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According to the head of the department, a recently discovered statistical error during the Academic Program Prioritization Working Group (APPWG) process has saved the public administration program from elimination.
Thomas Taylor, chair of the public administration department, said the program will now be suspended rather than completely eliminated after it was discovered that the results of regular semester-end Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) had been reversed.
“The statisticians mixed it all up,” he said. “They goofed.”
Despite this newest decision about the fate of his department, Taylor remains convinced the restructuring process will inevitably spell the end of public administration teaching at the University of Maine, a theory due in a large part to the efforts of one man — UMaine President Robert Kennedy.
“The real problem is Kennedy,” Taylor said. “We just don’t understand him.”
Administered at the end of each semester for every class, the SETs have a number of questions geared to assess the quality of teaching by allowing students to grade their teachers on a one to five scale. These evaluations were one criteria considered by the APPWG committee when formulating their final decision, issued in mid-April.
An e-mail from Ted Coladarci, director of the office of institutional studies, states the public administration SETs listed a “one” response as the highest and a “five” as the lowest, opposite the scale used by the APPWG committee. This led to a combined average score of 2.93 from academic years 2004-2005 to 2008-2009, a drastically lower figure than Taylor expected.
Once the error was discovered, Coladarci recalculated the department’s average for academic years 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 at 3.93. This new figure would place the public administration department’s average in the normal 3.78 to 4.61 range seen across the university.
Despite the newly corrected score, Coladarci’s e-mail cautioned that it would be difficult to compare this figure to averages from other departments as the years from which the data was taken for public administration differ from those used by the APPWG committee.
“Again, the correct PA mean of 3.93 is based on 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 (whereas all other means in the APPWG table are based on 2004-2005 through 2008-2009),” Coladarci stted in his e-mail. “Thus, it is difficult to compare the PA mean of 3.93 with the other departments’ means (which range from 3.78 [to] 4.61).”
While the discovery of this statistical error has saved the public administration department from elimination for now, Kennedy said the original APPWG decision was not the first time the administration had considered cutting the program.
When the time came to make academic cuts, which were “precipitated by the budget process,” Kennedy said the elimination of the public administration department became a priority for the committee based on this previous history.
“At the top of the list was the elimination of the public administration department,” Kennedy said. “In a sense, it had not been a new topic of discussion.”
He said the student evaluations were only one part of the entire scope of the APPWG process and that the committee’s decision was based on a “combination” of several factors, calling the procedure “broad-based.”
One of those factors considered by the committee was an apparent lack of original research by the public administration department, which Taylor said was raised by Jeffrey Hecker, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In contrast to Hecker’s assertion, Taylor said his department has authored two books within the last year despite his relatively small staff of five full-time faculty members.
“Since we’re small, as chair I do more teaching than in a department with 20 people,” he said.
Outside of the university, Taylor said the loss of public administration at UMaine would deal a serious blow to local governments in Maine. As the only accredited program of its kind in northern New England, the department has “pumped out” nearly half of the state’s town managers by his estimate. With almost 500 municipalities being governed by members of a baby boomer generation preparing to retire, Taylor envisions a serious deficit of homegrown leadership in Maine’s future if the university does not retain the program.
“We rarely have people who graduate from our program who don’t find jobs,” Taylor said.
Taylor said he remains “perplexed” about the reasons why his department is still being targeted for suspension given the corrected statistics, proof of original research and the apparent need for trained leaders in the state. If he had to point to one source of continuing pressure on his department, Taylor said he would have to point to Kennedy.
“It’s one word, basically: Kennedy,” Taylor said. “We don’t know why he doesn’t like us.”
In order to help save his program, Taylor said he has appealed to the Maine Town and City Managers Association, which has scheduled a meeting with UMaine Provost Susan Hunter Sept. 29. Additionally, Taylor has personally appealed to University of Maine System Chancellor Richard Pattenaude, who has the ability to amend Kennedy’s official decisions.
“I want to know whether or not [Pattenaude] has any balls or not, because he has the opportunity to change some things,” Taylor said.
