Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost

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1 November 14, 2011 Dear Dr. Stevenson, Please, accept my application for the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. I am confident my experience, abilities, and approach will contribute to realize CU- Boulder s Vision of becoming the model for the new flagship university. My experience as an administrator began with my appointment as Associate Dean of Faculties in January of I held this position until 2009, the year I competed for and was appointed Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost. The mission of my office encompasses multiple responsibilities, all of which support the university s mission while enhancing the university climate for faculty, students and staff. I take pride in ensuring that high rigor and excellence are expectations upheld throughout all search, promotion and evaluation practices. To achieve the goals of the office, I have developed strong, collegial relationships with university administrators (particularly academic deans and department heads), the faculty at large, as well as staff and students. In my tenure in the office, I have developed or modified processes designed to oversee or monitor the fairness and fidelity with which administrative, grievance, promotion and educational processes are carried out. I work collaboratively with college deans and department heads in a broad range of initiatives and goals, from those aimed to elevate the faculty, to those that create and enhance interdisciplinary engagement, to setting the vision and ensuing strategic planning for the university. The mission of the Dean of Faculties office is guided by the principles of academic freedom, shared governance, equity and justice. The Dean of Faculties leads by example in recognizing, appreciating, and celebrating disciplinary, social, cultural and individual diversity. The Office of the Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost is organized into seven separate offices, the Dean of Faculties, the Center for Teaching Excellence, International Faculty and Scholar Services, Inter-college Interdisciplinary Degree Programs, the Faculty Senate, Callaloo the premier journal of the African Diaspora arts and letters, and the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts. In all, 34 full time employees and 15 to 20 undergraduate and graduate student-workers make up the Dean of Faculties and affiliated offices. Direct reports include three Associate Deans, an Assistant Dean, and two Directors (with the exception of the assistant dean, all others are faculty). Information about the mission and activities of these offices can be pursued through links found at The Dean of Faculties, including its affiliated offices, manages a budget of about $5 M, with well over $3 M dedicated to support academic (e.g., conferences, speaker series, curricular development), faculty development (e.g., workshops, mentoring, consultation services), and employment-related programs (e.g., partner placement, development [sabbatical] leave, equity studies, climate assessment). My CV describes in detail my roles, examples of my initiatives and programs, as well as a comprehensive list of my tasks and responsibilities. The CV includes a complete list of my publications and other academic achievements. You will see that I not only fulfill all the required qualifications and competencies but that I also have ample experience in the Academic Administration/Management, Human Resources Management, and Service domains. 1

2 I am cognizant that the college dean's role in higher education is shifting to an outward focus. As budgets shrink and aspirations grow, a dean must take an active role in securing revenue through fund-raising and development. This outward focus brings two challenges. Having the role of collecting and interpreting faculty feedback for the evaluation of college deans, I have learned that fundraising should be a means to an end. First, deans must pursue development but remain true to the mission of the college and stay connected to the faculty, staff, and students. Second, deans need to feel comfortable communicating with external audiences about their plans and ideas. I am comfortable relating to people in a wide variety of contexts and circumstances and I am confident in my ability to establish partnerships with private entities or offer gift opportunities to potential donors. As an Assistant Professor I established a partnership with the local corrections department to fulfill their service needs through internships covered by clinical-psychology students. This relationship has provided stipends to 1-3 graduate students for over 15 years. I created the International Committee of the National Hispanic Network on Drug Abuse in 2004 and have procured from government agencies, international organizations, and individuals over $160 K to support travel and lodging expenses of foreign investigators and students attending the network s annual conference. My office has been successful in obtaining support from our alumni, The Association of Former Students. For example in the last two years we have received over $400 K to fund programs and activities carried out through the Dean of Faculties Office and the Center for Teaching Excellence. I realize these amounts are drops in a bucket, but fundraising and development per se have never been responsibilities assigned to my professional roles. I have nonetheless been proactive in pursuing external sources of revenue through the establishment of partnerships and philanthropy. In addition, in my role of Dean of Faculties I am a Co-PI of a $4 M grant funded by NSF s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Program to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Finally, the Provost trusted my office with $1 M of recurring funding to develop and manage a program designed to enhance the learning experience of students through the incorporation of interdisciplinary research in the curriculum. It is important I share my thoughts regarding the status and future of public, research-intensive universities. I am optimistic but I realize that the credibility of higher education is under siege. College costs and students debt continue to rise. In the current economy, the prospects for good employment opportunities dwindle, even for those with a college degree. More troublesome is a growing concern that many students graduate without the most fundamental skills: the ability to reason, communicate, analyze and solve complex problems, to be creative. It is not surprising that a substantial constituency of stakeholders is raising skepticism over the value and return on investment in higher education. Demagogues, politicians, legislators, and even university trustees, are demanding swift, drastic reforms that menace the survival of the public research university as we know it. Engagement in research and creative work is being criticized, in part because it takes faculty away from the classroom, but most deeply because our stakeholders fail to understand the role scholarship, research and creative works have in advancing society and humanizing the individual. Most impacted by this lack of appreciation is the heart and soul of the academy: the arts, the humanities, and the basic pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake. 2

3 Faculty and administrators must remain true to the core mission of the university: a deep commitment to educate and prepare its students to become lifelong independent learners able to adapt and contribute to the rapidly changing world, the dissemination of new knowledge and creative works through the peer review process, and the satisfying task of giving back to society. However, faculty and administrators must also accept and embrace change because change provides the only path to progress. Part of that change involves faculty learning to educate and help stakeholders, starting with our own students, appreciate what faculty do and the relevance of their research and creative works. For example, through the Center for Teaching Excellence, my office is encouraging faculty to incorporate within their curricula direct relational links to their scholarship. We also created an online syllabus builder that reminds faculty of the option to offer a description of their research and creative works, and to explain how their scholarly work relates to their pedagogy and the content of their course. Similarly, we have formed a learning community to tutor faculty on how to integrate their teaching and research or translate their research into innovations in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Finally, we are working to create workshops that will help faculty communicate the relevance of their work to the public at large. The university will need to harness new and varied modalities of learning that are more interactive, more collaborative and more effective. Through an internal grant mechanism, and in consultation with the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate and the college deans, my office developed and will manage an incentive program seeking to enhance the learning experience of the student through the integration of multidisciplinary research and creative activities. This program will award $1 M in recurrent funding to support up to 10 proposals annually. With time, as the quality of long-distance instruction improves, online universities will challenge the return in investment and need for the residential university. This semester I invited José Bowen, Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, to share his vision for the use of new technologies to improve student learning. I agree with him that new technologies must be used primarily to increase student preparation and online learning outside of the classroom so that in-class time can be dedicated to guide interactions and critical analysis exercises between the students. Residential universities will remain competitive to the extent that in-class time is used to share and challenge ideas rather than to merely present content through lectures. Regardless of degree program, public universities should give students the opportunity to leave college with excellent communication skills, the ability to persuade others, to work with people at a distance, people who are not from the same culture, and to dialogue with them about complex issues. Faculty in colleges of Arts and Sciences are the best suited to lead the university in developing students into creative, critical thinkers able to relate and communicate effectively in a global, diverse society. Whereas faculty should be the ones taking up the challenge and be responsible for developing and implementing the curriculum, administrators must facilitate the work of the faculty and reward their efforts. We recently organized a workshop to encourage faculty to develop high impact international experiences. The workshop, co-sponsored by the Dean of Faculties, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Study Abroad Programs Office, shared good practices on how to create a successful high impact, international experience for undergraduate students. For the university to achieve its mission, rewards and incentives must be congruent with the goals and objectives. Last year I chaired a task force composed of faculty and department heads charged with providing 3

4 guidance on faculty performance evaluations. Among other recommendations, the committee emphasized that: any university guideline should be flexible to accommodate different unit needs; deans, department heads and faculty should contribute to the development of the evaluation system; the primary responsibility of selecting indicators of excellence resides with the faculty; evaluations should be both summative and formative; and multiple sources and indicators should be used in performance evaluations. Several actions were recommended and are being implemented through my office. We are modifying faculty rules, facilitating dialogues between faculty and administrators, and providing consultation and training services through the Center for Teaching Excellence. For example, the revision of the faculty rule states that scholarly community engagement, interdisciplinary activities, and globalization and diversity efforts must be considered in the evaluation of faculty performance. The rule also states that individual faculty load assignments across teaching, research and creative works, and service must be flexible but remain congruent with university, college and departmental goals. To help the implementation of these recommendations, I developed a guideline that outlines the process of how to decide and what to consider for inclusion in the annual merit evaluation. The committee also developed a general framework (in the form of a matrix) for faculty teaching performance evaluation. The matrix identified components of teaching to be evaluated (e.g., delivery, mastery of content, classroom management) and recommended indicators associated with each component, as well as recommended sources of data including student, peer, administrator, and self evaluations. My office organized forums to explain the task force recommendations and listen to the concerns of faculty and administrators. Using the feedback received, I charged the Center for Teacher Excellence with developing a program that will help departments identify the relevant domains, indicators, and methods that will improve the assessment of faculty performance in teaching. I will end with my philosophy and approach to diversity. Diversity comes with challenges. Consensus takes longer to develop in diverse groups; and diversity takes individuals out of their comfort zone. However, the benefits of diversity far outweigh the loss in efficiency. Without diversity we are limited to the confines of monotony and sameness; in overcoming our fears and adapting to new challenges we mature. Diversity increases the potential to excellence because diversity enriches the pool of ideas and nurtures human creativity. In the university, appreciation and advocacy for diversity includes but goes beyond equity in treatment and representation of women and minorities. Diversity also embraces also individual differences in culture, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race and ethnic identity, age. There is also diversity of disciplines and approaches to understand life and human interaction. Even within disciplines and specific areas of study one can find multitude of approaches to scholarship, research and artistic expression. From the experience of studying hundreds of tenure and/or promotion cases from 11 colleges and 66 academic departments over a 6 year period, I have learned to appreciate that departments and colleges have distinct, valid ways to encourage, achieve and recognize excellence. In all my professional roles I have been a strong advocate of diversity, women and underrepresented minorities. I have made intentional, successful efforts to attract and retain students of color. Of the 15 graduate students I have mentored to master and/or doctoral degrees you ll find that the majority were women and minorities. Through the Dean of Faculties office I have supported up to 25 identity-based faculty and staff networks. In cooperation with the Women s Faculty Network, my office provides support and guidance for a faculty mentoring program that reaches men and women regardless of their race and ethnic identity. Since 2006 I have conducted faculty search committee workshops that train faculty, staff and administrators to increase the diversity of their applicant pools, avoid the 4

5 pitfalls of stereotyping and misleading biases in the sort and selection process, and attract and retain diverse faculty. It is with a spirit for change and the pursuit of excellence that I apply for the position of Dean the College of Arts and Sciences. I am confident my skills and experience have prepared me well to perform the duties of the dean and achieve the mission and goals of the college. I can provide a list of professional references at your request. If you need to contact me, I can be reached by phone, (979) , or , acepeda@tamu.edu. Sincerely, Antonio Cepeda-Benito Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost YMCA Building 1126 TAMU College Station, TX Tel Fax