Where have all the faculty gone?

[xiaoxue]

i was looking into grad school here today, thinking that maybe i might try my hand at taking an MBA part time.

and then i discover that the college of business has lost about half its faculty! the directory in building 6 list professors in the wrong rooms, or worse yet, many who are no longer around. i was looking for dr. qi since i'm chinese and guess what? she left here in 1999! why is the directory so out of date?

where have all the faculty gone to? somebody said that even the provost is gone and they don't even have a replacement.

is cal poly a toxic waste zone or something?

think i'll look at some other school....any ideas?

[jayandbutton]

Originally Posted by xiaoxue

i was looking into grad school here today, thinking that maybe i might try my hand at taking an MBA part time.

and then i discover that the college of business has lost about half its faculty! the directory in building 6 list professors in the wrong rooms, or worse yet, many who are no longer around. i was looking for dr. qi since i'm chinese and guess what? she left here in 1999! why is the directory so out of date?

where have all the faculty gone to? somebody said that even the provost is gone and they don't even have a replacement.

is cal poly a toxic waste zone or something?

think i'll look at some other school....any ideas?

well, xiaoxue, i thought your only interest was sports. good for you for seeking a graduate degree.

i agree that our university has been on a perilous downslide. not long after i arrived on this campus in the 1980s we were ranked seventh in the west, and as i recall in one poll we actually were ranked either above or very close to our sister school at san luis. now check the current rankings. we have fallen TWENTY FIVE spots to 32d, behind chico state and even with sonoma state, two smaller schools nowhere near us a decade ago!!! how did we let this happen???

additionally, we've faced the greatest turnover of people i've seen anywhere, and when you lose so many senior people in just two or three years you are in serious trouble unless you have some great leadership, which also as you note seem to be bailing out. business faculty are leaving for other jobs or early retirement in every department, most recently a very distinguished professor of accounting who had written several books on the subject, for a college most people never had heard of.

as you say, our MBA programs are a mess. we've lost a good chunk of our size, many senior faculty with years of experience, the director of graduate programs (and now two of them in just two years), and almost all of its distinctive off campus and overseas programs. some classes are so underenrolled they must be cancelled.

i had no idea the business college directory was so grossly out of date. Dr. Mei Qi was a TOM professor from UCLA, one of our rising stars, who left many years ago.

for options what is your area of interest? and where do you want to go geographically? and what kind of budget do you have? for example, if you live south i'd recommend fullerton or long beach but i'd need more info to advise you.

[PL28]

You guys seem to have a very good point, After starting my school here at CPP. I have seen a decline in enrollment and the number of activities around campus every quarter. Maybe it’s just me or the classes that I’m taking but it sure seem like our students and faculty are moving on to something else.

But we the students can get the ball rolling. College is what you make out of it so its a great chance to get involved and make something out of it.

[xiaoxue]

you're right, 28. when i was a freshman we had a lot more student clubs with all kinds of interesting activities and projects in business. now at least a half dozen of them are gone, and students don't care anymore. my faculty advisor told me that the faculty no longer is being encouraged to do that sort of thing at all anymore so nobody advises student clubs. we used to win all sorts of national awards for clubs that now are defunct. and all the advisors of those clubs have left our school. no wonder our rankings have gone down so far.

jb, i live in rowland heights. tell me more about fullerton. that's close enough.

[lakdod]

I do not know if there has been a decline in enrollment but alot of people seem to lose interest in participating in the activities. Lucky for me my major seem does not have a big problem of faculty leaving but maybe the reason because of the size of my major.

xiaxoue very funny you say you live in Rowland Heights. I live in the same city.

Anyways good luck if you decide to continue your education

OT: I need basketball season to start soon. It will be nice to get the schedule out.

[jayandbutton]

glad to see some old names back on the board, and i too am excited to see what our broncos will bring to the table this year.

xiaoxue, congrats on graduation and good luck with your MBA quest. since you live in RH i absolutely would recommend cal state fullerton, and certainly over cal state LA which is also zooming downhill fast. it's one of the largest colleges of business in the west and unlike our situation where we are scattered all over campus facing total mayhem fullerton is moving into a state of the art $80 million palace in a year. the business faculty is among the best in the entire CSU system and for the most part has high achievement and morale levels. take a look at the web site www.fullerton.edu and see if you like what is offered, and i'll hook you up with some of my friends there.

lakdod, your field of history is stable compared to the turmoil elsewhere on campus. consider yourself lucky.

[xiaoxue]

yah, their website shows all kinds of stuff while ours has almost nothing on it. why is that?

if i can't get admitted to fullerton what might be a backup for grad school?

[Talon]

If you want to look for a faculty member in any department, use the People Search Button on the right side of Cal Poly Pomona's homepage. I think the people search directory is fairly updated. It has worked for me in the past when I've used it.

In regards to graduate school, xiaoxue, I think you should apply to as many schools as you possibly can. Make a list of all the schools you'd like to attend including safety schools and your dream schools. Apply to all the schools on your list. You have nothing to lose. You may get accepted or you may not, but you will never know until you apply.

Here is a link that you may find useful: http://www.gradschools.com/

Good luck to you xiaoxue.

[xiaoxue]

thanks talon...that link was really helpful!

i really had hoped to stay close and really wanted to continue on here at poly but it doesn't look like things will be repaired in the college of business for a long, long time. some of the private schools look interesting but i doubt i can afford any of them, so fullerton would appear to be the best bet.

hey, why is cal state-LA not recommended? that's not far.

[Admin]

Best of luck in the GMAT! (if you haven't taken it yet)

Interesting article on the WSJ regarding universities' performance and measurement:

Accountability 101: State Colleges Prepare
To Measure Their Own Performance
August 9, 2007; Page A2


The American medical and higher-education systems regularly boast, with some justification, that they are the best in the world. But in recent years they have been forced to confront tough questions: How do we know we're getting our money's worth? How do you know you're doing such a good job? Is there some way to measure your performance that the rest of us can understand?

In health care, publicly available measures of quality are increasingly common. Some were forced on doctors and hospitals by insurers. Some were promoted by those who want Americans to shop for health care the way they shop for cars. Some were pushed by insiders looking for levers to improve quality.

Then the spotlight moved to colleges. President Bush's education secretary, Margaret Spellings, and Texas investor Charles Miller, whom she picked to lead a commission on colleges, beat the higher-education establishment with a bat. Having imposed testing on K-12 schools through the No Child Left Behind Act, Ms. Spellings and Mr. Miller a few years ago began pushing colleges to measure and report performance. "If the academy doesn't do it," Mr. Miller says, "it's going to be done for them."

Colleges have, so far, successfully fought laws or regulations that prescribe testing. But they know they need an offense. Now the state schools -- the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (big research universities) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (the rest of them) -- are about to take a significant step. (Full disclosure: The National Association's president is Peter McPherson, who is also chairman of the board of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newspaper.)

The state schools are designing a template for college Web sites that, for those that opt to use it, shows in standard format: (1) details about admission rates, costs and graduation rates to make comparisons simple; (2) results from surveys of students designed to measure satisfaction and engagement, and (3) results of tests given to a representative sample of students to gauge not how smart they were when they arrived, but how much they learned about writing, analysis and problem-solving between freshman and senior years.....

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118661283191392293 .html?mod=djem_jiesw w&reflink=djem_jiesw w

[jayandbutton]

xiaoxue, cal state-LA has been facing similar issues as cal poly pomona, which center around either bad leadership or none at all. when you have inspirational leaders like the previous president at long beach state then great things happen, but when you have an autocrat/empire or somebody asleep at the switch then the opposite effect takes hold. the dean over at LA just walked off the job and they were unable to replace him and still haven't, rendering that program adrift. if fullerton doesn't work for you for whatever reason take a peek at beach, though they too are looking for a dean. either would be a good choice for an MBA.

speaking of leadership, can anybody say coach k. isn't some kind of leader? one local columnist said it best when he said he does more with less. in two months we'll see what magic he pulls off this time, perhaps beginning with an upset in the thunderdome.

[xiaoxue]

i went to visit cal state los angeles today. you are right, they are almost as disorganized in their college of business as the mess we have at pomona. the facilities there suck like ours too.

next week i'm going to visit fullerton hoping that one looks better with people there who know what they're talking about.

[Talon]

Visiting the campus definitely helps. Hope all goes well at Fullerton. I may be applying there as well for graduate school. It has been a while though since I last visited the campus.

[xiaoxue]

i gotta take the GMAT so anybody got any clues on how to do well let me kno. that kaplan course looks like a ripoff...check out their fees! yipes!

visited the business college at fullerton and they have their ### together. they're very organized and efficient unlike the chaos at pomona. and that new building is HUGE!!!! they say it will be ready next year.

even tho it's a drive am going to visit long beach state next. looks like it will be a choice between these two tho i don't like that drive down the 710, aka truck alley.

[Admin]

Better hit the libraries and borrow all them GMAT review books. You know the drill, it's like preparing for the SAT with twice the challenge.

Take the cumulative exams found on the back of the GMAT review books before and after the self-study to see any improvements. Some students improve their GMAT scores drastically simply by reviewing the study guides at home, while others require the in-class guidance from a GMAT expert.

If the exam date is not far from now, try out the Cal Poly Pomona College of the Extended University (CEU) GMAT course. Kaplan might have a few scholarship programs in which you can apply to. Google GMAT courses and you should find a ton.

edit: google gmat forums and you should find tons of resources!

[jayandbutton]

admin makes some good points xiaoxue. the university offers a quickie course that is much cheaper than kaplan. my wife took both of these courses and of course got much more from the kaplan but then she paid way more too. there must be other options out there other than kaplan, and you can always retake the exam to better your scores.

on your original post we have now lost more than SEVENTY faculty and staff in the college of business within the past two years to resignations, retirements, early retirements, and dismissals. were you to guess that each person averaged twenty years of experience, and that's surely low, that would mean business has lost 1,400 YEARS of experience in just two years. that is huge. it will take at least a decade to repair this gaping hole, and that's why you so aptly have identified this university's greatest deficiency. good luck to you.

[xiaoxue]

one of those recently departed faculty i wanted to work with was dr. karayan, who is an expert on tax accountancy. and he wanted to stay, but this absolutely broken university did not even look at his request for a pay adjustment. so he took another job making 25 grand more nearby starting this fall--and this guy has written a number of major books in his field. the marketing department has lost about half of its faculty and management lost both the professor from harvard and the professor from yale in the same year. dr. karayan says even every department chair in the college has resigned. what a mess.

i picked up one of those GMAT prep books. some of the questions are easy, but some of those verbal exercises are very challenging. i wonder what score i will get.

[Admin]

xiaoxue, Kaplan is offering a free GMAT practice exam online.

Thank you for your interest in Kaplan's free online GMAT services.

To preview the online components of our GMAT classroom, premium online and private tutoring programs, including a free full-length GMAT practice test, get started here.

http://www.kaptest.com/Kaplan/Articl...cticeGMAT.html

[Talon]

All I can say is study, study, study xiaoxue. Study for the exam as if your life depended on it.

[xiaoxue]

i love this board!!!

thanks to all of you for the guidance and tips...and yes, i will need all the help i can get!!!