College of Liberal ArtsAnnual ReportAcademic Year 2015-16_________________________________________________

DAVID TERKLA, DEAN_________________________________________________

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Goals for 2015-16…………………………………………………………...…3

Goal: Advancing student success through recruitment and retention of prepared students at the undergraduate and graduate levels........3-7

Goal: Enriching and expanding academic programs and research and new interdisciplinary programming at the undergraduate and graduate levels…...................................................................................................7-10

Goal: Improve learning, teaching and working environment through increasing accessibility, space, faculty development, and appropriate departmental staffing…………………………………..……………..11-13

Goal: Globalizing our faculty and student programing……….....…...13-14

Goal: Infuse undergraduate research in the curriculum…………....…14-15

Goal: Encourage and foster community engaged scholarship and teaching through outreach to the community……………………..................…….15

Goal: Seek out opportunities for revenue generation……………...…15-16

2. Other Major Achievements……………………………..................................16-17

3. Strengths and Weaknesses………………………............................................17-19

4. Unit Goals for 2016-17 & Relationship to Strategic Plan……………………….19

5. Aspirational Peers…………………………………………………………….19-20

1. Goals for 2015-16

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The College’s goals for AY 2015-2016 are listed below with the current status of each. These goals are excerpted from the College’s 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, which intentionally aligns closely with the University’s Strategic Plan.

Goal 1: Advance student success through recruitment and retention of prepared students at the undergraduate and graduate levels

Continue expansion, evaluation, and improvement of CLA First! and SophoMORE. Appendix 1 provides details of CLA First!, SophoMORE, and First-Year Initiatives.

Highlights include: Start Smart! series: Start Smart sessions were offered regularly and continued to

mix academic skills with social opportunities. Evaluation efforts: Efforts to dig deeper into the student experience and student

satisfaction were made using remaining Vision Grant funds by hosting further focus groups contrasting the experiences of students in freshmen communities, and those who did not participate. Results showed membership in CLA First! provided students with more knowledge of advising, and more connection to the University.

Job Shadow: Through continued support from the CLA Vision grant and in partnership with Career Services, the students in SophoMORE were offered the opportunity to job shadow a professional in an area of career interest. Interested professionals were recruited by connections with Career Services and Alumni Programs. We continue to work to expand our network of employers and to expand the number of students exposed to the program given the extremely positive responses of students to their job shadowing experiences. There were 18 participating employers (of these, 9 were returning as hosts; 9 were UMB Alumni).  

Assessment: Quantitative and qualitative assessment was conducted in the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016 to capture a more comprehensive picture of the sophomore experience.

Block Scheduling: Given our success last year with getting students to enroll in “course bundles” we expanded our ability to offer these and so far this June 90-95% of orientation students have chosen pre-scheduled bundles. This is important because our initial data indicates 87.3% of students in bundles have enrolled for Fall 2016 and 85.9% have a GPA of 2.0 or greater. Moreover, 68.7% completed 25 credits or more during their freshmen year.

As we are able to gather more data because initial CLA FIRST cohorts are graduating, the numbers have been impressive. The four year graduation rate of the most recent cohort was 26%, compared to last year’s 25%, and the previous year’s 21%. This is in sharp contrast to the overall CLA four year graduate rate of 9-13%. 81% of the 15-16 CLA First! Cohort was retained to Fall 2016 compared to 75% for CLA in general at the last snapshot.

Continue improvement of department advising systems.

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The growth of the CLA Advising Office in AY 15-16 allowed the College of Liberal Arts to provide all of our declared majors with access to both faculty and professional academic advising for the first time in the history of the College. In the past, only new students with declared majors in the College (both freshmen and transfers) had access to a professional academic advisor (“CLA advisor”) and this was only during their first year at the institution. In contrast, continuing students with more than one year at the University were assigned faculty advisors by their academic departments, and the faculty advisors were offered training, collaboration, and consultation to support them in their advising responsibilities. Details of all advising efforts are provided in Appendix 2.

Notable accomplishments include:

CLA Advising changed its name (removing the word “Majors” from its title) and became a stand-alone office (with its own website), which reports directly to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts’ office. Its growth had made combining it with CLA First! in one office no longer practical.

We implemented an on-line student intake system, which allows us to more easily identify which students have accessed our services and how many advising exchanges occurred in a semester and at which times.

In spring 2016, we were able to start using a centralized note-taking system, which allows us to share advising notes on each of our students, so that we can ensure a more continuous service when students need to see more than one CLA advisor or when we want to share information with a student’s faculty advisor.

The CLA Advising Office strengthened collaborations with faculty advisors around individual student cases: the goal has been for each student to rely on a team of two advisors (a faculty and a CLA advisor) who can collaborate to better support the student.

We strengthened and systematized our collaboration with the University Advising Center (UAC) to design, deliver, and assess the CLA New Student Advising and Registration (NSAR) sessions offered during orientation for new students, both freshmen and transfers, with the exception of special programs (e.g. Direction for Student Potential and CLA First!).

In addition to caseload management for the New Student Advising Programing, each CLA advisor did proactive, personalized outreach to students whose GPAs were below 2.0 (probation or extended probation), regardless of their admission term.

Key Outcomes: 91% of students working with a CLA advisor during Fall 2015 re-enrolled in Spring 2016 compared to 75% who did not work with an advisor. 80% of students working with a CLA advisor in Fall 2015 had enrolled for Fall 2016 compared to 66% who did not work with an advisor. At the time of the most recent snapshot, 67% of students working with an advisor in Spring 2016 had enrolled for Fall 2016 compared to 36% who had not.

Improve Academic Support, the Reading, Writing, and Study Skills Center, and the Graduate Writing Center.

Dean Terkla has been co-chairing a committee within the Dean’s council (along with Joan Becker) to study the current state of academic support on campus. The committee is

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near to making several key recommendations involving a major restructuring of the Writing Center, overhauling the instruction of Algebra, rethinking the process for placing entering students in First-Year Seminars, and expanding support in statistics for graduate students.

Collaborate with Enrollment Services to articulate admissions criterion.

We created a handout for prospective and incoming undergraduates articulating the differing admissions criteria for our Communications and English programs and majors. This was done in order to clarify and fine-tune the distinctions between two of our most popular majors.

Continue to liaise from orientation to graduation with CLA Career Specialists and expand internship and job shadowing opportunities for undergraduates.

In support of the College of Liberal Arts academic mission, the CLA Career Services Specialists along with other members of the Career Services team presented 60 classroom presentations reaching over 1,155 students. The CLA Career Services Specialists conducted 25 workshops/events impacting 535 students. Through these efforts, CLA students and alumni were able to participate in career programs like the Career Symposium, Pre-Law Workshops, SophoMORE Success, Professional Etiquette Dinner, and Job Search Strategies for Liberal Arts Majors.

The CLA Career Services Specialists conducted 443 individual career appointments with students registered in My Career Online during the 2015-2016 academic year. In addition, 252 CLA students met with other members of the Career Services team for a total of 695 CLA individual career appointments.  

Career Services worked with CLA to provide two specialized workshops, “The Job Search Process and Tips for Success!” and “Career and Job Search: Strategies for Liberal Arts Students” to students who are alumni of the CLA First! and SophoMORE Experience programs. This served as a way to continue to engage and support CLA students who were involved in these programs as they progressed toward graduation.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, the Office of Career Services and Internships (OCSI) in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts and University Advancement presented the seventh annual Career Symposium. Fourteen CLA alumni returned to campus to speak with 112 students about their career paths and how they leveraged their liberal arts degree when building their career. Many alumni, including alumni guest speakers from the Department of State and Charlestown District Court, shared with students information on current available internship opportunities. This was a great learning and networking opportunity for CLA students.

CLA collaborated with OCSI and served on the hiring committee for the second CLA Career Services Specialist.

CLA collaborated with the Office of Career Services and Internships (OCSI) and the University Advising Center (UAC) to build a pre-law advising program with a dedicated UAC advisor and a dedicated OCSI specialist. During the 2016-2017 academic year, the OCSI Career Specialist partnered with the Manager of University Internships to build a relationship with Justice Bridge Legal Center, in

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order to secure law related internship/volunteer postings for students. Additionally, data were gathered related to internships pre-law students participated in as well as information on law schools UMass Boston students were accepted into in order to share during the spring 2016 Welcome Days during the Pre-Law Advising Program session with admitted students interested in a career in law. Lastly, the Pre-Law Society, a new student club on-campus that was established during the spring 2016 semester, gained an official faculty advisor, Professor Bussiere, from the Political Science Department. Both the pre-law advisors in the UAC and OCSI are available to provide support and programming as the Pre-Law Society develops.

CLA Career Services Specialists continued to provide a variety of classroom presentations for CLA students, including participating in the English Colloquium, a one-credit course where students gain skills preparing them to successfully apply to jobs and/or internships. The three-year partnership between OCSI and the English Department for this course has been in existence since fall 2012. At the start of the spring 2016 semester, 16 students were enrolled in the English Colloquium. CLA Career Services Specialist and Manager of University Internships also collaborated with Criminal Justice Internship Coordinator to present to approximately 90 CJ majors with information regarding finding internships.

CLA students also took advantage of the Beacon’s Student Success Fellowship which provides financial support to undergraduate students engaging in summer experiential learning activities such as unpaid or underpaid internships, volunteer work, a faculty-supervised research project, study abroad, participation in an academic symposium, travel related to academic projects and study, and other forms of experiential learning. In the summer of 2015, 26 of the 45 students awarded Beacons Student Fellowships were from CLA. For the summer of 2016, 18 CLA students were awarded Beacon’s Fellowships.

Expand assistantships for graduate students.

As more departments develop grant writing consciousness and strategic partnerships for grant success more graduate students are supported by grants. The Sociology Department is a shining example of faculty committed to supporting their graduate students. Although 4th in total number of dollars awarded this year behind Psychology, Anthropology, and Applied Linguistics, the majority of those dollars most generously went to support graduate students in the program offering excellent research and leadership opportunities for students. It is important to note that Sociology faculty are willing to apply for a diverse set of funds (16 applications) coming in second only to Psychology’s 17 grant applications this past year. The annual report of the Graduate Program Director states: “Several faculty have also provided assistantship support through external funds over the last academic year. Professors Heather Zaykowski, Megan Klein-Hattori, Andrea Leverentz, Russell Schutt, Stephanie Hartwell, and Kevin Wozniak each were responsible for providing incredibly important resources in the form of research assistantship opportunities funded by external money to graduate students in both the MA and PhD programs. It is because of their hard work and creativity that we were able to offer funding opportunities to as many students as we did.”

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Goal 2: Enriching and expanding academic programs and research and new interdisciplinary programming at the undergraduate and graduate levelsDevelop select undergraduate interdisciplinary programs in areas of demonstrated need and demand.

We have implemented the revitalized interdisciplinary BA in Labor Studies as well as possible new Certificate programs in this area. A new tenure-stream Director has been hired to spearhead these programs.

The Masters program in Transnational Cultural and Community Studies accepted its first cohort of students in Fall 2015.

The Pre-Law professional advising program is now self-sustaining after 2 years of committee work (see below under Advising).

The interdisciplinary Human Rights program is off to a strong start, and has approximately 15 students enrolled as minors. The interdisciplinary minor in Cinema Studies is actively recruiting students.

Develop new programs including Minors in Sexuality Studies, English/Theatre Arts, Religious Studies, and Majors in Dance, Comparative Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and International Relations.

The International Relations major has received approval and is now recruiting students.

A major in Dance has been approved to go forward toward Stage I development by the Deans’ council.

Committees are working on a Comparative Cultures major and a Sexuality Studies minor.

Continue expansion of graduate programs in carefully selected niches with high demand and in consonance with the existing availability of faculty resources.

In the immediate future, our graduate program expansion goals are in niche areas and built off of solid undergraduate and MA program bases. The two programs currently in the governance process are the MA in Public Anthropology in final preparation and the PhD in English in preliminary preparation. The Public Anthropology MA program will serve students interested in learning anthropological approaches and ethics for data gathering, analysis and dissemination by working with groups that constitute our many "publics."  Students will learn from communities as interns and advocates and will disseminate analyses in ways/formats that benefit collaborators outside the academy. The program offers three main concentrations – Health, Heritage, Environment -- or a fourth “individualized” concentration combining any of the above, or with emphasis in human rights. It require 36 credits, including an internship based in such collaborations, and features an inter-disciplinary and mixed (research) method curriculum though primarily by UMB cultural- and biological-anthropology faculty. The PhD in English has an emphasis on professional writing and will use the writing center model as a laboratory for scholarship. Another program, the PhD in Applied Linguistics, will be recruiting students next year for the first class to enter in September 2017. The History program also diversified its options with an online MA and a 5-year accelerated track. The PhD

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program in Transnational Cultural and Community Studies (TCCS) is awaiting a critical mass of MA students before admitting students for the PhD.

Continue development of Pre-Law Advising program in collaboration with Career Services and University Advising.

One of the professional advising programs we have developed that is now self-sustaining after two years of committee work is the Pre Law program which features best practices in an Advising and Career Services collaboration. Pre law advisors form Advising and Career Services made 108 student contacts (41 individual appointments, 63 email contacts, and 4 phone appointments). Currently, 64 students and 4 alumni have declared themselves as interested in attending law school. This is a 65.85% increase in students and alumni who were identified as pre-law during the 2014-2015 academic year. Additionally, about a dozen students are participating in a Pre Law Club that offers professional development opportunities including the ability to participate in mock trials.

Maintain partnership and collaboration with the Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies.

This collaboration has been continuing with several of our affiliated faculty and through the coordination of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department.

Consider expanding the Center for the Study of Humanities, Culture, and Society into an Institute.

The current Director is developing a proposal, but also realizes this is contingent on identifying funding sources and developing a more substantial funding record for the Center.

Expand grant activity (submissions and successful applications) in the college assisted by enhanced support from the Dean’s office.

We have expanded our grant activity across the college with a 30% total increase in departments submitting external grants (10 out of 19). During FY16 CLA, faculty submitted 53 external grants; 17 more than FY14 (but slightly less than FY15 see Table 1 below) with $100,000 increase in external funding since FY14 (see Table 2 below). We also had excellent results in internal and university-wide grant competitions including 7 Healey awards, 1 Public Service grant award, 2 Internationalization Grants from Global Programs, and 2 Creative Economies awards indicating a strong pipeline to future opportunities. We held a CLA-wide “Cultivating a Grant Wring Consciousness” workshop that was attended by 24 faculty across the social sciences and humanities with speakers from Advancement on non-profit opportunities and ORSP on grants, contracts, and federal funding. The CLA Dean’s office is planning to hire a grant manager during the next AY and until that person comes aboard will facilitate looking for grant outlets for interested faculty and departments with less experience in submitting external grant proposals.

Table1: External grant applications since 2014

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Division/Unit/Department FY16 FY15 FY14

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College of Liberal Arts 53 56 36

Africana Studies 0 0 0American Studies 1 1 0Anthropology 4 7 6Applied Linguistics 4 1 2Art 0 0 1Economics 2 2 3English 1 0 0Gender Security & Human Rights 1  0  0History 2 3 0Modern Languages 0 1 0Music 0 0 0Philosophy 0 0 1Political Science 0 1 0Psychology 17 28 17Religious Studies 0 0 0Sociology 16 9 6Women's Studies 0 3 0World Lang & Cultures 0 0 0

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Table 2: Total grant awards by department and unit 2015-20161

Departments Sum of Total Cost Budget

Anthropology $                                 787,487

Applied Linguistics $                                 774,317

Center for Evidence Based Mentoring $                                   78,500

Economics $                                 105,869

History $                                   91,273

Psychology $                              2,237,635

Sociology $                                 379,687

Grand Total $                              4,454,768

Support leadership and management of scholarly publications.

The History and English Departments now editorially host the NEQ: New England Quarterly, with joint faculty editors from both departments.

Expand opportunities for hiring/development of post-doctoral programs

CLA’s goals relate to research expansion (see our Undergraduate Research Portfolio below) and subsequently funded research. Our aspirant peer, the College of Liberal Arts at Temple University (see section 5/Figure 3), is comparable to us in size but brings in 3 times as much external funding. They also have 13 PhD programs to our 3. Our hypothesis is that doctoral and post-doctoral students create grant writing and funding capacity. To that end, our goal is to create more doctoral programs in solid undergraduate departments such as English. We also hope to host more post- doctoral students. Currently we have 1 in English and 1 in Psychology. The Sociology Department/Dean’s office will host a post-doctoral student from Canada and through this experience they will learn first-hand how to facilitate the process and their employment at the University. Global Programs facilitates international post-doctoral students’ appointments. Domestic and international post-docs are hired as contingent workers. Post docs can be searched for or come with their own grants to work with a grant identified mentor as is the case with the Dean’s Office post doc. Regardless of whether they come with funding, they are typically in need of supplemental funds and teaching is a mechanism through which they can earn money, and space to work. Hopefully, the budget crisis will result in structural changes that free up some use of vacancy savings that will remain in the control of College Deans so these funds can be used to enhance the opportunity for post-doctoral support.

1 Grant data does not include June 201611

Goal 3: Improve learning, teaching and working environment through increasing accessibility, space, faculty development, and appropriate departmental staffing

Continue to support faculty development across assistant, associate, and full professors.

We collaborated with both CIT and OFD to support professors teaching Large Enrollment (LE) courses. With OFD, we held a luncheon with all LE professors to unveil the LE Resource webpage and get their feedback for further refinements. With CIT, we sponsored a LE teaching forum with CLA LE professor for all the colleges in the university called, “Before and In the Classroom: Strategies and solutions for Large Enrollment Courses.”

In Spring 2016, we offered 48 large-enrollment classes as we did Spring 2015, enrolling 4,280 students. Several departments new to the business of large-enrollment classes are still busily engaged in determining through trial and error which of their classes they can expect to fill to 70 or more. We were able to room these courses in the campus’s limited large-lecture spaces by judiciously spreading them across all available time slots (see Table 3 below).

Table 3: CLA LE sections and total enrollments

# CLA L-E #enr CLA L-E

Fall 11 (pre 2-2) LE = 60+ 30 2726

Spg 12 (pre 2-2) LE = 60+ 25 2260

Fall 12 (pre 2-2) LE = 60+ 30 2733

Spg 13 (2-2) LE = 70+ 36 3418

Fall 13 (2-2) LE = 70+ 47 4291

Spg 14 (2-2) LE = 70+ 42 3893

Fall 14 (2-2) LE = 70+ 43 4026

Spg 15 (2-2) LE = 70+ 48 4327

Fall 15 (2-2) LE = 70+ 45 4589

Spg 16 (2-2) LE = 70+ 48 4280

We also collaborated with OFD to develop rationalized mentoring programs at the departmental level. A sub-group of department chairs is slated to work with the Dean’s office and OFD to formalize mentoring programs in all departments.

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Continue to right size staffing across all departments in CLA based on department needs as measured by enrollments, number of total faculty, research activity, programs, and other factors.

Despite extremely limited resources, we made the following hires in order to accomplish this goal:

Economics: Outreach Coordinator Performing Arts: Outreach Coordinator Asian Studies: Part-time Administrative Assistant Sociology: Graduate Program Coordinator

We also upgraded staff to full-time in the Departments of Communication and Women’s and Gender Studies.

CLA continues to be hampered by the lack of an equivalent university-wide right size staffing model. Most statistical evidence points to us as being one of the more under-supported colleges, but there is no mechanism in place at the moment to easily remedy this.

Continue to support graduate student teacher training through OFD.

Here again CLA has taken the lead across all colleges with OFD and OGS facilitating and running the TA training program in September with OFD and faculty from CLA. TAs that participate in this program can also complete the Graduate Teacher Training Program which is noted on their transcript.

Continue monthly Departmental Administrator meetings.

The Departmental Administrators and Managers (DAM group) met twice a semester this AY during the “DAM meetings” where they are informed of college business similar to the Graduate Program Directors and Chairs groups. This time is also used to providing shared tools and resources to facilitate their work in their departments. This has proven to be a very successful, innovative way to keep communication lines open between the office and DAMs.

Continue expansion and refinement of learning outcomes assessment procedures through AQUAD. Move to implementation in departments that have completed AQUAD reviews.

The learning outcomes assessment is a valuable tool for departmental improvement. The College of Liberal Arts has taken the initiative to develop an assessment cycle for the departments. This enables the Dean to monitor a department’s progress on its learning outcomes and it encourages a conversation among faculty to improve and refine student learning outcomes. Departments undergoing AQUAD review are required to articulate, and then review, the learning outcomes for their majors. Additionally, departments are asked to develop a plan for assessing these learning outcomes. This format is designed to help clarify this process in order to ensure each department is actively participating in both areas: 1) development of learning goals 2) assessment of learning outcomes. For a

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detailed plan, see Appendix III Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan. Departments were required to post their learning goals on their website. Example: https://www.umb.edu/academics/cla/art/ug/ba

Continue progress toward a research-friendly teaching load

We are very successfully on the path of a research-friendly 2-2 faculty workload (+ 1 CLR for research per semester). We have approved department enrollment targets and schedules for the next academic year that continue the revenue-neutral 2-2 workload. As originally agreed on implementation of 2-2, we consulted with the FSU in Spring 2016. Our surveys and data show that there is much satisfaction both at the TT and NTT levels with this move.

Actively participate in planning for the new academic building and for classroom renovations to assure availability of sufficient numbers of classrooms of the right size with the right technology for both undergraduate and graduate offerings.

The CLA Dean’s Office and the faculty of the Departments of Performing Arts and Art have successfully collaborated in the move of the two departments to University Hall. In March we hosted a “Celebration of the Arts” in University Hall bringing together student artwork and the University Chorus to welcome the new building and the spring.

The Dean’s Office and all CLA departments also actively participated in REAB discussion and meetings.

Goal 4: Globalize our faculty and student programing

Of the 19 new faculty hires this year, the majority have transnational and global research and teaching interests.

All CLA new programming (Cinema Studies, Human Rights, Comparative Cultures, International Studies, etc.) is designed with a focus on transnationalism and internationalization of the curriculum.

Through the Dean’s Travel and Research funds, CLA supported many faculty for faculty conferences and research abroad.

A faculty member in Psychology, through the ERASMUS+ Teacher Mobility Program, spent a week guest lecturing at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (they call it JP2 or KUL).  This visit occurred in the context of a larger collaboration that is being organized by Schuyler Korban of Global Programs. 

We have inventoried, publicized, and promoted CLA study abroad options with CAPS and elsewhere.

We have expanded financial resources to assist student participation in study abroad and conferences, such as with the Beacon Scholars program.

The College and the University as a whole offer or subscribe to many study-abroad programs. CLA students take advantage of various exchange agreements set up by the University. However, a large percentage of our students have neither the financial resources to go to another country for a semester nor may take time away from the jobs

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most of them have while attending school. In order to address this, we have been proactive in developing and offering shorter-term programs abroad such as summer or winter session courses that are able to draw in students because both cost and time are less of a burden. In addition, as part of the capital campaign, we have started a student assistance fund for alumni donations. If we can get sufficient capitalization of this fund, we can begin offering programs to assist students to attend conferences with faculty as well as study abroad opportunities.

Short-term CLA-Sponsored Study Abroad Initiatives include:Summer 2015:          

Food and Culture: The Italian Experience / Siena, Italy 2016 (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department)

Maya Archaeology Field School in Belize / Belize, Central America (Anthropology)

China Today: Culture, History, & Society (History and Women’s Studies) Athens & Beyond: Greek Art & Architecture (Classics and Art History) Caribbean Studies Summer Institute: Caribbean Society and Culture in

Comparative Perspective (Sociology and Anthropology)

Winter 2016:  The Cities of Vesuvius: Ancient Greeks & Romans on the Bay of Naples, Cuma/

Italy Caribbean Tropical Ecology in Puerto Rico

Goal 5: Infuse undergraduate research in the curriculum

Though 2 years of sustained committee work, we have successfully moved into the pilot phase of implementing the CLA undergraduate research Portfolio (formerly “certificate”) with the goal of providing an undergraduate research experience that will advantage students on the job market and in the graduate school application process as well as giving students the opportunity for a high quality faculty/student exchange. The portfolio can be completed in one year or up to three years.

Components include:1. Must have 30 credits in residency or transfer to participate in the undergraduate

research portfolio.2. Attend program orientation seminar, twice a year run out of CLA Dean’s office,

register, receive form to track participation.

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3. Complete Research Methods course or equivalent with a B or higher (we need a comprehensive list of these courses).

4. Participate in a Research Assistantship with a Professor/mentored field experience for credit with an accompanying bibliography through Capstone, Independent Study, or Internship with a B or higher (students can petition for courses or graduate courses as research intensive).

5. Create a portfolio with evidence of the following: (a) Attendance at 2 or more research forums (faculty talks, colloquium,

visiting speakers) on campus (evidence of participation a selfie at the event).

(b) Attendance/participation in a national, regional or on campus research conference with a presentation or poster (evidence of participation)

(c) Completion of the CITI Training for your major (Certificate of completion).

(d) A written research statement and bibliography accompanying completion of the form (we need a grading rubric)Once complete and submitted the CLA Dean’s Office students will receive an asterisk on their transcript from the registrar with a note stating they completed undergraduate research portfolio program.

Goal 6: Encourage and foster community engaged scholarship and teaching through outreach to the community

We continued and expanded outreach to local high schools. Departments of English, History, Modern Languages, Classics, Performing Arts, and American Studies were involved in several outreach activities such as teacher training, collaboration with relevant departments in high schools such as Boston Public schools, and presentation of papers at Professional Development venues for school teachers.

Faculty in Performing Arts intend to leverage the opening of University Hall with expansion of community activities and access including such things as music camps, summer theater activities for high school students, and lunch time concert series.

The Departments of Political Science and History expanded our partnership activities with the EMK Institute and the JFK library.

CLA signature programs including the Department of Classics’ Conventiculum Bostoniense, the Department of American Studies’ JFK Institute for Teachers, the MFA in Creative Writing’s Submitathons, the Department of Sociology’s Social Theory Forum, and the Department of English’s Rare Book Exhibitions with the Boston Public Library continued to thrive during 2015-16.

We continued to promote academic community partnerships including Anthropology’s Plimouth Plantation Project 400 and Eastern Pequot Anthropology/Archeology Collaborative, the Brazilian Immigrant Center Partnership, and the Sociology Department’s work with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and Teen Empowerment.

In collaboration with the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project and the College of Nursing and Health Science, Women's and Gender Studies faculty submitted a CESI grant proposal to redesign the Women’s and Gender Studies course focused on

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Indigenous women’s histories and contemporary issues in North America (WGS 270). The team co-taught the redesigned course in Fall 2015.

The Psychology and Sociology Departments continued to connect health services research with the local and regional community

Goal 7: Seek out Opportunities for Revenue Generation

We have been actively seeking additional outside funding sources, such as training grants, and higher overhead grants as part of the expansion of faculty grant-seeking activity noted above. As mentioned above we attempting to increase our capacity in this area via targeted PhD programs and post-doctoral students as well as hiring a dedicated grant manager.

We have attempted to increase capacity to manage grants and contracts through thie hiring of a college grant manager. The college grant manager was posted in April and the committee met with a candidate in May. The candidate accepted a job elsewhere so the search has been reopened.

We continue to expand strategic partnerships with CAPS and encourage more faculty to try teaching online. In particular, the Departments of History and Psychology expanded their on-line teaching capacities.

We have continued our outside fundraising efforts with alumni and potential “friends of the college.” The Dean has worked closely with University Advancement to meet with alumni to excite them about CLA, enhance their giving, involve them more in university affairs through classroom visits and guest lecturing opportunities, and involve them in the internship and job shadowing programs.

2. Other Major Achievements in 2015-2016

CLA has continued its strong hiring plan, bringing in faculty with robust and diverse research interests in the social sciences and the humanities.

The following is a list of TT hires made in the past four academic years: AY 2012-13 = 10

o 6 on replacemento 4 new o 3 additional searches failed or were carried over to AY 2013-14.

AY 2013-2014 = 16o 6 on replacemento 10 new

AY 2014-15 = 17o 7 replacementso 10 newo 1 on-goingo 2 failed searches

AY 2015-16 = 19

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o 9 replacemento 10 newo 3 failed searches

CLA faculty continued their excellent publication record

CLA faculty continued robust scholarly production in 14-15 (15-16 not yet available), producing higher numbers of books, book chapters, and journal articles than in 13-14. The college’s faculty collectively published 17 books, 229 journal articles, 79 book chapters, 264 creative works, 7 edited books, and 27 columns See Appendix IV A, B, and C.

Personnel milestones

Eight (8) CLA faculty achieved tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. The College has recommended 4 promotions to Full professor and 6 to Senior Lecturer, and is awaiting responses from the Provost.

CLA has worked mightily to increase our communication efforts highlighting the achievements of our stellar faculty, alumni, and programs via CLA and Dean’s Office Twitter feed with about 350 combined followers. The Twitter feed is an excellent archive of the great work that is being done in CLA. A sample of accomplishments tweeted about include:

Our MFA alumni Jennifer Leon winning the One City/One Story even for Boston Reads

The CLA nominated convocation speaker, Former Secretary of Transportation and Trustee, Jeffrey Mullen, welcoming open the academic year with enthusiastic endorsement of moving UMB forward

Creation of the new Labor Studies major and minor CLA SophMORE program beginning a job shadowing program Faculty from our Criminal Justice program hosting the Massachusetts Appeals

court Our 7 Healey grant awardees, our 1 Public Service grant awardee, our 2

Internationalizing grant awardees, and our 2 Creative Economies grant awardees Our faculty’s major media noteworthy and critically notable work in resiliency

(Jean Rhodes), activism (Aaron Lecklider), prescribing anti-psychotics to children (Ed Tronick), gun violence (Steffi Hartwell), archeology’s Pequot Field School (Stephen Silliman), the archives on the busing crisis in the 70s (Marilyn Morgan), ditching the tampon (Chris Bobel), and the economics of paid leave policies (Randy Albelda)

Our graduate students’ major fellowship awards from NIJ, NSF, and NIH. Teaching awards at our university-wide Teaching Learning and Technology

conference swept by CLA faculty Inaugural Manning Prize for excellent teaching to Psychology’s Susan Zup Performing Arts Professor Rafael Jean wins lifetime achievement award in

costume design from Salem State University

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Nyhan Fellowship competition from the Center for Media and Society revitalized through the English Department

UMass Boston named one of the top 10 best colleges in Massachusetts to get an Economics degree

New student clubs on campus spearheaded by CLA majors in pre Law and Students for a Sensible Drug Control Policy

3. Strengths and Weaknesses

CLA’s strengths and that of the Dean’s office emerge from our large number of multidimensional and talented faculty and undergraduate and graduate students. Our leadership in student success initiatives including CLA First is based in peer mentoring. Our graduate students teach seminars and support Large Enrollment courses as well as participate on faculty research projects. Our award-winning faculty is led by 19 dedicated Departmental Chairpersons and 10 energetic Graduate Program Directors all of whom are active in their scholarly fields, their classrooms, and in college administration. CLA is often at the forefront leading initiatives that are tantamount to the strategic plan and goals of the University including undergraduate research, writing support across campus for undergraduate and graduate students coordinated through the English department, study abroad, advising and career services support, and working with departmental administrators to assure best practices in policy and procedures. CLA faculty also perform the lion share of teaching, scholarship, and service across the University. Through these strengths, our sheer size and talent, and combined efforts across all citizens of the College we are able to educate our students with the analytical skill sets and practical experience necessary to make a difference in the global world.

Nevertheless, there are certainly areas we are stabilizing within the college. Faculty satisfaction is important for retention and our technical support in communications, grant finding, TA training, and teaching LE courses is essential. We also took the lead in developing a prototype and work plan for an electronic one form that streamlines creative course preparation and proposals essential for new and busy faculty. Unfortunately, the work of this committee, while at the goal line, has been stymied by budget woes.

Similarly, our graduate programs have been extremely hard hit by the evolution of graduate programming on campus and the mixed messages from leadership in both Administration and Finance and OGS. For instance, OGS created Guidelines for Hiring Assistantships, which is necessary, but CLA GPDs felt they lacked any opportunity for input. Similarly, the message that MA students are not a priority for the university came across load and clear in the A&F memo listing graduate MA programs as the #1 place to save money to close the budget deficit. This suggestion was shortsighted as our MA assistants are both our employees working for the university and mentees. GPDs found the idea that MA programs are supposed generate funds to support new doctoral programs unsavory. It would be one thing if the doctoral programs existed first or the programming was developed that way at the get go, and we were a different type of university, but the fact of the matter is we developed MA programs to support our students in the workforce and the shift away from assistantships as a recruiting tool for our students is a difficult one for GPDs to understand. Finally, admissions to our graduate programs have been stultified by the “inability to release assistantship money.” While our message as a college has been to move forward in admissions and offers, GPDs are

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extremely leery that both they and their potential students will be left in the lurch or worse because the University will be unable to fulfill a promise to our graduate students. Hence, graduate admissions are down 20%. This is not a problem isolated in CLA as is made obvious by graduate admissions data across the university. Nevertheless, the continued inability of A&F to value graduate programming is a problem best solved through education and communication. CLA GPDs welcomed A&F staff to a meeting we held this spring, which was a start of this process. An obvious solution would be for the University to move into the 21st century in terms of unit funding and adopt the Responsibility Centered Management (RCM) model strategy of funding units where budgets are fungible maximizing college flexibility, accountability, and independence.

Finally, we continue to try to move some of our weaker departments into positions of strength. In the case of two departments, we have made significant hires this year that should allow these departments to advance considerably. Another department is currently facing administrative challenges that are in the process of being addressed.

4. Unit Goals for 2016-17 and relationship to Strategic Plan

CLA’s unit goals for 2016-17 are intimately and organically linked to our strategic plan. To summarize briefly, during the next academic year, we plan to continue advancing student success through our CLA First!, SOPHOmore, and Advising programs. We plan to provide students with interdisciplinary programming, and opportunities for doing research at the undergraduate level. We intend to work hard on the recruitment, retention, and support of graduate students. We will continue in our efforts in further globalizing our academic programming, engaging with the community, and exploring further avenues for revenue generation. The more detailed outline of our goals is provided in the first section.

5. Aspirational Peers

Despite its recent troubles, we selected Temple University as our aspirational peer as it has a College of Liberal Arts (CLA), is ranked, and articulates a RCM budget strategy where CLA is accountable for, and manages, its own budget. Temple’s CLA has many like programs in the humanities and social sciences and a similarly large commuter based student population convened at a public urban institution in the heart of Philadelphia. We admire Temple CLA’s ties to their School of Medicine, School of Public Health, and School of Social Work and their faculty’s significant revenue generation and notable expertise in the areas of urban health disparities, sustainable communities, survey research, social policy, CJ and substance abuse research centers, and aging and as a driver of the regional economy. Temple boasts an 88% freshman retention rate and 40% graduation rate at 4 years (UMB is 40% at 6 years). Two-thirds of students at Temple are on financial aid, 80% live off campus, and 30% of all classes convene 20 students or less with a 1:14 student faculty ratio. It is the 31st largest university in the country and ranked 115 overall by US New and World Report. We think their goals of access, affordability (15k in-state, and 2k out of state), diversity, regional economy partnerships, and educating the future workforce of innovators are admirable and achievable at UMass Boston (see Table 4 below). After all Temple had an 83 year head start and does not boast the beauty of our campus on the sea. Table 4 examines similarities and differences across Temple University and UMass Boston. Bolded comparisons provide benchmarks

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where we’d like to see comparable growth in CLA. Finally, all colleges at Temple are managed using the RCM model (see above), where Deans are responsible and accountable for their budgets as related to enrollments and productivity. This model would be ideal for CLA rewarding all the heavy lifting the CLA does across the University in terms of teaching, scholarship, and service.

Table 4: Aspirational Peer and UMass Boston Information

Temple University UMass Boston

founded 1884 founded 1967

Rank 115 US News and World Report Tier 2

40,000 (12,000 grad students) 18,000 students overall (3,000 grad students)

18 schools/colleges 11 colleges

4,400 CLA Majors (700 grad students) 4,700 Majors (550 grad students)

$16 million grant funding in CLA $5 million grant funding in CLA

35 majors in CLA 28 majors in CLA

36 minors in CLA 26 minors in CLA

15 MA in CLA 9 MA in CLA

13 PhD in CLA 3 PhD, 1 MFA in CLA

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