College Update

From: Sanford Shugart
To: All Faculty and Staff
Date: 5/15/03 10:41 AM
Subject: College Update 5-15-03


1. New Calendars - After much discussion and consultation, I have approved significant adjustments to the academic calendar, building on the work of the calendar committee. You will recall that the calendar committee adjusted this year's calendar to balance instructional time, preserve the examination period, begin classes on a Monday, and achieve other objectives they thought would be helpful to learning. However, the new calendar also made for very abrupt beginnings for students and faculty, and the college calendar has long created a very brief time window between the end of Christmas vacation and beginning of classes and none between Commencement and the summer term.

As we discussed how to make the calendar support our principles of "start right," it became clear that we needed a 54 week year. That proved a tad impractical, so we looked for the next best solution.

The new calendar will compress the summer term by about a week and a half beginning summer of 2004. This will require very careful redesign of the calendar to ensure that class lengths and schedules are designed for optimal learning (we probably shouldn't just add minutes to every class meeting, in other words). The deans are committed to this work over the next year and faculty should be consulted liberally in that process.

Meanwhile the new calendar will aid us in these ways:

a. It adds a week between Christmas holidays and the beginning of the spring term for students, reducing stress on students and staff and providing more time for assisting students with registration problems. This should, in turn, create more stable classes for students and faculty. Faculty will return a couple of days later than usual and have time to prepare for classes.

b. It adds 2 to 3 days between Commencement and the beginning of the summer term classes. Again, this should be helpful to students, staff, and faculty.

c. It maintains a full two week break for faculty between the end of summer and beginning of fall term, and allows for two additional days for faculty to return, prepare for classes, enjoy Academic Assembly, etc. before classes begin (many of us missed the preparation time and the ritual of reconnecting before teaching.)

d. The regular faculty contract (10.5 months) will still involve 194 work days as it presently does. The summer supplemental contract will have about five fewer faculty work days (reduced from 34 to 29), but with no reduction in compensation, of course.

This year, summer schedule is not effected and fall term will begin as it did last year (first day back is a class day for faculty.) Therefore, the Academic Assembly isn't scheduled until September 16. All staff will be invited and the college will be closed. Next year, we will begin with Academic Assembly in the fall without many of the staff there due to registration, but we will still have a college learning day for all staff and faculty later in the fall term.

I hope this isn't thoroughly confusing. The short message is by compressing the summer schedule a bit, we have been able to restore some time for preparation and a better start for each term in the college calendar.

My thanks to the committee and the faculty association board for some creative work.

2. Politics - I'm sure you've been reading the papers about the special session of the legislature to make another attempt at a budget. I have been very involved in the details this year. A week ago, Governor Bush joined me with many of the other presidents on our West Campus to discuss our budget situation. We do have some good news, I believe, given the kind of year most of the state is having.

It looks like we will get a small increase in state funding - perhaps 2.5%. In addition, the legislature will authorize a tuition increase of, probably, 7.5%. This doesn't by any means fund our enrollment growth. It is a dang sight better than the budget cuts most other agencies, programs, and universities are absorbing. In addition, Governor Bush pledged to work with us to get our enrollment growth funded next year. this would be a major breakthrough.

The budget process is continuing locally through the regular channels. After the legislature finally adjourns on May 27, assuming my guesses on the funding are correct, we should be able to make the remaining big decisions on salaries and positions that will move us to a budget by July.

3. Thanks to the ILP Review Panels- Last year, we revised the tenure process, the Teaching and Learning Academy, and the whole process of induction for new faculty. A major linchpin in this work is the development of an Individualized Learning Plan for each new faculty member and a process of peer review of these plans. The commitment of time and energy by the peer reviewers is quite significant. They are willing to give this energy and care to the process out of a deep commitment to good teaching and learning and a desire to support their colleagues. I want to thank all of the faculty involved in the ILP Review Teams for their significant work.

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