CU Boulder Provost Russ Moore today announced the report of the Provost’s Committee on Academic Re-organization has been posted for community review on the committee webpage.
The report, commissioned last April, was drafted by a committee composed of a majority of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff along with their colleagues from the campus’s colleges, schools, institutes and programs. It drew membership from the arts and humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering and other disciplines, and was co-chaired by former Senior Vice Provost Bill Kaempfer and physics professor and former Arts and Sciences Associate Dean for Natural Sciences Patricia Rankin.
The report, calls for the creation of a new structure of divisional leadership within the college, with strong divisional deans (natural science, social science, arts and humanities) who can set budget and resource priorities, reporting to an executive dean who safeguards the liberal arts imperatives of the college, works with the divisional deans on budget and priority setting, and who reports to the provost.
“The committee worked earnestly to examine several models of structure and leadership, including those of the University of California Davis and the University of California Santa Barbara,” said Kaempfer. “We took into consideration, as we were charged, the recommendations of the Cumalat-Julien Academic Futures white paper, but discussed other models, ideas and structures as well.”
Rankin said the report’s recommendations “are offered in clear terms, not as an end all, be all solution, but as a possible evolution of the College of Arts and Sciences for the near future. We are eager to see how the campus responds to the ideas and structures proposed in the report.”
Deadline to provide direct written responses to the report: Dec. 14
CU Boulder Provost Russ Moore praised the leadership of the two and the work of the committee, saying, “It has given us a clear set of things to think about at an important moment in the life of our largest college and in the life of the university.”
Moore asked that the campus provide thoughtful and direct written response to the report, no more than two pages in length, through the end of business on Friday, Dec. 14. An earlier version of this announcement gave a November date for this deadline. Moore said he will incorporate the feedback, consult with the chancellor and senior vice chancellor, and provide a direction (subject to the approval of the CU Board of Regents) in the spring semester.
