From: "Terry S. Bowman" <tbowman@SIU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Presidential Search Advisory Committee
To: FACULTY_SENATE-L@SIU.EDU

SIUC shortfalls over the past 5 years?

1) Inability of the institution to "think" and "act" "outside the box".
Therefore, attempting to continue an anachronistic system of academics in a
fast changing world resulting in lost opportunities.

2) Wasting time, money, and energy on promoting SIUC as a research
institution which it never was, is not now, and does not currently have the
ability to become.

3) Disconnect between "heads" of the institution and what is really going
on "down in the trenches"...failure of the bottom up channel of
communications.

4) Lack of true service to and understanding of the institution's
clients...the students. Such as: requiring that 34% of each 120 sh degree
consist of general education courses while departments and students are
crying out for the ability to offer and teach more courses related to the
major; allowing courses to be taught by graduate assistants rather than by
tenure track/tenured faculty "assisted" by graduate assistants; giving
undue attention and focus to research at the expense of teaching; failure
to provide for adequate campus dorms resulting in students residing in dorm
basements; disconnect of services to students between units such as
Admissions and Records and individual departments; failure to develop and
implement an effective marketing program; failure to promote the
institution within southern Illinois (such as not going into southern
Illinois high schools); failure to maintain a system of timely payments to
vendors for goods and services resulting in bills owed by the institution
being 90 days or more past due; failure of some units to properly advise
students; etc. etc. etc

5) (Back to #1) Failure to recognize that the world of academics HAS
changed. Those institutions serving populations similar to SIUC's have
recognized that the client is demanding education for careers rather than
education for the sake of education. Thus, the institution has lost and is
missing the opportunity to specialize in serving a particular market niche
in the State of Illinois (lost enrollments).

6) Failure to recognize and divert resources into programs that are so
popular and so well presented that only those with an ACT of 27 or higher
are admitted while well qualified applicants are denied admission due to
lack of resources (more lost enrollments).

7) Finally, a lack of leadership resulting in fragmentation of the
institution into specialized interest groups who spend all of their time on
in-fighting rather than making SIUC the best it can be.


Terry S. Bowman, Ph.D.
Director, Off-Campus Academic Programs
Acting Chair, Technical and Resource Management
College of Applied Sciences and Arts
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901-6613
(618) 453-7275      FAX: (618) 453-8894