[The Montana Professor 15.1, Fall 2004 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Keith Edgerton
History
Montana State University-Billings
Montana CHE Sheila Stearns. Photo by Hayden Ausland.
Sheila Stearns recently celebrated her first anniversary as Montana's Commissioner of Higher Education. A native of Glendive, Stearns has long been a familiar face and voice in Montana higher education. After receiving her undergraduate and graduate education from the University of Montana (where she earned an Ed.D. with a focus on progressive era education), Stearns served as the Director of Alumni Relations and Vice-President for Governmental Relations between 1983 and 1993 becoming a well-respected lobbyist in and around the legislative halls of Helena. Then in 1993 she was selected as Chancellor at Western Montana College in Dillon, and served in that post until 1999. After a stint as President of Wayne State College in Nebraska, she and her husband Hal (a long time Montana educator) somewhat reluctantly returned to their native Montana, she to assume the high profile and high stress role of Commissioner. She follows on the heels of Richard Crofts, who, by the end of his tenure, gained notoriety as the target of a lawsuit over barring the press from his meetings with campus leaders and then clashed openly with the former speaker of the Montana House and now current Board of Regents chair, John Mercer.
Stearns brings a strikingly different management style than her often times dour predecessor, and arguably she has had a lengthy honeymoon with the Board of Regents. Soon, however, she will face her first grueling legislative session as Commissioner. She inherited a system of higher education that has been chronically plagued by under funding and public antipathy, and she must work with a Board of Regents that is as politicized and as polarized as any in recent memory. The Montana Professor recently sat down with her for a discussion on the challenges both she, and we in Montana higher education, face.
TMP: You've been in the office a little over a year now, what have you found to be your greatest challenges thus far?
Commissioner Stearns: The biggest challenge in the office is to connect and communicate among all these diverse and wonderful units from community colleges to tribal colleges and research universities and especially the four year colleges, that feel in some ways they have benefited from restructuring and other ways feel that they have been held back by restructuring. I'd also say that finding out really what's true, versus what is myth, finding out or at least assessing for myself what's really working, what maybe needs more work in the system. That's one challenge.
The second challenge is the Board has changed a great deal from previous Boards. It is a more active Board. It is more interested in--I would not say micromanaging--but there is definitely interest in changes and direction, changes in how we communicate with governors, legislators, leaders. Making my way through what's almost a mine field this year has been interesting. I'm a real optimist. I do like my job and I'm getting more so that almost every day I like it better and better. I really do. Because I love the state. I love the people I work with. I have a great deal of respect for the members of the Board--the passion and energy and interest they bring to it frankly are energizing. My job as I see it is to help support and get the very best out of this energy and intelligence that the Board members bring to this which is at an unbelievable level and harness it for the best results for all of us and for our approach to the legislature and to whoever is our next governor.
TMP: Have there been any big surprises?
Commissioner: I would say the biggest surprise has been the interest and realization that the university system is as much an engine for economic development as it is and to participate in that process and still to convey to skeptics that the regents and I and others have not lost our way. We know that the university--a good college, a good university--needs to have general education. You have to create thinkers for this new knowledge economy. Not that it is so new but it certainly has evolved and accelerated over the last ten years and Montanans particularly have maybe come a little late to the realization that innovation and technology and creativity are key to our economic future and education is the key. So that has been my biggest surprise and it has affected my workload. I have spent a lot of time traveling the state talking and asking, listening about the university system and our role in economic development. And I always need to say to a group, to folks who might wonder if we are forgetting the fundamental liberal arts kind of communication, thinking, critical skills, writing, mathematics that one needs in almost any job and one will especially need in five years whatever the job is because it will change so fast. I convey that neither the Board nor I have forgotten that but it's exciting to find the interest and support for the university system because of this growing realization that what we do connects to the bottom line as well as to the good life.
TMP: Montana, as you know, ranks dead last in the amount of state support it provides per capita for higher education. What is your response to that? And, given that you will be facing a legislative season soon, what strategies do you have to change that? Do you think it has sunk in to legislators just how abysmal our funding is?
Commissioner: First question. Because we are among, if not the lowest in the nation in jobs and income that is one of the reasons I am traveling as much as I am--connecting the dots between educational achievement or opportunity for education and the ability not just to get a job but to get a better paying job. It's not just educators who are realizing that. I think it is sinking in. I've been this summer on a tour of fifteen different communities for conversation--small to large. The smallest was probably Poplar--Fort Peck community college--15-20 people asking great questions and offering to help. At every one of these there have been either current sitting legislators or legislative candidates who are saying "we get this," and asking how can we work together. I don't perceive any arrogance or condescending approach from either direction. We in the university system used to be accused of thinking we had all the answers and that we were somewhat condescending and, conversely, I used to hear from a lot of my staff and faculty colleagues that legislators just thought we were ivory tower idiots. I'm hearing less and less of that and I've met right now most people who either are incumbents or have made it through the primary across the state--not all--but most. Many have just walked in--one on one and I'm listening--I'm not just asking. But so are they.
I like the change in terms of attitude. They sense that we are more aware of our connection to Montana's per capita income and how can we work together. So given that, the strategies are to communicate and say we are all in this together. We're all in this boat--we are not that much different than some other states of similar rural, sparsely populated backgrounds. Idaho has some different demographics but North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana are four of only six states in the nation that have declining high school graduation rates upcoming. We are holding our own better than North Dakota and South Dakota in terms of attracting non-resident students although those have begun to decline perhaps because maybe we've been a little greedy in terms of non-resident tuition. Are we charging a little too much? All along the northeastern counties of Montana I hear that North Dakota knows what's up. They are offering--stealing--the best and the brightest from our high schools from Williston to Minot to Dickinson to the University of Mary to actually U.N.D and North Dakota State. They advertise heavily. The key is asking ourselves if we are doing what we need to do to be competitive. And that's what I'm about. On behalf of the university system in particular to convey that the interest of all of us is on behalf of a better future for the whole state so that all of our children who want to at least can stay in Montana and work if that's what they choose.
TMP: So you are optimistic rather than pessimistic about this upcoming legislative season?
Commissioner: Yes, I'm always cautiously optimistic. I'm not unrealistic. But we are talking the language more and more people are using: the word "investment." We do need to invest more in a variety of areas including education for significant change to happen. I've stayed in touch with the two gubernatorial candidates during the primary season and I'm working with the current governor and her budget director. We're all in this together. They are all asking now how they can contribute and are listening as we make our case for investing in higher education. Investing in students so that tuition does not have to go up so much or, if it does, then we need to award more financial aid. We've been looking at a range of strategies making sure policy makers understand--working them out together--making sure students understand them.
TMP: There is a feeling among faculty on some of the smaller campuses that there are several historic obstacles that hinder us within the system. For instance, many think the funding models are unfair. To give one example, Bozeman's current level of state funding for resident students is $4,146 per student compared to MSU-Billings's rate of $3,582.00, a difference of about $600 per student. True, there are many variables involved--cost of programs primarily--but the bottom line is that students at Billings have to pay more in tuition than their counterparts at Bozeman or Missoula. What is your response to this? Is it a merely a perception or are there real inequities that need to be addressed?
Commissioner: We don't have on our work plan to have a major overhaul of the cost of education funding model but it is looked at every other year as we prepare for a session. And I know that in my office Deputy Commissioner Sunstad said it's time for us to look again. Where has it gotten out of whack? What have we missed? So I don't think--at least he shows me--that every two years about this time we are double checking whatever allocation we receive from the legislature--is it distributed fairly?--and adjustments have been made. For example, several years ago adjustments were made to help Montana State University-Northern because of its disproportionate share of fee waivers to Native Americans. Was that fair to take it out of their appropriation when they were serving the numbers they were? So that adjustment got made. Our office will always take a look at the funding model if it is out of whack--and we certainly do that--it is important to do that because nothing is static.
I'm not sure there's an easy cure for it unless--this is oversimplifying--just allow me to oversimplify because some of what you describe may be perception but there are data to show that unless or until, and I'm not sure if this will ever happen, all the units are willing to use the same set of peer faculty data--because, as you know, 80% of our costs are in our people. Now can faculty talk each other into let's just as a state use the same--agree on an average of all of our comparable institutions then gradually--it would take some time--but gradually that differential might go down.
TMP: In 1994 the MUS reorganized into its present configuration. What are your plans, if any, on further consolidation of units? Some would argue we have too many units of higher education and that something more akin to the Wyoming model might be more suitable for us.
Commissioner: Nothing's off the table on my watch; however, the primary thing that is on the table is to look at workforce development, quality education, at affordability for students, and the best appropriate use of distance learning. Now if restructuring in any way the way we are currently organized seems to get in the way of achieving objectives we need to do them as economically as we can, well then, nothing is off the table. If governance structure turns out to be a bit of a red herring, which I think sometimes it is, when the problem is fundamentally under funding--under investing--then governance is not the issue. I think the comparison to Wyoming is a good example. Many believe if we were just organized like Wyoming then we could spend $11,000 per student as they do. The fact is they spend more, not because of the way they are organized but because of their willingness to invest. We are more efficient. We have to be and I guess that's part of it. But the blue ribbon panels of the past have all said you could gut one of the units and then most of those students would transfer to one of the two bigger units or maybe one of the three bigger units and take the cost with them. It's not the way to save money. It's the numbers of students you are educating--what we need to do is invest in those students. You're not going to save a lot of money by, let's say, closing mythical town's college. What you will do is gut the economy for reasons that will offset it to the point that you will not save anything. So on my watch, I still will always say nothing is ever off the table, no sacred cows, but prove before we go very far down any one of those roads that it would really save money and increase quality and then we'll look at it.
TMP: There is a perception, especially at the smaller campuses, that there are a disproportionate number of non-teaching administrators throughout the system and as such our students are being ill-served overall as precious resources are not being funneled directly into classroom instruction but to administrative salaries. True, we don't have as many as some other state university systems, but in that we are at the bottom in state support for higher education and our tuition levels seem to be going up dramatically and given that we have extraordinarily limited resources currently, what is your response?
Commissioner: You use the word "perception,"appropriately so. My contrary perception is that the increasing demands for student services, unfunded federal mandates ranging from crime-reporting to disability services, to the need to raise more of our financial support, have certainly increased the number of non-teaching professional staff compared to days of yore. This may seem even more obvious on small campuses. But as the NASA Director said in the movie Apollo 13: "Work the problem. Don't make matters worse by guessing!" My perception and yours should be checked out with better data from the institutional research staff on the campuses, and from national analyses.
TMP: What do you think of the Regents imposition of uniformity in general education requirements on the System? Shouldn't the faculty, who develop and deliver the curriculum, be the ultimate arbiters of what type of general education a student should receive?
Commissioner: I agree that faculty should determine the general education requirements for their institutions. But within a system with the same governing board and with plenty of opportunities to work together with colleagues in the system, they ought to be able to respect and accept each other's particular architecture and expected outcomes for those requirements, so that they can transfer as a core. Montanans can understand that our general education requirements will be somewhat different from campus to campus, but I think it is reasonable for the Regents as state leaders as well as University System leaders to expect a common core to transfer among each of our fine colleges and universities. I am reminded of the Euro, a huge challenge for most European states, with distinct sovereignty and vastly different economies. But to be a stronger region, they had to compromise on a common base for exchange that would work across borders for large and small nations, all fiercely independent and sovereign. Many in those countries are still stunned and miffed about the loss of control. Someone smarter than I am would have to say whether it is working to give Europe's citizens a better future in a world that includes not just the powerful USA, but China and other powerful economies coming on strong. I know it's not a perfect analogy.
TMP: What is the status of our faculty salary study? Is there ANYTHING that can be done to address our abysmally low faculty salaries, salaries that are, in many fields not competitive?
Commissioner: The compensation study is completed, at least in draft form. It is not as in-depth as some would like, but it is a start. It gives us a better sense through many faculty, staff, and administrative levels where we are compared to appropriate benchmarks, and will be a starting point for discussions. Montanans want to be competitive; I'm convinced of that. If it takes six-figure salaries to attract veterinary molecular biologists, many fellow citizens understand that the salary is what it is in the marketplace, and better yet, is often supported by research and grants. I worry about compensation in the disciplines that have long been less likely to be funded by NSF or NIH, or other agencies that are responsible for America's scientific and technological R&D. That includes my disciplines of English, history, and education. What is competitive and what is just are not always congruent, unfortunately, and not just in higher education. No news there. Increasing, and then publicizing more effectively, the contribution of faculty and staff in Montana's overall well-being sounds simple, but is not. It is part of our "Shared Leadership" initiative, and has to be part of any strategy to raise widespread regard and reward for the value of post-secondary education--and those who deliver it.
TMP: Do you think the office you hold is something of a graveyard? That is, given that no one has held it for more than a few years and those who have gone onto retirement or less distinguished positions. Has it been a graveyard? If so, why, and what do you plan to do about it? How do you envision changing the office?
Commissioner: I think it has varied over the years. Larry Pettit was one of the first commissioners--he was the first commissioner--and he went on to a long and distinguished presidency at Indiana University, Pennsylvania, where he made a big difference in a fine college. I do think it's not a graveyard but it often is a platform for change because it's only so long if you truly love colleges and universities that you really want to be away from more direct student contact. So you have to have support. Give me enough support to visit a lot of campuses a lot of times, visit with students and then I will be happy. If you make me sit in a bureaucratic office all the time then I won't be able to stay very long either. Then if I can connect with not just students but faculty and legislators and community leaders as I've been doing and I get enough support, how I would change the office would be to get a little bit more help--even a little bit more space so I can have a faculty in residence, I can have students in residence, more internships, bring those folks circulating through my office so we have the liveliness and excitement of campuses, then I could stay in the job quite a long time and be very happy.
[The Montana Professor 15.1, Fall 2004 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]