In the fall “Address from the Dean,” I announced a number of initiatives—16 to be exact—and I am happy to report that all of these initiatives have already been launched. Just this month, for example, we awarded nine Research Enhancement Awards to support faculty course releases and graduate assistants; five tenured and four pre-tenure faculty received these awards. In the spring, the College will award a number of grants to help supplement travel funds that you receive from your departments (applications are now available). All new tenure-track faculty are eligible to take part in the New Faculty Support Program, which enables you (in consultation with the librarians in Milner Library) to designate up to $500 worth of books in your field for purchase by the library; if you have not yet made these arrangements, I urge you to do so.
In the spring two faculty members—one tenured and one pre-tenure—will be presented with the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement, a $3,000 award that along with the Arts and Sciences Lecturer is the College’s highest recognition of extraordinary scholarly accomplishment. Many of you have found the monthly Faculty Mentoring Program to be very useful, and we plan to invite a number of guest speakers to future sessions.
The College’s informational forums with students, staff, and instructional faculty have been quite successful. Initiating and maintaining open lines of communication among all constituents in our College has done much to strengthen us as college, as a group of professionals all engaged in a common endeavor. In fact, this is what many of you have found so valuable about CASNews; we now on a weekly basis can keep abreast of what is happening not only in our own or related departments but in the College as a whole—and as you have seen, we have much to be proud of as a college.
I am delighted with our progress in forming college-wide advisory boards so as to strengthen our connections with important constituencies outside the College. The College worked hard over a two-month period to determine what would be the ideal membership of these boards, and the response has been stunning: one-hundred percent of our choices for members of the Emeritus Faculty Advisory Board and ninety-five percent of our choices for members of the Community Advisory Board agreed to serve. This is especially impressive because the Community Advisory Board comprises a number of the most prominent (and busy) leaders of the community and region, and it is a tribute to us as a college that they agreed to help support us with their time and advice.
The College is investigating the possibility of reorganizing College-wide technological support so as to be even more efficient and responsive to faculty and staff, and recently the department chairs agreed to name technology the College’s number one priority. And speaking of priorities, just last week we finalized the membership of a Steering Committee to develop a five-year strategic plan for the College—a committee that has broad representation from all constituencies within the College, including students, alumni, staff, tenure-line faculty, instructional faculty, emeritus faculty, and department chairs.
Many of you have been concerned about the faculty hiring situation, and we have news on that front. At ISU, the dollars associated with vacated faculty lines are placed in a pool of vacated lines in central administration. When a line is vacated through retirement or resignation, the department that had possession of that line receives $25,000 for each year that the line is vacant; this money is used to cover courses through the employment of instructional faculty and graduate assistants. In the best of times, a department should have the vacated faculty line returned to it in two years or so. At this point in time, there are 42 vacant lines in the College (there are 16 departments). As you know, ISU—like every public institution in the nation—has suffered from massive budget cuts over the last three years. These cuts have had a drastic effect on the hiring situation here at ISU, and the pool of vacated lines (called the Academic Impact Fund, or AIF) has been reduced by over a million dollars.
For the last three months, the provost and the other vice presidents have been struggling to devise ways to replenish the AIF and to return the University to the position it was in prior to these dire economic times. I can assure you that the provost has fought valiantly to bring the faculty hiring situation back to normal as rapidly as possible, and just last week the president and other vice presidents approved a plan to do so.
The plan entails some belt tightening on the part of all of us. For example, funds will be reallocated from some non-academic areas to contribute to the funds needed to replenish the AIF. The College will contribute in a number of ways over a three-year period. First, our rate of hiring will be reduced for the next three years. We will hire 10 faculty this year instead of 17, and even fewer over the next two years. The genuinely good news here is that the provost and others did not do what is common in many other institutions: simply wipe out the lines altogether. We will get our lines, but we will need to wait a few years for them. This seems to be a reasonable sacrifice for us to shoulder for the good of the university.
Second, the College will contribute $130,000 of recurring funding this year and another similar amount next year. The good news is that the College will follow the same process that we did during the budget cuts in July: we will not require the departments this first year to cover these cuts; the College will cover them centrally so as to protect the academic core. The departments may, however, need to help out next year, but because they are relieved of the obligation to give back funds this year they now have ample time to plan for the cuts next year.
Third, the amount of money coming to the College to cover instruction beyond tenure-line faculty instruction is being trimmed by about ten percent. The good news is that the College should be able to cover this shortfall, so this budget trimming should not directly affect you or your departments this year.
Finally, central administration will not be able to supplement the College’s summer school budget over the next few years. In “normal” times, summer school is funded both by the College and by central administration. The good news is that I have been working with the provost to develop an innovative way of funding summer school that, if it is implemented, promises to position us to sponsor the most robust summer offerings we have ever had. As soon as we have news about whether this alternative plan will be implemented, we will let you know through your chairs.
In short, although we as a College will feel a bit of a pinch over the next two years, at the end of this process the AIF will be whole again, and we will be able to resume operations as usual. The College will bear the brunt of all the actual cuts, so as to minimize the adverse effects on faculty, staff, and departments. That is, we in the College Office will find every way possible to continue to cushion you from these necessary but temporary budget cuts.
It is easy to forget that in any university there are many competing interests that are constantly vying with “academic” interests for bigger and bigger shares of an increasingly smaller pie. I would like to thank the provost and his staff for the great effort they have made to protect academic affairs, especially our faculty lines. They have done us a great service. I would also like to thank each of you for the part you are playing in helping us get through these difficult times.
I wish you all a relaxing holiday season, and I look forward to another exciting and productive semester here in our vibrant and diverse collegiate home, CAS.
Cordially,
Gary A. Olson
Dean and Professor