By Mikhailina Karina

Approximately 50 Mason faculty and staff gathered recently in the Center for the Arts mezzanine to share ideas and concerns about the university's future. The Nov. 19 meeting was the second to last in a series of town hall gatherings, titled Engaging the Future, held on the Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William Campuses. Craig Gibson, Fenwick Library, and Robert Matz, English, facilitated the meeting.

The "futures" town hall series was organized by the President's Task Force on the Future of the University, a seven-member interdisciplinary faculty task force led by Joe Wood, vice provost for academic affairs. In early October, the task force issued a report that presented five scenarios, each of which might represent a direction for George Mason, but actually set out assumptions about the future from which the university may select. (A copy of the report is available at the Information Desk in the Johnson Center or online at http://www.pubs.gmu.edu/futures/).

After eight town hall meetings, Wood says one common theme has emerged: people fear that they have to choose one scenario over another. In reality, he says, the scenarios were deliberately written in stark terms, with pros and cons for each, to encourage discussion and debate. In fact, different academic units already practice a combination of these outlined scenarios: becoming a research university, refining the educational mission, consumer sovereignty, learning clusters, and the flexible response.

Governor-elect James Gilmore promised during his campaign to support a funding effort that would provide $25 million for George Mason to achieve financial parity with other Virginia universities. However, before the state legislature votes on the proposal, George Mason must present a plan for how the money would be allocated to benefit the entire university. Thus, the ongoing process of examining the university's past and of setting priorities for the future presents opportunities on many levels.

"The fact that we're engaged in discussing the future reflects that we are in the process of distributing this money in a thoughtful way," Wood says. "We have to show the Board of Visitors, SCHEV, and public supporters, including the Roundtable and Century Club, as well as our students and community, that we are thinking in great thoroughness and detail how we allocate our resources internally."

Town hall meeting participants engaged in a heated, but cordial, discussion of a number of faculty and student issues. Coilin Owens, English, said he was concerned with his students' lack of preparedness for success at a university. In the past few years, he says, anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of freshmen English students are "remedial cases. It's not surprising our students can't read basic texts for college students." By accepting freshmen with low SAT scores, he said the university's admissions policies are compromised, in turn compromising the integrity of the entire institution. "We accept almost any student who applies," he said. To remedy the problem, Owens suggested toughening admissions standards and providing more effective support to students who need help.

Other faculty also voiced their concerns about Mason's undergraduate students. Roy Rosenzweig, History and Art History, said that even though students may come to Mason with inadequate skills, it is the university's role to make sure they graduate with good skills.

President Merten took a few minutes from the concurrent Board of Visitors meeting to listen to the discussion and to answer questions. He emphasized that Mason's mission is to serve Northern Virginia. "We can be highly selective and still serve the needs of the community. It's not a conflict of priorities. One way to meet the needs of the community is when we look forward: what skills should our students have? Information technology and communications," Merten said.

Several Arts and Sciences faculty stressed the need for a strong liberal arts education. Paul D'Andrea, Robinson Professor of Theater and English, said that faculty should take a leadership role in teaching the outside community and the university administration that liberal arts are tremendously important for understanding current political, social, and economic developments. "Accountability to the community is an excellent idea," he said. "We should be leading our communities, government, and administration in what we know--the relevance of liberal arts in educating free men and women.

"I am quite concerned that in the future we will become responsible for teaching communications skills devoid of content. Writing cannot be taught through algorithms. The reason one writes well is because one has something terribly important to say, such as concerns dealing with Supreme Court decisions, U.S. government, or heartbreak." D'Andrea went on to say that we must resist trends, modes, and fads that would lead us away from content-oriented liberal arts and sciences material.

Another hot topic was reconciling the demands of research and teaching. Debra Bergoffen, Philosophy and Religious Studies, said it would be a mistake to decouple research and teaching. "We now have large classes and no teaching assistants. It's a terrible formula for undergraduate education. In my life, research feeds teaching and vice versa. I don't plan to make a choice about which one is more important."

Bergoffen agreed that Mason should support the local information technology industry. "It's not a challenge to academic integrity to develop programs supporting the area where we live," she said. However, that is difficult to achieve with current staffing problems. "We cannot have a quality institution staffed by adjuncts," she said.

The issue of adjunct faculty hit a nerve with those in attendance. David Kuebrich, English, said that Mason's adjuncts are deficient in salary, office space, and employment benefits. "We can't expect them to serve on committees or advise students," he said. As a result, many adjunct faculty don't invest much energy into creating a connection or continuity with their students, he said. Merten responded that it would be wrong to make a generalization that adjuncts are bad teachers. "We have access to a pool of people others would kill for," he said. However, he agreed that it was important to see whether Mason was developing an "overdependency" on part-time faculty.

Several faculty made suggestions about attracting a strong freshman class and promoting George Mason in the community. Bergoffen said the university should develop more magnets, such as the Honors Program, to bring in students. Alok Berry, School of Information Technology and Engineering, said that local high schools lack complete information about Mason's offerings. He suggested bringing in high school teachers to Mason for short seminars, as well as recruiting from other areas in Virginia. D'Andrea agreed that faculty should get more involved in speaking at high schools and exciting students about education at George Mason.

Concludes Wood, "We are not voting on the plan for the future. We are collecting information from all such dialogues and reporting this information to the president in January," he says. "These dialogues raise new issues, common values, shared interests, and a range of concerns. Out of that, we will cobble together a sense of what should be done. At that time, he might want to move into a more strategic planning mode. I expect the president will move forward on some decisions this spring."