In the 2010 Faculty Climate Survey released mid-February, the College of Engineering reported the lowest numbers in job satisfaction and gave President Renu Khator and Provost John Antel the lowest approval rating out of all of the colleges participating.
“I don’t believe this is an accurate assessment of the college,” said Michael Evans, junior chemical engineering and student senator for the College of Engineering, in an e-mail interview.
“I believe initially (engineering students) would be stunned and wonder why,” said Evans about students’ reaction to the survey, “but they would understand that the 30 or so responses to the survey only represent a fourth of the engineering faculty.”
According to the survey, 36 faculty members from the College of Engineering responded. The college had the fifth most representatives in the survey out of 13 colleges. CLASS had the most respondents with 136.
Even with the low number of respondents, engineering gave Provost Antel a “slightly disapprove” rating at 3.75 on a 1 to 7 response scale.
President Khator received a higher rating from the college with a “neutral rating” at 4.41, compared to the highest number coming from the Library with a 6.83 “somewhat approve” rating.
“The reason why the ratings might be low is because the engineering faculty think that they are not receiving enough money or provided with adequate facilities,” Evans said.
Evans also commented on the difficulties from on-campus construction.
“Engineering student groups are forced to meet in the Y-building, which is barely standing, and the engineering buildings are old and out-dated,” Evans said.
Aside from poorly rating the president and provost, the engineering faculty evaluated central administration “least favorably.”
Comparative analyses across University colleges indicated that UH’s “risk of losing faculty” is highest in engineering, according to the survey.
While no one who participated in the survey would comment about the ratings since it was done anonymously, Shin-Shem Steven Pei, electrical and computer engineering professor and faculty senate member, pointed out that the College of Engineering did not rank lowest in every category.
“We gave our department chairs a very high 4.91 rating out of a maximum possible of 7, which is higher than Technology, Pharmacy, Business and Library,” Pei said.
For students like Evans, this provides optimism about their college.
“I don’t think (the survey) should represent the college as a whole,” Evans said. “My professors are very pleased with the performance of the president and provost. Their labs are being renovated, and new faculty members are being brought to the campus.”
Overall, the president’s ratings were positive, as were the provost’s, even though his were slightly lower.
Mr. Evans questions whether the results are representative of the college as a whole by saying that the number of faculty respondents is only one fourth of the college's faculty. He goes on to say the the survey should not represent the college as a whole. He bases this judgment on his own very limited observations. Why does he think that his own views represent the college better than 30 faculty who responded to the survey? If he thinks that the views of 1/4th of the college's professors is not representative, why does he believe that his own views are more representative??
Instead of dismissing these results, one should try to understand the root cause of the problems.
State of the art research is cruical for the College of Engineering. Neither the President nor the Provost have any credentials in research. They have no understanding of how to build and support research in a tier one university. The President gives good motivational speeches but these speeches can hide her ineffectiveness only from those who are not involved with the detailed workings of the research enterprise in the College. The engineering Dean is completely ineffective: not being able to do his job, he has delegated everything to others. Unfortunately, none of the people assigned the jobs have the competence necessary to carry out the job.
The associate dean for research has no research credentials. The associate dean for graduate studies has no research and does not supervise any graduate students. In fact, many believe that his appointment is based on the sole fact that he is the husband of President Khator. This brings up another major problem: The administration is riddled with cronyism and most faculty feel that virtually all critical decisions are made in secret without fair consideration and review.
The major accomplishments that President Khator and Dean Tedesco take credit for (NRC rankings, Carnegie classification) have nothing to do with their performance. All these are based on data for years BEFORE they came to UH. Many students and many in the community do not know this and are misguided by the President and the Dean to think that the current administration is accomplishing something important. Faculty are seriously concerned that these accomplishments -built upon their hard work- are at risk as a result of the extremely poor decisions made by the current administration.