BusterAg said:

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The academic foundation of the campus could be developed around four large units: AgriLife, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Texas A&M Health, with strong connections to other applied academic units.

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I am about to force upon you the role of Super Dean, who will be made up of four of my close allies and wield unprecedented power. All important decisions regarding anything will be made by this office, as directed to the Super Deans. However, all of the fallout from decisions will be the fault of the faculty.

All of the decisions of this office that are going to be unpopular with faculty or donors will be the fault of the faculty, thanks to the decision of the Super Deans, which are heads of the faculty. However, the Super Deans will be told exactly what to do by the President's office. It's the best of all worlds.

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Where does the College of Business fit into this four-legged stool? I don't think I saw it mentioned anywhere other than briefly in the discussion of coordination between marketing (which may have been institutional marketing and not the department) and the old, but new again Journalism Department.

Funny story. We queried a third party vendor about a development instance of their product so changes to the environment could be tested prior to deployment to the production instance for the institution. Since we provide integration back to a critical campus service we thought it would be good to test our integrations with their product. Furthermore our integrations required code changes to their product that they implement. We were told that our request could not be fulfilled because it is a cloud product and it is complicated.

It is now a running joke when we get a less than satisfactory response from one our third party "cloud" vendors it is because it is a cloud product and it is complex.

I'm all for using cloud products when we can but there are SAPs in TAMUS that can thwart using cloud based or hosted systems. Particularly when it comes to certain classifications of data.

Make out sports teams / scholarships representative of every identity group first.

Adds back the Journalism Department

Anthropology about to get rolled into the college of arts and sciences. The LA folks are in an uproar for some reason (probably because the science heads will run the combined departments - which means its probably a good move by Banks.

Anything in there about the $1200 Texas A&M owes the Texags Politics board?

Agthatbuilds said:

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Mr. AGSPRT04 said:

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Lots of what I expected

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Large portions of the interview and survey audiences were conflicted about the university's culture
and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Some survey respondents believe the DEI efforts are
ineffective, resulting in an inability to recruit underrepresented student, faculty, and staff populations.
Others have questions about the effectiveness of resources invested in DEI that could be used to invest
broadly in education-focused endeavors for the entire student population.

Address diversity and champion a way forward by changing the dialogue and developing a
narrative that ties into the land-grant mission. Recent investments in DEI can serve as a start.
Standardize the IT function and systems

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They are going to do more dei.

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You left out what the top 3 were among the majority respondents - Aggie culture uniqueness, the people, etc. This is what the minority of respondents thought were important.

The best dig was that the faculty senate was not representative of the demographics of the faculty. In other words - a bunch of white people. Suck it libs Time to give your seats up!

Funky Winkerbean said:

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Diversity could be achieved quicker if they would just stop allowing white folk in.

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Expecting random outcomes among various groups is extremely odd. I wonder if they are going to "diversity" our athletic teams? I mean, the teams should look like the population of Texas.

BusterAg said:

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Let me try to interpret for those that are not familiar with corporate bullshiitise, the language that this report was written in.

I will start with the loudest message, at the end of the reports high-level findings, which is the clearest and loudest. Every other recommendation is a way to enact this one.

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Large portions of the interview and survey audiences were conflicted about the university's culture and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Some survey respondents believe the DEI efforts are ineffective, resulting in an inability to recruit underrepresented student, faculty, and staff populations. Others have questions about the effectiveness of resources invested in DEI that could be used to invest broadly in education-focused endeavors for the entire student population. High-level recommendations:

Invest in recruitment efforts by creating an Office of Undergraduate Recruitment. The office should be overseen by the new Academic and Strategic Collaborations unit, which will work to increase engagement with both the local community and Texas at large. Clear success metrics must be defined and reported regularly.

Ensure Student Affairs focuses on its critical role in the development of the whole student. Students who participate in Student Affairs programs and services should expect to become well-trained leaders, understand the value of being accountable to the larger campus community, and uphold the Aggie Core Values.

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Message: we have told you before, DEI is the new way of the future. You didn't listen. Now, we are about to bring the hammer.

1) The Academic and Strategic Collaborations unit will screen every applicant for job postings to make sure that they are compliant with our DEI policies. You WILL NOT hire another teacher or professor without their seal of approval. Dissent from the office of the president will not be tolerated.

2) You WILL meet our DEI quotas. Unsatisfactory performance on these quotas will be reported directly to Emperor Sharp.

3) Student leadership positions WILL be held by DEI favored students. Students WILL be indoctrinated with the importance of DEI. The Aggie Core Value WILL include DEI as the most important things to Aggie Honor. Emperor Sharp has said so. It must be done.

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The consultant team consistently found the university's operational structure is decentralized, resulting in ineffective use of talent and resources.

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We need to get rid of a lot of middle-management administrators. Also, the central office of the University needs more power. Why? Oh, you know why.

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Strengthen the effectiveness and consistency of the overall operational structure by expanding the role of the President's office.

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The President's office is about to transfer a lot of favored administrators out of college budgets and into the presidents office. Also, historic bastions of power, like, for example, the Office of Research, are about to lose a lot of decision making authority. How much depends totally on you, Mr. / Mrs. / Xhe Dean.

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Centralize the Information Technology, Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness, Facilities, Marketing and Communications, and Finance units across the university to increase effectiveness and clarify responsibilities.

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College deans are about to lose a lot of power when it comes to decisions about IT, HR, staffing hierarchy, major lab equipment purchases, building hours, raising money for buildings, and independent budgeting. All your base are belong to us. Don't piss us off.

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Inconsistent transparency and a lack of strong operational analytics and performance metrics across units, colleges, and campuses creates operational inefficiencies as well as unclear responsibility and accountability necessary for operational success.

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Gather data on day-to-day operations of operational units and implement a system of continuous improvement build on performance analytics to understand where misalignment or ineffective use of resources exists.

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The office of the President is about to start looking over the shoulder of college deans much more rigorously. The head of performance management in the Office of the President is about to become one of the most powerful positions on campus, from a political perspective. We don't like some of you. You WILL give us more ammo to help get rid of you if we want to. You will assist us with this.

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Centralize the Division of Marketing and Communications to ensure effective and consistent branding and communication efforts take place across all operational and academic units.

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Hey, faculty. Get the hell off of Twitter. [Ok, this one kind of makes a lot of sense.]

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Invest in staff development and succession planning to allow leadership to continue improving campus operations.

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Tenure / schmenure. Faculty is getting too comfortable and feudalistic. Favored new blood is about to get more power. We are looking for a certain kind of new blood. DEI is an important part of that.

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Increase the university's direct support of the faculty by creating a Faculty Affairs unit that reports directly to the President and will focus exclusively on faculty issues.

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You don't like our new DEI focus. Pobrecita. Extranas a tu mami mucho? Our university will receive direct support of DEI. If you don't like it tell Faculty Affairs.

Also, Anthropology department. Sit down and STFU. If you have a problem, contact the head of Faculty Affairs.

Faculty Affairs will be staffed with Top Men. Any problems with DEI will be routed to the Academic and Strategic Collaborations unit of the Office of the President. For all other problems, we will have Top Men in Faculty Affairs look directly into it.

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The academic foundation of the campus could be developed around four large units: AgriLife, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Texas A&M Health, with strong connections to other applied academic units.

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I am about to force upon you the role of Super Dean, who will be made up of four of my close allies and wield unprecedented power. All important decisions regarding anything will be made by this office, as directed to the Super Deans. However, all of the fallout from decisions will be the fault of the faculty.

All of the decisions of this office that are going to be unpopular with faculty or donors will be the fault of the faculty, thanks to the decision of the Super Deans, which are heads of the faculty. However, the Super Deans will be told exactly what to do by the President's office. It's the best of all worlds.

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Refocus the provost unit on academic services and student success to further the university's academic mission.

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All of the research grant money, and University / Corporate partnerships will be handled by the Office of the President. Provost is about students, not research, or anything else that has to do with bringing money into the University. All of the issues that have any political pull at all will be handled by the Office of the President.

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Rebalance the university's investment to ensure that the four large academic units mentioned above correspond in terms of support and there is appropriate investment in targeted academic units of strategic interest.

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Hey colleges, you will all quietly support our diversity campaigns, or you will be nixed from getting any money. Also, Anthropology, sit down and STFU.

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Realign several academic units to allow for focus on mission, increase student success, and better meet student needs.

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Hey deans! Some of you are getting the ax. Get your CV's in order. You know who you are.

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This is a giant FU to all of the fiefdoms within the University. There is going to be a giant power cram-down. It might actually create some efficiencies, but, I guarantee you, that is not the primary motivation here. This University is likely to get a lot of money from some of the good research that has happened here in O&G, genetics, bio-pharma. It would be a waste to let all of that new found political power to be wasted at the college level.

Also, BTW, we are not woke enough. Get on board, or get your budget slashed, and ultimately get replaced.

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Your thought processes are correct, but what makes you think it's going in a liberal direction? For example, there are too many "diversity" offices. Each college has one - that's going away. Things are getting more centralized. No more BS from the Vet school like we saw over the summer.

Time will tell. Trust but verify.

Y'all just remember all the great things that were said about Banks when it was announced that she would be the president.

TxTarpon said:

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MGT Consulting and Martin+Crumpton Group (M+CG) were hired by the Texas A&M University System in June 2021 to conduct a high-level, comprehensive review of major functional areas at Texas A&M University. This review focused on the organizational structure of central offices at the executive level and administrative units at the college level. The consultant team was charged with conducting interviews with a wide range of individuals in leadership positions, including faculty senate leadership, as well as providing the opportunity for input through surveys of faculty, staff, students, and former students. The consultant team was asked to identify changes that would restructure Texas A&M University in a significant way to increase effectiveness and transparency and to contribute to overall student success.

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Sounds like Martin+Crumpton made some good coin for a report that might not mean anything.

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No doubt.

I should have been a con$ultant.

Are you suggesting she hasn't been a good President so far ?

I put in the general section to get rid of equity and everything associated with it. Said more about how to affect diversity through hand up instead of disparaging handouts. Then said we need to add political views to protected status like Michigan State does if we want to have a less divisive culture on campus.

MAROON said:

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Are you suggesting she hasn't been a good President so far ?

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I guess we'll soon see how many people she gets rid of because of this report. Time will tell I suppose.

The report seemed really basic for what they spent. A&M will centralize in 2022 and then 10 years later (or five if another favored consultant finds the right ear), they will pay for a report that tells them to decentralize.

As others have mentioned, the scary parts are all the references to DIE ... whoops, sorry, DEI. A&M is diversifying just fine on its own. The state's demographics will ensure that.

Any money spent to convince some kid to come here is a waste. Keep the admissions process fair and you'll have a majority-minority school soon enough.

Funky Winkerbean said:

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Diversity could be achieved quicker if they would just stop allowing white folk in.

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I like the idea of putting the truth out there for everyone to see.

Get a big 'ol sign with large block lettering: NO MORE WHITE PEOPLE!

And underneath in much smaller font: #Equity #Diversity #Inclusion

Then go organize a massive protest directed at white students and faculty chanting: LEAVE! LEAVE! LEAVE!

Bring the full force of their Marxist critical race theory bull**** out into the light for everyone to see what it truly is.

The DIE stuff would be funny to me of it weren't so insidious. It's a game of bull**** that the folks at the top of organizations are playing because none of them are brave enough to say that the emperor has no clothes.

You don't make STEM graduates by putting "diversity" in Calculous seats: you create washouts.

You don't serve Texas by filtering out well prepared and talented kids based on their DIE score.

Everyone who's able to open their eyes and connect two brain cells can see that it's a farce - but the game of pretend continues.

aginresearch said:

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Sounds great until you realize that almost all the cost savings on shared services has already been wrung out of operations (at least in the IT area of which I am familiar). The real problems are understaffing and lack of competitive compensation with industry but that doesn't save you money.

The threat, if this report is followed, is that TAMU will have a massive departure of institutional knowledge which will make operations exceedingly more inefficient and costly in the short to medium term.

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Fire all the commies (liberals).

There! I just saved us a bunch of money and improved the education of our students infinitely

mazag08 said:

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Fire all the commies (liberals).

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Non sequitur: they are bringing back the Department of Journalism.

As long as the friends of the administration' made money from the survey or stand to make money from the recommendations we're good.

So basically the university spent tens of thousands of dollars to "feel better". Nothing I see there is of any real improvement. It's nothing more then putting a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood. They could have saved themselves a ton of YOUR money by just listening to a couple of JP clips:

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I should have been a con$ultant.

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You need to wear funkier glasses and style your hair like you spent big Austin area money on it.

TAMU1990 said:

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Your thought processes are correct, but what makes you think it's going in a liberal direction? For example, there are too many "diversity" offices. Each college has one - that's going away. Things are getting more centralized. No more BS from the Vet school like we saw over the summer.

Time will tell. Trust but verify.

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I guess we shall see, no?

I see dark clouds. The bigger A&M's budget gets, the more power it has. People that like power tend to get power. People that like power also tend to not like institutions like Texas A&M that teach individual responsibility and individual empowerment.

I pretty much completely disagree with you that this is a nothingburger.

This will be used as political cover to force an epic power cram-down. The office of the president is working hard to put individual professors and deans on an island, focused on academics, while it consolidates decision making and political power. If they can effectively remove any relationships between corporate and individual donors and the colleges, they will be able to force through change a lot easier.

Even if there are not major changes, this is a pretty obvious shot across the bow.

milner79 said:

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mazag08 said:

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Fire all the commies (liberals).

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Non sequitur: they are bringing back the Department of Journalism.

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This was perhaps the weirdest part of the report.

Of all the issues facing A&M as it moves into the next decade, restarting its journalism department has to rank at or near the bottom. Even in its heyday, the journalism department was maybe 400-500 students. In a school with 65,000 students, that's a drop in the bucket.

Traditional journalism is dead, anyway. There aren't any more ink-stained wretches out there serving the public good.

Yet the need for a J school was given prominent coverage in the report. Someone surely has an agenda there.

like it or not "Journalists" have a lot of sway in society. In the state of Texas those "journalists" tend to be from tu, so much of the reporting about A&M is done by tu grads. Would be nice if a few A&M journalists existed to counter balance come of the thoughts of sips.

And anyone who thinks this report is a nothingburger is not close to the academic side of A&M. I can guarantee you there is a lot of hand wringing and knashing of teeth going on within the academic departments. Heads are going to roll (they already have before this report came out). This will just give Banks the cover she needs to restructure this school and hopefully rid of the liberal rabble rousers Young set-up in offices of power

I wonder why they excluded the Division of Research from this report.

They were mentioned at the begging having recently already been moved to report directly to the president.

BusterAg said:

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I pretty much completely disagree with you that this is a nothingburger.

This will be used as political cover to force an epic power cram-down. The office of the president is working hard to put individual professors and deans on an island, focused on academics, while it consolidates decision making and political power. If they can effectively remove any relationships between corporate and individual donors and the colleges, they will be able to force through change a lot easier.

Even if there are not major changes, this is a pretty obvious shot across the bow.

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Perhaps you are right; Time will tell. However, I stand by the opinion (as someone else aptly described) that this report is nothing more then "rearranging the chairs on the Titanic". It simply doesn't matter how you reorganize the various departments and/or centralize power. The ship is going down. I am of the opinion that the current state of "Universities" will not survive the economic and culture shifts that are occurring.

Universities have been generating more income by expanding student populations. They have done so by generating useless degree plans. The net result is they have watered down the value of a college education, bloated the administration, and burdened a generation with a debt that will act as an albatross to their own economic growth and as a result, the economic growth of the community. There simply is little value in attending a 4 year university unless you want to pay for the "college experience". I think the future will have student doing several years of basic credits online, getting credits through AP courses at HS, and/or attending local community colleges; Perhaps then wrapping up their degree at major university for the diploma.

TAMU1990 said:

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The best dig was that the faculty senate was not representative of the demographics of the faculty. In other words - a bunch of white people. Suck it libs Time to give your seats up!

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The actual "diverse" faculty are really not going to want anything to do with them.

I agree with the general outlook that college will be less relevant

Especially in IT, everything is cert driven. Experience plus certs and having a wide range of certs shows aptitude.

More relevant than a college degree.

BCS-Ag said:

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I wonder why they excluded the Division of Research from this report.

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MONEY

pacecar02 said:

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I agree with the general outlook that college will be less relevant

Especially in IT, everything is cert driven. Experience plus certs and having a wide range of certs shows aptitude.

More relevant than a college degree.

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Exactly. Here are a few more examples: I have a medical secretary making $16/hr who graduated from Tech. She is a single mom who worked and borrowed to get herself through university. She was accepted into a prestigious nursing program but simply couldn't afford to borrow any more money and it was too expensive to try to work her way through. So instead of being a year closer to making $50-75/hr as an RN she is stuck here making $16/hr until she get herself in a better financial situation.

On the contrary, I have a mother of a patient (I'm in pediatrics) who was also a single parent. She attended a local community college. She completed her first two years and was then accepted into a nursing program by Baptist Health System. They paid for her tuition and she owed them several years of work at a reduced rate. She made slightly less then the she would have for several years but now she is debt free and has real world experience that she can take anywhere.

So the underlying question is what has more value (Tech jokes aside): The 4 year "college experience" program with compounding interest on debt and monthly payments chipping away at your disposable income versus the local community college with an internship agreement with a local corporation, no debt, and a guaranteed job to get you started?

Agthatbuilds said:

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https://feedback.tamu.edu/

Basically, reorganize the leadership chain....


There is a give your own thoughts section thoigh

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Hope this isn't one of those woke consulting firms like that one that recommended getting rid of the museum volunteers and hiring replacements based on equity and diversity.