Vol. 24, No 5 January 2012 A New Year’s Resolution for WCU:
Let’s Resolve Our Deficiencies and
Enforce Our Standards
By Jayne Zanglein
Associate Professor
Business Administration & Law
For a few weeks in between semesters as faculty recuperate from the incessant demands of the past semester,
prepare for the inevitable stresses of the holidays, and get ready for the next grueling semester, we can look
back and reflect on what worked and what didn’t and resolve to do better next semester.
That’s one of the reasons I love teaching—it’s the ultimate do-over. If I don’t achieve the standard I set for
myself, I get to erase the board and begin anew. And what better time to start thinking about the upcoming
semester than the last day of exams as I procrastinate grading those papers!
To excel as teachers, we need a respectful, safe and equitable environment to work in, the proper infrastructure
to support our work, and a commitment to work collegially with our colleagues to motivate our students to
meet the basic standards of a university of our rank and reputation. Let’s start with the latter.
Preparing Students to Succeed in College
I am currently teaching two 100 level courses and a capstone course. My job as first year teacher is to motivate
students to learn, to show them that learning is fun, to help them identify the basic skills needed for them to
succeed in college, and to empower them to meet the demands of a fairly rigorous first year course. I set high
expectations for my students, but not so high that they all could not get an A if they study, participate in class,
and timely turn in all of the assignments. Of course, they all do not get A’s. Only a few students do. And I
keep wondering why.
The answer this week—when I am more cynical and yet more optimistic than usual—is that they are not
prepared for college. They do not understand that if they don’t do a 10% paper, then they cannot get an A.
They fail to recognize that attendance is important, that participation can affect their grade, that it is their
responsibility to turn in papers on-time and in the right format, and that they are not invisible in class. We see
them sneak in late. We see them texting. We see them studying for other classes, especially during other
students’ presentations.
We also see the sudden interest in grades during the last two weeks of the semester. My students can always
look up their current grade on Blackboard. But many of them do not look at their grades. Instead, at the end of
the semester, they ask, “Why did I get a zero for the homework in the second week of class?” I bet you are
nodding your head in agreement as you read this. Even the strictest of teachers has a hard time convincing
students to turn in assignments on time.
1 I have often wondered why this phenomenon exists. Is it because high school teachers accept papers no matter
how late? Is it because ADHD is so widely diagnosed that it has become impossible to enforce rules? Is it
because as college professors, we just give in and accept late papers when the nagging becomes unbearable?
Or, is it because students do not believe we will fail them because they know the university wants to retain
them as students? I am leaning toward the latter explanation. And I admit, as strict as I claim to be, I often give
classes amnesties on submitting late work so that the majority of the class does not fail—because as a dean
once told me, “If one student fails, it’s the student’s fault. If they all fail, it’s the professor’s fault.” I’m not
taking the blame for a widespread cultural phenomenon.
I also teach a capstone class, which presents other obstacles. I have managed to mentor them to write high
quality memoranda, to professionally interview clients, to represent clients in a mock trial at the Jackson
County Courthouse. But I cannot get them to turn in the final research paper on time with a Works Cited page,
proper quotations and attributions. I remind them of the requirements for proper citations, and we work on it
all semester in other contexts, but still half the class submits improperly cited papers with lackluster sources. It
is distressing to catch and confront plagiarists! I am so frustrated that I am considering dropping the
assignment even though I strongly believe that no one should graduate from college who is unable to write a
coherent, properly attributed research paper that is, by and large, grammatically correct. This seems to be an
unattainable goal and I am growing old and tired of fighting battles without adequate resources. It is hard to
strive for excellence in teaching and learning as our workloads are increased, our classes balloon, our resources
shrink, and our pay remains stagnant.
Ensuring an Adequate Internet Infrastructure
Let’s turn to the infrastructure issues. How can we teach professionalism and emphasize punctuality when we
have a poor Internet infrastructure? Online exams are affected by outages of Blackboard during exam periods.
Students cannot timely submit documents when the email between students and faculty is broken. It took 20
minutes for me to receive an email that a student sent me from three feet away. (I timed it.) Students often text
me to tell me that they emailed me and oftentimes I text back saying, “Resend. I didn’t receive it.” Even my
colleagues have complained that they did not receive emails, and so I don’t think it is a specious claim. We
cannot enforce deadlines if we do not have the infrastructure to support it.
We also need a better infrastructure for advising and supporting students. Students should not have to meet
with faculty to register for classes. Faculty involvement in advising should be limited, except in special needs
situations, to career and professional advising—not helping a student decide what courses to take and then
handing out a PIN.
Finally, the creation of mini-profit centers creates problems. It’s often cheaper to rent a car than to use the
motor pool. To host an event at the UC Theater or the BAC costs money. This deters faculty from hosting
community events.
Ensuring a Safe, Respectful, and Equitable Environment
Now, for the environment. We need a safe, respectful, and equitable environment. In my role as facilitator of
some of the 2020 faculty meeting sessions, I heard many complaints about the workplace environment—the
lack of trust, the lack of equity, and the fear of reprisal. Faculty fear being fired—and rightfully so, given the
previous administration’s penchant for swiftly removing faculty and staff for reasons that will never be known
because they are protected by multiple gag orders. Many faculty members praise their superiors in online
surveys because they adamantly believe the responses can be traced to them and they fear reprisal if they voice
their concerns. It doesn’t matter if they incorrectly fear reprisal: perception is their reality.
Let’s face it: We work at a campus where we are rarely appreciated except on Employee Appreciation Day
when the university hosts a lunch and closes down faculty parking spaces. We are expected to tow the line. If
we don’t, we are put in our place or reprimanded in a non-collegial and unprofessional manner. Dissent is not
welcomed. Our input is welcomed as long as it is what the administration wants to hear. And if we do provide
input as requested, it often disappears into a black hole, never to be heard of again.
That's one of the reasons that the Faculty Senate vote on collegiality is so important. By including collegiality
as a fourth leg of the tenure stool, we are unwittingly allowing faculty who dissent or object to college,
2 university, or administrative decisions to be judged on conduct unrelated to their teaching, service, and
scholarship. It provides the administration the ammunition with which to silence our voice.
We give lip service to equity, especially that of women and minorities. Did you see the student graffiti this
semester that said something like, “All my professors are white”? We are making inroads in recruiting
minority students but we don’t have a good reputation for recruiting and retaining minority professors and
staff.
Women still make significantly less than their male counterparts, and although I know some of you will bristle
at the next remark, I am going to say it: In some colleges where women faculty are the minority, they do a
disproportionate amount of service. And although we had to attend sexual harassment training, it was wholly
inadequate. The message was: sexual harassment is wrong and we are making you do this because we have to.
That’s another blow for the victims of harassment on campus, whether they are male or female.
The administration sometimes delegates decisions to faculty that should not be delegated. I look forward to
meeting the prospective Provost candidates so I can ask: “Are you willing to call a snow day when the weather
is treacherous?” That decision should not be left to individual faculty members. Either it's a snow day or it
isn’t. Likewise for cancelled exams. Faculty should not be expected to accommodate students because the
makeup exam time caused by the lockdown was inconvenient for them. As I heard one student say, “I’m not
driving all the way back from Franklin to attend a makeup exam.”
Finally, we need a safe environment. Kudos to Chief Hudson and the Safety Committee on the handling of the
recent robbery incident. But there’s still a lot to be corrected. People entered the campus during the lockdown
and walked into supposedly locked buildings. People thought the second siren was permission to leave the
secure environment. Some classroom doors cannot be locked and those red-green window cards are nowhere
to be found.
The Next Steps
So what can we do to work with our colleagues to motivate students to meet the basic standards of a university
of our rank and reputation and encourage good faculty to stay here? How can we encourage WCU to
appreciate students, faculty and staff, welcome our voices, hear our concerns, and provide us with support to
do our jobs professionally?
The Strategic Plan draft issued December 14, 2011 is a start in the right direction. It lists our
core values as:
Institutional Integrity
Free and open interchange of ideas
Respect for our communities
Organizational and environmental sustainability
Cultural diversity and equal opportunity
To make sure that we meet our core values, I propose we start with the following:
1. We appoint a task force of students, faculty, and staff to determine the essential skills students need to
succeed at WCU and we develop orientation sessions, USI sessions, library sessions or English
modules (mandatory for all students, even transfer students) on basic college work skills and
ethics, plagiarism, and other important issues. We might consider adopting a campus-wide
required book on this issue that is provided to each student at orientation and is emphasized in
orientation sessions.
2. We consider adopting a campus-wide policy so that we can be consistent in our treatment of
plagiarism and late papers. This would allow us to teach students to work and cite properly, rather
than graduating people who still cannot write a proper paper or turn work in on time. Currently,
enforcement is inconsistent, which leads to graduates who are unable to meet these basic
requirements.
3. We appoint a task force on gender equity.
3 4. We hold a faculty/staff convocation to affirm the current administration’s lack of tolerance for
unlawful retaliation or retribution, sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying, etc. and hold an
open forum on how to regain faculty/staff trust for administration. (The open blog on the Strategic
Plan is a good start at http://www.wcu.edu/29842.asp)
5. We find the resources to upgrade the Internet infrastructure to be reliable.
6. We provide constructive feedback on ways to improve campus safety that include concerns and
suggestions from students, who often report issues to faculty that never get addressed.
7. We create a University Ombudsman Office to work with faculty, staff and administration and to
encourage them to raise such complaints to an independent neutral, to offer conflict resolution
training, and to provide a safe haven for redressing workplace complaints.
Happy New Year!
Jayne Zanglein
Associate Professor
Business Administration & Law
_____________
Coulter Faculty Commons for Teaching and Learning
We normally feature the responses to our previous month’s
Faculty Forum article in this section, but everyone was so busy
with holiday activities and end of semester duties that we received
NO responses to Erin McNelis’ excellent article entitled It’s About
Community, which can b e accessed here:
http://fpamediaserver.wcu.edu/~sandbox/FacultyForum/Faculty
ForumDec2011.pdf .
There is still time, though, so go back and read Erin’s
article and send us your responses. It was a terrific article with
which to end the semester; it put a capstone on some hearty
dialogue about the challenges and opportunities we face at
Western and reminded us all of just how much we share even
while we disagree and debate the tough issues.
_____________
Editorial Notes
By Vera Holland Guise
Faculty Fellow, Coulter Faculty Commons
We are now scheduling authors for articles for this spring semester. We are thrilled that the interest and
enthusiasm for writing for The Faculty Forum has dramatically increased, as have the responses to articles.
Currently, we just have April open for a writer, so if you’re interested, let us hear from you! Remember, you
can always comment on any article at any time and if you prefer you can always list your response as
4 “anonymous” and we will honor your privacy. Email me at vguise@wcu.edu let me know when you’d
like to write an article and some idea of its slant, or send your responses and comments to me for posting. OR
you may comment directly through the webpage by accessing the Faculty Forum’s Wiki at
https://media.wcu.edu/groups/facultyforum/ then select the article under What’s Hot on the top right. The
Wiki requires you to use your email username and password to access the article. The Faculty Forum is a
publication by and for WCU faculty, but we do invite comments from staff, who are equally important in the
pursuit of excellence here at WCU. It is such fun to serve as the Faculty Fellow in the Coulter Faculty
Commons assigned to The Faculty Forum! This is truly an honor and a privilege. Thanks to all of you who
make it happen!
To access the article as a PDF, click here.
Click here to go to the most current Volume of the Faculty Forum.
The direct link to the main Faculty Forum Webpage is: http://www.wcu.edu/7480.asp.
To access the Wiki and make a comment online, follow: https://media.wcu.edu/groups/facultyforum/
Wishing all of you a very happy new year in 2012!
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