Message from the Dean
Dear Colleagues,
In the final memo of fall semester, I’m delighted to report that Arts & Sciences will have more than 400 undergraduate and 70 graduate students receiving degrees at December commencement. Well done!
Throughout the semester, many students have shared with me how much they admire the faculty, enjoy their classes, and believe their majors are preparing them well for life. Similarly, many faculty have acknowledged the high quality of UofL students and what fun they have teaching here. With this combination, it is pretty clear that commencement will bring us 470 successful graduates and appreciative new alumni.
In more news of student success, Department of Anthropology students Joel Ben Thomas and Kristen Connors were selected from among many nominees throughout North America for two of the four spots as “Emerging Leaders in Anthropology” from the American Anthropology Association. They will be honored this week at the AAA meeting in Washington, D.C.!
In more good news, we have received more funds and our financial team will soon be disbursing DE funds and program tuition recovery to those departments that have earned that funding. Please be patient as we process these transfers. I’ll have an overall budget report ready for the January meeting of department chairs. We are saying goodbye to Jeanie McCabe today, and to Becky McCandless next week. After meeting with a plethora of truly qualified applicants, we welcome to Arts & Sciences Bridget Burke as Assistant Dean for Finance and Martyna Warren as Unit Business Manager Senior. Ms. Burke comes to us from the Office of the Provost, and Ms. Warren is from the Office of Budget & Planning.
Finally, as semester breaks often permit time for contemplation, I hope we can start 2015 with some ideas on what an ideal College of Arts & Sciences should look like in the short-term and long-term future, and what we might realistically hope for in a state with shrinking support for higher education. A lot of the great things we currently do in terms of research, teaching, and service we’ll certainly want to preserve. I know many people want A&S to be included in the campus planning. There was some internal planning last spring, and there’s still more to do.
We’ve made headway this semester generating a list of research activities in response to the Provost’s 3 questions, but it is clear from suggestions that keep coming in that our “list” isn’t yet ready to share with her or for us to put into use ourselves. All that’s really clear is our faculty are doing some pretty amazing activities, and they extend widely across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and math. Fortunately, the Provost has extended her deadline into January.
We also want to get more activities onto the campus list of “pilot projects.” The Provost clarified for us that these pilots don’t just have to be research activities, but could also include other sorts of initiatives such as a cutting edge general education curriculum. The key seems to be whether we can attract additional funds that we currently aren’t getting, either through grants and contracts or through gifts and endowments. It would be most beneficial to A&S if we could identify a small group of potential pilots in such a way that all our various strengths get some momentum, and none of what we currently do gets diminished. There’s no deadline for this, but we’ll all feel better once we’ve laid claim to at least a few cars on that train.
Another initiative that we should highlight is our huge involvement in making Louisville, the region, and the world a better place. Like most Arts & Sciences activities, we do this in so many ways through research, teaching, and service.
I welcome your ideas on how I might best guide us in these conversations and decision-making. Strategic planning is a great way for us to come together this spring and share ideas. I look forward to seeing many of you at graduation, and hope you all enjoy the semester break.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard
Dean
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