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Thinking about CAS

Since the CAS Dean’s blog does not allow comments, I’m reposting it here. I will note that, unlike the other Deans, Bruce Blonigen and the CAS leadership regularly meet with the CAS Senators in the “CAS Caucus”:

CAS Leadership Update

Continuing our approach to sharing the top items that CAS leadership is currently working on, here is this week’s leadership update. At our recent weekly leadership team meeting, we considered the following items:

Budget

We discussed and finalized our proposed expenditure cut plan for the College as requested by the Provost’s Office. This plan was informed by conversations with all of our advisory bodies of faculty and staff in the College, including the CAS Senate Caucus (the CAS faculty and staff who are UO Senators), the Heads Council (two elected heads from each division), the Managers Advisory Committee (two elected department managers from each division), and the entire group of department heads and managers. We are thankful that we were given a relatively modest cut as a College though it is more a challenging exercise because of the expenditures that will come online when Tykeson Hall opens this fall.

We will be discussing our proposal with the Provost over the next two weeks or so to finalize the plan.

Tykeson

Carol Stabile, who is coordinating the development of our new Tykeson Hall operations with our partners in the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success and the University Career Center, gave us an update and had a number of discussion items about Tykeson Hall.

As we near completion of construction on Tykeson Hall, we look forward to officially opening the building. We currently plan to open to the public in Fall 2019. Right now, we are working on creating strong partnerships between Tykeson Hall advisors and advising in CAS units through CAS working group meetings and smaller meetings with department heads, managers, and advising staff. We are also working on developing rich materials about our CAS majors that will allow our new colleagues in Tykeson Hall to understand our many units. We look forward to the partnerships that will allow Tykeson Hall to enhance student success on our campus.

Fellowships and Awards

We spoke with Research and Development Services (RDS) about the support they provide in helping faculty apply for prestigious external fellowships and awards. Increasing the nominations and awards that our faculty garner is a major goal for all of us and we talked through various strategies to achieve that goal. We also shared some suggestions about additional support faculty would find helpful. We appreciate RDS taking the time to collect input and continually improve their services.

Effective Meetings Training

The deans spend a large portion of their time each week in a variety of meetings. With that in mind, we held a session on how to improve meetings. Suggestions included making sure to set agendas and sharing materials in advance, assigning times to agenda items, setting clear expectations for the meeting (e.g. communicate goals, ask people to put away laptops and cell phones, use white boards and notetakers, etc.), and following up after the meeting with outcomes and action items. We hope to be able to implement some of these things to help us use meeting time more effectively.

Writing Circles

CAS plans to hold three writing circles in Tykeson Hall in fall term. These circles provide time for faculty to focus on their writing goals in a small group setting with support from other faculty and the faculty member leading the circle. We will send a notice in May to give faculty the opportunity to sign up if they are interested.

One Comment

  1. CSN 04/30/2019

    >Effective Meetings Training

    The deans spend a large portion of their time each week in a variety of meetings. With that in mind, we held a session on how to improve meetings. Suggestions included making sure to set agendas and sharing materials in advance, assigning times to agenda items, setting clear expectations for the meeting (e.g. communicate goals, ask people to put away laptops and cell phones, use white boards and notetakers, etc.), and following up after the meeting with outcomes and action items. We hope to be able to implement some of these things to help us use meeting time more effectively.

    Glad to see the Deanery has graduated to a 101-level understanding of organizational operation.

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