Memorandum: Year-End Thoughts

To: UT Knoxville Faculty and Staff
From: Provost Robert Holub
Re: Year-End Thoughts
Date: June 19, 2007

As I approach the end of my first year at Knoxville, I thought I should share with the campus some of the work of the Provost's Office over the past year and some of the items we will be working on in the future. First, however, I would like to thank all of you for being so welcoming to me and my family. No matter where I go on campus I find individuals who have been gracious, open, and hospitable, and I appreciate your help and your patience as I integrate myself into this great institution and community.

One thing I have tried to do is make my office more transparent to the campus community; you can read up on what we have been doing by going to my website: http://provost.utk.edu/

Here you can find all memoranda emanating from my office, various small talks and papers I have delivered ("From the Provost"), and the Provost's Forum, where I and my staff present issues of importance and often deal directly with controversial topics, and invite input.
We are currently looking at ways to make the web site more effective, and we will be adding separate pages relating to faculty members and their concerns.

A central emphasis of my first year has been faculty compensation. In the most recent report I received I read with dismay that we would need to add over $10 million dollars to the faculty salary budget to reach the average of our THEC peers. Full professors lag behind their colleagues at these other institutions by an average of over $13,000.

I argued strongly this year that compensation for faculty and staff should be the highest priority in our budget request, and I am grateful to see that others agreed. The budget we received this year should allow us to address the issue and close the gap somewhat. The Faculty Compensation Task Force I appointed will report to me very soon, and I hope in the future to come up with ways to make merit increases a regular part of faculty evaluation.

Graduate education was another priority for me this year. As you may know, I reestablished the Graduate School and appointed a Dean of the Graduate School, Carolyn Hodges. Dean Hodges is now proceeding to make recommendations for how we can revitalize the Graduate School and set graduate education on an upward trajectory. Since graduate education is a key to the realization of our goal to be among the very best research institutions in the country, the success of the Graduate School is a critical piece of Knoxville's future.

I have also prioritized retention of undergraduate students, a measure in which we have traditionally done rather poorly, and which perhaps reflects the legacies of open enrollments and budget cuts.

Under the leadership of the new Vice Provost for Academic Operations, Todd Diacon, we will inaugurate the "Light the Torch of Academic Excellence" program this summer and fall.
http://www.utk.edu/features/lighttorch/

Included in this program are a number of innovative initiatives that will put academics in the spotlight during orientation and welcome week.

Next fall we will have close to 100 freshman seminars taught almost exclusively by tenure and tenure-track faculty, and we hope to duplicate these efforts in the spring. http://web.utk.edu/~froshsem/

In cooperation with the Student Success Center, ably led by Ruth Darling, we will be dealing directly with student needs and trying to keep at risk students in school and successful in their course work.

The Task Force on Retention, chaired by Assistant Vice Chancellor Darling and Tammy Kahrig, will be reporting to me soon, and I expect that the campus will develop further programs and policies to make certain that all undergraduates have the advice and tools they need to succeed at UT. As I said in my first presentation to the faculty senate: we have the obligation to ensure the success of every student admitted to the campus.

Programs such as these require support. Some of you have undoubtedly noticed that the Provost's Office has gotten larger. The additions have been essential for our ability to provide better education for students and opportunities for faculty development. I address the issue of size in a recent Provost's Forum.
http://provost.utk.edu/forum/sizematters.shtml

There are many other things we accomplished over the past year, from reforming the athletic admissions policy to expanding faculty input, to moving toward more reliable data sources for decision-making, from regularizing the search process for Governor's Chairs to working toward better cooperation with other institutions of higher education in Tennessee. And of course we have many regular activities related to academic affairs and other aspects of educational processes to which we attend on a daily basis.

In the upcoming year we will continue to work on improvements in graduate education and undergraduate retention, on faculty compensation issues and reforms to our evaluation and personnel process. But we are also going to move forward on a program that will provide additional opportunities for undergraduate research. Our chief advantage over most four-year institutions in the state is that we are a research university, and it is incumbent on us to use this advantage to our benefit by introducing students to learning by encouraging them to work with us on our pioneering efforts to advance knowledge in our respective fields.

As always, I welcome your input into our activities and your comments on my proposals and views. I hope you have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to working with you in the new academic year.