Previous Mission Statement
New Mission
Statement
Speakers' Commentary
Dr. Rich Becherer
Dr. Ron Cox
Dr. Debbie Ingram
Dr. Wilfred McClay
Dr. Mark Mendenhall
Dr. Gail M. Meyer
Dr. Irven Resnick
Dr. David Sachsman
Dr. James Tucker
Dr. Kim Wheetley
Dr. Michael Whittle
Review Session Summaries
September 20, 2001
September 26, 2001
Considering the Mission of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
By David B. Sachsman
George R. West Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs
and Professor of Communication
The mission statement of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga properly articulates its goals as a metropolitan regional state-assisted institution of higher education. While it is certainly possible to update the specifics of the statement, the general goals are clear: teaching, research, and service.
The essential dilemma of the statement is that the mission is ideal, and so the university has not been able to live up to it. Faced with limited resources, the university has put most of its efforts into the first goal, teaching, which has become the primary goal of the institution. With very little financial support, research has become a secondary goal. And the very definition of "service" is unclear at UTC.
One possible solution to the problem of limited resources is to reduce the mission of the institution. But cutting out the weak programs to strengthen the strong ones is a Draconian solution that can demolish the community of scholars so necessary for a real university. And reducing the emphasis on scholarship and service would be a setback, rather than a step forward.
The goal of the university should be to fulfill its mission statement, rather than diminish it. The good news is that the university is a strong, mature, fully developed institution that already has all the systems and answers in place, waiting for the financial resources necessary to fully fund them.
The faculty is excellent, prepared and eager to develop themselves fully as scholars and teachers. But how can they do so - and how can new, research-oriented faculty be recruited - if they are expected to teach a four-course load? The difference between a university that really supports scholarship and an educational institution that requires some research for promotion and tenure is the difference between a three- and a four-course teaching load.
This is not to say that the four-course load should be universally abandoned. It continues to exist at many of America's finest research universities for those teachers who are not research-oriented. Here at UTC it already is possible for a faculty member actively involved in research to be given a course release. The goal now should be to give every faculty member who wishes to do research a one-course release from teaching each and every semester that they are actively engaged in a program of scholarship. This would greatly improve our ability to recruit new faculty, and it would give our faculty a fair chance to develop their scholarship.
Three more things are needed to support faculty research: financial grants, student research assistants, and sabbaticals. UTC has long since recognized the need to provide such support, and so the necessary systems and programs already exist. The problem is that they are underfunded. The small amount of money currently dedicated to support for faculty research and to provide for student research assistance should be increased to the point where every faculty member with a strong research proposal should receive some financial support, and every student wishing a paid research experience should be given a chance.
The university's sabbatical program should be funded sufficiently to allow as many as one-sixth of the full-time faculty to be away on sabbatical in any given year.
While the university has all the systems in place to support research, it has not yet developed sufficient mechanisms to provide adequate support for "service." In fact, what is meant by "service" is not clearly defined at UTC, and some at the university believe that what is generally defined as "community service" (service as a volunteer, or as a member of a service organization such as Girl Scouts) should not be counted as part of "service" for promotion and tenure. The issue of service needs to be fully discussed. What should count as "service" at a metropolitan-regional university and what means of support should be provided to faculty members actively engaged in service?
At one time, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga community asked itself whether its mission should be that of a metropolitan regional state-assisted institution of higher education or that of a "public ivy," a university of the very highest quality, a "little Chapel Hill." Because UTC exists to serve the needs of the people of the city of Chattanooga, the region, and the state, the metropolitan-regional orientation was chosen. The "public-ivy" model was viewed as more elitist, and apparently few people thought it would be possible to combine the two missions, to be both a metropolitan-regional institution and a "public ivy," a truly great university. And yet when the mission statement was written, it called for research and scholarship as well as teaching and service. The reality was an emphasis on teaching, a four-course teaching load, and little support for scholarship, but the ideal was a community of scholars, and all the systems and mechanisms were put in place to support research, if funding could be found. The university's mission statement is, in fact, a roadmap to the goal of becoming not just a great metropolitan-regional institution of higher learning but a great university as well. With the help of the community, now may be the time for UTC to take some giant steps down this road.
Bill McClay offers the idea of an Honors College. Our current honors program is excellent. Given the proper support, it could become an Honors College, potentially the best in the state. But can such a college really thrive in an environment that underpays its faculty and calls small seminars under-enrolled?
Ron Cox hits the nail on the head when he suggests that we should reconsider our list of "peer institutions." Right now our "real" mission is to try to keep up with a list of supposed "peer" institutions. Ron does not consider this a very impressive list, and neither do I, and, yet, in financial terms, we are not even at the top of this list. I'll know that our mission really has changed when we change our list of "peers" to universities that have already proven themselves successful in meeting similar goals.
And my guess is that these will be communities of scholars that support research as well as teaching, value service, and don't have a four-course load.