STANDARD V (C)

INTERNAL ACADEMIC UNITS

As one of the nine Colleges of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), the College of Agriculture shares the campus-wide responsibilities (as outlined in the Academic Master Plan [AMP] for UNR) to be "a center for scholarship and learning, with responsibilities that extend to the citizens of our state, our nation, and our world. This invests us with an obligation to discover, gather, apply, convey, and preserve knowledge for the improvement and enrichment of human life."

To direct our faculty, students, and staff, this mission statement of the College has been adopted:

The College of Agriculture is composed of four academic units: the School of Veterinary Medicine and three Departments consisting of Applied Economics and Statistics, Biochemistry, and Environmental and Resource Science. These units offer six majors for the Bachelor of Science degree, five minors at the undergraduate level, and three Master of Science degree programs. Faculty also participate in five interdisciplinary M.S. programs and four Ph.D. programs.

Faculty of the College are supported by resources allocated to the College by the University, the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station, and Nevada Cooperative Extension. Hence, the objectives of the faculty extend beyond the College to these latter two units of the University.

The College plays a significant role in supporting the educational mission of the University. In addition to curricular offerings which support the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. programs, each academic unit provides service courses for students outside of the College, including core classes in science, social studies, diversity, and capstone.

A large portion of our faculty have joint appointments with other academic units on and off campus. These combined appointments are with the Departments of Microbiology (Medical School), Biology (Arts and Sciences), Cooperative Extension, and the Desert Research Institute. The Department of Biochemistry jointly serves the School of Medicine and the College of Agriculture. This interdepartmental support of faculty in the College is reflected in the curriculum of our students. A number of our classes are cross-listed with other departments and/or co-taught with the help of outside faculty. The majority of our graduate programs are interdepartmental with the leadership of most of these programs coming from faculty of our College.

The College’s commitment to outreach is most significantly realized by faculty efforts in extension, particularly in the Departments of Agricultural Economics and Statistics and Environmental and Resource Sciences and in the School of Veterinary Sciences. Additionally, three academic units provide summer research experiences to high school students, especially minority students. Two of the departments have offered continuing education courses for public school teachers. One department offers a distance education class to high schools.

This department serves the university by advancing and disseminating knowledge of economic behavior related to regional growth, environmental quality and resource demand, including community and public service extension. In the last four years, four new courses have been developed, one new major instituted and one major dropped. The computer laboratory, which serves the entire College, has been outfitted with thirty new Pentium computers. A separate, student-use laboratory with twenty 486 computers is now available for daily and nightly use. The department offers a variety of core classes, include those with capstone designation. With the addition of several new faculty in recent years, the research productivity of the department has been significantly enhanced.

This unit is a combined department serving both the College of Agriculture and the School of Medicine with faculty support coming from both. It recently consolidated its two B.S. majors, in the respective College and School, into one which is administered only by the College of Agriculture. Two new classes, one core and one required for the major, have been implemented. A hallmark of the undergraduate program is the senior thesis which requires six credits of laboratory research (problem solving). Students in this class culminate the course with a written thesis and an oral presentation. The B.S. major has been rapidly growing in student numbers over the past nine years. The department maintains a very strong research environment.

The department provides an interdisciplinary approach to the education of students in the natural resource and environmental sciences. They bring together education in conservation biology, environmental sciences, hydrology, and natural resources. Four core classes, including three capstone courses are offered. Collectively, the department has a very strong research program.

The School concentrates its efforts in the areas of animal health, nutrition, and physiology. It administers a highly successful preveterinary curriculum and an animal science B.S. major. It is noted for its high quality instruction and its effective extension program. It offers a general capstone course which is popular among students outside of the College.

Accompanying an increase in student enrollment has been an observed improvement in the quality of the matriculated students and in the quality of student achievement in their academic pursuits.

2. Student learning

Enrollment in the College of Agriculture has doubled in the past ten years. The increase is due in a very large part to the updating of the curricula which specifically targets contemporary majors, to the modernizing of course content, to the emphasizing of quality instruction, and to the enhancing of student recruitment and retention efforts. Accompanying the increase in student enrollment has been an observed improvement in the quality of the matriculated students and in the quality of student achievement in their academic pursuits. For example, during the Fall of 1994, 10% of the Presidential Scholars on campus were enrolled in majors in the College of Agriculture. The College also boasts a large number of honor students.

• Problem solving/critical thinking experiences are widely offered to students in the form of laboratory experiences. Biochemistry has a year long senior thesis/laboratory requirement. Veterinary Medicine and Environmental and Resource Science majors are encouraged to work in the laboratory and a large percentage of their students do.

• Thirty-five percent of the students who complete the Preveterinary Science program are accepted to Veterinary School; this is twice the national average.

• Exit interviews of seniors document that they are pleased with their education in the College of Agriculture.

• Exit interviews rate the College as the best on campus when it comes to quality student advisement.

• Over the past five years, nineteen biochemistry undergraduate students have co-authored research papers published in peer review journals. Students in Environmental and Resource Sciences also co-author research papers.

• Biochemistry majors must present a public oral accounting of their research efforts. A written thesis is also required.

Most classes in the College are relatively small in enrollment, ranging from 5-40 students. However, a minority of offerings are somewhat larger, peaking around 100 students. Therefore, for the most part students get the advantage of small class, personalized instruction. Students get to know their instructors and have convenient access to the faculty. Senior exit interviews and alumni feedback confirm this advantageous situation.

Course evaluation related to class size and other considerations are collected from responses recorded on a formal student evaluation form. Additional input comes from written student comments and senior exit interviews. Collectively, our courses are given high marks and reported to be effective and useful.

2. Upgrading of course content

Each department has a curriculum committee which reviews course curricula and other aspects of the instructional environment. One of the criteria for annual evaluation of faculty is the upgrading of course material and content.

To facilitate faculty development in teaching, faculty are encouraged to participate in workshops, peer assistance, videotaping, etc. Credit is given in the faculty annual evaluation process to those who seek to improve their teaching skills.

2. Evaluation of departmental effectiveness

The quality of teaching is measured in a number of ways. A primary technique employed throughout the College is the use of a standardized, national student evaluation form (CIEQ). This instrument allows the comparison of student data for a specific instructor with a large data bank of responses of students in similar classes throughout the nation. This provides the college, department, and faculty member with comparisons against an unbiased, constant standard. Typically, 65-75 percent of our faculty are rated by students to be in the top category (excellent) of this comparative ranking. Other measures of effectiveness come from student feedback outside of class, peer evaluation, and senior student exit interviews.

Faculty in the College have qualifications consistent with their teaching and research responsibilities. It is one of the objectives of future hiring to bring into balance the now top heavy academic rankings of the current faculty. Likewise, the College is underrepresented with faculty who are women and minorities. Much effort is directed to correcting those deficiencies.

Our faculty represent a group of experienced and talented teachers and researchers who are actively engaged in publication and who have adequate to significant outside funding. Outreach functions are primarily focused in extension priorities, in K-12 teacher training, and in laboratory experiences for secondary school students.

Significant changes in the curriculum have occurred over recent years which have resulted in a shortage of teaching laboratory space. Whereas, all classes are now accommodated, scheduling is sometimes difficult and as student enrollment increases, the available space will quickly become inadequate.

In general, the availability of current research space is adequate, however as the faculty numbers and programs grow, space will soon be inadequate. In a few cases, faculty have inappropriate space to properly conduct their research objectives.

Mostly, research laboratories are moderately to well equipped, but with the rapid change in technology, it is a difficult task to acquire contemporary equipment. Likewise, the resources to hire adequate technical support is markedly insufficient.

All faculty have personal computers and Internet links, but the College has limited high-end computing capabilities. These needs are currently underfunded and are increasing in need.

Students

The significant student recruitment and retention efforts that are ongoing in the College will continue. Enhanced emphasis and effort will be directed toward the recruitment of the underrepresented minorities. These objectives are shared by all departments and the Student Center.

The need for increased opportunities for internships is recognized. Departments are exploring new arrangements with business and governmental agencies to provide additional quality internship training opportunities.

The faculty of the College do not appropriately represent women and minorities. Hence, strong efforts are directed in the hiring process to correct this deficiency as vacant faculty positions are filled.

Funding

Throughout the College there is a significant need for additional technical personnel. Modern equipment, both teaching and research, requires trained technicians to operate and maintain. To date, the College has a marked shortage of these people.

Operating money for instructional support is very limited and the number of teaching assistants required to oversee laboratory classes is inadequate.

The College of Arts and Science, which embraces the fine arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, plays a key role at the University of Nevada, Reno. Through its seventeen departments and six programs, the college accepts responsibility for a significant proportion of all undergraduate education, for a variety of graduate programs at both the masters and doctoral levels, and for a serious research agenda in every discipline it represents. A commitment to excellence characterizes every endeavor undertaken.

The College of Arts and Science (CAS) currently offers 32 major programs and 41 minor programs at the undergraduate level. All majors must satisfy the requirements of the core curriculum plus individual disciplinary requirements. All majors, except those with expanded fields of concentration, must also satisfy additional general education requirements of the college, which include: completion of a fourth-semester college course in a foreign language or evidence of equivalent proficiency, completion of a 200-level Humanities course, and completion of a second Social Science course from a department different than the Social Science course taken for the core curriculum requirement.

The college has undergone a fair amount of organizational change over the past ten years as a consequence of a major reorganization at the university level and other more minor reorganizations. These have included the moving of departments of Recreation and Physical Education, Social Work, and Criminal Justice from CAS into the College of Human and Community Sciences; and Computer Science has moved from being a part of the Department of Mathematics into being an independent department in the College of Engineering. Other units have been added to CAS. The Oral History and Basque Studies programs have been moved from the library. CAS has created a Woman’s Studies Program; the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies; and Western Traditions (a part of the Core Curriculum currently administered through CAS).

These changes are indicative of the dynamic character of both college and institution, inasmuch as the movement of departments in or out of the college or the creation of new units has occurred for sound academic reasons. Overall these changes have resulted in the college being even more reflective of its role as the "traditional liberal arts" arm of the institution.

The 17 departments in CAS have been responsible for 50% of the total student credit hours generated by the University of Nevada, Reno each year for the past five years, and enrollments have increased by 8% over this period. Credit hours for the college have been generated by students taking CAS courses to satisfy core curriculum requirements as well as by majors within the college. Undergraduate majors for the college have approximated 25% of the total declared majors of the university and this pattern has been consistent for the past five years. Moreover, majors within the college have also consistently accounted for over a third of students within the university to receive a baccalaureate degree each year for the past five years (Table 5.9.B.1).

The number of tenure or tenure-track faculty in CAS has grown from 197 in 1987-88 to 220 in 1996-97, an increase of 11%. Approximately 50% of our current faculty have been hired in the last ten years. There has been a significant improvement in overall faculty quality, in part because we have been able to hire from prestigious institutions across the country. Thirty-five percent of the faculty is at the rank of professor, essentially the same percentage as ten years ago. Gender balance within the college has improved: 25% of the 1996-97 faculty are women, an increase from 19% in 1987-88. The percent of faculty who are minority has remained low but has increased from 4.6% ten years ago to 8.2% now.

The college has experienced substantial growth in research productivity since 1987-88. Sponsored Project income in the college has risen from $1.1 million ten years ago to $3.8 million in 1996-97. Much of this increase in sponsored research has occurred in the natural sciences, but it is not restricted to these disciplines, as sponsored research also occurs in the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts. Scholarly output has also increased significantly. The average number of articles, essays, and books published in all departments is more than double that of ten years ago, with publications appearing in outlets with greater national and international recognition. Additionally, review letters for faculty being considered for promotion or tenure are being solicited from major state and research institutions.

In the tradition of being the "liberal arts arm" of the university, the college has devoted substantial effort to establish, implement, and sustain the institution’s core curriculum. The core curriculum is required of all undergraduate majors of the university so it is not exclusive to CAS and, in fact, all colleges at UNR have played important roles in the core curriculum. Nevertheless, the sheer size and academic definition of the college have made it the major player in the institution’s revision of the general education requirement for all university undergraduate majors. The three-semester Western Traditions sequence, partly funded by two NEH grants; the establishment of a Mathematics Center, funded partly by grants from the National Science Foundation, AT&T, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and the Writing Center are all either exclusive or primary undertakings of the college. Each speaks to the commitment of our faculty to the core curriculum and the excellence of their work.

The college’s commitment and dedication to instituting the core curriculum cannot be overstated. Even though certain courses from our prior "cafeteria style" general education requirement became part of the new core curriculum, all required significant modification to include a meaningful writing, and in some cases mathematics, component. Thus, faculty in all departments have made significant course revisions to existing courses. New capstone and diversity courses have also been developed. The Western Traditions Sequence was developed exclusively by faculty of the college. This sequence is normally started in the second year by our undergraduates. An examination of the annualized net FTE generated by these courses (Table 5.9.B.2) can be used as an indirect measure of the transition period required for the overall implementation of the new core curriculum.

This college’s commitment to the general education requirement of the university, when coupled to the discipline-specific degree programs of each department, creates the historic problem faced by all colleges of arts and science: That is, how does one divide available resources so as to provide adequate education in each of the two competing areas? The problem becomes especially acute when the university as a whole demands greater offerings in core courses or discipline-specific required prerequisite courses for majors outside of the college. If resources are inadequate, these increased demands are most frequently met through the appointment of part-time personnel, who, by nature of the position, do not provide the continuum of course and curricular improvement expected of permanent faculty. Competition for resources between major and general education needs is particularly acute in regard to department operating budgets. The college has not received an increase in this budget line for over 5 years, despite enrollment and inflationary increases.

Quality in teaching has always been a strength of the college and this tradition has continued over the past ten years. CAS teachers have garnered 18 of 28 university-wide outstanding teacher awards—two-thirds of the total. Fifteen of its faculty have received the Paul Bible Award for Excellence in Teaching, a college-wide award. Many of these are included among those who received the university awards. The Carnegie Foundation has recognized one CAS faculty member for his outstanding teaching.

As a group, CAS faculty have been gradually changing their teaching techniques from the standard lecture format that was typical ten years ago to presentations that incorporate modern teaching pedagogy. This change is most readily apparent among our newer faculty, but it is also occurring with some of our more senior faculty. The College of Education has been offering a voluntary course/workshop for faculty each spring semester to help faculty improve their teaching. Approximately half of the faculty who have taken advantage of this opportunity have been from CAS. More faculty within the college are also developing personal teaching portfolios which are now routinely being submitted as part of individual promotion and tenure applications.

Although formal assessment of undergraduates within individual majors is just beginning for majors without discipline-specific accreditation, departments have been doing informal assessment to varying degrees. This has typically consisted of evaluating student knowledge, communication abilities, and critical thinking skills in discipline-based capstone courses, as well as assessing student knowledge from lower division feeder courses. Such evaluations have often resulted in curricular changes within the major. More formal assessment plans are being developed for each major in the college.

Until recently, assessment of alumni by the college has also been informal, although the Assessment Office has surveyed all University Alumni on a more regular basis. CAS distributed an alumni survey for most departments in the college in Fall 1996 and received an approximate 10% response. Responses ranged from those who graduated within the past few years to those who received degrees more than twenty years ago. The majority of responses were in the latter category for many departments. Although these comments were typically positive, they are perhaps more valuable in defending the importance of a traditional liberal arts education over the course of a career than as a tool that provides immediate input to help improve an existing program.

All departments are involved in some type of service or outreach activity although the definition of this varies substantially from one unit to another. Activities such as the offering of formal science laboratories to high school students taking Advance Placement courses, providing low cost clinical service in the Psychological Service Center, participating in the establishment of state wide standards in K-12, and tutoring non-English speaking elementary school children are all examples of service and community outreach being done by CAS.

Four divisions are recognized within the college: Fine Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. This division is delineated only in terms of elections within the college and is not important in CAS administration since the responsibilities of the Dean and Associate Dean are not divided along division lines. The division structure does, however, provide a useful way of separating the complexity of the college into smaller units for further elaboration.

Fine Arts is composed of the Departments of Music, Art, and Speech Communication and Theatre. Each of the three departments offers a Bachelor of Arts degree. The Bachelor of Music degree is also granted and a Bachelor of Fine Arts is offered in theatre. A Master of Arts degree and a Master of Music degree are offered by the Department of Music; the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre offers a Master of Arts degree with a major in speech communication. Graduates from the fine arts have increased over the past five years with most of the increase occurring in the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre.

Fine Arts, as a whole, has made a significant shift in definition over the past ten years as retiring faculty have been replaced with very talented hires in the departments of Art and Music. These faculty members, when combined with existing talents in the departments, provide the fine arts an opportunity to move from the role of regional service to that of more national prominence in certain defined areas. The Department of Music has already implemented Orchestral Studies, a program unique to this campus, as a specialty in its Master of Arts program, and the Department of Art plans to implement a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree within the next two years.

The core curriculum requires all students to take one course in the Fine Arts and each department offers its own course(s) which satisfy this requirement. Departments also offer courses which satisfy the general capstone course requirement for seniors. The majority of these course offerings are taught by regular full-time faculty. As required for all courses in the core curriculum, these courses include a writing requirement and efforts are made to insure that all sections of multiple section courses have similar goals. This is monitored both at the department level and by the various subcommittees of the University Core Curriculum.

All departments in the Fine Arts also provide service courses to various units outside of the College. Both the departments of Music and Art offer a series of courses for students majoring in Elementary Education. Speech Communication plays a much greater role in service in that certain majors in the Colleges of Business and Human and Community Sciences are required to take Speech Communication courses. Many sections of these Speech Communication courses are offered by either graduate assistants or Letter of Appointment faculty. The department is fortunate to have competent people to teach these courses on a temporary basis, but there is, nevertheless, a compromise to the department and instruction since these faculty are not as available to students as are full time faculty.

Majors

The Department of Art offers a high quality Bachelors of Art degree and plans to introduce a similar Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the next two years. Number of majors have been steadily increasing over the past four years. While the department has remained at a constant of 9 faculty over the last ten years, there have been a number of changes in that time. Several faculty have left the department during the past ten years. This allowed the department to redefine these positions with a resulting modification of curriculum that has included the addition of such topics as Videography and Digital Media. The overall quality of the program has improved significantly, as several of the senior faculty have national and international reputations and promising young faculty appear to be well on the way towards achieving similar stature. The department is proud to have the only university faculty member to have received the Regents’ Outstanding Creative Activity Award.

The Department of Music received its accreditation renewal from the National Association of Schools of Music in 1991. It provides a quality undergraduate program and it recruits heavily throughout the State of Nevada and surrounding areas. Undergraduate majors have increased by approximately 25% over the past five years. The department is composed of 12.33 faculty, an increase of one during the last ten years. One member of the faculty has received recognition by the university for excellence in teaching and by the college for excellence in scholarship. The department has made two hires recently, one at the assistant professor level and another more senior position that was accepted by the Concert Master from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The addition of this latter person has raised the unit’s vitality and level of excellence while also introducing a new area of specialty, orchestral studies, at the graduate level. This new program is a unique one and is already attracting talented musicians from around the country.

The Department of Speech Communication and Theatre is actually two distinctly different programs within a single department. Majors in Speech Communication have gradually increased over the past five years at both the undergraduate and graduate levels while those in Theatre have been relatively constant. Numbers of graduates in each major have increased steadily for the past five years. This pattern has been especially notable in the case of Speech Communication which has tripled the number of undergraduates to graduate over the past 5 years. The faculty currently numbers 8.5 faculty, 8 of whom are tenured at the rank of associate or full professor. The .5 position is held by a lecturer. Given the distinctly different nature of the two programs, the department is clearly understaffed. Speech Communication is a high demand major, and could easily double in size were major courses more available. Service courses offered for other majors are also in high demand and are typically among the first courses to have all sections close each semester. Theatre also suffers from problems associated with under staffing, as their lower division courses are commonly filled well before the start of each semester. Moreover, the productions schedule, an integral component of the Fine Arts offering, is particularly taxing for such a small number of Theatre faculty.

Units in the Humanities division of CAS include the Departments of English, Foreign Languages and Literatures and Philosophy. For the purpose of this document, the Department of History and the Oral History Program will also be placed in this group since it is anticipated this will occur in the next by-laws revision of the college. Oral History does not offer a degree program. All other units offer a Bachelor of Arts degree, with the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures offering majors in French, German, and Spanish. Each department also offers a Master of Arts degree and English offers the additional Master of Arts for the Teaching of English degree and Masters of Arts degree for Teaching English as a Second Language. The Departments of English and History also offer the Doctor of Philosophy degree. The change in number of students who have received degrees, either undergraduate or graduate, varies depending upon the major. Graduates have been fairly constant in English, Philosophy, and Spanish, while undergraduates receiving their degree in History have increased by approximately 30% over the same period. The number of students receiving undergraduate degrees in either German or French has decreased steadily.

All Humanities departments have made a substantial commitment and contribution to the core curriculum. The Department of English is solely responsible for the freshman writing program and the Writing Center assists faculty across the institution in adding meaningful writing components to all courses in the core cirriculum. All units in the Humanities offer courses which satisfy the general capstone requirement and the diversity requirement. Departments in the Humanities were also primarily responsible for developing and teaching the Western Traditions (WT) sequence. The importance of these courses to the general education requirement of all undergraduates and the effort required to implement them is mentioned above in this chapter and elsewhere in this self study. While the annualized net FTE generated by WT can be used as an indirect measure of the time sequence required to implement the core curriculum, it has also produced something of an overall quirk in the data for annualized net FTE for individual departments (Table 5.9.B.2). Faculty in the departments of English, Foreign Language and Literatures, Philosophy, and History have been responsible for developing and teaching Western Traditions while concurrently either eliminating or scaling back other offerings formerly used to satisfy our previous general education requirement. Thus FTE figures listed under Western Traditions appropriately belong as part of the FTE for these respective departments. Data showing a gradual decrease in annualized net FTE for History should more appropriately be regarded as being unchanged, while that in English, which is relatively constant, actually represents an increase in department annualized FTE. Reported increases for Foreign Languages and Literatures and Philosophy are even greater than those shown in the table.

Annualized FTE for the Humanities departments also reveal the substantial total responsibility of these units to the institution. English consistently generates an annualized FTE that is exceeded by only three other colleges outside of CAS in the entire institution, and the total annualized FTE generated by all faculty in the Humanities is greater than the total generated by any other college in the university.

Majors

The Department of English is the largest department in the university with 30.5 faculty. It has increased by five positions, or 20% over the last ten years, and it is committed to offering quality degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The number of undergraduate majors has increased by 5% in the past five years, and it is currently the third most popular major in the college. Graduate enrollment at the master’s level has been relatively constant, but the number of doctoral students has nearly tripled over the past five years to number approximately 60. Graduation rates have been fairly constant for students receiving the Bachelor or Master of Arts degrees, although the number receiving the latter degree is somewhat lower than one might expect given the number of students in the program. The buildup of students in the doctoral program has occurred within the last 5 years and the fruit of this effort was first realized in the1994-95 academic year with the awarding of six degrees. Given the size of the program, it is expected that the department will continue to graduate this number of doctorates yearly over the immediate future.

Faculty consist of both tenure track and lecturer positions. The latter are full time permanent positions for the instruction of lower division courses. Lecturers have extended rotating contracts and are thus provided a certain degree of job security. The department has been a leader for the institution in defining the lecturer position so as to provide a continued course of career development that assures excellence in teaching while providing reward for meritorious performance. Current faculty have been recognized by the institution for both instruction and scholarship; the faculty includes 3 recipients of the university outstanding teaching award and 2 recipients of the university outstanding research award. The department has hired 15 faculty over the past 10 years, which includes 5 new positions. The excellence of those hired at the assistant professor level is indicated by the fact that most are tenured and promoted to the associate level well before the end of their sixth year. Hires have also been made at more senior levels and these hires have enabled the department to establish the Writing Center, the Writing Emphasis component of the graduate program, and the Center for the Environmental Arts and Humanities.

The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (FLL) offers three undergraduate majors. Overall enrollment has increased as demand for Spanish has been increasing. However, the number of majors in both French and German has been decreasing steadily. This is a trend that the department should attend to seriously in the next year or two. This is particularly important in that FLL has a substantial teaching responsibility, beyond that associated with the university core curriculum and department majors. It is also solely responsible for language instruction for majors who require language as part of degree requirements. These collective responsibilities severely tax their existing resources, and it is very unlikely the university will provide additional positions to cover teaching needs in areas with current low or declining demand. Faculty in the department include both lecturers and tenure track faculty. The department has hired 13 faculty over the past ten years. These have been excellent but several have also left the department. A new position has been promised the department for the 1997-98 academic year, and a second new position will be assigned the department with the next budget (provided there are new positions). Both of these will be filled by individuals with a strong interest in pedagogy, in an effort to help the department integrate computerized language instruction into its teaching. This will require the addition of a computerized language laboratory with technical help that is readily available to students and faculty alike. Current faculty are committed to excellence in scholarship and teaching and the department boasts the presence of two faculty who have received the college’s Alan Bible Excellence in Teaching award.

The Department of History developed a master plan of its own volition five years ago. Three years later, after it hired four new faculty, the department did an extensive revision of the plan. This master plan, and later update, included a critical evaluation of its current status and defined a future direction for all aspects of the department including the undergraduate and graduate programs. The positive consequence on the department and majors has been substantial and it may well explain the reason for the near doubling in the number of graduates and majors the department has enjoyed over the past five years. The number of students in the doctoral program has also doubled over the same time period. Faculty are dedicated to implementing the existing master plan while concurrently recognizing the importance of its periodic revision. Existing faculty have been revitalized by both the process of developing the plan and the excellence of new faculty who have been hired as a result of the plan. The faculty, which includes three members who have been recognized by the university or college for both excellent research and teaching, constitute one of the most cohesive departments in the college.

The Department of Philosophy underwent an extensive self-examination with its program review during the 1995-96 academic year. This included a critical review of the existing major and a vision for possible future department minors. Timing of the program review was especially appropriate since it was performed after a significant effort by the department to increase its number of majors. The latter effort has resulted in the near doubling of majors at both the baccalaureate and master’s level over the past five years. Overall quality of the department is excellent and it includes one individual who has been recognized by the college and university for excellence in both teaching and research.

The Social Sciences comprise the departments of Anthropology, Geography, Military Science, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology, as well as the Basque Studies Program and the Center for Women’s Studies. The Department of Geography offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography and a Master of Science degree. The Departments of Anthropology, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology offer a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree. Political Science offers a Master of Public Administration degree and the Doctorate of Philosophy degree. Anthropology and Psychology also offer the Doctor of Philosophy. The Basque Studies Program offers an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in conjunction with other departments. The college is also the home of the Doctor of Philosophy in Social Psychology, an interdisciplinary program that includes faculty from the colleges of Arts and Science, Business, and Human and Community Sciences. The number of students majoring in the Social Sciences has increased in all departments in the last five years. In terms of percentages and absolute numbers, this has been greatest in the Department of Sociology. Number of students earning their degrees in the Social Sciences has also increased, although this rate has not been as great as the rate of growth in majors.

All departments within the Social Sciences, except Military Science, participate in the core curriculum as each offers at least one course that satisfies the Social Science requirement and upper division courses that satisfy the diversity or general capstone course requirement. The Departments of Geography and Anthropology also offer courses that satisfy Group B of the Natural Sciences. Many of the courses that currently satisfy the lower division Social Science requirement already existed prior to the core curriculum, but they have been modified to include a writing component and many have added or are adding a mathematical component. Most diversity courses and general capstone courses now being offered by departments in the Social Sciences are new courses that were added to department offerings in order to support the core curriculum.

Many departments in the Social Sciences also offer courses that are required or recommended for majors outside of the college. The School of Journalism, for example, requires its majors to take an additional Political Science course, and several majors in the College of Human and Community Sciences are required to take Abnormal Psychology. Courses offered by the Department of Geography on Geographic Information Systems are constantly filled by majors from outside the department.

Majors

The Department of Anthropology is dedicated to providing a program of excellence to it students at all levels of their education. It is of moderate size in number of students and faculty but evidence of overall program quality is provided by the fact that over 60% of their faculty have been recognized by the university or college for excellence in research and teaching. The faculty is also strengthened at the graduate level by faculty from the Desert Research Institute. The annualized net FTE generated and the number of majors in the department, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, have been relatively constant over the past five years. However graduation rates for undergraduates over the past three years appear to be increasing. The number of students receiving the Master of Science degree has been fairly constant over the past five years while the total number receiving a doctorate over this period appears to be low given the number in the program.

The Basque Studies Program offers an undergraduate minor and an interdisciplinary Basque tutorial Ph.D. program. It is the only Basque Studies program in the United States and the minor provides students with an introduction and exposure to one of the unique heritages of the American West. The program is recognized for its excellence internationally and is currently staffed by three faculty.

The Department of Geography primarily offers an undergraduate program, as its Master of Science program was first implemented in 1994. The Department has changed significantly over the past ten years inasmuch as it has replaced two retiring faculty. Its current number of faculty, 5.75, represents an increase of 2.25 positions from ten years ago. The current program was ranked among the top five of such programs by a survey done by a branch campus of the SUNY system in 1992. Both of the present most senior full time faculty have been recognized by the university for excellence in teaching, and one of them was also recognized in 1995 at the national level as the Carnegie Foundation "Nevada Professor of the Year." Three of the faculty hired over the past four years have already been nominated for similar awards. Enrollments for the department, in terms of net annualized FTE and number of majors, have been relatively constant over the past 5 years. This is also seen in the graduation rate for the same period. The Department is currently housed in the Mackay Science building, which provides an aesthetically pleasing (if somewhat battered) environment that contributes to the collegiality of the department.

The Department of Political Science has a substantial obligation in terms of the number and size of programs it offers. It has consistently ranked among the top five departments in the college, in terms of number of undergraduate majors over the past five years, and the actual number of majors has increased by 18% over this period. In terms of department responsibilities, it is logical to couple the interdisciplinary major in International Affairs to Political Science, since the director to the program holds his appointment in the department. This latter major has been averaging 60 majors a year, so it adds a significant additional responsibility to the department. The graduate program includes both M.A. and M.P.A. degrees that have both had meaningful and constant numbers of majors over the past five years. The number of students in the doctoral program has increased by 30 percent. Data over the past three years shows a pattern that the doctoral program is starting to graduate students on a regular basis. This diversity of major offerings, coupled with the popularity of the programs, is substantial given the size of the department, which now numbers 11 faculty. This is an increase of two positions over the past ten years. Two of the existing faculty have been recognized by the college for excellence in teaching while one has been recognized by the university for excellence in research.

The Department of Psychology offers several options for its majors and graduate students. The department enjoys the largest number of undergraduate majors in the college and the number has increased by 19% over the past five years. The doctoral program is nearly double the size of any other doctoral program in the college. This program has increased by 55% over the past five years. Among the graduate programs is Clinical Psychology, which is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association, and has been accepted for membership in the Academy of Psychological Clinical Science. The increases in enrollments for majors have not resulted in a corresponding increase in the annualized net FTE for the department as that figure has increased by only 6%. It is reasonable to assume that overall educational effort by the faculty has thus shifted away from the core curriculum or service courses and towards students majoring in the department. In spite of these trends, graduation rates are not impressive. The ratio of majors to students receiving a degree each year, at either the bachelor or doctoral level is among the lowest in the college. This can be partly explained at the doctoral level by the rapid growth in the size of the program, but the number of students to receive the Ph.D. degree from Psychology should double in the next three to four years. The low graduation rate for undergraduates can also be at least partially explained by the advising program, which in 1993 was rated by a student survey as being the poorest for all majors in the university. The chair of the department has recognized the seriousness of this situation and has implemented a series of changes to correct this problem. Funding of graduates programs and department scholarship is improving as outside funding to the program through grants and contracts has increased substantially over the past five years. Personnel within the department have also changed in the past ten years as a result of four new positions having been added and four existing positions having been filled. The department has made excellent choices in filling all vacancies and the new group of faculty should keep the department positioned among the strongest in the university. Among existing faculty are two individuals who have been recognized by the university for excellence in research and one member recognized by the college for excellence in teaching, as well as one who has been recognized for outstanding service to the community.

The Social Psychology Doctoral Program is an interdisciplinary program housed in CAS although it includes faculty both within and outside the college. Five years ago the program appeared to be on a downturn in terms of students, but this seems to have changed as the number has increased from a low of 12 students to the current 32 students. Graduation rates have also increased from zero students receiving a degree in the years from 1991-93 to three students graduating in the 1994-95 academic year.

The Department of Sociology has initiated several activities over the past two to three years specifically directed towards increasing the number of students majoring in the department. These included such activities as the reactivation of its Sociology Club, the publishing of a department newsletter, identification of meaningful internships, curriculum revision, and improvement of undergraduate advising. This effort has resulted in more than a 400% increase in undergraduate majors and the growth of a master’s program which had no students in fall 1993 to a current enrollment of 11 students. It is anticipated this increase in student numbers will continue in the immediate future given the renewed interest the unit is showing in its educational programs. Staffing of the department has increased by one position in the last ten years and the current faculty of six includes one individual who has been recognized by the university for excellence in research.

Although the Woman’s Studies has been offered as a minor program since 1979, the university first hired a full time Director of the program in 1995 and she joined the campus in January, 1996. Since her arrival, she has solidified the minor and has put forward a major program which she will implement in the 1997-98 academic year.

Natural Sciences is composed of the departments of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics. The four departments offer a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree. Chemistry also offers a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry that is accredited by the American Chemical Society. Mathematics also offers a Masters of Arts for the Teaching of Mathematics degree. Both the Departments of Chemistry and Physics offer the Doctor of Philosophy degree in their respective disciplines. They also offer an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Chemical Physics. The number of undergraduate students majoring in the Natural Sciences has increased as all departments have shown an increase in majors by at least 30% in the last five years..

As a group, the departments within the Natural Sciences have undergone a dramatic shift over the past 10 years. All have experienced a significant change in their faculty as a result of normal faculty turnover and new positions. Now nearly all faculty have active research programs, and most of the bench scientists are funded by outside grants and contracts. This shift has not come at the expense of teaching as departments include faculty who have been recognized by the university for their teaching and three departments also have grants to support and improve undergraduate education. Perhaps the greatest testimony to the commitment of faculty to teaching is the fact that approximately 20% of the Natural Science faculty regularly dedicate a portion of their paychecks to university projects specifically targeted towards the improvement of undergraduate education in the sciences.

The core curriculum requires that all students take two courses in the Natural Sciences and the departments of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics offer their own courses which can satisfy this requirement. The majority of these courses (over 90%) are taught by regular full time faculty, with graduate teaching assistants commonly being used for required laboratories. A meaningful writing component has been added and the Mathematics Center has been instrumental in assisting faculty with strengthening the mathematics component to core curriculum courses in the Natural Sciences.

The Department of Mathematics is the only unit to offer courses which satisfy the Math requirement of the core curriculum, with several options that meet this requirement. It has also monitored a summer testing placement to assist students in determining their proficiency so as to insure the students enroll in appropriate entry level courses. A similar standard is used in determining teaching assignments. Math 120 and 128 may be taught by permanent or part time lecturers, graduate assistants, or letter of appointment faculty. However, the department requires that all Calculus courses be taught by a person holding a doctorate in the field. Thus, these courses are taught by regular full time faculty. The Mathematics Center assists faculty across the institution in adding meaningful computational components to courses in the core curriculum.

All departments in the Natural Sciences offer an array of courses that are required for majors outside of the department. Calculus, for example is required of all majors in the Natural Sciences, Mines, Business, and Engineering. Since the definition of the requirement is not constant, Mathematics offers several different Calculus options that differ according to major both in and outside of the college. Various Biology courses are required of majors in Agriculture, Nursing, and Human and Community Sciences. Physics and Chemistry offer courses for majors in Mines, Engineering, Human and Community Sciences, Nursing, Agriculture, and Biology. These service courses place a substantial responsibility on the Natural Science departments, and they are the primary reason the departments of Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology consistently generated an annualized net FTE that place them among the top 6 or 7 departments in the university. In fact, only one college outside of CAS has a total annualized net FTE that is greater than the total for these three departments, and no college has a greater annualized FTE than the combined FTE of all the four departments. Since many of the courses offered in the Natural Sciences include a laboratory component, a significant percent of the annualized net FTE generated by these units include the need for preparations, space, equipment, personnel, supplies, and other infrastructure beyond that required for standard lecture/discussion courses.

Majors

The Department of Biology completed a significant revision of its undergraduate major in the 1990-91 academic year. This included the addition of a meaningful mathematics requirement and an option to allow students to select either a field or laboratory orientation. The number of undergraduate majors has increased by 50% since that change and graduation rates have kept pace with the increase in majors. The undergraduate program was also enhanced four years ago by the award of an Undergraduate Improvement Grant in the Biomedical Sciences from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The number of faculty has increased as the department has added three new positions in the last ten years. The current faculty includes one individual who has been recognized by the university for excellence in teaching and another member recognized by the university for excellence in research. The department continues to offer a Master of Science degree, but it phased out its Doctor of Philosophy degree as part of an overall university plan to make all doctoral degree programs in the life sciences interdisciplinary in order to include expertise from the colleges of Agriculture, Arts and Science, Engineering, and Human and Community Sciences, and the School of Medicine. Faculty from the Biology department are active participants in one or more of these interdisciplinary programs. Funded research has increased substantially, as it was below $100,000 ten years ago and is now over $1 million. This additional funding, coupled with new faculty, has required the department to remodel undergraduate teaching laboratories into faculty research space, and the department has dropped the laboratory component from several of its courses in order to compensate for the reduced teaching space.

The Department of Chemistry was recognized in a report published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, which ranked its graduate program as second nationwide among departments of its size or smaller. The department has had a doubling in both the number of undergraduate majors and doctoral students over the last five years. It has had a historic problem in the graduation rate of undergraduates, as the number of students to receive baccalaureates in the major in proportion to the number of majors has been among the worst in the college. The department has taken several steps to address this problem and unofficial graduation figures for the 1995-96 academic year indicate these efforts are resulting in very positive consequences. The graduation rate for that year was 25%. The graduation rate for doctoral students is perhaps the best in the college, with a steady ratio of producing one Ph.D. per five to six students in the program. Faculty strongly support all components of the educational program as they aggressively seek outside funding to support their research, graduate program, and undergraduate students. This effort has been successful as they regularly generate funding over $1 million. Current funding for the department includes individual faculty research grants, an NSF EPSCoR grant, and an undergraduate NSF REU grant. The faculty includes two Fellows of the AAAS and nearly one third have been recognized by the university for excellence in either research or teaching. This currently includes two outstanding teachers and three Foundation Fellows. The latter group includes two individuals who have been selected as outstanding researchers and one chosen as the first recipient of the "Regents’ Researcher Award." The department has received three new positions in the last ten years and it consistently made excellent hires in filling these or existing faculty lines that have been vacated through retirements.

In 1988 the Board of Regents added a mathematics requirement as part of the general education requirement for all students. This substantially increased the teaching responsibility of the Department of Mathematics, although it received no additional positions. The department attempted to meet this mandate, but it did so by compromising its graduate program and undergraduate major. Eight new faculty have now been added to the department since 1992-93 through the addition of new faculty lines and the filling of vacancies created by retirements. The resulting change to the entire program has been substantial. The number of undergraduate majors has increased by 20%, while the number of master’s students has doubled. The graduation rate of undergraduate majors has also doubled. In addition, the department has added a new option in Applied Mathematics at both the graduate and undergraduate level in an effort to modernize its curriculum. The most recent faculty hires represent a strong central core that will serve the department well in future years. Included among the more senior faculty is one individual who has been recognized by the university for excellence in research and a second faculty member recognized for excellence in teaching. In spite of their accomplishments to date, it is recognized that the department is barely meeting existing teaching demands. It will be impossible to do so as the institution grows without returning to the same problems that existed five years ago. The department has been promised an additional position when new positions become available, and they can reasonably expect a second.

The Department of Physics has had a gradual but steady increase in its number of undergraduate majors over the past five years. Graduation rates have not been good, but a pattern of improvement has started to emerge in the last three years. The number of doctoral students in the department has been relatively constant over the past year and the program has a graduation rate for these students that competes with Chemistry for the best in the college. The overall quality of the program improved dramatically with the hire of an outside chair in 1992. This change occurred almost instantly as the new chair molded the department into a meaningful cooperative unit. The excellence of the faculty is illustrated by the fact that two of its members are fellows of the American Physical Society, and one of its emeritus faculty who is still active in the graduate program also holds this distinction. To this core of superior senior faculty, the department has added several young dynamic faculty who have been hired to fill existing vacancies or new positions. Some research is supported from outside grants and the department is a participant in NSF DOE EPSCoR grants. Additional support for research has come from various pieces of equipment that have been acquired from national or corporate laboratories. Most recently it has acquired a Marx generator, the most powerful generator of its type found at any university in the country. Faculty collaborate on a regular basis with colleagues at the Desert Research Institute and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the department is visited on a regular basis from by physicists from around the world.

PROBLEMS TO BE ADDRESSED BY THE UNIVERSITY

The Board of Regents mandated four years ago that every program within the institution undergo a program review every five to six years, that includes an internal analysis followed by an external review. A number of departments within the college have undergone reviews and these have revealed a number of problems that seem to be common to all units. Many of these read as a common theme throughout this self study so are not unique to CAS. They are, thus, only briefly outlined in the following paragraphs.

With the growth of students and faculty, the campus, including CAS, is continually told by outside reviewers that existing space and equipment is inadequate. This is due partly to growth, but it is also due to increased demands created by technology, the addition of new programs and centers, and the changing definition of the institution.

. Support personnel are also a critical need of the college. Many program reviews have focused particularly on the inadequate staffing for routine secretarial needs, and more than half our departments have but one secretary. However the shortage of support staff is even more evident in the case of technical support. Personnel to handle tasks such as maintenance of computer laboratories or technical scientific equipment are non-existent for most departments.

Operating budgets for the college and departments are also a problem as these have not had any increase in absolute dollars in over five years, even though there has been inflation and a general increase in number of faculty and enrollments. In addition, it is common for actual or anticipated internal or external "budgetary shortfalls" to be solved partly by passing an additional expense or responsibility from a central unit out to the departments.

Just as CAS claims in its mission statement, to train students for a rapidly changing world, so must we be prepared to be active players in this same world which is demanding, and will create, significant change in higher education over the next ten years. The college should position itself so it is proactive rather than reactive to events that appear to be looming as we enter the twenty-first century. This is not to suggest that we need to change the foundation of the college, as the traditional liberal arts component of the institution. Rather we need to insure that the college remains the foundation of the University.

One change that has already occurred is a shift in focus with regard to the educational mission of colleges and universities. While education has been viewed historically as teaching, it is now discussed in terms of the broader issue of student learning. The call for meaningful assessment is a consequence of this change, and it is important that all departments have in place a regular process that assesses student outcomes for their majors so as to improve the overall quality of the program. Units should also be willing to implement strategies such as meaningful advising, intern programs, discipline-based clubs, senior thesis, etc., that are already known to result in program improvement.

Excellence in higher education requires that faculty maintain active research and scholarship, yet institutions are likely to incur additional responsibilities that will place ever increasing pressures on faculty who must continue their creative activities. Departments need to recognize and anticipate future demands that are apt to be placed upon their faculty, and develop strategies that will allow individual scholarship to continue. Moreover, it is critical that the institution continue to explore creative strategies to reinforce faculty for a variety of roles.

Perhaps the most difficult problem that will need addressing concerns overall funding of higher education. It is not an entitlement and it appears to be a much lower priority at both the federal and state level than such things as highways or prisons. Individual departments will not be able to solve this problem on their own. Nevertheless, they must recognize funding will not be as it has been in the past, and must therefore be willing to assist the institution in finding alternative funding sources. Activities such as meaningful partnerships between departments and local businesses, department development activities, extensive grant activities, student recruitment, and applied research, are apt to be fundamental necessities if departments expect any funding increase or even to maintain a level equivalent to the present.

Faculty in CAS are fully capable of responding to the agenda outlined above. Ten years ago many questioned if we would ever be able to develop a core curriculum. Now, not only have we done so, we have created one of the best among state institutions, and much of this has been the result of individual effort by faculty in the college. These same faculty have been important participants in the overall improvement of other aspects of the institution including: the overall increase in scholarly productivity, the increase of grants and contracts to the institution, the significant improvement of the university Honors Program, the recruitment of strong students at the undergraduate and graduate level, and the success of the University Capital Campaign. Faculty must view the next ten years as an opportunity and challenge to move the College of Arts and Science and University of Nevada, Reno even further than they have the previous ten years.

The mission of the College of Business is to achieve excellence in our undergraduate and graduate business programs for our students and the regional business community.

This mission statement is in line with that of the university, built on the tradition of the evolving land grant university. To that end, the college has decided that its activities should be directed to the following goals:

• Achieving excellence in business education by integrating academic scholarship and practical application in quality programs

• Producing basic and applied research to enhance business analysis, practices, and policy

• Helping meet the economic challenges facing the state and region

• Creating an ethical, professional environment where individuals are encouraged to pursue a mix of activities to their talents and career stage which will support the needs and mission of the college

One of the goals of the college is to build on the university's core curriculum to insure that its own lower division core is focused on providing a critical education to students beyond that initiated by the university. We encourage faculty to provide for critical thinking, to encourage written and oral communication, and to use appropriate mathematical and statistical skills in each of their courses. This applies to both the lower division service courses we offer as well as our lower division business core.

These critical skills are also enhanced in the upper division business core. Faculty are encouraged to provide written and presentation communication skill opportunities to their students at every opportunity. The necessity of developing these skills is reinforced by involving community members as guest lecturers when appropriate.

The college has begun to attain its objectives. We have rewritten the college rules to encourage instruction. We have provided incentives for faculty as we have broadened the definition of instruction to again include advising. Some 19 of our faculty are currently responsible for advising students in the college. We have also encouraged the faculty to invite community leaders to be part of their instruction. We have invested resources in instructional technology beyond that which the university has provided. We have provided annual faculty development funds of $1,000 for each of our faculty to spend as they see fit to enhance their careers. This money is available for attendance at instructional conferences, for software purchases, etc. As these practices continue, our students are receiving a much enhanced instruction. Our ultimate check on this goal is evaluated against our internship practices and recruiting visits by companies seeking to employ our students. During the Spring 1997 term, 28 companies visited the college to interview our students. This rate of approximately 2 companies per week during the academic term is up significantly from prior years and is one measure we use to check the effectiveness of our instructional efforts and the quality of our students.

We are currently beginning a rewrite of the faculty workload document that in 1995 tried to expand the range of legitimate faculty activity. Since the faculty workload and productivity data have grown significantly since then, we need to reexamine the document to insure that it encompasses all the work our faculty do.

The purposes of the units within the College of Business is to provide students with

appropriate skills and background to become part of the organizational matrix of the business community. This is reflected in the various departmental mission statements and the goals of the college. We are working to do this by insuring that information flows between the college and the community are enhanced at every opportunity.

The university core curriculum has strengthened our students' general educational background. By so doing, the core has enhanced the ability of our students to deal with the complex analytical issues they will face in our own curriculum. The number of students enrolled in the college has declined in the past five years. In the Databook,1311:1 indicates that student numbers have decreased 1,644 in the Fall 1991 term to 1,386 in the Fall 1995 term.

The nominal differences in quality that may have occurred among our students are difficult to note at the lower division level. We attribute much of the perceived lack of increase in quality to a maturation factor among our entering students. It is much easier for us to judge the quality of ours students by the examining the college internship and recruiting practices.

The college conducts an alumni survey that allows us to measure the quality and

achievement of our former students. We will also initiate this Fall a one year since graduation interview with a group of our students as another monitoring device to ascertain the quality of our programs. Most recently, though, the alumni survey has indicated very high levels of satisfaction with the college and the educational programs our students experience. A copy of the survey is available for examination in the college offices.

The objectives of the courses in the college curriculum are focused on meeting the

goals outlined in our mission statement. We are attempting to provide our students with a mix

of communication and mathematical skills, enhanced analytic abilities, stronger group affinity in providing solutions to identified problems, and the critical ability to provide a range of solutions to issues.

Class sizes have changed very little in the college in the past five years. More than

class size, a renewed emphasis on instruction and student learning has served to attract more recruiters to the college.

The courses which have not been taught in the college in the past two years are listed (Attachment 5.9.C.1.). We have no current plans to revive any of them.

The course syllabi of the faculty in the college are current. We use two procedures to gain information about course syllabi. The first is the annual review process of each member of the faculty. The faculty submit material, including course outlines, which are examined by their peers in the department, the department chair, and the college personnel committee. The course syllabi are used to help judge course currency and completeness.

Secondly, at the end of each term, the college interviews a randomly selected group of graduating seniors to gain information about their experience as students. They provide information to us about courses, relevance, currency, etc. This information is passed on to the chairs of each department for appropriate action where necessary.

Faculty development money can be used to enhance instructional ability. There are also a number of campus opportunities offered through the College of Education which are available to our faculty to encourage their instructional development. A number of the faculty have signed up for these seminars in recent years.

The faculty in the college is comprised of a variety of people from diverse academic backgrounds necessary for us to offer programs appropriate to a business college. Virtually all of the faculty hold the terminal degree in their field. The level of activity of the faculty is given to us by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). I have provided the past three years worth of data on faculty intellectual contributions to provide data on faculty research activity (Attachment 5.9.C.2).

To insure that the college is working to expand its diversity and gender base, we work closely with the Affirmative Action Office. This cooperative activity insures that the advertisements, the identified pool of candidates, etc. are going to identify the largest and most diverse population of eligible applicants in each search.

Faculty effectiveness is enhanced, we have discovered, by continued conversation about the college. Since 1992, the college has been engaged in a renewal process. This has involved large numbers of faculty rewriting college bylaws. It has involved large numbers of faculty writing a workload document for the college. It has involved department faculties writing and rewriting department procedures and bylaws. The conversation has involved faculty in defining outreach as part of instruction, research, and service in ways they are comfortable with. We are now involved in discussions that will lead to an audit of the MBA program. An offshoot of this work will engage our faculty in discussions of professional/management education.

The library materials available to us are adequate. We have begun to employ more technology in the college to support instruction; departments are buying portable computers and other devices to support faculty in their attempt to move beyond traditional chalkboard lectures.

The physical facilities of the college are adequate. The Ansari Building houses the college's classroom and office facilities. It is becoming clear, however, that the 1983 building is beginning to outlive it possibilities. The college is at the limit of the building's capacities. We are now talking with central administration about using some small classrooms for office facilities. While this will impinge on some instructional capabilities, the move will permit the college to continue its growth.

We have not yet done a thorough five year plan. As noted in the prior response, we have been working from annual goals and objectives given by our mission statement to guide our activity. In addition, our accreditation processes with AACSB have assisted the college in defining its processes and work flows in such a manner that resources are put in the critical junctures to assist our students, faculty, and staff in accomplishing their work in the most cost effective manner possible. Copies of the AACSB reports, including the one written earlier this year which affirmed the college’s accreditation are available in the college offices.

The broad outlines of a five year plan would focus on areas of current strength and build the synergies that would enhance their strength and link them to other areas which have the capacity to grow. Logistics, accounting, economics, and gaming management are currently strong programs whose students are in very high demand. Because of community contact, we are entertaining increasing numbers of requests for students in finance, computer information systems, and marketing.

We currently lack adequate support resources. We are going to have to grow relatively slowly unless we can get beyond formulae as they are currently construed. We need computer technical support. We need enhanced computer maintenance budgets for hardware and software. We need additional staff and clerical support. We need greater operating budgets. We need student support budgets. As you can see from the intellectual contributions attachment, faculty productivity has increased dramatically. The college has become an effective resource for Nevada and has done so without an increase in its resource base. Our ability to continue reconfiguring the college to meet student and community needs is limited indeed.

As we request additional resources, we will initiate a planning cycle this Fall. Our immediate objective is to identify the 120 business schools in the country which share our status as having business and accounting accreditation. We will use faculty and community input to identify a small number of schools in this group that have parallel but stronger capacities than we do. With this base, we will then begin to do a SWOT analysis which will flow into our accreditation cycle and give us input into ways we can build the college beyond its current position. We will be examining our processes and abilities in light of strategic planning and performance indicators which will fold back into our mission statement and thereby provide data about our need to change the college in particular ways. We will be working through this planning cycle as we anticipate an accreditation visit by AACSB in 2003.

********* Attach 5.9.C.1 here please**********

*********Attach 5.9.C.2 here please**********

Producing intellectual contributions represents a core set of responsibilities of higher education for business. Such contributions improve management theory and practice, and support the present and future quality of instruction at all institutions. The components of intellectual contributions are:

Basic Scholarship: The creation of new knowledge.

Outputs from basic scholarship activities include publication in refereed journals, research monographs, scholarly books, chapters in scholarly books, proceedings from scholarly meetings, papers presented at academic meetings, publicly available research working papers, and papers presented at faculty research seminars.

Applied Scholarship: The application, transfer, and interpretation of knowledge to improve management practice and teaching.

Outputs from applied scholarship activities include publication in professional journals, professional presentations, public and trade journals, in-house journals, book reviews, and papers presented at faculty workshops.

Instructional Development: The enhancement of the educational value of instructional efforts of the institution or discipline.

Outputs from instructional development activities include textbooks, publications in pedagogical journals, written cases with instructional materials, instructional software, and publicly available materials describing the design and implementation for new courses.

*****************Attachments follow***********************

Attachment 5.9.C.1

Accounting/Computer Information Systems

CPA Problems 491/691

BASIC 150

Business Administration (MBA)

Research Design and Analysis 705

Economics

Introduction to Economic Education 103

Economic Geography 109

Economic Development of Western Civilization 200

Economics of Social Income Reporting 208

American Economic Systems 460

Regional Economics 772

Managerial Sciences

Institutional Management 301

Institutional Management 302

Land Resources: Value and Allocation 375

Real Estate Law 378

Wage and Salary Administration 387

Problems in Labor Relations and Personnel 427/627

Real Estate Evaluation 430/630

Real Estate Appraisal Problems 431/631

Seminar in Institutional Management 477/677

Problems in Business Finance 604

Attachment 5.9.C.2

1994

1995

1996

5.9.D COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

Begun in 1888 in a Normal School attached to the university, teacher education has always been a vital part of the land grant emphasis of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Since that beginning, the education school and later the College of Education (status granted in 1954) has endeavored to serve the changing needs of Nevada’s K-12 community. The College’s stated mission is: to provide leadership directed at the development of an optimal education system for the state of Nevada. To carry that out today, the College has established three missions:

• to prepare teachers, counselors, school psychologists, school administrators, and other educational professionals who have a strong fund of knowledge, who engage in reflective practices, who love learning, and who value democracy, diversity, and multiculturalism
• to add to existing knowledge through research, funded projects, and other scholarly activities
• to provide leadership for and collaboration with the university, community, state, and nation through outreach service and contributions to professional organizations

The college is currently graduating more than half of the entry-level K-12 personnel in northern Nevada and providing accessible and quality graduate education for teachers, school counselors, and school administrators. Additionally, it provides graduate education for marriage and family therapists, administrators and student service professionals for higher education. Its leadership role in K-12 education is evident through the various committees and task forces on which the faculty serve for the State Department of Education and for school districts. Its research and outreach are focused on K-12 issues, usually those that are critical to Nevada. Its evening, summer, and distance education programs serve more students collectively than any others in the university, supporting a strong commitment to continuing education, lifelong learning, and graduate degrees for practicing professionals.

The College of Education consists of three departments -- Curriculum and Instruction, Counseling and Educational Psychology, and Educational Leadership -- and two centers -- the Research and Educational Planning Center and the Learning Resource Center, a lending library for K-12 materials. The College is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (masters and doctoral programs in counseling). All departments are linked in a commitment to quality public education and to programs that produce well-educated teachers, counselors, and administrators. Undergirding all programs is a common knowledge base that emphasizes the development of a strong fund of knowledge, a love of learning, a valuing of democracy and multiculturalism, and a graduate who becomes a reflective practitioner. Graduates of the College are eligible for certification as K-12 teachers, counselors, administrators, media specialists, and school psychologists, for practice as college student personnel, or for licensure as marriage and family therapists. Over the past ten years, the college has seen significant growth in student enrollment, and approximately half of those enrolled are graduate students.

A campus Program Review was completed in Spring 1995 which supplemented a recently completed program accreditation review process conducted by NCATE and the program approval process conducted by the State Board of Education. As part of the accreditation and program approval process, a team of external evaluators visited the campus in Fall 1994. The Self Study Narrative was completed at the college-level with input from faculty and departments within the college. It incorporated feedback from the review team and established future directions. This level of self study and national accreditation is reflective of our strong commitment to excellence in professional preparation.

Important to the mission of the college are 1) research on K-12 education and in specialized fields that impact on teaching and effective schools and 2) transfer of the results of that research to teachers, parents, and all practitioners. The Research and Educational Planning Center supports through grants and contracts both research and outreach in a variety of fields. The Addiction Technology Transfer Center provides training to all of Nevada. The Learning Resource Center provides current materials to both our students and area professionals. All faculty engage in some type of research and outreach appropriate for their area of specialty.

Every academic program in the college conducts a survey of its graduates (in addition to the campus survey) and reports findings to the faculty. These results include program satisfaction, suggestions for changes, and employment success. Those results are used as points of discussion by faculty about curriculum and support services. For example, recent changes in teacher education requirements were based on student surveys which indicated that students saw unnecessary repetition in course content. Elementary majors also indicated that they did not feel competent in mathematics, in spite of nine credits of mathematics. With this information a second mathematics methods course has been constructed designed to give future teachers additional confidence and competence in quantitative skills. Writing skills have improved so markedly over the past five years, as demonstrated through student assignments, that the undergraduate teacher education program dropped one additional writing course that was deemed unnecessary. The last campus survey of employers pointed out the importance of classroom management for beginning teachers. That information is being used to increase the integration of classroom management throughout all courses and to support more in-school experiences for preservice teachers.

The overall number of students enrolled in the College of Education has risen steadily for the last ten years. The number of undergraduate degrees granted (K-12 teachers) in the College has doubled in the last ten years, but appears to be holding steady over the last two years, due probably to maximum enrollment in classes. The number of graduate degrees has also doubled in that same time period, with most of the growth at the masters level.

At the undergraduate level, requirements for entrance into the program include successful passing scores on the basic skills test and a GPA of 2.5 (secondary) or 2.75 (elementary and special education). Majors who fall below this GPA after admission are identified and asked to work closely with their adviser to look for remedies for the lower GPA. The College receives and analyzes all scores of our graduates on the Educational Testing Services PRAXIS tests, licensing examinations required by the state of Nevada. Test results have indicated that our students perform above national averages and have a passing rate of close to 100 percent. These certification tests establish clearly the educational effectiveness of teacher education, school counselor, and administrator programs. When test results indicate that we had more than one student not pass an examination, the faculty work with ETS to identify the areas in which our students are not being successful and examine our curriculum to see why, making changes in content or in the order of courses/test taking.

All programs, both undergraduate and graduate, require successful completion of internships and practica that include students’ demonstration of competencies and knowledge gained in their study. Detailed requirements, including learning goals and objectives, are developed for every course of study and verified in the internship setting by supervisors.

Almost all courses offered in the college are required in the teacher preparation program or in graduate programs. Three capstone courses are currently available that are open to students from across campus as part of the core curriculum, but most other courses serve the college majors exclusively. Intensive professional courses designed to teach methods have limited enrollments of 25 to 35 students based on program accreditation guidelines and student feedback. All too often, even 600-level courses have enrollments as high as 50 due to necessity. The relationship between class size and educational effectiveness is monitored through 1) student success on national subject-matter and pedagogy examinations, 2) teaching evaluations, and 3) monitoring of completion rate of students in programs. As of fall 1997, most 400/600 level courses have been eliminated as we have moved to a clearer delineation between undergraduate, licensure, and graduate programs.

All courses in the college are assessed each semester by students’ evaluations. Although these instruments focus primarily on teaching effectiveness, they also collect information on students’ perceptions of the success of the class in promoting learning. Final evaluations at the completion of students’ internships pinpoint areas of perceived weakness in the total teacher preparation curriculum or particular course needs. In the 1996-97 academic year, there were two task forces appointed by the College Senate working on improving college practices in relation to 1) general faculty evaluation and merit procedures and 2) teaching evaluation methods. Out of these reports are expected to come more effective methods of assessment of teaching, outreach, service, and research. Additionally, with the beginning of the new curriculum for preservice teacher education in fall 1997, the use of student portfolios as an additional assessment tool is expected.

The College of Education faculty work hard to model exemplary teaching methods, using a variety of teaching styles that stress active learning. The Learning Resource Center within the college provides an invaluable resource to assist faculty in this. Teaching aids, technical support, extensive project supplies, information on current methodology and national standards, and actual hands-on-material-development are all available through the Learning Resource Center.

Education students are the toughest critics when it comes to quality and effective instruction. Student evaluations of every course, feedback from the student organization in the college (very active), and written surveys after graduation seem to pinpoint problems with instructional effectiveness. When this occurs, multiple resources are available within the college to faculty who wish to improve their teaching, including videotaping and critiques.

Faculty qualifications are appropriate to their assignment and consistent with the role of teacher scholars who are actively engaged in the professional community. Faculty have a heavy service role, providing classes and consultation to the K-12 community throughout Nevada and emphasizing research related to practice. The research currently under way is nationally recognized in the areas of reading and literacy, school counseling, college student personnel, educational technology, substance abuse counseling, science education, mathematics education, occupational education school administration, and English as a second language. There are four national educational journals, one electronic, that are editored by a faculty member in the college.

The College has had difficulty recruiting, hiring, and retaining a diverse faculty, and is emphasizing diversity in hiring. This is a national problem in education, with low numbers of minorities entering teaching in K-12 and in then transitioning to the university professorship. Two minority faculty members were hired for 1995-96. Gender balance is not a problem in the college and approximately 50 percent of all professional positions are filled by women. Thirty-nine faculty positions are currently defined as tenure track positions. Of these, eleven or twenty-eight per cent are untenured. Of the thirty-nine tenure-track positions, fifteen or thirty-nine percent have been hired since 1990. The balance between new and established faculty seems reasonable, although few retirements are anticipated within the next five years, raising the possibility that the faculty may become heavily senior in rank and in tenure status.

With increased enrollment and pressures to meet the needs of K-12 in Nevada, the workload of the faculty has risen substantially and is currently unrealistic. Until fall 1997, all faculty taught eighteen credits (6 courses) per academic year plus at least one summer school course, chaired and served on graduate committees, advised as many as 100 students per semester, carried a regular program of student supervision in internships and practica, and were expected to publish and conduct research. Opportunities to reduce the course load are being explored, but as student numbers continue to increase, this will be possible only with new faculty positions. One innovative way that the college is addressing this issue is through the use of some positions as joint positions with the local school district in order to create rotating teaching positions. These K-12 master teachers are recruited and serve three years on the campus teaching classes and supervising students. The benefits of this relationship are many, including input from K-12 into our curriculum and faculty who teach more and have less responsibilities for research. Likewise, use of some part-time faculty who are excellent practitioners is seen as a plus in the college. In order to control the content of instruction, part-time faculty have an extensive orientation manual and a "partner" faculty member. Students in their classes complete a teaching evaluation, and their syllabi are routinely kept on file for review.

The new College of Education building opens in Fall 1997. This facility will offer state of the art classrooms, faculty offices, student laboratories in science education and mathematics education, and educational technology. The conference center in that building will afford the college the opportunity to hold more continuing education activities for the K-12 community. The William Raggio Math Science Center will connect the college to K-12 students and teachers in the math and science area.

One of the most critical facilities issue for colleges of education today is the availability of computers and the appropriate use of technology in the preparation of K-12 personnel. School districts now expect teachers, counselors, and administrators to be prepared to use technology effectively for instruction, assessment, and research. With the new building, this need is being met through laboratories, student access to drops throughout the building, and faculty access through well-equipped offices. Faculty training in technology and available release time to develop new ways of teaching will continue to be a focus in the years to come.

Using the priorities established under the university Academic Master Plan for 1997-2001 (AMP), the priorities of the College of Education are as follows:

• Strengthening the student experience

A student enrollment management plan will begin in fall 1997 that will 1) recruit the best students, especially minority students, 2) plan a cohesive movement through the teacher preparation program, one that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, 3) establish cohort groups with common interests and with one faculty member who will work with the group throughout the course of study, and 4) guarantee enrollment for students in the classes they need if they seek advisement and maintain progress in the program. Further coordination of the student’s progress through increased numbers of practica and internships will strengthen the experience even more.

Plans are under way for improved general student advising, including correct information about requirements, to be strengthened by the College Student Advisement Center. The Center will offer a college data base for tracking requirements, group advising, freshmen programs, support services for students with GPA difficulties, and information about jobs and career choices in education.

More minority student recruitment will be emphasized through the .5 position shared with the College of Human and Community Sciences, and then by 1999, a 1.0 professional position specifically targeting recruitment and retention. Additional programs with school districts will be sought, modeled after the current one with Washoe County School District that provides scholarships for paraprofessionals in the schools who wish to be teachers.

Graduate education is a significant strength of the College and offers the opportunity to build a variety of interdepartmental programs. The recent addition of the Ph.D. as an alternative to the Ed.D. was an important step in building the quality of these programs. A new educational technology emphasis in the educational psychology graduate degrees will be developed over the next three years. More delivery of graduate courses off campus will be planned in partnership with school districts and communities.

• Building partnerships

Further collaborative relationships with the schools, the school districts, and the State Department of Education will be sought to build field-based programs that meet the needs of the state. With the growing need for teachers and all K-12 personnel in the state, a new administrative structure within the college will be created to 1) assess the professional needs of the educational community in Nevada; 2) seek partnerships with school districts, individual schools, business, and local governments to provide the needed programs, courses, and workshops; and 3) create models for student recruitment and retention in underserved areas.

Use of the facilities in the new building by all K-12 communities will be promoted through workshops for teachers and students and through effective use of distance education.

Beginning fall 1997, all northern Nevada community colleges will have 2 + 2 programs arranged collaboratively with the College of Education. Joint workshops with community college faculty and university faculty will be held each summer to work on course content and effective preparation of teachers. It is anticipated that through partnerships with these campuses more upper-division and graduate programs can be made available to meet critical needs throughout Nevada.

• Providing access to information through technology

The College will emphasize educational technology with proposals for a new graduate program, involvement in appropriate use of the Internet in the K-12 classroom in Nevada, revision of curricula where needed to meet changing demands of K-12, distance education, teacher inservice opportunities, and pre-university opportunities for high school students. Every student in the college will be on e-mail and, as is currently the case with faculty and staff, timely information will be distributed through this method.

• Providing infrastructure to support quality

The shortage of adequate operating funds that have not kept pace with growth in student enrollment and faculty numbers threatens to create serious problems in service to students and faculty productivity. Money for equipment replacement and maintenance is critical.

More support personnel, both professional and classified, are essential. The College will need positions for the Research and Educational Planning Center (for statewide outreach), the Math Science Center, the Computer laboratory, the Conference Center, the Learning Resource Center, and the Advisement Center.

Four new faculty positions will be needed in 1997-99 to address state shortages and needs. Potential areas for emphasis include special education, ESL instruction, educational technology, and general pedagogy, but areas of greatest need will be identified in collaboration with school districts and the state. A proposed interdisciplinary program in early childhood/special education will need one more position, if approved. Applications from qualified minority faculty will be encouraged.

An effective outreach program for the college will demand professional and classified positions as a base on which to build with contracts, grants, and joint funding. This program will coordinate activities with Continuing Education and Extension Services, but will need to develop a new model of providing education to the community.