Jim,
As the one who created the pelting of your mailbox with responses
to my oversimplified survey, I feel the need to respond. Over half
of the responses I have received have been sent directly to me.
I will be summarizing the responses early next week. The beauty
of using the reply key when responding to a request such as mine
is that the subject line remains the same. If I'm not interested in
what is being discussed, I delete by subject. Maybe you don't have
that feature.
And, yes, the survey was terribly simplified. I did that for two reasons:
(1) I didn't want to take much of your time to respond and (2) as you have
pointed out, the variety of institutions and structures is too numerous
and complicated to analyze. However, we are in the age of cutbacks
and restructuring. We're constantly being invaded by consulting firms
who are reviewing our structure. They talk to one or two people, pull a
recommendation from their bag and are gone. We need all the ammo
we can get! I'm very, very pleased with the results for my purpose and
very, very thankful to have the RESADM-L as a resource!
Thank you for your input.
Ruth
-----Original Message-----
From: James R. Brett [SMTP:xxxxxx@CSULB.EDU]
Sent: Friday, February 26, 1999 5:27 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: Academic vs. Finance
I am wondering if the 1,300 or so people reading the RESADM-L listserv
could agree to have future polls of a general nature taken off-line. That
would mean that questions likely to stimulate scores of responses would be
posed as usual, but that respondants would reply not to the service, but
directly to the inquiring colleague. I am sure that most pollers would be
pleased to present the refined results to us (as we have seen this week ...
thank you CSULA).
It is a little unusual, I think, to have those polled subjected to each
incremental answer to a survey. I am not claiming human subjects
protection here, just asking for a little thoughtfulness about the
inevitable pelting our email inboxes take every time someone asks a very
broad and general question.
With respect to the current survey on reporting lines, I have to believe
that the response will defy correlation. Academic organization is highly
ideosyncratic and personalized. A given structure will work well with one
constellation of senior leaders and then become a problem when the
constellation changes. The results will show institutions bringing in $3m,
$30m and $300m using the same or similar apparent structure; institutions
growing and institutions fading using the same organizational structure,
etc. Sometimes state laws, institutional by-laws, and federal guidelines
mesh in different ways. One should mention that the institutional faculty
"culture" weighs in significantly in this. At Long Beach we have a
Research Office, Sponsored Programs Office, Grants and Contracts
Administration Office, a Central Development Office, and nearly a dozen
local College and Special Unit Development offices. It produces harmony,
light, peace, truth, Justice, and about $40m in g&c and $35m in gifts and
donations. We often work very closely with one another to reasonably good
results. At other institutions the division of labor has produced DMZ's,
thin red lines, and an occasional divot on the face of the institution.
So, at your institution, where is the authority vested for training faculty
members in grant proposal writing technique, AND where is the
responsibility for outcomes of that activity vested? It is a rhetorical
question meant to demonstrate the need to look to function rather than
form.
Jim
--
James R. Brett, Ph.D., Director
Office of University Research
California State University, Long Beach
562-985-4833 fax 985-8665
http://www.csulb.edu/~research
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