Hi i'm Brian Noland, and I'm Bethany Flora and together we're going to be
working with you throughout the course of the semester here and global sports
leadership 6900 a focus on organizational theory and behavior. What we'd like to do
in this introduction is just to provide a little bit of background on ourselves
our personal journey here to East Tennessee State University and then
we'll move through some of the basic elements of the syllabus as well as
assignments throughout the course of the semester. So as I referenced a few
seconds ago my name's Brian Noland, I have the honor to serve as president the
institution but I have the double honor this fall of serving I as a co faculty
member for this course a little bit on my background I have bachelor's and
master's degree in political science from West Virginia University PhD in
political science from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, you may think why
in the world does a political science person work through the aspects
associated with an organizational theory course and the answer to that question
is simple the basics and backgrounds of order theory of leadership are
consistent across disciplines and the more that I've had the opportunity to
learn about higher education, about political science, about public
administration, healthcare administration, or global sports leadership, I really
firmly believe that the basics of organizational theory, the basics of
leadership are constant across disciplines so Dr. Flora and I together
will walk through some of the foundational literature in
organizational Theory we'll talk some about its application to the world of
sport and then we'll move through the context of that world of sport within
higher education as a whole because from my background that's where i'm excited
about the course from the time that I've worked with Tennessee Higher Education
Commission the opportunity that i had to be System Chancellor in the state of
West Virginia and then here at ETSU one of the things that I've experienced
during that time period
I is a true belief that the athletic department is one of many departments
within an institution, and as you examine universities where there have been
challenges within the athletic department it's because individuals
that in those departments quite often view themselves as an
island what we're going to stress throughout the semester and what I'll
stress from an applied perspective is the critical role that you as leaders
within your field play in the university as a whole. Not athletics for the sake of
athletics but athletics as part of the corpus of the university. I'm excited
about the opportunity to dialogue with you throughout the course of the
semester and I'm excited by the opportunity to learn together with you
and my colleague Dr. Flora as the semester unfolds so Bethany I'll turn it to you.
Well thank you and I look forward to being part of this class as well it's a
real joy to be here and it brings together probably two of my major
passions for higher education one Org Theory I have a background in business
so my bachelor's degree and masters were both in business one from UVA wise the
other the masters from tusculum college right down the road here
my PhD is in higher education administration from Virginia Tech where
a cognate for me was organizational Theory so being part of this class and
talking org theory is something that I could do all day long i really wish we
were in a face-to-face class and we could do that
secondly i was a college athlete i was a freshman starter volleyball basketball
at Averett university my first year
Brittany a number two guard Lindsay outside hitter and transferred actually
after my freshman year because i was also a double major in my grades were
not great so I transferred to UVA wise finished out my last three years at UVA
wise only playing volleyball and then was an RA as well so this global sport
leadership org theory class really brings together two things that I'm
passionate about and i look forward to getting to know you all better and
talking through some of the topics of this class I'll turn it over to you talk
about the objectives and the topics I wanted to walk through the objectives
and topics is dr. Flora just outlined but I also want to talk some about the
assignments, anytime you move into a course one of the first questions a
student asks is how many assignments do we have and how long do the papers need to
be so the first question is easy to answer there will be four assignments in
terms of how long those need to be much of that's up to your own discretion and
we'll have a conversation about that is the class unfolds
but the first major assignment is assignment 1 an organizational paper in
which we're going to ask you to work through one of the readings in the
course scoreboard baby that tells the story of the university of washington
and challenges that the University of Washington both as an institution as an
athletic department and then as a football program experienced at the turn
of the 2000's, we're going to assign to each of you a role within that
institution so one may be the president, another the athletic director, another the
CFO, another the head of the Alumni Association, but each student in the course
will be assigned a role and then we'll ask you to walk through that experience
at Washington from your respective administrative position will provide
further details about that assignment as the semester unfolds but really an
opportunity for you to put on an applied hat and examined through various lenses
a challenge that really took apart an institution on the west coast an
institution that really is still looking to recover from some of the challenges
that they faced at the beginning of the 2000's the next is a literature
critique and i'll turn to the Dr. Flora to talk about assignments 2 and 3.
For this Critique you're going to be partnering two things, one is the Bowman and deal
textbook that is the organizational theory textbook that pretty much every
student of Org theory reads it's the seminal work by Lee Bowman, and Terrance Deal, I
believe I got their names right and they go over four different frames human
resource, political, structural, and cultural frame, symbolic frames to look
at organizations. Think about organizational theories as windows that
you look through to examine things so this takes the reading of organizational
theory and you'll apply it to the case study billion-dollar ball. So there's two
readings at play here in this assignment and one way to think about this, if you
choose to analyze billion-dollar ball from the structural perspective and
let's just say there's an NCAA violation in the book, you would talk
about roles responsibilities and hierarchy you would not talk about
things like equity or fairness because that's the human resource frame, if you
talked about the NCAA violation from
a human resource frame that's where you would talk about motivations equity
fairness punishments rewards those are the types of topics that you would talk
about if you analyze billion-dollar ball from that frame political frame you
might want to talk about the factions that were created from that violation
any type of resource competitions jockeying for position building
coalitions those types of things and then symbolically if you chose that
frame to talk about the billion-dollar ball case you might rotate through the
rituals, the ceremonies, the customs and traditions that are at play, and the case
that you analyze. So that's what the paper is now one of the things we wanted
to add for you all is this interactive component where you conduct peer reviews
of one another's work. Now this might be a little weird for some of you and it
normally is for the students that I teach because we're asking you to post
your papers in the discussion forum which means everyone will be reading
everyone else's papers, and that raises the bar also keeps you kind of motivated
and we want you to critique one another's paper so we'll have three
reviewers per paper and if you look at the content module you will see there is
a matrix that shows you who's reviewing who's paper so each of you have three
reviewers reviewing your paper and there's also a rubric that you'll use to
review those we want to make it easy for you
so pull down the rubric read one another's paper that you're assigned to,
and then submit that back to the Associated discussion form, and there
be more details to follow as we go along the way. Then the final element
really ask you to dissect an organizational challenge at the
institution that you call home
so for those of you who work here at ETSU it's an opportunity for you to dive
into three major challenges that we face at the university to outline why those
challenges exist to talk about remedial strategies to address those challenges
and in your implementation frame, we would ask that you align those topics within
the organizational theories that we've covered throughout the course of the
semester.
This is really a chance for you to take apart your institution and put it back
together again. For those of you who are at institutions outside of ours here in
Johnson City, a chance for you to do likewise
this is one that I'm looking forward to particularly because it's an opportunity
for us all to learn together but this will be the final major assignment
within the course. Now on to the readings, as you will see in the syllabus there's
a significant amount of assigned reading throughout the course of the semester
this is a class focused on theory it may be one of the few theory leading courses
that you'll have during your doctor experience here at the University so in
order for you to understand the broad concepts that frame, those respective
theories we felt it was critical that you really dived into the literature. We
have placed the book orders up through Brian Johnston in advance of the posting of
the syllabus on d2l so hopefully you've been able to take advantage of that
opportunity and order your materials in advance of the class. We've also been
mindful of cost and wanted to ensure that we had a breath of literature but
minimizing the cost that that would be encouraged to you and your families as
you work through the course assignments, but as you move through the course
materials you'll see at the beginning the focus on the Bowman and Deal
work as well as some supplemental readings and we will turn to Dr. Flora here
just to talk a little bit about the first couple of weeks and then i'll pick
up the readings on the back half of class.
So the first few weeks you guys are going to get into truly the
foundational elements of organizational Theory so not so much global sport here
but more org Theory here the Bowmen & deal readings, the Ash readings that we're
giving you truly relates to higher education in organizational theory of
higher education organizations they're excellent readings and I challenge you
to spend a lot of time with those readings so that you are better
acquainted with the way universities work organizationally and the dynamics
there within organizations like higher education institutions where a unique
enterprise and so it's important to become familiar with the way we work and
if you can understand it let us know because it's it's pretty complex. Then
I'll turn over the case studies to you Dr. Noland, I want to follow up on a comment
that Dr. Flora made with respect to the conceptualization of higher education
universities particularly large complex institutions such as ours are
diverse and dynamic entities and the hope is through the Ashe readings that
you'll gain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of higher education, of the
foundational structures for the places that we call home, and then the role that
athletic department's play within the organization as a whole so I want to
echo her comments and hope that you'll spend some time in detail on those
readings they're meaty, we will have supplemental lecture materials related
to them as we get into the semester I cannot stress enough the importance of
really digging into that section on the nature, function, purpose, background of
the organizational structure that we call home.
ie the modern american university. Within the the case readings, the scoreboard
baby, material as well as billion-dollar ball, are both elements that will
comprise individual assignments throughout the semester, the scoreboard
baby tells the story of the University of Washington, billion-dollar ball is
really a critique of the modern American landscape with respect to
intercollegiate athletics it talks about the dominant role that one sport
football plays within that landscape and how everything from organizational
structures to title nine to gender equity issues associated with title nine
all the way down to student behavior matters and disciplinary courts etc from
student affairs perspective run through that one sport and the dominant role
that that one sport plays in American higher education. Once again that will be
focused area from an assignment perspective then as we drop down into
the next portion of the class will be a series of readings on traditional
administrative and governance models in higher education where you learn about
the role of faculty Senate's, you learn about the nature and purpose of the
various elements that comprise our institutions. Then we'll talk some about
leadership as a whole the ambiguity of leadership theories that apply to higher
education leadership as a whole, and then reflections on the presidential
experience within institutions continuing moving forward through the
reading materials as we get into the months of November and then wrap
up with the institutional assessment. As a reference will provide detailed
lectures related to the materials contained within the syllabus, but we
just wanted to use this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you and to
briefly introduce the course to you. Once again really excited about the start of
the semester look forward to working and learning with all of you throughout the
semester Bethany and I have not done this together
in terms of team teaching a course so we're excited we thank you for your
patience with us as we all learn together here in the fall 16 semester
at East Tennessee State University.
Thank you, we will see you soon.