UH social work The University of Hawaii School of Social Work, which trains students to deal with the community's social problems, is working with facilitator Linda Colburn to try and resolve strife within its own ranks.
school in need
of help itself
Strife intensifies after the interim
dean fires a popular assistantBy Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.comThe National Association of Social Workers, Hawaii Chapter, and the UH Professional Assembly have been drawn into the long-festering dispute and say it could affect the school's accreditation.
The dispute primarily revolves around the UH administration's suspension of a search for a permanent dean to succeed Pat Ewalt and faculty differences with the school's interim dean, Jon Matsuoka.
Colburn said she invited faculty members to meet with her individually, and "far more than I expected responded."
She planned to meet today with the entire faculty to get a sense of whether people "want to continue the effort on a good-faith basis." She said she will ask their help in drawing up a list of issues to take to the administration for more clarification.
Faculty members were distressed when the administration canceled the search for a permanent dean despite strong endorsement of a candidate from Montreal's McGill University by the search committee, community and faculty.
The agitation intensified when Matsuoka, looking to another year in the interim position, fired the popular longtime dean's assistant, Sharon Otagaki, a 10-year faculty member in the school.
Otagaki, also president of the National Association of Social Workers, Hawaii Chapter, declined to comment on the action.
Matsuoka said he did not renew Otagaki's contract after thinking "hard and long" about it because he felt he needed an assistant "with a different set of skills. I can say with a clear conscience they (the reasons) were performance-based."
With tensions mounting, faculty members in September took a no-confidence vote against Matsuoka.
He questions the validity of the vote and feels he has faculty and community support despite some heated feelings.
However, UHPA president Alexander Malahoff, in a letter in October to Interim Manoa Chancellor Deane Neubauer, referred to the no-confidence vote, saying, "No administrator within the UH system should continue in the position of dean without the full support of the faculty members within his or her unit."
Neubauer said the new administration inherited the dean search for the School of Social Work, one of several small units on campus with interim deans, and the chosen candidate asked for "significant augmentation of the size of the facility."
Part of the dilemma for the administration was whether to make such a commitment before strategic planning is completed for the entire university system, he said.
He also pointed out that he is an interim chancellor, and it was decided that keeping interim deans would empower the permanent Manoa chancellor, to be appointed next year, to name his own deans.
The NASW urged university president Evan Dobelle in June to appoint a permanent dean.
Debbie Shimizu, NASW executive director, said many people in the community have a vested interest professionally in the school. "We are really concerned ... and want a permanent dean appointed as soon as possible."
A critical issue right now is accreditation, she said, suggesting lack of a permanent dean could jeopardize the school's standing.
Matsuoka acknowledges a lot of issues in the school and attributes some dissension to changes filtering down from Dobelle's vision and new directions.
He feels "external circumstances" brought long-standing and suppressed problems to a head, but said he sees this "as a healthy process of growth that we need to go through in order to get to a different place."
Matsuoka recently appointed a community advisory board and believes "things are moving in a direction where people are starting to think how to improve the school."
He said the school is already third on campus in extramural grants ($1 million annually) and it is ranked 19th in the country for performance out of 250 social work schools. It has about 250 students and produces about 100 social workers each year.
After talking to all those concerned about the school's problems, Neubauer said he felt the issues were related to a lack of consensus about its mission and how it should be achieved.
But, he added, one group claims "the interim dean himself is a problem. ... There is a lot of personalization, characterization and ad hominem attacks."
Neubauer said he has considered various options to the problems, "but as people make representations to me, again what's hard to get straight is who's doing the talking and what their interests are. With a vote of no confidence, the issue becomes: How is the vote produced and what does it mean?"
He said the interim dean has supporters in the school and community, but if he remains in the midst of continuing conflict, "he will be less viable."
Neubauer said his "No. 1 desire" on campus is to get the faculty to work together, build respect, cohere around a goal, sort out organizational problems and provide them with the kind of administrative leader and resources that they need.
Based on what she has learned from faculty members so far, Colburn said, "I'm really very optimistic in helping them chart a course in getting into more constructive territory."
Ka Leo O Hawaii
University of Hawaii
