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    Site Visit Program: A Needed Service to the Profession

    By Amy Ferrer, APA Executive Director, and Peggy DesAutels, Site Visit Program Director

    Since the report of the site visit to the University of Colorado Boulder went public, there has been quite a bit of discussion about the site visit program, how it works, what its reports are meant to do, and so on. In authoring this post, we’re taking the opportunity, now that the initial fervor over the report has died down to some degree, to reiterate just how important the site visit program (SVP) is for the profession, explain how and why the APA supports it, and begin to look forward to the program’s future.

    First and foremost, it must be said that members of SVP teams do an invaluable service to the profession—they have taken ownership of the climate issues in philosophy and are giving of themselves to help departments better understand how their own cultures and climates may be impacting the professional and educational experiences of faculty, students, and communities. The goal of the SVP is simply to help departments improve.

    The SVP is based on an established and successful program in physics—and experiences from that program show that it’s an effective methodology for improving departmental climates. In physics departments, SVP visits are a badge of honor. That is how they should be understood in philosophy as well. Departments that are confident that they have a welcoming and inclusive culture should request site visits to assess how well they are achieving their goals; departments with concerns about climate should request site visits to identify concrete steps they can take to improve. A number of departments have had or have scheduled site visits, and we encourage faculty members to advocate for bringing site visit teams to their institutions.

    We also want to take this opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings about the relationship between the APA and the site visit program.


    Specifically, we want to emphasize that the administrative relationship—the APA doesn’t oversee the site visit program and the site visit program doesn’t speak or act for the APA—should not be misconstrued to indicate a lack of support for or confidence in the SVP on the part of the APA. Further, the authority of the site visit program to conduct site visits or prepare reports and recommendations should not been seen as derived from its connection to the APA, but rather from the training and expertise of the site visit teams—skilled volunteers giving their time and talent in service to other departments and the profession.

    The contours of the administrative relationship between the site visit program and the APA do not undermine its value or authority. (In fact, this administrative separation from the APA makes the program stronger by insulating it from undue influence.) And though the APA does not oversee or direct the site visit program, the APA and our Committee on the Status of Women (which founded the site visit program) advise and support the program. As the site visit program is new and innovative and without parallel in the profession or in the APA structure, we at the APA are continuing to consider and discuss ways to strengthen the relationship so that the APA can further assist and support the site visit program going forward.

    It should also be said that the site visit program and the APA welcome constructive critiques and suggestions related to the program. Some of the site visit documentation has already been revised to clarify points of confusion that have come up recently, and there will be updates to site visit volunteer training process ahead of the next training conference in spring 2015.

    Because we want to hear those constructive critiques and suggestions, we’re opening comments on this post. But please be aware that only comments signed with a real name and valid email address will be accepted, and comments will be carefully moderated—this is not the time or venue to rehash the Colorado site visit or revive destructive attacks on the program or its volunteers. Instead, this is a time to look forward. We—the APA and the SVP—are committed to continuing to innovate and improve, to ensuring that the site visit program will be a prominent fixture in the profession for years to come, for as long as it’s needed.

    [Please note: Our appearance on this blog does not constitute an endorsement by the APA of the blog or its content.]

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    16 responses to “Site Visit Program: A Needed Service to the Profession”

    1. Fritz Warfield Avatar
      Fritz Warfield

      “The SVP is based on an established and successful program in physics—and experiences from that program show that it’s an effective methodology for improving departmental climates. In physics departments, SVP visits are a badge of honor. That is how they should be understood in philosophy as well.”
      To the extent that physics departments view site visits as a “badge of honor” one might think this is because the program in physics has earned that admiration through its work. Perhaps this program in philosophy will also eventually earn such praise. But many programs modeled on or “based on” excellent successful programs are not themselves excellent successful programs. The proof will come, if it comes at all, from the work the philosophy SVP does.
      I hope that it is therefore ok if one applauds the stated intentions of the program while reserving judgment for now on whether the program is a success and on whether a visit from the program should be understood as an honor for the program that invites the visit.

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    2. David Merli Avatar
      David Merli

      Would you be willing to comment on the confidentiality of site visit reports, whether those procedures have been altered in light of the Colorado dispute, and so on? I think this weighs heavily on the minds of people contemplating requesting a site visit.

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    3. Peggy DesAutels Avatar
      Peggy DesAutels

      In answer to David Merli, the Site Visit Program Teams takes confidentiality very seriously. The report will exclusively go to the person(s) who requested the visit (normally this is only the chair of the department). Determining who else sees the report is in the hands of the person(s) who requested the visit (once again, this is normally the chair of the department). We have scheduled four additional site visits since the Colorado visit. Each of these visits’ reports will be going exclusively to the chairs of the requesting departments, since each of these visits was requested exclusively by the chairs.
      Of course, it is the responsibility of the department requesting a visit to understand institutional policies and state laws about freedom of information disclosures. The SVP teams do their best to ensure all involved in the site visit understand the SVP’s confidentiality policies and the circumstances under which a report could become public.
      No procedures have been altered in the light of the Colorado visit, but there is certainly a heightened awareness by the Site Visit Program administrators that in some cases reports can become public when subject to freedom of information requests.

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    4. Mohan Matthen Avatar
      Mohan Matthen

      A couple of small comments:
      1. For reasons similar to those mentioned by Fritz Warfield, it is not clear to me that we are ready for universal SVPs. If a department has concerns about climate, an APA site visit may be one among many appropriate resources for it to consider. But the expertise available in the APA is not demonstrably up to that of a universal certification program, and should not be so considered. I hope Amy and Peggy were not suggesting anything so far-reaching when they wrote: “we encourage faculty members to advocate for bringing site visit teams to their institutions.”
      2. I would urge the APA SVP program to be extremely cautious in accepting invitations by Deans and other administrators outside a department. It’s one thing to offer collegial assistance to philosophers seeking to improve their own situations; it’s quite another thing to take on the role of investigators. I don’t mean to deny that it can be very useful to have an outside opinion. But administrators have the means by which to seek such opinion—they do so all the time with departmental reviews and assessments. My concerns are different. (A) Committees that excel in offering collegial advice aren’t necessarily effective in situations where they are offering advice to senior administrators with goals that are not necessarily supportive of departments. (B) The APA isn’t in any case the kind of association that polices the profession.

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    5. Amy Ferrer Avatar
      Amy Ferrer

      In response to Mohan: To my knowledge, no one has called for a “universal certification program” nor for the SVP to become one, and we weren’t suggesting that. A site visit is, as you say, one tool among many that a department should consider in determining how best to evaluate and improve its climate.

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    6. Kai Draper Avatar
      Kai Draper

      I would like to follow up on Mohan’s second point. I am inclined to think that the SVP should accept invitations only from philosophy departments and not from deans, provosts, or anyone else. Deans and provosts are sometimes hostile to philosophy departments and can potentially use an SVP report to damage programs in philosophy. It is certainly not uncommon to hear academic philosophers express the opinion that their department is under-appreciated or even under attack by some dean or provost that has power over them. (By the way, I don’t feel that way about the dean of my college or my university’s provost.) Moreover, there is no way for the members of the SVP, prior to a visit, to assess the agenda or motives of some dean or provost who may have invited the visit. Since the APA sponsors the SVP, the SVP should do everything it can to avoid being misused to harm a philosophy program. Thus, there are good reasons for SVP to abandon its policy of accepting invitations from persons outside of philosophy departments. Or at least that is my current opinion. What do you think Amy?

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    7. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      What if a Dean has reason to think that there may be some problems in the department, but the Chair denies that there are any such problems? Perhaps the Dean has good motives and genuinely wants to improve the department. Should she refrain from doing something that might help?

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    8. Kai Draper Avatar
      Kai Draper

      That is a potential cost, but as Mohan pointed out, Deans have other resources for making an assessment of the situation. If I were a Dean in that situation, I would replace the Chair! I guess I also don’t think the APA should play the role of policing philosophy departments for university administrators.

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    9. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      You seem to be assuming that the situation would be obvious and clear-cut and that the Dean is seeking to police. But what if the situation is not clear-cut (so that she could not justify replacing the Chair) and the Dean is seeking to improve the department, not police it? A third-party group like the APA’s Site Visit Program could help to try to figure out what is going on in the department and to make suggestions for improvement. The Site Visit Program is not trying to play cop. Of course, there may be other possible avenues for the Dean to use, but no one has denied that.

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    10. Amy Ferrer Avatar
      Amy Ferrer

      First, in response to Mohan and Kai, I should say that certainly neither the APA nor the SVP “polices the profession.” As to your specific suggestion, that would, in the end, be something for the SVP leadership to address. In my role advising and supporting the program, I would recommend the SVP take extra care when accepting invitations from deans, provosts, and other university administrators, keeping an eye out for any signals that the motives for inviting the visit might be something other than the betterment of the program. But I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend a blanket policy against such invitations. There can be very good reasons for someone outside a department to be among those inviting a site visit (for example, a department may partner with a dean to request a site visit in order to secure financial support without which the visit would not be possible).

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    11. Kai Draper Avatar
      Kai Draper

      Basically I agree with your last reply. The issue, of course, is whether the APA and its members should endorse a general policy of having the site committee not accept invitations which don’t come from departments. Policies must be crafted for all of the kinds of cases likely to arise and might sometimes require not allowing something which might in a particular case do some good because generally allowing it would run too serious a risk of doing bad. Of course, reasonable people can disagree here about the relative risks. Obviously I am assessing the risk of administrator abuse to be greater than the risk of a lost opportunity for a dean or provost to use the SVP to force the benefits of a site visit on a department chair that doesn’t want such a visit.

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    12. Kai Draper Avatar
      Kai Draper

      I appreciate your worry about the lost opportunity for partnerships between departments and deans. Maybe the best policy would be one in which a the SVP would accept an invitation from a dean or a provost only if the department requests that it do so.

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    13. Kai Draper Avatar
      Kai Draper

      Sorry Roberta. Post 11 was supposed to be a reply to your post (post 9)

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    14. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Ok, fair enough. I agree, it sounds as though we are assessing the risks differently.

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    15. Michael Tooley Avatar
      Michael Tooley

      David Merli asked, “Would you be willing to comment on the confidentiality of site visit reports, whether those procedures have been altered in light of the Colorado dispute, and so on? I think this weighs heavily on the minds of people contemplating requesting a site visit.”
      David Merli has raised two significant issues here. First, what is the status of site visit reports with regard to confidentiality? Second, have procedures been altered given what happened in the light of the dispute concerning the site visit report in the case of the University of Colorado at Boulder? I think that these are important issues, and ones that are very relevant to philosophy departments that are considering requesting a site visit.
      Let me start with the second of these questions. In her reply to David Merli’s question concerning confidentiality and site visits, Peggy DesAutels says that no procedures have been altered as a result of the outcome of the University of Colorado at Boulder site visit, in which the Site Visit Report wound up as a public document – something that has had far reaching and very damaging consequences with regard to innocent members of the Philosophy Department and their families. But, contrary to what Professor DesAutels says, there has in fact been a significant alteration in the Site Visit Program since the University of Colorado site visit, as can be seen as follows. First of all, if one goes to the relevant archives for the APA Committee on the Status of Women, namely, https://web.archive.org/web/20131014194018/http://www.apaonlinecsw.org/home/site-visit-program#sthash.lDuwQMna.dpuf
      one can download the description of the Site Visit Program that was previously available online, and that was archived on October 14, 2013. (The archived version of this webpage is not at all easy to read, since the background color, rather than white, as presumably it was originally, is now a very dark blue.)
      Here, then, are two crucial quotes. The first is from a section entitled “Prior to the Visit,” the first paragraph of which is as follows:
      Site visits would be conducted at the request of a department chair, in consultation with the faculty. These visits will be tailored to the needs of the department. Once a date is agreed upon, a team normally comprised of three philosophers, including at least two women, will be assembled. To request a site visit, the Chair of a Department should send an email to the Director of the Site Visit Program requesting a visit, a proposed time frame for the visit, and the reasons for the visit.
      Notice that there is no reference in this paragraph to the possibility of a site visit being requested by anyone other than a Department Chair. Nor is there any reference anywhere else in this October 14, 2013, document to such a possibility.
      Next, there is a section entitled “After the Visit,” which is as follows:
      The team will write a report for the Department Chair, detailing the findings of the visit and offering practical suggestions on improving the climate for women. The Chair is encouraged to share the report with the rest of the department. Approximately 12-18 months after the visit, the Department Chair will be asked to respond in writing to the team, describing actions taken to improve the conditions for women and other underrepresented groups. The list of departments that wish to publicize that they have undergone site visits will be maintained on the CSW’s website.
      Notice here that there is no reference to the report being given to anyone other than the Department Chair.
      Compare those two passages with the corresponding passages on the current (March 28, 2014) webpage. The first paragraph of the “Prior to the Visit” section has now been changed to read as follows:
      Normally, site visits would be conducted at the request of a department chair, in consultation with the faculty. The chair will be sent more detailed expectations tied to site visits found in the document, “APA CSW Site Visit Program: Site Visit Process and Expectations.” Once the chair has agreed to the process and expectations outlined in this document, the site visit will proceed. These visits will be tailored to the needs of the department. Once a date is agreed upon, a team normally comprised of three philosophers, including at least two women, will be assembled. To request a site visit, the Chair of a Department should send an email to the Director of the Site Visit Program requesting a visit, a proposed time frame for the visit, and the reasons for the visit.
      Next, consider the present, revised version of the “After the Visit” section:
      The team will write a report for the Department Chair (or whoever requested the visit), detailing the findings of the visit and offering practical suggestions on improving the climate for women. The team will maintain strict confidentiality about its findings and will send the report only to the person(s) requesting the site visit. The Chair is encouraged to share the report with the rest of the department. Approximately 12-18 months after the visit, the Department Chair will be asked to respond in writing to the team, describing actions taken to improve the conditions for women and other underrepresented groups. The list of departments that wish to publicize that they have undergone site visits will be maintained on the CSW’s website.
      As one can see, the situation now is that while site visits are normally requested by the Department Chair, they can also be requested by someone else. Who else? For an answer to that question, one needs to click on a link that was not present in the archived October 14, 2013, webpage, entitled “Frequently Asked Questions.” When one does that, one finds the following question and answer:
      Who can request a site visit?
      Normally, the chair of a department or the chair’s designate will request a visit. It is also possible for an upper-level administrator to request a visit in coordination with the chair.
      The upshot is that there has been a very important change from the Site Visit Program as described on the October 14, 2013, webpage, and it is a change that generates situations of very substantially reduced confidentiality, according to which a site visit report can be sent to an upper-level member of the administration, rather than just to the Chair of the Department.
      Finally, on this matter of who can request a site visit, things were clearly in a state of transition prior to the site visit to the University of Colorado on September 25-28, 2013, even though the changes had not been noted on the Site Visit Program webpage before October 14, 2013. For in a document entitled “American Philosophical Association (APA) Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) Site Visit Program: Site Visit Process and Expectations,” which was sent to Professor Graeme Forbes, the Chair of the Philosophy Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder, before the site visit, there was a section entitled “Confidentiality”, the second paragraph of which reads as follows:
      Further, the Site Visit Team will not communicate the details of what is learned about the Department as part of the Site Visit process to people outside of the Department. The final report will be directly provided only to the Department. The Team will not provide the report to anyone outside the Department, including deans, unless the visit request is made by a dean, in which case only that dean will be provided the report. The Team will not provide the report to institutional administrators, though the Site Visit Team may discuss its initial findings in broad terms with administrators during the site visit itself.
      Notice that this document, in contrast to what was on the Site Visit Program webpage on October 14, 2013, says that if the site visit was requested by a dean, that dean would also receive a copy of the report. It also says, however, that the site visit team will not provide the report to “institutional administrators” – such as, for example, provosts.
      To sum up, then, the Site Visit Program has gone from one where a site visit could be requested only by chairs of philosophy departments, and where the report would go only to that chair, to one where, in the case of the University of Colorado, it would also go to the relevant dean, if the dean had requested the site visit – but not to any “institutional administrator” – to one where, at present, it will go to any “upper-level administrator” who requests a visit “in coordination with the chair.” So there has been a significant change, and one whose implications with regard to a reduction in confidentiality are very important indeed.
      It is crucial for philosophy departments that are considering requesting a site visit to ask, then, what an upper-level administrator has to do “to request a visit in coordination with the chair.” Is it enough, for example, if the upper-level administrator, rather than submitting a written request, merely provides funding that covers part of the cost of site visit, since this must have been viewed by the site visit team as sufficient in the case of the University of Colorado, given that there were no written requests from either the Dean or the Provost for a site visit.
      There is, however, a second issue that is, it would seem, even more crucial with regard to David Merli’s concerns regarding confidentiality. It is one that Peggy DesAutels mentions briefly at the end of her reply, saying “. . . there is certainly a heightened awareness by the Site Visit Program administrators that in some cases reports can become public when subject to freedom of information requests.” This problem is also touched upon in the current online description of the Site Visit Program – something that was not the case prior to October 14, 2013 – but rather than its being mentioned on the main Site Visit Program webpage, where it would automatically be seen by anyone reading the description of the Site Visit Program, one has to click on a “Frequently Asked Questions” link, which takes one to another page where one finds a number of questions and answers, with the following found at the very end:
      Do open records laws apply to site visit reports?
      Open records laws vary from state to state and by type of institution. It is the responsibility of those requesting the visit to know to what degree a Site Visit report is subject to open records laws and to comply with such laws.
      But both this question and answer, and Peggy DesAutels’ remark quoted above, are cursory indeed, and fail to state the seriousness of this issue, since the upshot is that the promised confidentiality is in many cases virtually worthless because of the possibility of freedom of information requests. Professor Valerie Hardcastle, by contrast, put things a bit more bluntly in a letter that I received from her on February 2, 2014:
      You should also realize that because Colorado is a sunshine state, all your Dean or Provost had to do to get the report was ask your Chair for a copy, if he were the only one to receive it. Furthermore, the report, once issued to your university, is subject to FOI requests by anyone, since you are a public institution. But I’m sure you know all this.
      The situation, in short, is that even if a request for a site visit is made only by a chair of a philosophy department, that fact is no guarantee at all that the site visit report will not at some later point become a public document, as a result of a freedom of information request that anyone, including a reporter, may submit. Philosophy departments that request site visits should not be surprised, then, if they later find themselves at the center of a firestorm of very adverse publicity.
      Clearly, this is a very serious problem, and the APA Committee on the Status of Women, in describing the Site Visit Program, should draw the attention of philosophy departments to this problem in the clear, blunt, and direct fashion that Professor Newcastle very helpfully did in her correspondence with me. Why the APA Committee on the Status of Women fails to do so is, I suggest, something worth reflecting upon.
      What might the Committee on the Status of Women do if, rather than merely having a “heightened awareness” of this problem, they were to take the problem seriously? One natural proposal would be that the site visit report should take the form, not of a written document, but of one or more Skype conversations between the site visit team and the department in question. Such an arrangement, in addition to safeguarding confidentiality, would also have the advantage that the philosophy department would have the opportunity to raise questions about anything in the report that they found unconvincing. My recommendation regarding this matter, accordingly, is that any department contemplating a site visit should ask whether the site visit team is willing to deliver its report in that alternative way, and, if not, why not.

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    16. Amy Ferrer Avatar
      Amy Ferrer

      With regard to the suggestion that SVP policies or procedures have been altered, our post states, “Some of the site visit documentation has already been revised to clarify points of confusion that have come up recently” [emphasis added]. As Peggy writes above, no policies have been changed; the revisions to the website and other documents related to the SVP, such as those you note, Michael, are just that–clarifications to language describing the program’s existing policies. This issue has been addressed by Peggy in her comment to this post as well as in other fora.
      The suggestions you and others have offered here for further clarifications and revisions to the SVP website, documentation, and procedures are appreciated and I’m sure will be taken under consideration by the SVP’s leadership. It is of course concerning to us that a site visit report, intended as a tool to help a philosophy program improve its climate, could be used by a university administration to the detriment of the department. Though the SVP cannot, in the end, control what an administration or department does following receipt of a site visit report, the SVP works closely with all involved in each site visit to ensure, to the best of its ability, that the site visit team’s careful and important work results in positive outcomes for the department and those working and studying within it.

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