University of Colorado Boulder

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1 University of Colorado Boulder 2016 Program Review Report for the Arts and Humanities Aggregation Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee Approved Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs: Date

2 Contents Process overview ARPAC members 4 Role of the Arts and Humanities at CU Boulder 5 Analysis 7 Recommendations 12 Required follow-up Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 2

3 Process Overview The review cycle considered the arts and humanities units on campus; it was conducted in accordance with the review and planning guidelines. This involved looking at the entire division of humanities and arts in the College of Arts and Sciences (except for the Program in Comparative Literature) and a number of research centers and support units the Anderson Language Technology Center (ALTEC), the Center for Asian Studies (CAS), the Center for the Humanities and the Arts (CHA), and the CU Art Museum. The College of Music s review was postponed by a year at the request of the dean. The Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee (ARPAC) also elected to move the aggregate level review to the end of the fourth year of the reporting cycle to accommodate an overall assessment of progress on recommendations arising from the 2016 reviews. This report will inform that assessment. This public document reflects the assessment of and recommendations for the aggregation of units under review as approved by the members of the Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee (ARPAC) Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 3

4 Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee (ARPAC) Marie Banich, Professor, Institute of Cognitive Science Sanjai Bhagat, Professor, Leeds School of Business Adam Bradley, Associate Professor, Department of English Erin Furtak, Associate Professor, School of Education David Korevaar, Professor, College of Music Clayton Lewis, Professor, Department of Computer Science Jack Maness, Associate Professor, University Libraries David Mapel, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Academic year voting members Susan Nevelow Mart, Associate Professor, School of Law Bryan Taylor, Professor, Department of Communication Non-voting members Jeff Cox, ARPAC Chair, Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs and Professor of English and Humanities Bob Boswell, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement and Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Katherine Eggert, Quality Initiative Leader and Professor of English Bill Kaempfer, Senior Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Budget and Planning and Professor of Economics Mary Kraus, Vice provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Geological Sciences Ann Schmiesing, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures Staff Andre Grothe, Office of Faculty Affairs 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 4

5 The Role of the Arts and Humanities at CU Boulder As ARPAC pointed out in its 2009 aggregate report, the arts and humanities are a key aspect of our state-mandated mission as a comprehensive graduate research university and are at the core of CU Boulder s commitment to a liberal arts education. At a time of declining enrollments and increased scrutiny of arts and humanities disciplines across the country, it is all the more important to emphasize the centrality of these units and their contributions to education, scholarship, and service on the CU Boulder campus. ARPAC reiterates its earlier statement about the importance of the arts and humanities to the education of our students: As part of a liberal arts education, the humanities and arts help students to expand their powers of analysis, reflection, and problem solving while developing their skills in written and oral communication and in the synthesis of disparate fields of knowledge. In the process, they provide both an intellectual and historical context for understanding the human experience and the creativity needed for approaching the problems that confront us today. While all disciplines flood us with new information, it is the arts and humanities that allow us to make sense of the world by organizing that information towards some human good. Where some disciplines provide us with facts, it is the arts and humanities that help us to discover our values. This is not a distinction between hard, empirical truth and fuzzy, feel-good opinion but between two different kinds of disciplines. While chemistry or civil engineering or sociology or economics may tell us how the world is made and how it works, the humanities and arts teach us how to order and judge, how to choose and act. These disciplines make us human by studying what is best in humanity and what is best for humanity. While maintaining this belief in the inherent value of the humanities and arts, ARPAC also notes the value that an education in these fields brings to students in their career prospects and their quest to become life-long learners. Employers frequently indicate that they wish to hire people with the education and the skills that the 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 5

6 humanities and arts provide. Despite the uncertainty of some of our students and their parents, students in the humanities and arts have demonstrated success in going on to graduate and professional schools as well as entering into successful, productive careers upon graduation. It is important for both faculty and administrators to appreciate that a rigorous education in the humanities and the arts and a thorough preparation for a career in a professional field are not incommensurate. Quite the contrary, we cannot afford in the current climate to be shy about pointing to the power of the humanities and arts to prepare our students for more successful careers as well as richer lives. The units under review, as is the case with their peer units at many universities in the country, feel that in the current environment they are not given the recognition and the status they deserve. The fact of the matter is that our students need the humanities and arts to meet key educational needs, and CU Boulder needs excellence in these disciplines to reach its goal of being a model research university. Faculty and administrators need to reaffirm their commitment to these core disciplines. The recent revision of the College of Arts and Sciences core curriculum is a positive step toward supporting these units. The campus support of graduate education in the humanities following the 2009 ARPAC recommendations is another. As the campus moves forward, it must continue to enhance and to expand its support of the arts and humanities if it is to enhance the university s reputation and improve the quality of education it offers to its students Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 6

7 Analysis The academic units that comprise the humanities and arts at the University of Colorado Boulder are diverse in orientation and structure. The university would do well to recognize and support this diversity. Not all units are organized best on the model of a department, and the campus needs to make clear its support for centers and programs that may not generate tuition dollars. ARPAC has reported on each of these units, providing recommendations best suited to the particular circumstances within each department or center. There are, however, some issues that rise above the particularities of individual units and that can be addressed collectively. As already indicated, ARPAC urges the campus to reaffirm its support both intellectual and financial of the humanities and arts. Much has been said in recent decades about the crisis in the arts and humanities. Though this is a national issue, it has local implications. The units under review must take seriously the challenges of recruiting and retaining students. All the units under review indicated that they felt pressure to increase student credit hours to secure additional tuition dollars. However, there was often confusion about the metrics being used to measure success in these areas. There was also uncertainty about how to invigorate departmental efforts around undergraduate education. Personnel and governance There was concern expressed across departments about salary compression at the full professor level. The college and campus should work to correct this problem as well as to address the drain on some units of having multiple colleagues doing college and/or campus administrative jobs. ARPAC also was concerned that in a number of cases students and even junior faculty members expressed concerns about being able to speak to colleagues or administrators about difficult issues Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 7

8 The college and the campus must make sure there are safe pathways for such communication. Research, scholarship, and creative work The campus is justly proud of its interdisciplinary research, and faculty in the arts and humanities are excited about interdisciplinary possibilities on campus. ARPAC notes that interdisciplinary teaching has lagged behind interdisciplinary scholarship, and it makes some recommendations to further such efforts. There continue to be possibilities for collaborations in the arts, and there are other places where interdisciplinary work could be pursued, including between the arts and humanities and engineering; another area for collaborative work is in the study of Spanish speaking cultures in the Western hemisphere. Undergraduate and graduate education and support The college and the campus should work together to establish clear metrics, appropriate to the character of the unit being assessed, for measuring success. Should the unit be seeking majors? Total student credit hour numbers? Ways to contribute to general education? Agreement needs to be reached and then a set of metrics needs to be left in place long enough for units to respond to them. In addition, units have not been provided the resources necessary to track accurately the placement of their undergraduate and graduate students. The campus should create such a database. Units also have a good deal of work to do. Clearly, each degreegranting unit should be looking at its curriculum to make sure it is up to date and that it is designed to attract students. These are decisions best made by the practitioners in the field, but everyone needs to be willing to think through new possibilities. Units also should look at various success stories in the arts and humanities and learn from them. ARPAC is recommending a range of possible enhancements to undergraduate education in the 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 8

9 humanities and arts, including recruiting double majors, building internships, and using technology-enhanced methods of instruction. ARPAC also believes that admissions, enrollment management, and the registrar s office properly belong in the Division of Academic Affairs, where the provost can oversee their important contributions to recruitment, retention, and student success. The move toward cross-campus advising also can help students find their way to arts and humanities departments, whether for degrees, second majors, minors, or elective courses. ALTEC also provides cross-departmental programs that are valuable to our students and colleagues and deserve sufficient support. In the last review of the arts and humanities, graduate education was the greatest area of concern. There has been considerable progress in improving graduate programs, with some new degree offerings and some strengthened graduate degrees. The research assistantship (RA-ship) pilot program for Classics, French and Italian, and Philosophy was an important aid to these units, and they have attested to its success in recruiting and retaining students who are now successfully entering the job market. While there are various local problems that ARPAC has addressed in individual reports, funding for graduate students remains the key issue. ARPAC strongly supports the formation of the Consortium of Doctoral Studies in Literatures and Cultures, and it applauds the Center for Humanities and the Arts, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the provost for finding the resources to create this innovative program. The committee notes that other non-literature departments still need support, which can be found, for example, by continuing the RA-ship program in units such as Philosophy. There continues to be concern about the campus stipends, and there were new questions raised about fees levied on graduate students that may not support services 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 9

10 they need. Continued attention and support needs to be paid to graduate education in the arts and humanities to build on the progress of the past seven years. While much of the focus in this year s reporting has been on doctoral programs, departments also need to examine the roles of their MA and MFA programs. The status of MA-level degrees is quite different in different departments, so that, while the campus in general urges that resources be focused on doctoral students, some units want to emphasize their MA programs for a variety of reasons, including faculty strength in non-doctoral areas and success in placing MA students in top graduate programs. ARPAC believes the focus needs to be on terminal degrees (i.e., MFA, PhD, DMA) but urges departments to examine and to make the case for different emphases. There is also more room for departments to consider professional master s programs. In addition, departments may have courses that could contribute to professional master s degrees in other units. Budget Arts and humanities are motivated strongly to improve fundraising efforts, and they look forward to increasing partnerships with the Office of Advancement. Some units have had considerable success and may provide models for others in similar fields. Space There are a range of space needs from security concerns to the desire for technologically enhanced teaching facilities that should be addressed. ARPAC has elaborated on these specific concerns within the individual units reports. Inclusive excellence The arts and humanities units have much to contribute to increasing diversity and inclusive excellence on campus, and all but one unit within the division contributed inclusive excellence narratives. Not only do arts and humanities units tend to have 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 10

11 more diverse faculties, but also their scholarship often addresses key issues affecting under-represented groups. It is important that these departments continue their efforts to diversify their faculties and student bodies and pay attention to ways to help open the pipelines for members of under-represented groups. In particular, it is important that departments be aware of the special issues that faculty from underrepresented groups may face and have mentoring programs in place to address their needs. More generally, the arts and humanities can also be important contributors to efforts around internationalization, and ARPAC has some general recommendations to make about strengthening the campus global initiatives. Library resources Library resources are essential to faculty in the arts and humanities; the library often is referred to as the laboratory for these colleagues. As a result, faculty in the units under review are concerned about support for the libraries. ARPAC appreciates the University Libraries efforts to support the humanities and arts. That being said, the university must increase its efforts to shore up journal and monograph budgets Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 11

12 Recommendations The members of the Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee (ARPAC) address the following recommendations to the various units in the arts and humanities and to the offices of the dean, the provost, and the chancellor. It is the committee s intention that the recommendations serve to benefit program improvement and development and to further the mission of the University of Colorado Boulder. ARPAC strongly supports the university s commitment to a liberal arts education and the place of the humanities and arts within it. ARPAC notes that these disciplines not only enrich students lives but also can further their careers. It urges all levels of the campus to ensure the instructional, intellectual, and financial strength of the core units that were part of this review. The other recommendations in this report can be seen as contributing to this effort. 1. The provost should make clear her/his support for the arts and humanities, not only as enriching our students lives but also as providing them with key skills for their lives and careers. The provost should encourage the faculty to embrace the power of a broad liberal arts education as serving our students in many ways, including broadening their cultural awareness and preparing them for life and work. 2. ARPAC recommends that the provost and the deans reaffirm the importance of different kinds of units for example, centers and programs in addition to departments. Not all units should become departments (though ARPAC is recommending that the Film Studies Program become the Department of Film Studies), and thus the campus needs to 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 12

13 arrive at different models for evaluating and supporting differing kinds of academic operations. 3. To address the decline in majors and enrollments in the humanities and to some extent the arts, all units under review should reinvigorate their undergraduate curricula and improve their communication with students about the importance of studying the arts and humanities: a. The provost and Division of Academic Affairs should examine and reduce duplications of humanities and arts curricular offerings particularly by residential academic programs (RAPs) and the Herbst Humanities Program; b. Following the model of the Department of Classics, units may find, in particular, that students in the natural sciences, engineering, and business may have their education significantly enhanced by a second major, minor, or certificate in the humanities and arts. Students in the College of Media, Communication and Information are another group that might naturally take a second degree in the departments under review; c. All departments under review should explore how technology may enhance or expand their offerings. Such efforts will be mutually beneficial to our students and to the units under review; d. Some departments have found that internships are an important way to enrich their students education and to allow them to explore career possibilities. The dean and the College of Arts and Sciences should aid units in 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 13

14 building internship programs, perhaps with centralized staff support; e. Without ever betraying their commitment to a liberal arts education, units should be confident in explaining how their degrees will enable students to have successful careers. Supplying students with placement information about graduates is one way to do this. 4. Recognizing the improvements that have been made in the funding of graduate students in the humanities and arts, ARPAC urges continued efforts by the deans of A&S and the Graduate School to make CU Boulder s offers to graduate students competitive and to ensure the successful progress of those students: a. ARPAC applauds the creation of the Consortium of Doctoral Studies in Literatures and Cultures and looks forward to it being used in recruiting and retaining students. If this model of funding proves to be successful, the deans and the provost should extend it to other departments; b. ARPAC urges that the provost insures the continuation of the funding for RA-ships that were granted to Classics, French and Italian, and Philosophy. Philosophy will retain those RA-ships; French and Italian and Classics will contribute theirs to the consortium; c. The Center for Humanities and the Arts and the deans of A&S and the Graduate School should examine ways in which support might be secured for units or terminal 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 14

15 degree programs not benefiting from the consortium or the RA-ship program; d. The departments and the deans of A&S and the Graduate School should continue to push for additional funding to make packages for graduate students more competitive; e. The dean of the Graduate School should examine all fees levied on graduate students, including ones created by and for undergraduate students. If any of these fees are inappropriate, the dean should lobby to have them removed or subsidized. 5. ARPAC urges units to examine the role of the master s degree in the current educational environment and to find, in consultation with the deans, the appropriate size for their overall graduate programs: a. All doctoral granting units under review should focus available funding on doctoral and terminal MFA students in order to increase all such appointments to provide full tuition coverage; b. All departments should engage in conversations about master s and professional master s programs. Note that professional master s programs are unlikely to be successful unless they can attract a critical mass of students and that such programs should not draw needed resources away from current degree programs. Pilot certificate programs may provide needed information. Professional master s programs must be distinguished from traditional master s programs in their purpose, design, and delivery Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 15

16 6. ARPAC suggests that these units consider further ways to enhance their interdisciplinarity: a. The campus justly is proud of its interdisciplinary research but still has trouble delivering interdisciplinary, team-taught courses. The College of Arts and Sciences should convene a faculty task force to develop a sustainable model for this mode of instruction at the undergraduate level that grants each faculty member full credit for such courses; b. The role of various centers in the arts and humanities should be examined for possible collaborations and economies of scale. Various centers are at different levels of maturity; different centers offer different kinds of foci for faculty and student work. The campus created the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) to provide a crossdisciplinary, non-topic specific institution to support work in the humanities and the arts. To that end, CHA should pursue becoming an incubator for a broad range of interdisciplinary activities in the arts and humanities; c. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese has made important steps toward increasing CU Boulder s strength in Spanish-speaking culture in the Western hemisphere. Greater progress could be made through collaboration with other units including Education, Ethnic Studies, History, the College of Music s ethnomusicology group, and Women and Gender Studies. ARPAC recommends that a faculty task force, most likely under the auspices of CHA, be formed to examine the possibilities for teaching and research on the Spanish language and culture of the 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 16

17 Western hemisphere. Located in a western state with a growing Hispanic/Latino/Latina population, CU Boulder should be a leader in such efforts. This task force should consider how programs in this area might provide both a gateway for Hispanic students in the state, in particular, and a way to contribute, in a more general way, to the university s goal of inclusive excellence. The CHA director should open such discussions in consultation with the dean s office; d. ARPAC recommends that a faculty task force, most likely under the auspices of CHA, be formed to draw upon and expand collaborations between the humanities and the arts and the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The CHA director should convene such discussions in conjunction with the deans of A&S and CEAS. 7. ARPAC applauds the units within arts and humanities for their commitment to internationalization efforts and inclusive excellence. It offers some recommendations for further enhancement of these endeavors: a. The provost must make sure that appropriate resources are available to ensure the success of our increasing numbers of international students and that faculty and units that teach a large number of international students are provided necessary support; b. The provost should create an organizational and leadership structure for internationalization to oversee the campus teaching, research, and outlook efforts on the global stage; 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 17

18 c. The provost should ensure that the campus has sufficient resources to handle visa issues when colleagues are being hired; d. The Department of Art and Art History should engage all constituents within the department to generate an inclusive excellence narrative that reflects how the unit intends to make excellence inclusive; e. In considering reinvigorating the undergraduate curricula, all units under review should be intentional about identifying and implementing changes that encourage students from different cultural backgrounds to more fully engage in arts and humanities programs; f. To address the paucity of graduate students from underrepresented groups, the units under review should work together to determine how they collectively might recruit students, improve funding that enables successful recruitment, and create a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages retention and degree completion; g. The provost should consider a grand challenge centered on inclusive excellence that addresses the recruitment, retention, and inclusion of graduate students and faculty from groups historically underrepresented in arts and humanities. 8. Faculty in the arts and humanities, whether justifiably or not, feel that the Office of Advancement too often ignores their fundraising needs. One repeated complaint is the lack of continuity in staffing. ARPAC understands the constraints 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 18

19 under which the Office of Advancement operates, but all concerned should ensure the arts and humanities are prioritized. ARPAC also understands that this requires the full and responsible involvement of the faculty in individual units. Based upon reporting from the units, concerted efforts need to be made to raise funds for endowed chairs and named professorships in the arts and humanities. A secondary focus should be graduate fellowships. 9. ARPAC recommends that the chancellor place the registrar and enrollment management offices within the Division of Academic Affairs. 10. ARPAC notes that discussions have continued about a possible School of the Arts. The arts departments, both within and without the College of Arts and Sciences, should continue conversations with the relevant deans about creating an appropriate structure to enhance collaboration and to bring additional resources to the arts. 11. Departments expressed frustration about metrics, both about the accuracy of the metrics the campus provides and about administrators use of them to make decisions. There needs to be agreement, which the provost brokers, among the departments, the college, and the central campus administration about the kinds of metrics that are appropriate in evaluating units, with different metrics needed for different kinds of units. Issues include, but are not restricted to, how to count and to weigh majors, double majors, minors, total student credit hours (SCH), and contributions to general education. Language and literature departments also note that the percentage of SCH taught by tenured and tenuretrack (TTT) faculty may be distorted, as many language 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 19

20 classes are designed to be taught by instructors. Various rules and algorithms should be examined and perhaps adjusted, including those concerning the assignment and compensation of associate chairs and the calculation of operating budgets for non-departmental units. 12. The provost should work with the Office of Data Analytics to create an online database that tracks the placement of undergraduate and graduate students. Such data are important to students in making educational decisions and may provide useful information for units in recruiting and retaining students. 13. ARPAC was concerned that in a number of cases students and even junior faculty expressed worries about being able to speak to colleagues or administrators about difficult issues. The college and the provost must make sure there are safe pathways for such communication. 14. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the central campus administration should examine various departments space needs. Security must be ensured. Efforts should be made to consolidate dispersed units. Additional funds should be made available for the renovation of current unsatisfactory spaces. As teaching space is renovated, attention needs to be paid to the technology and room configuration needed to pursue current and future pedagogical innovations. 15. As the new College of Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum is put into place, the college and the provost should ensure that advising, online information, and new student welcome make clear the range of options in the arts and humanities, particularly in those departments that may be less familiar to 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 20

21 incoming students. Cross-campus advising should make clear the opportunities in the humanities and arts for students throughout their careers at CU Boulder. 16. Several arts and humanities units have seen significant numbers of their colleagues enter into college or campus administration, leaving the units strapped to cover key courses. The Dean and the College of Arts and Sciences should consider a visiting professor program whereby a unit that has lost essential faculty to administration could request funding to bring in a distinguished visitor to cover classes and to enrich the intellectual environment of the unit. 17. The Directed Independent Language Study (DILS) program provides essential services to students and faculty. A reasonable (perhaps $10,000) annual budget should be created for it, which could be managed through a regularized process to request funding for these services. The provost, working with the dean, should ensure that there is sufficient funding for DILS to aid students with disabilities as they pursue a foreign language. 18. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the provost should address significant compression and inversion issues for full professors in the arts and the humanities. While the campus lags somewhat behind its Association of American Universities peers in full professor salaries, in the arts and the humanities, salaries are running at approximately the 80 th percentile of salaries at peer institutions. 19. The University Libraries arts and humanities materials budget cannot always meet the needs of the faculty since the overall budget lags behind that of CU Boulder peer institutions. While 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 21

22 ARPAC has made some specific recommendations for units about library resources, it encourages the provost to provide additional funding to this vital part of the campus Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 22

23 Follow-up The Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee asks for annual review follow-up reporting from the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School and from the provost on the implementation of recommendations in the 2016 Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report Arts and Humanities Aggregation Report 23