A sociology professor walks to the wooden podium, centered in the front of the spacious Buzzard Hall Auditorium, as he overlooks his 193 students.

A buzz from the students’ voices, mainly freshmen and sophomores, hangs from the walls as sociology professor Ronald Wohlstein reaches into his right blue jeans pocket and turns on his microphone receiver.

“So, is everyone ready?” he asks.

Only some of the students look up. Even fewer nod yes.

Academic Affairs figures point out the class, Introduction to Sociology, has 242 enrolled students, the most of any course this fall. The course traditionally attracts such a large crowd because many younger students took the class in high school, said Kari Dailey, an academic adviser at Ninth Street Hall.

The class size could swell even larger next year.

James Kaplan, chair of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, challenged the state’s 12 four-year public universities last month to create a definition for faculty productivity by the board’s Dec. 9 meeting.

He said it’s time the burden of the state’s $5 billion budget deficit also fall on faculty shoulders. Previously, state legislature advised administrative operating costs be cut 23 percent over four years.

“I think what I’m afraid of is that if we cut faculty (jobs) that there is going to be a direct relationship with the quality of education,” said Alan Karnes, the board’s Faculty Advisory Council representative from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

“What (the IBHE and legislators) are really proposing to do is deliver a lesser quality, or an education of lower quality, than students are getting now.”

Wohlstein, an instructor at Eastern since 1970, doesn’t mind teaching large classes, and gauging from what his students said, they don’t care either. Larger classes increase the anonymity, Wohlstein says, but the high numbers detract from individual faculty attention, something Eastern takes pride in.

“Well, the hard part is that you lose eye contact after you get back so many rows,” Wohlstein said. “It’s more difficult to get a sense of how they are responding to the lecture.”

Pressures from state legislators to trim the budgets and staff sizes, to all the state-funded agencies, higher education and public welfare agencies included, could increase the workload of professors.

State legislators have communicated to the board more cuts will be made in Fiscal Year 2004. In FY 03, Eastern’s state-appropriated moneys were reduced by 8.2 percent, or $4.27 million.

“Every single state agency, the constitutional offices, everyone was asked to join in with the sacrifice to balance the budget,” said Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Chicago office. “So to suggest we turned only to higher education is not accurate.”

Faculty Productivity Defined 6 Ways

Ken Jerich, an advisory committee member and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Illinois State University, said the 12 public universities banded together to create the definition.

Jerich says representatives from 10 of the 12 state universities met Oct. 17 in Springfield to “come up with a conceptual umbrella” of how to define productivity.

The meeting resulted in the development of six topics:

-Faculty roles, responsibilities and productivity.

-The effects of reducing academic programs.

-The economic effects higher education budget cuts might have.

-The effects of prior budget reductions on higher education.

-Faculty productivity issues.

-Collective bargaining, since seven of the 12 universities are unionized.

Jerich says requiring faculty, who at some schools, including Eastern, must also fulfill research and professional service obligations to crank up efficiency, is a slap in the face.

“Some legislators think we’re only teaching six to nine hours a week and (going) home,” Jerich said. “Faculty put in over 50 to 55 hours a week because of their various roles and responsibilities. To (legislators), it doesn’t seem to sink into them at all.

“Either they are ignorant to this, or they don’t want to study this: how cutting faculty would impact the students.”

At the Dec. 9 board meeting, the faculty advisory committee will hold a special-session meeting and give Kaplan the productivity report.

Faculty concerned with possible staff reductions

Faculty here, and other state universities, believe higher education is a legislative budget cut target because a reduction wouldn’t have immediate repercussions.

Although the number of classes with more than 100 students here has nearly doubled in the last two years, jumping from 16 to 30, Eastern faculty may be asked to assume a larger class load with more students in them.

Interim President Lou Hencken said Eastern’s faculty are among the state’s most efficient. The university will offer 1,805 different courses, not counting the no-credit and off-campus courses.

“What bothers me sometimes, is that all universities are not the same,” Hencken said. “If the standard nationally is for faculty to teach 12 semester hours, if that’s the case, most of our faculty would all get a break.”

Faculty believe legislators think a faculty cost reduction similar to the recent 20.8 percent administration cut is possible. With legislative directions to trim “administrative bloat,” Eastern cut more than one-fifth of its staff over the last two fiscal years. But those numbers, in some respects, are deceiving because administrators are defined as any non-teaching employees.

Among those who qualify as administrators are building service workers, secretaries and residence hall directors.

Don Sevener, IBHE spokesman, said Kaplan did not make any specific requests at the faculty advisory board meeting. However, when faculty advisory committee members wondered if Kaplan gave them enough time to compile a definition for productivity, Kaplan said the “train has left the station.”

“If they want to increase teaching load, that increase in teaching load will come out of something else,” said Karnes, who with ISU colleagues, annually offers free tax act changes meetings to local businesses.

“We’ll do less research and less service.”

The governor’s spokeswoman Ottenhoff said Blagojevich does view higher education as a top priority. She cited the Truth and Tuition bill, a new law that will freeze tuition for new freshmen throughout their four years and an increase in Monetary Assistance Program grants as examples.

Eastern’s Faculty Senate split on response

Here at Eastern, the Faculty Senate has discussed this topic, which one faculty member described as the “IBHE onslaught,” over the last couple of weeks.

While some faculty members believe making concessions, like asking the University Athletics Committee to decrease general-funding expenditures, cutting some remedial programs, and bowing to the board’s requests may be the university’s best route.

Other senate members believe Eastern’s efficiency speaks for itself.

Business professor and senate member Matthew Monippallil has said the university’s strong academic reputation – Eastern has ranked in the top tier of the U.S. World & News’ Report “America’s Best Colleges and Universities” for the last three years – and its low cost should be proof enough. Some senate members chose to refer to Eastern’s 66 percent graduation rate and 80.6 percent retention rate of students.

The senate also suggested the faculty attempt to patch up relationships with the board by inviting legislators and board representatives to visit campus to see the workload the faculty handle.

Wohlstein, whose massive class required three separate attendance sheets, says he’ll remember the faces of maybe 30 or 40 of his students in the Intro to Sociology class.

“I think the disadvantage is that students have to be more responsible,” Wohlstein said. “Really, that is what the biggest difference is. It puts more on your shoulders to be up to date if the professor changes the test date or something. The faculty can’t continuously remind you.”