SEPTEMBER 3, 1998-vol30n2:Grant sees 'can-do' culture for new college

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 2 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1998

Grant sees 'can-do' culture for new college

By SUE WUETCHER
News Services Associate Director

He's worked long hours. Even pulled a few all-nighters.

But Kerry S. Grant says it's been worth the time and effort because the merger of the former faculties of Social Sciences, Arts and Letters, and Natural Sciences and Mathematics into the new College of Arts and Sciences is the perfect opportunity for UB to create what he calls a "culture of expectations."

It's a culture "where that apathy, that lack of ambition and expectations...is replaced by a sense of 'can-do' and we'll surely accomplish (our goals)," said Grant, who assumed the deanship when the new college was formed on July 1.

"Have expectations. Step aside from your discouragement with life in an institution that's had an on-and-off history," added Grant, expanding on his theme for the new college. "Commit yourself to the moment and change the place into what you want it to be.

"I do believe it's possible," he continued, "because so much of what troubles us, what limits us, is based in a frustration with expectations, some of which are no longer realistic to hold and some of which we may hold onto just because they give us some understanding of how to stay connected with an institution that has at times been disappointing.

"It's time to move on to a real sense of ambition and focused growth," he stressed.

Grant said the college's first step in creating that culture of expectations has been in the drafting of bylaws. The committee developing the set of procedures by which the college will operate-a subcommittee of the Founder's Committee, plus a few other members-has agreed to Grant's request that it steer away from a "litany of 'shall-nots'" and develop a set of positive expectations -"the shalls"- that will "create the place we would like to work-statements that open the doors and create expectations for the fulfillment of our best hope for the outcome of the college."

The bylaws, Grant said, should focus on "what we expect of each other.

"Bylaws that include what it is we owe each other and the standards that we would use to assess whether we were, in fact, meeting those expectations of each other puts the policy issue much closer to the governance issue," he said, noting that faculty governance is the long-standing tradition of higher education, contrary to the recent trend in higher education toward the corporate model in which the administration makes all the decisions and faculty often feel "unempowered."

The goal of the college, a key element of Provost Thomas E. Headrick's report on academic planning, is to improve the delivery of undergraduate education at UB.

Grant, former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, said UB's re-emphasis on undergraduate education is in keeping with the feeling nationally-embodied in the "Boyer Commission Report"-"that research universities have to do a better job of serving undergraduates."

The formation of the college will improve the undergraduate experience in several ways, he said. Among other things, it will remove "structural impediments"-namely three separate faculties focused on arts-and-sciences disciplines-that prevented undergraduates from exploring interests across the arts and sciences, and provide a "sense of community" for first-and second-year students who are not in specialized programs like engineering or health related professions.

Grant noted that in addition to serving students pursuing study in the arts and sciences, the college will "take responsibility" for all students not formally in a specialized program.

"Those are our students," he said. "We will have no orphans at the university."

A new Student Services Center is now operating in 275 Park Hall to provide a "one-stop center" for arts-and-sciences students seeking information and forms.

The center will provide peer advisors to guide students through the curriculum and faculty mentors to offer insight into the various fields of study, Grant said.

He stressed that a major part of the college's "agenda" will be to highlight UB's distinction as being the SUNY institution with the greatest number and variety of professional schools.

"The unique advantage to a student coming to UB is to be in the environment where you can look at those professions and even participate in some classwork in those professions while you are going through the arts and sciences," he said. "You don't have to go somewhere else to see what a law school looks like, if you are considering law."

He noted that while UB has some links between the arts and sciences and the professional schools, such as the early-admission program to the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, there needs to be more such programs "that join our students directly to our own graduate and professional schools." This could include such initiatives as early admission to UB graduate or professional programs for outstanding UB seniors who might be carrying a light course load during their last undergraduate semester and could begin graduate coursework at that time "and graduate (with an advanced degree) that much more rapidly," he said.

"We want to make the academic links between the arts and sciences and the graduate education provided by the professional schools to be sufficiently strong so there is a genuine benefit to the student to have selected UB with the expectation that they were going to go on into professional school."

Those links, he added, should be developed as "not the exceptional, but the regular occurrence across the arts and sciences."

Grant also emphasized that arts-and-sciences staff will be tracking student performance in order to intervene early with those students who get into academic difficulty or those who make the wrong choice of major "and lose heart."

In addition, Grant addressed two issues of particular concern to faculty members:

· Tenure and Promotion. Grant stressed that in order not to disadvantage faculty members who are well into the tenure process, the college initially will operate the three tenure-and-promotion committees associated with the three former faculties. It also will form a fourth committee that will serve as the central panel for the college and handle the process for all new and recent hires. The three parallel committees eventually will be phased out in favor of the fourth committee.

· Culture clash. Grant, a musician by training, noted that there has been a "lot of anxiety" among scientists about having in charge a dean who not only is not a scientist, but who is responsible for 31 departments, rather than the six that reported to the dean of natural sciences and mathematics.

The job of the dean of the college, he said, is "to recognize those cultures (of the numerous disciplines within the college) and facilitate the health of those cultures."

The dean is not to bring the perspective of a musician or a scientist to the job, he added, but should "bring the perspectives of a facilitator, a problem-solver and an enabler."

The dean need not be a renaissance man, one who can spout poetry while working out complex physics problems, he said.

"What's necessary for the dean," Grant added, "is to respect the expertise of the faculty, the needs of the institution, the obligations we have to our students and to blend those in the most effective combination."