Requests from the Faculty Senate Executive Council
Sent June 14, 2021


Provost Zomchick and Vice Chancellor Cimino,

I am sending you this note in my role as incoming Faculty Senate President. It arises from discussions of the Faculty Senate Executive Council over the past week and is an official request from the Council with their approval, since the Council acts for the Senate during the summer. It is being sent to each of you as the issues involved raise concerns that involve each of your responsibilities. 

The case that brought these matters to the Council's attention was mentioned at the last Faculty Senate meeting, involving the GlobalTech program. As a quick summary of facts of the situation, the GlobalTech at UTK program 
https://www.globaltech.utk.edu
was established through the UT Program Abroad office in conjunction with the for-profit entity Podium Education. It was set up as a pilot this semester and features 3 sets of two 3-credit courses all being offered on-line through the course INTE250 - Special Topics in International Education with UTK Catalog Description "Critical exploration of international and intercultural issues in a disciplinary or interdisciplinary context through experiential forms of inquiry such as research, service-learning and internship." The instructor of record for all sections of the course is Anne Mary Hulse who is a UTK staff member and currently the Interim Director of the Center for Global Engagement, which reports to the Provost and is not affiliated with any College. About 100 students are registered for these courses. 

The Council identified several issues of concern about this program, one of which (the program website identified individuals as Professors who were not in fact associated with UTK at all) was already dealt with expeditiously by the Provost. Some additional concerns are:

1. This program was set up with no input from faculty and it was not brought before any College curriculum committee or the Undergraduate Council for approval. It does not align with the national guidance for programs in the general area of data science. 
2. The course is listed under INTE250 course number but the course content has nothing to do with the catalog description for that course. The course content falls under the general area of data science, basic computing, and digital marketing. There is no syllabus available on the website, and the website includes logos for many major companies implying that UTK has approval from these companies to be affiliated with the program. 
3. The instructor of record seems to have no background in the course content and there is no statement concerning how learning will be evaluated. 
4. There was evidently no consultation with the faculty teaching courses in the topic areas of these courses (in Tickle College, A&S, Haslam College, and Communication and Information Science) regarding offering yet another sequence of courses that overlaps heavily with other UTK courses that cover these topics. 
5. In addition to the lack of alignment with curricular oversight, the process by which this program has been established illustrates the great temptation that units will have under the new Budget Allocation Model (BAM) to attempt to generate credit hours. 

Given the above, the Council requests that:

1. The Provost collaborate with the Senate through the Undergraduate and Graduate Councils to establish processes for approval of coursework for units not within Colleges (and thus not under oversight of College curriculum committees) such that faculty can maintain the integrity of UT’s curriculum. As part of this, identify potential areas of curricular conflict as would normally be done through the College curriculum approval process and the Councils to account for impacts on any UTK degree program. Until such time as these processes are established, any offerings beyond this term by the GlobalTech program should be halted. 

2. The Senior Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration collaborate with the Senate through the Senate Budget and Planning Committee so that the BAM process includes an oversight Board with faculty representation. Goals of such a Board are to ensure equity across all units of all revenue generation efforts as well as the processes by which units may request special arrangements for subsidies and reductions to standard charges that other units pay. Such a Board could establish clearly defined guidelines to avoid units establishing arrangements with external entities as a means to generate new revenue for the unit to the detriment of other units. 

I and Executive Council would be happy to discuss these requests further with either of you. 

Stay well,
        Lou

-- 
Louis J. Gross (he, him, his)
Chancellor’s Professor and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor
     of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics
Director Emeritus, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological
     Synthesis (NIMBioS.org)
Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling
University of Tennessee - Knoxville
President, 2006-2007, 2021-2022, UTK Faculty Senate
Past-President, 2003-2005, Society for Mathematical Biology
http://lgross.utk.edu/