The Arts and Sciences Council, November 13, 2018, 3:30-5:00

Meeting Minutes

Representatives present: Daniel Appelö, APPM; Barbara Buttenfield, GEOG; Cathy Comstock, RAPS; James Cowell, LING; Tanja Cuk, CHEM; Erica Ellingson, APS; Michaele Ferguson, PSCI; John Gibert, CLAS; Paul Gordon, HUMN; Gerardo Gutierrez, ANTH; Saskia Hintz, GSLL; Jonathan Hughes, ECON; ; Janet Jacobs, WGST; Daniel Jones, HNRS; Dan Kaufman, PHIL; Ramesh Mallipeddi, ENGL; Matt McQueen, IPHY; Akira Miyake, PSYC; Stephen Mojzsis, GEOL; Lonni Pearce, PWR; Mike Radelet, SOCY;  Patricia Rankin, PHYS; Hannah Shell, CINE; Evelyn Shih, ALC; Ted Stark, THDN; David Stock, EBIO; Tim Weston, HIST; Ding Xue, MCDB

Representatives not present:  Christine Brennan, SLHS; Françoise Duresse-Stimilli, AAH; Jim Goodrich, BCHM;  Juan Herrero-Senes, SPAN; Kwame Holmes, ETHN Joanna Lambert, ENVS; Julie Lundquist, ATOC; Rob Tubbs, MATH; Deborah Whitehead, RLST; Masano Yamashita, FRIT;

Also in attendance: William Kaempfer, Scott Pribble, Jim White

Stephen Mojzsis called the meeting to order at 3:31PM.

Chair’s remark, Stephen Mojzsis

Mojzsis advised the council that the ASC website has been updated.

On the ASC’s first meeting of 2019 (January 15, 2019) the Council will receive updates on student retention and recruitment with reports from Hillary Potter, Daryl Maeda and Clint Talbot.

On December 11, the ASC meeting will include the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Mojzsis asked for ideas on promoting this meeting. 

Mojzsis suggested a motion:

The chair of the Staff Advisory Committee will be invited to all ASC meetings as an ex-officio member.

It was moved and seconded, there was no discussion, the vote was 24 yes, 0 no, 0 abstentions. 

The campus diversity plan (Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics or IDEA) has been released. There is a one month time to review the plan and town halls have been scheduled. More information is available on ODECE's website.

Dean’s remarks, Jim White

Dean White has been meeting regularly with students and suggests Arts and Sciences departments do the same. Currently, at the students suggestion, Arts and Sciences is working on how to better represent the College with Career Services.

Dean White has been looking at the alternative college open option and the amount of students Arts and Sciences currently have whose first college preference is Engineering but are in Arts and Sciences. He is also looking at the lowering percentage of women in Arts and Sciences. Out of the over 600 students who were accepted to the University of Colorado Boulder but chose to go to another in-state college, 70 percent were women. Dean White thinks that the focus on advertising Engineering and Business is turning off qualified prospective female students; the Arts and Sciences message of the value of a Liberal Arts education was rejected by Strategic Relations as “too fuzzy.”

The meeting was opened for discussion. The representatives were concerned about only one year of students being looked at as well as feeling that many other reasons could exist for not attending CU Boulder that had nothing to do with the university’s reputation as an engineering college.

Committee on Academic Reorganization, William Kaempfer and Patricia Rankin

The Academic Reorganization Committee is recommending the College of Arts and Sciences remain unified under one Executive Dean. The change recommended will be the status and responsibilities of the divisional deans who will be officers of the university with control over budget, the ability to sign contracts and a seat at the Dean’s Council. The Committee wanted to maintain the structure and mission of Arts and Sciences and maintain the associate deans, who will still report to the Executive Dean, while giving them more authority.  

This report took inspiration from the Cumalat-Julien white paper and also deals with resource issues, the need for additional staff and a serious look at the college’s portion of the campus budget. Additional points made by Rankin and Kaempfer:

  • The Liberal Arts Mission of the College will remain intact.
  • The committee wants to address existing problems in the college without “breaking anything else.”
  • Some issues, like where tenure homes will reside, (the division or the college) will be worked out in the implementation phase if this report is accepted.
  • Each division will have its own budget.
  • It will be impossible to take the current budget in Arts and Sciences and make it work for the new model. Financial Futures will need to look at this reorganization model if it is approved.
  • The Executive Dean will be the adjudicator of conflicts that may arrive as well as someone who is in a position to see what works better in one division than another.
  • The Executive Dean would make decisions on unallocated funding that comes to the college. 
  • Faculty governance would be divisional but the divisional groups could choose to work together as a college.
  • The most recent reorganization of the college, the move to divisional deans, happened in the mid-90’s.

Mojzsis encouraged the representatives to read the report. There are 30 days to comment.

Continuing our Dialogue on the A&S Strategic Plan: Endorsement and Implementation, Stephen Mojzsis

The ASC Executive Committee discussed the Strategic Plan and college reaction to it at length. The Executive Committee would like the ASC to vote on the endorsement of the plan, and, if that vote is positive, to vote on implementation committee in December.

Barbara Buttenfield proposed an alternative:

Motion: That ASC vote to endorse the vision and direction in the current version of the Strategic Plan, and to request that the ASC Chair form an advisory Task Force to recommend on the prioritization of a set of activities that will address the implementation of this Strategic Plan. The Task Force will present its findings to ASC members for discussion and possible revision, targeting a final vote on adoption by ASC no later than the final ASC All-Hands meeting on April 16, 2019.

The motion was moved and seconded. 

The meeting was opened for discussion. Topics discussed:

  • Feedback on the plan was generally enthusiastic but concern was expressed over missing details and how it will conflict with other plans.
  • The new motion is specific on prioritization and calls for a task force to prioritize.
  • Few departments responded on the plan when asked for feedback.
  • Staff felt left out of discussion.
  • The task force would be advisory to the ASC.

The motion was passed by a vote of: In favor:24 Opposed-0 Abstain:0.

First year Seminars and Diversity & Inclusiveness, Erica Ellingson

Ellingson let the representatives know that the first year seminars are going well; 96 percent of the students say they are comfortable in their seminars and 86 percent say the seminars are helping prepare them for academic expectations. The Diversity Committee has also reviewed several seminars in the diversity category and have passed them on to the Curriculum Committee.

Presentation on Gender and URM Representation for the College, Deborah Wuttke

This summer Dean White asked Deborah Wuttke to study, with the support of a fellowship, the issue of diversity and inclusion in the faculty of Arts and Sciences and to provide some recommendations as to best practices to improve diversity among the faculty. Wuttke started her process by looking into the current state of diversity and found the numbers of underrepresented minorities are less that desired and cases of gender harassment are very high. These figures have been documented in the Natural Sciences and Wuttke assumes that they are similar in the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences. Wuttke has been meeting with chairs and directors to identify effective strategies to foster inclusion and diversity as well as seeing what practices are being implemented; she hopes to see what good ideas can be shared between departments. Next Wuttke will meet with faculty to see what their experiences have been. Wuttke’s work will end with a survey and report in May 2019 and she requests input and perspectives from the ASC; she can be contacted at deborah.wuttke@colorado.edu.

Police Presentation, Scott Pribble, UCPD

Last summer the university made a decision not to renew the contact with Lifeline Mobile Safety Application. The price went from $5,000 per year to $35,000 a year but only 2000 students downloaded it in the four years of the service. Phones now have emergency apps that will call 911 in a more efficient way than the previous service. The representatives asked Officer Pribble to send the instructions to Janice Jeffryes so they can be distributed.

Online Education Committee, Vilja Hulden

Hulden reminded the representatives to complete the online survey concerning online education. The committee is trying to find out if the departments are keeping track of the online courses in their subjects and if any courses are being vetted. The committee is also looking into the necessity of allowing faculty to use online courses as part of their teaching load; currently, most online courses are taught by graduate students and adjunct instructors. 

Instructor Task Force, Rolf Nogaard

The Instructor Task Force is meeting with chairs and directors and holding town halls with the goal of having a final report by the end of February. 

Information on the task force’s work has been sent to the representatives; Rolf Norgaard focused on the “aftermath” of the report; the task force doesn’t intend for the report to be buried. 

Each recommendation will include design principals; they have strived to balance forceful recommendations with sensitivity to the needs of individual units.

Each recommendation will note priority, timeframe and impact including financial impact.

A recommendation will be made to form some sort of body that will allow ongoing conversation and advocacy, for instance, a standing committee for Faculty Affairs.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:03.

Minutes approved December 5, 2018

Submitted by Janice Jeffryes