Update from Senior Vice Chancellor Couture

October 26, 2005

Dear Colleagues,

The Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs is coordinating a number of initiatives and projects this year that are critical to the success of our research and teaching programs. I am writing to inform you of our progress on a few of these programs and to invite you to participate. We need your full engagement to keep UNL moving forward in our constant pursuit of excellence.

Academic Strategic Planning

UNL is now in its second year of our iterative strategic planning process. Last year, we discussed drafts of our core values in public forums on City Campus and East Campus. Following reviews by faculty, staff, administrators and students, Chancellor Perlman announced the final draft of these values in his State of the University address; they bear repeating here--

We value:

• The uncompromising pursuit of excellence;
• A diversity of ideas and people;
• A learning environment that prepares students for success and leadership in their lives and their careers;
• Research and creative activity that informs teaching, fosters discovery, and contributes to economic prosperity and quality of life in Nebraska;
• Engagement with academic, business, and civic communities throughout Nebraska and the world;
• An institutional climate that challenges every member of the University community to advance these core values and celebrates their successes.

Our academic colleges and programs identified strategic priorities for their units last year, which now are published on a new strategic planning website: http://www.unl.edu/svcaa/planning/ . These strategic priorities were presented by our deans and directors at a retreat in April that was attended by the Senior Administrative Team and representatives from the Academic Senate, ASUN, and the Academic Planning Committee. Enrollment Management plans were discussed specifically at a retreat involving the Enrollment Management Council, deans, and senior administrators last August. And Chancellor Harvey Perlman, John Owens - our Vice Chancellor for IANR - and I have now responded to all plans that were submitted from our units.

During AY2005-06, our colleges and departments will refine their strategic priorities, identifying resources and action plans to support them. Colleges and departments also will develop hiring plans and enrollment management plans that will help them reach their goals. Another feature this year: units reporting to our Vice Chancellors for Business and Finance, Research, and Student Affairs will review how their own planning processes support our academic priorities. And, finally, UNL's Academic Planning Committee will review the published priorities to identify cross-cutting themes that will help us find ways to better collaborate across academic units.

Our deans and directors have been meeting with administrators in Academic Affairs and other university units to develop the response formats for this year's planning process. As for last year, department plans will be due on January 31 and college plans on March 15. Formats and response forms for this process will be released by October 30; Associate Vice Chancellor Ron Roeber is coordinating this process. Finally, to help colleges and departments as they prepare, Harvey, John, and I will be holding a leadership planning retreat for deans and chairs from on December 15 from 2-5PM. We ask that all chairs, heads, and deans mark this date and time.

General Education

Perhaps the most important new project facing us this year is the review and reform of our Comprehensive Education Program, what is more commonly known as general education. This effort is critical to our success as a research university attracting and retaining serious students who will be prepared to address the challenges facing our local, state, national, and global communities. John Janovy, Jr., Varner Professor of Biological Sciences, is leading our General Education Planning Team, the General Education Advisory Committee, and our campus in an intensive initial effort to identify the key learning outcomes that we expect every university student to have achieved upon graduation from our university. He - and our university community - need each of you to participate in the conversations that will lead to a renewed general education program that realizes our common ambitions.

Many of you joined Carol Geary Schneider, President of AACU - the principle voice for engaging and comprehensive undergraduate education in America - when she visited our campus a week ago. She helped us think together about issues facing our undergraduates as we strive to give them the best possible preparation for responsible citizenship and the workplace. And, too, many of you have been reading the comments of our students and faculty at the My UNL website accessible through Blackboard. Please note that another public forum on issues related to general education will be held on Wednesday, November 16, at 3:30PM in the City Campus Union. At this session, Pauline Yu, President of the American Council of Learned Societies, will present "The Humanities Without Apology," and talk with us about why a case for the humanities must be made to our students through re-imagining general and liberal education.

The original aims of our Comprehensive Education Program are admirable, but as for many academic programs in their 10th year, this curriculum needs re-examination. We now have 2,300 courses that meet general education requirements, yet do our students know why they do? Many students change majors, yet when they do, they find that CEP requirements completed in one college don't meet requirements of another. Is that fair? An AACU research project demonstrates that most students entering our universities don't think that writing, civic responsibility, ethics, global awareness, and cultural diversity are important outcomes of a university education. Is our current program teaching them anything to the contrary?

While we work to gather student perspectives from the online discussion board and focus groups, we need you to tell us what you think so that this review will result in the best possible general education program for our students and our faculty. John Janovy will be sending faculty and staff updates as the planning team identifies the outcomes that will guide our revised program. We need your best thinking about this important effort. I hope you will participate in our public forums and college and web discussions as the program develops. Please keep informed of our efforts via our new gen ed website.

Initiative for Teaching and Learning 2

We are delighted that NU Foundation and Chancellor Perlman have again provided funds for our Initiative for Teaching and Learning Excellence. As Harvey said in his 2005 State of the University Address, the Initiative will provide special funding for projects directed at learner-centered teaching and support services. This year, we have invited proposals from faculty and staff for projects related to recommendations in the Transition to University Task Force report, "Everyone a Learner, Everyone a Teacher" (www.unl.edu/ous), and for other activities that support teaching excellence and enhanced undergraduate student learning, retention, and success. Special attention will be given to projects designed to improve retention through strong and creative advising and support services. In late September, Charlie Nutt, Associate Director of the National Academic Advising Association, helped us think about better advising for student success and ways to develop strong proposals for the Initiative. For ideas talked about during that visit, please see my earlier message to our campus summarizing his remarks. And for additional information about the initiative, contact David Wilson, Associate Vice Chancellor, or go to http://www.unl.edu/svcaa/calendar/.

North Central Association Accreditation

James O'Hanlon, Professor, Education and Human Resources, is coordinating the effort to prepare the report to the North Central Association for our 10-year accreditation. We have in place a Steering Committee that includes key university leadership who will oversee the entire self-study process and prepare UNL for the accreditation visit; the members are: Harvey Perlman, Barbara Couture, John Owens, James Griesen, Christine Jackson, Prem Paul, William Nunez, Linda Crump, Elbert Dickey, Richard Hoffmann, Rita Kean, Jeff Keown, Mary Beck, Ben Keele (ASUN), and coordinating chair, Jim O'Hanlon.

Mark these dates on your calendar now: November 6-8, 2006. A successful visit will require the personal presence of all administrators and active awareness of all faculty and staff. Eight Task Forces have been established, each responding to a requirement of our accreditation agency; they will address developments since 1997, the time of the last accreditation visit; university mission; planning processes; teaching; scholarship; outreach; diversity; and assessment. 59 members of our university community are serving on these groups. Prior to the visit, we will request the informed engagement of the whole University community.

We have requested permission to do what is called a "special emphasis" accreditation self-study and visit. Permission to take this approach is granted to "mature already accredited institutions." The special emphasis we have selected to focus on is our strategic planning effort. There are many advantages to doing a special emphasis approach, rather than a traditional accreditation approach; they include:

• Places attention on what we are doing now to prepare for the future rather than explaining what we have done in the past.
• Places the visiting team more in the role of consultant and less in the role of evaluator.
• Enables us to direct our energy toward our strategic planning process as we prepare the self-study.

Our intention is to write a self-study that people will want to read and that will communicate to our constituents what we are about. To do this we will need feedback from many people both to write our story and to strengthen our planning work. Staff who are coordinating the planning effort include Jim O'Hanlon, David Wilson, Kim Hachiya of University Communications, and myself.

New Task Forces on Interdisciplinary and International Work

John Owens and I are pleased to announce two task forces that will work to help UNL better accommodate interdisciplinary collaboration and strategically focus resources on international initiatives. The Task Force on Interdisciplinary Collaboration, chaired by Professor Susan Sheridan, will identify "best practice" solutions for the following:

• Creating and maintaining effective joint appointments;
• Securing commitments from departments to support teaching in interdisciplinary programs;
• Creating effective organizational and managerial procedures for establishing centers and appointing center directors; and
• Handling cross-listed offerings.

The task force on International Initiatives, co-chaired by Professors Kenneth Cassman and Harriet Turner, is charged to help UNL find a strategic focus for our international initiatives; they may suggest, for instance, that we focus on certain countries or areas of the world where we are most likely to recruit international students or cite curricular programs or research areas of expertise that should be promoted because they make UNL an attractive partner with international colleges and universities. These taskforces include faculty and staff members from Academic Affairs and IANR; John Owens and I will keep you apprised of their progress.

Committee to Examine Faculty Titles

Last year, you will recall that Chancellor Perlman and I wrote to you about an issue raised by the particular appointment of one of our teaching faculty. We suggested then that it may be time to re-examine our faculty titles and perhaps consider creating a new title that would allow faculty members appointed on non-tenure lines that are primarily devoted to teaching and the scholarship of teaching to progress through ranks as do research faculty who are on temporary appointments. To address this possibility and other issues related to faculty appointments, in consultation with our academic deans, I have appointed a Committee to Examine Faculty Titles, to be chaired by Associate Vice Chancellor Evelyn Jacobson. Other committee members are: Joy Ritchie, Chair, Department of English; Ed Schmidt, associate dean, Arts and Sciences; Pat Shea, Professor, Natural Resources and Academic Senate; Kathy Phillips, Sr. Lecturer, Education and Human Sciences; Gordie Karels, Associate Dean, Business Administration; and Linda Shipley, Associate Dean, Journalism and Mass Communications. The Committee has begun their work by examining our current titles and definitions as well as national studies on the use of faculty titles in colleges and universities. We will keep the university community informed of their progress as discussions continue.

In closing, I wish you to know that I and my colleagues on our administrative team continue to be pleased with the great strides UNL has made to become a leading research university, offering the very best in undergraduate and graduate education. You all are a part of that success. If there is anything more that the Office of Academic Affairs can do to help you in your pursuit of excellence, I ask you to contact me. You will find information about our office, our staff, and ways to contact us for help at our website.

Best wishes

Barbara