Faculty caught off guard by request for information

By Sara Agnew, Iowa City Press-Citizen

If you go 

What: Iowa state Board of Regents’ Efficiency and Transformation Review Town Hall meeting. On hand will be Regents President Bruce Rastetter, Regent Larry McKibben, UI President Sally Mason and a representative from Deloitte Consulting. Mason will open the town hall meeting and representatives from Deloitte will outline the review time line, process and outputs, then open the meeting to questions.

When: 10 a.m. Friday.

Where: 100 Phillips Hall on the University of Iowa campus.

With less than a week to go before the start of a $2.3 million comprehensive review of higher education in Iowa, some faculty members at the University of Iowa are voicing concerns about the quality of the study.

Anxiety was heightened last week when UI staff and faculty were caught off guard by a request from Deloitte Consulting to produce a large amount of information by Friday in preparation for its review of UI, which begins Monday. In some cases, faculty members said they were given 24 hours to produce the information.

UI Provost Barry Butler, who was at the meeting for an unrelated presentation, was asked to explain the situation.

“My assessment was that given the amount of time we were given, it was very efficient work,” said Butler, who added that he knew several people who cut their spring break vacations short to return home and help.

“Why did they give the university so little time to pull so much information together?” asked Jane Pendergast, a professor of biostatistics in UI’s College of Public Health. “Are they interested in getting good data?”

Butler said some of the 150 items requested were readily available while others were not so easily accessible.

“But as you know, there were a lot of things asked for that required a lot of interpretation and time,” he said.

Deloitte will kick off its review of UI on Friday morning with a town hall on campus. Representatives from the group will be on hand to talk about the review and answer questions. Next week, representatives will be on campus holding meetings with faculty, staff and students.

The Iowa state Board of Regents in February voted unanimously to hire an outside consultant to conduct what might be the largest spending review in the history of the state’s three universities — UI, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Deloitte Consulting, an audit, financial advisory, tax and consulting specialist, is expected to complete the review by fall. Regents will address implementing new ideas during a separate phase of the efficiency process.

Butler said materials provided to Deloitte included a broad spectrum of information from detailed financial information to details about how the university staffs certain departments.

“It covered the entire spectrum of this campus,” he said.

When asked what Deloitte’s “hidden agenda” was, Butler said, “I honestly don’t know. I have not had any interaction with the group. What I have is based on the materials asked of us.”

Erika Lawrence, president of UI’s faculty senate, encouraged faculty members to attend the town hall meeting Friday and to ask questions. She said the faculty senate will meet with Deloitte representatives on April 4.

After spending a week on the UI campus, Deloitte will move on to spend a week each at ISU and UNI.