Goal 3: Build and maintain excellence in selected departments and programs across the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
In this document, we propose several goals. But we regard one goal as paramount: improvement of the quality of education, research and creative work in the College. We posit this a single goal, not two, because we believe that education, research and creative work are inseparable in a leading university, as we aspire to be. Moreover, we believe that the quality of the college is defined primarily by the quality of its faculty. The key to improving the College is to attract, nurture, and retain faculty talented both in imparting knowledge and in creating new knowledge. The quality of teaching, both in classrooms and under individual supervision, the quality of new knowledge developed in research, and the quality of new works of performance and creative art depend ultimately on the talent of individual faculty members and their students and on the synergism generated when they collaborate. With wise management of current resources, we can achieve improvements in our teaching, research and creative work. Major and sustained improvements in the quality of the College can be achieved only by replacing present faculty with new faculty of superior talent. Therefore, the most important element of a strategic plan for improving the College must be its strategy for replacing its faculty.
The quality of students, too, sets the level of intellectual discourse that occurs within and outside the classroom. Better students are attracted to universities and programs of recognized quality. External ratings of quality, such as rankings by academic agencies and consumer guides to higher education, affect the ability of the College to compete effectively with other universities to attract talented students. In particular, we regard it as a crucial component in our mission to assure that this College be a magnet for the most talented students in Colorado. A successful strategy for improving the quality of our academic programs will bring with it recognition of the enhanced stature of our College and improve considerably our ability to compete with the best public universities for talented students.
Insofar as the achievement of excellence depends upon the levels of funding available, it is a measure of the College's commitment to this goal that it has gone so far toward attaining that level of performance on the very modest funding currently available from public sources. In this respect, the University of Colorado at Boulder is an over-achiever; for in state funding provided per student it ranks at the very bottom of state universities. A few departments are to some extent shielded from the consequences of low state support because of substantial support provided by federal agencies. Indeed, CU has excelled in obtaining federal support, ranking second in the nation in research dollars generated per faculty member. No doubt, the relatively high ranking of some of the departments in the College stems directly from the success of their faculty in gaining federal support. But students in Colorado deserve an outstanding education across the disciplines, not only in those few in which federal agencies are interested in supporting research.
Some departments and programs in the College of Arts and Sciences now rank among the national and international leaders in research and teaching in their disciplines. These departments have managed to thrive despite inadequate state funding through a combination of exceptional leadership, fortunate circumstances, and hard work by talented faculty. By virtue of their high standing, and the infrastructure of colleagues and resources they are able to provide, such departments are able to hire some of the best new faculty members and to attract graduate and undergraduate students of extraordinary talent. It would be a mistake, however, for the College to become complacent about the standing of its highly ranked departments. These departments are competing with peer departments at universities whose level of support far exceeds that of the University of Colorado. The ability of such departments to leverage their productivity with support from federal and private agencies depends critically on the ability of their faculty members to compete effectively with their peers at other elite institutions.
In addition, the College has several faculty members in other departments who enjoy distinguished international reputations as scholars and teachers. Such exceptional individuals contribute disproportionately to the national standing of the College, and they set standards of performance for their departments and for the College as a whole. Without a few such individuals, a department has virtually no chance of attaining national distinction.
- The College must pay particular care to nurture and support excellence wherever it is found, whether in outstanding units or outstanding individual faculty. In particular the College must stand ready to take direct action and to work with the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Chancellor to take preemptive measures to retain outstanding faculty.
At the same time, the College recognizes as a compelling priority the need to foster excellence across the disciplines for the purpose of providing an outstanding liberal arts education for our students. This will require that the College develop an aggressive strategy to develop programs of excellence in the social sciences and the arts and humanities, as well as in the natural sciences. In some cases, such development cannot occur without the infusion of new resources; but we believe that much progress can still be achieved through more rigorous application of current planning procedures and prudent use of existing resources. Where incremental resources are required, exceptional progress can only occur in units selected according to the criteria described below. In order to meet the twin goals of maintaining excellence where it has been established and fostering its development across the College, we recommend the following objectives:
3.1 To maintain rigorous standards of assessment. Rigorous assessment of quality is part of everyday life in the academy, in the evaluation of students, colleagues, administrators and academic programs. In implementing the goal of building exceptional quality in targeted programs across the College, it is essential that we make a careful effort to evaluate present quality and potential excellence by measures that are fair, reasonable, and relevant to the distinctive characteristics of each academic discipline. Rigorous procedures for quality assessment not only provide a good basis for effective allocation of scarce resources; they also help the College, its units, programs, and faculty to develop a deeper understanding of how best to provide high quality education and research. Measuring the quality of teaching, research and creative work in a university is a complex endeavor. There are many possible indicators, some quantitative and some qualitative, and the limits on the validity of each vary among academic disciplines. Measures of quality must of course be benchmarked to the norms of each discipline. We believe that the best way for the College to develop rigorous procedures for assessing quality is to engage the faculty in each unit in the effort to establish appropriate measures for their own disciplines.
- Each unit making a budget request to the College should be required to develop and apply rigorous measures to assess quality in research and creative work, teaching, and service. Such measures should be adequate to indicate not only the current quality of the unit, but also to establish benchmarks against which the unit's progress in implementing its strategic plan may be gauged.
- To assess quality of research and creative work, each unit should be challenged to rank itself among equivalent units at peer universities. Where appropriate, the unit should take account of quantitative and qualitative data, which might include, but are not limited to: research funding; publication rate, citation rate of publications, or any other quantitative evidence of distinction in research; honors and awards; reviews of scholarly or creative work. All these measures should be regarded relative to the norms of the discipline. We believe that the College, through its deans and the Dean's Investment Advisory Committee, can use such self-assessments to judge the relative quality of individual units and programs in the College. Patterns will emerge among cognate disciplines that people will recognize as rigorous and reasonable measures for quality assessment.
- In those units where creative work is an integral part of the discipline, quantitative indices such as research funding, publication rate, and citation rate do not normally apply. Nevertheless, such units should be challenged to rank themselves among peer units at other universities using such indices as are appropriate and common to each discipline, such as gallery exhibits for visual artists, stage productions for theatre artists, screenings for film makers, dance concerts for dancers/choreographers, and publications for creative writers. Assessment of quality should be attested to by parties beyond the campus. And while rankings by external agencies are not usually available for units focused on creative work, such units should be cognizant of any such rankings or comparative studies.
- The College should do a better job of employing multiple measures to assess quality of teaching and learning. The goal should be to assess and document not only the quality of presentation of courses, but also the ability of the unit and its faculty to define clear learning goals with high standards and to measure whether students have achieved those goals. Toward this end, units and programs within the College should be expected to carry out peer review of teaching by their faculty on a regular basis and to provide adequate documentation of these reviews. Units may consider employing additional measures of quality of teaching and learning, such as:
- self-assessment and teaching portfolios;
- the mix of large and small classes and individually supervised study and research provided by the department to undergraduates and majors;
- training of graduate teaching assistants;
- success in attracting and retaining majors; measurements of quality of undergraduate majors by, say, grade point averages outside the major;
- importance of course offerings to other departments or the College Core Curriculum;
- exit interviews of graduating majors;
- student interviews conducted by professionals in learning assessment;
- success of graduates in gaining employment or admission to graduate and professional schools;
- duration of time required to earn M.A. or Ph.D. degrees;
- quality of employment after receiving degrees.
Some of the measures listed above and others not listed here may be more appropriate for some disciplines than others. We believe that if units are challenged to develop their own methodologies, a pattern of best practices will emerge.
- When the College decides whether to invest resources in a unit or program, one of the highest criteria should be quality of management. Indicators of such quality might include:
- ability to provide well-documented assessments of the quality of research and teaching, using measures that are credible and verifiable;
- strategic planning that demonstrates how the unit can improve its quality with additional resources and offers criteria by which such improvements can be assessed;
- demonstrably high standards in recruitment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure; and
- demonstrable success in managing its current resources to best advantage.
3.2. To integrate planning by departments and programs into the Strategic Plan of the College. Planning at the departmental level should not be conducted in isolation. A department's plans for curriculum, faculty recruitment, and program development should advance the mission of the College as a whole.
- This may be accomplished by the more active participation of the Dean's office in the Program Review process of A&S departments, especially in the preliminary phases. In preparing their Self-Studies and Strategic Plans, departments should work closely with their Associate Dean in formulating their faculty hiring and resource development plans.
3.3. To coordinate planning by departments and programs with realistic assessments of the resources available to the College. A critical component of the departmental planning process should be to relate anticipated recruitments and other funding requests to predictable resources. The involvement of the Dean's office at this stage should insure that departmental plans coincide with the anticipated delivery of resources to cover their costs.
- The College should formulate a three-year hiring plan based on reasonable estimates of anticipated funding. This plan should be coordinated with departmental hiring plans as described below in Section 3.5 and should be revised each year to take into account changes in anticipated resources.
3.4. To encourage the allocation of faculty resources according to rigorous priorities and criteria. The College must provide prudent stewardship of its resources as a critical component in its responsibility to its students, the state of Colorado, its alumni and friends.
- The Dean's Investment Advisory Committee is charged with evaluating departmental plans and making recommendations to the Dean. In doing so, the DIAC should be guided by the criteria established in Academic Program Review Procedures: Quality, Centrality, Student Demand, Uniqueness, and Cost. The following priorities should be applied in reviewing departmental plans according to these criteria:
- maintain critical mass in departments to meet instructional needs;
- maintain quality in departments that have established high standards in teaching and research or creative work;
- make strategic investments to improve the quality of units that demonstrate exceptional potential in teaching and research or creative work.
3.5 To couple resource allocation to assessment of quality. There must be incentive for Units and faculty to document their current quality and to provide plans for improvement. Therefore, (a) the resource allocation must be coupled to the assessment process, and (b) the rules by which Units and faculty can make an effective case must be clear. Serious assessment and resource allocation requires a substantial time commitment, and it is important to balance this cost with the resources at stake. Currently the Academic Affairs Program Review Panel (PRP) is the only formal mechanism for assessing a Unit°s quality, and recommendations for individual units can be made in the absence of the budgetary realities of the resource allocation process. The Dean°s Investment Advisory Committee (DIAC) considers unit quality in conjunction with annual requests for resource allocation but does not undertake to evaluate relative unit quality in a systematic way.
- The College should initiate its own formal three-year-cycle review process that is coordinated with PRP. Because PRP is currently on a seven-year cycle, this coordination could be achieved most easily if the PRP was shifted to a six-year cycle. (Such a shift would be convenient, but not absolutely necessary.) Then, every six years, the DIAC could review the strategic plan and request for resources from each unit in the light of the in-depth assessment provided by the PRP process. Three years later, the unit would be asked to submit a fairly detailed self-assessment and update of its strategic plan, to be reviewed again by the DIAC.
The main goal of the triennial review would be to establish a strategic contract with the unit, whereby the unit would make commitments regarding its performance and the College would tell the unit what resources it can expect during the subsequent three years. Of course, to be reliable, the information about resources must reflect the uncertainty in the resources that the College itself may expect -- i.e., the College should tell the unit what it can expect in scenarios ranging from pessimistic to conservative to optimistic. This Committee sees a number of advantages in such a triennial review cycle: the necessity to review only one third of the units every three years permits a deeper level of assessment while reducing the burden of assessment; the triennial cycle gives units some assurance of stability for their strategic planning and insulates such plans from annual fluctuations of resources available to the College or unexpected departures of faculty members; the PRP review becomes more useful by virtue of its integration into the College strategic planning process.
The new procedure we recommend here removes the requirement for each unit to submit a strategic plan and request for resources annually and for the College to review all such plans and requests. Instead, each unit would be expected annually to provide only a brief report to the Dean of its performance and any updates regarding its circumstances or plans. We expect that the triennial review process should decrease, not increase, the administrative burden on units and the College. To this end, the efforts invested by units and the College in the triennial review process should be scaled so that they are no greater than the cumulative efforts involved in the present annual review process.
Normally, we would not expect the College to modify its commitment of resources to each unit in the interim between triennial reviews. Of course, the Dean's office must always be ready to respond whenever unforeseen circumstances arise that require strategic decisions to be made regarding a specific unit, whether or not that unit is scheduled for a triennial review. Such a situation would probably warrant a review similar to the triennial review.
3.6 To reallocate faculty lines, when necessary, by open and transparent processes, conducted according to principles of fairness and a commitment to academic values. Fiscal exigencies, the natural evolution of disciplines, fluctuations in student demand, and the imperative to invest in opportunities to achieve excellence, may warrant the reallocation of vacant faculty lines if the College is to attain the goals articulated in this report.
- When vacated lines must be reallocated, decisions reached by the Dean and DIAC (or, if appropriate, other duly constituted bodies of faculty governance), must be consistent with PRP and midpoint assessments of the units gaining and losing positions. The criteria and priorities that govern such reallocations must conform to the principles articulated above (at 3.4) in allocating faculty lines.
3.7. To encourage new initiatives in interdisciplinary teaching, research and creative work. The organization of the College into departments reflects , in many respects, administrative convenience more than rigid academic categories. The boundaries between departments are intended to be permeable, and the College actively fosters collaboration among faculty within departments and among faculty across departments.
- Individuals and units acting collaboratively will be encouraged to formulate program plans for the development of new departments, programs, or centers in fields of study not adequately covered by existing units. Such program plans will be evaluated by the DIAC on the same basis as departmental plans, and an affirmative review will be considered the first stage in program formation.
3.8 To maintain rigorous standards for awarding tenure. The University of Colorado is committed to maintaining the tradition of academic tenure. To ensure that this tradition remains strong, the College must maintain rigorous standards for awarding tenure. We must have confidence that faculty members who are awarded tenure will be productive scholars and teachers throughout their career. As we have discussed above, one of the most important characteristics of a research university is that faculty members are expected to produce original research and creative work. Tenure should not be awarded to faculty members who fail to meet this standard, no matter how talented they are as teachers. The College can and does employ instructors whose primary obligation is to teach well, and that is the proper career track for excellent teachers who are not productive in original research or creative work. Likewise, tenure should not be awarded to faculty members who fail to meet the College's high standards in teaching, no matter how talented they are as researchers or artists. Awarding tenure to a faculty member whose subsequent performance is below expectations is the most costly mistake that the College can make. It is in fact a threat to the institution of tenure itself. The standard for awarding tenure cannot be merely that there is a good probability that the candidate will be a successful teacher and scholar; it must be that the candidate has performed at a high standard and there is little doubt that he or she will continue to do so throughout his or her career.
- Because of these concerns, it is imperative for the Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee to ensure that all recommendations for tenure meet the high standards we describe above.
