Dean’s Message
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to share with you this statement regarding the College’s priorities. I applaud the work of the A&S Budget & Planning committee and the A&S Assembly that passed this statement last week. I hope we can work together to achieve these objectives.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard
Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
A&S Priorities: Meeting our Strategic Goals
A strong College of Arts & Sciences is the heart of a premier research university. Current monetary pressures require the College to identify the goals that advance its core mission of education, research, and community engagement. Adapting the College’s Scorecard requirements, the current document defines essential goals under the following categories: 1) faculty and scholarship; 2) educational effectiveness and student success; 3) partnerships, collaboration, and community engagement; 4) financial sustainability and budget management; and 5) administration. The document concludes with a brief comment on external benchmarks of success.
1. Faculty and Scholarship
The University of Louisville is a Carnegie Research I University and the College of Arts & Sciences is its research hub, principally due to the activities of its full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty. The College seeks to improve the quality, quantity, community impact, and reputation of the scholarly activities it performs. The College must therefore:
- Substantially increase the number of full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty to enable full investment in the institution and its students, including ongoing curricular development and enhancement of pedagogical skills, active research programs, and participation in faculty governance;
- Ensure that full-time faculty receive nationally competitive remuneration;
- Ensure that each department is fully staffed, so as to better weather retirements and leadership changes, and to initiate meaningful curricular improvements;
- Reduce reliance on part-time faculty;
- Enhance intramural and extramural funding of research, creative, and scholarly activities;
- Improve the quality of graduate programs and provide competitive funding to GTAs.
2. Educational Effectiveness and Student Success
The College should be an inclusive, rigorous scholarly environment where students are excited about learning, and where they can succeed through graduation and graduate and professional education, if desired. The College must therefore:
- Increase six-year graduation rates and student retention while remaining financially accessible to all who can be successful, paying particular attention to traditionally underrepresented populations;
- Implement an innovative and high-quality general education program that meets rigorous standards of student achievement;
- Maintain and enhance the strength and currency of the curriculum in a context that protects the academic freedom of both faculty and students;
- Increase classroom space and the availability and currency of classroom technology;
- Enhance students’ opportunities to study abroad and to engage in meaningful educational experiences off campus such as service learning and internships;
- Offer a broad array of educational enrichment opportunities including student participation in research, small seminar classes, and a high-quality honors program;
- Assist students with their employment or graduate/professional school placement and track graduates;
- Reduce material and procedural barriers to graduation and student retention by improving financial aid, limiting tuition increases, improving advising, and ensuring course availability;
- Provide a learning environment that is intellectually challenging while promoting mutual respect and physical safety and security;
- Increase building capacity and faculty and staff numbers to ensure accessibility to all qualified students.
3. Partnerships, Collaboration, and Community Engagement
The College is committed to community engaged scholarship, teaching, and enrichment opportunities for students. The College should regard the community as a collaborator in its research and educational mission; the people of Louisville should regard the College as an indispensable asset and the Belknap campus as a hub of the intellectual life of the community. To promote these goals the College must:
- Enable faculty to count engaged scholarship toward promotion and tenure
- Increase intramural funding for community outreach, especially for students
- Increase the accessibility of community resources for student use, and of University resources for community use.
4. Financial Sustainability and Budget Management
Success for the College of Arts & Sciences depends on a well-managed budget that allows all departments and programs to plan for the future with confidence. It also depends on a productive and cooperative relationship with University administration. And due to the Commonwealth’s current disinvestment in public higher education, the College’s financial future depends on fundraising. To these ends, the College must:
- Ensure that department chairs and program directors are continually apprised of their current budget situation and prospects for the future;
- Ensure budget transparency and promote faculty governance in budget and planning;
- Support the establishment and promotion of an A&S-oriented endowment fund driven by College priorities, including student success and faculty research priorities;
- Maintain a more strategic and cooperative relationship with central administration on matters of finance and budgeting.
5. Administration and Staff
Operations and planning require a well-organized and transparent administration which builds trust among all constituents and stakeholders on all levels. To that end, the College must:
- Define key roles and responsibilities and ensure that resources are aligned effectively;
- Identify, document, communicate, and enforce key administrative processes;
- Find communication gaps and ensure that pertinent information reaches the appropriate audience;
- Commit to a professional, respectful, and rewarding work environment, and a family-friendly workplace for all employees;
- Promote equity across and within units, recognizing staff and all categories of faculty not just with adequate compensation but with a meaningful degree of control over their working conditions and opportunities to participate in College governance.
Benchmarks of Success
External recognition of these goals validates our success as a College and as a University. Thus, the College is dedicated to helping the University maintain its Carnegie Community Engaged University designation, and to meeting the long-term goal of housing a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
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Announcements
UofL Day of Service
The Office of Community Engagement is organizing a UofL Day of Service on Friday, April 17. The university allows all employees to take one day a year off to volunteer in the community. While employees are allowed to take any day of their choosing, employees who opt to participate in the April 17 event will have several sites in the city as options. If you’re interested in volunteering, please fill out this form.
Fair Use in Copyright Discussion
As part of Fair Use Week, Prof. Dwayne K. Buttler, Endowed Chair, University Libraries, will discuss copyright in teaching, research and beyond on Wednesday, April 1 at 10:30am in Ekstrom Library W104. University Libraries will also host a copyright Q&A session at noon with pizza in Ekstrom Library 254. For additional information, email Prof. Butler or call 852-3128.
Classrooms for All
Dr. Dwain Pruitt, Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Governance, is happy to report that all scheduled summer and fall courses now have assigned classrooms.
Nominations
Academic Deans: Nominate an Alumni Fellow
Please submit your nomination for Alumni Fellow (including one alternate) for your school no later than April 24. Submit nominee forms to Elise Buck. For more information, visit nomination criteria and nomination form.
Kudos & Congratulations
English Graduate Students receive Maddox Prize
Graduate students Elizabeth Chamberlain, Rachel Gramer, and Megan Faver Hartline (English) won the Carolyn Krause Maddox Prize in 2015 for their paper, “Mess, Not Mastery: Encouraging Digital Design Dispositions in Girls.” The UofL Department of Women’s and Gender Studies awards the Maddox Prize to one undergraduate and one graduate paper considered the best work in women’s and gender studies for that year.
Amy Lueck receives Stevenson Award
Graduate student Amy Lueck (English) was awarded the Guy Stevenson Award by the School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies. The Guy Stevenson Award is one of the highest awards SIGS gives to graduate students, and involves leading commencement among other honors. Amy was also awarded a K. Patricia Cross award as a future leader.
Jamila Kareem receives award at CCCC Convention
PhD student Jamila Kareem (English) won an Inclusiveness Award from the Council of Writing Program Administrators at the 2015 National Council of Teachers of English (CCCC) Convention.
In the News
Louisville losing about 150 trees a day(The Courier-Journal, 3/25/2015) – Prof. Margaret Carreiro (Biology) on the Louisville tree study completed by the Davey Resources Group.
Fall of Saigon: Louisvillians recount escapes (The Courier-Journal, 3/29/2015) – Prof. Daniel Krebs (History) on Louisville’s Vietnamese community and the upcoming event "Unheard Tales of the Vietnam War: A South Vietnamese Perspective from Kentucky."
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In this Issue
Announcements
Nominations
Kudos & Congratulations
In the News
Events
Fun Fact
Syllabi or Syllabuses?
That is the question.
You may have noticed that we used both “syllabi” and “syllabus” in last week’s Monday Memo, sparking a fierce College-wide debate.
Where to go with such questions?Prof. Julia Dietrich, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, is not only the one to ask if you have questions about syllabuses – ahem, syllabi. As a Distinguished Teaching Professor in English, she is also a good bet to answer such pesky grammar questions.
“Someone told me that a Latin plural like ‘syllabi’ is unwarranted for a word that isn’t Latin. He said it should be ‘syllabuses,’ but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. So just think about the use of ‘syllabuses’ as hyper-correct, if not a bit counter-cultural.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Prof. Dietrich!
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