Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 24, 1995 TAG: 9501240121
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For the past quarter-century, Ronald Carrier has dominated James Madison University through sheer force of personality. He didn't just oversee the makeover of a small teachers' college into a regional university of national acclaim; he hand-picked sites for the new buildings. He didn't just field sports teams; he personally courted big-name coaches such as Lefty Driesell.
So completely does Carrier personify JMU that even the school's mascot, a bulldog, bears an uncanny resemblance to its tenacious president.
Today, Carrier's presidency is rocked by a faculty uprising.
Or maybe not.
Sparked by Carrier's controversial plan to "restructure" the school's academic programs, the Faculty Senate has called for an unprecedented faculty-wide vote of confidence on Carrier's leadership.
But, said JMU English professor Cameron Nickels, "it's not the same as impeaching Richard Nixon."
He conceded some faculty members would like to use the confidence vote to force Carrier's ouster. "But that's a very, very small number," he said. "That's not the issue."
The issue, he said, is who should control academics - the faculty or the administration.
Yet, for that very reason, said political science professor Bob Roberts, "I don't think there'll be any impact whatsoever."
For one thing, the university's governing body, the board of visitors, appears squarely behind Carrier's latest move; five board members even distributed letters to faculty members Monday to declare their unqualified support.
Nevertheless, the faculty vote that started Monday and concludes today has attracted statewide attention. It even has been a topic of floor debate in the General Assembly.
Faculty at other Virginia colleges - most notably, Radford University, which saw its president step down amid a faculty revolt last fall and is undergoing its own "restructuring" turmoil - are watching, too.
"I think it ought to send a message to the state," said Radford political science professor Sidney Pearson. "I think it's kind of a shot across the bow at the education bureaucracy, that faculty in the state is prepared to defend what they think is academic integrity."
There's also a degree of personal drama in this campus controversy. As recently as 1989, Carrier was touted as a possible candidate for governor. Campus critics say in recent years the strong-willed president has become increasingly dictatorial.
At one Faculty Senate meeting, education professor Jesse Liles complained that Carrier has been treating faculty members "like file clerks." A Carrier supporter shot back that some professors were bent on "demonizing" the president. Students have been circulating petitions objecting to Carrier's restructuring plan and calling for a demonstration Thursday on the steps of the administration building.
But the root cause of the JMU flap deals with larger, public policy issues of how closely Virginia's universities should serve the state's economic development interests - and how much control the faculty should have over curriculum.
At its most simplified, the debate pits taxpayer-conscious state officials and university administrators against traditional liberal arts faculties.
Carrier's supporters and detractors alike agree the current troubles started in the late 1980s. State officials were pressuring universities to make room for a new baby boom of college students sometime in the 1990s; there also was talk of making curriculums more high tech.
Radford's response was to propose its recently axed College of Global Studies; JMU's was to create its experimental College of Integrated Science and Technology. Carrier's brainchild drew fire from some faculty who didn't think its curriculum, which he called "innovative," emphasized academics enough.
"CISAT and other curriculum changes have been interpreted as a kind of vocationalizing of the curriculum," Liles said.
At the same time, Virginia's public universities were hit with a round of budget cuts, and state officials ordered colleges to "restructure" themselves to do more with less. In August 1993, JMU's governing board granted Carrier extensive powers to carry out restructuring.
One of the first things he did was announce that the curriculum for the new college no longer would have to be approved by a faculty committee. That process, he said, took too long. Since then, the faculty and administration have tussled over other details of who should run academics.
But the long-simmering controversy boiled up anew a few weeks ago when the administration announced its largest "restructuring" move to date - the merger of two colleges - and the biggest flash point - the abolition of the physics department.
Carrier spokesman Fred Hilton said the physics department employs 10 faculty members but graduates only five students each year; it simply costs too much to operate.
One of Carrier's most vocal opponents on academic issues has been a physics professor who now heads the Faculty Senate. "Many people believe there's a connection," Liles said.
Even if there isn't, faculty critics complain that Carrier should have consulted with them before abolishing an entire department. Hilton said that's impossible. "The faculty wouldn't make a decision like that."
Here's where academic tradition collides with the political pressures of the day.
"It's a sharp difference in culture," said Roberts, the political science professor. "A corporation would have no problem with" eliminating a small, unprofitable division. "But in an academic culture, you don't do that."
Carrier's critics contend that he's jeopardizing the university's reputation and that a university without a physics department, however small, isn't much of a university. But supporters such as Roberts say not every college will be able to afford to offer the same program in the future.
That's the view pushed by the State Council of Higher Education. Virginia universities must absorb 63,000 additional students by 2000, "but we don't see a significant increase in resources," said council spokesman Mike McDowell. "It's imperative that the institutions concentrate on what they do best and concentrate on things in great demand by their customers - the students."
Memo: NOTE: Ran on A-1 in State edition.