August 19, 2002

 

 

TO:                  Dr. Conrado M. Gempesaw II

Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Planning

 

Dr. Timothy K. Barnekov

Dean, College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy

 

FROM:            ENEP Core Program Faculty and Program Director

 

Young-Doo Wang, ENEP Program Director, CEEP Associate Director and Associate Professor of Urban Affairs & Public Policy

 

John Byrne, Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, Professor of Urban Affairs & Public Policy

 

Paul Durbin, Professor, Department of Philosophy, CEEP Senior Policy Fellow

 

William Ritter, Professor of Bioresource Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering, CEEP Senior Policy Fellow

 

Yda Schreuder, Associate Professor of Geography, CEEP Senior Policy Fellow

 

Richard Sylves, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, CEEP Senior Policy Fellow (ENEP Program Director 1998-2002)

 

 

SUBJECT:            ENEP Program Faculty Response to the Report of the External Review Committee

 

            We are very pleased to receive the recommendations of the External Review Committee that “ENEP should be granted permanent status at the university” and that “the ENEP Program Director should report directly to the Dean of CHEP or, in the event that the Dean wishes to delegate this responsibility, that the ENEP Program Director should report directly to the director of CEEP on matters related to day-to-day administration of the ENEP program and support budget” (p. 4).

 

We are most gratified to learn the External Review Committee has a very positive assessment of the program.  It states on page 7 that  “the CEEP-sponsored ENEP program ranks among the three best combined graduate programs in energy and environmental policy with which the committee is familiar.”  Such a high ranking from a committee of internationally and nationally recognized experts is heartening to the faculty and director!

 

The program director and core program faculty are convinced that the ENEP Program can succeed as a permanent graduate program at the master’s and doctoral levels if it is provided the appropriate administrative and governance context for its operations.  As previously explained in our unanimous recommendation to the Dean of CHEP on January 8, 2002 (this memorandum appears as Appendix M in the “Self-Study of the Energy and Environmental Policy Program” – submitted to the Vice Provost for Academic Program and Planning on April 8, 2002), structural change in the form of a direct reporting line to the Dean of CHEP is essential to the viability of ENEP as a permanent program.[1]

 

Action on the External Review Committee’s recommendation that the program report directly to the CHEP Dean is crucial.  In the faculty and program director’s unanimous recommendation to the CHEP Dean on January 8, 2002 and in the “Self-Study of the Energy and Environmental Policy Program” submitted to the Vice Provost for Academic Program and Planning on April 8, 2002), the reasons for implementing the structure adopted by the University Faculty Senate in 1997 are presented in detail.  Briefly, three of these reasons are: 1.) faculty  governance – the ENEP core program faculty are drawn from several colleges and the protection of their rights and responsibilities for program governance depends upon their ability, through the program director, to directly submit academic policy and resource concerns and needs to the CHEP Dean for action;[2] 2.) strategic planning – the ENEP Program needs and will continue to need resources from the 5 formally supporting Colleges and the program faculty must be able to request consideration of the Program’s resource needs directly to CHEP’s Dean (who is to represent these needs at the Dean’s Council);[3] and 3.) program identity – the ENEP core program faculty and program director believe that the critical matter of program identity depends upon a clear and direct relationship between the program faculty and students so that philosophy, mission and direction are mutually decided in the interest of the program, rather than the program being obliged to accept an identity required by another academic unit.[4] 

 

Looking to the future, the ENEP program faculty and director are eager to attract junior faculty at the assistant rank to contribute to the program.  This can take two forms: recommending the promotion of existing junior faculty who contribute to the ENEP Program; and, possibly, recommending the hiring of new faculty in one or more of the 5 supporting Colleges.  To achieve these aims, the ENEP Program must be able to develop and administer its own promotion criteria and to work out agreements with units across the campus to facilitate hiring and promotion of junior faculty supporting ENEP.[5] While we recognize that hiring and promotion of junior faculty will be primarily decided by the requirements of traditional academic units in the 5 Colleges, we hope to present a clear procedure for complementary hiring and promotion recommendations from the ENEP Program.  The structural arrangement sought by the ENEP program faculty and director, and recommended by the External Review Committee, is essential to this aim.[6]

 

Solving the current structural barrier to program development will allow ENEP to build upon its achievements during the probationary period and move forward in its strategic planning.  While the existing administrative and governance arrangements have been found through four years of experience to impede development, the faculty and program director are confident that either of the two options recommended by the External Review Committee, or a third option recommended in their January 8, 2002 memo to CHEP’s Dean, can resolve the problem without cost to the University.[7]  Since the Graduate Program Policy Statement adopted by the University Faculty Senate in November 1997 envisaged the ENEP Program as an intercollegiate unit (rather than a program under a single department in a single college) and explicitly stated that it would report directly to CHEP’s Dean, the recommendations of the External Review Committee are entirely consistent with policy action taken to date.

 

The faculty and program director wish to express their view, based on four years of experience, that the status quo is not workable.

 

The program faculty and program director also wish to communicate their enthusiastic support for the recommendation of the External Review Committee for a full-time research position in CEEP to be funded by the University for the purpose of providing supervisory assistance on ENEP student research assistance and to serve as ombudsman for ENEP students (p. 16). We recognize the tight funding situation in the University and the fact that this item probably cannot be acted upon in the near term. Still, we hope that this vital resource need can be met within 2-3 years.

 

In sum, the ENEP program faculty and program director welcome the findings and recommendations of the External Review Committee.  We are prepared to work on behalf of ENEP as a permanent program with a workable governance and administrative structure.  As we are all aware, intercollegiate programs present special challenges to universities.  However, we are convinced that, with the appropriate administrative and governance context for ENEP’s operations, this intercollegiate program can succeed at our University.  ENEP’s performance during the probationary period is one about which we are proud and we believe that the path to long-term excellence is identified by the External Review Committee in its findings and recommendations.


[1]  While the ENEP faculty and program director are very pleased with the high ranking of the program given by the External Review Committee, it is important to note that significant barriers had to be addressed over the past four years, due to the reporting structure under which the program operated.  CHEP’s Dean told the ENEP faculty in 1998 that the reporting structure should be regarded as an “experiment” and that they should test it to see if it could be made to work.  The Program’s success has been realized despite many problems encountered with this structure.  We are unanimously of the view that future success requires change in the reporting structure (as the External Review Committee has recommended in its report).

 

[2] When the ENEP Program was passed by the Faculty Senate, CHEP’s Dean was formally designated in the graduate program policy statement of ENEP as responsible for the administration of the Program. Delegating this authority to the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy creates a basic dilemma of governance.  By recent University policy, intercollegiate programs like ENEP have been assigned to colleges.  When reporting authority for these programs is delegated to a department or school, the faculty of that school or department assumes responsibility for governance.  This can compromise the rights and responsibilities of the intercollegiate program faculty.  In several cases, college deans have avoided this problem by having program directors report directly to them (e.g., the Biomechnics and Movement Science Program in the College of Engineering).  The ability of the core program faculty to decide policy and resource needs is problematic so long as the ENEP program reports to the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy which has 31 tenure track and public service faculty, only two of whom are ENEP program faculty members.  The ENEP program faculty and director are confident that adoption of the External Review Committee’s recommendation that the ENEP program director should report directly to CHEP’s Dean can work.

 

[3] The current administrative arrangement pits the needs of the two existing graduate programs under the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy and its tenure-home faculty against those of the intercollegiate ENEP Program.  Obviously, the School will favor the needs of its in-house programs and in-house faculty over those of an intercollegiate program, most of whose of faculty do not have tenure lines in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy nor in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy.  A practical test of this proposition occurred when the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy developed its five-year strategic plan last year and failed to include ENEP.  Likewise, the recent review of the director of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy occurred without consultation with the ENEP program faculty or students.  (While the University is unlikely to provide new resources in the near term, hopefully there will be opportunities in the future, and the ENEP faculty and program director hope to have a favorable climate for expressing ENEP’s needs.  The current reporting arrangement creates a very unfavorable environment.)

 

[4] The External Review Committee applauded the “esprit de corps” of the ENEP Program (p. 10) but noted in several places that both students and program faculty found the relationship between ENEP and the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy to be awkward and unhelpful.  The core program faculty recognize the need of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy to promote its identity (e.g., through its philosophy of a ‘Delaware Model’) but this identity is quite different from that of ENEP (e.g., ENEP is more international in its course and research orientation and has a much higher proportion of its applications and students drawn from outside Delaware and the U.S.).  We seek the ability to work with our students to create a Program, rather than a School, identity.  The ENEP faculty does not wish to be identified as part of a mission to develop a ‘Delaware Model.’

 

[5]  The ENEP faculty has begun the process of identifying how they can contribute positively to the promotion and tenure process.  In the case of one of its senior faculty members, it has successfully negotiated a role via CEEP’s director for future promotion of a member from the rank of associate to full professor (see Appendix N, pp. 126-127 of the ENEP Self-Study).

 

[6] The current administrative arrangement would require ENEP to accept the promotion criteria of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy (the two existing programs in this unit are not permitted to have separate criteria), denying the intercollegiate identity of ENEP.  With regard to recommendations of new faculty hires, it is entirely possible that the ENEP program faculty and director may decide that a position, for example, in the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Science would best serve its needs.  Requiring ENEP to seek the approval of such a resource priority from the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy – as the current arrangement would require – is, obviously, unreasonable and doomed to fail.  School faculty would naturally worry that their endorsement of a priority for a new faculty line in another unit in another college to help ENEP might limit their ability to seek University priority for additional faculty lines in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.  Similarly, if the ENEP faculty wished to recommend enhancement of GIS facilities in another unit in another college, School faculty might be reluctant to support such a priority for fear that it could hurt their ability to gain funds for their own GIS facilities.

 

[7] See the note at the conclusion of the January 8, 2000 memo to CHEP’s Dean on the question of cost.