Arts and sciences federation a step in the right direction

Hogan comments on plans, strength of new structure

By JONI BENTZ SEAL, onCAMPUS staff

There is rarely -- if ever -- a simple blueprint when universities engage in administrative changes in which they modify existing structures or consolidate separate programs. Meeting strategic goals and increasing efficiencies or improving function provide a rationale for such changes; timing is often a motivating factor.

Michael Hogan

These were the considerations when, at the direction of Executive Vice President and Provost Ed Ray and in support of the goals outlined in the Academic Plan, the administrative structures of the five Colleges of the Arts and Sciences -- consisting of Arts, Biological Sciences, Humanities, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences -- were consolidated into one federation. The federation was announced in a white paper issued by Ray and President Karen Holbrook at the University Senate meeting May 8.

"Our Academic Plan demands strength in this critical area," Holbrook said. "If we maximize the synergies that exist among the programs in the five separate colleges of the arts and sciences, we can enhance the availability of interdisciplinary courses, sequences, minors, and majors available to undergraduate and graduate students, and build upon existing interdisciplinary academic program offerings in the arts and sciences."

To lead this effort, Michael Hogan, dean of humanities, who also has served as the representative dean for the five colleges since 2001, has been named executive dean of the new federation. Recently, he shared with onCampus his thoughts and preliminary plans as implementation is set to begin July 1.

onCampus: You've been serving in a concurrent role as executive dean over the five Colleges of the Arts and Sciences in addition to your role as dean of humanities. Have you seen a clear need for a federation with a dedicated dean?

Hogan: I have served as executive dean for two years, and during that time, Provost Ray saw a need to invest the position with more and more responsibility. When I first became executive dean, the job was simply that of someone who convened meetings of the arts and sciences deans, served as a conduit between them and the Office of Academic Affairs, and represented the arts and sciences on various university committees. But during the last two years, Provost Ray also asked the executive dean to lead a consolidated fund-raising or development operation for the arts and sciences, to get a group of colleagues working on a strategic plan for the five colleges, to re-energize the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee, and to tackle other responsibilities. At a certain point, I think the provost and the president realized that these mounting responsibilities made it necessary to detach the executive dean from one of the five colleges and create an independent office that could lead the arts and sciences as a whole. Part of this was the concurrent realization that the five colleges constituted a coherent unit, or federation, and that no one was charged with the responsibility for thinking about the federation as a whole. This was so even though my growing responsibilities clearly indicated that such an entity existed, that it constituted the academic core of the university, and that it needed careful nurturing if Ohio State was going to realize the goals of the Academic Plan.

onCampus: What is the significance of the federation to Ohio State, especially in relation to the Academic Plan?

Hogan: Ohio State has been unusual in that most major universities have a single arts and sciences college. This is the norm in academic life, and for good reasons. After all, despite differences among the various disciplines represented, faculty across the arts and sciences share a similar research mission and are jointly responsible for the university's core curriculum. At Ohio State, for example, faculty in the arts and sciences are committed to basic, original research, and they account for approximately 90 percent of the general education curriculum and for more than half of the honors curriculum. The new federation recognizes these core values and shared missions in a way that was not always true of the old structure of five separate, independent and often-competitive colleges. It will allow colleagues, faculty and students alike, to share their work more fully and more easily, to collaborate more effectively in common research and teaching initiatives, and to work collectively to assert quality control over their shared curriculum. At the same time, the new federation should permit new efficiencies in administration, realize economies of scale, and allow for savings that can be reinvested in the academic enterprise -- in faculty salaries, in new research programs, in innovative curricular initiatives and in all the things that will help us to achieve the goals of the Academic Plan.

onCampus: How will the federation better support the needs of the individual colleges?

Hogan: In the end, administrative structure must not be about itself. None of us wants an organization for its own sake, but for how the organization can help us to advance our basic missions. To put it another way, neither the new nor the old organization is about supporting the five colleges but about supporting faculty and students in the pursuit of their basic work. We think the new federation is a better way to provide that support. The winners in this reorganization cannot be deans or provosts or presidents, but those faculty, staff and students who are at the core of our mission. The only goal worth talking about is a structure that helps our colleagues succeed, or at the very least, eliminates the barriers to their success. 

onCampus: What contributions will the deans of the five colleges continue to provide to the university, and to the federation?

Hogan: In the new federation, the deans of the five colleges will continue to function as deans. They will advise the executive dean on the allocation of resources across the arts and sciences; be responsible for the efficient use of the budgets they receive; oversee departments and programs inside their colleges; initiate all appointment, tenure and promotion decisions; and do the other things that deans normally do. But they will assume a new identity. They will have to think of themselves as part of a larger unit, as leaders in a larger federation of colleges, and the white paper makes it clear that their performance will be evaluated on how well they do in this regard. As executive dean, I will look to the college deans for advice and assistance. It would not be wrong to think of them as constituting a kind of executive committee for the arts and sciences as a whole, and we have already begun talking about adding some cross-college duties to the list of responsibilities they handle as deans.

onCampus: What do you see as some of the key aspects of your role as the executive dean in implementing the federation?

Hogan: I think the key aspects of my role as executive dean are clearly spelled out in the white paper. That document assigns to the executive dean all of the rights and responsibilities normally accorded a dean, although in my case these apply to the federation as a whole rather than to a single college. They include regular budget authority for the federation as a whole, to give one example, as well as the authority to lead the faculty in drafting a strategic plan, in drawing up a pattern of administration for the arts and sciences, in fostering diversity, in building new cross-college, interdisciplinary programs, in asserting more faculty oversight of our honors programs and our curriculum generally, and in doing much, much more. First, and foremost, of course, is the role I have to play with my colleagues in actually creating the new federation itself, which means figuring out how we can share resources, consolidate operations, reduce costs and move the savings where it will do the most good -- into the hands of faculty who are anxious to build new programs and strengthen those already in place.  

onCampus: Although the announcement is still new, what preliminary plans do you have for implementing the new structure?

Hogan: The new federation will be launched on July 1, but my colleagues and I are already making some progress. I have asked two sterling teachers and scholars to join me as associate executive deans. They are Edward Adelson, professor of music, who will be responsible for instructional and curricular issues across the arts and sciences, and Robert Perry, professor of physics, who will take charge of issues having to do with research and faculty development. I also have started to talk with the deans about their cross-college responsibilities. Karen Bell, our wonderful dean of arts, will lead communications and alumni relations for the arts and sciences as a whole, just to give you one example, and Rick Freeman, the outstanding scholar who will be joining us as the new dean of mathematical and physical sciences, wants to lead our efforts to integrate the fiscal and human resource operations of the five colleges. These are two examples of the collaborative spirit that informs our mission and our federation, and more will follow in the months ahead. Three of the colleges, to give another illustration, have decided to join the Office of the Executive Dean in the same building, and Provost Ray has agreed to support this initiative. It will take 15 months or so to get there, but the new plan calls for bringing the deans' offices from the colleges of Arts, Humanities, and Mathematical and Physical Sciences together with the Office of the Executive Dean on the first floor of University Hall. I'm excited about this prospect, first because sharing space will enable us to share resources and that should make for real economies and efficiencies, and second because University Hall is one of the most visible and symbolically important buildings on campus; it is at the head of the Oval, between Bricker and the Main Library, and thus a perfect place to house the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences.

onCampus: How and when will you proceed with implementing the new structure? How long of a process do you feel it will be?

Hogan: Much more remains to be done, of course. In fact, we are only at the start of a process of federation that will take a couple of years to complete. Our goal is to be deliberate, but focused. That said, the president, the provost and the trustees have given us a charge. They expect results to come sooner rather than later, as do the faculty, who have made it clear that they want to see "value added" in new interdisciplinary programs, in greater faculty oversight of their curriculum, in less bureaucracy, in real savings and more. I don't think the deans and I will disappoint them. 

Thoughts from leadership

Trustee Chairman Zuheir Sofia does indeed have high expectations for the new federation and feels proud to lead the trustees and the university through the coming year. "The federation of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences will provide the right configuration for growth and innovation," he said. "As clearly stated in the Academic Plan, sustaining and enhancing further excellence in the arts and sciences is central to the advancement of The Ohio State University. This realignment is critical to strengthening the presence of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences in the university's decision-making process. The timing is appropriate and the budget situation underscores the need for strategic decisions to streamline, add efficiencies and reduce duplication," he said.

Holbrook also commented on the leadership of Ray, who brought the need for the restructuring of the arts and sciences to the forefront. "Every university in the top tier of public teaching and research universities has strong arts and sciences at its core. This federation will set the stage for the university to continue its move upward, and will be part of the legacy that Ed Ray leaves to Ohio State as he moves on to Oregon State University," she said.

Statistics research helps solve everyday mysteries

By PAM FROST GORDER, Research Communications

Shall I die? Shall I fly
Lovers' baits and deceits,
sorrow breeding?
Shall I tend? Shall I send?
Shall I sue, and not rue
my proceeding?
In all duty her beauty
Binds me her servant for ever.
If she scorn, I mourn,
I retire to despair, joining never ...

Is this poem the work of Shakespeare? Nearly 20 years after a handwritten copy of "Shall I die" was discovered on a dusty shelf in the Bodelain Library in Oxford, experts still don't agree. But the literary debate surrounding the poem is extraordinary, because it was fueled in part by a science: statistics.

That anyone could even attempt to scientifically analyze the Bard is a testament to the career of C.R. Rao, Eberly Professor Emeritus of Statistics at Pennsylvania State University. Once a visiting professor at Ohio State, he recently returned to give the Department of Statistics' annual Chotey Lal & Mohra Devi Rustagi Memorial Lecture.

As Doug Wolfe, professor and chair of statistics, said in his introduction, Rao is "one of only a handful of people who laid the foundation for modern statistics," and so the lecture was somewhat an overview of Rao's influence on the discipline -- from the metrics he developed for studying genetics and agriculture in the 1940s, to the statistics of surveys and clinical trials that make headlines today.

Rao's early work shaped what statisticians do today. They discern the numbers that lay hidden in the stuff of everyday life, and use that information to help us make decisions as mundane as how often to brush our teeth, and as critical as which car seat is safest for a newborn baby.

In the case of "Shall I die," statisticians analyzed the complete works of Shakespeare to determine what words he favored for his prose. They found that there are 31,534 distinct words in Shakespeare, and all but nine of the words in the new poem are part of that "vocabulary." Given the frequency of certain words, the new poem was statistically as likely to be Shakespeare's as any poem traditionally attributed to him.

Inspired by this research, statisticians decided to test a different literary work -- the Arthashastra, an ancient Indian text. Written in three sections, the Arthashastra spells out the laws of society and politics, and is attributed to the author Kautilya.

As it turns out, each section follows a different writing style, so the text was probably written by three different people. Perhaps the uncredited authors were simply writing for Kautilya the same way ghost writers now support Tom Clancy's name. Or, as Rao added jokingly, "perhaps they were graduate students."

Statistics research helps us solve everyday mysteries, he said, not by removing uncertainty, but by explaining it. For example, statistics suggest that smoking causes cancer, aspirin can help prevent a heart attack, and each consecutive child born into a family is more intelligent than the one that came before (Rao was ninth born in his family).

"These are not necessarily true statements, but something to guide us," he said. "In real life, action has to be taken on available knowledge, however meager it is. Statistics is the science and technology of making optimal decisions with minimal loss under uncertainty."

Marketers have been quick to pick up on one application of statistics: data mining, through which studies of people's spending habits have shaped grocery store shelves. People who buy bread often buy butter, so placing these two items within eyeshot of each other boosts sales. Though making the bread-and-butter connection might not have required advanced statistical techniques, consider that data mining also has shown that people who buy diapers often buy beer.

Faculty and students at the Rustagi lecture pressed Rao to predict the future of statistics. The discipline is very different now than when he started out, because of the computer, he said. So much information is generated by satellites and other technologies, that the chief task of the statistician has become managing huge samples of data. And things are still changing.

"Statistics as we know it might not be here in 20 years," he ventured. "It could be completely different."

At the post-lecture reception, Rao talked about how Ohio State has changed since he worked here in 1978-79. "The whole university has expanded, and the Department of Statistics has expanded. As new areas of interest emerge, centers have been established for them -- it's good," he said. In particular, he's interested in the Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Sciences, and he looks forward to projects that will grow out of the new Mathematical Biosciences Institute.

For his current work, Rao is keenly interested in signal processing. Statistics is needed to make sense of environmental data for global climate modeling, he said, and to pull new information from well-established technologies. For instance, he's developing statistical techniques for predicting the path of enemy aircraft using radar.

Rao has received a great many awards over the years, including an honorary doctorate from Ohio State. The prestigious journals Statistical Science and Econometric Theory have both profiled him at length in their pages, and the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference recently devoted several volumes to him in honor of his 80th birthday. In 2002, he received the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society, UK.