School of Business Faculty Council takes on stronger role
The University of Phoenix School of Business is now giving its faculty members greater input into the school’s curricula, and allowing them to give the final sign-off on course changes or design.
The newly revamped Faculty Council at the School of Business, which began work last September, is in the process of reviewing school exams and will work on other curriculum issues throughout the year, sources say. About 2,000 of the school’s 8,200 faculty members are being selected now to work on subcommittees and review various curriculums and other issues relating to the School of Business courses.
Dr. Ethel R. Vesper, PhD
“There haven’t been any really good channels for faculty to get their ideas into what should be in the courses,” says Ethel Vesper, a faculty member and chair of the Organizational Behavior Curriculum Council, a committee of sorts. “The Faculty Council is going to be that channel that will allow the faculty to give real input—and that’s important from a standpoint of accreditation.”
Previously, says Business School Director Bill Berry, faculty were always involved in helping shape the curricula, and often discussed things via teleconferences, but his office managed the process and signed off on the final improvements. In other words, the process was heavily managed by a central administration, and the previous councils only met to review bigger programmatic decisions.
But as of Jan. 1, 2011, Berry says, the Faculty Council will have the final say about coursework and the various curriculums and more faculty will be involved in this process. The council will sign off on the “higher level design of the courses and all the topics and objectives and textbooks” that will be used.
“I’m thrilled with this change,” Berry says. “It’s a weight off my shoulders and more importantly, it allows my department to start focusing on more aspects of understanding student learning, assessing how our students are doing, coming up with better ways to train our faculty—and getting out of trying to micromanage from 30,000 feet.”
Berry says his goal is to have “100 percent” input from faculty members.
The new Faculty Council is divided into 12 curriculum councils, each with a chair, like Vesper, and nine University of Phoenix faculty members who will meet or teleconference to discuss curriculum issues related to their respective areas. Categories include Organizational Behavior, Tax, Accounting, Economics, Finance, Audit, Business Law, Financial Reporting, Marketing, Management, Public Administration and Quantitative Analysis.
In turn, each curriculum council will also work with 90 selected curriculum reviewers from across the country—all faculty members teaching everything from business law to accounting to public administration courses, among other topics. Curriculum council members and curriculum reviewers are all volunteers.
“The hope right now is that every course that the School of Business has will be updated every year,” Vesper says. She has taught for University of Phoenix online for the past 11 years, focusing on cultural diversity, management and other areas.
David Tucker, who teaches accounting, economics and finance at University of Phoenix, is chair of the Finance curriculum council and his group will work on class revisions and figuring out which areas of the finance curriculum are weak. “All of the people that are on this committee teach finance courses, and they are the ones who know if a course needs work,” he says. “This concept is wonderful, in that those people who are teaching the courses are actually creating the curriculum.”
