CLAS Home > Dean's Office > State of the College

Dean Linda Maxson

The State of the College, Spring 2005

Delivered at the May 9 DEO meeting, Iowa Memorial Union

This spring, we have reached two significant milestones in the life of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences: the conclusion of the first review of the College in a decade and the conclusion of a five-year strategic planning period. Both the review and our planning indicators demonstrate that we have made real progress over the past five years, in spite of setbacks that were beyond our control. 

A major setback this year was the violent, catastrophic, and criminal attack on offices and labs in Seashore Hall, an assault that created havoc in the lives of faculty, staff, and students across the College, but especially those in the Department of Psychology. This attack was devastating, but the response was inspiring. Our colleagues in Seashore Hall adjusted heroically to the emergency, and the entire campus responded promptly and generously. CLAS departments, campus offices, other colleges, and central administration did a remarkable job of helping Psychology, Sociology, and Journalism & Mass Communication restore their day-to-day activities. 

Most important, in the face of this assault, we in the College reaffirmed our dedication to maintaining and nurturing an environment for education, inquiry, and discovery that is free from intimidation. The CLAS Faculty Assembly has published a statement in support of researchers in Psychology and in defense of freedom of inquiry. The College has renewed its commitment to its foremost planning goal: “to articulate, with pride and confidence, a vision of the liberal arts and sciences that demonstrates the centrality of our research to our mission.”

Other setbacks have been related to the resources needed to support our teaching and research mission. Reductions in state funding over the past four years have required us to focus and reallocate to our areas of highest priority. In the review of the College, both the review team and the Provost confirmed the strength of our planning and internal allocation efforts. The reviewers praised our increased grantsmanship and fundraising profiles, and encouraged us to continue to use these avenues to increase the College’s resources. The Provost added his assessment that we are well positioned to be competitive in the University-wide reallocation process. 

Our planning continues to be shaped by the budget reductions that the University has weathered over the past several years. The outlook for the State’s reinvestment in its universities is uncertain. The uncertainties of the future make it ever more imperative that we continue to focus on areas of strength and continue to reallocate to support excellence. 

Increasing Visibility

Our strategic plan for 2000-2005 focused on raising the visibility of our faculty’s research and supporting our faculty’s teaching. In line with this goal, we have seen our faculty’s increased success in attracting research funds; we have made continuing gains in faculty diversity; and we have made progress in supporting faculty salaries. Our planning also focused on raising the visibility of the College on and off campus. We have done so by celebrating the achievements of our faculty, staff, and students; by successful efforts devoted to private fundraising; and through exceptional progress in renewing our facilities.

Faculty Visibility. Our foremost goal has been to demonstrate the centrality of research to the College’s mission. This goal requires that we build and sustain a faculty highly productive in scholarly and creative work and that our faculty integrate their research into their teaching. This goal will be reaffirmed and emphasized in our strategic plan for 2005-10.

We have completed another highly successful hiring year, during which we have added 34 scholar-teachers to our tenure-track faculty. As in the past, we have seldom gone beyond a department’s first choice from its candidate pool in making the offer of appointment. Our new faculty come here with impressive records of scholarship and creative work that demonstrate great promise for the future. We have also retained key faculty in the face of outside offers.

One of the College’s planning objectives has been to rebuild our natural science departments. Helping new science faculty start their careers is expensive. Five years ago, we convinced central administration that it was time to begin making the necessary investment in the basic sciences. The new faculty we have hired have already repaid the start-up investment several times over. 

In Biological Sciences, for example, the most recently hired faculty members have brought in external research funds totaling nearly $13 million since their appointments began. The growth in Biological Sciences’ research programs has been assisted by the new and strong relationship the Department has built with the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. The Carver Trust established and equipped the Carver Center for Comparative Genomics and has generously supported research projects of individual faculty members in Biological Sciences.

Our new faculty in Chemistry, Geoscience, Physics & Astronomy, and Psychology are having similar success in attracting research support. In turn, the Provost and the Vice President for Research have helped us provide seed funds for these new faculty, and the Vice President for Finance has supported the much needed renovation of the Chemistry Building. During this recruitment year, we have seen the size of our Chemistry faculty start to increase, an achievement that we have been working toward for over a decade.

In many of our humanities and social science disciplines, research support in the form of externally funded research fellowships is highly sought. These fellowships allow scholars to spend a semester or a year off campus doing archival research. Over the past five years, our faculty have been awarded 45 externally funded research fellowships, including 10 such awards in 2004-05. Both senior and junior faculty have been extraordinarily competitive for these awards: in the past two years, for example, five assistant professors have received prestigious research fellowships. As a result of our faculty’s growing success, the University has begun to partner with us in providing stipend supplement and fringe benefit support to faculty who earn these competitive fellowships. This guaranteed support, in turn, appears to have spurred still more applications for external awards.

The current year promises to be a banner year for our faculty’s acquisition of research funds. At the end of the third quarter of the fiscal year, our faculty had already been awarded over $32 million in new awards, competitive renewals, and continuations of awards—a 37% increase over the same period in the previous fiscal year.

Departmental Distinction. The University’s aspiration is to be among the top 10 public institutions. This can be achieved only by having some graduate programs ranked best in the nation and a larger number ranked in the top tier nationally. Recent US News rankings show how strongly CLAS departments contribute to the University’s aspiration. 

Departments

• Speech Pathology and Audiology’s two graduate programs each rank #1 nationally.

• Creative Writing ranks #1 nationally.

• Political Science ranks #11 among public universities, in a four-way tie.

• English ranks #15 among public institutions, in a three-way tie.

• History ranks #17 among public institutions, in a five-way tie.

• Biological Sciences ranked #21 among public institutions, in a four-way tie.

• Psychology ranks #25 among public institutions, in a six-way tie.

Areas

• Social psychology area of Sociology ranks #2 among public institutions.

• The fine arts area in the School of Art & Art History ranks #4 among public institutions, with printmaking ranked #2 and painting and drawing #6.

• The paleontology area in Geoscience ranks #4 among pubic institutions.

• The clinical psychology area in Psychology ranks #11 among public institutions.

Since 1999 (the base line year for our last strategic plan), the University has moved from 26th to 19th in US News’ ranking of public universities. This perception of increased quality is directly tied to the vitality of the scholarly and creative work of CLAS faculty. No University can be strong without a strong liberal arts and sciences core.

One of our successes in fundraising has been creating an endowment to support our departments’ aspirations to “Excellence and Innovation.” Over the past two years, the College has competitively funded seven projects aimed at raising departments’ national visibility. 

Faculty Diversity. The excellence of our faculty is also demonstrated by its diversity. Over the past five years the College has continued to lead the University and peer institutions in achieving diversity.

We have made substantial progress in increasing the proportion of minority faculty over the past five years—from 13.7% at the beginning of our planning period to 15.9% this year (101.5 fte). The proportion of minority faculty across all ranks is very consistent. 

Women now constitute over 34% of our faculty (220 fte). We have made particularly impressive strides at the ranks of assistant and associate professor. Of our assistant professors, 70.25 fte (47%) are women, and we now have a similarly high proportion of women (44%, 94.25 fte) at the rank of associate professor. These young and mid-career women faculty compete strongly for the College’s and University’s research honors, including Faculty Scholar, Global Scholar, and Dean’s Scholar Awards, as well as for external research support and honors.

We look forward to gains in our most senior ranks consistent with those we have already seen among early and mid-career faculty. Currently, 20% of full professors are women (54.24 fte), and the same proportion of the College’s named chairs and professorships are held by senior women. We expect to see the women whose careers we have nurtured achieving the rank of professor at an increasing pace. In Fall 2005, half of our candidates for promotion to professor will be women faculty members. 

We also continue to see women providing strong leadership in our departments and divisions. Next year, women will head more than one-third of our 38 departments and divisions, including the Writers’ Workshop, a flagship program in our College. In 1999-2000, our baseline for strategic planning, less than one-fourth of our units were headed by women. 

Private Fundraising. We have been more successful in fundraising over the past five years than at any time in the College’s history. This success has translated into support for many of our departments’ aspirations. In the past few months alone, donors have endowed the organ program in the School of Music, pledged to endow a distinguished visiting professorship in the English Department’s Non-fiction Writing Program, and greatly enlarged the scholarship support available to our graduate and undergraduate students.

Private giving has also helped provide better teaching space for the College. Journalism and Mass Communication set an ambitious fundraising goal of $6 million for the Adler Building. Under the leadership of the School’s director, Pam Creedon, and of Jeff Liebermann, UI Foundation, the School has already achieved 97% of that goal.

Five years ago, at the beginning of the UI’s Comprehensive Campaign, we asked that the CLAS goal be nearly doubled, from $40 million to over $80 million. We have not yet achieved this goal, but we have every hope of doing so during the final year of the campaign. At present we have raised $60 million, or nearly 75% of our ambitious campaign goal. Our faculty have been among our most generous donors—nearly 600 CLAS faculty and emeritus faculty have given a total of nearly $6 million to the College and its departments during the Comprehensive Campaign.

Over the term of the Comprehensive Campaign, we have also increased the number of donors to CLAS by 56%, thanks to an aggressive calling campaign initiated in 2001 and 2002 on behalf of our departments. We will continue to see benefits from our newly visible fundraising profile over the next five years. 

Much of our success has been due to the leadership and dedication of Michael Kingan, the College’s Senior Director of Development in the UI Foundation for the past five years. Michael will soon take up new duties as Associate Vice President for Development at the University of New Mexico. His legacy to us is a much stronger standing for the College within the Foundation and heightened visibility with our alumni and friends. 

Planning for the Next Five Years

Our Collegiate self-study, submitted in December 2003, demonstrated that we are acting on our aspirations to excellence and that, in many areas of the College, excellence is within reach. Our most pressing concern was—and continues to be--our ability to support our highly central research and teaching mission in ways that will build on and sustain distinction. 

At the conclusion of our review, the Provost praised the College on its reallocation processes and its resourcefulness in dealing with the effects of decreasing state funds. He also congratulated the College on its record of diversity in hiring and on enhancing communication with faculty and DEOs.

On the central review issues, the Provost indicated that the College’s efforts to improve the faculty salary structure are in line with his and the University’s highest priority. He also voiced support for the broad goals of the University’s 2001 Plan for Reinvestment in the College but emphasized that, due to changed budgetary circumstances, the UI cannot honor the specifics of that plan. Instead, he expressed his belief that the College could do well in the current competitive process for University-wide reallocation and made a commitment to work with the College to continue our successful fundraising.

The changed budget environment to which the Provost referred is very real. The Regents’ institutions have made a decision to slow tuition increases. The Regents have proposed an ambitious plan to restore some state funding to the budgets of the three state universities, but the outcome of that proposal is still unclear. The University has established a mechanism for University-wide reallocation, under which the College must continue to reallocate at least 2% of its budget annually. A part of each college’s reallocated funds will revert to the Provost for redistribution. 

The College and University have not yet extricated themselves from budget uncertainties. However, this should not daunt us, as the strategies we developed in our last strategic plan will continue to serve us well in the next planning period. In framing our Strategic Plan for 2000-2005, we pledged to reallocate to “units that have achieved or are on the brink of achieving national visibility because of excellence” in teaching and scholarship. We pledged that any growth of new programs and interests would be balanced by the reconfiguration and rethinking of other programs. We have achieved this, and the Provost’s clear expectation is that we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. 

Over the summer, the Dean’s Office in consultation with the CLAS Executive Committee will articulate a draft Strategic Plan for 2005-10. Our new Strategic Plan will reflect the budgetary environment in which we find ourselves. It will also reaffirm our aspirations for excellence in research and teaching; reaffirm the value of a liberal education; and reaffirm priorities for faculty lines, salaries, and research support. 

Our new strategic plan will address the following issues:

• Continued Focus on Distinction. The University’s priorities are to align its resources with its aspirations and to enhance a small number of strong programs. We will use the document “Departmental Distinction and Faculty Excellence,” which was shaped through College-wide consultation in 2003, as a starting point for determining which units are candidates for enhancement. 
  
  Department leadership will be a crucial criterion. Experience has shown that those departments whose DEOs are creative leaders, as well as effective administrators, advance most rapidly and surely towards distinction. We will continue to mentor DEOs and develop their leadership potential, and we will use our new Administrative Fellow program to integrate experienced departmental administrators into the work of the College. 
  
  
• Interdisciplinary Emphases. In outlining his strategic emphases on excellence and interdisciplinarity, the Provost has indicated that he will support building faculty and programs in specific thematic areas through the creation of research centers. The College intends to compete strongly in these initiatives and to explore other mechanisms for focusing our investments in new faculty hires. Over the coming year, for example, the College’s Executive Committee will review information on cluster hiring programs that have helped build areas of strength at our peer institutions.
  
  
• Change in Salary Structure. The University, the Regents, and Governor Vilsack have all voiced their intention to make faculty salaries competitive with peer institutions. This is an area where the College has made, and will continue to make, strategic reallocations. This spring we plan to begin a four-year Faculty Achievement Program aimed at making competitive salary increments, over and above the merit increments awarded by departments, to our most productive faculty members. Along with other support for equitable salary increases, the Faculty Achievement Program will help us achieve a salary structure that is reflective of salary structures at peer CIC institutions.
  
  
• Learning Environment. The Provost has announced a University review of the General Education Program, in which the College’s faculty will play an important role. We will also continue to pursue a CLAS-specific Instructional Technology Fee, reallocations from our base budget, and partnerships with Central Administration to ensure that our classrooms, laboratories, studios, and performance venues provide teaching and learning spaces in which our students can excel. This year we gained Regents’ approval for a small Arts and Cultural Events student fee, which will the College continue to offer a calendar of performances and events at no cost or substantial discounts to students.
  
  
• Space Planning and Improvement. Construction and renovation undertaken on behalf of the College over the past five years has changed the face of the campus and improved working and learning conditions for a large segment of our faculty and students. The internal and external members of our review committee urged that the University continue to give a very high priority to improvement of the dozens of buildings occupied by CLAS.

Success in improving our facilities depends on collegiate planning that begins years in advance of any actual construction or renovation. Space planning, in and of itself, has been a major accomplishment of the planning period now ending. In fall 2002, the College drafted its first-ever long-range plan for space, which included renovation of the Chemistry Building and construction of a replacement for Seashore Hall. Work on the Chemistry Building has now begun, and the Seashore replacement is on the University’s capital request list. 

To give more coherence to our space plans, and help explain them to Central Administration, Associate Dean Joe Kearney has articulated a “Tri-Campus Vision” that includes a science campus, an arts campus, and a humanities campus. We will continue to advocate for new buildings for the Division of Performing Arts and for an Interdisciplinary Humanities Building as part of this vision. 

The Regents have announced their intention to focus on renovation and deferred maintenance over the next few years. Buildings occupied by the College account for nearly 70% of the estimates for deferred maintenance University-wide. In addition, a study of heating, cooling, and ventilation in CLAS buildings found very substantial needs for repair of these systems. The College’s planning efforts will continue to highlight these needs.

Our collegiate review committee and Provost Hogan have praised the College for the vital contributions we make to every aspect of the University’s mission. The University’s Year of the Arts and Humanities has celebrated an area of eminence in our teaching, our outreach, and our research and creative work. The University has announced that 2005-06 will be the Year of Public Engagement. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is proud to have this new opportunity to celebrate the impact of our faculty outside our campus. 

Our faculty represent the best of Iowa to the world. Dean Emeritus Jerry Loewenberg, elected this spring to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences spent a decade leading a major democratization project in eastern Europe. Van Allen/Carver Professor Don Gurnett, also recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is part of a tradition in the Department of Physics & Astronomy that has made “Iowa” synonymous with “space science.” Marilynne Robinson set her Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel Gilead in Iowa, one of many works emanating from the Writers’ Workshop that have made our small state a literary landmark. 

Many CLAS faculty contribute to internationalizing our curriculum. These faculty make our programs known across the globe and educate Iowa students in global and cross-cultural issues. Our departments serve Iowans through clinical programs and pre-professional practica, through music and debate camps for high school students, and by bringing professional-quality performing arts to a state-wide and regional audience. 

Above all, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences prepares an educated citizenry to participate in civic life and in the workforce. We will continue to emphasize the breadth and importance of this mission as we plan for the next five years.

linda-maxson@uiowa.edu