Senior Steering Council Reports

Senior Steering Council Reports

Analysis of the Caucus 3 Report May 17, 2001	Analysis of the Appendix to Caucus 3 Report May 17, 2001
Targeted Investments in the Natural Sciences May 16, 2001	Targeted Investments - Humanities & Social Sciences May 14, 2001
Initial Recommendations April 2, 2001

Analysis of the Caucus 3 Report
Senior Steering Council
Strategic Academic Plan for the College of Arts and Science
May 17, 2001

Caucus 3 was charged "[t]o review and select departmental or interdisciplinary proposals, graduate or undergraduate, for recommendation to the SAPG," with the additional instructions to "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." The report from Caucus 3 identified nine proposals worthy of consideration:

Bioscience, Technology and Humanities � This proposal is not at the point where it could be recommended for implementation. Interested parties may wish to develop the ideas represented in this proposal, for possible consideration by future committees involved in College strategic planning.
Center for the Creative Arts Already recommended
Cultural Studies of the Americas (already solicited by the SAPG) Already recommended
Development and Democratization Caucus 3 has identified this theme as appearing in a number of departmental proposals. Interested faculty may wish to prepare a formal proposal on this topic and submit it to the College for consideration by future committees involved in College strategic planning.
Environmental Sciences (already solicited by the SAPG) Already being reviewed by SAPG and it has been recognized in our review of interdisciplinary programs in the Natural Sciences
Ethics and the Professions This proposal is not at the point where it could be recommended for implementation. The issues of certification raised in this proposal are not strategic, and should be addressed through the College Committee on Educational Programs.
Law, Literature and Politics (already solicited by the SAPG) Already dealt with.
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities We have recommended that the College move to appoint or recruit a faculty member to fill the vacant Directorship of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities and adjust the constitution of the advisory board of the Center to reflect the increased interdisciplinary activity within the College.
Center for the Study of Religion and Culture Already recommended.

The Caucus 3 report also presented an appendix with a number of suggestions for improving the College. We attach this list of suggestions, with our comments and recommendations in italics.

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SAPCAS SENIOR STEERING COUNCIL ANALYSIS OF THE APPENDIX TO CAUCUS 3 REPORT Report in pdf format for off-line reading (Acrobat Reader required)
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The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council has reviewed the appendix to the Caucus 3 report, and provides comments and recommendations in red italics below. The 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 issues.
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:
.	1.1.	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. The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council endorsed Residential Colleges.
.	1.2.	New library building. Also has to be a major priority for the College. While the Vanderbilt 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 undergraduates don't want to go there! The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council recommendations on the Library are covered under our analysis of the Caucus 4 report.
.	1.3.	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 SAPCAS initiatives are funded, additional space will be needed, at least the size of Furman. The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council recognizes that the College needs new study, classroom, and office space. While we do not view this as a strategic issue, it is absolutely critical to the ability of the College to provide the services expected of it. These needs should be recognized as possible targets for benefaction.
.	1.4.	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. To be competitive with peer institutions, the College of Arts and Science is in need of additional endowed chairs, which nationally are evolving into a rank above Professor. This is particularly important as we try to improve the quality of our faculty, in that endowed chairs are essential instruments in recruiting and retaining senior faculty of the highest caliber. In the various interdisciplinary initiatives we have recommended, we identified a number of areas where endowed professorships would have particularly salubrious consequences. Core departments and programs would also benefit from endowed chairs. Our recommendation is that a vigorous effort be mounted to secure funding for these chairs.
.	1.5.	Endowment for the College. For years, the College has lamented its dependence on tuition 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. While the endowment of Vanderbilt University may be comparable to that of the other private universities with which we compete, the SAPCAS Steering Council recognizes that the endowment of the College of Arts and Science is woefully inadequate relative to comparable liberal arts colleges. We heartily endorse aggressive capital accumulation on behalf of the College of Arts and Science.
.	1.6.	Fellowships for first-year graduate students. There are sound scholarly and pedagogical reasons for trying to offer more service-free fellowships for first-year graduate students. It is one of the few ways for Vanderbilt to become instantly competitive with universities that are better than we are. Elsewhere in our report, we emphasize the need for recruiting better graduate students. In departments where the fellowships for graduate students require service during the first year or two, service-free fellowships would place Vanderbilt in a more competitive position. In many departments, an increase in the number, size, type and duration of academic year and summer fellowships is important for building stronger programs. We endorse aggressive efforts to accomplish these objectives.
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 restructuring 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.
.	2.1.	Student quality and diversity. The students at Vanderbilt are notably pre-professional rather than academic in orientation. Several department chairs mention the need to emphasize intellectual, as well as ethnic and economic, diversity. We recognize the problem, made addressing it one of our Criteria, and endorse efforts to solve it.
.	2.2.	Micromanagement. The College has prospered financially in part because of unrelenting attention to budget and management issues at the departmental level. While micromanagement 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:
.	.	2.2.1	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. See 2.2.2.
.	.	2.2.2	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. The questions of administrative micromanagement involve more than just the College of Arts and Science. It seems undeniable that a host of decisions made at the administrative level should in fact be made at the departmental level. We recognize the problem, and encourage an appropriate decentralization of responsibility and decision-making with a corresponding increase in accountability.
.	.	2.2.3	New approaches to sustaining interdisciplinary programs. Several of the program 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? We are concerned about the potential conflict between departments and interdisciplinary programs, such as requests for departments to teach courses in support of interdisciplinary programs, the appointment, promotion, and tenure of faculty involved in interdisciplinary programs, and the contention for budgetary authority and indirect cost allocation for these endeavors. We recommend that College ask the Provost to establish a task force of senior faculty to study the impact of interdisciplinary programs on the curriculum and scheduling, the promotion and tenure process, and financial management in the various schools.
.	2.3.	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 review of the earlier plans.
.	.	2.3.1	Managing the search process. Appointments in Department X often have consequences 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. See 2.2.3. above.
.	.	2.3.2	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 effective teaching, as well as for getting a jump start on scholarship and grant support. Departments should manage this responsibility within the framework of their instructional plans. Yep.
.	.	2.3.3	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. We encourage the Dean and the Provost to complete their review of departmental implementation of College regulations regarding tenure and promotion.
.	.	2.3.4	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? See 2.2.3 above.
.	.	2.3.5	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." Appropriate procedures and constraints on the PTRC to remedy both the reality and the (mis)perception need to be developed and promulgated. The Administration should be made aware of these concerns.
.	2.4.	Flexibility in teaching assignments and formats. In a decentralized management scheme, departments have the greatest stake in managing their teaching mission effectively. 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.
.	.	2.4.1	Department-based management of teaching. Departments should develop plans to discharge their teaching obligations under the oversight of directors of undergraduate and graduate study, and with due regard to the scholarly activities of the faculty. See 2.2.2 above.
.	.	2.4.2	Team teaching. Team teaching can be regulated most effectively at the Department 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. See 2.2.2 above.
.	.	2.4.3	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, including "half semester," "May-mester" and intensive short-course formats. See 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 above.
.	2.5.	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 scholarship. These needs vary from department to department. We recognize that there is a high level of dissatisfaction with the policies and performance of the Division of Human Resources at Vanderbilt. Some of the issues raised below go beyond considerations of administrative competence, thus indicating a need for a systematic review and repair of the Division and other units implicated in the items below. Furthermore, Vanderbilt must recognize the costs of competing in both the local and national markets for administrative, clerical and research staff. The points raised in the following list are worthy of detailed study and prompt action.
.	.	2.5.1	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.
.	.	2.5.2	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 conferences, managing Web pages, handling mid-level computing tasks, helping with proposals and similar tasks requiring more than routine secretarial training.
.	.	2.5.3	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 descriptions and salary levels need to be re-evaluated.
.	.	2.5.4	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.
.	2.6.	Career Center. Several departments mentioned the inadequacy of the Career Center in really helping graduates locate first jobs. We concur with the perception that the Career Center is inadequate and recommend that a qualitative and cost-benefit analysis be conducted to determine whether the funds used to support the Career Center might be better invested elsewhere.
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.
.	3.1.	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.
.	.	3.1.1	Computerizing College administration. Nothing shows our IT weakness more clearly that the fact that the College still operates with a largely paper administrative 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. This is a University-Central issue more than just a College One. We agree fully that Vanderbilt is behind many other universities in this regard. We recommend that University Central should move quickly to bring our information technology infrastructure into the 21st century. This may require a significant financial investment, accompanied by a change in culture.
.	.	3.1.2	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. We agree wholeheartedly. See 3.1.1 above.
.	.	3.1.3	Pushing for a paperless University. At long last, some grants accounting information 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 action forms, and property accounting functions. See 3.1.1 above. We agree, but recognize that with regard to Human Resource Services (Personnel), a significant decrease in the error rate is required lest errors get propagated more widely and rapidly.
.	.	3.1.4	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 (presumably by the Associate Provost for Research) to avoid waste and duplication of effort and facilities. Computer support is particularly lacking! See the analysis of the Caucus 4 report.
.	.	3.1.5	Instructional laboratory facilities. Departments should be challenged to demonstrate 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. Yep.
.	.	3.1.6	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? We agree that faculty need to be encouraged to utilize information technology, but, as we will discuss in our review of the Caucus 4 report, there needs to be a larger University commitment to supporting the academic information infrastructure.
.	3.2.	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.
.	.	3.2.1	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. See the analysis of the Caucus 4 report.
.	.	3.2.2	Digital services center. This center would be available to faculty and staff for handling routine service requests. The tradeoffs between such a center and departmental-level capacity for handing information or digital services will have to be studied carefully. See the analysis of the Caucus 4 report.
.	.	3.2.3	Automating University functions. Many aspects of procurement, property accounting, 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. We agree wholeheartedly. See 3.1.1 above.
.	.	3.2.4	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 investment in staff would have a huge payoff in enhancing Vanderbilt's appearance on the Web. See the analysis of the Caucus 4 report.
4.	Clever but inexpensive initiatives. Many things that would enhance the scholarly reputation of the College and its faculty are not all that expensive. Nevertheless, they require some budgeting and, in some cases, restructuring of programs.
.	4.1.	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. We have already addressed this.
.	4.2.	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. There is no mechanism in the College of Arts and Science to award first-time merit-based financial aid to students after matriculation. This is an excellent suggestion worthy of immediate implementation.
.	4.3.	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?] We agree with the need for a more diverse student body, and believe that adjustments to the recruiting and admission policies may be one way to accomplish this.
.	4.4.	Web sharing of faculty expertise. Development of a Vanderbilt intranet-based, searchable 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. Yes.
.	4.5.	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 inside and outside the University. This could be particularly useful in generating external support for specialized analytical or research facilities. Yes.
.	4.6.	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. We agree that the College or the University should provide specialized staff support for pursuing grant opportunities in the arts and humanities.
.	4.7.	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 information on specialized Vanderbilt expertise, The list is endless. Yes, yes, yes...

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Recommendations Regarding Targeted Investments
in the Natural Sciences
Senior Steering Council
Strategic Academic Plan for the College of Arts and Science
May 16, 2001

The charge to SAPCAS required us [t]o identify three to five strong graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences, as prescribed by the SAPG, and additional graduate programs in the natural science division, for emphasis and investment, adhering to the following guidelines: such programs should have critical mass; they should have attracted and suitably placed superior students; and they should have on-going financial support.

The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council began with the analysis of department provided by Caucus 2. The strength of the Department of Psychology in integrative and cognitive neuroscience and the particular development strategy adopted by the department led the SAPCAS Senior Steering Council to include the Psychology graduate program with the other departments in the Division of Natural Sciences. We then proceeded to review the relevant material.

Analysis

A substantial investment would be required to move any single Vanderbilt Natural Science Department into the top echelon of departments in the country. Rather than employing such a department-based development strategy, the Steering Council recommends that ongoing interdisciplinary initiatives be fully supported and that new opportunities for interdisciplinary programs be explored within the College of Arts and Science and jointly with the Schools of Medicine and Engineering.

Interdisciplinary research offers opportunities for establishing strong programs in the sciences that can compete nationally and internationally. Vanderbilt has unique advantages that permit a strategy for program building in this way. Vanderbilt's Schools of Medicine and Engineering offer world class talents in fields that intersect directly with research programs in the College of Arts and Science and these talents can help to build strength at a number of disciplinary intersections. The proximity of laboratories in the College of Arts and Science to those in our sister schools is another asset that can be used to advantage. Shared instrumentation and facilities as well as joint seminars and colloquia are encouraged by the geography of the campus.

Vanderbilt has recognized the opportunity for interdisciplinary programs with a substantial commitment for central funding of the Center for Structural Biology (CSB) and the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience (CICN). The CICN includes members from several College departments as well as from the School of Medicine and Peabody. The CSB, a trans-institutional initiative between the College and the School of Medicine, has made an initial investment in instruments and infrastructure and is now in a hiring phase. Structural Biology faculty will have dual appointments in the College and the School of Medicine. The Senior Steering Council admires the CICN and CSB initiatives and views these ongoing projects as experiments from which the College can learn. The Steering Council also encourages attempts to build upon existing strengths by establishing additional interdisciplinary programs; candidates include new initiatives in Biomathematics, Biophysical Sciences and Bioengineering, Environmental Risk and Resource Management, and Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Building strength in interdisciplinary programs such as the Center for Structural Biology goes hand in hand with building strong discipline-based graduate programs. Interdisciplinary programs are linked to the Departments by the Ph. D. degree. For the CSB and CICN and other interdisciplinary programs to compete nationally and internationally, graduate students who join these programs from Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology must be among the best in the country. Attracting outstanding faculty to interdisciplinary programs and building infrastructure and instrument centers will not be enough if Vanderbilt does not compete for the best students.

The CICN has been successful in helping to bring new faculty talent to campus and in focusing existing efforts at Vanderbilt. Proposals from the CICN and the Psychology Department to improve and increase the pool of graduate students reflect the strain that develops on a department when an influx of faculty talent is not appropriately matched by numbers and quality in the pool of graduate student coworkers. The SAPCAS Senior Steering Council endorses efforts to improve the quality and numbers of graduate students in CICN-linked departments and suggests that this should be done through the existing central funding mechanism for the program. Failure to address this critical issue will lead to frustration of the ultimate goals of the initiative and also reduce the quality of the core discipline programs in the participating departments.

The CSB and other interdisciplinary programs in the Natural Sciences will face a similar problem as a number of faculty associated with it are hired and become members of or have secondary appointments in Arts and Science departments. Just as new programs require an investment in infrastructure and library resources, graduate student lines in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics must support the increase in faculty talent in these departments. A decision that an investment in graduate students is not required to establish the CSB or other such programs will compromise the initiative and also be harmful to the core disciplines in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, and Physics. An interdisciplinary development strategy should not undermine the central core disciplines; failure to address the graduate student quality and quantity problem coupled to an aggressive recruitment of faculty talent could be devastating. In addition to funding for interdisciplinary endeavors, the College and University must provide funds to recruit and support graduate students in the Natural Science departments to preserve and strengthen the core areas within these departments.

Shortfalls in the recruitment of high caliber graduate students can severely handicap junior and senior faculty research. One solution to this problem might be increased faculty reliance upon postdoctoral research associates. Frequently, a high-profile faculty member can attract research associates of a higher caliber than the graduate students recruited by the department. The productivity of a research associate is high relative to a beginning graduate student and the cost is only somewhat greater than that of a graduate research assistant. However, the rankings of a department may be more strongly influenced by graduate student production and quality than by similar measures for postdoctoral trainees. This conflict between individual research and departmental strength and recognition requires a concerted effort by the University to correct the balance in favor of more rigorous graduate programs.

Support of graduate students throughout their careers as Research Assistants by expenditures from faculty grants clearly helps in the competition for the best students. The high cost of supporting students at Vanderbilt compared to the cost of doing business at competing universities discourages this, however, particularly in the early years of a graduate students education when a heavy course load and the 72-hour requirement results in large tuition expenditures. In some disciplines hiring a graduate student Research Assistant may be as expensive as hiring a postdoctoral coworker. Indeed, no single action would benefit the Natural Science programs at Vanderbilt more than a tuition waiver for students hired as Research Assistants on federal grants. Charging federal grants for tuition channels the resources provided by external grants and contracts to the support of postdocs, and graduate programs suffer as a result.

The evolving national research and funding strategy favors interdisciplinary science. Natural Science departments at Vanderbilt should adjust to this reality. The traditional view of departments in which subspecialties are propagated in hiring decisions by historical birthright will not permit the assembly of groups that can work in concert to solve interdisciplinary problems. Historical views of boundaries between the physical, chemical and biomedical sciences may restrict interdisciplinary initiatives. Strong programs in Chemical Biology and Biological Physics, for example, will have impact in several corners of the campus and raise the national visibility of all participating departments, but only if tradition does not block the recruiting and retention of faculty with interdisciplinary interests.

Recommendations

The Senior Steering Council encourages attempts to build upon existing strengths by establishing interdisciplinary programs like the currently operating centers for Structural Biology and for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience. Candidates include new initiatives in Biomathematics, Biophysical Sciences and Bioengineering, Environmental Risk and Resource Management, and Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

We recommend that the College of Arts and Science or the Provosts office examine possible mechanisms and funding for intensive efforts to identify and recruit outstanding graduate students, either at the departmental or divisional level.

In addition to funding for interdisciplinary endeavors, the College and University must provide funds to recruit and support graduate students in the Natural Science departments to preserve and strengthen the core areas within these departments.

We recommend that the College of Arts and Science reexamine its policy of charging research grants for part or all of the costs of tuition for graduate research assistants. The College should revise its policy to encourage funded investigators to support graduate research assistants.

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Recommendations Regarding Targeted Investments
in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Senior Steering Council
Strategic Academic Plan for the College of Arts and Science
May 14, 2001

Procedures

Caucus 2 (Professors Bahry, Bell, Siegfried, Gay, Staros [Chair]) provided to the Senior Steering Council an unsorted list of departments and graduate programs that they believed to be worthy of further consideration. In the Humanities and Social Sciences, these departments were English, Philosophy, Religion, Spanish & Portuguese, Anthropology, Economics, History, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. Once the Caucus 2 report had been received, the Senior Steering Council reviewed both the list and the procedures and criteria to be used for the selection. Department and program chairs were invited to respond to the Caucus 2 report and its recommendations. The Senior Steering Council decided that any Senior Steering Council member would recuse himself or herself from the discussions and the vote regarding any department or program with whom he or she was affiliated. Finally, we reviewed the criteria that had been established by SAPCAS, eliminated inappropriate criteria, and amplified the remaining criteria to allow us to obtain a clearer understanding of the strengths of each department or program. For voting, we combined these criteria into five categories: strength of the faculty, strength of the graduate student population, gain versus investment, internal ripple, and external impact.

Recommendations

Based upon our detailed analysis, we identified three departments that can be elevated into the top ranks by an appropriate strategic investment. In descending order, they are English, Spanish & Portuguese, and Anthropology. We then identified two departments whose strength was sufficiently great and whose role is so central to the Universitys mission that they too needed to be included in any efforts to develop a near-term strategy to strengthen the graduate endeavor at Vanderbilt. They are History and Philosophy, without a relative ranking. The proposal from the Graduate Program in Religion was considered an interdisciplinary proposal and has already been recommended by the SAPCAS Steering Council for support as the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. The Department of Psychology will be considered with the programs in the Natural Sciences. With regret, we do not recommend Economics, Political Science, and Sociology for immediate additional investment, in that they did not adequately meet our criteria. The rationale for those departments that we recommend follows:

English. The Department of English has maintained a leading position in the College of Arts and Science while transforming and modernizing itself. The Department has established strengths in Renaissance to twentieth-century British literature, Southern literature, and the theory of gender and sexuality. The department is exceptionally versatile, already contributing its expertise to Film Studies, Womens Studies, and African American Studies. It promises to be an important contributor to the new programs we are recommending in the Center for the Americas, Law and Humanities, and Media Studies within the Center for Creative Arts. The department has a history of strong leadership, and a cogent plan for development. Based upon both its size and reputation, the graduate program of the English Department is likely to reach the top twenty in the next five years, and this process could be accelerated by an appropriate, timely investment.

Spanish & Portuguese. The Department of Spanish & Portuguese has noticeable strengths, their faculty have been harmonious, and there is an absence of major weaknesses in any of the measures we considered. This is the premier foreign literature program at Vanderbilt. We believe that it is important that Vanderbilt have at least one strong foreign language department and, based upon national trends, this area is of great national consequence. In contrast to many other Spanish and/or Portuguese departments, the Vanderbilt department has strengths in both Peninsular and Latin American studies. Because it has strong intellectual connections with other graduate departments and interdisciplinary programs, an investment in this department would strengthen other areas that have been targeted by SAPCAS for future investment. It contributes to programs and activities in Latin American and Iberian Studies, Comparative Literature, and Latino-American literature, and demonstrates a willingness to support other foreign language departments and programs. It will also contribute to the reputation of the Center for the Americas. Latin American and Peninsular criticism and history are areas of strength at the Vanderbilt University Press. Because the department has a positive momentum from good hires, strong demand at the undergraduate level, and a strong market for Ph.D.s, it has much more room for development than the other language departments in the College.

Anthropology. The Department of Anthropology has earned a unique position. In the field of Mesoamerican anthropology it is already one of the premier departments in the Americas. Only slightly smaller than the top-ranked departments, the Vanderbilt department has the largest number of specialists in Mesoamerican anthropology and archeology, as well as an excellent record in terms of field research. They are developing a second strong cluster of expertise in Andean anthropology and archeology, which would benefit from additional support. Such plans would expand the breadth and strength of connections to other areas of study at Vanderbilt, particularly the Center for the Americas. Its placement record for Ph.D.s at highly ranked departments is possibly better than any other department in the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt; many of its best Ph.D.s return to Latin America, thereby increasing Vanderbilts reputation in the region. The department contributes to international diversity by attracting outstanding students and faculty from Latin America.

Our charge was to identify three to five departments in the humanities and social sciences ... for emphasis and investment. We have identified three departments, as discussed above, and now turn to the larger problem of building a coherent graduate program at Vanderbilt. The Senior Steering Council and Caucus Two are convinced that more than three departments should be targeted in the near term. We pose the strategic question: Which departments would benefit the most from an immediate, additional investment? Within our original charge of three-to-five departments, we identify History and Philosophy as departments worthy of investment in the near term. There are, of course, many departments at Vanderbilt that must receive additional, targeted investments for Vanderbilt to present a strong graduate program in the humanities and social sciences, but we would argue that in a resource-limited environment, such investments would be more appropriate on a longer time scale. In the interim, existing College and University resources should be used to support and strengthen those departments. The rationale for supporting History and Philosophy in the near term is as follows:

History. The Department of History has an unprecedented opportunity to transform a good department into an excellent one. It has expertise, and concomitant recognition, in American, European, and Latin American history. The strengths of the department and the presence of seven open positions in American History (some as a result of early retirements) provide the department with an opportunity to recruit outstanding faculty and jump to a leading position in American History. The department will play a pivotal role in the proposed Center for the Americas, the Law and Humanities program, and the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. As with the Department of English, the intra-Vanderbilt connections with History provide a multiplicative effect for strategic investments.

Philosophy. The Department of Philosophy has made a strategic commitment to a pluralistic approach in research and graduate teaching rather than to concentrate on the mainstream analytic approach that dominates in the top-ranked, narrowly focused departments. This approach places the Philosophy Department within a clearly defined group of successful and highly competitive departments: Northwestern, University of Texas at Austin, Pennsylvania State, SUNY Stony Brook, and Emory. Among these departments the Vanderbilt Philosophy Department already sets the standard for the placement of graduate students in both research institutions and teaching colleges. The department seeks additional resources to further develop itself along its present lines in a market that will be increasingly favorable to the research approach it fosters.

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SAPCAS Senior Steering Council
Recommendations
April 2, 2001

The Senior Steering Council of SAPCAS has completed its detailed review of the proposals from Caucuses 1a, 1b, 1c, and 7, which are posted at www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/strategic . We are forwarding to Dean Venable the following decisions, approved by all voting members of the Senior Steering Council. A record of these decisions will be included in our final report and in the College Strategic Plan:

We recommend the establishment of a program in Law and Humanities.

We do not recommend the establishment of a program in Law and Politics. The proposed program in Law and Politics does not meet a sufficient number of the stated selection criteria.

We recommend the establishment of a Center for the Americas.

We want to thank Caucus 1c for the excellent proposal for an Institute for the Study of Popular Music. Our judgment, however, is that the proposed institute does not fit within the Center for the Creative Arts as presently designed. Hence we cannot evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of that proposal relative to other components of the Center.

We do not recommend the inclusion of a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the proposed Center for the Creative Arts. In our judgment the MFA in Creative Writing does not adequately meet a sufficient number of the stated selection criteria to merit such inclusion.

We recommend the establishment of a Center for the Creative Arts that includes a new program in Media Studies and enhanced facilities for Studio Art and Theater. The College of Arts and Science should concurrently appoint an academic Director for the Center for the Creative Arts with the responsibility of developing the full program, guiding the design and construction of the building, and expanding the scope of the Center to include academically appropriate opportunities in writing, dance, music, and other creative activities.

We recommend with enthusiasm the report by Caucus 7 on financial aid goals for the College of Arts and Science.

Other recommendations will be forthcoming in due course.

John Wikswo, Chair
SAPCAS Senior Steering Council

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