Dean's Council Meeting

College of Arts and Sciences

September 10, 2008

Present:  E. Boquet, M. Coleman, N. Dallavalle, D. Keenan, M. Kubasik, P. Lane,

J. McCarthy, D. McFadden, J. Orman, S. Peterson, L. Porter, R. Rodrigues, G. Sauer,

J. Shanahan, J. Simon, M. Sourieau, D. Winn

The meeting convened at 3:30 p.m.

Welcome

Dean Crabtree welcomed all chairs to the start of a new semester. She explained that the first section of the Dean's Council meeting will focus on elaboration of College priorities, activities, and a time line to accomplish those priorities. The meeting will incorporate an opportunity for chairs to discuss initiatives where they are already engaged in relationships relative to the College-wide priorities, which focus primarily on the NEASC and Strategic Plan goals.

College of Arts and Sciences Priorities

At the last Dean's Council meeting during the academic year 2007-08, the Dean previewed what she felt would be the big priorities for the College. These priorities were again introduced during the August 27, 2008 Chairs' Retreat, and then again at the Dean's Council meeting for discussion in broader terms.

The Dean explained to the chairs that the vision behind the College's priorities is to "Strengthen and enrich the work of the College of Arts and Sciences as the oldest, largest, and most diverse school at Fairfield University." This vision will be shared with the College of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors at their October 14, 2008 meeting. The presentation to the College Board will parallel some of the priorities that she will share with the chairs related to implementation to the Strategic Plan, as they map out funding priorities towards building College endowment.

The Dean contributed some of the language she used in demonstrating the College vision to a previous conversation she had with Dr. Hugh Humphrey, which was relative to the College's response to the Long Range Plan, prior to implementation of the University's Strategic Plan. The agenda and main priorities she would like the College to strive towards will respond to the NEASC Report—implement the University's Strategic Plan in the College, direct and support the College's Board of Advisors, and reorganization of the College's personnel and offices.

Responses to the NEASC Report are dependent on the issues being addressed. A report on the College's Governance issue is expected to be submitted by the end of this academic year. The Dean's are expected to forward progress reports to ?????? by fall. The Strategic Plan will be the largest initiative in terms of the Dean's work with the chairs. While directing and supporting the College's Board of Advisors is mainly the responsibility of the Dean, she expressed an interest in finding ways to integrate faculty as facilitators of presentations or activities with the Board.

Periodic Program Review—In terms of the NEASC report, the Dean mentioned that one of the larger issues would be for the College to implement a system of periodic program review. She mentioned that the College does have wonderful examples of program review experiences they could reference.

The Dean would like to respond to the problem with systematic program reviews. She mentioned that these reviews should be led by departments and programs and the concerns should be relative to department and program goals. The programs are supported by institutional resources, and the Dean will attempt to obtain a permanent annual budget of $25,000 a year to hire outside experts to assist with the reviews for five College programs per year. Some of these reviews are absorbed through existing resources, for example Humanities Institute Grant can be used as a funding source for strong core components. Faculty, within the College, have used these funds to move curricular and pedagogical reform along. The Dean's discretionary budget is also available to support discipline specific resources to guide program reviews. The Dean will put together a broad template that should be included in department and program reviews so that specifics come out of the discipline's associations—such as description of program, numbers of major and minors, trends, manifestation of mission related activities and other engagements, faculty activities in terms of their teaching, research, and service within the University and within their discipline.

Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes—The Dean mentioned that assessment of student learning outcomes is a required data set for successful program reviews. Departments with a heavy core component would relate to the core assessment project. This project should be operational within departments. They should be looking at planning, mapping of curriculum, and artifacts of student learning in a more collective approach. This information needs to be consolidated. The Dean reminded the chairs that the CALC and Core Integration initiatives are two places that have resources to help departments and programs with assessments—both expert resources and financial resources. These assessments are used for improvement of programs and pedagogy.

Annual Faculty Performance Review—This is identified in NEASC as a problem. The Dean mentioned that within the College there is no commensurability of plans. The process and outcomes have not been satisfactory to the Dean or the Academic Vice President. The process is incredible cumbersome, so the process needs to be streamlined. She is not sure that informative components are in place, such as faculty having the opportunity to discuss their goals for the following year and hearing about the assessment they receive in the current year. The Mission and Identity work should be reflected in the Merit plans. In terms of alignment, not only in the reporting mechanisms, there should be a connection to Mission and Identity. The Dean commented that, in reading through some of the annual reports, department initiatives reflected a connection to Mission and Identity. They need to determine how they could advance their mission. She mentioned that the reporting mechanism is working, but questioned the evaluative component, all of which should be aligned. The Dean mentioned that there was conversation among the Academic Deans to bring this conversation forward to the Rank and Tenure process to minimally ascertain where in the existing document we see it reflected and how faculty articulate what they do in relationship to the standards as they are written.

Relative to the annual faculty review process, the Dean mentioned, without assurance that there is money on the table most people do not have a lot of energy to put into the Merit process. She suggested that the College allow the University to lead, because in terms of the Salary Committee, they are looking at coming up with some solutions, along with Billy Weitzer investing in some University wide solutions.

Improving Systems and Quality of Student Advising—The Dean informed the chairs that Dr. Elizabeth Boquet is leading an advising initiative for the College of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with a University wide conversation on advising. Boquet has put together a team, who will be attending NACADA, the National Academic Advising Association. This group will broaden their conversation to help the College learn some best practices and find out how advising is handled within institutions similar to ours. The Dean mentioned that there is too much routine advising being handled within the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Office that should be handled at the faculty advising level; therefore, the Dean's Office developed some intake procedures to follow to help connect the student to their faculty advisor. She asked for the help of the chairs in carrying this procedure forward. The Dean's office should handle the escalated cases and/or challenges that students are facing. The Dean also made a suggestion that the College may consider creating an advising core, above and beyond the routine faculty advisors, for students interested in areas such as Study Abroad and/or broader mission and living and learning related advising. This will initiate leadership opportunities for faculty.

Dr. Rose Rodrigues expressed her concern about the loss of faculty advising in terms of the student athletes. She finds that the advising going on in Athletics is very problematic; it is getting out of control. Dr. David Winn asked if there was a central area that students could refer to in terms of advising. The Dean shared that there are on-line resources, such as degree audits, and also invited the chairs to e-mail Ms. Susan Peterson to inquire a list of these resources.

Improve Systems of Governance—In relationship to NEASC and the Blue Ribbon Commission Report, the Dean mentioned that the College is charged with reviewing the Governance Document. She mentioned that this document is not even internally consistent. The chair selection process is still pending. There has been a lot of data collected from the College with a fifty percent response rate that was representative. Seventy-five percent of those responses voted that there should be collaboration with the Dean, as long as it the selection is not the Dean's sole appointment. There was a larger percentage who agreed that there should be term limits. The Dean mentioned that the College needs to respond to the survey and the mandate, and will do so by putting together a task force. She informed the chairs that task forces need to complete their work within a one-year time frame.

There is structural alignment that needs to be addressed within the Governance Document such as the following:

• The Dean noticed that the Dean's job description, which is an appendix to the Governance Document, is not consistent with the language that appears within the document.
• The College does not have a planning committee. The Dean's Council Steering Committee was voted by the College faculty to represent the College Planning Committee. They were essentially not functioning in this capacity; therefore, after consultation and agreement by the Steering Committee, the Dean disbanded the committee prior to the start of the fall semester. There is already a mechanism for a College Planning Committee and the revised language will be shared at the College faculty meeting.
• Presently there is not a clear structure for graduate education; therefore, this will be reviewed as well. As a first step, the Dean will convene the graduate program directors, their department chairs, and selected faculty actively involved in those programs to discuss commonalities working towards creating a draft.

Implementing the Strategic Plan—In terms of Strategic Plan implementation, the College will work towards integration of the core curriculum, integration of Living and Learning, integration of graduate education with University mission and Campus Operations. These three major goals encompass the overarching goals of diversity and Mission and Identity.

Core Integration Initiative—The relationship between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Center of Academic Excellence will be formed with the core integrated initiative in an attempt to move this initiative along. Boquet is leading the core integration for the College of Arts and Sciences, as a leader of Strategic projects within the College. The objective is to move the core integration into the departments individually, in terms of what faculty are doing with their core courses within the departments, and through a serious of summer workshops bringing these conversations integratively between departments. Because the program directors are the front line of integrative work, the Dean will ask them to participate in an assessment project relative to how integration is presently working within interdisciplinary programs. The Dean commented that she will align the College budget to assure that this work is possible.

The Dean mentioned that the existing part-time faculty conversation will continue to move forward conceptually in new ways. She shared that a College survey was conducted last year, and found that part-time faculty are more dedicated to the University, teaching at fewer institution, and open to professional development opportunities then most. She expressed the importance of part-time faculty having the opportunity for development, but also the need to be supervised and evaluated. The Dean sees this as part of a supportive, but rigorous process for dealing with part-time faculty, and an opportunity to embrace part-time faculty as full members of the institution, because their quality and engagement is so high.

Integration of Living and Learning—The Dean commended the College for their engagement with substantial collaboration across divisions. The Living and Learning communities, the College Dean's office, the Office of Residence Life, and the Dean of Living and Learning, are constantly engaged in conversations and collaborations with a tremendous amount of faculty involvement. One of Dean's roles is to constantly remind the Community that College faculty are running a majority of these initiatives and doing the majority of that work.

The Dean announced that she will not continue the annual Sophomore Symposium, but she will have discussions across divisions with the Dr. Deb Chappel, Mr. Mattew Dinnan, Dr. Tom Pelligino, and Dr. Deb Cady about transition of students from freshmen to sophomore year. What can we do to help students plan academically and otherwise around this transition. This initiative will offer opportunities for faculty leadership. In addition, the Dean mentioned that the College will need to focus on the work that we presently participate in terms of assessment, such as internships and supervised student research that is connected to Living and Learning. Dr. Philip Lane asked what connection the College has the FYE program (First Year Experience). Lane mentioned that he was the only faculty from the College participating in the program. The Dean stated that although the College does not have ownership of this program, she has been in conversation with Dr. Cady, and with her new leadership, the main focus of this program will shift resulting in a greater need for faculty involvement.

Integration of Graduate Education—The Dean will seek a more systematic way to manage graduate programs. She will have some conversations with the other Deans about cross school collaboration; she commented that a lot of opportunities rely on cross school collaboration.

The Dean's Office will have evening hours, one day a week, to accommodate the graduate students. These changes will be implemented soon.

Enhancement of Institutional Diversity—The Dean mentioned that enhancement of diversity within the College was a success due to the increase in diverse recruiting and hiring of College faculty. She stated that diversity was not about changing the demographics of the institution, but more about changing the institution. Diversity unfolds in numerous settings contributing to a different makeup within the college. At the department level, conscientious raising and change, revisiting diversity curricular requirements, deepening those from teaching about others to having transformational learning experiences for students in terms of knowledge, motivation, attitudes and skills, which give greater opportunities for growth.

Mission and Identity—The Dean will have conversations about hiring for mission with the departments who are going through the hiring process. She sees hiring for mission around the question of academic rigor, reflection, and social justice and/or engagement as broad strokes related to liberal arts and the Jesuit tradition of the institution. Rev. James Bowler, S.J. will participate in these meetings. There are ongoing opportunities for the "formation to mission," which is demonstrated with new faculty orientation. Mission and Identity opportunities are not necessarily religious experiences, but often spiritually oriented and more often quite intellectual.

Dr. David Winn mentioned that he was not aware of many faculty who were aware of the content of the mission of the University. The Dean commented that faculty should know, and that this would be a great mentoring opportunity for Winn and other faculty. They should take the time to orient new faculty to the University and the University Mission. There are certain expectations about the kind of teaching within the College, which includes rigor of our courses, interaction with students both in and out of the classroom, and expectations of student development, all of which are mentoring opportunities for faculty to orient new faculty into the College.

Direct and Support the CAS Board of Advisors—The Dean articulated a priority around faculty research, while working with the College Board of Advisors, which entails "Enhancing the quantity, quality, and visibility of faculty accomplishments: research, creative work, and other professional contributions made by faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences." The College is always seeking to engage in these activities, but more resources are needed to accomplish these goals.

Reorganizing College of Arts and Sciences Personnel & Offices—The Dean's goal is to develop an organizational culture and capacity where the College is a professional learning team and diversity is a way of proceeding. The Dean expressed her interpretation of diversity in many ways. She announced the hiring of Ms. Brandi Hayden, Operation Assistant, in the College Dean's Office and invited the chairs to introduce themselves to her as they visit the Dean's Office. Ms. Dawn Quintiliani was hired to join the Dean's office in the capacity of Assistant Dean. She is presently an Assistant Dean in the Dean of Freshmen Office at Fairfield, and with her link to the FYE Program will become much more possible for College engagement, because of her institutional knowledge. Ms. Quintiliani has excellent academic preparation and professional experience in the type of work that the Assistant Dean's are engaged in. She will partner with Ms. Susan Peterson, Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences will be very accommodating to the needs of the Dean of Freshmen's Office during this transition.

The Dean shared with the chairs that the College Dean's Office suite will be renovated, working on reorganization of the work space environment to accommodate staff needs and additional staff hires.

Challenges in the College—The Dean mentioned that the challenges within the College are a reflection of immense productivity and growth. The College has 30-40 pre-tenure faculty per year, 8-12 rank and tenure cases per year, and 8-12 faculty searches per year. The mentoring of junior faculty is uneven; and given the volume, the Dean suggested that College faculty "step it up," by looking at whole career mentoring and 360 degree mentoring not just by through traditional mentoring where senior faculty assist junior faculty through the rank and tenure process. She mentioned that the College does have interesting proliferated ideas, but with rising costs and increasing demands it is difficult because of tighter economic times.

The Dean mentioned that, at the upcoming College faculty meeting, she will present information pertaining to grant activity, so that they will capture a sense of the investment in research that is funded by the Dean's Office relative to startup costs, travel funds, and other initiatives.

The Dean opened the floor for comments. Dr. David McFadden inquired about how the College will prioritize the work that she presented. The Dean responded that core integration and assessment is this year's main priority. There are other initiatives that are on her list to address as Dean, such as getting a system in place relative to periodic reviews. That conversation will be addressed during a Dean's Council meeting later in the year in consultation with the chairs to design a procedure. There may be a few programs that will be ready to begin their review by summer of 2009.

Re-conceptualization of Dean's Council Meetings and the Role of the Dean's Council Steering Committee

The structure of the Dean's Council meetings will be different from previous years. They will become a professional development and working opportunity for department chairs gearing towards motivation and skill building. The Dean shared a handout drafting ideas for 2008-2009 Dean's Council meetings, which will address the following topics:

• September 10—Dean's Agenda for the year
• October 1—How do/can/should departments work?
• November 5—Hiring and Retention
• December 3—Reflections on Core Integration
• January 14—Mentoring for tenure and promotion and creating a culture of peer review of teaching
• February 4—Assessment and Department Reviews
• March 11—Advising
• April 15—Core Integration Revisited
• May 6—Summer expectations for department chairs (includes program directors)

The Dean informed the chairs that the program directors will meet separately, because programs have different issues then department chairs; therefore discussions will be geared to the appropriate groups. In the past the directors of American Studies and International Studies attended the Dean's Council chairs' meetings, but the Dean eliminated their presence, along with the College Faculty Chair and Secretary, because the Dean's Council gatherings are a place for chairs to share ideas, develop skills, and strategies around personnel. The program directors will address programmatic issues and strategies relative to their programs, as they will meet approximately three times per semester.

The Dean announced that she will have another August retreat, which will be scheduled around the arrival date for new faculty. She found a retreat prior to the start of the academic year, rather than a retreat in May (as had been in the past), more productive.

During the October Dean's Council meeting, the group will share their practices on how their department works. Departments are engaged in interesting initiatives that would be useful to share with one another. How departments run meetings, what types of seminars are taking place, and what kinds of discussions are they engaged in, etc… will give chairs an opportunity to share best practices. The rationale behind this is that they acknowledge the importance behind being adaptable to change. There are institutional and policy changes' taking place and it is important that chairs communicate these changes to their faculty. Departmental compositions are changing and methods of communicating among colleagues, which may have worked in the past, need to be evaluated and perhaps changed to accommodate the diversity within the department. An opportunity to come together as a department lends the opportunity for full dialogue offering a productive way of communicating with faculty and giving them a greater opportunity to listen and share ideas.

The Dean expressed her interest in inviting Drs. Matthew Kubasik and Renee White to be on the planning team for the November Dean's Council meeting relative to hiring and retention. Kubasik had successful experience in hiring women within the Chemistry Department for the first time. White was appointed the Academic Diversity Officer, appointed by the Academic Vice President, and she can share interesting ideas and/or materials facilitating a discussion relative to adjustment and retention for historically underestimated groups. The Dean also mentioned that Dr. James Simon has engaged in a number of social initiatives within the English Department moving towards changing the culture within the department, in terms of moving into a different space collegially with members of the department. These are interesting ideas that will be shared among colleagues.

The Dean mentioned that their discussion should encompass some of the more specific topics such as understanding situations that may occur with the hiring of international faculty—the faculty may show interest in only participate in international intellectual communities, non-English publications. Is the College prepared to deal with these scenarios and are we communicating our expectations? Women tend to be more interdisciplinary in their publications. Have there been discussions that certain venues will be counted equal to other venues?

During the December Dean's Council meeting the group will revisit Core Integration to report back to the group on conversations that transpired within the departments.

January's meeting will be a discussion on mentoring for tenure and promotion. Also, incorporated in the January meeting will be a conversation regarding deepening the understanding and strengthening the culture of the peer-review of teaching. Current evaluation forms do not effectively measure faculty's teaching. Junior faculty are reviewed at least once a year by senior colleagues, the chair, and the Dean. Some questions to discuss will be as follows.

• How are they interfacing with CAE?
• How can we help senior faculty who may have disciplinary or generational difference about what constitutes good teaching, which may be different from the expectations that new faculty consider noteworthy?
• How do we know if a particular pedagogy is effective, if we are not practicing that pedagogy?

The Dean will share exemplars of letters identifying chair recommendations, so they could see the variability and discuss what should or should not be part of these evaluations. She will also share classroom observations, so the norms could be discussed. These can be used to determine what style could be most effective.

The Dean will meet with all pre-tenure faculty on October 3 to give them an opportunity to hear about the her expectations.

During the February meeting department and assessment reviews will be discussed in preparation of program reviews. The Dean assigned Simon as a planning team member. The English department just completed a department review with external reviewers and performed a self study prior to this review. They utilized Modern Languages Association for guidelines on how their self study was conducted. The Dean mentioned that she will seek one of the scientists to join the team to share their experience with the core science review, and another member interested in assessment. Dr. Ann Stehney, Director of Institutional Research, is an expert in running reports that could assist departments in finding data that can support or help understand program effectiveness.

The March meeting will be a discussion on advising—responsibilities of chairs, study abroad advising, advising as teaching, and developing a College of Arts and Sciences "Advising Corps." Boquet will discuss advising as teaching and report on University advising initiatives.

April's meeting will revisit Core Integration to evaluate the progress of the College and prepare for summer workshops.

During the May meeting there will be a discussion on the summer expectation of chairs. What are the minimal expectations, what opportunities are available to do more intensive work, and how will they find resources?

Dr. Phil Lane asked if the Dean has a strategy for budgets. The Dean shared that she had an extensive conversation with Bill Lucas, Vice President of Finance, to inform him of the rising costs of faculty travel, the increase demands for faculty travel (due to a high productivity level amongst our faculty), and increase in startup funds for new faculty. The Dean encouraged the chairs to have conversations with their faculty about discernment among colleagues in respect to travel. If faculty are attending conferences and there is not a direct line between conference attendance and outputs, then there should be a question as to why the College is investing in their travel. We need to evaluate the use of our resources, so we can utilize these resources to the best of our ability. As far as what type of information should be included in departmental budget request, the Dean commented that alignment of resources are necessary. Mr. Lucas shared with the Dean that new resources are not available. She did suggest that chairs still request additional funding, so that their request reflects unmet needs over time, but there should be an understanding where the institution is presently in terms of the ability to fund these requests. In terms of asking for new faculty lines, extra lines will be carved from retirements; but, with the escalating cost of salary for new hires, we have committed some of this year's retirement money to fund faculty hires for the current year. One entire faculty line was needed to be carved to compensate the increase in the hiring salaries for our 2008-09 hires.

Discussion of Dean's Expectations of Chairs and Chair's Expectations of the Dean

The Dean mentioned the following as expectations of the chairs.

• Strong communication within the department, between departments, and with the Dean. There should be a balance between early notification to the Dean relative to departmental problems and handling situations within the department.
• Internal problems should be handled directly within the department. There are a majority of these situations that can be resolved with a quick phone call.
• Manage situation that can be handled by the chair and determine if systematic problems can be handle within the department or if it needs advise from the Dean
• Take responsibility about knowing and advancing institutional goals by facilitating these initiatives at the department level
• Be Available to students, including prospective students and their parents
• Act as role models demonstrating the values of the institution—in terms of rigor, academic excellence, core personalis, engagement with questions of justice and rights, and reflection.
• Provide a quality education to our students and promoting the common good within departments

The chairs addressed the following issue to the Dean.

• Dr. Marie-Agnes Sourieau asked if there were any plans to accommodate office space needs. The Dean mentioned that space is a big issue across the campus, so it is difficult to obtain additional space. Billy Weitzer is the leader on planning for institutional facilities. The Dean did not hear about a broader comprehensive conversation relative to space.
• Dr. Lane asked who handled classrooms concerns. The Dean mentioned in terms of scheduling the use of classroom space, the Registrar is responsible for classroom assignments. In terms of the quality and norms of classrooms it is the responsibility of the Academic Vice President.
• Dr. John Orman mentioned that the University has too many administrators in terms of the University's needs. He commented that it would be nice if the funding for one or two of these positions were used for faculty lines instead of administrative positions. In previous years the ratio between faculty vs. administrators was 1:1. The Dean explained that there are two pieces of context to Orman's concern. First, in terms of broad higher education trends, a College education is not what it once was; it is expected to be a full service operation for students and providing a full service operation takes additional administrators to produce these services. The competition for the types of students the University targets, in terms of recruitment, is highly competitive and the amount of money we can charge for tuition is becoming constrained. Over the year's faculty have become decreasingly interested in the part of their professional responsibilities associated with the operational functions of the University. They have invested more of their time in teaching and research and less interest in assessment, program review, etc… What students want for their money and what they want from an education is a different landscape then in the past. The Dean reminded the chairs that the open budget session is an opportunity for faculty to share these thoughts.
• Dr. James Shanahan is interested in learning about the progress of the goals associated with the Strategic Plan. The Dean mentioned that there will be a discussion with the Board of Trustees in October followed by a major progress report shared with the University community. Part of this discussion will include the venue for faculty engagement. The reporting will be partially related to progress, description of new initiatives, and identification of new resources needed. The report will be largely descriptive about the progress and offer opportunities for conversations for next steps.

Announcements

The Dean mentioned that a travel memo will be sent to department chairs requesting a list of additional travel needs. Any travel funding that the Dean approved over the summer should be reflected on these submissions.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m.