research and creative mission.
Vision Ohio states the goal that Ohio University will be a nationally prominent research university recognized for the excellence of its faculty and the balance they strike between teaching and scholarship and sets as the primary guiding principle that strong graduate and professional programs are necessary to achieve our educational research and creative mission.
On paper it is absolutely clear that teaching and research are the mission of Ohio University. In case you didn't know, teaching and research are done by the faculty. For years, Ohio University's full-time faculty have excelled in serving the teaching mission as indicated by good marks in retention rates, graduation rates, in national rankings and the successes of our graduates. Research productivity has more than doubled over the last few decades, with external research funding in 2008 averaging about $50,000 per year per Group 1 faculty member.
Over the last few decades the student enrollment has increased and OU has kept pace with the teaching and advising needs of more students by hiring more Group 1 faculty to serve our mission with excellence. And the increase in tenured faculty is directly related to our increasing graduate enrollments, new degree programs, increased undergraduate research and increased research funding. But over the last few years, as OU brags about the biggest enrollment increases ever, it has lost sight of the fact that more faculty are needed to serve more students with the same quality. Since 2006, the Athens campus enrollment has gone up 4.8 percent, but the number of Group 1 faculty has gone down by 6 percent. In the largest college, the College of Arts and Sciences, the number of faculty is decreasing twice as fast (9 percent) as the student body is increasing!
Presently on the Athens campus, there are 45 fewer faculty to teach 962 more students. Teaching more students with fewer faculty increases class sizes, increases the student to faculty ratio, reduces course offerings and decreases opportunities for student research and creative activity - all of these weaken academic programs. Increased teaching and advising demands erode research productivity and upset the balance between teaching and research mandated for faculty in the primary goal of Vision Ohio. Increased teaching and decreased research weaken graduate programs and are directly contrary to OU's stated mission, goals and guiding principles.
This pattern of faculty degradation with increasing enrollments is very disturbing to the faculty not only for the direct negative effect it is having on our ability to excel at our central purpose but because the university administration constantly holds the rhetoric of Vision Ohio in one hand while cutting faculty lines and academic support with the other. Ohio University simply cannot continue to claim it is serving its mission when the number of students is going up and the number of faculty are going down. This issue far outweighs what the athletic director thinks OU's mission is or how the president and board of trustees can justify the money they spend on the dynamic marketing vehicle that athletics thinks it provides. The OU Board of Trustees and administration have to put the money where the mission is if they want Ohio University to follow the trajectory of excellence it has followed in the past.
Steve Reilly is a professor of biological sciences.
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Opinion
Steve Reilly
