To the campus community,
As we near the end of the fall semester, first let me thank you for all you do for the university, for your colleagues, and most especially for our students. I am grateful for you and your commitment every day.
I want to provide you with one more update in 2022 on the Academic Renewal process before we turn our attention to some exciting work in 2023.
The work over the last several months as well as the feedback from last week’s town hall meetings have allowed us to collectively reflect on possible approaches to achieve the primary goals of Renewal: to better enable the development of impactful, relevant programs for our students and to support opportunities for faculty to meaningfully collaborate across colleges.
Organizational structure is one way to enhance our potential to achieve these goals, which is why we have focused our discussions this fall on structure. Your feedback has significantly influenced the different iterations of an emerging academic model.
Those conversations have made clear that there is considerable support for the pillars as a framing device and, especially, for thinking together about how to better support curricular innovation, faculty collaboration across colleges, and new interdisciplinarity programs that students want and need. Those conversations have also made clear that there is less widespread support for a significant academic reorganization. While the structure discussion has helped to spur many productive explorations of the benefits of more deliberate interdisciplinary collaboration, it also has distracted us from talking about other important and perhaps more immediate ways to generate impactful, relevant programs and faculty collaboration which remain the primary goals of Renewal.
Given this and in response to the enthusiasm around curricular innovation, faculty collaboration, and interdisciplinarity, we are going to turn our attention this spring to focus more explicitly on enabling these outcomes through other avenues. For the spring semester, we are designing a much more intentional process that will include clear steps and phases, defined feedback loops, communication expectations, and decision points. We will be able to share more about the entire process soon, but this process will begin with sessions with faculty and staff in mid-January to:
- discuss the explicit goals of Renewal as they relate to the pillars, curricular innovation, and interdisciplinary activity;
- consider what we already do well and what we do poorly as relates to these pieces; and
- solicit, discuss, and refine specific ideas for moving us from where we are to where we desire to be.
Meanwhile, academic structure remains an important lever for unlocking our potential. We have taken your collective feedback, including that shared over the past week, and are moving ahead with the submission of an RTP in January. As a reminder, an RTP is a “Request to Plan.” It allows us to stake our claim on a proposed approach and then spend some time working out the details before submitting a Level II proposal.
Instead of splitting the College of Humanities and Sciences into two colleges, the RTP will call for restructuring H&S into schools. The H&S deans will work with faculty on the precise school structure. The RTP will also call for a reconsideration of the Franke College of Forestry and Conservation consistent with the principals of the Matson Report. The FCFC dean will work with faculty on the precise structure and on the specific Matson Report recommendations to be implemented. Finally, the RTP will call for the exploration of a School for Emerging and Applied Technologies (SEAT). SEAT will be an interdisciplinary school, drawing faculty in joint appointments from multiple colleges and reporting through the Provost’s Office with dotted lines to the appropriate deans. SEAT may point the way to the exploration of other interdisciplinary schools.
Yesterday, I reviewed this structural model with the Faculty Senate. Not all will find this approach satisfactory, but I believe it strikes a middle ground that will allow us to move forward and pivot our focus to some of the more immediate ways we can collaborate and develop impactful, relevant programs.
Thank you again for your work on Renewal this fall. I appreciate your partnership, and I look forward to our continued work together in the New Year.
Pardis Mahdavi, Provost and Executive Vice President