Senate Leadership has been asked to recommend faculty for a number of committees and working groups. If you are interested in serving, please email senatecoordinator@uoregon.edu.
- Senate Budget Committee
The Senate will vote on one additional Senator to be appointed to Senate Budget Committee. This committee meets approximately once a month and is responsible for providing faculty input into the portions of the university budget which impact academics. The Senate President will appoint another member to this committee–if you are interested in serving, or know someone who is, please send an email to senatevp@uoregon.edu. More information here:
- CHC and Grad School Dean Search Committees
Chris,
I am pleased to announce that Bruce Blonigen, Dean for Faculty and Operations, College of Arts and Sciences, has agreed to chair the search committee for the new dean of the Clark Honors College. Christoph Lindner, Dean of the College of Design, has agreed to chair the search for the new Dean of the Graduate School. Both searches will be supported by an executive search firm.
Input from the University Senate is very important in the process of filling an academic leadership position and I would very much appreciate your suggestions for nominees who can bring the senate perspective to the process…
Thank you for your help.
Best regards,
Jayanth Banavar
Provost and Senior Vice President
- CAS Small Programs Working Group
From: W. Andrew Marcus, Tykeson Dean of Arts & Sciences, Bruce Blonigen, Dean for Faculty and Operations
Re: CALL for Nominees for Small Programs Working Group
There are a total of about 20 small programs in the College of Arts and Sciences at any given time. These are typically interdisciplinary programs that offer a minor, graduate certificate, or undergraduate certificate. (Some also offer a major.) Created organically by our faculty, they are an important source of curricular diversity and innovation for the College and University. Often, they are also important focal points for interdisciplinary scholarship and/or community for diverse faculty and students. While a few have quickly blossomed into highly successful programs, many of them have seen dwindling student involvement in recent years.
We recently updated our compensation schedules for department heads and program directors. Because we had not updated this in many years, we found quite a few mismatches between resources we were giving small programs (and their directors) and the number of students they were serving. These mismatches have been addressed in the updated schedules in the following way. First, we have now tied compensation of the small program directors to the number of students (or advisees) they have in the program. Second, in order to support research-related event programming that small programs often find valuable, we now direct programs to apply for CAS program grants and have increased the budget we have for these grants.
While these changes have better aligned our scarce resources with academic activity, we recognize that there may be remaining concerns and perspectives. We also want to explore with faculty how we can best be proactive in supporting innovation, diversity, and interdisciplinary curriculum and scholarship that comes from our small programs within the constraints of our limited resources.
In particular, we are seeking nominations for faculty members to serve on a working group to explore and analyze the following questions (and other related questions):
1) When and how do we encourage innovation and creation of new programs that will interest both faculty and students?
2) When and how do we decide when programs are no longer successful and should be discontinued?
3) Often programs may be strong in one dimension (e.g., important for scholarship), but weak in other dimensions (e.g., few students). How should we distinguish between programs that have different strengths, and what types of resources should be available to them?
We plan to form a working group of faculty and staff with diverse perspectives, and will also work with the UO Senate to identify potential members. We would expect that the committee will be able to complete its work and provide recommendations to the CAS Dean no later than February 15, 2018.
To nominate someone for this working group, please email casdean@uoregon.edu
- CAS Tykeson Hall Working Group
From: W. Andrew Marcus, Tykeson Dean of Arts & Sciences, Bruce Blonigen, Dean for Faculty and Operations
Re: CALL for Nominees for Tykeson Hall Working Group
In fall 2019, the College of Arts and Sciences will open the new Tykeson Hall. The vision for Tykeson is for a building that will not only serve as the “home” for the College, but one that will provide an integrated and seamless academic and career advising experience for students that informs them about the many and varied professional paths that lead from a liberal arts education. This vision has resonated strongly with many constituents and immediately garnered state and philanthropic support. Now we have to develop tangible plans to implement that vision.
Some of that work has already occurred. Over the past 18 months, we have consulted with a wide variety of users groups to inform professional teams who have developed plans for not only a beautiful building in the heart of campus, but also a truly active, collaborative, and welcoming space inside. Besides classrooms, the main student-oriented spaces in the building will serve first-year writing and math courses and academic and career advising.
A remaining crucial task is to develop a plan for how faculty and staff will most effectively provide student services in the building, and how they will collaborate and work with related faculty and staff in departments and other units across campus. The most ambitious task is to develop an integrated and seamless academic and advising experience for students – a critical need for our College. There are a number of goals for developing an implementation plan for the advising functions in the building that we would like a Tykeson working group to examine:
1) Integration of existing academic and career advising services into a well-functioning and collaborative unit
2) Development of a professional advising team that will provide advising for majors in the College as much as is practically possible
3) How to engage and proactively advise students more intensively from the first day they step on campus until they graduate (and beyond?)
4) Ways to inform and market the value of liberal arts degrees for professional pursuits
We plan to form a working group of faculty and staff with diverse perspectives, and will also work with the UO Senate to identify potential members. We would expect that the committee will be able to complete its work and provide recommendations to the CAS Dean no later than May 1, 2018.
To nominate someone for this working group, please email casdean@uoregon.edu.