The charge of the SAP-CAS Steering Committee to Caucus 3 was "to review and select depart-mental or interdisciplinary proposals, graduate or undergraduate, for recommendation to the SAPG." Further, we were given the following guidance:

This committee should review the original departmental academic plans submitted to Dean Infante (and any graduate plans not recommended by Caucus 2), select those appropriate for forwarding to the SAPG, and counsel other promising units on how their proposals might be refurbished for reconsideration.

     This charge implies that the plans to be selected are primarily those that cut across school boundaries or otherwise have a trans-University mission and appeal. We have also examined the original department and program plans for initiatives that might be undertaken largely within the College through SAP-CAS.

     Based upon our review, we recommend that SAP-CAS expand upon and then review the following new initiatives (listed in alphabetical order) for possible recommendation to the SAPG:

1. Bioscience, Technology and Humanities (with possible additions to the current proposal)
2. Center for the Creative Arts
3. Cultural Studies of the Americas (already solicited by the SAPG)
4. Development and Democratization
5. Environmental Sciences (already solicited by the SAPG)
6. Ethics and the Professions
7. Law, Literature and Politics (already solicited by the SAPG)
8. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities

Our recommendations are based on (1) the existence of broad expertise and support across all College departments and programs and (2) the prospect of significant resonance with other units in the Univer-sity. Charts showing which units intend to or could be effectively involved in such initiatives are ap-pended.

     In addition, we propose that a Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, linking several CAS departments with the Divinity School, be developed within the CAS strategic plan. Also, the existing area studies programs might well be integrated with one or more of the SAPG initiatives 1-7 or within the CAS. The most advanced and detailed strategic plan for area studies describes a proposed Center for European Studies. Since the ground rules for strategic planning have changed so much in the last year, we recommend that the directors of all the area studies programs communicate with the leaders of the various recommended initiatives to whether and how they may be involved in those projects. However, involvement in these possible SAPG initiatives is not a substitute for strategic planning within the Col-lege.

     Last but not least, we note that there were many suggestions and proposals in the original academic plans that bear on administrative, infrastructure and organizational issues within the College. These are appended to this report. Perhaps foremost among these is the critical issue of enhanced information technology for both scholarly and instructional purposes. There is a pervasive sense in the department and program planning documents that the College and the University have lost significant ground in the delivery of information technology and services in recent years. Proposals for both digital media ser-vices and digital media development deserve early consideration, a process that need not wait until the appointment of a vice-provost for information technology. Departmental governance and management issues described briefly in the Appendix also need to be given very high priority in the strategic plan for the College. .

T he suggestions outlined briefly below are primarily gleaned from the departmental strategic plans submitted to Dean Infante in the spring of 2000. They are augmented by some suggestions made directly to Caucus 3 members by faculty during our examination of these ssues.

1. Capital campaign issues. In the forthcoming Capital Campaign, the College should put forth the strongest possible case for funding a number of major new initiatives. We ought at the bare minimum to press for funding for the following items:
   1. Residential colleges. One of the best ideas ever discussed on the campus for improving the tone of intellectual and social life, and for bringing faculty and students into more frequent contact. In the student affairs arena, this should be our highest priority for the Capital Campaign.
   2. New library building. Also has to be a major priority for the College. While the Van-derbilt Library staff are doing a great job under trying conditions, the library's physical plant is simply no longer credible as part of a great university. No wonder the under-graduates don't want to go there!
   3. New classroom and office building. Although the College has been looking forward to renovating and occupying Buttrick when MRB-III is completed, this will only relieve current needs, and that barely. If any of the major SAP-CAS initiatives are funded, additional space will be needed, at least the size of Furman.
   4. Endowed chairs. In the past, a sort of general call has been raised for more endowed chairs. It may be more useful to identify areas in which the creation of chairs would impart significant momentum to the College, especially to those interdisciplinary areas the College hopes to strengthen.
   5. Endowment for the College. For years, the College has lamented its dependence on tui-tion income. Higher priority must be allocated to breaking out of the cycle by effective and aggressive fund-raising. Recent experience in Vanderbilt's School of Engineering shows that significant development is indeed possible here.
   6. Fellowships for first-year graduate students. There are sound scholarly and pedagogi-cal reasons for trying to offer more service-free fellowships for first-year graduate stu-dents. It is one of the few ways for Vanderbilt to become instantly competitive with universities that are better than we are.
   
   
2. Cross-cutting administrative issues. There is an urgent need to reexamine "the way things are done" in the College. Many departments expressed variations on the theme that restruc-turing governance is the key to productive innovation, efficiency and enhanced performance - and quite possibly to better financial health, provided that appropriate metrics and incentives for performance are developed and implemented.
   1. Student quality and diversity. The students at Vanderbilt are notably pre-professional rather than academic in orientation. Several department chairs mention the need to em-phasize intellectual, as well as ethnic and economic, diversity
   2. Micromanagement. The College has prospered financially in part because of unrelent-ing attention to budget and management issues at the departmental level. While mi-cromanagement was probably necessary twenty-five years ago, it now is a hindrance to both departments and the College. Time to change! The elements of this change should include transitions to:
      1. Department-based business planning. Departments should be managed on the basis of business plans that are appropriate to their size, needs, and strategic plans. These plans should be developed in consultation with the Dean of the College, with appropriate provisions for real delegation of stewardship and accountability.
      2. Department-centered decision making. The College is virtually ungovernable under the present micromanagement scheme, which violates every management canon of span of control. Within the framework of the departmental business plans, departments could implement many routine items now requiring College approval.
      3. New approaches to sustaining interdisciplinary programs. Several of the pro-gram directors note that they cannot offer needed courses because faculty have moved on, leaving the future of the programs in jeopardy. In a department-based management plan, department chairs could simply agree and execute such innovations. Will this in fact work?
   3. Appointments, promotion and tenure. The departmental plans allude to some of these difficulties, but most of the following ideas were suggested to Caucus 3 during its re-view of the earlier plans.
      1. Managing the search process. Appointments in Department X often have con-sequences for Department Y. Search committees should be appointed with due consideration. [Similar logic applies in the sciences to the Schools of Engineering and Medicine as well.] The College has recently encouraged this.
      2. The first year. New faculty need to have special consideration both for their first-year teaching assignments and for developing a long-range plan for effec-tive teaching, as well as for getting a jump start on scholarship and grant sup-port. Departments should manage this responsibility within the framework of their instructional plans.
      3. Retention and promotion. The departmental standards for tenure and promotion should be formalized as rapidly as possible. Standards for meeting the teaching criteria for tenure are much in need of revision; the continuing reliance on student ratings as the sole measure of value added to instructional activity is counterproductive. The CAPT Report may have to undergo minor revisions to take this into account.
      4. Appointments, tenure and promotion in an interdisciplinary environment. It is proverbial wisdom that junior faculty cannot be tenured for interdisciplinary scholarship. Or is it only for "interdepartmental" or "interschool" scholarship? If we are moving toward a more interdisciplinary environment for graduate work, are changes needed in the way we evaluate interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching for tenure?
      5. The Role of the PTRC. During the CAPT study, numerous improvements were made in department and college/school procedures for tenure and promotion. However, the role and procedures of the PTRC was not well defined, with the result that it is now viewed by junior faculty as a kind of "Star Chamber." Ap-propriate procedures and constraints on the PTRC to remedy both the reality and the (mis)perception need to be developed and promulgated.
   4. Flexibility in teaching assignments and formats. In a decentralized management scheme, departments have the greatest stake in managing their teaching mission effec-tively. Chairs need the flexibility to define, in consultation with the College, what the teaching mission of the department is, and then to manage it independently.
      1. Department-based management of teaching. Departments should develop plans to discharge their teaching obligations under the oversight of directors of under-graduate and graduate study, and with due regard to the scholarly activities of the faculty.
      2. Team teaching. Team teaching can be regulated most effectively at the Depart-ment level; the College should not feel obligated to provide a "one-size-fits-all" policy for teaching credits in team-taught courses. In principle, department chairs should be able to agree on a course-by-course basis.
      3. Modular or unconventional course formats. The growth of interdisciplinary graduate programs poses special challenges to the conventional scheduling of graduate courses. Undergraduate courses - such as those providing advanced learning experiences - can also benefit from flexibility in teaching format, in-cluding "half semester," "May-mester" and intensive short-course formats.
   5. Instructional and research staff. High-quality staff free faculty to do things that faculty do best, and are more effective than faculty at many tasks central to research and schol-arship. These needs vary from department to department.
      1. College vs departmental administrative services. The College should investigate the trade-offs between providing centralized services - such as financial analysis and student evaluation data - and letting individual departments manage these functions.
      2. Staff development. Many departments need administrative services that cannot be met by the staff categories authorized by the College. Personnel policies should favor the hiring and retention of staff members capable of running con-ferences, managing Web pages, handling mid-level computing tasks, helping with proposals and similar tasks requiring more than routine secretarial training.
      3. Staff salaries. Several departments mentioned the problem of competitiveness in salaries and benefits. This is particularly pressing as we compete for higher-quality staff with more capacity in information technology. Both job descrip-tions and salary levels need to be re-evaluated.
      4. Long-range funding for staff. Presently, instructional staff are budgeted against expected tuition income. There is no analog in the College for research staff, leaving research equipment in which the College has invested millions of dollars to be maintained by graduate students and research associates who are temporary and who often do not have the requisite specialized expertise. An appropriate mechanism for supporting these facilities from combinations of user fees and indirect costs is needed.
   6. Career Center. Several departments mentioned the inadequacy of the Career Center in really helping graduates locate first jobs.

3. Information technology and research infrastructure. Although the College appeared a decade and a half ago to be in the forefront of this area (e.g., in the "Mathematica across the Curriculum" initiative), we now seem to lag well behind our peers and need to examine our commitment to continual improvements in our management of information technology.
   1. Support for information infrastructure and facilities. An investment-oriented strategy is clearly needed to bring our IT infrastructure up to the appropriate level, particularly in departmental and College offices.
      1. Computerizing College administration. Nothing shows our IT weakness more clearly that the fact that the College still operates with a largely paper adminis-trative system. We need to put all routine administrative functions - including student evaluations, minutes of College meetings and course enrollment information - on the Web, eliminate paper distributions from the CAS, and provide all data for Departmental analysis in downloadable electronic form.
      2. Acquiring up-to-date scheduling software. OASIS was designed a long time ago and is no longer adequate. It is inflexible and provides little feedback in electronic form to faculty and administrative staff. The College should move more aggressively to get a 21st century software package for these functions.
      3. Pushing for a paperless University. At long last, some grants accounting infor-mation is being made available over the Internet to researchers. The College should take an aggressive stance with respect to computerizing all University-related administrative functions, including purchase requisitions, personnel ac-tion forms, and property accounting functions.
      4. Centralized research support. In the sciences, certain centralized services should be provided on a recharge basis for analytical and shop services. Business plans for these facilities probably need to be approved at the Provost's level (pre-sumably by the Associate Provost for Research) to avoid waste and duplication of effort and facilities. Computer support is particularly lacking!
      5. Instructional laboratory facilities. Departments should be challenged to demon-strate that the instructional laboratories (in all disciplines, not just science!) keep pace with facilities available at our peer institutions. This could be done, for example, by asking faculty when they travel to give seminars, take a look at the status of instructional facilities and report back. This also should be a frequent agenda item for the University's development staff.
      6. Faculty use of information technology. The College has been developing more and more electronically equipped classrooms. A surprising number of faculty still do not make use of these resources. We need to find out why. Is it that we naturally are hospitable to Luddites? Or do faculty need more help and opportunities to learn to use these resources effectively?
   2. New IT resources for the College. Catching up in information technology will require investments in some new resources, many of which can probably be funded through grant or in-kind contributions.
      1. Digital media center. Such a center would provide expert resources to faculty from all departments for development of instructional materials. Financing for such a center - e.g., backcharging to departments-will be a ticklish issue here.
      2. Digital services center. This center would be available to faculty and staff for handling routine service requests. The tradeoffs between such a center and de-partmental-level capacity for handing information or digital services will have to be studied carefully.
      3. Automating University functions. Many aspects of procurement, property ac-counting, general ledger functions and other research-related administrative functions remain manual or semi-manual, leading to mistakes and extra work for faculty and staff. The College should press for upgrades of administrative systems in University Central.
      4. Web-site development. Most of the work involved in Web site development for departments, courses and scholarly enterprises is now being done by faculty and students. This is not usually an effective use of faculty time. A modest invest-ment in staff would have a huge payoff in enhancing Vanderbilt's appearance on the Web.

4. Clever but inexpensive initiatives. Many things that would enhance the scholarly reputa-tion of the College and its faculty are not all that expensive. Nevertheless, they require some budgeting and, in some cases, restructuring of programs.
   1. Research stipends for students. Undergraduate and graduate research fellowships for the Robert Penn Warren Center and other College centers would be an important and relatively inexpensive way to signal the partnership between faculty and students in the scholarship that informs the life of a university college.
   2. Scholarship policies. Reserving a few Honors scholarships for top performers after the freshman year could aid in retention of our best students when they have shown that they in fact can do exceedingly well. One way to do this is to earmark funds offered to incoming freshmen but not used (because they go somewhere else) for a competition for sophomore scholarships.
   3. Admissions policies. More targeted admissions searches are needed to change the mix of student interests, generate a more differentiated and diverse student body, and search for specific talents and experience. [In plain text, fewer pre-professional students?]
   4. Web sharing of faculty expertise. Development of a Vanderbilt intranet-based, search-able interdisciplinary clearinghouse research and teaching interests (a different kind of "faculty registry") would make it easier to develop intra-University collaborations. This is in principle already possible by searching the Web, but requires that faculty all have up-to-date Web résumés.
   5. Web sharing of specialized facilities. Creation of a Web-based, searchable index to Vanderbilt research facilities and service capabilities that can be searched from both in-side and outside the University. This could be particularly useful in generating external support for specialized analytical or research facilities.
   6. Encourage grantsmanship in humanities. While grant awards in the humanities tend to be small, more entrepreneurial activity in this sphere can be encouraged and rewarded. Sponsored Research could be asked to help identify funding sources and programs. The SR search capability for faculty research interests is a big help here.
   7. More intellectual outreach to Nashville. Student docents at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, faculty speakers for the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, more faculty interaction with the local entrepreneurial community, developing more flexible mechanisms for initiating collaborations with local industry, Web-based and paper in-formation on specialized Vanderbilt expertise, Â… The list is endless.