Just less than a week after Provost Lou Anna Simon revealed her vision for the future of MSU's liberal arts programs, some community members said the final report doesn't represent its entire target body.

In November, Simon appointed Marcellette Williams to head the process that involved meetings with administrators, faculty and students. The meetings, called focus groups, allowed the members - by invitation only - to voice their opinions on improving the university's liberal arts.

"We're part of a community, and we need each other's help," said Williams, a retired faculty member and MSU's secretary of the Board of Trustees Emeritus. "The provost was trying as hard as she could to be open and inclusive with the public."

Aside from the 12- to 14-person focus groups that met about 20 times between November and December, Williams said she and Simon both encouraged people who weren't invited to attend the groups to e-mail suggestions to them.

But some members of the focus groups said they don't think the report reflected what happened in the group sessions.

"It seems like, in the final report, that many of the provost's suggestions came out of thin air," said Brad Love, a member of the Council of Graduate Students. "They were not the result of focus groups or committee work."

Love said he applauds the university's effort to include community members in the decision making, "but, in practicality, very few if any of the ideas from the focus groups were part of the proposal."

In her report, the College of Human Ecology, the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and the College of Arts & Letters will be fragmented and redispersed into different areas of the university. No programs will be eliminated as a result of the proposal. The plan also recommends forming a new college to combine several departments.

Robert McKinley, an associate professor of religious studies, said Simon had a lot of input in the final report.

"She pretended or claimed to not be too firm, but everyone sensed she was leaning a little this way, and I don't think there are really strong compelling reasons for it," said McKinley, who did not participate in the groups. "I think the goal of dissolving the College (of Arts & Letters) has been on her wish list for a long time."

Associate professor of advertising Nora Rifon, who was a member of one of the focus groups, said the report was consistent with what she and her group came up with.

"The conversation was at times chaotic, at other times meaningful and provided some foundation for decision making," she said.

Graduate Employees Union President Scott Henkel said although he was not part of the focus groups, he wishes he had the opportunity to speak more.

"The provost might think she was open and candid about the process, but she should have been more open and more candid with the public," he said, adding that the people who were chosen for the groups were most likely chosen for a reason. "If you select all the people whom you want to listen to, there might be some bias in the process."

However, Simon said she didn't choose the people to be in the focus groups and maintained her distance throughout the process to keep it as true to the members' views as possible. Her only involvement was to offer seven focal questions for the groups to answer in their meetings.

"I believe that (Williams) wrote the report without any interference from me, from what she heard," Simon said. "I know it's hard for people potentially to believe that, but that's how it was.

"It would be impugning Dr. Williams' integrity to say that she essentially wrote a report before the focus groups met."

Henkel said the bias might still show through, even if Simon wasn't involved in picking the members.

"Regardless of who did the picking, someone did it," he said. "Even if the person wasn't the provost, the provost picked Dr. Williams."

Williams said she's confident Simon's report reflects the sentiments of the focus groups, in spite of what some people might think.

"When you have a process that's different from the routine process, especially when people think things are at risk, then people have these feelings here, the desire for more input," she said, adding that the focus groups were not stacked to meet Simon's interests in any way. "I certainly have better things to do with my time than to engage in some sort of ploy."

The focus groups, in the end, were effective in their goal of creating a proposal and allowing people to voice their opinions and concerns about the future of MSU's liberal arts, Williams said.

"Everybody isn't going to always agree," she said. "But at least we have to provide the opportunity for people to provide input."

Staff writers Tina Reed and Meghan Gilbert contributed to this report.

Amy Bartner can be reached at bartner2@msu.edu.