the provost would help determine what the school’s future focus will be.
“We have to make choices and say we are going to be known as a university for X, Y and Z,” he said.
Aoun also said increasing the school’s retention rate is an important goal that will bring Northeastern more resources. Currently, the school retains about 80 percent of students until graduation, with as much as 93 percent of freshmen and sophomores staying for at least another semester, he said.
“It is a statement to the students, to the parents and to the world that when you come here, you graduate,” he said.
And while retention rates at Northeastern are high now, Aoun said the school must focus on how much financial aid can be given out in order to ensure students are able to afford to study here, especially during the current recession.
“The main issue in this period is not tuition per se, because tuition, as you know, is discounted,” he said. “We need to increase financial aid. Students have to know they can be here for four or five years.”
Marc Levine, a professor of mathematics and member of the faculty senate, said students are not the only ones having trouble coping with the current financial situation.
“A lot of universities are cutting back,” he said. “For people looking for tenured track positions, I think it will be a difficult couple of years.”
Aoun said that while other schools are making faculty cuts, Northeastern is not yet taking such drastic measures in regards to staffing. The university has taken other measures in response to the financial crisis, however, as construction of a new residential hall called Building K was postponed two months after plans were first announced.
“For the time being, we’re still recruiting, we have great opportunities,” he said. “Places are freezing recruitment. We’re not there.”
Ramaiya Balachandra, a professor in the College of Business Administration, said he would like to see more students studying abroad on Northeastern-owned satellite campuses.
“It has been mostly one way,” he said. “Students from there to here. Our students have not gone there.”
Aoun said that while international education is important to the university, Northeastern should be careful to avoid “non-sustainable” methods that other schools are adopting.
“We want our students to explore the world,” he said.
Aoun said establishing campuses in other nations can often be complicated by government restrictions, like India’s rule that a school must establish a campus in collaboration with other universities.
