Faculty Senate

List of questions for Interim President Matt Schroeder 

Qualifications for the interim president’s role and permanent president position

1. What are your qualifications to serves as university president?
2. How long do you intend to stay in this role?
3. Do you support the recruitment of someone, with broad academic credentials, from outside of the university to be the next president?
4. Why are we recruiting a permanent provost without a permanent president?

 

Vision for UToledo and transparency of leadership

1. What is the University’s direction and vision for next 5 or 10 years?
2. The UToledo administration is not transparent, causing distress for faculty and staff at the university. How are you planning to increase transparency and trust in the university? 

 

Enrollment/Recruitment of Students

1. Background Information:  This year, a high school senior child of some out-of-town family friends picked UT as his first-choice college.  We offered our house near campus where he could live for free.  He applied for a waiver from UT’s on-campus mandate - which was denied. As a result, he chose to attend BGSU to reduce his college debt load.

Question: Has a study been conducted to determine the effect of UT’s on-campus-living mandate on recruitment?  If so, what did that study show?

2. The University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University are similar institutions that, with a few exceptions, cover the same range of academic disciplines and draw students from the same geographic area. Yet enrollment at BGSU has remained stable throughout the pandemic and increased this year by 12%, while enrollment at UT has declined dramatically over the same period. Clearly BGSU is doing something right that UT is not. It is hard to see how this is just a result of bad salesmanship.

Does the administration plan to conduct a systematic survey of students and faculty to discover what they view as UT’s weaknesses that might contribute to students not attending UT? 

3. What responsibility (and action) is the administration taking over losing enrollment while BGSU is gaining enrollment? BGSU's enrollment increased 12% this year based on today's Blade?
4. Unlike many other Ohio universities, student enrollment continues to deteriorate in UToledo. Clearly, UToledo needs to change how it approaches enrollment significantly and comprehensively. How will you do so - could you provide examples of what you are doing differently from the previous administration?  
5. BGSU continues to experience student enrollment growth. Student enrollment across the country is increasing as well. It is higher in community colleges but still improving overall since the pandemic losses. What do you see as the main reason Toledo’s enrollment is low?
6. We have enrollment problems primarily caused by lack of competence and negligence of senior leadership. Now, we are asked to bear all the burdens. The University of Toledo leadership has not made significant efforts to take care of the enrollment problems. What is your plan?
7. The University centralized recruitment which severely damaged our recruitment and enrollment. Even after centralization, UT offices and leadership made so many mistakes. A recent example is the UT experience day this spring. We, the faculty and staff, at the College of Engineering have been supporting and hosting these events. You centralized it, but then canceled it. What are you doing? We organized our own event without any support. 

Supporting articles:

https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2024/08/21/bgsu-celebrates-enrollment-increase-during-move-in-days/stories/20240821096

https://www.bgsu.edu/news/2024/08/bgsu-new-student-enrollment-continues-to-increase-up-22-over-the-last-two-years.html

 

Centralized Advising

1. In the College of Engineering (COE), faculty, chairs, the co-op office and advisors currently work together to run the programs, create the professional identity, and improve the student experience for the same group of students. Centralizing advising will lower the quality of advising and further reduce our enrollment and retention. How can you maintain the flow of information and collective work towards improvement of our programs if academic advisors report to a central office disconnected from the daily and long-term challenges of running our programs?
2. The transition of Associate Director of Department Student Services (ADDSS) positions, to narrower Advisor roles will strip understaffed Departments of the much-needed professional staff support. Within the College of Engineering, for instance, ADDSS staff play vital roles beyond student advising, such as advising Department Chairs and Program Directors on curricular matters, managing student peer-mentoring groups, organizing/participating in recruitment events, supporting students emotionally, and (leveraging their personal connections with former students) connecting the Department with its alumni. Limiting their functions to advising could — by shifting these roles onto the shoulders of overworked and less-skilled-in-these-areas faculty — undermine student experience and affect recruitment and retention, especially with our already thin faculty/staff ranks. Do the benefits associated with this restructuring really outweigh the harm to they will cause to programs where the ADDSS is one of the lynchpins of the Department? If so, what are these benefits?
3. There is a rumor that the University has previously hired external consultants to study a proposal for centralizing advisors, and the consultants found that centralized advising would be a poor fit for our institution. Are these rumors true? If so, what is the motivation for discarding this recommendation?
4. From what I understand, the Administration’s vision is for every Advisor to advise students across all of UToledo’s programs on basic questions and refer more complex, program-specific queries to specialists. This could lead to students being bounced between staff and — since an advisor without program-specific expertise might “not know what they don’t know”— could increase the risk of erroneous advice that could delay graduation and/or harm our students financially. This would not be a good look for an institution trying to stabilize its enrollment. Has this potential to harm our students (and, ultimately, our institution’s finances) been considered and adequately addressed by the Administration’s plan?
5. Some in my College have heard that the advisor centralization is expected to reduce the number of advisors from approximately 50 to 40 through attrition. From the conversation I have had, the people we will likely lose are some of our best ones, e.g., a highly qualified Director of Student Services in a professional program with deep discipline-specific curriculum knowledge and strong departmental relationships will view the change in their job title to “Advisor” (and being torn from their home Department) as a demotion and seek opportunities elsewhere. This is especially true given that what the University or its students stand to gain from this move has not been clearly articulated to the University community. Has the Administration considered the potential for losing these top, front-line staff members in their decision to restructure advising?
6. Centralization of advisors raises many concerns. For example, many advisors are overworked, and it seems that Centralization will only add more work to them - are you planning to get more advisors to do centralization without damaging the advisory's core missions?  Also, advisors need to specialize in a program to provide accurate advice to students and communicate meaningfully with faculty regarding exceptional cases of students - how can this specialization and communication be maintained?
7. Student service directors at COE are like nurses who directly interact and support students’ need at frontlines. They are also involved in our recruitment, alumi relationship and other activities in addition to advising students. The centralized mentoring will not support retention and student learning and experience. Please leave the working system alone. Instead, please try to fix the broken leadership and administration problems as well as enrollment issues. 

 

Budget

1. Last time Matt presented to faculty in 2023, he offered a chart that showed projections of cash on hand. How are we doing right now compared to those projections? Is there an updated chart like this for where we stand?
2. In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, Interim President Schroeder hinted at selling off more property as way to offset the challenges of decreasing enrollment numbers. What will this decision mean for faculty and staff?
3. When will budget discussions start for Fiscal Year 2025-2026?
4. As a past CFO, you are seen by many as one of the main reasons why UToledo is in a difficult financial situation. What are you currently doing (not planning to do) differently to overcome the crippling UToledo financial situation?
5. In planning for the FY24 budget, academic affairs was required to address a budget reduction of over $20 million, this past June when UT closed the FY24 budget there was a $20 million surplus.

Is it effective budget planning to make such large budget cuts that impact the essential key mission of the institution, only to see the resulting budget to end up positive when those funds could have been used to support important academic programs and services for our students?

6. Why are we planning to demolish so many buildings, which will cost quite a lot of money? Is this because of low enrollment? Any efforts and visions to increase enrollment? (please see the picture below). It is just UT’s problem due to lack of leadership. What if we could increase our enrollment? Are we going to build new buildings later? It is so sad to hear all outsourcing and demolition plans of beautiful buildings.  

 

Program Prioritization

1. Does the administration plan to continue cutting humanities programs?  Is it willing to consider rescinding the recent elimination of some degrees (e.g., in foreign languages)?
2. Is the administration willing to consult the faculty and solicit their participation in decisions that result in major changes in academic programs?

 

Faculty

1. Does the administration plan to hire faculty to strengthen academic programs where we have lost personnel?
2. What is the delay for a new faculty contract? When can faculty expect a new contract?

 

DEI

What is your plan for DEI on our campus now that there is no longer a VP?

 

Student Activities

1. On May 28, 2024, you sent an email to faculty that listed your “top priorities.” Your last bullet on this list was: “Position UToledo as a destination for activity and take a more active leadership role in our community.” The FS Committee on Student Affairs conducted a survey that identified the following activity themes for the survey questions: Academic, sports, cultural activities, arts, social events, and entertainment. In addition to the specific activities within each theme, there was an option for students to enter additional suggestions for activities. We sent a copy of this survey to you on May 28, 2024.  Over 1,000 students responded to the survey.

Our direct question to you is how will these activities be organized and administered and who will determine leadership of each type of activity? Thank you!

2. Do we really need a rowing team??