ABSTRACT
Hustling across campus at Mid-State University, Anthony Cerise, an associate professor in the College of Education, juggles his backpack, his morning coffee in a paper cup, and the agenda he just printed for a meeting to which he hopes he will not be late. His scarf is flapping across his face thanks to a stiff fall breeze, blinding him off and on, but in a stroke of luck he spots the campus bus in time to flag it down, only spilling a little coffee as he does so. He sprints up the bus steps and flops down on a worn vinyl seat just behind the driver, who sees him on this route between the education and engineering buildings often enough not to require his campus ID when he boards. Good thing, too; he doesn’t have a hand free to fish his wallet out of his pocket. It was also fortunate that he caught the bus, he thinks; it’s important to arrive on time today without having to sprint. This meeting is being held to discuss issues with the IDP (or, as the dean always states in full, the Integrated Design Program). Showing up disheveled, let alone late, would not put him on the right foot. Sure, the program is a big success—that’s the problem, in fact; it has grown so large and so quickly that he and his colleagues desperately need to confer on where it is coming apart at the seams. But Anthony is keenly aware of the tensions which have existed in the program since the beginning, not to mention those between the program and the administration right now. As the leader of the faculty team which designs and implements the program, he works to keep an even keel and to exude confidence on behalf of them all. He’d like to maintain that presence. More than that, he doesn’t want to give Roger Went, head of the administrative steering committee, any reason to carry back to the other deans an impression that their current growing pains are any worse than they really are. Despite the ballooning enrollments in IDP, or perhaps because of them, Anthony knows there are those on campus who wouldn’t mind seeing this program shut down. It is drawing enrollments away from other majors, including those currently contributing to the multidisciplinary effort as partners. Others, he suspects, are eyeing the program as a candidate for moving online with outsourcing for recruitment and program management, the idea being that if it is growing as a campus program, it will surely be a moneymaker online. If he and his fellow colleagues cannot handle their current growing pains, he worries that the institutional support they need will be withdrawn or that the program might be effectively taken out of their hands.
