Menards Hall collapses at North Dakota State University.

Definition of “Creeping Meatballism” The idea of thinking individually has become a big joke. Old Thomas J. Watson of I.B.M. came up with the idea for a sign which just said: “Think”. And today, it’s a gag! This is the result of “Creeping Meatballism”.

On the first of December, Dr. Richard Hanson became the interim president of NDSU. I recall thinking at the time that he might becoming president of an institution on the verge of collapse.  I had no idea that it might happen literally.  I’m referring, of course, the collapse of the north side of that grand old structure Minard Hall.

For those unfamiliar with the NDSU campus, Minard Hall is the four floor yellow brick building with maroon trim across Albrecht Blvd from the NDSU Library, sandwiched between Askanase Hall(the Little County Theatre), the heating plant and Festival Hall.  It was built in three stages, the first being in 1901. It houses the College of Arts, Humanities and social Sciences, as well s the Mathematics and Psychology Departments of the College of Science and Mathematics.

For those not involved in higher education at a research university, this is a catastrophe of indescribable proportion.  To me, it is symbolic of the neglect  a state with a billion dollar surplus and its population treats its higher education system.  I don’t expect to make any friends by saying this, but for me, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I no longer care whether the youth of North Dakota get quality education or not.  Much as I love my students, the state just doesn’t deserve the effort.

So let’s return to Minard Hall, clearly one of the most important buildings on campus.  Currently it is closed to everyone.  There is hope to get the offices and classrooms not affected by the collapse ready for the start of spring semester.  There will supposedly be a window of opportunity for faculty with offices in the safe part of the building to return to their offices to retrieve important materials, such as books and papers, before the building is closed again.  I find that many don’t understand that NDSU is a research university, meaning that just because classes are not in session does not mean the faculty don’t need to use their offices.  I think the NDSU administration, in particular provost/academic vice president Craig Schnell, and, for that matter, some of the students, of publicizing the fact that many of the lost books and papers are irreplaceable.  I can only imagine how much research has been lost.

Bruce Frantz, who is in charge of the physical buildings on campus, would have us believe that this was an unforeseeable accident, and there were no mistakes made by his office or the contractor.  Snort.  This is an engineering school with a strong construction engineering program and excellent construction engineering faculty.  They just didn’t pay attention, in my view.  Franz is probably right to say the collapse happened at one of the few times no one would get hurt.  I’m glad, of course, that no-one did, but if someone had, I would have enjoyed the embarrassing national publicity that might have followed.

Franz would also have us believe that the damage can be fixed(for half a million.  The loss to the affected faculty, of course, can’t.  Even if it could, it turns out that NDSU carries no liability insurance).  I question whether Minard Hall should be repaired.  The building has been an expensive disaster for decades.  My office is in Minard Hall, but not in the affected area.  But my library and research papers and very probably my health has suffered much over the years.

Sometime in my first few years at NDSU the roof above(by a floor or two) sprang a leak and much of my library, carefully and costfully assembled while I was a graduate student and new faculty member, was drenched, rendering many of the books unusable, as the pages are all stuck together. This has happened so many times since that during a rain storm there is apparently a stand-by crew available  that can go rushing into faculty offices and cover everything with plastic if the roof leaks.  I read something about this once, but since I’ve observed it happening a few times, there’s no need to cite it.

Air quality has also been an issue in Minard Hall, due to its proximity to the heating plant.  In fact, the state health department once declared my office as uninhabitable.  My department and college administration was unable to find another office for me, but fortunately I was able to generate two invitations from departments in other buildings to reside there.  Yes, that is a dig at the problem solving abilities of the NDSU administration.

So, what we have here is an historic building that houses many important departments and in which many classes are taught that is virtually collapsing.  We didn’t have enough space for our 14,000 students before this happened.  And all of this at the end of an eleven year term of a president, Forum’s man of the year, that could raise millions for athletics, but couldn’t keep a major building safe in a state with a billion dollar surplus.

There’s many more problems Chapman left us with, but that could be the topic of another essay.

How long has it been now since Joseph Chapman has made the front page of the Forum or been the topic of a Television News Feature about his alleged accomplishments?  I’m not sure, but he sure seems to have dropped off the radar all of a sudden.  Wonder why  that is.  I can only speculate, but I think we don’t know very much of the story.  His sudden and unexpected resignation(regardless of what he says after the fact) and the speed with which the State Board of Higher Education accepted his resignation certainly makes one wonder.  It has been amusing, however, to watch the news media display their ignorance of the Chapman presidency and how a research university functions.

I recall the huge issue of the forum with the front page headlines of “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” together with several other articles with color photos of Chapman and his missus.  I have often wondered what NDSU president’s wives have to do with the situation: it is not their credentials that are examined, they are not the ones to give an address, as is customary, to the entire university community, so why do the presidents always refer to their spouses when announcing news about their actions on belhalf of the University?  In this case, Chapman’s wife was paid approximately the salary of a beginning assistant professor, supposedly to represent the University.  How could she do that, when she is not a University administrator, faculty member or staff member?  Of course she was not paid with apporpriated funds, and to focus on such minor apparent abuses is, I think, to miss the point.

There was supposed to be a huge rally in support of Chapman during the middle part of the class day featuring the Gold Star Band, speakers and throng of students.  Channel 11 hyped the event for approximately a week. promising full coverage.  I watched their coverage, and tried to figure out where the event was held.  There were remarks by Chapman and his wife, some members of the Gold Star Band performing on a stage, interviews with a couple of students(what does two interviews out of 14,000 students tell us about anything?) and some shots of some students sitting in an auditorium.  I noted there were a lot of empty seats.  Channel 11 did remark that the event was smaller and more subdued that the previous Chapman rally.
Later, I found out that the event was held in the Memorial Union’s Century theater and was attended by about 150 students.  If true,e I find even 150 a bit high, since that’s about all Century theater holds.  At that time of day, I could get 150 students to watch people flipping coins in the union.

I’m not sure what happened during the first rally to cause such a large and enthusiastic turnout, but I suspect it had something to do with athletics and a large dose of propaganda from the president’s office.  The turnout this time is not surprising: students really have almost zero contact with the president or his office, academic policy is not made by the president, so in general most don’t know or care who the president is.  Anything they learn about him will come from the media, which apparently gets its information directly from the president’s office.

So, now we come to the interim president, selected rather quickly by Chancellor Goetz.  Before the appointment of Dick Hanson as imterim president, the Forum again amused me with their picks.  One was Allan Fischer, who was interim president once before, and the mdia has indicated was “The student’s Choice.”  This last is pure balderdash: just because a fes students held a vigil outside the president’s office while Fischer occupied it does not make him the student’s choice.  As a metter of fact, the vigilantes were, as it turned out, all members of the Campus Crusade for Christ, an organization of which Fischer was the Faculty Advisor.  In fact, Fisher was previously Dean of the college of Science and Mathematics.  He neglected to have the faculty perform their mandatory evaluation of him, so Vice President Schnell stepped in and had the faculty evaluate Fischer.  Most people on the evaluation committee were shocked as to how unpopular he was with his own faculty.  Now, it is important that Dean does not mean “Boss.”   His unpopularity among his faculty did not come from poor administrative decisions, but rather from poor administrative style.  In fact, under current University policy, his style of administration would now be illegal.  But I won’t go into detail.

Despite an attempt by an end run by some local luminaries, Fischer was not appointed without submitting to the usual search process.  I asked one of the search committee members about his candidacy, and was told he was not a serious candidate.  During televised interviews he was often not able to respond in a complete sentence.    I was tempted to attend his address to the University community just so I could ask enough questions so that he would embarrass himself, but was told by the same member of the search committee that would be unnecessary, since he would do a perfectly good job of doing that himself.  Apparently, that’s what happened.  So, not a good choice for interim ;president now, I don’t think.

That brings us to another Forum choice, Provost/Academic Vice President Schnell.  Craig Shcnell is the closest thing to leader the University has.  He is far, far too valuable to the University and its academic programs, both teaching and research, to spend his time on funding and the like, in my opinion.  Also, he has a direct and honest style which I find refreshing and is unusual in a university administrator, which makes him all the more effective as provost and Vice President, but I don’t think it would help much in the Legislature or in fund raising.  Of course, that’s just my opinion.  I could be wrong, on all counts, but I  dont’ thiink the Forum consider any of these issues in deciding who they think should be NDSU’s president, either permanent or interim.

That brings us to Chancellor Goetz’s pice, Dick Hanson, whom the Forum apparently supports.  I knew Dick rather well when he was Sharon Wallace’s Associate Vice President for academic affairs, and admired him as the only man in the uppr administration with any brains(remember, Sharon Wallace, the Academic Vice President and Jim Ozbun, the president at the time were essentially run out of town on a rail).  I suspect that the Forum supports Hanson because he is an ex Bison football player, and so will continue to support higher profile athletics.  If so, I think they are mistaken: I think Dick’s football days are in his past.

But let’s look at the rest of the story.  Hanson, as reported in the Forum, was indeed a faculty member at NDSU for a few years, but I believe his PhD is in Home Economics are a similar field.  NDSU is the state university of agriculture and applied science.  Even though he had some success in the past. I don’t think Dck’s credentials qualifies him to seek funding for such a university.

When Dick left NDSU, it was to become academic vice president at Augustana College.  He apparently has had several other positions since then, most recently as president oi Waldorf College in Iowa, a 440 student liberal arts college.  The similarity between such an institution and NDSU is non-existent.  One main difference is that Waldorf wouldn’t be doing any researchm, while NDSU gets approximately 1/3 of its budget from overhead money for its research programs.  Dick is an advocate of high teaching standards for the faculty, and who can disagree with that, but he , at least used, to have some what are to me funny ideas.  For example, he doesn’t agree with those of us that think active researchers use that activity to make them better teachers.  Well, just think about it.  Would you rather learn a subject from someone active in the field or someone that just studies it?  He thinks, or used to, that high student evaluations were synonymous with good teaching.  sometimes, maybe, but when I was a department chair I used to be suspect of abnormally high student evaluations, and investigation proved me right on many occasions.  Besides, we are have a large College of Engineering: in taking their beginning science and mathematics courses, it is far more important that the students learn the material that if the like how its taught.  But all of this may be moot, the president doesn’t have much control over these things, and Dick may have changed some.  I always found him intelligent and open to new ideas.

But I cannot emphasize enough the difference between a school like Waldorf and NDSU.  Of course I’m biased, but to my way of thinking and experience, education at state land-grant schools is a real bargain.  Small liberal arts colleges pride themselves in academic excellence, but they are very limited in what they can offer.  In some departments at NDSU, the best students in their graduate courses are their own undergraduates.  I currently know of one student that in 3 1/2 years will have completed a double major in the sciences and earned a master’s degree in addition.  The type of institutions Hanson has been associated with would have noting to offer such students.

So, I hope whoever makes the decision of the composition of the search committee and ultimately the president will take into account the actual make up and structure of the University, and I hope everyone ignores the Forum.

Recently, as we all know, Joseph Chapman

unexpectedly and suddenly resigned as president of North Dakota State University.  There was, at the time, a controversy about cost overruns on his new house and his $22K trip to O’Bama’s inauguration.  However, the suddenness of the resignation and the speed with which the State Board iof Higher Education accepted the resignation makes one wonder if there isn’t much more that might bear scrutiny.  In fact, I have heard from leaders of the University Senate, the actual governing body of the University, that all we have seen is a very small tip of the iceberg.  However, since I’m not aware of other issues, I will not speculate what more there might be.

The local media was filled with interviews with faculty, students, and, of all people, Bison athletics fans.  This last I think significant, and I must say that the media must know a radically different group of faculty and students than I do.

President Chapman is not extremely popular among the faculty.  It is important, I think, to note that he is not the “boss” of the faculty in any sense.  The University is governed be the University Senate, which is primarily composed of elected and appointed faulty representatives. There are two staff members and five students, but the rest of the Senate, well over 40 members, I think, are faculty.  I think the proper perspective is gained by noting that the Mace, the symbol of the University’s authority, is carried at graduations by the presiding officer of the University Senate.

Much has been made of all of Chapman’s so-called accomplishments.  I’m not sure how many accomplishments of NDSU are actually his.  Sure, one gets that impression by reading the Forum and watching the local news on television, but it seems to me that they get most, if not all, of their information from Chapman’s office.

Now I happen to know Chapman reasonably well, as well as several other administrators and lots of faculty and students at NDSU.  From first hand experience I can say that despite his smiling veneer, Chapman is the type of leader that doesn’t receive mail he doesn’t want to receive, doesn’t answer questions he doesn’t like, and will avoid situations that might turn confrontational.  Never fear, I can prove all of these things, but decline to be specific in keeping with the more’s of this site.

Chapman arrived on campus eleven years ago, trumpeting the advantages of moving to division one in athletics.  He assured us that this would help the faculty to obtain grant funds, and besides, that’s what are peer institutions do.  When it was pointed out to him that the type of athletic teams NDSU play do not come from NDSU’s academic peers, he responded he meant Land Grant Schools.  Well, South Carolina State and North Carolina A&T are land grant schools, a fact which Chapman denied, citing that Clemson, for example, is the land grant school in South Carolina.  Unfortunately, Chapman was apparently unaware that in the southeastern United States, each state has two land grant schools(”separate but equal”).  Alright, so the athletic department hired a consulting firm to study whether NDSU should go division one or not.  Sure enough, this firm recommended a move to division one.  A poll of the members of the University Senate showed that a majority opposed such a move.  Athletic Director Gene Taylor went so far as to claim that this same consulting had surveyed the faculty and discovered that a majority favored such a move, and even wouldn’t object tro appropriated funds being spent on a division one program.  Of course, no such questions wre actually asked of the faculty, and Taylor somehow bvelieved the University Senate would believe him when he said they(apparently the athletic department) had come to that conclusion on their own based on other un-named responses.

One might wonder how this move was accomplished if the University Senate was opposed.  Simple.  No apoproriated funds were involved: the money was all to come from donations to the Development Foundation and Teamakers.  So, according to Chapman, it was none of the Senate’s business.

Now, about athletics.  The athletic program has virtually nothing to do with academics, and certainly nothing to do with the availability of external funds to faculty for their research.  Chapman made a big thing about NDSU becoming a Carnegie 2 research Institution, but neglected to note that despite tremendous problems, such as poor or non-existent laboratory facilities or research library, the faculty does pretty well with its research.  Many of the best research institutions(e.g University of Chicago, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, case Western Reserve, Caltech to name a few) have very minor or non-existent athletic programs.

So despite the fact that the media claimed that the decision of NDSU(actually, Chapman and the athletic program) to move to division one as “the most important in the school’s history,” the move to division one athletics did not benefit the educational or research programs one iota.

Now, what  of his other “accomplishments?”  He himself haws talked publicly both within and without the University about the excitement of the 14,000 enrollment.  Many do view this as a positive development.  Why?  There has been no increase in faculty or facilities to accommodate these students.  I have heard many faculty complain that the quality of NDSU’s undergraduates has decreased as a result, although I haven’t observed this nor am I able to verify it.

This is a crucial issue.  All this hype about the athletic program has clouded the fact that NDSU remains desperately underfunded.  I will focus on one important department which I will not name, but is crucial to almost every academic program at the University.  This department has ten assistant professors out of a faculty of sixteen.  In 2004, at the request of the NDSU administration, this department was reviewed by a faculty member from the University of Nebraska.  His conclusion was that this department needed 21 faculty minimum in order to perform its function, and that dramatic salary increases wre needed to retain the very well qualified faculty.  Evidentially much of this has gone unaddressed, since the inordinately large number of junior faculty are a result of having to replace more senior, well qualified faculty that have moved on to better funded situations.  So, I don’t think more students means a better institution, but continually losing qualified faculty due to low salary and facilities is not an accomplishment.

Now, how about research?  It is true that external funding has increased across campus, but I don’t think Chapman had much to do with it.  In several department at least, older, non-research faculty have retired to be replaced with younger faculty, more schooled and experienced in research.  The resulting increase in research capability has naturally resulted in an increase in extra mural funding for research.

The research park does not impress me much.  There is some research that goes on there, but I don’t think much o0f it has to do with the University.  Alien Technologies doesn’t do any, and has 34 $9 an hour jobs to add to the local economy.

So, unless one wants to to include athletics, I don’t see much in the way of benefit NDSU has received from Chapman’s tenure.  And I don’t see any connection between academics and athletics anywhere, except on NDSU’s webpage, a fact which infuriates many faculty.

How did this happen?  People think athletics have something to do with academics, and the search committee that sent Chapman’s name to the State Board of Higher Education did not include any faculty members.  In fact, Bruce Furness was the chair of the committee.  Nothing against the former mayor of Fargo, but what does he know about higher education.  For that matter, what does the State Board, composed primarily of political appointees, know about higher education.

Chapman is not, I think, without his accomplishments, however.  I think now people understand that NDSU is the true flagship state university.  I think there have been several departments added to the institution to give it a true university flavor.  But everything still remains desperately and critically underfunded, and it is the President’s job to address that.  In my view, he hasn’t.  He has done some fund raising, but much of it for the athletic program, and by mishandling of the situation, has, I think, damaged the chances of his successor to seek donations.

So what’s the bottom line to this?  The University has been hurt by hiring a fundraiser that concentrated on athletics and not on the academic and research programs that are the real business of the University.  In other words, the emphasis on athletics, both by Chapman and the media nad the population has in fact been detrimental to the growth in quality of the University.

This week will be Looong week for this guy.

Next week faculty comes forward.

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,

Earlier today, I tendered my resignation to Chancellor Goetz. Serving as
president of North Dakota State University for the past 11 years has been
the greatest privilege of my academic career. Together, we have taken
this institution to new levels, and I take great pride in all we have
accomplished together. Gale and I have made friends and community ties
here we will cherish for the rest of our lives.

Controversies in recent days have created distractions that have made it
impossible for me to provide the leadership this institution deserves.
Students have always been paramount, and I fear these distractions have
impaired my ability to serve their interests.

I have full confidence NDSU will continue to thrive and contribute to the
prosperity of North Dakota well into the future.

I thank you all for your kindness and support.

Joe

FARGO, N.D. (FargoPhantom.com)–On Tuesday night, the NDSU Bison Men’s basketball won the Summit League tournament and thus qualified for the NCAA tournament.  This is indeed laudable, since this is the first year Bison were eligible for the tournament.  This has only been done once before (L:ong Beach State in 1970).  Even more impressive to me is that the Bison are primarily made up of home grown talent(North & South Dakota, Minnesota and Montana).  Our area is known, for a variety of reasons more for producing football and hockey players.

But of course I do not need to point out this is an impressive accomplishment: we’ve heard and read little else in the media in the last few days.  I looked to me like the front page headline in Thursday’s Forum were six inches high.  NDSU President Chapman was interviewed in Souix Falls just after final game.  The TV station that showed the game and conducted the interview said Chapman would explain why this win was so important to the University and the state.  All I heard him say was “this is a great win for the school and the state.”  He didn’t say why.

The next night, in the same time slot with an equal amount of coverage during and after the game as given the Bison, Robert Morris University won the Northeast Atlantic Athletic Conference and thus qualified for the NCAA tournament.  Only this will be their sixth appearance, so they must really be a well known school.  Unfortunately, I had never heard of the school academically or athletically.  I surmised they must be in New England somewhere. since they call themselves “the Colonials<” and the name of their conference puts them in the northeast somewhere. I know that Robert Morris was ne of the signatories of the Constitution, but I had no idea what town the school is in or what state it is in.  I wonder how many others are in the same situation.  I now know(and there is no town associated with the institution), but I’ll keep the information to myself.  Other “important” qualifiers are Sienna, Radford and Charleston.  Real academic and athletic powerhouses.

Now, I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s parade.  I’m just trying to bring a little perspective to the situation.  Certainly in would be nice to see the Bison advance even one round, but that’s not likely.  Let’s face it: the Oakland University team they beat on Tuesday resembled, to me, a disorganized, badly coached high school team.  The only reason they were in the game is that they were so much taller.  But they threw up more air balls than a bingo parlor, were fond of throwing the ball to nobody, and one of their seven footers even went up for what was presumably a dunk and slammed the ball off the side of the backboard.  To me, if this was representative of Summit  League basketball, I’m not impressed.

It actually bothers me to watch the time and effort followed by the expectations that people put into Bison Athletics.  I’ve heard TV sportscasters talk about the “signature” win over Wisconsin a couple of years ago.  Yeah, along with the signature 40 point loss to Kansas State the same season.  Does this mean that Grand Valley State’swin over Michigan State(admittedly in an exhibition game). Gardner Webb’s win over Kentucky and Hampton Institute’s win over North Carolina are all “signature” wins for significant programs?

The move to division one was, I think, driven by football.  But football is expensive.  I don’t think we have the fan or financial base to support a big time program, actually in either sport.  I’m not impressed by a near win and a win over a dispirited and disinterested Gopher team.  I might be if, after that game, the Bison had to play another Big Ten team the next week, and another the week after that.  But I think we saw last season what would have happened.  Many were surprised at the number of losses the Bison incurred last fall and I’ve heard people ask “what’s up with that.”  To me, the answer’s simple: for the first time, the Bison actually had to play a schedule of established division one programs.  No weeks off to play Concordia of St Paul and lick the wounds of the previous week.

It pains me even more to hear people interviewed on television talk about how they love tie Bison, wouldn’t miss a game, etc.  Love the bison, OK, but what about the University?  Even with our huge state surplus NDSU is still one of the worst funded research institutions in the country.  Of course, many don’t understand the level of competence in their fields of many of the faculty, or what a strong land grant school does for a state.  If you need some indications, look at our financial situation, which regardless of what you here is not good.  And we essentially feed the world.  We should have many communities like Apple Valley, Edina, Eden Prairie, al in the Twin City area.  But we don’t.  We don’t have the people with the education to make it happen, in my view.

NDSU’s mission is supposedly “Teaching, Research and Service.”  President Chapman used to think it was “Athletics, Education and Research” until the faculty reminded him otherwise.  Somehow, NDSU does a good job with its stated mission.  The opening night of the Fargo Film Festival showed a documentary about two NDSU geology professors and their trip to Antartica with two of their students.  They made an extremely important discovery on this particular trip, and the film gave an excellent description, I thought, of what drives driven researchers like these two professors.  Oh yes, somehow Dr. Chapman seemed to have missed that event, as well as the play “Mr Lincoln” held in Lincoln’s 200th birtday, as well as many other concerts, plays and other academic events at NDSU and elsewhere.

As impressive as I think NDSU’s faculty is,, this needs to be kept in perspective too.  The University of Minnesota is currently growing hearts, presumably for replacements.  I won’t go into the details, but that’s impressive.  I’m sure most of us have heard of the Collider that has been built in Europe to create sub=atomic collisions bewteen particles in an effort to understand the nature of matter(believe me, we’re still very much in the dark: in joke, pun intended).

We’ve got a fine little University here in Fargo.  Should be smaller, according to many faculty, many of whom think the increase in enrollment has actually hurt the overall quality of student.  We ought to support it, and support does not mean making a big deal of a mid-level athletic program.

“there are no institutions of higher learning that have as part of their mission statements “entertain the local population by having athletic teams.”

By:The Norwegian Explorer

A recent local topic of discussion is the consideration of the North Dakota Legislature somehow requiring the football teams of NDSU and UND to play each other on an annual basis.  Even though I don’t care if the two institutions ever play each other again in anything, or for that matter even have football teams, or even athletic programs, I think that if the legislature considers such an act it would be right up there with when the Tennessee legislature decreed that the irrational number pi is, in fact 3.

First, according to ESPN, there are no institutions of higher learning that have as part of their mission statements “entertain the local population by having athletic teams.”  What would be the content of such legislation if one or both of the institutions decided to drop football a la Western Washington, or follow the lead of some of the finest research universities, e.g. University of Chicago, University of Rochester, Carnegie Mellon to name a few, and eliminate athletics altogether?

This, of course, is not likely to happen. But let’s suppose such legislation does become law.  In that case, we would have the situation where the legislature has interfered in the internal affairs of it’s flagship institutions, a clear violation of the academic freedom of both institutions and one or more of their academic departments(yes, the Athletic Department is an academic department).  This could besmirch the academic reputations of the schools to the level of affecting their ability to attract outside funding for their research.

OK, so you don’t care if the schools are any good or not.  Fine.  But when NDSU went to Division 1 athletics the case was made by President Chapman when speaking to the NDSU University Senate that the funding was coming entirely from outside donations, and was therefore none of the Senate’s business.  Well, if the football teams are funded primarily by private donations, what business is it of the legislature’s whom or if they play?  And some say the smoking ban violates their individual rights.

In summary, I have no dog in the fight of whether NDSU and UND play each other in anything.  But I think that if the legislature meddles in the situation, it would serve no-one and possibly harm all parties.