2011-2012 Report of the Office of the Ombudsman |
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September 18, 2012,
Volume 59, No. 04 |
Thadious M. Davis, University Ombudsman
Penn’s Office of the Ombudsman began out of a perceived need. When the Task Force on University Governance recommended in August, 1970, that the University of Pennsylvania provide a space open to all members of the University community for responding to “general problems or specific complaints,” it envisioned a way to improve conditions and communication within a large, modern educational institution (Almanac March 31, 1971). Appointed by Penn President Martin Meyerson as the first Penn Ombudsman, Professor Joel Conarroe undertook the process of establishing the Office and its objectives in 1971. The primary concerns then were accessibility and responsiveness to all constituents, whether students, administrators, staff, or faculty, and confidential and impartial conduct in solving problems.
Today, perception and need remain key to the work that we undertake and the service that we perform through the Office of the Ombudsman. Staffed by a tenured member of the faculty serving as part-time Ombudsman and a full-time Associate Ombudsman, the Office welcomes visitors from all units and populations of the University. Available by phone (215) 898-8261 and email (ombuds@pobox.upen.edu) for scheduling confidential appointments, the Office is open Monday through Friday. We continue to provide a service to the entire University community by being a sounding board and a mediation unit for diverse problems, including interpersonal difficulties, administrative challenges, and academic concerns. We offer an informal way of approaching conflicts. After 41 years, the primary objective of the Office is still to meet the need for assistance with questions or complaints that impact individuals within the University community. That process of providing help, however, does not follow pre-assigned steps and is not part of formal grievance procedures. Instead, it requires recognizing each visitor as an individual, as well as understanding all queries and problems as personal and distinct. Importantly, it means listening carefully, respecting confidentiality, maintaining fairness, examining options, and facilitating interventions or mediating resolutions, but always with the objective of helping to ease tensions, opening lines of communication, and improving the work environment while remaining neutral and impartial.
Over the decades since the 1971 founding of the Office at Penn, the concept of ombudsman has developed into a more defined professional role within academia. Standardized procedures have evolved at colleges and universities out of the practices of ombuds offices. In addition, the International Ombudsman Association, organized in 2005, now provides a set of shared ethical principles to maintain the integrity of the ombudsman profession; these principles, largely accepted by our peer institutions, include independence, neutrality, confidentiality, and informality. While these four principles have been integral to the function of Penn’s Ombuds Office since its founding, they have become increasingly visible in explaining the function of the Office, implementing its standards of practice, and distinguishing its work from that of other service units on campus.
Marcia Martinez-Helfman, hired as Associate Ombudsman in July 2011, has attended meetings and workshops sponsored by the International Ombudsman Association in order to better understand its recommended standard practices and code of ethics. Under her expert leadership, our Office has made significant strides not merely to align Penn’s procedures with the national and international ombuds standards for mediation and problem-solving, but also to better protect the privacy of visitors and information; for example, all materials related to visitors are now coded for confidentiality and placed in secure password-protected electronic files. All files more than five years old have been shredded. In conjunction with facilitating the recommended standard practices, our Office has updated its website and revised its brochure to better reflect both the function and the responsibilities of the Office. As part of sharing information, the new brochure for the Office of the Ombudsman will be widely distributed throughout the University, and we will be available to make presentations about the services we offer.
During the 2011-2012 academic year, the Office served 169 visitors: 28 undergraduate students, 34 graduate students, 35 faculty, 6 post-docs, 63 staff, and 3 others. Students and staff made up the majority of visitors, 125 out of the total of 169.
While maintaining our level of service to our constituents, we also initiated an effort to demystify the Office and to clarify for the Penn community what the Office of the Ombudsman is and what it does. This educational undertaking stems from our recognizing that the purpose of the Office, or perhaps even its very existence, was little known on the Penn campus. Because of the informal nature of the Office, we can offer greater assistance in resolving concerns if we become involved before the issues become too volatile and the parties too intransigent. In disseminating information about our function and familiarizing constituents with our services, we hope we might be contacted in the early stages of problems so that we might make a difference in resolving them before they escalate.
Even with an early intervention, an area that has caused some dissatisfaction and has required clarification for some of our visitors is that the Ombudsman Office does not advocate for a position or have decision-making authority and cannot take remedial action or participate in formal grievance processes. Our office is impartial, neutral, and informal. We do provide channels of communication and mediation, which may include off-the-record clarifying conversations in order to maintain a fair process and to forward a resolution to a conflict or problem. We may also make recommendations to the University units with the authority to implement changes in policies and procedures. Because of the time element in forwarding a recommendation, having it considered, and possibly implemented, this more long-term impact on an individual matter that may effect the larger University community can be seen as inaction or lack of resolution. A major objective is to clarify our impartiality and neutrality by offering more educational information about the Office at the beginning of the academic year and to provide more hands-on conversations throughout the year about our services. In implementing outreach efforts and in disseminating revised brochures, the Ombudsman and Associate Ombudsman hope to address misconceptions about the Office, ameliorate dissatisfactions with our process, and publicize our availability to serve staff, students, and faculty.
During the past year, our visitors have made us aware of areas of vulnerability within the University community. The one area that comes up repeatedly is the fear of retaliation for revealing a conflict, bringing forward an inequity, or even visiting our office. The University has a well-articulated policy regarding retaliation and specifically prohibits retaliatory measures or threats. Nonetheless, employees and students at a variety of levels have expressed their worry over retaliation should they disclose problems. The perception from students, staff, and faculty is that despite any official policy, retaliation is a practice they cannot risk by speaking out. Retaliation continues to be a stated reason for not wishing to involve the Office of the Ombudsman in bringing parties together to discuss areas of concern or to mediate a resolution. Perhaps most surprisingly, faculty members expressed their reluctance to inquire or express concern about tenure, promotion, or sabbatical/leave procedures for fear of evoking negative or hostile responses. Since several previous annual Ombuds reports have pointed out fear of retaliation as an ongoing issue (John Keene, Almanac April 7, 2009, and Joan Goodman, Almanac October 25, 2011), we recommend that Penn make a concerted effort to educate supervisors, chairs, and administrators not only about the policy against retaliation but also about what constitutes retaliation or a threat of retaliation. Education regarding this issue could contribute to improving the work and study environment at Penn and contribute as well to fostering better lines of communication for mutual respect and creative exchange of ideas.
In order to improve our operational procedures and to examine the standard practices recommended by the International Ombudsman Association, we have planned in consultation with Joann Mitchell, Vice President for Institutional Affairs, conversations with the staffs of ombuds offices at several peer institutions. We anticipate discovering more detailed information about how other offices comply with the best practice identified by the IOA while attending to the specific founding charges formulated by their universities for ombuds offices. Currently, Penn cannot become a full member of the international association because of some of Penn’s practices which do not conform to IOA standards. Our Office’s reporting practice and position as an agent of notice, for instance, are not in compliance with IOA normative standards, in addition to being unlike those of the ombuds offices at our peer institutions. An unresolved issue in the matter of reporting is the degree of similarity or difference between the Office of the Ombudsman and the other major resources offices within the University designated as reporting offices under the University’s Sexual Harassment Policy, which is currently under review. This designation means that the Office is available to answer questions, provide information, assist in informal resolution of complaints, and recommend additional resources for complainants and respondents; it also places the Office as an agent of notice in a position that could compromise both its and the IOA principle of confidentiality. Importantly, the University’s Sexual Violence Policy (Almanac July 17, 2012) has begun to articulate the role of the Office of the Ombudsman as an information, counseling, and support resource office and to distinguish its services from other complaint resolution resource offices.
Former Ombudsman Professor Joan Goodman strongly recommended a review of Penn’s Office in light of the IOA standards (Almanac October 25, 2011). Such a review would be a major step in determining the way forward for our Office; nevertheless, in any movement forward, we wish to avoid a tension issuing from the increasing professionalization of the national and international organization of ombuds: that between a corporate model of professional efficiency and a counseling model of personalized attention. Penn’s Office is committed to efficient professional service as well as to effective personal service to all individuals who make up the University. It is a balancing act, and we are especially mindful of that fact not only in seeking information about the institutional practices of other ombuds offices but also in attending to the requests, issues, and problems raised by our visitors.
July 1, 2011—June 30, 2012 |
Total Number of Visitors: 169 |
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Visitors by Categories of Issues Raised: |
Academic, General |
12 |
Academic Integrity |
8 |
Academic Procedures |
37 |
Employment, General |
45 |
Employment, Promotion |
17 |
Employment, Compensation |
8 |
Employment, Benefits |
2 |
Employment, Procedures |
1 |
Procedures, General |
4 |
Miscellaneous, Personal |
8 |
Financial Matters |
12 |
Student Services |
7 |
Discrimination |
5 |
Sexual Harassment |
2 |
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Visitors by Categories of Status: |
Employees |
63 |
Monthly Paid |
51 |
Weekly Paid |
11 |
Part-time |
1 |
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Faculty |
35 |
Dental Medicine |
6 |
Medicine |
18 |
Veterinary Medicine |
1 |
Nursing |
1 |
Arts & Sciences |
4 |
Engineering & Applied Science |
1 |
School of Design |
2 |
Wharton |
1 |
Not Available |
1 |
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Post-Doctorates |
6 |
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Students |
62 |
Undergraduate |
28 |
Arts & Sciences |
21 |
Wharton |
2 |
Nursing |
3 |
Engineering & Applied Science |
2 |
Graduate |
34 |
Engineering & Applied Science |
4 |
Nursing |
5 |
Arts & Sciences |
13 |
Graduate School of Education |
3 |
Medicine |
7 |
Wharton |
2 |
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Others |
3 |
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