The following comments (raw data) were collected in an online survey following the strategic plan listening sessions on Sept. 29, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 2021. View the “Listening Session Jamboard and Follow Up Survey Synopsis.”
Student Success and Retention
- Retention especially given Covid is very good, recruiting is really challenging. In five years I hope to have sustainable numbers.
- I tend to identify competent but at risk students and try to mentor them to succeed. Undergraduates, I try to get involved in research and to apply to graduate programs and internships, graduate students I try to teach independence and self reliance.
- We offer financial and mentored support through fellowships, supplies, and lab experience to help students grow their research, develop a deeper connection within the college, and gain real life experience
- Doing Well: Individual advising sessions every semester; committees working on curriculum and student success; fostering community within the department for students and faculty. Challenges: Difficult degrees with too many credits; students facing mental health challenges and not enough resources on campus; woefully behind in technology (OIT should manage U technology needs rather than departments…when attached to budgets, tech gets cut and students and faculty suffer. Security risk). Evolved: Altered degree plans to be more manageable for students; more tech support; more options for mental health on campus (including resources for students with financial barriers).
- Providing meaningful experiences that both recruit and retain students
- We host cohort-based research experiences for first-in-family and low income students from rural areas in Idaho. In addition to cohort building activities, students are also paired with a faculty mentor and works with the faculty member’s research group, which is composed of peer, near-peer, graduate students, and often postdocs that together, constitute a team that will carry out team science. We are in the process of measuring the impact of this program on student success and retention, and find that students who participate in the program represent many academic disciplines, are retained to graduation, earn their bachelor’s degree, continue on to graduate school or professional school in locations across the nation, and become successfully employed in their area of study. We are in the process of submitting a manuscript for publication so that we can disseminate the results of our activities. Challenges include meeting the needs of all students. Financial constraints limit the number of students that are provided this cohort-based experience. I hope that this work will have evolved five years from now to include all students that wish to participate in this type of program.
- I work in programs that value student retention and our reach efforts. We conference with our students, are encouraged to participate in CTL activities, and share campus resources. We have worked to rethink attendance and late work policies. We focus on creating community in our classes. I love this. The issue is that this has increased our workload from when I first started teach 15+ years ago, but the increase of time spent on mentoring and reaching out to students is not reflected in our workload. Our work extends off contract, in evenings, and weekends. Given the debt and interest rates our students pay to be in our classes, they deserve this attention. But there are only so many hours in a day. Additionally, given rising housing costs, many staff and contingent faculty are picking up side hustles, as our incomes have not kept up.
- As departments grow, dedicated advisors will be crucial. As an advising coordinator, I know quite a bit about the process. However, once I hand off students to faculty focused on their interests, this knowledge wans by default because it takes a lot of time to learn the nuances and resources to advise properly. Our aspiring peer institution, UNLV, has centralized advising that work with programs. As it stands, CAAS is not positioned to offer this, nor are all departments funded in a way that a dedicated advisor can be hired. This would help greatly with retention, and allow me to be more confident in progressing my other activities. In the short term, I continue to write at least one graduate assistantship into any grants I submit in hopes of hiring/training someone who can be dedicated part-time to this work. Honestly, a part-time advisor (who only advises) is all we need at this point.
- Offer students quality classes, that is, classes which are updated to the times the students are living in and classes which are up to date with current research. I have been throughout my teaching career offering classes that introduce students to the most immediate research in the field(s). And this requires, I, as the teacher, must either be aware about recent scholarship and/or actively involved in pursuing research current in the fields. This however does not happen across classes as many faculty have no active research agenda and/or care little about getting acquainted with current research in (their) fields. I am not talking about faculty who for some reasons have fallen behind (As President Tromp mentioned in her candidacy talk: women faculty of color are most affected by this); rather, about faculty who are unwilling to pursue any research because they have grown comfortable with their jobs. If we wish to be “nationally-recognized” and serve our students, greater rigor in research is required and this includes revising our tenure and promotion requirements, and more demanding evaluation of full professors. In order to be a student-oriented institution we need to pay attention that we place faculty ahead of them. This means supporting faculty in order to ensure they can do their work without worrying about work-place harassment, job security, housing issues, inflation etc. etc. If faculty are distracted, they cannot focus on teaching.
- in 5 years: Pell-eligible in-state students meet/exceed retention and graduation rates of other student populations.
- In my interactions with students I try to make sure they understand that I am here to help them learn and available to answer any questions they may have and offer any help at advancing their understanding as needed.
- Doing well: Undergraduate research programs.
- My unit, the Department of Chemistry stockroom, is tangentially responsible for student success and retention, in that we support student learning without directly engaging in it. We have done well in accommodating the increasing class sizes and in adjusting to the new normal with COVID and more online learning opportunities. However, we are facing an issue with students not gaining the necessary experience in labs because they had to be online. Retention seems not to be an issue yet, what with increased class sizes staying steady. In five years, I hope that we have expanded the teaching faculty and staff to help fill the retirements and other losses we have had over the last two years in particular; this will significantly decrease the stress on our system and increase our capacity to encourage student successes.
- Doing Well: We have done well in adapting to the austerity measures in place across the university, which we have addressed by revamping and reducing our curriculum, increasing class sizes, and relying on adjunct instruction to compensate for lost tenure-track lines. Challenges: While we are able to maintain the status quo, we are challenged to meet the needs of our students and to continue to grow and develop programs that remain relevant in rapidly changing and highly competitive disciplines and associated industries without adequate staffing or financial support. Future: Five years from now I would like to see us as part of a Center where we can work collaboratively with other university programs such as athletics, biological and health sciences, business, music, and others to produce meaningful media content and messaging, to prepare students for their chosen careers, and to demonstrate the level of sophistication and skill necessary to become educational leaders that produce elite alumni with 100% job placement upon graduation.
- Make learning more accessible to more people
- Undergrad research opportunities are a strength.
- Incorporating career advising across the curriculum, increasing inclusive education, empowering students of color with substantive resources; need to directly address national dialogues that fetishize STEM and the vocationalization of higher ed while undercutting the critical thinking and broad education of the liberal arts
- We have no data on where students are going post-graduation
Research and Creative Activity
- I am doing really well pursuing opportunities; I am struggling to find the bandwidth to capitalize on those opportunities. In five years I hope to have a manageable workload.
- I’m doing my best with research and creative activity under the present circumstances. I’m hopeful for the future.
- We collaborate with other departments within COAS and other colleges on campus to foster research growth, a deeper student connection and educational experience, and provide opportunities for junior faculty. The challenge is sharing the available opportunities and finding balance between departments or colleges that manage workloads differently. Great communication is key to successful collaborations.
- Doing Well: Managing to still produce research with a full load (during a pandemic); building a diverse portfolio of publications/presentations/grants; managing to work with very little support (no budget for faculty travel, no time during the year to complete research, no guidance on grant-writing at the departmental/college level). Challenges: No time for research with a full load; no budget for presenting research; very few options for grants in the Arts (and the options seem to be for performative/collaborative work only); no guidance on grant-writing in the Arts/COAS. Evolved: I hope there will be a better understanding in the Arts of the different types of creative activity (performance, academic research, artwork, etc), and that there will be grant opportunities to support all types. I hope we will have Arts or COAS specific assistance for grant-writing and resources to support our research efforts (I feel very lucky to have discovered on my own that Jana LaRosa in Research Development is able to assist with a research plan).
- Supporting research administration for departments that do not have the expertise to manage grant related projects from a financial aspect. Challenges are that more back-end resources are needed to sustain the current volume of research.
- We could do better with more resources. Our department currently has no money for faculty travel and research. This was removed during last year’s budget cuts and it has yet to return.
- We have established shared core facilities that support research efforts across campus. These facilities are available to anyone who would like to use them. Technical training is provided to new users, students and faculty alike. Highly skilled research staff members are available for consultation, collaboration, and generation of novel data. The shared core facility serves as a hub for new faculty members who are in the process of establishing their own research program, and provides a mechanism to efficiently and economically support many individual labs through one centralized facility. We are in the process of evaluating the impact of shared core facilities at Boise State on research growth. Initial findings support the conclusion that access to shared core facilities and belonging to a community of investigators fosters collaboration, increases productivity, and leads to a successful transition to independence. Challenges include sustaining shared core facilities over the long term, and transitioning them to a self-supporting business model. This transition will rely on establishing good governance, communication, and evaluation practices, as well as assessing the needs of the campus research community, the operations, and personnel that provide services to the campus research community. Over the next five years, I anticipate that the existing shared core facilities will evolve and adopt best practices that will facilitate the transition to sustainability. A critical factor in this transition is the ability to provide funding for Pilot Projects, mentored career development and guidance, and activities that enhance the research environment in support of the campus community.
- No time for either, only teaching and administering.
- Our reach output is high, and we are inviting undergrads to contribute to research in meaningful ways. We are getting grants, and there are some amazing interdisciplinary collaborations happening. We do need more grant support and for VIP type of models to be recognized in our workload and to be built into our curriculum.
- I know space is an issue. We hired new faculty who do not have room for their archaeology collections (something I know is in the works). I personally am still, nearly a year after my office wall began to “melt” from the rain, in a temporary office. As a result, I am taking up two spaces. Though I am not yet tenure track, I am now a clinical faculty with a growing (and promising) applied program in human-animal interactions and applied behavior. Students are craving knowledge in interspecific research, something evident in the increasing number of animal cognition and human-animal interactions labs (and programs) developing around the country. As such, I would like to eventually secure a simple dry lab space to which we could invite community members to participate in research like other institutions with these programs. This would give me increased opportunities to include students in my work (without asking them to drive around Boise on their own gas to meet with participants), while also engaging the community in science on campus. I hope to see my lab become the next Purdue, Duke, University of Arizona, Oregon State, Barnard, Hunter College, etc. lab focused on this bond and offering classes (baby steps in progress) and perhaps a minor in anthrozoology (aka, human-animal interactions). This is a long-term goal, for sure. However, if we do not address our space issues and maintenance concerns now, I do not see how we will get where we want to be for my lab or others. If my actual office were repaired (which I am to understand has been on hold since last fall because the roof needs to be repaired first), I would at least have space for a second small desk and computer where students could come work on projects. Alternatively, I would be more accessible from the anthropology student workroom. I have proven to be adaptable, but the current situation is becoming a “long-term” temporary solution. I realize that space isn’t directly researched – yet it is so tightly connected. VIPs often meet in classrooms where their ideas have to be erased from the board at the end of the hour. Equipment or resources have to be carried around campus rather than having a “home.” I can’t be the only faculty member in this position with their and their students’ work.
- Doing well: We are supporting student efforts and working to remain relevant. Challenges: Due to our current responsibilities, we have not had the ability to focus on or support faculty research and creative activities. This has been an ongoing challenge. “Doing more with less” doesn’t apply in this area, as the “less” in instructional and support staff typically requires “more” in time and effort to meet student needs. Future: Five years from now I would like to see some collaborative research and creative projects within the department, as well as an increase in research and creative outputs.
- Research is a very responsible way to gain knowledge! We should be teaching how to research well before the 300-400 level courses.
- Our facilities are a challenge as well as University support with lab safety.
- Persevering despite lack of resources
Budget and Operations
- This is outside my normal wheelhouse but I’m willing to serve in this capacity if that is what the university needs from me.
- I feel that we manage our budget and operations well and are able to maximize our opportunities to help as many people as possible (students, faculty, and staff). We sometimes struggle with what growth will look like and how best to manage that growth.
- Challenges: Related to previous comments, we need to centralize technology on this campus for better equity between departments and to ensure that our computers are secure. We have departments that are woefully behind because hardware/software updates are connected to the full department budget (that gets cut first). This impacts classrooms and faculty computers. Departments could continue to purchase computers above and beyond through grants if they wanted, but we need to ensure that everyone has the basics. Research funding is extremely limited in the Arts and seems to be focused more for performance creative activity. Support for faculty travel and all types of creative activity would be helpful.
- We have leveraged smaller appropriated and local university investments to secure larger and more extensive extramural funding for research and research training programs, workforce development, and infrastructure building efforts. The operations that support these efforts are provided by a small administrative team that is highly effective and efficient. In five years, I anticipate that we will continue to see the return on investment of the university funds in the form of increased research productivity and growth in ways that improve the world in which we live and the quality of life that we experience.
- Need more administrative help. Would like more guidance on annual/monthly rules, e.g. the taxation was a surprise.
- Oooffff. It feels like Bronco Budget hates the humanities and undergraduate mentoring. We need to prioritize undergraduate education and retention. This might mean smaller class sizes and interdisciplinary majors. Bronco Budget does not support that.
- I think our department, like many others, is simply in the painful position of not having the resources to grow, yet being ready to grow. We have many great ideas, yet in some ways, we find ourselves hitting the pause button in order to prioritize immediate concerns over some of the projects and changes which could assist in recruitment for our program and the university. Unfortunately, I know how to seek grants and work small budgets. I do not know enough to answer this question on the institutional level.
- in 5 years: expenditures that actually follow student demand/growth/need for instructors
- I see myself more as at the “mercy of” rather than having any impact on budget. The current budget environment is terrible. In past academic positions the administration was able to help financially when unexpected events arose but now it seems like the administration is working against research and creativity.
- Doing well Getting by on a shoestring budget. Challenges Getting by on a shoestring budget. Five years from now I would like to have adequate financial support to provide the resources necessary to develop and expand our undergraduate programs, to establish a vibrant graduate program, and to increase research and creative outputs.
- Facilities staff are doing a great job in general, a challenge is that we are expected to pay for such basics as repairing failing flooring (trip hazard and eye sore).
- Heavily subsidizing other programs, need to find creative solutions to subvert the highly regressive bronco budget that keeps funneling more resources from low budget “efficient” programs to profligate big budget “inefficient” programs – like program prioritization says it would do. Hah!
Graduate Programming
- I am doing really well relating graduate curricula to work and student aspirations; I am having a hard time being as involved as I used to be due to overload. In five years I hope to be sitting in the same room with graduate students.
- I do my best with graduate education. I teach one graduate course and support graduate students with external funding when I can.
- We offer graduate salaries, tuition support, and continued research support so that graduate students can continue their research, become published authors, present at conferences, and hopefully, have a fuller university experience.
- Doing well: Most students move through in 2 years Challenges: Need to change the curriculum (offer more elective courses, change the timing/delivery options of classes for grad students); we can’t grow the programs until we are willing to offer an online program or change to evening classes (our students are professionals during the day) Evolved: Fully online degree option; edited degree plan; afternoon/evening classes; some summer options.
- creating new curriculum
- We support interdisciplinary graduate education in the following programs: Biomolecular Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science, Computing, and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior by providing funding for graduate student stipends, training workshops, teaching biophysical courses that rely on high-end instrumentation residing in shared core facilities, and career development activities. One recent challenge/opportunity was the realization that many graduate students do not see their future in academia but rather feel that they fit better in an industrial profession after earning a PhD. To increase their successful transition from graduate school to industry, we initiated an Industry Internship for recent graduates of doctoral programs. During a one-year internship, students work on an industry-specific project, meeting regularly with the specific company representative. Over the next five years, this program will grow, and begin to demonstrate an economic impact for Idaho. Additionally, students will be able to explore non-academic career paths.
- Need more consistent support.
- I currently only mentor one graduate student. They work on a project and get hands-on experience with the concepts they are learning in their classes. I would like to see our university think carefully about how and when we offer graduate programs in the liberal arts given the decline in tenure track jobs nationwide. We want to be sure our students are prepared for alt-ac careers.
- We need to be better positioned to offer tuition waivers and other funding for graduate students. This will help us be competitive in recruiting high quality candidates. I understand that this can, and to some extent, should be funded through faculty research grants, but we are currently going through a growth spurt on campus. There are many great ideas fighting for increasingly smaller pieces of the grant agency pies. Support in this way would make faculty more productive and hence, more competitive on the grant market.
- When thinking about graduate education, it is imperative that we increase our MA and Doctorate offerings, including in traditional humanities (but which are globally situated). Transdisciplinarity as a talking point is great but this “one size fits all” mindset must be replaced. Yes, transdisciplinary graduate programs are required but so are traditional disciplines, albeit revised, in order to understand and “respond to the continuous and unpredictable shifts in the world around us, as Stuart Hall reminds us in “Old & New” (1991: 43). Hall as a Humanist understood this well, hence as early as the 1970’s he initiated Cultural Studies (British) as a way to define “new axiologies and forms of praxis” to “identify and solve global problems that conventional disciplinary perspectives cannot capture” (Hunsinger & Nolan “Transdisciplinary”), but without advocating moving out of a “traditional” British literature discipline. Instead, Hall insisted on the need to reimagine English literature much in the same way that Latin American decolonial scholars today call for reimaging (European) modernity as trans-modernity or a modernity that was forged through the (erased) contributions of non-Europeans.
- in 5 years: NO PhDs in Humanities without extremely careful, innovative work. A PhD will drain already stressed departments. Instead, concentrate on excellent, exciting, student-focused undergraduate degrees and select and purposeful master’s degrees.
- The same as above.
- Doing well: A growing number of graduate students which propels research further.
- My unit, the Department of Chemistry stockroom, is tangentially , in that we support student learning without directly engaging in it. We have been expanding our graduate program and our students are finding success after graduation. However, we are having an issue with too much interest and not enough space for students, both in lab availability and in physical space. In the future, we hope to expand to other buildings and increase lab capacity that way. Further, we as a department want to hire more faculty members to encourage more student project diversity as well as more staff for the stockroom to help with research needs.
- Doing well: We are developing a graduate program that allows students to combine their areas of interest with a discipline specific core to tailor their degree to meet their personal and professional goals. Challenges: While this is an exciting prospect, we currently lack the instructional staff and resources necessary to make it a reality. Future: Five years from now I would like to see us with a rigorous and rewarding graduate program that is recognized both locally and nationally.
- This is incredibly important, we need to make this information more available
- Challenges include affordable (and somewhat nearby) student housing (particularly those with families).
- Starting a new graduate degree
- Grad students can’t focus on their education if they can’t afford to live here, increased capacity to engage across departments (e.g. getting a cert from another program etc)
Do you have any other thoughts, questions or ideas you want to share/ask?
- Not currently but would like to remain in the loop.
- “Treat your audience like poets and geniuses and that’s what they’ll become.” – Del Close
- I get the impression that the University has some challenges to solve but I don’t have a good idea of what they are. I’m a problem solver and would try to help if I knew what the actual problems were. If there are no problems then great! Let’s keep things going the way they are! I’m all for self improvement but change can be disruptive to the things people and programs that are successful. If we do make radical changes, I need to understand the why a little better and the thought process for the solution.
- The word “tradition” in the statements kept hitting me wrong. I think we want to move away from that word. I agree that we want to learn from and grow from our past, but tradition feels old and stuffy to me. We want to innovate and move forward!
- I hope that the administration can see the way to add faculty to keep up with the ideals created at the top, or to make more substantial lecturer positions for suffering and overworked adjuncts.
- There are real opportunities for expansion in ODP. That said, the budget models for extended studies, with bottom dollar adjunct wages being the model, is problematic. We need to invest in our people. Additionally, many of us are on 9 month contracts but work 10 months and our contracts should reflect that.
- These Statements need to be more easily read and digested than they are in their current form.
- I love Boise State, and I find myself committed more every day. Perhaps it is because I’m still relatively new, but I see so much potential in our ideas, the approach of blue turf thinking, and our commitment to community (on campus and off). I know this is a time of growth, and growth is never easy, but I also think that careful planning will truly make us a leader (and model) in higher education.
- I’m just a graduate student, so I’m wondering why I was able to attend?
- It seems like a morale buster to have a national search for a new dean of COAS – why not choose from well qualified (and up to speed) existing faculty?
- Working group progress would be great, but monthly seems like too frequently
- I think the listening sessions and follow-up work like this Google Form are terrific! Folks who want to be more engaged and informed about the direction of the college have been warmly welcomed into that opportunity this semester, and this must have taken an inordinate amount of time and planning by multiple people in the Dean’s Office. Congratulations to all of you who made this effort — it shows leadership and shared governance, and that real strategic planning when involving the troops takes data collection and hard work!