Greetings,

Over the last three years, we have made significant progress in the review and analysis of our undergraduate curriculum. Last year, based on the work of the 21st Century Philosophy work group, we established the four “pillars” of a Kent State undergraduate curriculum – knowledge, insight, responsibility and engagement, concepts which are fundamental to all of our undergraduate teaching. They have guided our conversations, proposals and key changes to the undergraduate curriculum. I would like to touch on these changes and some other key projects affecting Academic Affairs.

Kent Core

Recently, with the advice of the Faculty Senate, the Kent State Board of Trustees recognized some fundamental changes to the LER system with the adoption of the Kent Core. Importantly, with the Kent Core, Kent State will continue to meet the requirements of the Ohio Transfer Module, set by the Ohio Board of Regents. The key changes include:

• Adoption of the name Kent Core
• Requiring all courses in the Kent Core to have specified learning outcomes by the year 2010; and
• Allowing students to use specified courses to satisfy both university requirements and their individual  courses of study.

Engagement

These steps are important and much needed. We cannot, however, rest on these changes. Many faculty members had the opportunity to hear Ken Bain speak at the FPDC learning institute, “What do the best college teachers do to cultivate learning?” Throughout his presentation and subsequent conversations, he emphasized the importance of posing the right questions to students in an innovative manner as a way of engaging students and approaching instruction at their knowledge level. His message was clear: the importance of engagement – the faculty member to the student; the student to the material; and the student to the application of the material in the real world is essential in good teaching.

One of the 21st Century work groups, the Curriculum Implementation Task Force, has recognized this factor of success in their work over the last two years. The Task Force recently provided me and you with their report. One of their key recommendations matches the importance Bain places on engagement and our own recognition of engagement as a pillar of undergraduate education, recommending that every student at Kent State should participate in at least one experiential learning activity.

As these events demonstrate, across KSU many vectors are merging to move us toward a more dynamic, engaged undergraduate program. To facilitate our discussion of the opportunities and our path to implementation, the Office of the Provost is hosting the “Innovative Curriculum Summit” on Feb. 22 from noon – 2 p.m. Chairs and directors and Regional Campus deans nominated faculty to participate in the Summit. The Summit will provide a path for our next generation of innovation in undergraduate education. It is my hope that we will identify several key ideas we want to develop, and hopefully the work of the Curriculum Implementation Task Force will be recognized and we will push forward on experiential learning.

Further Experiential Learning Opportunities

As we discuss experiential learning, let me also note that the Office of Experiential Education and Civic Engagement is conducting “Conversations with Colleagues,” a series of eight conversations designed to provide faculty a forum for contributing to discussion on the legitimacy of experiential education and civic engagement. The Conversations serve as a prologue to the Advancing Community – Engaged Scholarship Institute, scheduled for March 11 – 12. The Institute will explore the validation of experiential education in the tenure and promotion process. For more information and to register, visit http://www1.kent.edu/experiential/.

International Education

Our philosophy of an undergraduate education emphasizes the importance of international education opportunities. To that end, I am pleased to co-host the International Education Summit on March 3 with the Office of International Affairs. In this day-long event, key stakeholders across the university and Kent community have been invited to see presentations and discuss a number of subjects affecting international education. They range from recruitment, retention and strategic planning to community partnerships and distance learning. These are just a few of the many topics to be discussed. We look forward to sharing key insights from the event with you later this spring.

Space

As the president has noted over recent months, many of our facilities are in need of updating and our current instructional and research space is in need of expansion. Over the next few years, as our current discussions on space become formalized plans, Kent State will be a beehive of construction activity. Allow me to step back, however, and provide some insight on the context and details of these conversations.

President Lefton has outlined five guiding principles for construction initiatives at Kent State:

• The safety and accessibility of our facilities
• Support for high-priority strategic directions
• Functionality
• Energy conservation; and
• The pride, look and feel of our buildings.

These are the principles that have guided the conversations among the Offices of the University Architect, Vice President for Business and Administration, the President and Provost and staff in Academic Affairs regarding the allocation of project funds. It has become increasingly apparent that the university’s needs far exceed the dollars that we can obtain through bonds and capital payments provided by the state each biennium. With that in mind, we have used the five guiding principles outlined above to begin to develop a model of renovation and construction for consideration by the Board of Trustees. Several key priorities have emerged concerning our avenues for broad-based success with capital improvements projects:

• Front Campus should be dedicated to academic programs
• The housing of all support programs should be on the campus periphery
• Finding a home for the College of Public Health is an important campus-wide initiative
• Moving the College of Architecture and Environmental Design to a new building will create optimal space opportunities
• Bowman, Satterfield, Van Deusen and the Art building require substantial to nearly total renovations; and
• The science buildings require extensive renovations to laboratories, facades and internal space.

At this point, the process has focused on the careful identification of needs meeting the criteria set forth by President Lefton. We are now working at a broad conceptual level. During the coming year, a more complete and detailed proposal will be presented to the campus community and then taken to the Board of Trustees for consideration.

Infosilem

Addressing our facility improvements is only part of the solution to our space concerns. We must also develop a better system to both describe and allocate our academic space. Several years ago, the university purchased the software program Infosilem. Infosilem is valuable in that it provides the ability to characterize classroom attributes to match learning needs and to program space efficiently. With Infosilem, the onus of spending hours looking for available rooms will be removed from departmental staff. The program enables us to easily match teaching needs to rooms and student needs.

The implementation of Infosilem is one of the most important strategic steps Academic Affairs will undertake over the next 36 months. The process will require the combined efforts of departments, colleges, The Offices of the Provost and the University Architect for a successful implementation. In addition, Infosilem will match the Graduation Planning System (GPS) we are developing to teaching space and classroom planning. Between these two systems, we will be able to predict the utilization of personnel and buildings – our two largest resources. They will move us to a level of information management that will advance our program delivery significantly.

Graduate Education

Graduate education programs are critical to the reputation of the university and to our ability to contribute to Ohio and the nation. Kent State runs a staggering number of doctoral and master’s degree programs. We have reason to be proud of the strength of many of our programs, but we have yet to take the systematic approach of assuring the quality of each and every program. The support for these programs is fragmented and often different between colleges. We fail to achieve economies of scale in the management of like programs and lack systematic marketing efforts for all programs. Many of our difficulties reflect the diffusion of graduate programs among an array of colleges and an Office of Graduate Studies not realizing its full potential.

I believe we need Graduate Studies to utilize the best practices available in graduate education to both evaluate our programs and provide support services. To this end, I have asked Interim Dean Mary Ann Stephens to lead a work group to address the structure of Graduate Studies at KSU. I expect this effort will lead to a consolidation of doctoral programs in the College of Graduate Studies. In addition, the work group will make recommendations regarding master’s programs that should be exempted from the centralized graduate school.

I look forward to sharing the progress we make on these initiatives in the coming months. And, I hope that you will take advantage of opportunities to share your insight and ideas on curriculum innovation and programming at the events I mentioned. In the meantime, I wish you continued success in your research, teaching and outreach efforts.

With warmest regards,

Robert G. Frank
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs