Units

Minutes – Alumni Association Board, Oct 26, 2017

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Minutes – Alumni Association Board, Oct 26, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/26/2017 - 00:00

Alumni Association Board

Intro by Emily CoBabe-Ammann

Intro on teaching and research visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. What role can interested alumni play and how can we participate in this effort?

A. Your voice is important – we have heard comments about better utilizing our alumni in almost every conversation. You can participate in several ways, such as:

- Attend the thematic meetings – they are listed on the website (some of you already are).

- Visit the Academic Futures website and submit comments, ideas, and white papers where you want to add to the discussion.

- As business leaders, engage in areas that impact the success of our students, such as how to expand our research portfolio, how to identify and utilize more internship opportunities.

Q. As business leaders, we find that students do not always have the skills that we need them to have when they graduate. How and where can we engage to help drive the outcomes needed for success?

A. One good place to start is the Office of Industry Collaborations – this is a concierge service for industries who want to work with ��ֱ��. Once a relationship is established, OIC gathers input from potential employers on what they need to see, and then pass that information on to the campus departments and institutes for alignment. We continue to hear that employers want students with a liberal arts foundation. That said, we also know that in some cases the traditional approach does not always meet employers’ needs.

Q. What is the current level of focus on technology, especially as it relates to the changing landscape for jobs?

A. We have heard from industry that they want students to be more than just adaptable. They want students who are intellectually flexible given that current jobs may go away and new jobs will appear. In that case, it does not matter what jobs are created 10 years from now – if the students are intellectually flexible, curious, and have been able to build on a deep practice of hard work, they will be successful.

Comment: We want ��ֱ�� to remain a strong liberal arts institution. We want to see that students don’t just graduate with skills that make them a good employee, but also a good citizen. They need to be prepared for corporate culture and all that comes with that, including issues around diversity and harassment. We want them to have cultural competence, and yet be empowered to create a new culture within their organizations.

Q. What is coming out of the conversations outside of the classroom from the student affairs side?

A. Academic advising and student affairs is showing up at many of the sessions. One topic that is emerging is the need for a coordinated approach to student support and basing it on research-based practices.

Comment: As a business owner and recruiter, I am noticing that students do now have the skillsets to contribute up front, and we have to teach new hires many skills, especially cross-functional and interdisciplinary skills.

Q. One of the ��ֱ�� Creed bullet points is respecting the rights of others. How are you blending this with the academics?

A. Inclusive Excellence is a campus-level strategic initiative that has been underway for approximately 2 years. The focus is how to build inclusiveness into the culture, and coordinate and connect with other units around best practices.

Q. With the changing demographics, there are studies that show in 10 to 15 years there will be a smaller student population, leading to more universities than there are students to fill them. How will ��ֱ�� maintain their student population?

A. We recognize that we need to differentiate ourselves from other R1 universities, and the answer in part changes based on the unit level. Some units currently turn away a significant number of applicants, so if there are fewer applicants, it is unlikely that they will be affected. Other units, however, have already started to raise this issue and are beginning those conversations.

Comment: We are and extremely engaged group of alumni from all backgrounds and across the country. We would like to help in any way we can.

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Minutes – Philosophy Oct 20, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:24:14 +0000

Minutes – Philosophy Oct 20, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:24

Philosophy

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

History of A&S process
Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
Schedule for committee’s work

Comment: The new A&S curriculum has created barriers for interdisciplinary teaching by requiring a class to live in a department. Guest lecturers do not fit in the model – we have had to use “freshman seminars” as a solution, but that does not serve the real audience.

Comment: Universities across the country are doing more than what is their core mission. This has resulted additional administrative overhead, and ultimately in the cost of higher education increasing faster than household income. We need to focus on our core mission.

Comment: Interdisciplinary teaching should be placed on a level playing field as regular teaching. That being said, there is still a case to be made for smaller classes with a standard teaching model (better student participation, can assign additional papers and provide more in-depth feedback, stronger relationships between students and instructors).

Comment: Interdisciplinary teaching is great for freshman since they do not always know what they want to do – they can make a better-informed decision on where to go.

Comment: We need a campus core curriculum based on values that transcend any particular college. We need a good model on how to do this (e.g., that doesn’t shift all general education to adjunct instructors).

Comment: We have been talking about diversity for years, but still do not have it. Diversity would benefit all of us – better for students, instructors and research.

Diversity/Inclusive Excellence is a principal of the process and a topic of discussion. It’s not that we don’t have a voice, it’s that we need to find a way to organize to make our voices heard.

Comment: We need to create a good climate for both teaching and study. There is a concern that faculty are not always respected by administrators.

Comment: Other colleges have more control over what students they admit than A&S does, such as the overflow from Business and Engineering. This results in many students in A&S that do not really want to be there. A&S needs to have the same level of control of admitting students.

Comment: There is no positive incentive for faculty to engage in public outreach, such as visiting high schools or writing op-eds. We need to provide incentives for community engagement (and at the least, remove disincentives).

Comment: We need to do more to protect undergraduates from all forms of abuse, including sexual predators, whether at home or at the university.

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Minutes – English, Oct 20, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:18:55 +0000

Minutes – English, Oct 20, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:18

English

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

History of A&S process
Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
Schedule for committee’s work

Q. We have been talking about interdisciplinary work for years, but the measures of value are still based on student credit hours and majors. Can this actually be fixed?

A. There are discussions about the budget model taking place. Part of the reason for these meetings are to help inform those discussions by determining what we want to do, and then partnering with the administration to figure out how to do it.

Q. It feels like these processes (AF, A&S) are happening really fast at the moment. Is it possible to get a year of exploration?

A. For AF, it is happening quickly. There are other planning processes going on at the campus-level that will continue (such as the campus master plan), and we want to get ideas and input to inform those processes. For A&S, we are still in the strategic planning phase and welcome any input you have.

Q. We still need students to have basic skills, such as writing and math. If we talk about a common campus core, where does PWR fit in?

A. We are still in the “what do we want to do” phase. Determining where PWR fits is a discussion for the “how do we do it” phase.

Comment: We would like to engage in interdisciplinary teaching where we can co-teach with colleagues from a different university in another part of the world. Students like this idea. There are currently significant barriers (funding, logistics) in doing this.

Comment: We would like to be able to hold conferences without also having to handle all of the logistics ourselves. We need common conference services that are both available and affordable.

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Minutes – INSTAAR, Oct 19, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:15:06 +0000

Minutes – INSTAAR, Oct 19, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:15

INSTAAR

Intro by Bill Kaempfer

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Comment: Would like to rethink a “campus core” given the activities in Arts & Sciences. We want to remain a liberal arts university.

Comment: Non-tenure-track research (soft dollar) faculty are currently excluded from parts of the educational process, such as supervising undergraduate students and serving on certain committees. We need to remove barriers like this to allow research faculty to fully participate in campus activities and provide additional learning opportunities for undergraduates.

Comment: We find there are cases where “soft dollar” faculty want to do more teaching and tenure faculty want to do less teaching and more research. Barriers exist to this type of arrangement.

Comment: As a soft dollar scientist, we always face funding gaps, but we still need to pay our bills and support our families. It would be nice to have something like a “salary bank” that we can pay into when we have funding, and withdraw from when there are gaps.

Comment: We are finding that students want some significant computer experience as part of their program (e.g., computer programming, data analysis), but end up having to get a double major which is not what the students want.

Comment: Students need to be allowed to drive data analysis, including using digital works and books. Is there an expanded role for the library for research computing?

Q. If major changes come out of the AF process, it will require a lot of resources to implement. What are the conversations about how to find and provide resources?

A. Everything will be fed to the AF committee, which has good representation across the campus. They will codify the 5 to 7 things that we want to take on as a university. Both the Provost and the CFO are willing to take a look at it from all levels. We are not shying away from the conversations that need to occur. We have a partnership with the administrative side of the campus. We have a fiscal reality as a public university. That said, we don’t want to be hampered by “no, we can’t afford it”, but instead look at it as “how do we organize so that we can do it”. Any ideas are welcome.

Comment: Is there a better way to utilize the Humanities to increase flexibility, entrepreneurship, and impact by the Humanities? It would be useful to think in terms of “Applied Humanities” to increase the value of the Humanities. This should be a campus-wide conversation as it can be something that will attract students.

Comment: Geography is everything when it comes to bringing people together in the same creative space in an effort to push boundaries and look at teaching and research in new, creative ways. We need intention around this to drive changes.

Comment: Being co-located here at INSTAAR is great, but it takes 20 minutes to get to main campus to engage with other colleagues. Reducing the distance or time it takes to interact with other parts of the campus would help a lot.

Comment: We need a better reward system for interdisciplinary teaching.

Q. We need to have a focus on gender equity and diversity. Is that a part of the current conversations? It always seems to come in 2^nd, 3^rd, 4th… place in the process, but needs to be a top focus.

A. It is part of the conversation, both as its own topic as well as part of other discussions. Some of it is addressed by Inclusive Excellence, but not all. The AF committee will need to have some serious discussion on this. There are models we can look at to accomplish this.

Comment: We need more transparency across the board on what funding departments and colleges get. If we find that other departments are more efficient and effective than we are with less funding, we can go to them and find ways to improve our own department.

Comment: We need to have conversations about incentives. There is internal competition for resources, and incentives impact faculty decisions.

Comment: We are facing incentive “whiplash” – just when we make long-term plans, they change. This devalues our work even though it is still important. Incentives change too rapidly.

Comment: We lack diversity of funding and this impacts both research and undergraduate education. We are good at getting NSF funding, but alternative funding (e.g., private donors, foundations) is difficult - our OCG is not set up for this. We sometimes lose out on funding due to barriers.

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Minutes - Department of Linguistics Meeting, Oct 18, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:15:00 +0000

Minutes - Department of Linguistics Meeting, Oct 18, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:15

October 18

Linguistics (7 people)

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

History of A&S process
Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
Schedule for committee’s work

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Comment: Allocation of SCH to departments militates against team teaching which is a wonderful opportunity for the exchange of ideas and for our students.

Comment: Need course releases to develop new kinds of courses.

Comment: Institutes (ICS in particular) are great locations for interdisciplinary education

Comment: Collaboration takes time.

Comment: We need to heal the divisions between departments and institutes.

Comment: Institute research faculty should be allowed to do more teaching

Comment: We need to consider the role of centers in interdisciplinary work.

Comment: We need to look at certificates in interdisciplinary education.

Comment: There needs to be funding to support grass roots interdisciplinary education initiatives

Comment: The process for getting innovative degrees through faculty curriculum committees is too cumbersome.

Comment: Solve the problems for interdisciplinary PhDs; we need a template for interdisciplinary PhDs.

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Minutes – Integrated Physiology, Oct 18, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:08:00 +0000

Minutes – Integrated Physiology, Oct 18, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:08

Integrated Physiology

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

History of A&S process
Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
Schedule for committee’s work

Comment: We encourage you to share any ideas you have on the Academic Futures website.

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Minutes – CMCI, Oct 18, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:06:10 +0000

Minutes – CMCI, Oct 18, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:06

CMCI

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Comment: We need to determine what is programmatically required to link research to pedagogy with a focus on best practices. Need to make it value-added where we generate knowledge, not just share knowledge.

Comment: We need to make the practices of discovery more transparent and outside of the curriculum for graduate education, for example, creating and attending seminars.

Q. If we put forward white papers, it will mostly likely be from the perspective of our expertise. There is a concern that those reading them could view them as self-serving rather than something that we really need to address. How will we know the papers will be taken seriously?

A. We are a community that puts forward intelligent propositions with supporting evidence, and then we debate those ideas. If the ideas have traction across the campus, we will spin off those ideas into thematic meetings and talk about them further. Then the committee will do its best to absorb and prioritize the ideas and will check back with the campus.

Q. Are you looking for ideas that are campus-related, or can we put forward proposals that have a farther reach for higher education?

A. The Provost would like to consider any idea – put it on the table.

Comment: For students, college is becoming too expensive. The students want a return on investment and are looking for jobs and skillsets rather than pursuing their passions in order to change the world in different ways.

Comment: We would like to envision the institution as one without an NCAA Football program given the data on brain injuries.

Comment: We also need to talk about removing barriers between all four campuses to create a university without walls. For example, a student at the medical school who also wants to supplement their degree with courses in the Humanities. The Boulder A&S organization can help serve other campuses.

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Minutes – Undergraduate Education, Oct 16, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:04:42 +0000

Minutes – Undergraduate Education, Oct 16, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:04

Undergraduate Education

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Comment: At times, the campus seems to be at odds with the departments when it comes to retention of students. Departments view it as a win/lose situation when a student transfers to a different department, but as long as the student graduates from ��ֱ��, it should be seen as a win/win for the student and for ��ֱ��. We need to keep the focus on student success, not the department’s success at keeping a student in the department if it is not in that student’s best interest.

Q. We hear concerns and complaints about accountability and concrete direction to make things happen. What is the time line to move AF into the “nuts and bolts” to inform operations?

A. For now, we are just looking at “what” we want to do, and “why” we want to do it. Phase 2 will focus on the “how”. We will be able to at least provide a preview of the “what” and “why” in the spring.

Comment: The Foundations of Excellence report from the Provost is currently scheduled for April 1^st, so it may be prudent to separate the timing.

Q. What is the role of the AF committee? After sifting through the input, how will they make decisions on what is high or low priority?

A. We are hearing recurring themes from the campus and are holding the targeted focus meetings on those themes. The committee will flesh out those ideas as best they can and then bring that back to the campus for review.

Q. Are you concerned about getting either too few or too many white papers? Should we encourage our colleagues to submit white papers?

A. Yes, we definitely want to encourage people to submit white papers that include not just what you would like to see, but also what it looks like, how it would work, etc. Come one, come all.

Q. What will happen to recommendations that do not align with the current power structures?

A. The Provost is willing to have conversations about any idea. Everything is on the table. Once the report is given to the Provost and decisions are made on where our focus should be, we will move to Phase 2 and determine what barriers need to be resolved to implement the ideas.

Comment: When talking about tuition, we need to use the language “keeping it affordable” rather than “lowering tuition”, and then keep an open mind on how we get there. There are many ways to solve for affordability.

Q. We have seen some unintended consequences affecting the image of ��ֱ�� – ��ֱ�� is now seen as a “Science and Engineering” campus. Gender-based trends relating to this is disturbing, and it affects every department and class. What are we trying to portray/project as ��ֱ��?

A. It is unclear if we have consensus on that and if we can solve it. We need specific ideas on what to solve and how to solve it.

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Minutes – Critical Media Practices, Oct 13, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:02:53 +0000

Minutes – Critical Media Practices, Oct 13, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:02

Critical Media Practices

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

History of A&S process
Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
Schedule for committee’s work

Comment: The Critical Media Practices program is designed to be an interdisciplinary program. Some of the institutional barriers to interdisciplinary work that have been identified so far are:

Budget and funding models – the current formula is based on majors – a model based on majors plus “students in seats” would be better for inter-departmental teaching
Cross-listing courses
Finding space/rooms that work for interdisciplinary courses

Q. Is diversity of faculty and student body a priority?

A. Inclusive excellence is a particular focus of this process. It is one of the topics and the conversation will be about practices, classes, pedagogy, etc.

Comment: On-campus childcare should be considered for attracting and retaining younger faculty. Childcare costs are prohibitive on an assistant professor salary.

Q. Are we considering a model where students can create their own majors?

A. We want to discuss any idea and are open to looking at this.

Comment: We need some infrastructure and funding for cross-disciplinary team teaching and connecting all of the arts on campus. Examples – visiting artists who are not tied to one budget, getting the various graduate students together.

Comment: Space is a big concern

Need different spaces than standard classrooms
Need to be nearer to our co-partners, as proximity helps foster community and creativity; need places to gather, participate, and converse; where do we find out what each other is doing?
Current disjoint model is not sustainable
New teaching methods need a way to try new methods and see what works

Comment: ATLAS no longer seems to be available, need to get back to the spirit of ATLAS – the need and desire still exists and remains unresolved; we keep building different labs across campus with different technology, versions, etc.

Need technological rooms built and managed centrally for collaborative use at all levels – undergraduate, graduate and faculty
Need centralized management to cover the different technology needs, manage software versions, and fix and upgrade technology
Different departments can contribute in various ways

Comment: We do not want “interdisciplinary” used as an excuse to create more bureaucratic and/or centralized hierarchy, for example budgets – we still need departmental operating budgets to react quickly.

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Minutes - Law School Meeting, Oct 12, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 17:00:04 +0000

Minutes - Law School Meeting, Oct 12, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2017 - 11:00

Law School

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and research visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. Does it really make sense to consider the AF process without defining the problems we are trying to solve from a state, national, or global view? Should we organize around problem solving? When you have several people from several disciplines looking at the problem, it helps keep the efforts focused.

A. This process is not focusing on picking one particular challenge to solve. The purpose of this process is to engage the entire campus in open and honest conversations and reach a consensus as a campus on where to focus our efforts. If the campus determines that a problem-solving model is needed, then we will consider it.

Q. Is everything on the table, for example, tenure?

A. The Provost is willing to listen to anything that the campus wants to raise, even something as large as tenure. That being said, the units have control over the criteria for excellence in promotion and tenure and over their annual merit process. Changes can happen quicker at the unit-level than the campus-level. Still, there are many conversations in AF meetings about what should be included in “teaching excellence” or as service.

Q. The university is continually reacting to corporate and other outside influences and pressures. It would be nice to have a defense against these types of influences.

A. While recognizing the changing attitudes towards higher education, the university wants to move from a defensive mechanism to one where we continue to garner respect as a university. We want to protect what is important in a way that also looks forward.

Q. Interdisciplinary work is great. It was promoted in the ��ֱ�� 2030 plan, but nothing happened. We are skeptical that this will lead to operational changes.

A. The first phase of AF is to get the input from the campus. In the next phase, we will likely create projects for the campus, such as “Interdisciplinary Teaching”. That phase will be about practices, including identifying and fixing barriers. It will include both academic and non-academic implementation teams. The intent is for the AF process to help keep the vision in front of the campus so that progress continues.

Comment: We need to remember the importance of recognizing that we are a public institution and think about what this means at the state, national, and international levels.

Comment: The Law School has become “elite” because of the cost of tuition. Scholarships tend to be awarded on merit rather than need. We need recognize the importance of providing access and keep tuition costs down.

Q. How does AF relate to the Strategic Imperatives?

A. The Strategic Imperatives were set by the Chancellor for us to take into account as we do our daily business. They provide the high-level guidance. Any strategic plan exercise needs to align with those imperatives. AF is the mid-level “what do we want to do” effort to meet those imperatives.

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