Planned restructure of debt-laden department angers students

A bitter row between the Union and the Department of Life Sciences has erupted over what Union President Alex Kendall terms as the “deletion of Plant Sciences” from Imperial. The re-structure of the Life Sciences department, aimed at plugging a £1.5 million hole in the department’s finances, has provoked a series of controversial accusations from the Union including claims that the Department has “severely misused” its statistics.

The restructure of the Life Sciences Department involves merging three units, Plant and Microbial Sciences (PMS), Cell Biology and Functional Genomics (CBFG) and Biophysics into a new unit called Integrative Cell Biology. This will focus on high-throughput platforms, systems biology of model organisms, functional physiology of microbes and systems neurobiology.

The breadth of the Imperial degree in Biology and Biochemistry will suffer Imperial College Union

The absence of Plant Sciences from the new units’ intended research areas has led the accusation that Plant Sciences will “vanish from the university” at the research, post-graduate and undergraduate levels. “The breadth of the Imperial degree in Biology and Biochemistry will suffer” the Union said in an online statement, which also accused the panel reviewing the restructure of a conflict of interest – a claim the department rigorously denies.

Head of the Life Sciences Department Ian Owens rebutted the accusations. “We are absolutely not closing down Plant Sciences, we’re restructuring that group because that group has some difficulties and instead we’re putting something else in its place.” He sought to re-assure undergraduates in his department in a recent email that said “Imperial’s commitment to key fields of academic activity remains as strong as before”. He also pointed to plans to create a cross-departmental unit of Plant Sciences that would work across disciplines to encourage research in Plant Sciences, a plan that the Union called ‘vacuous’. He admitted that no concrete plans for the cross-departmental unit could be made until the restructure had been completed.

We are absolutely not closing down Plant Sciences Ian Owen, Head of the Life Sciences Department

Further concerns have been raised about the impact that the loss of academics from the PMS and CBFG sections would have on undergraduate teaching. While at this stage of the restructure it is unknown how many staff will keep or lose their positions, the loss of staff, that according to the Union takes on the majority of the teaching and administrative work in the department, would be detrimental to teaching.

The Union President Alex Kendall argued that it was clear from teaching data that the Plant Science and Cell Biology academics do the bulk of the teaching in the Life Sciences Department, in some cases 50% more than academics from other sections. Ian Owens disputed this analysis pointing out that it did not include post-graduate teaching hours which reduced the discrepancy and further said that “the teaching and administrative activities of the two centres did not satisfactorily counterbalance their relatively low research competitiveness.”

The trigger of the restructure is the department’s precarious financial position. It has been chipping away at a £12 million operating deficit since 2006/2007 and had reduced the gap to around £750,000 as of last year. However the removal of parts of College funding (the so-called flexibility margin) has undone some of the department’s hard work. The College said this about the removal of the flexibility margin: “The ‘Flexibility Margin’ is designed to act as a buffer, protecting faculties from fluctuations in resource. It is not intended to provide ongoing support; if it were so then this would be at the expense of other academic areas of the College.”

The jobs of 28 academics are at risk in the restructure, which is designed to plug £1 million of the £1.5 million gap

The jobs of 28 academics are at risk in the restructure, which is designed to plug £1 million of the £1.5 million gap (the other £0.5 million coming from further cost-saving measures). The department has already taken significant steps to address their financial issues, which originate from the re-structure of the then Faculty of Life Sciences in 2004/2005. These steps include increasing the number of undergraduates to the maximum allowed, increasing fees for post-graduates and overseas students and down-sizing the amount of space used by the Department.

The Union President has taken a controversial position on the department’s financial difficulties, saying that the restructure is an “easy way out” of the department’s financial situation and further declaring on his Union blog that the College “has money to burn”. He questioned the Department’s motives saying that the re-structure sent the message to academics that “if you are an excellent teacher but not an ‘internationally competitive’ researcher you have no reason to be here.” However Ian Owens brushed away the notion that he was rejecting individuals “I’m looking at this from a group perspective. I’ll agree we don’t know exactly what individuals will be doing, but I think we can be confident that we will be able to deliver the full range of teaching. This is the other area of the statement from the Union that worries me the most, the idea that we are closing down Plant Science’s Whole Organism teaching. I’ve never contemplated the department carrying on as before but minus the 28 people i.e. no group”

Plant and Microbial Sciences and Cell Biology and Functional Genomics have been targeted in the restructure due to their poor research quality and input of research funding in comparison to other units within the department according to the consultation document issued by the department. However their use of data has provoked an outcry from academics in the PMS section and the Union. The have vigorously disputed these claims accusing the department of distorting and misusing the data on research. They claim that the PMS and CBFG sections produce as good research as the other units and that any difference in averages is due to “high-flying” academics pulling the average of the group up. The Head of the Life Sciences Department Ian Owens responded by saying that he did not want the restructure to be centred on a statistical argument and “as Head of my department, I would not be presenting the data if I did not believe that it was statistically significant.” When challenged by the Union to provide further data he said that he did not want to “insult my academics by telling them that their jobs were dependent on a statistical line in the sand.”

I'm not going to "insult my academics by telling them that their jobs were dependent on a statistical line in the sand" Ian Owens

To further complicate the issue, the section of Plant and Microbial Sciences has only recently settled at the South Kensington campus after a highly disruptive 6-year move from the former campus at Wye (and Ian Owens admits that there are still some niggling problems). This has been held up by the opposition to the restructure as evidence that the academics would bring in as much funding as the other units if they had more time to settle in. But the department contests this saying that there have not been signs of a return to the 5* Research rating given in 2001 and that some academics also left during the Wye disruption (possibly hampering the groups research potential)

In the name of fairness the Union has urged the Department to consider a full review of all units, saying that if difficult decisions have to be made then they should be made in as fair a way as possible. The suggestion is unlikely to gain much traction with the Department. The Head Ian Owens has spoken of his fear of the negative impact on morale of restructures. “The other units are performing pretty well, and you need a wide range of individuals to form a good team and so I don’t want to destroy relationships all the way across the department. We’ve identified key parameters that you can measure unambiguously, research citations, and from that we can identify certain trends”

The question of whether teaching of Plant Sciences will continue in the long term is of course in the air as the Department of Life Sciences are planning a review of teaching.

Ian Owens reiterated his confidence in the breadth of teaching options to be made available to students next year.

“Plant sciences is no different from any course next year. They’ll all get thrown into the mix as it were, lots of stuff will change, lots of stuff will stay the same but there is absolutely no plan at all to get rid of plant sciences.”

Union President Alex Kendall remains sceptical and has been sure to condemn these decisions made by College early on in the new academic year. He suggested the Department’s priorities may be still misaligned. “When College improve research, they’ll get more money. But no matter how much you improve teaching, there’s no financial correlation.”