ADEC IDEAL IRIC-E Report: Subcommittee for Eliminating "Turf" Barriers

IDEAL Report
Subcommittee for Eliminating "Turf" Barriers
Submitted by Larry Whiting, Ohio State University

This subcommittee is trying to operationalize the valid recommendations (E.1, E.2, and E.3) in the IDEAL Report.

The problem of "turf" is formidable and complex in that it varies from university to university and college to college. Often, institutional pride is at the heart of the matter --- whether it encompasses institutions, colleges, and academic programs or whether it is between universities and other public agencies. Sometimes even within states, geography gets in the way: for example, one university's hospitals and clinics serving one area of the state and another university's medical complex serving the remaining portion. Jealousies occur because of overlapping distance education or other programs.

A study conducted several years ago found that there were more than a dozen administrative organizational structure models within colleges of agriculture. For example, at some institutions the experiment station, extension service and academic programs are within the same structure, reporting to a common dean or vice president. At other institutions, extension might be viewed as broader than agriculture and will be under the jurisdiction of someone other than the agricultural dean or vice president.

Also, distance education is centralized on some campuses, often the responsibility of continuing education programs or even perhaps of the university public broadcasting operation. On other campuses, each college may be operating independently even to the point of equipping its own distance education classrooms and studios rather than using a centralized university facility. Furthermore, public broadcasting in some states consists of one unified system with all stations under one management. In other states both radio and television stations may be owned and operated by several public universities and, consequently operate independently of one another.

Given these kinds of scenarios, more formal and unified management and operation of distance education will become difficult to bring about even though it may be much desired. At many of our land-grant institutions, distance education is much of a free-for-all with replicated facilities and services with a wide range of expertise and interest. In the worst cases, there are no strategic plans or common mission and vision goals. Indeed, university administrators are often in a quandary as to which entity on campus should be in charge. What often happens in these cases is the formation of a university-wide committee to essentially become a surrogate administrator. In many cases these committees are ineffective and simply delay some important decisions that the university's central administration should be making.

Given the above situation, one can easily see that an organization like ADEC --- which will often be seen as an external organization and which on some college campuses may be unfortunately viewed merely as an agricultural organization --- may have difficulty attaining sufficient credibility to do all that is necessary to bring down those turf walls.

None-the-less, here are several suggestions: