Dear colleagues. 

It is a busy time in the college! My purpose in writing today is to update you on a few key topics, which I summarize here and elaborate on below my signature.

1. The college reorganization: Following Academic Futures, A&S now has a federal, or decentralized, structure, with discretionary authority delegated to each division, each led by a dean (CU officer) who reports to the college executive dean. We are clarifying roles and processes to finalize this reorganization, and we have hired a temporary project manager to help us complete this important institutional change.
2. A&S priorities, mission, vision and values (MVV): It is important, especially in the reorganized college, to think about our collective aims. We have started a process to consider MVV and will soon seek your input. Elements include enhancing student success, supporting faculty and staff impact, engaging the community and elevating justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
3. Budget: The new CU budget model brings transparency and stability. It is based on net tuition revenue (NTR), support of campus services and supplementation of key programs that do not produce enough NTR. This year (FY24), A&S faced a 1.1% deficit (~$2.5 million), but we adapted and will break even in FY25. However, we are concerned that FY27 costs will exceed revenues. Hence, we are developing a cash-reserves policy and a framework for internal college allocation. 

I will send periodic updates on our progress in these areas in the coming months. I also will begin holding Coffee Chats (open time for visiting) every few weeks beginning Thursday, March 14, from 3 – 4:30 p.m. in Carlson Gym, room 108. Please consider dropping by. I look forward to talking with you!

Thank you for all you do for the college and its students.

Sincerely,

Glen Krutz
Executive Dean

College Reorganization

The university community has discussed the College of Arts and Sciences reorganization for so long that it might feel like a nebulous, unending process, despite administrators’ occasional emails that mark milestones.

I understand this. A college reorganization, especially one as significant as ours, entails many changes. At a minimum, we must ensure that the college’s central office, which provides college-wide policies, procedures and administrative support, works seamlessly with the divisions, which now have expanded decision-making and budgetary authority.

Success requires several things: shared understanding of roles and responsibilities, clear and comprehensible policies and procedures on personnel and budgetary processes, and precise guidelines about whose lane is whose.

Of course, a reorganization also involves a good number of tasks of varying complexity. All of us are busy with our regular workloads, and we have found that completing the necessary reorganization tasks, some enumerated and some not, is challenging.

That’s why I have offered Erin Cunningham Ritter, director of employee engagement, a temporary appointment as our reorganization project manager. She holds a PhD in organizational learning and change and is eager to coach us across the reorganizational finish line.

Priorities, Mission, Vision and Values

At their core, however, all these actions should reflect our priorities, mission, vision and values (MVV).

Over the last two academic years, we have emphasized several priorities in the college, including:

• Enhancing student access and success,
• Fostering faculty and staff efficacy and impact in research and teaching,
• Embracing community engagement, and
• Elevating justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (which crosscuts the three areas above)

It is important to note some encouraging metrics. After weathering the pandemic by keeping our classes available and our research and creative activity viable, even while faculty and staff hiring were halted, we’ve expanded our instructional offerings, and we are beginning to hire again.

We’ve also seen improvement in our six-year graduation rate, and we have set records in our first- to second-year retention rate and our retention rate from the first to second semester. We’ve made key investments in faculty and staff development, and we’ve seen striking success in the number and size of grants we’ve obtained. For fiscal year 2023, arts and sciences departments received sponsored awards totaling more than $113 million.

Also, we continue to make progress on the college and divisional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plans. (To learn more about the campus’ five DEI goals, visit this link). Centering the needs of and support for our faculty and staff, the college is focusing on DEI goals 1 and 4. To support our students’ development and sense of belonging, the divisions are focusing on DEI goals 2, 3 and 5.

Meanwhile, the dean’s executive leadership has been working earnestly in the last two months to complete a draft statement outlining our proposed mission, vision and values (MVV). When we finish this draft, we’ll share it with you, our colleagues, for your feedback. 

Appropriately ratified mission, vision and values statements do not, of course, dictate our course of action as we encounter challenges and opportunities that we don’t foresee. Such statements serve only as beacons, helping us judge to what extent our decisions do or do not reflect our first principles.

Budget

The new campus budget model has been implemented, and this has brought increased transparency, stability and predictability to the university budget process. After taking a budget cut in the inaugural year of the new budget model (1.1% or ~$2.5 million) last summer for FY24, the college’s fall 2023 and spring 2024 enrollments produced enough revenue relative to our costs that our FY25 (July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025) budget looks quite favorable and should break even. That said, we do have concerns, with rising costs and a coming decline in Colorado high school graduates, about future years, starting with FY27.

That makes considering two remaining budget topics all the more important—a cash-reserves policy and how our internal A&S budget allocation will work. On cash reserves, which refers to one-time funds that sit in the college separate from the budget model (which allocates continuing budget), it is important that we take stock of these, manage them well and use them for key purposes related to our priorities. The biggest category of such funding is faculty start-up costs. 

College allocation refers to how the central college appropriation that A&S receives from the budget model is divided up by the executive dean for the division and central A&S office budgets. Like the campus model, we want this process to be transparent and, in developing a framework for allocation, we need to give careful thought and intention to net tuition revenue, what we want to offer no matter what (supplementation) and the distinct character and approaches of each A&S division. Both topics are being discussed with the college leadership, faculty leaders in the Arts and Sciences Faculty Senate and staff leaders in the Staff Advisory Committee.