Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Sept. 16, 1982, edition 1 / Page 1
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Kaleidoscope serving the students of the University of North Carolina at Asheville ^1^ Volume 1, Number 2 Thursday, Sept. 16, 1982 Faculty input nil Robert Hoyer, pictured, outlined areas which are weak in faculty input, last Wednesday at the Faculty Forum. Faculty Forums are held each Wednesday at noon in the private dining room in the new student center, photo by David Pickett according By Elise Henshaw 1 I Dr. Robert Hoyer, Associate Pro fessor of mathematics and political science, speaking Sept. 8 at the first Faculty Forum of the year, faulted the faculty at UNCA for not asser ting itself in the major decision making process. Speaking in the private dining room of the new Student Center, Hoyer said that most of the pro blems at UNCA lie within the ad ministration. He also blamed facul ty members for failing to participate in the larger academic decisions. “I am a proponent of faculty assertion.” he said. Dr, Peggy Downes, Assistant Pro fessor of literature and leader of the Faculty Forum for this year, in troduced Hoyer and read a list of his accomplishments. They include a doctorate in statistics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, one year as Assistant Professor of statistics at Princeton and two years as Assis tant Professor of political science at Yale. In 1978 he accepted the posi tions of Director of Instructional Programs at the Institute for Social Research and Lecturer in statistics and management science at the University of Michigan. For the past ten years he has served as a consultant at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, operating from the University of Michigan. Hoyer said he prepared the list of his achievements to show that he “had been around.’' “If the structure of the University is operated effi ciently, you can make a lot of impact with a small amount of time.” -Dr. Robert Hoyer Hoyer’s speech was titled “Drucker and Man at UNCA: A Self-Study of the Report of the In stitutional Self-Study of the Univer sity of North Carolina at Asheville,” a reference to William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale. “Peter Drucker is the guru of management science,” said Hoyer. The “Institutional Self Study” was undertaken during the past year in preparation for an evaluation by the Southern Association of Col leges and Schools. This evaluation is done every ten years for accredita tion of the University. to Hoyer Hoyer praised Arnold Wengrow, Associate Professor of drama, for the manner in which he “put a com mon language to all the reports turned in by the Self-Study commit tees.” Hoyer said he thought “the report was exceedingly well written.” However, he said, “I think 100 percent of the faculty members on the committee have 100 percent of their post-Ph.D. teaching experience at UNCA. Such people can come to believe that the way UNCA does | things is the way to do them; not so. They do things differently in other places.” Hoyer criticized the admissions policy at UNCA. He noted that the requirements for admission in the 1979-1980 catalog stated that begin ning freshmen must be in the upper 50 percent of their class and score a combined total of 850 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT], with at least 400 on each. The catalog now lists the two criteria for admissions as being based on high school class rank and SAT scores. Hoyer said that from 1979 to 1982 the percentage of beginning freshmen who satisfy both requirements has gone from 52 percent to 42 percent, and those who satisfy neither has gone from 9 per cent to 15 percent. The University is accepting a “larger number of marginal students, and those who are marginal are further away from the criteria than in the past,” Hoyer said. Hoyer questioned who determines the change in admissions criteria and catalog requirements. He said the full-time equivalents are up, but the academic standards are down and “all this has happened without faculty participation.” He suggested the need for a facul ty committee to establish admis sions policy, instruct Admissions on how to carry it out, and oversee its fulfillment. He said he is against the transfer policy with technical col leges which allows graduates of these colleges to be accepted automatically at UNCA simply because these schools are ac credited. Hoyer also criticized the lack of at tention given to the Computer Center, noting that it occupies only one paragraph in the “Self-Study,” It doesn’t seem to be a problem on the campus,” said Hoyer, “but it is. How we understand computers will affect how we operate in this world.” “Things are happening in the Computer Center quite independent of the Computer Center Advisory Committee,” Hoyer said. “No one on this campus has suffi cient knowledge of computing to specify the details of a comprehen sive computer center. We need to employ two independent con sultants to come to UNCA and evaluate our computer and com puter science needs. We need to sink a lot of money into computer hard ware and software,” he said. Hoyer said that we should have hired two new programmers this year instead of a new librarian. Hoyer said the duty assigned by the board of governors of the University is to expand and diver sify. He feels we should aim for a first-quality institu tion with a mission. He said, “We [the faculty] must define a mission for ourselves, one we are able to carry out, and convey it to the ad ministration. Let’s decide what we can do special and do it.” Hoyer said that “we are under funded and we run out of supplies at exam week. One problem is our up per echelon administration is not hustling money.” He noted that the stock answer to this is lack of time. “If the structure of the University is operated efficiently, you can make a lot of impact with a small amount of time.” Hoyer sees the solution as “facul ty involvement at a creative level.” According to Hoyer, the faculty needs to make their views known to the administration. He said, “Will they can me for speaking out like this? How could they can me? It would be outrageous.” Inside Editorial page Features page 3 Sports page 4 and 5 Entertainment pages 6 and 7 Photo collage 8
University of North Carolina at Asheville Student Newspaper
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Sept. 16, 1982, edition 1
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