You might not know it, but this is the last issue of the Auburn Horizon (at least in this incarnation). It has been an exciting and rewarding experience for us, and hopefully for you too. Our primary goal was to get people at Auburn talking to each other, sharing information, and working together to solve the problems that continue to challenge us year after year. Over our short time, we have seen some remarkable changes in how faculty, staff, adminis-tration, and students interact with each other. But, mostly, it has been business as usual. While this is unfortunate, it is understandable in a sad way. In some ways, significant change at Auburn might be too much to ask.

1. Proving Auburn's Worth to the State
“As I see it, a key issue is convincing the state legislature what an economic miracle Auburn University is. As last year’s student satisfaction survey indicated, when Auburn students’ perceptions were bench-marked against a national data base, AU was significantly higher in students’ ratings of instructional effectiveness. Student pride in our institution ‘dwarfed’ the national average.
In economic terms, Auburn plays a huge role in the economic well-being of this state as well as the quality of life. Numerous types of businesses in Alabama have benefitted from Auburn faculty expertise. Indeed, the lifeblood of Alabama’s economy and employment levels heavily depend on the viability of Auburn University. A key point is, we could do so much more if Auburn was adequately funded. Auburn’s huge return on the state’s investment could continue to grow along with the chances of attracting high-tech business into the state.”
--Michael LaTour
Professor, Marketing

2. The Politics of Funding
“The most significant issue facing Auburn University is its lack of funding compared to the universities with which it is expected to compete. The significant shortfall in dollars per student results in noncompetitive compensation for faculty and threatens the quality of academic programs.”
--William V. Muse
President

3. Not Allowing Automation to Harm Teaching Effectiveness
“There is a trend at Auburn, and I believe in education in general, which seems to me to be at odds with the best ideals of a liberal education, and which is aided and abetted by economic stringencies on one hand, and technological advancement on the other hand. This accelerating trend is the turning over to machines of instructional tasks traditionally done by warm, living humans. There are teaching tasks most appropriately, and most effectively done through high-tech media, with students sitting in front of a computer screen. But let's articulate a principle, that we spend as much of our energies creating efficiencies and seeking resources with the objectives of maximizing student/teacher contact and creating a mentoring atmosphere, as we do creating remote and machine-mediated learning for students. This will mean smaller classes and more reasonable teaching loads, which in turn requires a higher level of resources and commitment to this time-honored mode of instruction. The most encouraging, motivating and memorable experiences one has as a student are often relationships and interactions with teachers. I hope that this facet of our educational experience can be preserved, and even enhanced, for future generations.”
--Bryan Duncan
Professor, Fisheries

4. Stay Strong and Committed to Auburn during Adversity
“I believe the most important issue for Auburn University is for it to continue nurturing itself as a university (i.e. liberal arts institution) in the face of budget crises and a State politic that appears not to understand the nature or value of a university. We must ensure that the strengths of our present Core Curriculum are preserved during the transition to a semester system. We should encourage interdisciplinary studies and interactions for students, faculty and administrators. We should never assign value to programs solely on the basis of enrollments and numbers of graduates. The real signs of a viable program are the presence of high quality teaching and research and an intellectual liveliness rampant among its faculty and students.”
--Jim Bradley
Director, Human Odessey Program and Professor, Zoology

5. Reintroduce Education's Role in Changing Lives
“The problem is that higher education is less and less able to defend itself from the charge of being irrelevant. Not irrelevant to the goal of producing insurance agents and veterinarians and engineers, certainly. In a sense, Higher Education is now Higher Information. But irrelevant to the difficult task of living a good life, which includes searching for the definition of a good life. I propose a “rotating faculty”. Faculty would teach undergraduates in a particular discipline for three years at most, then would be moved to another discipline. I could teach Chemistry for 3 years, then I would move on to Sociology. After 3 years in Sociology I would move on to Architecture, and then to History, and then to Accounting, and so on. I would continue to teach graduate courses in Chemistry, and to direct graduate research in Chemistry.”
--Peter Livant
Associate Professor, Chemistry

6. Unrecognized Resources: Experienced Faculty Spouses
“Something that I’ve noticed about AU is that academic activities have seldom been encouraged for faculty spouses. This includes spouses who want to do degree work, and also associate or adjunct status for spouses with advanced degrees. Although the faculty senate recently passed a motion to create something akin to adjunct status, it is still not available to qualified faculty spouses. As persons with adjunct/associate status, qualified spouses could be doing creative work or research under the auspices of AU, giving volunteer undergraduate talks or workshops, and assisting our graduate programs. In some cases, they could be helping departments out with vacant teaching assignments. Faculty spouses who are active in research or creative work now do so informally or outside of the AU framework. We are not encouraging and using valuable expertise and abilities that are available in our home community. We would have to have a Presidential or Provost initiative that would make accommodation and use of qualified spouses a priority for Auburn.”
--Stephen Dobson
Associate Professor, Zoology & Wildlife

7. Gaining forward momentum.
“The overriding change we have seen in the last four years is that the university has lost all forward momentum. To gain momentum we must be proactive under superior leadership. We must distinguish between leadership and management, because part of the problem of this university is too much management and not enough leadership. For example, our department was actively working towards achieving a Top 10 National Ranking (we are currently Top 20-25 nationally); we had to put that aside to react to management mandates on Priority and Rankings, and Reallocation schemes.
We need leaders to educate the trustees and legislature on how a flagship research university can be an economic engine and how our students will get more if they pay more. An environment with forward momentum would allow us to again strive for top national levels. This model has worked elsewhere: witness the development of high-tech enterprises in Silicon Valley and Atlanta; Stanford, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech were necessary to support their development.”
--Russell D. Meller, Harriet B. Nembhard, Charles R. Sox, and Pamela H. Vance
Faculty, Industrial & Systems Engineering

8. Creatively Develop and Use Instructional Technology
“As Auburn University prepares for the future, one issue which needs to be addressed is that of the “open university” in the age of the Internet. It has been said that when a new instructional technology emerges, it is first used to deliver traditional instruction in the new medium. It takes time before experimenters and pioneers discover the new possibilities offered by the technology. As an example, when computers first began to be used for instruction, most of the early programs consisted of text displayed on the screen or multiple choice tests. The programmers simply transferred these traditional exercises from paper to electronic form. It took some time before truly interactive programs became available. With respect to “distance education,” Auburn has experimented with satellite uplinking and compressed interactive video, but these experiments have been limited to the delivery (or reception) of traditional classroom instruction by means of these newer technologies. With increasing access to the Internet and the world-wide web, advances in audio and video compression, and faster network speeds, what capabilities will be made available to students and educators in the future? If a student wants to take a non-traditional foreign language, such as Swahili or Sanskrit, will he or she be able to do so at Auburn University? What about online seminars given by leading experts in fields such as Economics, Philosophy, Mathematics, Biology? Will students be able to register for Independent Study in specialized areas with professors around the world? These capabilities are already provided by the new technology and will continue to expand as the technology improves. Will Auburn University be prepared to take advantage of them? There are some important issues surrounding the technology. First, will we make the commitment and investment in it? Second, how will we administer credits and grades? Third, how will we monitor quality and approve new courses and curricula? Finally, how will we handle financial issues such as tuition, fees, and payment for the instruction? There are many important issues to be addressed and questions to be answered. We need to start now.”
--Bill Flick
Director, English as a Second Language

9. Institutional Acceptance of Marketing Plan
Like the profession of teaching, the marketing concept has widespread misconceptions. It is far more than promotion (which is the negative stereotype given most often by academics -- as if it meant we would become University of Bud Light). Marketing is the purposeful actions which bring about successful completion of goals and desires. It involves intricate research (both internally and externally), planning (both strategic and operative), and positioning (politically, internally, and among our many constituents) along with the concepts of promotion and pricing. The successful management of the academic organization should have little bearing on the academic agendas or pedagogy of faculty at Auburn. Those are the most important functions of the University and happen whether or not the University is managed effectively. The faculty in Issue #7 call for less management and more leadership. I agree in spirit. However, we need better management, not less. A ship cannot be run by a captain alone nor can it be run with the crew sitting in their quarters. The fact remains: organizations need to be managed. They can't just be led into success. The hip phrase to utter nowadays is “Universities should not be run like businesses.” Fine. However, they must be run like something and that something should be far more specific than the arcane, utopic, and largely unproven theories normally given.
--Van Muse
Transfer Student Specialist, Office of Admissions

10. Better Engage Our students in Real Knowlege
“In the past few weeks the major topics of national discussion and concern have included: cloning, abortion, the use of military force against Iraq, and the moral standards of our highest political leaders. Unfortunately, our students are apt to have only the vaguest information about any of these matters. For the most part, the controversies of the day will have passed them by. It would be mistaken to conclude they are completely ignorant. They are likely to be highly informed about latest films, rock videos, and the pitfalls of coping with the opposite sex. However, one of the most important functions of universities is to provide young people with the background to understand the major issues of their era and provide them with the means to analyze them intelligently. Hence, an issue I would like to see addressed is that of how we can do a better job of making these topics come alive for our students and encouraging them to become involved in the nation’s examination of them.”
--Gerard A Elfstrom
Associate Professor, Philosophy

11. Maintaining the Human Touch in an Electronic World
“We live in a world that is becoming increasingly impersonal and decentralized. E-mail and voice mail are replacing personal conversations. Teleconferencing is replacing face-to-face meetings. Telecommuting is becoming commonplace through the wide availability of powerful and inexpensive telecommunication facilities. On college campuses, we see these trends affecting the very core of traditional student life. Fewer students live on campus, making it more difficult to have a common student experience. Some classes are now taught over the Internet or through some form of distance learning, making it more difficult to have a close bond between the student and the professor. Students “meet” in cyberspace instead of the student union building.
The challenge we must meet is, in spite of these trends, to maintain the essence of the Auburn experience, to never lose the Auburn Spirit in all that we do, and to make sure that an Auburn education in the future remains more than just a collection of interactions in an increasingly impersonal world.”
--James P. Golson,
Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management