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Dear Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you well and enjoying this time of year leading up to school. I know that top of mind are the plans for back to school and back to work and I hope you have been finding the information you need through the sources linked in President Cauce’s recent email and our college FAQ which continue to be updated. While we attend to the health and safety of our community in the immediate term, we have also been making progress on ensuring the college prospers and thrives in the medium and long term.

Our recently adopted strategic plan expands our ambitions as a college. As we all know, our people are our greatest asset and when we work together, we are at our best. This memo lays out two major investments in the college’s faculty, staff, and students and finishes with other personnel news of colleagues new to our community and those taking on different roles.

Seeking New Colleagues Who Add to CBE Culture

Central to accelerating progress on almost all our strategic plan goals is recruiting and hiring excellent faculty who will be cutting edge leaders in 2030 on such topics as climate solutions and environmental justice. The faculty recruitment committees are working on recruitment plans and did excellent work developing the job descriptions, please feel free to share it with your networks. We encourage you to stay in touch with your department representatives if you have colleagues you’d like to recommend or who might be good contacts for referrals. We also have an important leadership search for the new chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate, more information to follow soon.

Once the CBE committee finalizes their selection of candidates for the cohort hires, they will refer them to the departments. At the end of fall quarter we will be looking to the departments to follow the standard process to review, interview and share the pros and cons with the chairs. Since all current faculty will be engaging in the selection process, we will be supporting them consistent with the most current research and best practice, specifically we are asking all faculty to attend anti-bias training.

First we ask that you review the Handbook of Best Practices for Faculty Searches, and then save the date for training.

All CBE faculty Anti bias training

Oct 27 12:00-1:20

Topics: review best practices and resources intended to minimize the impact of bias in the assessment and interview process

All Department faculty recruiting committee members anti bias training – deep dive

Nov 17 8:00-9:00

Topics: building on October training – best practices for reviewing files, creating a short list, practicing effective committee deliberations, developing interview questions

Aligning Faculty and Staff Resources with Strategic Goals

In addition to the national faculty searches, there are exciting changes that have been unfolding over the past few weeks. In looking at the goals for more positive student curricular and extracurricular experiences, I worked with college leadership on some changes outlined below for the two year implementation phase of the strategic plan.

To address expanded goals for the BE curriculum, we have created a new staff position, Director of Academic Planning, who will work with Associate Dean Vikram Prakash and the BE curriculum group. During the two year implementation phase, we have appointed Daniel Coslett as Acting Director. Dr. Coslett is a scholar of colonial and postcolonial architecture and urbanism whose work addresses the intersections of architecture and urban planning, preservation, archaeology, and tourism in North Africa. He received a PhD in the history and theory of built environments from the University of Washington and an MA in the subject from Cornell University. Coslett has taught art and architectural history at Western Washington University and the University of Washington.  He is an associate editor at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. While a student at UW, Coslett initiated some of the first BE courses taught in our College. We will be relying on strong faculty engagement to ensure that the college’s academic planning benefits from the full range of disciplinary diversity and pedagogical cultures present in our college. Associate Dean Prakash continues his core responsibilities in TPMR and college academic planning in addition to  strategic planning initiatives leading the History Humanities Futures Group and the BE Curriculum Group.

Given the many strategic plan goals for expanding student support, we are creating a new Associate or Assistant Dean for Students role to work with Dean Cheng and college leaders. In the implementation phase, this person will establish broad, college-serving student services programs, policies, and processes. This position will work closely with departmental staff and processes to ensure broad collaboration, coordination, and consistency of college student service while reflecting the unique cultures and traditions of each department or program. For the initial 2 year term, I have appointed Christopher Campbell as Associate Dean for Students. Christopher will divide his time as he continues in his role Chair of Urban Design and Planning with some adjustments. Christopher brings a breadth of experience to this new role, as well as a passion for working with students, student affairs and policies. He has been with the Department of Urban Design and Planning since 2000, the Director of the innovative UDP undergraduate program, CEP, since 2010 and was appointed Chair of the Department in 2015. Christopher most recently served as the interim Chair for the Runstad Department of Real Estate during the 2019-2020 academic year, and guided the department through the ongoing pandemic.

Beyond his extensive leadership in our college, Christopher’s own research and work focuses on innovative student programs that combine academic rigor with professional and community practice. From 2008-2013 Christopher served as the Special Assistant to the Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. He has served on numerous university-level committees focused on curricular, programmatic, and policy issues, and has been a member of the Faculty Council for Student Affairs since 2015 where he contributed to Title IX, student health and wellness, and academic policy and procedures. He has been a three-time nominee of the University of Washington Teaching Award, a recipient of the Panhellenic Association’s Interfraternal Faculty Award (2012), and the University of Washington Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award in (2015).

We have also identified the need for a new position for equity, diversity, and inclusion. We expect to find a person who will contribute to equity, diversity and inclusion goals generally identified in the strategic plan. During this interim year while the Diversity Council develops a specific EDI strategic plan, I will work closely with Associate Dean Campbell, and the Diversity Council to determine the next steps for filling this need.

Some of you may be aware of the successful summer program called Aspire but you might not have met the program director, Alexis Wheeler. The Aspire pilot has demonstrated an excellent model for introducing students currently underrepresented in our fields to the historic and cultural barriers to housing stability and the building of generational wealth. Over this next year, Alexis will continue her work on developing internships in the college. Born and raised in Greater Seattle, Alexis brings professional experience in both real estate and higher education to the role, having previously practiced as a real estate associate at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP (Seattle) and having served in several administrative roles at UW Bothell and UW Tacoma. She holds bachelor’s degrees in history and political science from the University of Washington, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a MSc in Real Estate Development from the University of Westminster (London).

In other news, I am pleased to announce the successful completion of a national search for the Director of CBE’s Fabrication Lab. Catherine McCulloch (she/her/hers) joins us on September 15 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and brings ten years of experience in higher education running interdisciplinary making spaces.  She has demonstrated a commitment and passion for building educational programming, with strong inclusive communities at the forefront of those programs.  She exhibits a deep understanding of teaching students from diverse backgrounds, while also managing large and complex fabrication facilities. We are grateful for Penny Maulden’s wonderful leadership, which forms the basis for continued future success.

After a national search, we have hired Melissa Hamasaki in the Advancement Services Officer role, and she started with CBE just this week on Tuesday, September 7th. Melissa will be supporting the Advancement team on college events, stewardship and office management. She brings over 20 years of event experience working in professional theatre, serving as Stage Manager on many productions.  Locally, she has also worked with Seattle Children’s Theatre, Intiman, 14/48, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Rep, and the UW School of Drama. Melissa also brings experience working as the Continuing Legal Education Coursebook Coordinator for the Washington State Bar Association where she worked with volunteer faculty to develop course materials. She is passionate and practiced in event planning and management about events and we are excited to welcome her to the CBE Advancement team!

Continuing the practices of the past two years, I am strongly committed to open searches, believing they are key for modeling equitable practices as well as advancing dialogue about who we are as a community and understanding the potential for individuals to add value to our collective culture. It’s going to be challenging to give the appropriate attention to each search while also making steady progress on strategic plan implementation. We are prioritizing the faculty cohort search for fall and winter and judiciously making appointments for limited term positions in other areas. We have time later for searches for those positions where the “acting” role is intentionally brief.

Please join me in welcoming those new to our community and congratulating those taking on new roles. I look forward to seeing how the new collaborative teams support our collective work on strategic plan implementation.

Yours,

Renee

P.s. If you haven’t seen it, check out the recent post from the School of Public Health Dean, Hilary Godwin. I found her perspective to be very helpful to me personally as well as insightful on the values underlying UW’s transition back to in person learning. I have confidence that we will weather the transition with grace and good humor as we have throughout the pandemic and encourage you to reach out to the department chairs or me if you have any questions or concerns.

Dear CBE faculty and staff,

One of the most vivid memories I have of coming to know the college during the Dean’s Dialogue conversations in 2019 was a phrase from one of our staff: “CBE is a great place to work”. Through the surveys and focus groups, summarized in this organizational analysis, it was clear that faculty and staff loved contributing to the positive cooperative culture rooted in a shared belief in the importance of CBE’s teaching, research, and engagement. At the same time, there was a wide-spread perception that faculty and staff were spread too thin and were vulnerable to burnout, which led to a cautious concern that changes would require stretching even thinner by instigating new activities piled on top of all that we currently do. Addressing that concern, many suggestions were made for creating reliable systems and processes that would allow more people to focus their time on strategically chosen tasks. And a general sense that in order to elevate our work, we needed to simplify, align, and streamline. These sentiments were echoed in the strategic planning process. As part of their work this summer, the strategic plan writing team analyzed the 131 actions that came out of the task groups  and found that over 20% of them mentioned making processes more clear, more equitable, less onerous, so that they better support the goals of the task groups. In addition to the strategic plan task groups, Rachel Ward led an organizational steering group of faculty and staff whose work is summarized in a memo posted by Staff Council in April 2020.

Context

The consistent message from all this work was that we should stop trying to do more with less, and find ways to better leverage the amazing talent, expertise, and resources we have. As I mentioned in my previous CBE Forward memos, we framed our reorganization goals in ways that attracted investment by UW Provost and partners, so we can not only do better with what we have, we can accelerate with new investments and smart use of funds from positions where people have departed. This CBE organizational change is coming at a time when other colleges and universities are implementing large scale layoffs and furloughs to meet the pandemic economic crisis and I want to emphasize that these changes do not result in budget reductions – overall CBE investment in staff is stable. Rachel and I had extensive review and consultation with UW central HR and senior staff in the UW Provost’s office to make sure each change was connected to identified needs and strategic goals. We have placed a great deal of effort in communicating to those people whose appointments have altered for any modification in supervision, role, or title. We have done additional communication with the very few people whose appointments have been more substantively changed. There are no layoffs or furloughs in these plans, which is not to say that individuals may feel negatively impacted and we understand that many in the college will need to adjust to change. We hope those that need help with the transition will reach out.

Approach

Below are the high level descriptions of the changes, and more information will be posted on the new CBE Forward intranet site as its developed.  In exploring options, one of the questions we asked was: to what degree is centralized coordination across the different needs in the college beneficial compared to the benefit from customized tasks with departmentally based staff? These explorations led to the creation of new teams and shifting some roles and responsibilities as described below.

1. Strengthening Centralized Approach to Information Technology

We confirmed that CBE IT centralization is effective. So effective that we consider it a model for serving individual needs while providing robust college-wide support from a cross-trained team. Adjustments to further clarify roles within that team reflect Mark Baratta’s expanded role, now called Director of Operations, and the developmental progress of members of the IT team have made over time. We are grateful that Brian Vogt maintains his role of Web Developer and his connection with IT but moves his primary membership to the Advancement team. IT team changes are still under development to clarify and focus roles and when finalized, the new organizational structure will be found on the CBE Forward intranet site. Questions can be directed to Mark.

2. Expanding the Advancement team to Encompass College-wide Communications

Over 25% of the action items suggested in the strategic planning process included communications and engagement to celebrate, disseminate, and engage partners on topics key to built environments. The needs described included tracking information effectively, telling  our stories, hosting events, and other ways to promote and engage CBE thought leadership and research. In previous years, the college-wide support for communications was extremely limited (a half-time role split with advancement) and it was clear that even with the recent change to a full time position, more was needed. This was an area where centralization with coordination to the departments seemed warranted and was sought by every taskforce group. As college expectations increased at the same time societal shifts pace and quality elevated the importance of communication, a cross-trained team with clear complementary roles became the best way to meet these demands.

Erika Harris, Director of Marketing & Communications, will oversee a team that reports up through Alex Haslam, Assistant Dean for Advancement & External Relations, as a part of the Advancement office. Some members of the expanding marketing and communications team are CBE staff in newly focused roles, this includes Brian Vogt as Web Developer and Josh Polansky in role for the Creative Production Manager, which will retain content coordinator for the gallery. We are excited to announce a team member new to CBE, Jamilah Williams, who will focus on content creation as the Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications. The Advancement team is still finalizing two roles that will support events, social media and digital content. These changes are designed to help elevate the College’s reputation, recognition, and reach locally, nationally, and globally, especially to audiences not currently aware of our work. More information about the Advancement team’s new roles will be addressed in a forthcoming note from Alex. Questions about these changes may be directed to Alex.

More on the approach

In addition to the approach that led to the centralization described above, there were other changes we believed were needed based on feedback that staff were stretched thin and their time was often spent on immediate needs instead of core responsibilities or strategically chosen projects. This was particularly critical to address since regardless of the excitement about new initiatives, it was daunting to consider how current resources could stretch to do any more than we were already doing. Creating more focus, defining more clearly complementary roles, and aligning resources from new sources or recent staff departures are all critical to the success of the changes described below.

3. New Finance/HR Team

In the analysis Rachel led, we started by looking at how we are managing risks in faculty/staff resource decisions and financial processes and found that areas with most risk were also the ones reported as most time-consuming and/or challenging for departmental staff. This was understandable in context of increasingly complex rules governing higher education; as well as UW recent change to the Workday HR system and expected change to new Finance systems which assume colleges have someone who has specialised knowledge of those systems.

To use everyone’s time more effectively while continuing to manage risk, we are creating a new finance/HR team that Rachel Ward will lead. We will add a new HR lead and we are working to better understand how central UW finance transformation can shift some of the repetitive financial tasks to a new hub or be covered within the college with new personnel. The outcome of these changes will be that Rachel can focus on finance and strategic support for the college. Additionally, previous time spent on sponsored research will now shift in responsibility to the new partnership with CSDE described in the previous CBE Forward memo. Questions can be sent to Rachel.

4. Continuing Support for CBE Deans

The position supporting the Associate Deans was recently vacated and we have refocused and expanded the job description to support specific initiatives. For this year the focus will be on initiatives anticipating future investments in college-wide courses and programs identified by several task groups, most particularly the curriculum task group and described in the CBE Forward memo on budget goals for future investments. The position will complement the research team as described in the CBE Forward memo on the CBE Office for Research, and will also manage schedules for Associate Deans and the Assistant Dean for Advancement & External Relations. More on the search coming soon. Questions can be directed to Rachel.

5. Bringing More Focus to Operations Team

Meegan Amen will continue to work in the operations team led by Mark Baratta, but will fully focus her time on facilities and managing pandemic measures. When we are free to use our facilities more normally, she will take on recommendations from the Space, Place, and Resources task group . To help focus this role, her previous responsibilities in student support and event support will move to others. Questions can be directed to Mark.

6. Defining Support for Student Experience

A new Head Advisor role – this is not a new position, but an administrative role we expect will be filled by a current advisor – is planned to advance goals identified by the Student Experience task group and consolidate work previously done by Meegan (student led events and student groups) and Josh (student wellness, Title IX, compliance.) More soon on how this role relates to current departmental advising and the Student Experience task group recommendations. We have also reviewed the departmental advisor roles and made small changes to improve equity. Adding a new part-time advisor for the new Real Estate major is another outcome of this review.  Questions can be directed to Rachel.

7. Acknowledging Strategic Role of Department Administrators

Department Administrators and their partnership with Department Chairs are essential to the success of departments and we have excellent people in these roles. However, even accounting for differences between departments, there were inequities in the ways the positions were defined, compensated, and evaluated. Knowing that coordination between them is key to the success of the college now, and more will be needed for the college strategic goals to elevate interdisciplinary collaboration, creating an equitable basis for these roles was critical. In addition to being consistent across the departments, the administrative roles are now defined as core strategic level work. This is supported by moving the personnel and financial processes that directly interface with UW systems to the new College HR/Finance team. We are pleased to welcome Debbie Underwood as department administrator for Construction Management, which formalizes what had been an interim role. Questions can be directed to Rachel.

Timing

Some of these changes will take more time and some will be easier if they are sequenced (for example moving Workday systems tasks away from Department Administrators should wait until the new HR person is in place). We hope that all the changes will be completed by the end of Autumn Quarter with the simpler job title and supervision changes occurring before school starts. While the transition is underway, your patience is much appreciated and your attention to communication and requests for feedback will be very important. The CBE Forward page will have the most current information and we will use it to post reference materials such as organizational charts when they are finalized.

Moving Forward

Intentionally advancing equity as a cultural value was behind numerous small adjustments to positions throughout the college. By making roles and responsibilities more clear and matching positions with clear descriptions we can connect our review process to individual goals and strategic plan goals. We expect that the structural changes will lead to improved recruiting, onboarding, and retention that will be essential to reaching college diversity goals. We look forward to testing how these small and large changes bring the college operations more aligned with our values.

I know there may be questions around these changes and additional information will be coming in the next few weeks in emails and posted on the intranet. I appreciate your patience as we see how these new structures and pathways work. It’s important to give feedback on how they are impacting you, please feel free to contact me, Rachel, or other team leads directly. While there is no perfect organizational structure, I have confidence that these changes bring us closer to what we need and I trust we have processes to make adjustments as needed. Most importantly, CBE moving forward will be more focused and effective while continuing to be a great place to work for all our talented staff, researchers and faculty.

I know there have been several CBE Forward memos in the past week, we will take a bit of a break from communications on budget and HR while attention shifts to the start of school. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.

I hope you enjoy the weekend safely and we can look forward to fairer skies and better air in the near future!

Yours,

Renee

Sent on behalf of the Dean and Associate Deans

CBE Forward Memo 1

Colleagues,

As we move into the coming year facing unprecedented challenges resulting from colliding crises, I hope you are all as well as can be expected. You’ve been getting information about the measures that UW and CBE are taking to keep our community safe and healthy, and more information will be coming in the next days and weeks. If you haven’t checked CBE COVID information page lately, it’s being updated frequently and is the best source of information. If you have questions or concerns about health or safety, please send an email to <CBEresponse@uw.edu>.

This summer has been unusually busy and there are developments in several topics for which I wanted CBE faculty and staff to be informed since they are critical to the strategic planning process, culture, and daily operations of the college. I’ll be issuing a series of “CBE Forward” memos and will set up a page on our CBE Intranet so you can reference this information without having to dig through your email. I’ll do my best to keep the memos as legible as possible, however they may be dense with information and conceptual mapping to the strategic plan discussions. Thanks in advance for your patience and engagement to read them through.

This first memo addresses something I know many of you are curious about, how the college is positioned to respond to the economic crisis created by the pandemic and how we will do so with innovation, equity, strategic focus and interdepartmental collaboration in mind. Our strategic planning process has shown us that we are stronger when departments and college work as a team complementing each other organizationally, pedagogically and in our research and community impact. The complementary approach is equally important for college finances and below I outline how this will play out.

Budget Overview:

Our college total annual budget is about $26M, this includes a range of revenue sources and expenses. The majority of our revenue is from tuition and the majority of our expenses are salaries/benefits, leaving a relatively small margin of discretionary expenses to work with in the reductions (see phase 1 and phase 2 below). It’s helpful for our budget planning to distinguish between revenue that is recurring (considered relatively consistent annual income such as tuition, fees, and endowments) and those that are non-recurring or time limited such as research grants, non-endowed gifts. This distinction is important in context of our recurring expenses (for example salaries of tenured/tenure track faculty or full time staff) compared with non-recurring (for example part-time or limited term faculty or staff). There are also funds each year that are not spent, some is flexible and some is restricted in its use. These “carryforward” funds will be critically important to ease these budget cuts so their impact can be lessened. Another use is a kind of internal bridge fund so we can continue to make strategic investments even as we are reducing in some areas.

UW also makes the distinction between General Operating Fund (GOF) and Designated Operating Funds (DOF) which are important to our calculations of the reductions outlined below but the explanation of the math and technical distinctions are too long to cover in this memo. Let us know if anyone wants a tutorial. Most universities, UW included, run on an annual fiscal year starting on July 1 and ending June 30. There used to be a biennium budget but this has been shifting to an annual budget basis at UW, though it is still beneficial for the college to plan our budget over multiple years and it is still the basis of how UW submits budgets to the state legislature. The nomenclature can be confusing since the academic year 20-21 (AY20-21) falls in the fiscal year 21 (FY21). This memo concerns the current FY21 which started in July 2020.

In CBE, we look at our budgets in 6 main buckets: One for each department and one that we call the “college” or “dean’s office” for everything not covered by departments. The majority of each department’s revenue has some relationship to the tuition earned by classes assigned to that department and the number of majors, known as Activity Based Budgeting (ABB), and the majority of expenses are in salaries/benefits. The ratio of faculty to staff and students varies, as does the proportion of salaries for tenured/tenure track faculty, affiliate/part-time faculty with some departments more heavily weighted to tenured/tenure-track and others more heavily on affiliate/part-time. The amount of carryforward also varies in each department, most is non-recurring and some is restricted.

Guiding Principles for Investment and Reductions:

Invest strategically – even in a time of reduction, choices can/should be made to invest in the future of CBE, ensure continued impact, and position us for the future. We will not “eat our seed corn” and we will use funds that can stimulate future revenue and advance goals outlined in our strategic plan.

Transparency – communicating key information at the appropriate level of detail for understanding and decisions, building trust through transparency, inclusive decision-making, clarity of roles in the decision-making process.

Collaboration – belief that our differences are complementary and working together to create a common foundation, which the CBE admin leaders have been calling “big boat” , that will raise the level of investment and impact for everyone, developing deep understanding for the different mechanisms that departments bring in revenue and set priorities for expenses, work towards shared values even if there are differences in the ways those values are applied to decisions

Equity – acknowledging different programs and departments have their own cultures around money, different levels of current needs, desires, assets and potential revenue sources. We will use equitable practices and policies in decision-making and make decisions that advance strategic plan equity goals.

Planning:

This year UW is facing reductions and will use a set of UW planning and budget guiding principles to determine how those reductions are met. All colleges, including CBE, will contribute to helping the university meet those reduction goals. At the same time, we are committed to continue to invest guided by our principles and our strategic plan. The reductions may slow the pace of investments, but they are essential to positioning us well for the future and for continuing to make progress on our goals. CBE leadership has developed plans for responding to budget reductions that are expected to roll out in 2 phases. Phase 1 has been initiated. Phase 2 reductions are likely to be announced in January, but planning is underway.

Phase 1 Confirmed Reduction: CBE has a confirmed reduction of $138,000 to our recurring revenue. We plan to make small reductions in each of our six budget funds.

Phase 2 Possible Reductions: Much is still unknown, but on Aug 5, the UW Office of Planning and Budgets asked Colleges to model three levels of reduction to a particular portion of our GOF funding, the levels and impact to the CBE are: 5% ($700K), 10% ($1.4M), or 15% ($2M). The reductions fall more heavily on the department budgets compared to the general college budget since it’s related to ABB income that supports GOF.  After extensive study and discussion, I asked the chairs to target reductions that are 19% of GOF for two departments which were less dependent on GOF and 15% for others. Depending on the department’s reliance on GOF and the percentage reduction, the net effect on departments’ overall reduction ranges from 2%-10% of their total budget.  Timing and amount is not known, the very worst case scenario is a reduction $2M that would be retroactive to the start of this fiscal year (July 2020) and as an ongoing permanent reduction. However, other more likely scenarios include a phased and potentially limited duration reduction, and it may be at a lesser level of reduction. It is anticipated that the legislature will start their session in January and UW decisions on college budgets would come in February 2021. If the worst case does not occur, we are the happy position of accelerating investment (see below on Goals 2 and 3).

CBE Approach:

Over the summer, chairs, associate and assistant deans have met regularly to have in-depth discussions on a variety of approaches to the current budget crisis as well as historical alignments or misalignments in how ABB was allocated relative to actual student activity. Each of the six budgets have been analysed to identify carryforward, flexible endowment funds, areas of potential reduction, potential for future revenue growth, committed funds that are inflexible. Unsurprisingly, there were variations in each budget.  Consistently, discussions included the goals arising from the task groups and strategic planning process last year and we mapped how those goals connected to factors driving the different models. The CBE administrative leadership group explored investments that would benefit everyone, the conditions for justifying shifts from current budgets, and timeframes required for implementing change. We clarified three distinct goals:

Goal 1: prepare for worst case $2M reduction due to the pandemic economic impact

Expected Outcome: immediately adopt manageable and equitable reductions for each of the six budgets to be discussed in the department meetings in mid-september.

Note: If the worst case does not occur, funds can be used to accelerate progress on Goals 2 and 3

Goal 2: Develop the common foundation that will benefit all of CBE

Expected Outcome: 2-3 year plan to establish and invest in common good, immediately begin exploration of investments that will bring most value to the college, such as growing and coordinating current classes with broad appeal, new large classes if market demand is known,  PhD investments, new faculty hires, other initiatives related to the strategic plan

Goal 3: Reach equity of resources, support, and contribution across departments and throughout the college

Expected Outcome: 2-3 year plan to achieve equity between and among departments in the college, immediately begin work to determine activities we have been valuing and see if they should change, look at differences and similarities in how departments handle revenue and expenses, reach agreement on what equity means for faculty and staff workload and contributions, and for student experience.

The CBE community will no doubt face challenges, but my goal is for us to make decisions in the context of a larger plan for transparent, strategic, and equitable investments that will help us as CBE moves forward. As always, I welcome questions and feedback, especially if the impact does not match the intent expressed above. I’d be happy to attend faculty meetings or meet with any of you in my office hours or other forums.