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Dean Linda Maxson

The State of the College, Spring 2002

Delivered at the May 6 DEO meeting, Iowa Memorial Union

Over the past academic year, we have been witnesses to an historic and fundamental shift in the University's relationship with the State of Iowa. We have suffered through successive budget reductions very different from reductions the University saw in the previous decade or even the previous century and a half. The University has lost $42 million this year from its budget, and may lose an additional $8 to 10 million in July at the beginning of the new fiscal year. The Regents institutions already have lost more than $80 million overall—the equivalent of UNI's entire state-appropriated budget. It appears that, in the future, we can expect the sources of the University's annual operating budget to continue to shift away from state appropriations and toward tuition revenue and fees.

Our strength to fulfill our mission has been repeatedly tested this past year, and we have passed those tests. When I say "we," I mean our faculty, staff, and students who are unselfishly committed to the work we engage in as an academic community. Because of sound budget planning and the generosity of all our units, we have been able to cope with serious loss of funds, while protecting faculty, teaching assistants, and staff from lay-offs or furloughs. At the same time, we have averted the across-the-board cuts that have been so damaging to departments at many of our peer institutions in the CIC. We have worked hard to maintain our commitment to sustain excellence and nurture promise.

We have been helped by our own foresight and creativity. The College began identifying reallocations that could help us achieve our planning objectives and strengthen areas of high priority more than two years ago. A year and a half ago, these plans enabled us to meet the first of our budget reductions. A year ago, fearing that further cuts would be imminent, we began reallocating staff duties across the College, increased the size of small-section courses for the 2002-03 academic year, and authorized fewer tenure-track searches than normal. Early last fall, when we had more information on the magnitude of the reduction for this year, we took more drastic action and suspended staff searches in progress. At the same time, DEOs searched their budgets for as-yet uncommitted instructional funds that could be returned to the College. All these actions made it possible to meet our assigned reversions this year.

We are all feeling the pressure of more work being done by fewer people. As a result of our strategic decision to hold all vacated staff lines open, front-office positions have gone unfilled in a number of our departments—Cinema & Comparative Literature, History, Spanish & Portuguese, and the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs. Technical staff positions have also gone unfilled across the College—in Art & Art History, Computer Science, Journalism & Mass Communication, and Psychology, as well as in the Video Production Unit, which serves degree programs in Journalism & Mass Communication, Cinema, and Communication Studies. The Dean's Office did not replace an accountant position that offered direct service to our departments, and two other Collegiate staff members are voluntarily reducing their appointments to less than full time. Staff from other departments have generously offered their help to those units that have lost positions. The Dean's Office is now analyzing staff distribution across the College, to help us reallocate staff positions as fairly as possible within our shrinking resources.

Departments have had to make difficult and undesirable choices over the past year in order to maintain instructional programs and support the Four-year Graduation Plan. They have offered their curricula in spite of the reductions in our visiting faculty funds—reductions that eliminated 300 course sections this year. Departments have planned for even more stringent circumstances next year, when we have agreed to offer the same number of course seats as we did in the current year on an even smaller instructional budget. Students have (and will continue to have) a narrower range of courses and sections to choose among than in the past, and they have been taught in somewhat larger classes, particularly more medium-to-large-sized lecture classes.

Until the College sees an influx of new funding, these changes will persist. We will have fewer staff, fewer visiting faculty, fewer tenure-track faculty, and fewer teaching assistants. In the meantime, our reduction of the hours required for graduation from 124 to 120 should begin to decrease demand for scarce course-seats. Last month, JoAnn Castagna of the Dean's Office Staff received an IOWAward for her role in proposing this change and shepherding the proposal through its approval process. In addition, changes to the Foreign Language Incentive Program, approved last month by the Faculty Assembly, should shift demand for language instruction to courses in which more seats are available.

I am grateful to all of you for your help in weathering these hard times. Today, however, I want to speak to you about the progress we have made this year, the encouraging prospects we have for the future, and the ways in which we are moving forward toward our shared goals—not alone, but through collaborations within and outside the University.

Partnership with the University Administration

For the past five years, we have been working to increase public recognition that the Liberal Arts and Sciences are the heart of the University. And the University administration has affirmed that we are absolutely central to the distinction of the University and the success of its other colleges. President Coleman has committed to a multi-year plan for investment in the College, and proposed to the Regents that it be funded with new tuition dollars, which derive preponderantly from CLAS students. This plan includes building our faculty numbers and renewing our facilities for teaching and learning over the coming years. Just this morning, Provost Whitmore informed me that the CLAS will receive ten new faculty lines from the new tuition income, as well as an increase in start-up funds.

The President's plan on behalf of the College was the culmination of a long process of building relationships between the College and Central offices. Our budget processes have won the trust of the Provost and Vice President for Finance. We have worked successfully with the Vice President for Research and with the Dean of the Graduate College on support for the research and creative work of our faculty and students. With the help of the President and the Office of External Relations, we are seeing the College increasingly recognized in the University's press releases and other publications. The Provost and other central officers have co-operated to help underwrite our instructional programs and teaching initiatives.

This year, the College has broadened its collaborations with the Provost's Office in support of faculty searches. The International Faculty Initiative is supporting new hires in Japanese language and culture and in global media, communication, and culture. In addition, International Programs' Center for Asian and Pacific Studies has received a grant from the Freeman Foundation, whose mission is to foster a greater mutual understanding between America and China. The grant will help support tenure-track positions in Chinese religions, Chinese geography, and Chinese politics.

We also continue to work closely with the Provost's Faculty Diversity Opportunity Program to recruit and retain a diverse faculty. Over the history of this Program, nearly half the lines supported have been in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In addition, next year for the first time the Faculty Development Opportunity Program will support our curriculum financially, by contributing funding that will increase the size of the course in race, class, and gender offered by the Department of Women's Studies.

We are very proud of the excellent record our departments have established in recruiting and nurturing a diverse faculty and in creating opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds. Last fall, the Department of Theatre Arts was honored with the University's Catalyst Award for its "sustained commitment to diversity in faculty and student recruitment and for presenting plays whose themes reflect diversity in culture, race, gender, and sexuality." The Department of Mathematics was similarly honored two years ago, for its success in recruiting and mentoring minority students.

Partnerships in the Curriculum

The College has a goal of developing an integrated curriculum that includes not only our traditional daytime offerings, but courses offered through Continuing Education and during summer and winter terms.

Division of Continuing Education. This year, Executive Associate Dean Curto has worked closely with the Division of Continuing Education on creative ways of sharing the support of some courses, in order to make them available to both on-campus and off-campus students. In this way, we are bringing more of the College to non-traditional students, making more seats in high-demand courses available to traditional students, and bringing new sources of funding into our departments. Last fall, these pilot projects involved only two courses. By spring this number had grown to eight courses in six departments. Next fall, the number of courses will increase to 12, offered by eleven different units in the College.

Summer Session. The College is now working with the Provost's Office on an incentive plan that will return to us a small proportion of the funds generated by summer session and winterim enrollments. These returns could facilitate departmental planning of summer course offerings that articulate with the academic year schedule. As a result, we will be able to formulate an integrated, 12-month schedule of course offerings designed in the best interests of students, who are increasingly incorporating summer session in their plans of study.

Enrollment Management. The College is working with the Registrar's Office and the Provost's Office to develop better ways of managing enrollments. For example, with the help of the Registrar we are reserving seats for entering students in a variety of courses they will need to create a schedule. As a result, continuing students will be directed toward more advanced courses for their electives. One benefit of this change is that more students in introductory courses will be at similar stages of learning, making our teaching more effective.

Other Undergraduate Colleges. The College works closely with other colleges in the University, to support their curricula with our General Education courses. We also are working with Education on an initiative that builds on the success of our American Sign Language to make deaf education licensure available to students in the elementary education major and in the teacher preparation program for secondary education.

Regents' Institutions. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the language departments at Iowa State University, UNI, and the University of Iowa are undertaking a program of distance learning for students of Russian, East European, and Slavic languages to maintain and enrich language and area studies courses at all three institutions. This program is a farsighted approach to the problem of how to support specialized study when budgetary pressures make it necessary to fully enroll our courses.

Administrative Innovation

As we reallocate to meet our changed budget situation, we must look at how we organize our administrative work, to find creative and efficient ways of sustaining our programs so that we can focus our resources on our teaching and scholarly mission. I am proud of the two divisional arrangements that now exist in the College, and the collaborations and synergies they have created for the benefit of our faculty and students. I am also proud that the College is working with staff in our largest departments to share and develop administrative expertise.

Division of Interdisciplinary Programs. Established in 2000-01, as an administrative home for four interdisciplinary certificate and major programs, the Division has already grown to include eight programs, and next year the number will be nine. The growth of the Division is testimony to the leadership of the Director, Helena Dettmer, and the staff members who have enthusiastically welcomed each new program and worked to understand its needs, as well as to support from the Provost for the remodeling of space in the Jefferson Building and for seed grants that fund interdisciplinary course development. The Division has worked particularly hard this year at making its programs more visible and accessible to students.

Division of Performing Arts. The Division of Performing Arts fosters interdisciplinary collaboration among Dance, Music, and Theatre Arts and administers the Performing Arts Production Unit, which serves all these departments. This year, the Division brought Arts Share, the University's arts outreach program, under its umbrella. Under the leadership of David Nelson, the Division is enlarging the cooperative interactions among its programs, including a shared lecturer position between Dance and Theatre Arts, numerous performances that represent important collaborations between departments, joint marketing of its major productions, and a Performing Arts Learning Community in Currier Hall.

College-wide Staff Development. Since January, the College has been working to ensure that the administrative assistant and associate positions in our largest departments are offered appropriate levels of responsibility, training, and recognition. An important result is that DEOs can be released from paperwork and review of reports to perform their academic mission. Dean's Office staff now work directly with these administrative assistants and associates, including scheduling monthly group meetings where they share their expertise with one another. The reaction to this initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, from both DEOs and staff, and we hope to extend this pilot project to serve other departments in the near future.

Partnerships with our Alumni & Friends

As we prepare to enter the public phase of the University's Comprehensive Campaign, our fundraising efforts continue to grow in vigor and impact.

• Last year, we joined our departments in a unified annual-giving appeal that increased the total number of alumni donors to our College by over 1,000 and raised the level of giving by 30%. The most important effect was to give departments discretionary funds for enriching the teaching and learning environment at a time when state funding for these purposes decreased.
• Through the efforts of his friends and former colleagues, Dean Emeritus Dewey Stuit has been honored with an endowed fund in his name at the UI Foundation. We were able to announce this honor on his 93rd birthday earlier this semester. The income from this fund will promote the development of mentor-protégé relationships between undergraduate students and faculty members. This spring we have made three awards in response to applications submitted by our students or by departments on behalf of students.
• Our development officers in the UI Foundation have been increasingly successful in raising large gifts to support the aspirations of the College and our departments. This year, these gifts have included a significant endowment to Classics to support faculty and graduate student travel, an endowment in the School of Music for their organ program, a large donation to the School of Art and Art History to support the new building, a $700,000 grant from the Carver Foundation to establish a Center for Comparative Genomics in Biological Sciences, a large challenge grant to renovate Dey House for the Writers' Workshop, and a very substantial gift to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication that will equip classrooms and laboratories.

Capital Expenditures—Building for the Future

We are grateful that the University, Regents, and State continue to support our requests for capital projects. New construction and renovation will benefit our students, faculty, and programs for many years to come. The University administration has made building for the Liberal Arts and Sciences a high priority, and the State has funded these projects in an effort to stimulate the economy. As a result, we are acquiring additional high quality classroom space, lecture halls, and instructional laboratories in which we can carry out our undergraduate and graduate teaching mission.

This fall we will see groundbreaking on two buildings—a new Art Building, to be built across Riverside Drive from the existing building, and a new classroom building that will house the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature. In spring 2004, the Myron and Jacqueline N. Blank Honors Center will open, providing additional high-quality classroom space for our programs. In spring 2005, another new building will open on the Anne Cleary walkway. The Pomerantz Center will house our Careers Center and provide new general assignment classrooms, including a 400-seat auditorium that will replace the Chemistry auditorium.

Through renovation projects, the spaces that house some of our departments and programs are being improved. Over the next year, we will complete the renovation of the teaching and research space in the old Biology Building. The Jefferson Building has been renovated for POROI, the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs, Women's Studies, and American Studies, and as a temporary home for Honors. The International Writing Program will move to Shambaugh House this summer, thereby freeing space in the overcrowded English-Philosophy Building. Urgently needed renovations to Seashore Hall and Spence Labs are being funded jointly by the College and University. Finally, renovation of the Chemistry Building is at the top of University's list of capital projects, and a masterplan for refitting this space is being developed.

The Soul of the College

In preparing this report on the State of the College, I hoped to put the past year into perspective, to reassure you that, despite a painful budgetary year, we are progressing toward our shared goals. Looking ahead, we can't predict how faculty innovation will shape our programs over the next three or five or ten years, but we can predict that those programs will adapt to changing circumstances.

Because we are committed to nurturing excellence, we cannot move simultaneously on all fronts, nor were we able to do so before the budget reductions took place. As we reallocate to meet the realities of our new funding situation, we must find ways of sustaining and building on what is essential, as we have done over the past year.

This year we have strengthened our curriculum and our infrastructure. Our faculty are accelerating their achievements—as our Faculty Honors Reception late last month demonstrated. Our DEOs are providing strong leadership for their departments at the same time that many are taking on additional teaching duties. Inspired by their example, and after experimenting with a first-year seminar this year, I will be co-teaching a large, General-Education course on "Human Genetics for the Twenty-first Century" next fall. We have worked hard to make this difficult year a successful one, and this unselfish commitment has benefited our programs and students. We can all take pride in the good things that are happening across the College and University, even as we know that in individual units there are many needs that wait to be met.

Next year will present many of the same challenges we have confronted and successfully addressed this year. The most serious challenge is to create a competitive faculty salary structure. This year, as faculty are lured by offers from other institutions, it is particularly difficult to make competitive counteroffers and at the same time provide deserved adjustments to the salaries of those who are not on the job market. The College will, if necessary, make the hard choice to replace fewer vacated faculty lines in order to create a more rational and competitive salary structure.

My gravest concern is that this difficult budget year and the next may take their toll on the sense of community that we need in order to continue to advance in the face of less than ideal circumstances. Last month, I attended the presentation on the "Soul of a University" by Ida Beam Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Moore. He described the responsibility the institution has for nurturing creativity and cultivating community among its faculty, students, and staff. He spoke persuasively of the need for friendship, conversation, and memory within the University.

A specific proof of our sense of community was made tragically last September, following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. The attacks were a transforming moment for our nation and a test of the values that underlie our national identity—freedom, tolerance, and respect for diversity. These values are also central to a liberal education. They were movingly upheld by the faculty in our College who led public forums for learning, discussing, and thinking about the events of September 11. Together, we were brought to a better understanding of these events and our role in creating a better future. These conversations filled a deep need in our campus community, and filled it in a way that is most appropriate to our academic mission—by making information, analysis, and thoughtful examination a vehicle for mutual support.

In a College the size of ours, there is a great need for conversation, and not just when we must assimilate shattering and horrific events like those of September 11. We need conversation to reinforce our shared values and mission. We need conversation to stay abreast of one another and honor one another. Over the past five years, we have continuously enlarged our celebration of the contributions and achievements of our College community—through ceremonies honoring faculty and staff, through receptions for graduating students, through webpages devoted to Collegiate news, and in other, smaller ways. We have promoted conversation with many constituencies—through our Student Advisory Committee, our Emeritus Advisory Committee, and our meetings with those holding Named Chairs and Professorships. Last year we began a series of small luncheons with junior faculty who had just been reappointed or promoted, and this year we facilitated meetings of newly appointed faculty, beginning several weeks after our orientation sessions.

This year was a hard one in many ways. It was financially devastating to a degree unprecedented in the institution's history, and the change in our financial situation has altered the way in which we fulfill our teaching mission. And yet my report on the State of the College is that we have not only endured the shock but have made surprising progress on a range of shared goals. Why? Because the State of the College depends on the Soul of the College.

That soul expresses itself in our commitment, creativity, and conversation. You have repeatedly demonstrated your commitment over the past year. To help us cope with a reduced budget, faculty and staff across the College have looked beyond themselves to the welfare of the College as a whole. You have also all demonstrated your creativity in responding to what could have been crippling budget cuts. We have confirmed our need for conversation with one another, and will continue to seek ways of speaking and listening more frequently to one another, fostering the sense that we are making progress toward shared goals, and communicating our readiness to support one another in this shared enterprise.

linda-maxson@uiowa.edu