Dean's Message: Checking in at the semester midpoint

As we approach the midway point of the Fall 2021 semester, we’re still focused on getting through the school year safely and planning for Spring. That said, other things are still moving forward, and it seems a good time to provide some updates.

Last year, we were in the throes of preparing for massive budget cuts. With the exceptional planning by Mark Reynolds and the College financial team and the hard work that all of our chairs put into last year’s process, we do not see any cuts coming this year and we currently anticipate modest merit pay increases this Spring. However, we can only keep future cuts at bay by realizing some modest growth over the next few years. Overall, KU was basically flat in its Fall enrollment this year. Although the College was down slightly (by about 2.4%), much of that was attributable to other schools (e.g., Business and Education) initiating freshman admissions, which simply shuffles students and credit hours that in past years would have been counted in the College. Shifting students or credit hours from one unit to another doesn’t actually get us anywhere. We need to generate real growth, and we are looking to do that in the College in two specific ways. First, we are working to bring more students to campus by adding two new recruiters to our staff; These recruiters will focus more heavily on population centers within the state of Kansas. Second, we are looking to improve retention. One way to do this is by increasing the quality of services provide by our advising corps. We’ll be working to reduce the student-to-advisor ratio (it’s currently about 375:1) by hiring more advisors, and by making our advisors’ salaries more competitive in order to reduce staff turnover.

On another note, KU leadership has realized some progress in negotiations with the Kansas Board of Regents in developing a statewide instructional workload policy for tenure-track faculty. A conceptual draft is currently available, and we will be working to collect input from chairs and faculty in the near future. Some of the encouraging signs in this realm include having KBOR formally acknowledge KU’s status as a Research 1 institution in workload calculations. In addition, instructional workloads will be specified in terms of averages calculated for the university as a whole, for individual schools, and for departments. The use of overall aggregates instead of individual minima allows for more flexibility within units and for taking into account different disciplinary conditions that bear on the number of sections that are taught and the number of student credit hours that are generated.

Finally, the College will be initiating a search for an Associate Dean for the Social/Behavioral Sciences later this month, and we are expecting that the Provost will launch a search for a permanent Dean in the very near future.

Thank you again for all you are doing for KU.

John Colombo
Interim Dean & Professor of Psychology