Author: bearcee

My degrees are in Journalism (M.A.,Andrews University) and Philosophy of Religion (M.A., Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University). I taught for 34 years at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD—mostly religion, philosophy, communication and media studies, public relations and advertising. Then I was an adjunct professor in philosophy at Trinity Washington University (DC) and an adjunct in Business Communications at Stevenson University, MD. I love design, reading, writing, teaching, and learning. I'm married and have a son and a stepdaughter. I am a Christian with Taoist and Buddhist influences. I am now retired and writing full time. My first collection of essays, "Wandering, Not Lost," was published in November 2019 and is available from Wipf & Stock and Amazon.

We Are Our Communication

“Every part of a system is so related to its fellow parts that a change in one part will cause a change in all of them and in the total system. That is, a system behaves not as a simple composite of independent elements, but coherently and as an inseparable whole.”

These dispassionate words may not come to mind when we see the shelling in Gaza or watch in horror the videos of what the Islamic State is doing to Christians in Mosul. But they give us a way to deal with these extremes and to understand them.

The quote is from Pragmatics of Human Communication (1967) by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson, who were three of the principal researchers at the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto in the late 60s and early 70s. The pioneering work that they did, trying to understand the connections between communication and human behavior, was an interdisciplinary venture that spanned psychopathology, mathematics, literature, systems theory, and communication studies. They wanted to know how communication as an interactional process affected our behavior.

Starting from the axiom that “all behavior is communication and one cannot not communicate,” they arrived at the conclusion that everything we do when we communicate with each other affects all our communication processes and cannot be separated out. Put simply, to say that the actions of person A causes the behavior of person B ignores the relation of B to A and the effect B may have on A’s subsequent reactions.

Like it or not, they seem to be saying, we’re all in this together. Every time Hamas fires a rocket at an Israeli settlement it is communicating; with the inevitable reciprocation on Gazan villages there is a deadly communication process in place that becomes a feedback loop. Every action results in a reaction which provokes a new action ad infinitum.

Furthermore, if we isolate an action in order to find its cause—and thus to blame—we miss the wider context in which that action takes place. We discover that actions happen in a context and that that context occurs within a relationship between people and groups. Focusing on the particular actions and not on the relationship between the parts of this system results in us missing the meaning of the actions that take place.

An example given by the authors is the difference between my foot kicking a stone and me kicking a dog. When my foot hits the stone it will move and eventually come to rest again. But if I kick the dog it may jump up and bite me. The kick has become not simply energy but information; my behavior has communicated something which the dog, rightfully so, interprets as an attack and responds accordingly. A kick is not just a kick within a relationship: it sends a message that grew out of the relationship prior to the kick and will affect responses to the kick.

As I read news reports of the actions of ISIS/Islamic State, watched videos, and read the comments of readers and viewers I could feel a tension building in me. I could imagine the desperation of the thousands trapped on Sinjar Mountain, the children dying from thirst and exhaustion. And I wanted to obliterate the militants surrounding them on the plains below. It wasn’t enough that American pilots drop supplies to the victims: I wanted to see the bodies of those fighters after the bombs tore through them. I wanted video of them calling out for help as they bled to death.

And then a curious but inevitable thing happened. As the tension in me built the world divided up neatly into right and wrong, black and white, us and them. Crush them all! Barbarians! Stomp their lives out! So they’re killing Christians and ethnic minorities? Damn Muslims!

In a flash I had gone from righteous indignation to murderous wrath, from a generalized tolerance for other religions to a Crusade mentality against all Muslims. From the particular to the general. Kill ’em all and let God sort it out later.

It got even worse when I stumbled across a website that is apparently run by Christians who believe Islam is Satanic. Their comments were raw hatred, all the visceral fear and fury of those who are absolutely certain that their enemy is the Devil and they are on the side of the angels. And these were self-confessed Christians. In the words of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I looked from pigs to men and from men to pigs, and already I could not tell the difference. And that’s when I remembered Paul Watzlawick and his pragmatics of human communication.

I realized I was confronted with a moral dilemma that I couldn’t face—the slaughter of the innocents. I was helpless to do anything except inwardly rail against the perpetrators. The situation was too complex for me to handle, so I simplified it. I had divided my perceptual world in two: Christians and Muslims. But of course it’s much more nuanced than that. It’s Sunni against Shiite, Kurdish against Iraqis, caliphate against sovereign states, America against rebel forces, economic interests against religious and political ideologies, men against women and children, hate-filled Christian extremists against fanatical Islamic jihadists.

But even that was still too simple, a binary response to something multi-faceted and entangled. I recalled something I’d read years ago by William Irwin Thompson, a cultural historian and philosopher: “We become the thing we hate,” he said. And I remembered, too, how easily we are manipulated by media images, and how adept political and military groups have become at the propaganda arts. Our instant and ubiquitous media draws us all across the lines in the sand. By watching we become changed—and not for the better. All those Christian groups glued to their YouTube videos, who thought Hamas and Islamic State would be in our streets next week unless we nuked them, would be more likely to turn on their neighborhood mosque or to beat up someone wearing a hijab on the Metro.

I am not at all settled on this. I could visualize myself, with the best intentions, running out into no mans land with my hands out, imploring both sides to cease fire, and getting shot before I could make my eloquent statement. Where am I on the non-violence idea? Generally for it, from the safety of my Maryland suburb. Children in Mosul were being beheaded, said a Chaldean-American activist on CNN. Is that true? I shudder to think so, and yet my children have their heads on their shoulders in the sweet summer evening air. Am I to feel guilt because we are safe, our home has not been bombed, my wife and daughter have not been raped? Guilt of that sort doesn’t seem productive and yet my heart can feel the terror and the blind rage and the sheer relief of having survived an attack, all in my imagination.

Hobbes thought the world was a place of constant terror, a life that was, as he famously put it, ‘nasty, brutish, and short.’ Kant was steadfast against lying and murder, for any reason, and Aristotle counseled moderation in all things. Courage and prudence were cardinal virtues that didn’t need to be moderated; how could you be too courageous or too prudent? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that Christian exemplar of integrity and ethics, said, ‘When a horse is running wild in the street, you stop the horse.’ There is a time for words and a time for action, he seemed to be saying. Pacifist that I am would I hesitate to shoot someone about to murder women and children? The Tao cautions that violence should be the absolute last resort, and be discharged with sorrow and not with triumph.

What is becoming clearer to me is that we are, all of us in this tortured, dark, yet beautiful world, bound to one another. The death of one—any one—impoverishes all of us. This, I am convinced, is not New Age ignorance disguised as bliss. It is, rather, part of the virtues of humility and courage that Jesus and others exemplified. We cannot not communicate. All that we are, says the Dhammapada, is a result of what we have thought. Our revolution begins from the inside—and affects the world.

Every Breath We Take

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 (NRSV)

According to the Gospel of John the world begins with the Word. Communication requires two, not just one. The Tao Te Ching, the book of wisdom in Taoism, notes that:

The Tao gives birth to One
One gives birth to Two
Two gives birth to Three
Three gives birth to all things

In the astonishing clarity of the prologue to the gospel the writer gives us three phrases that build in intensity, each one leaping farther into the unknown.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

Not simply a word, but the Word. It’s a Word that is mysterious, yet so encompassing that the singular article exists to create the One that is all and communes with all.

But lest we think that this Word is alone, there is from the beginning a simple preposition, “with,” that evokes the image of relationship.

“And the Word was with God.”

This is not just proximity, an accident of spatial congruence that creates a false sense of belonging. To be with someone implies a confluence, a commingling, a relationship that continues even when the two are separated. “Are you with someone?” we ask the stranger at a party or a gathering. ‘Yes,’ comes the reply, ‘I’m just waiting for my friend.’ “And the Word was with God.”

Then comes the third phrase that jolts us with its audacity.

“And the Word was God.”

Not only is the Word with God, the Word is God. And it implies that the eternal One creates out of desire: it takes two to tango, it takes two to communicate. Bruce Springsteen and the Book of Proverbs say, ‘Two hearts are better than one.’

Everything begins with communication, with the Word. Communication gives rise to communion with the other, the one to whom we turn, without whom we are but silence beating the air, the sound of one hand clapping, a tree falling forever in a forest born before sound and light.

Everything and everyone begins with the Word; not just a word but the Word, and the Word is life and light and love. It brings us into being for each other, for without each other we are simply syllables looking for completion. Our lives against the vastness of the light of the stars are so fragile that we are drawn to each other in order to reflect God’s glory to each other.

The Word was and is God and thus is there from the beginning. The beginning is not just the beginning of us or of our glorious, fragile world, but a beginning of which we cannot conceive because we have no way of grasping how time can expand in all directions at once. We think in linear fashion: front to back, up and down, left to right, start to finish, but this beginning takes us back and back until, gasping, we are drawn in through the first word to some place infinitely beyond the beginning point.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That is a description of communication in action, of communion in process. That Word creates community within itself, and every time we open our mouths to speak we take on the risk to become one with that community, a community that exists within us and without which we are not complete. But as Thomas Merton reminds us, “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, beyond speech, beyond concept.” The Word draws us into communion.

Communion is that possibility that exists between people—the eternal possibility—that we may actually come to understand one another, the first step toward loving another. In all our faltering attempts at communication, with every word that rises up from within us, that possibility is there. It is not yet embodied, not yet made flesh until breathed out in our words, but it is there. So in every breath we take—no matter what the word is—in that breath not yet become a word lies the hope for true understanding between you and I. Between Sunni and Shiite, Protestant and Catholic, homophobic and gay, progressive and conservative, man and woman, Israeli and Palestinian, Tutsi and Hutu, sex worker and client, border guard and immigrant.

Once upon a time God came to this earth; the Word became flesh and lived here with us. Now the Word continues in our communion with one another. The infinite possibility for peace is literally within us at every moment if we will imagine our words to be the Word that came into the world to bring us light.

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Cutting the Branches at WAU

A short post on the dubious reading of Scripture to justify faculty cuts and layoffs . . .

bearcee's avatarWashington Adventist Community

Weymouth Spence writes a half-page column each month in the Visitor, the primary publication of the Columbia Union Conference. His column for July 2014, entitled “Partnering for Fruitfulness,” drew our attention here at WAC (Washington Adventist Community) for several reasons. We’ll look at what it suggests about his management style in this post and leave the rest for another time.

He points out that external stakeholders have grown increasingly interested in the academic performance of colleges and universities, calling for more accountability and more assurance that graduates can perform at the levels these institutions claim they can. The tools employed to gather this evidence are numerous: enrollment patterns, retention, completion, and graduation percentages, job placement rates, graduate school admissions, and more. In the business of higher education these approaches go by the names of evidence-based or competence-based outcomes. Gathering this data and crunching the numbers reveals, in President Spence’s words, “whether the institution’s…

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Thresholds and Endings at WAU

Saying goodbye to WAU’s 2014 departees . . .

bearcee's avatarWashington Adventist Community

There are liminal moments in the history of an institution in which a threshold is crossed.  One such threshold has arrived for WAU: for the first time in recent months we are hearing from people whose judgment we respect worrying out loud about the demise of Washington Adventist University. Years of misguided decisions and instability in academic leadership at the Cabinet level have taken their toll on departments across the campus. Programs have been reduced, suspended or scheduled for closure, departments have been cut and faculty members dismissed. That has inevitably had an effect on student retention.

Just as worrisome is the apparent lack of concern on the part of the board for the direction of the university. A majority of the board are conference presidents, some of whom would be just as happy to see WAU close—and have privately said as much. The fact that there is little, if any, inquiry…

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How WAU Can Win (Back) Friends and Influence People

bearcee's avatarWashington Adventist Community

None of us want to see WAU close. That includes us here at WAC. Although we’ve been accused of being an “evil” website trying to bring down the university, that is far from our intention. What we want is what many others want: a healthy, financially stable educational institution, with a clear sense of purpose, that is dedicated to helping students learn how to learn and how to transform their world into part of the kingdom of God. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

But you can’t achieve good ends by shifty means. You can’t build on sand and you can’t cut corners in the construction of “present truth.” What we’re looking for from the administration of Dr. Spence, Provost Kisunzu, and VP Farley first, is transparency. There are tough problems right now at WAU, and bunkering down behind false promises and self-interest isn’t going to help. We’re all…

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Begin Again, in Myth

“. . . [T]he purpose of a myth was to make people more fully conscious of the spiritual dimension that surrounded them on all sides and was a natural part of life.” — Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

Myth is a word that has suffered greatly in our times, but it wasn’t always this way. As used by Plato in his dialogues it had an honorable place next to logic: it carried the truth of a concept through a story. Those whom we like to call ‘the ancients’ seemed to live in a myth-ful world in which stories were told, repeated, passed on, modified, lived out and lived within — in short, a myth was a portal to a dimension of transcendence which only had to be invoked to be experienced. We are so far from that now.

“In every culture,” notes Karen Armstrong, “we find the myth of a lost paradise, in which humans lived in close and daily contact with the divine (A Short History of Myth 14).” Through many cultures and times the heavens were opened up, sometimes with a tree, a pole, a mountain, an escalator at the center of the world by which people could climb up to the god lands. These were the Golden Ages, common to most cultures around the world, a time when people and animals could commune together, and the gods walked among humans, sometimes in disguise, sometimes revealed through a flash of insight or a glance understood. These were the good old days.

Then somehow a catastrophe snapped the connection between heaven and earth. The mountain crumbled, the tree was cut, the ladder broke. As a species we’ve never been the same since. Joni Mitchell pointed out our longing in Woodstock—“and we’re trying to get ourselves back to the garden.” None of this was meant to be history, a deliberate and verifiable account of events. It was myth, stories that taught us how to live in the face of the inexplicable and to survive in the shadowlands. 

We divide our world into the religious and the secular, a concept that would have been blasphemous to our ancestors. To them the world was imbued with the sacred; they walked in light that was cast by divine beings. Nothing was untouched by the gods, anything could be imbued with the sacred. The idea that we worship in a building on a designated day would have been laughable had it not been so seriously bent. For them, the divine could be seen—and heard—in a burning bush, just off the path. While the sacred was all around them it was not so obvious that they could afford to be inattentive. Moses, on the lam from a murder charge in Egypt, making a life for himself in the desert, sees a bush burning and turns aside. He is awestruck, naturally, and curious, but to our eyes the remarkable thing is what happens next. He hears a voice from within the bush telling him to take off his shoes for he is on holy ground—and he does it! 

Our first instinct would have been incredulity, tinged with panic. We might have thought ourselves to be slipping, hearing things, suffering hallucinations, most likely from dehydration. A couple of long pulls on the ever-present bottled water and we’d be set right again. Back slowly away, slip around the rock and forget the whole thing ever happened. But Moses turned off the path, allowed the distraction, and met his destiny. By so doing he expanded his universe infinitely in all directions. We would contract it, reduce it, constrict and desiccate it. 

I am envious of this inclination to the transcendent. It’s all through sacred writings from all cultures; it is depicted sometimes laconically, sometimes in bewildering detail. The great divide between those people and us is at the molecular level of the One versus the Many. They saw the world as one being, everything in it spinning up in the drama between heaven and earth. Somewhere along the line it was understood that “on earth, as it is in heaven,” was real. This world was a mirror image, on its best days, of what transpired in the heavens. There were people with an acute sensitivity, who saw the signs and could read the wind. You went to them because they could see from a great height what the earth looked like and where you were placed.  

There were rituals, sacraments to be carried out, each one another opportunity to come closer to transcendence. It was not a matter of belief, but of practice. Beliefs came and went or wore out and had to be replaced. Or they were found to be impractical. What mattered was the doing, the deed, the action that made the ritual real. When the ancient stories were told you could see yourself in the moment: the hearing made the acting vivid. The acting recreated the story with you, this time, in the starring role. “This is the way,” you heard, “walk in it.” The world is One and you are part of it.

But you don’t get science that way. In order to understand the whole it must be seen through the parts. Not for nothing do we talk about “breaking it down” in analysis. Our metaphors build categories; without categorization there is no possibility of analytical thinking. Usually this works well for us: we see the world as it is; we break it down into parts and then build it back up into a new form and hope there are no little pieces left out in the rebuilding. Thus we can separate action from belief, understand the process, see where the system gets clogged or breaks, and make our repairs. By reducing the world to the lowest common denominator we see what energizes it from the inside. This is what gives us immunizations, molecular biology, synthetic drugs, and nanobots. 

But I long for Jacob’s ladder, with the angels going about their business, magnificent beings who barely gave him a glance. He was dumbstruck, touching himself to see if he was dreaming all this and hoping it was real. It was as real as it needed to be because he felt the weight of the numinous, the holy, and he shouted, “Surely the Lord is in this place!” And he placed some stones together to mark the spot, for in the absence of angelic footprints he needed to find it again when he passed by that way. And he called it Beth-el, the house of the god El. And for everyone who came by that place the stones spoke of an experience that was had by someone that was worthy to be remembered. In the remembering one might enter that experience too and feel oneself transformed.

But there’s an inevitability here that can become tragic. A man has a transcendent experience at a nameless desert scree and piles the stones to mark the spot. The story gets out, the people come in hopes of their own experience. The crowds pour in, the tents go up, the hustlers work the crowd, t-shirts are sold, and miracles performed. In time, a city springs up, the temple at its center. There are opportunities for business and investment, legends grow, and soon the religious tourism is booming. And if you should be able to slip out at night, where the buildings give way to sand and desert rocks, and you lie on your back and look up, you must shield your eyes from the glare, but faintly against the sky you might see a moving star, a satellite. No angels, no ladder, no brush of the wind against your cheek, just the clear and certain knowledge that your texts and calls are being carried by that point of moving light. 

And yet . . . and yet . . . we may still find the power in the myth if we’re willing to see with our imaginations and suspend our need for irreducible certainty. The world is One and Many, God is in this place, be it Syria, Iraq, Capitol Hill, or Orange County. We will find what we need if we act on our beliefs. ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’

 

Down the Rabbit Hole

bearcee's avatarWashington Adventist Community

One of the purposes for which Washington Adventist Community, aka WAC, exists is to raise questions about the actions of the administration at Washington Adventist University, aka WAU. And there is no end to the questions that come to mind. In fact, trying to figure out the logic behind their actions can consume more time than any of us should spend. Nevertheless, we here at WAC do it so that you don’t have to. However, a word of caution: if you should plunge headlong down the rabbit hole into this alternate reality don’t expect to find your way back to the light without considerable effort. With that in mind, we’ll begin.

Despite almost seven years of contradictory evidence we continue to look for a clear plan for this university. We’re not talking about “The Plan,” the prosaically-named revision of the strategic plan of the early part of the century. We’re…

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Why Adjuncts Can’t Replace Full-Time Faculty

We knew this day would come: Washington Adventist University (WAU) is trying to fill the gaps in their faculty ranks with adjuncts—lots of them. The NAD Employment site is filled with listings for openings at WAU. In fact, there is an Adjunct Faculty Career Fair coming up on June 4 on campus in which prospective adjuncts can meet with representatives of various departments to discover “what it’s like to teach at WAU” (see a copy of the Email with more information here: WAU_Today’s News (05.28.2014).

“We are currently seeking to expand our pool of qualified adjunct faculty,” says the announcement, “and to fill several openings in key discipline areas, such as English, Math, Business, Computer Studies, Nursing, Biology, and Chemistry.” (Full details are also on the WAU website)

We here at WAC thought those were “key discipline areas” too. And we thought that those areas were being covered pretty well by the full-time faculty who not only taught in their disciplines with expertise, insight, and dedication, but advised, served on committees, participated in research, coordinated on-campus and off-campus events, found internships for students, led out in worship and spiritual events, were available to students during office hours and more, and generally provided not only information but experience and wisdom to students year after year.

But now those classes will be covered by adjuncts. Covering the instructional material is all an adjunct can generally do. One of us here at WAC is a full-time adjunct. Whereas some adjuncts have steady jobs from 9 – 5 and teach in the evenings, many of us do this full-time.

Nationwide, adjunct faculty now make up 76% of college instructors. They make on average $20,000 to $27,000 per year, with no benefits (NPR, Feb. 3, 2014) . This trend began in the 1970s when adjuncts were few, but usually professionals who wanted to share their expertise with students and pick up some extra money on the side. They brought their “real-world” experience to the classroom in business, criminal justice, health care, vocational, and social work.

The difference now is that most of the part-time instructors are of two types: either they were cut from full-time teaching or they are just out of graduate school and hoping to hang on long enough for a full-time position to open up.

That almost never happens.

As long as administrators can hire a competent instructor for less than a third of what they would have to pay an associate or full professor—and no costly medical or retirement benefits—they have no incentive to change.

Colleges and universities have differing attitudes toward adjuncts. Some go out of their way to make them feel part of the campus by offering orientation sessions at the beginning of each school year, parking privileges, access to the library, recreational and dining facilities, and invitations to campus events.

Other colleges are late with contracts, don’t provide information about schedules, important dates, access to copy machines, or remedial services on campus that a teacher might refer students to. Information that the teacher needs is difficult to find or is contradictory or is simply not available, all of which is frustrating for someone on a schedule that is sometimes calculated down to the minute.

Adjuncting full-time means juggling schedules on two, sometimes three or four campuses, with five to seven different preparations for classes that can begin at 8 am on a campus an hour away and conclude that night at 10 pm on another campus—usually with two to three other classes in between on yet another campus.

When you’re racing from one campus to another there isn’t much time for face-to-face advising with students, even if you can find a place on campus that offers some privacy. Advising must be done through email, throughout the day, between classes on one’s phone or at the end of the day after hours of preparation, teaching, driving, and grading.

The reason why most full-time adjuncts teach overloads is because most campuses will not give an adjunct more than two classes a semester, lest they have to pay them benefits. So in order to make a living wage one has to teach as many courses as possible. I know adjuncts who not only teach three or four courses a week, but have another job as well.

When you read the comments after articles or podcasts about the grind of adjunct teaching, it’s clear that many people have no idea what teaching is really about. They can’t understand why anyone would work so hard for such low wages. “Get another job!” they say. “Nobody needs your sacrifice.” The full-time adjuncts I know live with these conditions because as stressful as it can be at times, all of that usually fades away once we step into the classroom. There’s an excitement and anticipation that just can’t be found in a lot of other jobs.

But this is not an ideal situation for anyone but the financial officers of a campus. No matter how dedicated and innovative an adjunct may be, they can rarely replace a full-time faculty member who has more resources, more time, better facilities, and a fuller sense of the mission of the college.

As WAU tries to fill these positions they will quickly find that there are precious few qualified Adventist instructors who are willing and able to meet the schedules and to work for the wages that WAU offers. They may be hiring people who are content experts in their respective fields, but who will be unfamiliar with the unique culture and ethos of an Adventist campus. Fitting into that culture will not only take explaining but coaching. Given the fact that most faculty at WAU are already overworked, not much time and attention can be given to adjunct faculty beyond basic instruction.

Fasten your seat belts and lower your expectations. This could be a bumpy flight come September.

What is Shared Governance?

As the Washington Adventist University campus prepares for Graduation weekend there remains among faculty, students, and alumni a palpable sense of distrust in the statements released by the university on the loss of accreditation by the Nursing Department, the reasons for the laying off of four full-time faculty, and the financial state of the university.

So it’s interesting to note that Washington Adventist University was the subject of a dissertation, A Qualitative Assessment of the Meaning of Shared Governance at a Parochial University (2012) by Shaton Monique Glover-Alves, a doctoral candidate in education at Northeastern University in Boston. The author gathered data through surveys and interviews with administrators, faculty leaders, and even a student leader, to determine the meaning of shared governance on campus. Not surprisingly, she discovered that it had different meanings to various groups on campus, but that the diversity of perceptions could lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. While the official statements in the bylaws and regulations defined shared governance, the actual practices in interactions between faculty and administration often diverged widely from the required processes.

When asked to define ‘shared governance’ both administrators and faculty leaders interviewed said ‘it all depends.’ This led the author to coin the term ‘situational shared governance,’ meaning that while there were official descriptions of the role of shared governance on campus, the changing situation often dictated how that was interpreted. In other words, due process was often not followed.

The faculty interviewed all said that the many committees on campus had a ‘voice but not a vote,’ that they functioned merely in an advisory capacity, and that their recommendations were often vetoed by the administration. Committees appeared to make a decision, but the real decisions were made elsewhere at another level. Administrators readily agreed that this was the case and one interviewee, referred to as ‘Shane’ (described as the chairman of the Board of Trustees), took care to reiterate that faculty did not have a vote in major decisions.

Faculty have served on search committees in which they spend countless hours recruiting candidates for positions on campus, vetting them, conducting extensive interviews with them, and then making their recommendations on the best candidate, only to have the President summarily appoint someone else. Their disappointment and frustration suggests that in practice, at least, they have a different perspective on their role as a search committee than does the President. One example of this was the appointment by the President of a person to develop a program in Homeland Security. Neither the program nor the position nor the instructor went through any faculty committee or Academic Council. As it enters into its third year on the budget at an estimated cost of over $100,000 per year, the program still has no students. While it was touted as a full four-year degree it is currently advertised as a six-month certificate training program.

The researcher noted that “When faced with questions and definitions about collegiality, “Paul” [a pseudonym for one of the administrators] reported that the governance structure supported the collegial model, and that faculty, staff and cabinet got together to engage in the strategic planning process to discuss mission, vision, and goals. Both Frank and Holly [pseudonyms for top-level administrators] describe collegiality in terms of faculty power and reported that faculty committees only had advisory power, but the administrator had veto power (71).”

The response given by “Paul” is a non-answer. It is a demonstration of his mastery of the sidestep in which the goal is diversion. However, the researcher was not fooled.

Trust was the second major theme that emerged in the study. There was a strong emotional connotation to the idea of trust among the faculty interviewees. The researcher described an interview in which a faculty leader struggled to control his tears as he talked about the humiliation he experienced in actions taken by administrators. Trust was equated with transparency about financial matters, academic decisions, and the goals and visions for the university. While benevolence, competency, and reliability were highly desired by the faculty interviewed, none of those dimensions mattered without trust.

“Paul” noted that “trust takes a long time.” Other administrators talked of “deferred trust” and “delayed trust.”  While some of the faculty interviewed felt that they were trusted to do their job by the administrators, they still had deep reservations about the consistency of care exhibited by administration. In a carefully nuanced statement the author commented, “Researcher reflection suggested that without the formation of a relationship, and a sensitivity to the corresponding emotions, there would be little basis for the success of situational shared governance.”

So when President Spence insists that he operates from a position of shared governance, he means something quite different from what faculty actually experience. He thinks if committees gather, discuss, and talk about an issue that shared governance has taken place. He is then free to disregard or veto the committee’s recommendations. Thus, faculty and administration operate with decidedly different expectations and goals about shared governance. The result is miscommunication, misunderstanding, and constant inefficiency.

The author offers three recommendations:

1. Campus leaders should assess the level of trust in the leader. “There may be a need to build trust before shared governance can be fully effective.”
2. It is wise to periodically “review all documents that describe shared governance to bring them into greater reality with practices on campus.”
3. Campus leaders should “engage in discussions on shared governance to clarify campus meanings before embarking on project which require shared governance.”

The research was done to discover the meaning of “shared governance” at a religiously-based university. It resulted in more questions about the nature of Seventh-day Adventist higher education. The dissertation concludes with this sentence: “If the institution is academic, then shared governance will flourish; if it is not, then market-driven, corporative, non-input and handed-down decision will be the order of the day.”

The provost and the president have made it clear in videos, written statements, and public forums that their decisions are market-driven, data-based, and handed down. They have consistently resisted input from faculty and alumni and have couched their language in corporative terms. If we take the findings of this research seriously we can only conclude that shared governance, however defined, no longer flourishes at Washington Adventist University.