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Dean Linda Maxson

The State of the College, Spring 2004

Delivered at the May 3 DEO meeting, Iowa Memorial Union

Each year in the State of the College address, I speak on the crucial question “Where are we headed?” This question has been in the foreground ALL year, not just in drafting this speech, while we have been responding to ever-more-severe budget reductions and undergoing our seven-year review by the University.

We are a college that takes pride in our scholarly and creative work, and in the excellence of our teaching. And we are a college whose teaching and scholarship are central to the intellectual vitality of the University. We are also a college that is—and, historically, has been—underfunded for our enormous teaching responsibility. Our self-study points this out, and our external review team confirmed it during their visit on campus.

All other colleges rely on our teaching. We offer 60% of the University credit hours, and more than 70% of its undergraduate credit hours, with about one-third of the University’s tenure-track and clinical faculty. Our historic underfunding has only been further exacerbated by the recent budget reductions.

Our departments are strongly connected to one another through interdisciplinary teaching, cross-departmental course offerings, and collaborative research. As a result, what harms one unit threatens many others. What benefits any of us strengthens the entire fabric.

Yet what threatens us can strengthen us, as the budget reductions have demonstrated. Over the past several years, departments have looked beyond themselves to the welfare of the College as a whole. They have loyally enlarged their lectures and course sections, and ensured that General Education and introductory courses were offered in spite of inadequate faculty lines, disappearing visitor funds, and shrinking TA lines.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is not “down and out”—far from it. We pride ourselves on teaching problem-solving skills and nurturing creativity. We are applying those same skills to maintain the integrity of our teaching, scholarly, and artistic mission in these difficult times.

It is testimony to our vigor that we continue to see strong demand for our majors and degree programs. We continue to attract and educate excellent students who receive academic honors. Last year, we awarded degrees to over 2,800 undergraduates—the highest annual total in our history—and awarded nearly 600 graduate degrees.

It is a tribute to our strength and reputation for distinction that we continue to recruit and retain an excellent and diverse faculty. Of the 29 tenure-track appointments accepted so far this spring, 85% were accepted by the candidates who were the first choice of the search committees. These new faculty include 6 supported in cooperation with the Faculty Diversity Opportunity Program. Searches still in progress could result in 5 to 10 additional faculty appointments, two made with the support of FDOP. One of our new positions in the Department of Biological Sciences will be partially funded under a new campus program as a Presidential Biological Scholar. The Office of the Vice President for Research will provide significant start-up funds for this position.

It appears that we will at least maintain the small rebound in faculty size that we achieved in fall 2003, and may actually increase our faculty by several positions. This is truly remarkable in a time of shrinking budgets. We are planning for a modest increase in faculty size again next year, and continue to aim for a faculty size of at least 700.

It is a tribute to our creativity that we continue to have excellent results from the innovative partnership with the Division of Continuing Education that began two years ago. This partnership has been a boon to our curriculum, making it possible to offer more faculty-taught courses to non-traditional students and providing us with TA lines and other flexible funds to replace some of the funding lost to state disappropriations.

It is testimony to the creativity and dedication of our administrative staff that they continue to be recognized with the University’s “Improving Our Workplace Awards”—four of them in the past year. These awards recognized teams and individuals within our College who have identified issues in the work environment that they could improve, and then designed and implemented solutions.

It is testimony to our intellectual vitality that our faculty continue to earn honors for their teaching and their scholarly contributions. Our faculty also continue to attract external funding and prestigious fellowships for their research. Next year, these include a Guggenheim Fellowship, three NEH Research Fellowships, a Fulbright Scholar award, a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, and two NSF Early Career Development Awards.

Our faculty bring important conferences and lecture series to campus. This past year these included the nanotechnology conference organized by faculty affiliated with the Optical Science and Technology Center; the conference on global democratic peace organized by Political Science; the symposium on race and ethnic identity sponsored by Sociology; and the year-long American Studies lecture series marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

It is testimony to our strong ties to alumni and friends that our external fundraising is growing more and more successful, with the number of donors increasing by two-thirds over the past five years. Contributions and pledges increased by 23% from 2002 to 2003. With several major gifts this year, we have reached 60% of our goal in the current Comprehensive Campaign.

One important purpose for which we have raised funds is to endow the CLAS Excellence and Innovation Funds, to help our departments achieve their aspirations and increase their visibility within their disciplines. These funds are already supporting a two-year symposium on Roman culture in the Classics Department, providing seed money for a new Center for the Study of Social Inequality in the Department of Sociology, and helping to bring to our campus the 2004 Association of Departments of English Summer Seminar. A new competition for these funds has been announced for this spring.

All these achievements reflect the priorities that the College established at the beginning of the budget reductions. These priorities are support for faculty lines, faculty salary structure, and faculty development. We recognize that our ability to perform our teaching, scholarly, and creative mission in the face of the recent budget reductions is due in very large part to the commitment of our permanent faculty. Their individual successes and commitment foster our success as a College.

WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

The answer continues to be “forward,” even though the way is challenging. This year, like the past three years, we have been reaching toward our strategic goals in an adverse environment.

In this year’s salary decisions, the College expects to make small but measurable progress toward restoring a sound and competitive salary structure. We are more than ever concerned that, in spite of reallocations already made to support faculty salaries, the salary structure in many departments is far inferior to that at peer institutions. We have received permission from the Provost’s Office to reallocate still further within our faculty budget to address salary compression, forestall counteroffers, and reward extrameritorious performance. I have asked each DEO for a proposal for addressing the critical cases in his or her department.

We have benefited, and expect to continue to benefit, from construction and renovation projects. In January 2005, the Adler Building will open, housing Journalism & Mass Communication, Cinema & Comparative Literature, and the Daily Iowan. In summer 2005, the Schaeffer Library addition to Dey House will be completed. The renovation of those parts of the Biology Building that date from the 1960s and earlier is now completed, as is the renovation of Spence Psychology Labs. We are working with the University’s Facilities Service Group to ensure that other CLAS priorities are added to the capital planning list.

Looking further into the future, we will see the opening of the new Art Building in fall 2005, and subsequently the renovation of the current Art Building. We also look forward to a start on the renovation of the Chemistry Building in 2005. Finally, an external consultant is now conducting a needs assessment for the renovation or replacement of Seashore Hall and other possible projects on the east side of campus.

We are hopeful that, in fall 2005, the College will begin receiving new monies from tuition and fees. We have submitted—for approval by the Provost’s Office and the Regents—a proposal for a CLAS instructional technology fee on a par with other undergraduate colleges and a proposal for a University-wide arts and cultural events fee that would support the performances, exhibits, film showings, and other events that the College offers as course-related activities.

However, the near future will be as challenging as the past 12 months have been. We will be attempting to maintain the day-to-day operations of the College and our departments with seriously constrained resources. We lost over $2 million from our state-funded budget this past year, and have lost more than $6 million over the past four years. The cuts absorbed by central offices, such as the Provost and the Vice President for Research, have been real cuts to us and our faculty as well. Funding from these offices provided us with computer upgrades, renovation funds, instructional equipment, intramural research grants, and matching funds on external grants.

The cuts to the College’s budget have virtually wiped out our flexible funds. These funds were, in reality, temporarily vacated faculty lines. From these lines we made annual allocations for visiting faculty, for instructional equipment, and for one-time additions to departmental budgets in response to special needs. Over the past two years, we have made the choice to fill these vacated lines with permanent faculty and to award competitive pay increases to our faculty. We have no source of funding that can replace the flexible funding we have lost. We have responded to our budget reductions with economies in our operations and with vigorous external fundraising. But there remains a huge hole in our budget, as well as pressing needs, not all of which can be met.

The College, like the University, is addressing the budget crisis through faculty consultation. In January, President Skorton formed a General Education Fund Task Force, with substantial representation from our College, to investigate how the University could reduce its expenditures of state funds and tuition monies by $12 million. At the same time, I constituted a CLAS Task Force on Budget Reductions to advise me on strategies for protecting the College’s curriculum and its research mission, in the face of our continuing, severe budget reductions. The core of this task force was the elected CLAS Executive Committee, with the addition of three appointed members. In their deliberations, this Task Force kept in mind the priority the College placed on support for faculty lines, faculty teaching, and scholarly and creative endeavor.

As their deliberations concluded, the CLAS Task Force recommended that the College perform a global assessment of the strength of all our academic programs. The College is now establishing two ad hoc committees—one to assess undergraduate programs, the other to assess graduate programs on the University criteria of quality and centrality.

It became clear even while the College’s self-study was in progress that our resources have shrunk to a point where they are insufficient to support our mission. We now need a serious evaluation of where the College should invest such resources as we can expect in the future, and how many academic programs we can help aspire to excellence. These ad hoc committees will look at the critical mass of faculty available to deliver our programs, at student access to courses and faculty mentoring, at the facilities and research experiences offered to students, and at data on student demand and student placement. The ad hoc committees will advise on where we can build distinction and where must retrench, in view of the reductions in the University’s budget.

As our December 2003 self-study stated, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences aspires to excellence and, in many areas of the College, excellence is within reach. We are confident that our review committee’s report will acknowledge our record of success in responding to an increasingly adverse environment and we are optimistic that the University’s new provost will work closely with us to help change that landscape.

linda-maxson@uiowa.edu