Dear colleagues,

As the leaves of October reveal a beautiful Autumn in Missoula, I’d like to reiterate my gratitude to all of you for the efforts you are making to help students learn in varied learning environments, despite ever-evolving circumstances and given the added challenges many of us are experiencing.

Carrying on with our lives and responsibilities during 18 months of the pandemic has been challenging and exhausting and, yet, accompanied by a cautious feeling of renewal. I want to express my deep gratitude for your individual commitments to UM, to your colleagues, and to our students. That simply can’t be expressed enough in a time when competing commitments press us to our limits.

This marks the 35^th year since I accepted my first academic post, a visiting appointment at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Just walking around a sun-splashed campus during student orientation filled me with gratitude to have the opportunity to teach and share my research with students just a decade or so younger than me. Like many of you, I was busy writing manuscripts, grant proposals and lectures for the classroom. The intermittent heartburn of reviews was tempered by the genuine, unbridled enthusiasm of returning students.

Fast forward to this year—it’s a similar feeling. What an incredible opportunity you have to share your expertise with students. To engage them in person—with pandemic caveats—remains our collective hope and expectation for the year. These are unprecedented times, indeed, not just in Missoula but everywhere. We decided last year to provide for a modified in-person learning experience, and UM faculty stepped up in incredible ways. UM planned with optimism for this fall semester as May commencement 2021 drew to a close; then Delta turned up and we once again turned to mitigating COVID risks per CDC and local public health guidelines. Transitioning from last academic year to this fall has been far different than what we anticipated back in the early summer.

This year, in many respects, is more complicated than last year. Last year, we had a statewide mask mandate and no vaccine. This year it’s flipped: no statewide or system mask mandate and an available vaccine that is safe and effective—with an unknown uptake on campus. What is similar, of course, are our constantly evolving circumstances. I want to emphasize how hard UM’s shared governance leaders have been working since late July to advocate for COVID risk mitigation measures at the Montana University System level. At the September Board of Regents meeting, you should know that UM’s faculty, student, and executive leaders were the most vocal advocates for a safe learning environment. UM took the lead in persuading OCHE that a mask requirement—first in instructional settings and now everywhere indoors—was critical as we fulfill our commitments to the campus community.

We are a campus of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Key mitigations minimize illness—keeping social circles small, maintaining good hygiene, staying home when feeling unwell, and, of course, masks and vaccination. As we monitor the data and work within a variety of restrictions, the UM administration is committed to the health of our campus community while honoring our commitment to students, many of whom showed up vaccinated, masked, and eager to learn. There’s no playbook for this and we’ll continue to monitor and adapt as necessary.

In the Office of the Provost, our team is committed to listening to students, faculty, staff, and administrators, and to providing ongoing guidance to our campus community. As we entered the semester, the overwhelming position of returning students was a desire for in-person learning. Faculty enthusiasm for in-person teaching has been similarly high, but we also recognize that the variables introduced by COVID have caused some to modify delivery or a preference to pivot to teach remotely. I’ve asked that those in the latter group to talk to their dean and arrive on an instructional approach that meaningfully engages students.

I deeply appreciate the strong working relationship between the UM administration, Faculty Senate leaders, and faculty union leaders.  Kimber McKay, Jenn Bell, Amanda Dawsey, Allen Szalda-Petree, Jessica Dougherty-McMichael and Vic Valgenti are working tirelessly on your behalf, and they bring the collective voice of the faculty into focus so we can truly collaborate. As I emphasized last year, my personal mandate is to advocate for faculty as we move the academic enterprise forward, so please contact your Faculty Senate and union representatives to make sure your voice is present in the frequent conversations President Bodnar and I have with your representatives.

In the next section of this communication and in subsequent updates, I’d like to turn to academic initiatives that my office has been developing over the past year, as part of the academic planning process. that engaged our deans and faculty leadership. My office took the substantial input of that group along with work completed over the summer to create a set of initiatives that I have presented to President Bodnar. To summarize, our initiatives include but are not limited to:

1. Building on last year’s academic planning work, including the work of the Academic Planning Group, and on enhancing synergy between certain academic units better serve UM’s future growth and sustainability.
2. Ensuring instructional staffing levels meet FY23 budgets: I’m working with the deans to ensure resources align with instructional and student needs while maintaining UM’s core commitments to students and society. UM is—and has been, for some time—challenged by the growing disparity between student enrollment and faculty capacity. Recently, I invited eligible faculty to consider a Voluntary Retirement Incentive plan offer. That plan was specifically created as an important step to minimize further faculty reductions of an involuntary nature, so it was restricted to eligible faculty members in the College of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), where the needs are most acute. I won’t know how this plan will inform further decisions on instructional staffing until later in the semester, and I continue to work with the H&S Associate Deans on strategies that are least disruptive to the College and University.
3. Supporting Strategic Enrollment Planning (SEP) and initiative around curricular innovation: The curriculum proposal and approval process will become more strategic as UM embraces data-informed SEP in AY21-22. I will support the curricular innovations that help students prepare to address broad themes of global relevance such as general education, interdisciplinary offerings, and experiential learning opportunities.
4. Launching the New Learner Initiative: The Office of the Provost will partner with key campus units in designing and implementing a new venture to broaden UM’s academic portfolio for new learner audiences. Julie Wolter recently accepted the role of Associate Vice Provost for Innovation and Online Learning. Julie and Paul Gladen in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Creative Scholarship will lead the New Learner’s Initiative.

More details about this work are posted on the Provost’s Academic Planning 2021-2022 website.

In closing, I have learned a great deal serving in the role of Provost for the past year. Sometimes it seems the administration and faculty are working towards the same goals but from different angles, and when everyone is overwhelmed, tired, and on edge, this can put us at odds. Please know that, at my core, I am a teacher; I understand and empathize with instructors who walk into the classroom every day to do what we love the most—share our knowledge and help students achieve their dreams. And I realize it has gotten really complicated and more difficult for you to do that this year. We are on the same team, working for the same goals.

Thank you for all that you are doing to serve our students and our institution. I deeply appreciate everything every one of you is doing, every day.

Sincerely,

Reed Humphrey, Acting Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs