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