To: Chancellor Loren Crabtree
From: Louis J. Gross, Professor of EEB and Math, Past-President UTK Faculty Senate
Re: University of Tennessee Mission Statement
Date: August 15, 2007

This is in response to your request for comments on the "Mission of the 
University" statement from President Petersen. I find this to be a flawed statement
which limits the potential for effective future movement of UTK into the 
top ranks of the best higher-education institutions in the US and enhances the 
likelihood of continuing conflict within and mismanagement of this University. I will 
justify these points below, but I begin by pointing out that no representative body 
of faculty at any unit within the UT System was given an opportunity to provide input 
on this document, nor were we part of the discussions alluded to in the document 
as supposedly held with "leadership within the system and campuses". The document
implies that this statement was "developed and shared" broadly throughout the 
System - it was not. Misleading statements such as this, implying consensus of opinion 
before opinions are requested, does great harm to the process of shared governance 
that should be a hallmark of thoughtful leadership in a System as diverse as that of UT. 

I begin by noting that I investigated, rather quickly, given your deadline, statements of 
Missions by peer universities and statewide university systems. A small compilation of 
these are located at a web-page at  
http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/facsenate/univ.missions.txt
and even a cursory perusal of these points out some glaring differences with the one
distributed by President Petersen. One is that these statements were often authored 
initially by Faculty governance units, or had input from them, and were approved by 
the highest levels of authority at these institutions (e.g. Boards of Trustees). 
I find it simply astonishing that the document distributed had no input at either of 
these levels. The Mission statements from other institutions all recognize the 
great diversity of faculty activities and do not limit these to "research and economic
development" but explicitly use the terms scholarship and creative activity. The UT 
System includes numerous faculty whose artistic and creative efforts enhance the 
quality of life for our State and nation, and the importance of these contributions 
should be included rather than neglected in a mission statement. 

The organization structure outlined in the statement, as well as the entire tone of 
the document, is reminiscent of the failed Presidency of Wade Gilley, in which 
the System subsumed many of the responsibilities of the UTK campus. No evidence is
available that the current Systems administration has the capability to manage 
activities that greatly impact this campus any more effectively than the Gilley 
Administration did. To the contrary, there is ample evidence that the current 
System administration is incapable of dealing with ongoing issues that they are 
well aware must be dealt with. Over the past year I have made continual 
attempts to encourage the Systems administration to deal with the ongoing 
information technology problems arising in great part from their poor planning 
and insistence on a System-wide email solution. I have been appalled by the 
administrative lethargy that has led to utter neglect of the ongoing problems.
Similar issues pointed out by the UTK and other campus Faculty Senates with 
regard to data and information security have gone unanswered, and it is not 
even clear to whom one should address concerns on these matters since the 
Systems administration has not established the management structure for 
information technology. 

While the statement seemingly places all of UT Athletics under the President 
(I assume this is an error - UTC and UTM are certainly part of the UT System and 
have quite active athletics programs, but they report to their respective 
Chancellors), I am far more concerned about the notion that the System will oversee 
the Cherokee Farms. All the plans I have seen for the Cherokee Farms have 
involved explicit and extensive inclusion of faculty research (and thus teaching 
as well, since this certainly implies graduate student participation) on the
property. Faculty do not report to the System administration however, but rather to
the campuses. This sets up the expectation of continuing conflicts between the 
needs of the campuses involved (presumably this would mostly be UTK and the 
Institute of Agriculture and possibly some faculty from UTHSC) in hiring and 
evaluating appropriate faculty, and the potentially quite different goals 
that could be set by Systems administrators. The statements made by the President
regarding plans for significant growth of the student population at UTK would
require extensive new facilities for classes and labs, presumably to be located
at Cherokee Farms. To have these overseen by the System and not the campus is
highly inefficient, introducing an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, and is a 
recipe for ongoing conflict.

In sum, I encourage you to request that this document be withdrawn until an 
opportunity has been provided for the input that should have been requested 
before its promulgation, and that this input should be requested from the array of 
University-wide constituents, faculty, staff and students, in order to ensure
that the stated goal of a "collaborative effort" to meet our statewide obligations
is likely. 

I will be happy to discuss any of these comments with you. I am posting my response
on a public site in the expectation that it might be useful to my faculty 
colleagues in responding to your request.