Monday Memo May 8, 2017
Dean’s Message
Dear Colleagues,
As we conclude spring semester with graduation this week, I want all faculty and staff to know that I recognize and appreciate the tremendous work throughout Arts & Sciences that went into this academic year. By many criteria, we have had great success. There have been significant achievements across the board in terms of teaching, research, and our contributions to the region. Friday, I will take part in the awarding of several honors and hooding ceremonies—including our first three MFA recipients in Fine Arts—as well as greet a huge number of graduating seniors at commencement. Arts & Sciences once again has proven the heart of UofL. As I wrote in a recent Courier-Journal editorial urging support of the College, not only does the university benefit from our work in A&S, but local, state, national and international communities would be diminished without the research, service, engagement and creative activities of our faculty, students, and staff. Thank you all for your role in our collective success.
I regret that the full extent of the budget situation for AY18 is not yet clear, as I had hoped to be in a position to describe what we face and outline our plan for next year before some faculty leave for research locations outside Kentucky. At this point, I do know that Arts & Sciences will experience a substantial cut of between two to three million dollars, which will exceed three percent of all our funds except grants, contracts, gifts, and endowments. Academic units will experience a far lower reduction than administrative units, but there is no way in which we will not feel pinched and disadvantaged by the cut. Next year we must draw fully on our existing teaching capacity, handle fiscal and academic operations without additional staff, and severely limit expenditures.
As I make decisions on our AY18 budget, I promise that I will be guided by the following principles:
- Align with the mission and goals of the university and college
- Meet the enrollment targets (7,715 undergraduates, 820 graduate students) and revenue target. (TBD) assigned to A&S, and continue to provide 90% of the general education curriculum to all UofL students.
- Maintain A&S strengths in teaching and research
- Minimize lasting impact that would harm the College
- Support professional development of faculty, with priority to junior faculty
- Reward departments that are successful in generating revenue
I will continue to work with department chairs, the Budget & Planning Committee, and Faculty Senators to devise an optimal plan. If you have ideas, I welcome them. I also promise to send a special message to faculty and staff when the budget situation is known, probably late in June.
Although the situation seems troubling on several fronts, I do want to convey my sense that this is a short-term problem. The University’s financial situation is largely the result of unrealistic budgets for the past several years, and the current Central Administration has promised a new budget model based on actual spending and realistic projections of enrollment. The new budget model will be developed during AY18 (with substantial input from the campus so please participate when you can) and implemented for AY19. Arts & Sciences should compare favorably in a new budget model that rewards both headcount and student credit hour production.
Many in Grawemeyer Hall have described next year as “a bridge year.” The image I conjure is a wobbly suspension bridge that requires some trust to cross, but one that is well worth the journey because we will land on much more sure footing. As we make our way through AY18, we need to stay focused on the great work we do together, our students who deserve the fine education we provide, and the new knowledge we produce to improve our world. The University of Louisville remains a strong public institution of higher education, and the College of Arts & Sciences will continue to be central to its teaching, research, and service missions.
To those of you leaving campus soon, safe travels and best wishes for successful summer research. Thank you very much to the faculty who have stepped up for summer teaching. To those of you who will be here this summer, let’s have some fun too. To everyone, thanks again for your dedication and please enjoy some vacation – we’ve all earned it. This will be my last Monday Memo message until mid-August, but we will continue with an abbreviated memo throughout the summer.
Gratefully,
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard
Dean
Announcements
Call for Proposals: University of Louisville Discourse and Semiotics Workshop
The University of Louisville Discourse and Semiotics workshop invites proposals for the 2017-2018 academic calendar year. This workshop provides space for faculty and students at the University of Louisville to share research on how language and other semiotic resources mediate social worlds.
The workshop aims to develop interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars from a variety of disciplines who study talk, text, interaction, semiotics, visual communication and design, performance studies, and mass media. The workshop coordinators are particularly interested in providing space for graduate students to develop their research. Founding faculty and students come from the adjacent fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition, but they welcome and encourage the participation of scholars from other fields who share an interest in the mediating processes that link their objects of study to their social surround.
The workshop invites proposals for the following formats:
Data Analysis Session: Presentations of research data for group discussion and analysis. This may include, but is not limited to, video data of interaction, transcripts, audio recordings, ethnographic documents, media texts. In these sessions, researchers explain their projects, pose questions about their data, and facilitate group discussion of their data.
Work-in-progress Session: Works-in-progress for pre-circulation and discussion in our workshop. Whether drafts of journal length articles, essays, or book proposals, any pre-publication pieces of original research are welcomed.
Reading Discussion: Proposals for discussion of both classic and contemporary texts in semiotic theory, language studies, and discourse analysis. Through these readings, the workshop aims to build common frameworks for analysis across diverse disciplines.
If you are interested in participating in one of the workshops during the coming academic year, please send a brief proposal (200 words max) that includes which workshop format you propose (data, draft, or text) for your session and any preference for when in the school year you would like to be scheduled to UofL Discourse & Semiotics by May 31, 2017.
In the News
Faster communication needed in emergencies, UT and Austin police agree (The Austin-American Statesman, 5/2/17) – Prof. Karen Freberg (Communication) on the use of social media alerts by officials at the University of Texas-Austin in relation to a recent incident on campus where four students were stabbed.
A proud history: Kentucky’s LGBTQ pioneers (LEO Weekly, 5/3/17) – On the Kentucky LGBTQ Heritage Project, led by Prof. Cate Fosl (Women’s & Gender Studies), director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research.
Ricky Jones’ bias makes him the best choice for the Citizens Commission on Police Accountability (LEO Weekly, 5/3/17) – LEO Weekly Editor Aaron Yarmuth on why Prof. Ricky Jones (Pan-African Studies) should be elected to serve on the city’s police review panel.
No uppity Negroes allowed (The Courier-Journal, 5/4/17) – Prof. Ricky Jones (Pan-African Studies) on River City Fraternal Order of Police President David Mutchler’s comments regarding Jones before the city’s police review committee and on his own fitness to serve on the panel.
How Do You Make a Fox Your Friend? Fast-Forward Evolution (The New York Times Book Review, 5/5/17) – Prof. Lee Dugatkin’s (Biology) latest book, How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution, reviewed in The New York Times.
