Dossier

I have served within the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office since Fall 2019. While our UTC Faculty Handbook does not account for administrative responsibilities when describing the attributes of the Professor rank, these responsibilities have accounted for a large proportion of my time. Most importantly, they have been tremendously fulfilling.

My role as an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences involves facilitating a variety of faculty and student affairs. For faculty, I facilitate the reappointment, tenure, promotion, and post-tenure reviews at the college level. I also develop and administer a collection of college level faculty development programs like writing and creating retreats, travel grants, collaborative pedagogy grants, and our Research and Creative Activity Award program. For student affairs I collaborate with department leaders, our Vice Provosts, and the Office of the University Registrar to engage in effective enrollment management and course scheduling. I also work alongside our college’s six graduate program directors to facilitate graduate program recruitment, program development, and assistantship funding.

Faculty Affairs

Reappointment, Tenure, Promotion, and Post-Tenure Review

Faculty appointment guidance

One of my main responsibilities in the College of Arts and Sciences involves maintaining records regarding our faculty roster and facilitating the reappointment, tenure, promotion, and post-tenure reviews for our tenure-track faculty at the college level. To support those activities, I:

• regularly communicate college tenure and promotion guidelines and policies via workshops for department heads and RTP Committee chairs each year. To support these workshops I have generated guidance (Tenure and Promotion Guidance for Chairs and Reappointment Guidance for Chairs) that I update annually.

• maintain a set of sample documents for department heads and RTP Committee chairs. For confidentiality, I will not share copies of those documents here, but they include templates for inviting external reviewers, templates for notification letters to faculty, and examples recommendation letters to department heads (from RTP) and dean (from department head).

Within the last two years, I have also provided annual workshops for faculty who are pursuing tenure and/or promotion. In these workshops I set a casual atmosphere of conversation around the tenure and promotion procedures, expectations around formatting of the materials and dossier, the faculty role in securing external reviewers, and generally work to make myself available to answer their questions.

• Faculty who attend these workshops are provided with a brief guide to the tenure and promotion procedure in the college (Tenure and Promotion Guidance for Candidates).

College Tenure and Promotion COmmittee leadership

In February of each year, I organize the college-level committee review, discussion, and voting for candidates for tenure and/or promotion. This committee independently reviews and makes recommendations to the Dean regarding candidates for tenure and promotion within the College. The College T&P Committee uses the UTC Faculty Handbook, the College bylaws, and bylaws from the relevant Department to review recommendations for faculty tenure and promotion forwarded by departmental RTP committees and their department heads.

I have served as chair of the CAS Tenure and Promotion Committee for the last 5 years and I assisted Dr. John Tucker when he chaired the committee in 2020. Each year we have reviewed between 9 and 19 candidates and this work is completed within 15 calendar days. It is a significant effort for the committee members, so to best respect the time commitment of my faculty colleagues, I:

• assemble all the candidate’s materials in a single email following a standard format (Folder of Materials, Dossier, CAS Bylaws, and Department Bylaws). Committee members consistently report that this organization has made their review work easier and more efficient because all the information they need is available in a standard place. See here for an example.

• deploy a Qualtrics survey to anonymously collect committee input while they conduct their independent review. I then examine and summarize the input before the committee meets so that the summarized input can be used to guide discussion. Qualtrics survey

• generate and/or edit a letter of recommendation for each candidate. In recent years, I have assigned each of the 8 members of the committee to generate a letter draft for one tenure and/or promotion candidate under review. I then edit their drafts for consistency and generate any other required letters as we have always had more than 8 candidates being considered in any given year.

Periodic post-tenure performance review facilitation

Within the college, I am responsible for assembling any necessary divisional subcommittees for our post-tenure review process. While this year we have only two faculty completing periodic post-tenure performance review, we have usually had between eight and 20 annually. To facilitate the college review process I hold an organizational meeting with each subcommittee in the early Fall (faculty members from each of our four divisions) and I separately hold optional workshops for those who are under review in the late Summer. Finally, in December, I collect all the committee reports and share them with the Dean.

Faculty development programs

Student Affairs

Enrollment Management

My enrollment management responsibilities focus on aligning course offerings, instructional resources, and faculty assignments with student demand and institutional priorities. This work involves both budget oversight and collaboration across academic units to ensure efficient and accessible pathways for students.

Budgeting and Course Offerings

• Each semester I communicate benchmarks for course and set offerings with department heads. Where possible, I summarize anticipated course needs, communicate institutional priorities for clearing curricular bottlenecks, and made recommendations based on historical enrollment. To inform consistency in this process, I deployed the CAS Academic Scheduling Policy

• Partnering with our budget manager, I document course assignments for our ~270 full-time faculty across 16 departments and reconcile those assignments to any course releases, additional duties assignments, and/or trainings. This practice allows my team to track faculty assignments over time to detect workload imbalances. We use this data to inform ‘overload’ compensation and I am responsible for approving and identifying a cost center for those overload teaching assignments.

• A proportion of our courses in the College of Arts and Sciences are led by part-time faculty. I manage a recurring fiscal year budget of $1.6 million for part-time faculty. To steward these funds well, I communicate with department heads about their adjunct-led course offerings, approve those offerings, and work to identify alternative funding sources where appropriate.

• Alongside approving overload compensation and part-time faculty compensation, I also monitor enrollment in all College of Arts and Sciences courses and collaborate with department heads and our Student Success Center to navigate waitlist management and student notifications regarding in-demand course offerings. I am also responsible for discerning when low enrolled courses should be cancelled or merged.

• Once the schedule has been released, I process all College of Arts and Sciences approvals for modifications to the modality, day/time, instructor, and/or course capacity assignments.

• These enrollment management practices are also a key responsibility as our College plans for the summer semester. I am responsible for a $700,000 budget for summer instruction. To best steward these funds toward student progression, I allocate this budget across our 16 departments and identify alternative funding sources where appropriate. To inform consistency in this process, I deployed the CAS Summer Instruction Policy.

General Education

• When the General Education curriculum changed in 2023, I initiated a process to map UTC’s GE14 offerings with the GE23 offerings to help support a smooth transition between curriculum and staffing needs. I now track General Education offerings annually across categories to ensure we are meeting student needs and maintaining a reasonable balance of those offerings across departments.

• I collaborate with colleagues in other colleges to develop paths for students to complete their General Education and major programming within an online modality. This work involves liaising with faculty in Arts & Sciences, administrative leaders in the Rollins College of Business and College of Engineering and Computer Science, and staff in Academic Advising and the Office of the Registrar.

• I collaborate with the Assistant Provost for Student Success to cohort First Year Experience courses across the university with General Education courses in Arts & Sciences.

Graduate education

My work in graduate education centers on supporting the success of graduate students and faculty by overseeing assistantship allocation, faculty and thesis approvals, and program development. These responsibilities also include collaboration with institutional offices to strengthen and promote graduate offerings across the College of Arts & Sciences.

• Advocate for, allocate, and track graduate assistantships across six programs in CAS.  Liaise with College Budget Manager to ensure all assistantships are funded and received.

• Review and approve applications for graduate faculty member status (~ 20 annually).

• Review and approve masters student theses (~ 20 to 30 annually).

• Assist with development of Joint Undergraduate to Masters Programs and certificates. Address obstacles to program growth and for new programs to be added.

• Liaise with institutional research and marketing to promote our eight graduate programs.

College Affairs

co-Director of Integrated Studies

As Co-Director of Integrated Studies (INTS), I provide academic, administrative, and strategic leadership for this rapidly growing interdisciplinary program. My work encompasses curriculum development, program administration, supporting recruitment, and building institutional partnerships to align with university priorities. Since assuming co-directorship in Summer 2024, we have facilitated a growth in enrollment of over 400% while advancing new pathways and opportunities for students.