12th Floor News March 2017

The outstanding achievements that define the College of Arts and Sciences are a source of inspiration for all. It’s exciting to see how our faculty and students have moved the college to be one of the best global public research colleges in the country.

This is due to our commitment to solving real-world problems through excellence in research while providing an outstanding and affordable liberal arts education and engaging students’ talents in the global world in which we live.

I recognize how privileged I am to lead the oldest and largest college at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln with such talented, creative and ambitious people. Here are a few highlights that demonstrate my excitement for what we have accomplished:

• Among our many students’ achievements, 11 received Fulbrights. One of these students, Bailey Lathrop (with majors in Anthropology and Geology and minors in Spanish and Mathematics) won a Presidential Scholarship to attend Imperial College London, fully funding her Ph.D. We celebrate with Anne Himes who was a Rhodes Scholar finalist, and we applaud alumna Emily Schlichting for being named to Forbes “30 under 30” in health care.
• Two professors were visiting Fulbright faculty scholars to the college, one from Australia and one from Spain.
• Carole Levin created the first joint program bridge between the college and York University in England.
• 22 student athletes from a variety of majors earned the Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Award. These students averaged a grade-point of 3.7 or higher for the previous academic year.
• Three professors — Patrick Dussault, Mary Anne Holmes, and Robert Powers — were named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Professor Ken Bloom of Physics was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
• We launched and completed a 18 city tour bringing alumni together through hosted alumni events in Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, San Diego, Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln, and greater Nebraska.
• The college launched the Dean’s Advisory Council this past fall semester. The council is composed of dedicated alumni from around the country. The first two-day meeting was informative for them and instructive for us. The council is dedicated to working with us to continue to raise the teaching and research profile of the college.

We wanted to make sure capable, hard-working and responsible students have access to affordable higher education opportunities. Our priority to keep college a part of the American dream for students through new scholarship offerings that was initiated last year is showing tangible benefits.

Enrollment and Faculty Hires

The university announced on September 7^th that fall 2016 enrollment was 25,897 students, surpassing the previous fall enrollment record of 25,260 students. I am happy to report that our college led in the enrollment growth for the university at about 7%.

Not only did we see growth in our student body of the college, but we also added 33 new faculty members to the college. Almost half (48%) are women and just under 40% are faculty of color, adding to our already diverse faculty that is 41% women and 20% faculty of color. I look forward to working with our new faculty, supporting them to be our next education and research leaders, bringing innovation to our curriculum and conducting groundbreaking research.

Humanities Symposium

I want to encourage you to join us for the Future of the Humanities Symposium, March 9-11, on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. I look forward to the meaningful debate and dialogue about the nature, scope and future direction of the humanities. I am excited about the array of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary speakers coming to engage with us. We will explore how to create opportunities to build effective and enduring partnerships that will enrich humanities research and foster further exploration of new directions for scholarly work.

Engagement Awards

Many of our faculty and staff have, over the years, given of themselves freely to broaden the engagement mission of the college. They serve without recognition or reward, yet their service to outreach and community projects that extend research, teaching, and creative work benefit so many within the university, the profession and the community. This spring semester we will launch the Engagement Awards to recognize the service of groups and individuals. Our goal with these awards is to acknowledge outreach and engagement by our faculty, staff and students as an integral part of our mission.

What Lies Ahead

I foresee the college becoming the epicenter of interdisciplinary collaboration—among our academic departments, centers, programs and institutes; with other colleges here at the University of Nebraska; and with our state, national and global partners. Partnerships are key to the college moving into the future. Moreover, the best teaching, research and public engagement knows no boundaries. By prioritizing innovation and embracing our strategic goals as outlined in the Dean’s Vision, we will seek even greater accomplishments in our education, research and engagement missions in 2017. More importantly, I hope these and the many other stories we share with you throughout the year inspire you to help us to transform our world through our college’s mission.

Below are some of the initiatives that the deans are leading and working on to move us forward. 

ACADEMICS + EXPERIENCE = OPPORTUNITIES

Since joining the Dean’s office a year ago, I’ve been working with Christina Fielder, Director of the Academic and Career Advising Center, and Jodi Holt, Director of Recruitment, to weave our overarching philosophy about the value of a degree from the college throughout recruitment, advising, and career development. Our philosophy, encapsulated in the tagline, ACADEMICS + EXPERIENCE = OPPORTUNITIES, is the value of a degree from CAS comes through students’ academic engagement in unique combinations of majors and minors as well as real-world experience through research, internships, education abroad, service and leadership. It is this critical combination that leads to the best possible opportunities immediately following their time at Nebraska. This approach has been well received by prospective and new students and their families at Red Letter Days, New Student Enrollment, and campus visits.

Dean’s Merit Scholarships

As we get ready to award prospective student scholarships for fall 2017, we want to take a moment to congratulate those recipients of these awards for the previous two years. This scholarship is merit-based but carries a financial-need component as well. Of the 98 scholarship recipients since 2015, 22 earned a 4.0 in their first semester with the two-year group earning an average cumulative GPA of 3.553 in their first year. Congratulations to our Dean’s Merit winners.

Teaching Academy

The college is launching a Teaching Academy and has chosen four fellows as the inaugural class, which will begin in fall 2017: Wayne Babchuk, assistant professor of practice of anthropology; Debbie Minter, associate professor of English; Leen-Kiat Soh, professor of computer science and engineering; and Manda Williamson, assistant professor of practice in psychology.

The new initiative engages arts and sciences faculty in local, national and international conversations about essential issues in higher education, develops teaching expertise across the disciplines and at all levels of learning, and recognizes and rewards exceptional teachers. Each fellow will serve for three years, with a new class of four fellows announced annually. Fellows will lead interactive teaching workshops, serve as teaching mentors to peers, organize Teaching Academy symposia on emerging campus and national issues related to undergraduate education, and attend meetings for fellows. The fellows will have the opportunity to visit peer institutions to explore pedagogical approaches and publish articles about topics they explore as fellows.

Instructional Improvement Fund

The college has established a new fund that offers incentives to doing the often difficult and time consuming communal labor involved in developing or redesigning curriculum. This year the college funded five projects for a total of over $37,000. This fund will be available two more years, with the next application period opening in October 2017.

Two New Classrooms

We’re renovating the Burnett Hall rooms formerly occupied by the CAS Testing Center into two new classrooms: Burnett 126 will be the home of digital humanities classes that utilize GIS and/or 3D imaging, and Burnett 127 will be the new and improved home of Geography wet labs (their former space in Morrill Hall will be taken up in the museum’s upcoming expansion). We’re very excited about the new possibilities for teaching and learning these classrooms will make possible for the college. Be sure to check out the rooms in the fall!  

Partnerships

In late November, the college circulated an online survey designed to understand the range and scope of partnerships that exist between college faculty and entities outside the university with an eye toward expanding opportunities for our faculty and encouraging external partnerships in the future. The college defined partnerships broadly to include everything from collaboration with non-profit agencies to social entrepreneurship, translational science, industry sponsored research, faculty “spin-off” companies and start-ups.

The response rate of 69% was tremendous and the results suggest that we are a very engaged community. 46% of respondents reported being in an active partnership now, and 50% of respondents expressed a desire for forming external partnerships in the future. When it came to partnering with for-profit entities, 45% or respondents described their attitude as positive and only 10% as negative. 70% expressed a positive attitude toward partnering with non-profits whereas 1% were negative. 48% of respondents were upbeat about faculty developing spin-off companies from their research and only 7% were negative.

Attitudes toward and levels of engagement in partnerships ranged across the college but our faculty are excited about their existing partnerships and about opportunities to partner with outside entities in the future. Lack of time was identified as the greatest barrier inhibiting the formation of new partnerships, with lack of funding noted as a close second. Not surprisingly, Assistant professors and Professor of Practice identified lack of time as the biggest inhibitor, whereas full Professors and Research faculty and Lecturers said lack of funding was the biggest issue.

The survey also revealed that more than half of our College faculty are unfamiliar with the processes in place to help them form new partnerships, and many are unclear about the value the College and their department places on partnerships. Many faculty were also uncertain about how such activity is, or should be, incentivized and evaluated. For the rest of the year, the College Executive Committee will be reviewing the survey data and working on ways to educate and guide our College in the creation of fruitful external partnerships.

ENHANCE Award

Since its inception in 2014, the ENHANCE CAS award for the humanities and social sciences has supported 46 faculty members with grants up to $5000 for research, scholarship, and creative activities. Consistent with Vision 2020 and the strategic goals of the college, the program aims to help increase the recognition and reputation of humanities and social sciences scholarship. ENHANCE proposals are reviewed three times a year with the next deadline for submission March 15^th. 

International Travel Award

The college’s award for international travel to support scholarly presentations began in 2014 and has now had 58 recipients who have received up to $1500 for trips to international conferences. This program has been a great way for our faculty to showcase their work internationally. Proposals are reviewed three times a year and the next deadline is March 15^th.

International Research Collaborations Award

In spring 2016, the college made its first round of 11 awards. This year’s awardees are working with partners in Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, Vietnam, Turkey, Italy, China, Ethiopia and the United Kingdom.  The International Research Collaborations (IRC) Award aims to develop and enhance long-lasting international connections between our faculty and their counterparts in academic and research institutions abroad. Ideally, a focus on areas of mutual interest will lead to expanded international collaborations. The IRC awards are reviewed yearly and requests can be made for up to $10,000. The deadline for proposal submission is March 15^th.

More information on these awards can be found on our college’s website under Awards.  

Staff Development

The college’s Staff Council has approved 11 awards for professional development opportunities for staff this past calendar year. Staff attended conferences on advising, information technology, leadership, budget and planning, laboratory education and management, and more. Each recipient brought back information that they shared with the Staff Council and their units. The knowledge gained and networks created at each of these conferences have enhanced services in our units.

Business Services and Efficiencies

The Oldfather Business Cooperative (OBC) continues to play a critical role in the college, leading the way in business support and operational processes. They provide superior support to the departments and programs that have been assigned to them and even added an additional department in 2016. The OBC has found a niche in providing transitional support to departments and programs who find themselves without office/business support. This may involve arranging for temporary office/phone coverage to doing a complete analysis of finances and procedures for the unit. The OBC staff have become a resource in providing departmental perspectives and are often called upon to lend their expertise and serve on university committees.

Breana Garretson has been working with the university’s Strategic Sourcing team and has led an effort to create an E-Shop Super Users Group that has been tasked with identifying and addressing concerns with the current procurement system, identifying vendor efficiencies and cost savings broadly on campus.

Sara Mattson works closely with the Office of Sponsored Programs in providing pre- and post-award support to various departments in the college who are in need of assistance with complicated situations.

In the four months since Michelle Rethwisch has been in the OBC she has worked to improve the process by which our bi-weekly employees report their time, training new employees and holding refresher sessions for current employees on how to use the ESS Time Reporting system in Firefly.

Carolynn Kollmann joined the OBC in July and has since improved our file maintenance procedures and created a system for obtaining departmental head signatures on various business documents. 

Academic Program Reviews

At Nebraska each department completes an Academic Program Review (APR) approximately every seven years. The APR process involves a written self-study by the department and review by an External Team that visits campus over four days. Preparing for an APR is a tremendous amount of work, but most departments find that the process allows faculty to think strategically about how to improve their programs.

Last fall the Department of English completed an APR. The External Team was enthusiastic about the quality of research, creative activity, teaching, and outreach carried out by faculty and students in English. We are now working with the department and Academic Affairs to make a great department even better. And even as I write the external team reviewing the Department of Classics and Religious Studies is here in Lincoln. We are looking forward to hearing their recommendations. 

In addition to the departmental APRs (organized by Academic Affairs) that have taken place for many years, in the college we are in the second year of reviewing our programs and centers, many of which have never been reviewed. This spring we have reviewed, or will review, the Environmental Studies program (which we share with the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources), the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (shared with Libraries), and the Institute for Ethnic Studies. We expect these reviews will help us make these already-strong programs even stronger.

Rebuilding Programs in the College

Last year we completed a college-organized external review of our Department of Anthropology. The review team, which included three prominent anthropologists, including one member of the National Academy, made a series of thoughtful recommendations for ways to rebuild our department. Based on their recommendations, as well as on clear student demand, the college has committed to strengthening anthropology in cultural and biological anthropology and archaeology. To that end we are excited to be searching now for an external chair and a professor of practice.

Last year we also carefully reviewed our geography program, including consulting with several current and former officers of the American Association of Geographers. Geography is highly interdisciplinary, including aspects of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and for this reason geography programs are typically found in Colleges of Arts and Sciences. What holds the discipline together is a focus on the importance of time and space on human activities and natural processes. Over the last five to ten years, as a result of advances in geographic information sciences, greater recognition of human impacts on the environment, and interest in building and maintaining sustainable human communities, the field has seen significant growth. At Nebraska student demand is strong. We are excited to begin rebuilding geography in the college, with an initial focus on human-environment interactions. We are now searching for an external chair. The new program chair, together with current and new faculty, and partners in Natural Resources and Community and Regional Planning, will reinvigorate teaching and research in geography at Nebraska.

Temporary Instruction and Increased Enrollment

For many years, faculty, lecturer, and graduate student budgets in most departments have not been sufficient to cover all of the courses our students need. To meet this demand departments have annually requested additional “temporary instruction” funds from the college.

In order to make this “temporary” budgeting process more transparent, last year the college revised the budget request process. This more-detailed request template has allowed us to better understand departmental teaching needs and costs. In turn, allocation decisions were more clear, and we have been able to authorize departments to write 2-year (rather than 1-year) contracts for many of our long-term lecturers. Thank you to chairs, vice chairs, and other departmental personnel that gathered this detailed information. 

Currently we are looking in more detail at course enrollments this year and how this year’s large freshman class will move into 200 and 300-level classes next year.  

Professor of Practice Guidelines

The College Mentoring Committee developed proposed guidelines for professors of practice to clarify rights and responsibilities, hiring, reappointment, and promotion processes.

We worked on the draft guidelines in the Dean’s Office and then held two focus groups with professors of practice in the College to get feedback on the guidelines. After another round of revisions, we brought the guidelines to the Professors of Practice Workshop, Chairs and Directors, and Academic Affairs for further feedback.

The guidelines were officially approved by the Chairs and Directors in December and are now available.

Thanks to Dan Hoyt, Judy Walker, Matt Dwyer, Jeannine Capo Crucet, and Ann Tschetter for their tremendous work on the Mentoring Committee.

Engagement Awards

When we did an engagement inventory for the College, we were blown away by the responses we received. People in the College are involved in engagement activities that have a tremendous impact beyond the university.

According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, community engagement involves “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.”

To honor the people and units that are heavily involved in these activities, the College put in place the College Engagement Award. Two $1,000 awards, one to an individual and another to a group (department, program, or unit) within the College, will be given each year.

Nominate a person or group for this award.

Hiring, Promotion and Tenure

The College had many new faculty on campus this past fall. We were able to make 33 hires in the 2015-16 AY, which meant a vibrant and exciting New Faculty Workshop in August.

Having the opportunity to get to know these new faculty better during our first-year faculty lunches was simply a thrill. We have hired amazing people and are very pleased to have them in the College. The hiring freeze/pause slowed us down but we are still in the process of doing some hiring this year.

We also have had a busy promotion and tenure season. Twelve faculty in the College went up for promotion and tenure and another eight went up for promotion. Thanks to the College Promotion and Tenure Committee (David Henderson, Jacob Cheadle, Anthony Zera [Fall Semester], David Harwood [Spring Semester], Myra Cohen, Debra Hope, and Ken Winkle) for their fine work. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the committee and we were all impressed with the wonderful work being done by the faculty in our College.