2021
Kansas Board of Regents Program Review
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
University of Kansas Program Review Year 2021 Degree Program CIP Level Recommendation* Notes** African & African-American 05.0101 B, M Continue Studies American Studies 05.0102 B, M, D Continue Anthropology 45.0201 B, M, D Continue Contemporary East Asian 05.0104 M Continue Studies Creative Writing 23.1302 M Continue Dance 50.0301 B Continue East Asian Languages and 16.0300 B, M Continue Cultures Economics 45.0601 B Continue Economics 45.0603 M, D Continue English 23.0101 B, M, D Continue Film and Media Studies 50.0601 B, M, D Continue Global & International Studies 30.2001 B, M Continue (GIST) Humanities B Discontinue Discontinue major and department History 54.0101 B, M, D Continue History of Art 50.0703 B, M, D Continue Indigenous Studies 05.0202 M Continue Interdisciplinary Studies 30.9999 M, D Continue Latin American & Caribbean 05.0134 B, M B = Merge Merge bachelor’s with Studies M = Continue GIST as concentration Liberal Arts & Sciences 24.0101 B Continue Museum Studies 30.1401 M Continue Philosophy 38.0101 B, M, D Continue Religious Studies 38.0201 B, M Continue Russian, East European & 05.0110 B, M B = Merge Merge bachelor’s with Eurasian Studies M = Continue Slavic & Eurasian Lang. & Lit. as concentration Theatre 50.0501 B, M, D Continue Visual Art 50.0702 B, M Continue Visual Art Education 13.1302 B, M B = Discontinue Low enrollments; not M = Discontinue enough faculty to support quality program M= Masters; B=Bachelors; D= Doctorate *Recommendation options are: Continue, Additional Review, Enhance, Discontinue
2 University of Kansas Program Review Institutional Overview The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research university that serves as a center for learning, scholarship, and creative endeavor. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities since 1909, KU consistently earns high rankings for its academic programs. Its faculty and students are supported and strengthened by endowment assets of more than $2 billion. Students are split almost equally between women and men and come from all 50 states and 103 of Kansas’s counties. More than six percent of students are international and students of color comprise more than 23% of the student body.
KU’s program review is based upon the belief that the academic unit is the locus of program excellence for any institution of higher education. The faculty, with their expertise and involvement in teaching, research, and service, are in the best position to assess KU’s academic programs and to improve those programs. As such, KU’s program review is structured around a detailed self-study conducted by the academic unit with summary information and well-substantiated assessments reported to the deans and provost.
The current report includes program review information for programs in the following units:
• College of Liberal Arts & Sciences o African & African American Studies o American Studies o Anthropology o Center for East Asian Studies o Center for Global and International Studies o Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies o Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies o East Asian Languages and Cultures o Economics o English o Film & Media Studies o Humanities o History o History of Art o Indigenous Studies o Liberal Arts & Sciences o Museum Studies o Philosophy o Religious Studies o Theatre & Dance o Visual Art • Graduate Studies o Interdisciplinary Studies The Kansas Board of Regents’ program review asks institutions to evaluate programs based upon the following criteria:
1. Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution;
3 2. The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty; 3. The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; 4. Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program; 5. The service the program provides to the discipline, university, and beyond; and 6. The program’s cost-effectiveness.
In response to these criteria, University of Kansas program review employs a standard self-study template, managed through an online system, with questions addressing each criterion, on topics such as:
1. Departmental mission and how it aligns with the mission and role of the institution; 2. Faculty productivity, impact of department scholarship, grant awards and expenditures, honors and awards, community-engaged scholarship; 3. Assessment of student learning, pedagogical innovations, curricular changes, student satisfaction 4. Effectiveness of degree and program demand; 5. Faculty service to the discipline and contributions to university committees; and 6. Teaching loads, recruitment and retention of students, ideal size for programs, faculty/student mentoring.
Units at the school level respond to the KBOR prompts, while units at the department level respond to the KU prompts. For each question posed, relevant data were provided to the respondent from a variety of sources, including Academic Analytics, Faculty Professional Record Online (PRO), Academic Information Management System (AIMS), degree-level assessment, senior and graduate student surveys, Survey of Earned Doctorate, Doctoral Completions Survey, Doctoral Placement Survey, and the Progress to Degree system.
For those programs within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, an external review was conducted following the completion of the self-study. If an external review was not possible because of the onset of the pandemic, an internal review team was assembled. For each program, review materials were then reviewed by the dean and by the Office of the Provost. The completed program review report was reviewed by the department chairs and the Provost’s Office prior to submission to KBOR.
Previous Program Closures While outside the scope of the review, University discontinuation procedures were initiated in Fall 2020 for several programs in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences based on low enrollment and diminishing faculty: graduate degrees in Gerontology, and an undergraduate Juvenile Justice track in Applied Behavioral Science. Total anticipated savings from these recommended closures is $230,000.
Additionally, in the past six years, KU has moved to discontinue the following 15 programs. The programs had no or low enrollments and many were duplicative of existing offerings:
• MA and PhD in Botany • MA and PhD in Entomology • Doctor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering • Doctor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering • LLM in Elder Law
4 • MA in Chemistry • MS in Water Resource Engineering • MS in Water Resource Science • Bachelor of General Studies in Human Biology • Joint MBA/MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies • Joint MBA/MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures • Joint MBA/MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies • Certificates in Global and International Studies, Strategic Management, and Military Transition
Other Areas of Fiscal Responsibility The following page outlines KU’s budget. The largest category, 24%, is from student tuition, fees and scholarship allowances, followed by grants/contracts at 20%. State appropriations accounts for 18% of KU’s budget.
KU is refining its budget model to focus on foundational priorities. The model requires difficult conversations and decisions about where KU must invest and where it can no longer invest. Such conversations, along with steps to address the budget shortfall as a result of COVID-19, have resulted in an estimated $61.18M in savings as outlined below.
• Elimination of the administrative structure of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures saving $450,000 annually. This school, approved in 2014 and housed in the College of Liberal
5 Arts & Sciences, was home to most of the university’s foreign language programs and departments. Changes to departments and programs are included on the previous page. • Closing of the following centers after an evaluation based on return on investment which led to $1.13M in annual savings: the Tertiary Oil Recovery Program in Engineering, the Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and centers in Supply Chain, Integrated Customer Service, and Business, Industry and National Security — all housed in the School of Business. • Closure of the Center for STEM Learning, housed in KU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, has saved $1M annually. The Center graduated 17 STEM teachers in AY 2018 and five in 2019. The Center oversaw the UKanTeach program which was modified and moved to KU’s School of Education and Human Sciences which annually graduates numerous STEM educators. • In response to COVID-19, instituted a voluntary salary for the leadership team, a hiring freeze, a six-month salary reduction plan, a voluntary separation program, and a partial central sweep of unit carryforward balances and vacant positions, generating an estimated in $58.6M in savings.
Complementary and Synergistic Initiatives KU is engaging in a number of complementary and synergistic initiatives to benchmark systems and processes against best practices to improve outcomes and services. As KU is faced with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous disruptions, there is no choice other than to make changes – not only to keep people safe, but to best position KU for the future. These initiatives include strategic planning, an administrative services review, an academic portfolio review, development of a university- wide faculty workload policy, and an increased focus on program assessment and review.
Jayhawks Rising The first initiative was completion of Jayhawks Rising, KU’s new strategic plan that identifies our vision, mission, values, core institutional priorities, and metrics for measuring core institutional priorities that align with and support the Kansas Board of Regents’ strategic plan, Building the Future. Ten design teams representing faculty, staff, students, and partners have undertaken work to strategically implement Jayhawks Rising.
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Administrative Services and Academic Portfolio Review With financial support from KU Endowment, KU engaged rpk Group to complete an academic portfolio review and a review of administrative services. The administrative services review seeks to support KU’s leadership in better utilizing existing resources and reallocating any cost savings toward activities that support Jayhawks Rising and Building the Future.
The academic portfolio review includes an efficiency and productivity analysis; a resource allocation review; a market scan and analysis; and a review of finances and budgets. The academic portfolio review will also consider program outcomes, demand, and student success using a “return on investment” lens. In the short-term it will result in a reduction in expenses by reducing course sections and improving fill rates.
Faculty Workload Policy and Program Assessment/Review The results of the administrative and academic portfolio review will be coupled with two other initiatives. The first is the Board’s interest in developing a standard workload to ensure consistency of faculty effort within each institution. At KU standards for meeting faculty workload requirements have historically been set by academic units. Recognizing the benefits of a university-wide policy, KU’s Vice Provost for Faculty Development, representatives of Faculty Governance, and members of the Faculty Success Design Team have developed a draft policy that sets the minimum workload standards for teaching across the University. The draft policy aligns with KU’s mission and is consistent with Association of American Universities (AAU) peers.
In addition, Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor Barbara Bichelmeyer has elevated program assessment and program review through the appointment of Holly Storkel as KU’s first Vice Provost of Assessment and Program Development. Assessment is a critical component of KU’s efforts to ensure students attain
7 the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in work and life and to create high-quality learning environments. It is also part of KU’s commitment to help faculty realize their full potential as educators and is crucial for KU’s preparation for our comprehensive site visit from the Higher Learning Commission in 2024-2025.
Program assessment is being designed to better link to program review which will increase the efficacy of the review. Program review is also being redesigned as KU implements more frequent reporting on metrics in Jayhawks Rising and Building the Future, and will incorporate some metrics from the rpk group study.
Conclusion The rapid adjustments to COVID-19 have challenged the KU community, and they are not yet over. In this moment of change, amidst the chaos, there is opportunity. How KU responds, both to the current crisis and beyond, will determine its strength as a research institution with regional relevance, national prominence, and international influence in the years ahead. KU must be willing to take an honest look and have the courage to be innovative to succeed as the 21st century institution it aspires to be.
While KU is recommending that most programs continue at this time, the University also recognizes it is in an unprecedented moment in the history of higher education – with significant transformational forces at work and with serious financial challenges. The academic portfolio analysis and the administrative services review from the rpk Group is on-going. Decisions on how to address our challenges will be based on our mission, they will be based on demand for our programs, and they will be based on excellence. And, unfortunately, it is likely that KU will need to close low-enrolled programs and programs that don’t align with the core mission of the university and to also consolidate some administrative services.
There is no one action or decision that is going to be the answer to our fiscal challenges. Our solution will involve many things – brought together over time with focus and purpose and resolve and teamwork – that will enable us to overcome the challenges we have. What is critical about all of these actions is they are based on our mission, the academic demand of students and society, and our pursuit of excellence.
8 African & African American Studies Department CIP 05.0101, BA/BGS and MA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. In 1970, KU created the Department of African Studies. The Kansas Board of Regents approved the baccalaureate degree in African Studies in 1972, making KU the first and the only major public institution of higher learning in the region to offer such an academic program. To reflect its ever-widening range of academic activities on Africa, African-America, and the Caribbean, the department’s name was changed in 1986 to the Department of African & African-American Studies (AAAS). The Department reflects the human experience where Africa meets Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and indeed the entire world. Its educational and research mission, in conjunction with broader university initiatives, is to prepare students for today’s global society, providing them with the intellectual curiosity and skills that will help them become national and international leaders in a worldwide effort to create informed and healthy communities and transform the world in a variety of ways. The department is critical to KU’s mission of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. AAAS is a robust research unit whose faculty work in diverse areas of regional studies and intellectual thought and praxis; research concentrations that not only augment their teaching, but also have propelled KU, and the department, to a leading position in the field of Africana Studies. It is the only department of its kind at a public or private university in Kansas and one of the very few in the Big XII. The department is one of the most diverse at KU: 62% of tenured/tenure-track faculty are classified as under-represented minorities. Faculty are highly visible in KU’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and committees, lending important scholarly expertise and, in some cases, personal experience to campus-wide DEI efforts.
Since the last program review, current faculty have produced more than 119 publications (books, articles, reviews), made more than 318 presentations at professional conferences, symposia, seminars, and workshops, produced more than 10 creative works (exhibitions, films, productions, etc.). Some faculty have published internationally while others have published nationally with university and academic presses such as Africa World Press, Bloomsbury, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Rowman & Littlefield, South Carolina, Bedford & St. Martins, Palgrave, Mississippi, Indiana, Penn State, Routledge, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Springer, Michigan, Cambridge, California, and Information Age. They have competitively published in peer-reviewed professional journals such as Journal of Foreign Languages and Culture, CLA Journal, Journal of International Migration and Integration, African Human Mobility Review, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of Modern Craft, ARTMargins, International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Journal of Education Administration and History, Multicultural Perspective Journal, Women, Gender and Families of Color, English Education Journal, Journal of Case Studies in Educational Leadership, International Journal of Pedagogy and Curriculum, African Review, African Educational Research Journal, Journal of International Learning, Africa Today, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Anthropology Quarterly, Journal of the African Literature Association, Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies, Journal of American History, American Studies, Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, and The Howard Journal of Communications, among others.
AAAS faculty have served as members of grant review committees for external agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, Carter G. Woodson Institute, Social Science Research Council,
9 Fulbright IIF, Kansas Humanities Council Grants, U.S. Department of Education (Group Project Abroad), and U.S. Department of Education (Collaborative Partnerships Program).
Over the review period the department has successfully received external grants for research worth $525,467. This figure mostly represents institution-wide grants such as those related to the Federal Department of Education and National Endowment for the Humanities grants. In addition, recently added faculty have successfully received over $600,000 in grant funds over the review period on top of the Title VI grant of $2.1 million through the Kansas African Studies Center. Besides these prestigious grants, there are a number of individual, short-term external grants and fellowships received by faculty from the following bodies: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Mellon Foundation, Fulbright, National Security Agency, American Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, Kansas Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Faculty have also won many internal research grants, including Hall Center for the Humanities travel and research grants. Some external grants, especially those from the Federal Department of Education, have been used to support the research and field work of graduate students and faculty.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. The undergraduate program’s goal is to prepare students to succeed in a wide range of professions including the arts, business, education, foreign affairs, medicine, law, science, and the like. Sixty-four percent of the department’s undergraduate majors and 61% of department’s minors are classified as under- represented minorities. In terms of placement at the undergraduate level, DegreeStats indicates 75% of graduates are employed in the region and have median earnings of $48,818 five years after graduation.
A number of students who graduate from the MA program pursue a doctorate, or another terminal degree, in a different field after graduation. In recent years, students were place in PhD programs in various fields at institutions such as the University of Florida, Michigan State University, University of Illinois, University of Washington, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Kansas. Graduate alums are also working in both the private and public sectors. AAAS graduates have gained employment in areas such as, social work, urban planning and the federal government, in agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Defense (DOD).
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The department contributes substantially to the general education offerings at KU as well as to other majors through cross-listed courses. The department offers many of its courses in face-to-face and online formats, increasing accessibility of its courses to students. Additionally, many students in the face-to-face and online Bachelor of General Studies (BGS) in Liberal Arts and Sciences take AAAS courses to fulfill degree requirements. The department generates approximately 2,900 student credit hours annually (5-year average), and this level of productivity has been relatively stable.
Apart from providing general professional service to Kansas and the nation, the department’s interdisciplinary blending of diverse research and teaching is germane to understanding the complexity and multiplicity of human experiences in a rapidly changing, multiracial, global society. As an international and interdisciplinary unit, AAAS spans a multitude of fields in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts. The Department offers more than 30 courses that serve the KU Core, as well as numerous general electives taken by students from other departments and schools.
10 The department also teaches a number of less commonly taught languages, which are funded through Title VI grants held through the Kansas African Studies Center. Taken together, the department contributes in a number of ways to instruction at KU, beyond its number of majors. While its language courses complement and enhance KU’s standing as a university that is serving the national need for teaching critical languages. The department also offers an undergraduate minor which enrolls about 25 students each year on average, and awards 12 minors annually, on average.
Moreover, AAAS faculty are active in the discipline beyond the confines of the campus. Three members are editors, or co-editors, of academic journals; Bolden, The Langston Hughes Review; Hines, Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education; and Jelks, American Studies. In addition, a number of our faculty sit or have sat on the editorial boards of major discipline journals, including Alexander who currently sits on both the Journal of African American History (Association for the Study of African American Life and History) and the International Journal of Africana Studies (National Council of Black Studies). He also is the editor of one of the largest digital platforms in the discipline, H-AfroAm. A number are editors, or board members of important book series with major academic presses, including the Carter G. Woodson Series at the University of Virginia Press and Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South at the University of Georgia Press. AAAS faculty have played an important role in planning professional conferences, seminars, and workshops and in making presentations on their research before their academic peers from other institutions. Since the last program review, AAAS faculty have served on numerous grant review committees for external agencies; participated on review committees for a number of academic publishers and professional journals, and have reviewed other units throughout the United States. Additionally, one faculty member has been a contributor and interviewee in two award-winning PBS documentaries, which has brought tremendous attention to the department and the university.
Finally, for a small unit, AAAS faculty play a significant role at the University. A number of faculty have served in University governance including as Faculty and University Senate Executive Committees members.
The program’s cost effectiveness/benefit analysis. The department generates approximately 2,900 student credit hours annually (5-year average), and this level of productivity has been relatively stable. Though degree programs in the unit are undersubscribed when evaluated by KBOR’s minima requirements for majors and graduates, as demonstrated during the Board’s strategic alignment review, the department is cost effective generating estimated tuition of $1,568,508 in FY 20 - which is in excess of the cost to run the unit. The department benefits the KU community by welcoming and offering courses and programs that speak to students who feel left out of the common experience offered at a predominately white institution. AAAS, in combination with a few other small units, are poised to work with these students - often becoming a place of solace as well as intellectual discovery. Therefore, AAAS course offerings are also needed in a way that is not fulfilled by the major, minor, and dollar calculations; the courses, alongside faculty mentorship bring more to the university than can be measured by statistics and typical metrics.
KU recommends continuing departmental programs. The department is critical to KU’s mission of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. The programs are too imperative to consider for other options. Degrees have a unique curriculum that would be difficult to merge. The department is a strong home for underrepresented minority students and faculty. It makes a critical contribution to general education and the BGS is Liberal Arts & Sciences (both online & in person) as reflected by robust student credit hour
11 production and is cost-effective. The department has a new chair (in first year) who understands the need to rebuild programs. The unit has recently overhauled its major and minor programs, and broadened the pathways to complete degrees.
American Studies Department CIP 05.0102, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The Department of American Studies (AMS) traces its founding to 1953, when the major in American Civilization was established, reflecting a national embrace as what became known as the American studies movement. KU was in a small set of other midwestern public universities which helped expand and develop the field, and has consistently been in the top tier of departments nationally and internationally. The Department responds to KU’s mission to educate leaders, build healthy communities, and do research that changes the world through its educational and research missions. It is an interdisciplinary unit whose faculty and students engage in critical and creative analysis of enduring issues and problems in American culture, politics, and society.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The department is comprised of six tenure-line faculty who hold 100% appointments in AMS. In addition, the department includes three jointly appointed tenured faculty with a 50% appointment in American Studies and a 50% appointment in either English or History; and one jointly appointed faculty member with a 75% appointment in AMS and a 25% appointment in African & African-American Studies. AMS also includes one non-tenure-track instructor who carries the title of “Associate Teaching Professor.” AMS partners with 32 affiliated faculty from 15 other departments at KU. These affiliated faculty members teach courses in their own disciplines that are cross-listed in AMS and count as elective courses in the AMS major.
An external review panel was brought in as part of the regular program review process and found the program has strengths in faculty scholarship, faculty diversity, and in its interdisciplinary nature. Of the nine faculty four are faculty of color. The department’s scholarship is exceptional due to the high research productivity and intellectual output of the AMS core faculty. Indeed the review panel found “AMS is the academic home to an unparalleled assemblage of world-class scholars and interdisciplinary practitioners” which is on par with larger departments at peer and aspirant institutions such as Yale University, University of Southern California, New York University, University of New Mexico, and University of Texas.”
This is borne out by the staggering scholarly productivity of the department. During 2011-2018, departmental faculty had 30 articles in referred journals published or accepted, published or had in press 23 books and 40 books chapters, published or had in press 121 other works, gave 401 presentations – half of which were invited, received 67 honors/awards, and had 42 appointments for editorial work/serving on editorial boards.
AMS core faculty have edited three impactful journals. The coeditors, Professors Randal Jelks and Sherrie Tucker, of the longstanding American Studies have maintained its position as the second leading publication in the field. NAIS, the leading journal in indigenous studies in the United States and perhaps
12 the world has been co-edited through much of its rise by Professor Robert Warrior. The editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, Professor Jennifer Hamer, has departed the university but that promising publication remains on campus under new editorship. Professor Warrior also edits the University of Minnesota Press’ illustrious Indigenous Americas series whose over twenty recent titles include some of the most important work in American Studies today. The department has also played a major role in the recent emphases on producing new knowledge of the major organization in the field, the America Studies Association (ASA). Professors Warrior and Roediger both served as ASA presidents. The program has disciplinary strength in African-American Studies and in Latina/o Studies and is also known for its department-wide mentorship of students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The external review panel stated the following: “In sum, the department—despite its small size and in the face of limited resources—greatly outperforms the above-discussed peer and aspirant institutions vis-à-vis research engagement, scholarly profile, and intellectual growth. It is therefore apparent and worth enthusiastic underscoring—given the ostensibly disproportionate relationship between research productivity and faculty resources—that the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has in AMS an academic “gem “in its midst.”
Quality of program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. As a part of program review, the department reviewed its undergraduate curricula and is restructuring the concentrations and major requirements, deepening and strengthening the Latina/o/x minor/courses/teaching resources, and reviewing offerings for the KU Core. The unit has also enacted several pedagogical innovations including standardizing the AMS 100 syllabus and launching a minor in Social Justice, a certificate in Race and Ethnicity and a minor in Latina/o/x Studies. The unit has also worked with the Hawk Link program to offer course sections for students who come from queer and underrepresented backgrounds.
Focusing on the doctoral program, its goal is to train and mentor critical, interdisciplinary scholars who will make both social and intellectual contributions through original research and cultural analysis. The goals of the American Studies Department center on the recruitment and support of students of color and LGBTQ students, laying the foundation from the ground floor for inclusivity. The consistent pattern in graduate student satisfaction seems to be that AMS scores very close to the university mean on most measures. .For overall program quality and quality of graduate teaching faculty, AMS consistently score between good and very good - noting that students agree the overall program climate is positive and they are inclined to select KU again if they were to start their graduate program over.
As a small department, American Studies was for many years required to lean on faculty from other, larger units to provide students with the array of classes needed beyond the core that AMS faculty provided for the doctoral program. The department is now able to offer a full range of the kinds of interdisciplinary courses students are seeking, and believes this allows it to attract a wider range of excellent students and to promote the doctoral program specifically through the stature of excellent faculty which includes a Distinguished Professor and a Foundation Professor, both recent past Presidents of the national American Studies Association. The unit has also begun offering multiple year funding packages with the goal of offering students five-year packages. Finally, after an internal evaluation of undergraduate introductory courses, the department implemented a model that allows all students at least two years of GTA/GRA work before they move into teaching their own classes.
13 Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. While the number of undergraduate majors has declined in recent years, the average number of graduates continues to exceed the KBOR minima. The decline in the number of majors can be partly attributed to change in 2013 in how AMS students entered the major. Course prerequisites and a GPA minimum were instituted and the number of majors decreased. At the time the requirements made sense because there were a large number of students desiring the major and the unit was relatively small at that time. The department indicated that it is “at a point where we would like to modestly increase majors. One way that this can occur—and here we are making some progress — is to create broader understanding, earlier on, of what American Studies in fact studies. As it is, we rarely get majors until they are well into their college careers and discover one of our courses. The social justice area of concentration, important in its own right, also helps with such visibility as well as with serving university missions.” The department is looking at re-forming its undergraduate concentrations so students take more of its non-intro/non-Core courses to fulfill the major and shrinking the number of concentrations (currently at 7) to better utilize faculty. The unit is also seeing growth in numbers in its Latina/o/x and critical race classes and should be able to bring more students to the major via those courses and a minor in the immediate future.
American Studies teaches about 2000 undergraduate students per academic year. The overwhelming number of these — about 1750 — enroll in the three AMS courses — 100, 110 and 332 — that fulfill KU Core general education goals 4.1, 4.2 (Cultural Diversity) and 3S (Breadth of Knowledge). AMS provides “service teaching” to a wide swath of KU undergrads. The program also offers minors which averages 30 enrollments and 12 awards annually and maintains a highly-regarded doctoral program. In terms of job placement at the undergraduate level, DegreeStats indicates 71% of graduates are employed in the region and have median earnings of $47,064 five years after graduation.
The doctoral program enrollment exceeds KBOR minima and the number of graduates meets KBOR minima requirements. The Department has put considerable thought and effort into revising the goals of the doctoral program and implementing changes to meet those goals. Noted successes include reducing time-to-degree for doctoral students. Faculty believe they are currently right on track with respect to size, quality, and time to degree for doctoral students. The academic unit made the recent, strategic decision to slightly downsize the graduate program in order to ensure funding and to provide optimal mentoring and job placement support to students.
Career paths for doctoral graduates vary and include university teaching. In terms of placement, besides American Studies proper, alumni hold tenure-stream positions in departments of English, History, Anthropology, and various formations of ethnic and gender studies. Beyond those faculty positions, graduates have gone into education administration, at institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis and Chico State in California; as well as public intellectual institutions such as the Smithsonian, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Black Archives of Mid-America. The professional experience offered to students through GA appointments in journal publishing has allowed two graduates of the program to gain employment with Duke University Press, one of the leading academic presses worldwide in the AMS field.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. About forty academic editorial boards have enjoyed the services of AMS faculty members during the years under consideration as noted in a previous section of this report. These include, among faculty continuing to work in the unit, American Literature, Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Osage Nation
14 Editorial Board, Souls, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Jazz Perspectives, Journal of the Society of American Music, Immigrants and Minorities (Great Britain) Critical Studies in Improvisation/Etudes critique dur l’improvisation, Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Journal of American Ethnic History, and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Transformations: A Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. The department has also played a major role in the recent emphases on producing new knowledge of the major organization in the field of study, the American Studies Association (ASA). Professors Warrior and Roediger both served as ASA presidents, five times department members served on the ASA program committee, and in 2016 the unit organized the regional meeting of the Mid-America American Studies Association.
For a smaller department AMS plays an outsized role in university governance. The president of GTAC, the teaching assistants’ union, comes from the AMS doctoral program as do many of the most active members. Last year the president of the Faculty Senate and University Senate came from the department. A majority of the current faculty have served on the Senate at some point. Members have also taken active roles on the Core Committee multiply, the Library Liaison Committee, the special Dean’s Committee on Revenue, the Distinguished Professor Steering Committee, the Committee on Teaching Excellence, the Executive Council of Graduate Faculty (multiply), the Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Advising, the Faculty Rights Board of Review, the CLACS Executive Committee, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Advising, the Academic Policies & Procedures Committee, University Senate, and the Committee on Sabbatical Leave.
Cost Effectiveness. As demonstrated in Board’s strategic alignment review, the department is cost effective generating estimated tuition of $2,795,122 in FY 20 – while the instructional costs to run the unit were $1,552,665. KU recommends continuing all degree programs. The program provides “service teaching” to 2,000 undergraduate students annually, has renowned faculty, a strong international reputation, a highly- regarded doctoral program, and has implemented its plan to increase the number of undergraduate majors to meet KBOR minima requirements. This plan was developed as part of the regular program review process and should result in an increase in majors.
Anthropology Department CIP 45.0201, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The mission of the Anthropology Department is to develop “a citizenry that is broadly informed and capable of critical appraisal," and that can locate fundamental knowledge in a wide variety of fields, not just anthropology. The Department is committed to the study of human cultural, linguistic, and biological variation, in both their contemporary expressions and in evolutionary context. Faculty insist that students acquire a solid grounding to understand human interactions and human affairs in a world where long- standing boundary markers between countries, cultures, and ethnic groups have been negated or redefined. Its mission is in keeping with KU’s mission to “lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world.”
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Over the past several years the Anthropology department has been in a period of transition. The
15 department had 20-22 FTE faculty for much of its history, but that number dramatically reduced after 2017. By Fall 2018 the number of FTE was 13, is currently 10.25, and will be 9.25 by the end of spring term 2021. This decline in number of faculty has created major challenges for curriculum reform and time management for research and scholarly productivity.
To properly assess faculty strength and productivity it is important to recognize the exceptional breadth of the discipline, and the diverse productivity styles and products this entails. As a discipline, Anthropology encompasses both the hypothesis driven approaches common to the life and physical sciences as well as styles of inquiry into the human condition more typical of the humanities and some social sciences. Accordingly, the products of scholarship in these different traditions are highly variable, with long-term fieldwork resulting in books and monographs more common in cultural and some aspects of linguistic anthropology, while journal articles are the common products of research in biological anthropology and archaeology.
The department is characterized by three subunits, cultural and linguistic anthropology (Dean, Dwyer, Gibson, Hannoum, and Metz), archaeology (Hoopes, Mandel, and Sellet), and biological anthropology (O’Rourke and Raff). Mandel also serves as Director of the Kansas Geological Survey and the Odyssey Geoarchaeological Project, with his line in anthropology being 0.25 FTE. These subdivisions are crosscut by areal strengths in Latin American research, research in the North American arctic, and North American archaeology.
All of faculty briefly outlined above are productive scholars within their respective fields, secure funding for their research and student support relative to the standards of the different subfields. Collectively during the review period, faculty published or have in press 48 refereed journal articles, eight books/monographs, and 40 book chapters. They have made almost 300 presentations – half of which were invited, have received 33 honors and awards, and have had 14 appointments for editorial work/membership on editorial boards. During the review period of FY 11 – FY 19, total external research expenditures exceeded $3.2M.
It is also important to note that many faculty engage in collaborative research with their colleagues within the department and in other units at KU and beyond. Collaborative research is common in many areas of anthropology and is certainly common in the department. As a result, most faculty also serve on graduate student advisory committees in other departments and programs, including Native American Studies, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Museum Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. In part in response to declining faculty numbers, the undergraduate curriculum, program requirements, and alternative strategies for meeting graduation requirements, was completely revised and the new curriculum instituted in 2017. At the same time, the department moved from an in-house advising system where each major was assigned a faculty advisor to a more centralized advising system using professional advisors. The advisor is in residence in the department one day per week but is available to students via email or meetings in her office. From a faculty perspective, and based on individual faculty course evaluations, the recent changes to the undergraduate program and student experience seems to have had positive effects. It is certainly easier for majors to fulfill degree requirements and has eliminated course bottlenecks of past years.
16 The graduate program has been under similar reformulation. In 2018 the department elected to no longer admit graduate students without financial support. Such a practice is of long-standing in anthropology but has been changing nationwide in recent years. A major impediment noted by students for many years is work and financial commitments. A major impediment to graduate recruitment was the inability to offer multi-year financial packages to students that were competitive with peer institutions. The department now only accepts graduate students who can be offered (or come with their own) full funding for four years. This funding may come from the University in the form of GTAs or Fellowships, from external funding of individual faculty research as GRAs, and from student-initiated grants and fellowships, e.g., NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, as one example. Students in their first year take coursework including grant writing, and are strongly encouraged to submit the grants produced as NSF Graduate Research Fellowship applications, or other grant or fellowship applications, e.g., Wenner-Gren grants.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. At 68 and 28 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. Importantly, the percentage of majors identifying as members of underrepresented minorities has increased since 2010. This likely reflects both national trends within the discipline, but also a focused commitment by the department to increase diversity at all levels. Likewise the doctoral program exceeds minima with 21 average annually enrolled and 3.2 graduates averaged annually. At 4.2 graduates per year, the MA program is slightly below KBOR minima for average annual graduates. This in part is the result of intentional recruitment of students interested in pursuing the PhD degree, although students may still opt for the MA if desired.
In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 70% of undergraduates are employed in region after graduation. However, the wage data may represent the fact that many are enrolled in graduate or professional schools. Due to the breadth of training in cultural diversity, global and comparative perspectives on the human condition, and basic human biological diversity, anthropology is a preferred major at many medical, law, and business schools, important for those intending to pursue professional careers outside anthropology.
The academic job market in anthropology, across all subfields has been, and continues to be, very tight for graduate students. However, anthropology graduate students do have other employment options upon completion of degree. Many pursue post-doctoral training while honing skills that will permit them to compete for the few academic positions available. But professional positions are also available in other areas. In archaeology, both MA and PhD students find employment in Cultural Resource Management, in government (e.g., BLM, Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation) at both the state and federal levels. Students in biological anthropology, especially with our focus on molecular anthropological genetics, find post-doctoral fellowships in related areas, in the private sector with biotech companies, in agencies involved in forensic analysis, and in museums. Cultural and linguistic anthropologists find placements and employment in NGOs, as translators, cultural resource managers, in state and federal government agencies, and museums.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. Faculty contribute substantially to general undergraduate education. Over 50 different courses across the curriculum fulfill all the KU Core Goals except Goal 5. Many departmental courses meet program requirements in the five area studies centers and several biology programs. The graduate course ‘Doing Ethnography’ (ANTH 783) is a requirement for cultural anthropology graduate students, and likely meets
17 methodology requirements in other departments as students from Communication Studies, Education, and the area studies programs are often enrolled. Over half the faculty also teach Honors courses to aid in attracting top students to the discipline.
Faculty routinely provide community service and resources to constituents through individual pro bono consultation and testifying on immigration and asylum cases for Latin American immigrants, Uighur migrants from China, working with Lawrence Centro Hispano, and Indigenous organizations throughout Central and South America. Several faculty routinely consult with regional, national, and international museums, and work with students in KU’s Museum Studies program.
Some faculty have joint or courtesy appointments in other units and routinely serve on or chair graduate advisory committees in other departments. All faculty are attuned to enhancing the recruitment of students from underrepresented minorities, including participation in SING (Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics), in an NIH sponsored DEI Strategic Planning conference, and in the Haskell HERS Program, among many other activities. Faculty have also served as elected officers in national professional associations and as editors of professional journals.
Cost Effectiveness. Despite significant changes in faculty FTE, the redistribution of faculty across subdisciplines, and reductions in support staff, the department has maintained its productivity at a fairly constant level. The generation of student credit hours per full time equivalent faculty has remained essentially steady over the last reporting cycle. KU is recommending all programs continue.
The number of graduate students remained nearly steady through 2018. The number of entering students declined in 2019 and will continue to be lower than in the past as a result of the changing recruitment strategies and the decision to only accept students who can be offered four full years of funding at entry. The reduction of number of new, entering graduate students does realize some economies of scale for graduate student support.
With little expectation of expansion of department budgets, the primary mechanism that can effect a change to increase graduate student recruitment is external funding that can be used to support incoming students as Graduate Research Assistants. This has been moderately successful in the short-term and hopefully will increase in the future.
One area being explored to increase cost effectiveness of the department’s degree programs is reducing the time to degree for both MA and PhD students. Department faculty are working hard to devise new training models to facilitate transit through the graduate program without sacrificing quality of education.
Center for East Asian Studies CIP 05.0104, Master of Arts - Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. Founded in 1959, the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at KU supports East Asian language instruction and promotes East Asian studies across the university and the Kansas region. CEAS fulfills KU’s mission to “lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities, and making
18 discoveries that change the world.” Over the last 25 years, CEAS has been one of the few National Resource Centers (NRC or Title VI) in the United States. The NRC is a million dollar grant over four years to support East Asian Studies (and area studies centers). In addition, CEAS has also received the Foreign Language and Area Studies award (FLAS). This is also a one million dollar grant every four years. These grants directly contribute to departments though faculty support (travel awards, conferences and course/faculty development), seeded tenure track positions, lectures and GTAs as well as students’ scholarships and internships.
The NRC and FLAS contribute to educating leaders, such as KU students who go on to the State Department, intelligence agencies and private firms involved in global business. CEAS works closely with academic departments, especially East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC), and the NRC helps fund language instruction while the FLAS provides student scholarships to attend language classes. CEAS also provides information and workshops on domestic and international (government and non- government) internships.
CEAS promotes building healthy communities though regional outreach and university programs on East Asia. CEAS directly contributes to diversity and equity across campus though cultural programs. In addition, CEAS outreach works closely with Kansas community colleges introducing East Asian studies into classrooms at institutions such as Barton Community College, Pratt Community College and Johnson County Community College. Moreover, these programs at community colleges and Kansas high schools provide a pipeline for KU undergraduates. The CEAS programs at Kansas community colleges also improves the image of KU across the state.
CEAS supports discoveries that can change the world (and make it is safer) through faculty research, symposia, invited speakers and seeded positions. CEAS, through the NRC grant, provides research funding for affiliated faculty in East Asian studies from fieldwork to publications. The center also funds symposia that bring scholars from around the country and globe to KU. In addition, every four years, CEAS secures funding for a seeded position in East Asian Studies.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. While CEAS does not have assigned tenured/tenure-track faculty, the center has 70 affiliated faculty members teaching in 26 departments and 8 professional schools at KU, offering over 250 courses fully or partially devoted to East Asia.
One of CEAS’s programming goals is to help improve the strength, productivity and qualifications of the affiliated faculty and associated departments. CEAS contributes to the strength of the East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) department though direct GTA and instructor support for course offerings, especially for advanced language learning such as 5th year language courses for Japanese, Chinese and Korean. According to the US State Department and Department of Defense, these are critical languages. In addition, CEAS supports specific languages such as Tibetan and Uyghur. In fact, KU is only one of four universities in the United States that teaches Uyghur. CEAS is currently developing an online version of the courses that will become available to broader audience. Indeed, there is a growing demand to learn this language over the next several years due to events in China.
CEAS contributes to faculty productivity through research funding and symposia. Every year CEAS
19 provides over a dozen summer research grants for faculty to conduct fieldwork in East Asia or archival work in the United States. This funding directly influences faculty publications and productivity. CEAS also gives priority to assistant professors to increase their research productivity before coming up for tenure.
CEAS also funds faculty-led symposia on their specific East Asian areas of study. These symposia (at least two to three a year) bring in scholars from around the country and globe. For many of these symposia, the result is an edited book or a special issue of an academic journal. This contributes to faculty development especially for assistant and associate professors. The symposia also bring together regional partners with KU such as Fort Leavenworth. For example, this year CEAS worked with Fort Leavenworth and KU Office of Graduate Military Programs for a symposium on North Korea that brought in former US Ambassador to South Korea, speakers from US intelligence agencies as well as KU faculty.
CEAS directly funds faculty research and online publications such as the Uyghur online textbook. In fact, this textbook is the only one of its kind the country, and it is one of the most downloaded items in KU ScholarWorks through the KU libraries. CEAS is currently funding the long awaited second volume of the Uyghur textbook.
CEAS provides funding for tenured/tenure track and lecturers to participate in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) training workshops. The ACTFL sessions provide the highest level of language education training. The standards for language teaching and assessment change, so ACTFL workshops are critical for KU language departments and faculty.
Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. The CEAS MA program was established to meet the need for US Army Foreign Area Offices to receive a civilian MA degree from an accredited research one university. This is an interdisciplinary MA program that draws on CEAS affiliated faculty for classes and advising. The program is also open to non-service members. Over the last few years the program has about 2-3 MA students per year. While the program is small it fills a critical need.
In Fall 2020, CEAS started the CEAS accelerated MA program also known as the 4+1 with Global and International Studies (GIST) to increase the number of students in the program. The program is designed for GIST, POLS and EALC undergraduates.
CEAS provides two $2,500 course development grants each year (summer). Faculty can redesign or create a new East Asian related course for their respective departments. New courses are important for faculty and their related departments to design (or redesign) class that meet with KU Core Goal 4.
CEAS works with Study Abroad program to provide East Asian internships in China, South Korea and Japan. The goal is to connect language and cultural experience with practical internship in a company or non-government organization. For example, the Office of Study Abroad with CEAS applied for and was awarded a Freeman Foundation East Asia Internships Grant of $400,000 across two years to provide scholarships for students interning abroad in East and Southeast Asia. This provided East Asia Internship grants of $4,000-$5,000 and high-need students can receive up to $8,000 in scholarships and aid for summer internships in East Asia.
20 EALC majors graduate with a high proficiency in language and cultural competency of China, Korea and Japan. A recent survey of EA graduates confirms CEAS’s impact: 10% of CEAS alumni work at some point in their career in public or military service; 11% are K-12 teachers; 15% work for national or international non-profits; 18% are pursuing graduate study; and the remainder hold jobs in academia (11%) and private sector (35%) across the nation and world. EA alumni in public service include jobs in the intelligence, State Department and military.
CEAS also contributes to the Interagency Studies Program (ISP) with Fort Leavenworth. The ISP is a condensed one year MA program and the students are Special Operations Forces officers. One of the key classes for this program is China Foreign Policy. East Asian studies is also a critical area of interest for Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
CEAS also supports Chinese, Korean and Japanese courses as well as offering Tibetan and Uyghur classes. These are critical languages for the US Department of Defense and the State Department. Indeed, CEAS contributed $300,000 to the Project GO critical language grant at KU. This is a US Department of Defense grant that offers KU ROTC students scholarships to study critical languages including Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Demonstrated Need, Employment Demand, and Cost Effectiveness. CEAS does not have an undergraduate program, but CEAS is critical in supporting language courses and course development in other departments. Through the CEAS NRC and FLAS grants, CEAS has funded critical 5th year Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages classes in the EALC department. The 5th year courses dramatically improve student’s language fluency and makes them more competitive in the job market especially for international business and government jobs. CEAS also funds language tables for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Uyghur. These language tables provide essential language training and practice for students. CEAS also funds additional GTAs needed for language classes.
Student interest in national security and intelligence has been growing in the last decade and will continue to grow, especially interest in China. Academic programs, internships and campus events have been adjusting to meet this need. Over the last 20 years CEAS provided 5 seeded positions from center grants. In 2019 the seeded position through the CEAS NRC grant funded the assistant professor on East Asian Security in political science. These East Asian classes typically reach full enrollment. In 2002, CEAS was awarded the Freeman Foundation grant for a seeded position in China politics. From 2003 to the present, the political science Chinese domestic and foreign policy classes are always full with a wait list. A current Chinese Foreign Policy class was designed to bring together military officers and KU students in one class. This unique course is capped at 23 with 13 military officers from Fort Leavenworth and 10 KU graduate and undergraduate students. The course immediately filled up. CEAS sponsored talks and symposiums are well attended, especially those related to East Asian security. The recent North Korean symposium had more than 80 faculty and students in attendance. In 2018-2019, 122 students participated in Asian internships and together received $326,745 in scholarships. From embassy internships to private companies, students gained the experience needed to be competitive in the national and international job market. These well attended classes and programs reflects the student demand for East Asian studies especially in the areas of national security and intelligence. CEAS has met this demand and continues to work with departments and the College to increase student opportunities as well as expanding grant applications and external funding.
21 Though the degree program in the unit is undersubscribed when evaluated by KBOR’s minima requirements for majors and graduates, the Program’s AY 2021 operating budget is slightly over $250,000 – much of which is covered by grants, making the program cost-effective.
Service to the Discipline, the University and Beyond As mentioned above, CEAS is not an undergraduate academic unit, but through NRC and FLAS grants over the last 25 years CEAS has made direct contributions to EALC department supporting instructors and GTAs as well as political science and history departments regarding seeded tenure track positions and course development. The recent CEAS NRC or Title VI grant for 2018-2022 provides $621,912 for salaries and fringe across several departments.
CEAS provides significant resources for affiliated faculty and students. Including professional development for language instructors, travel funds for faculty, sponsored symposia and conferences and language scholarships for students through FLAS. The professional development for language instructors is through CEAS sponsored ACTFL training. This improves the quality of instruction for EALC. As noted above, CEAS provides funding for faculty travel especially for research. The CEAS 2018-2022 grant cycle provides $76,000 in travel funds available to the 70 affiliated faculty across 26 departments. In addition, the grant on average provides over $40,000 for East Asian library acquisitions. The recent grant also provides $56,000 for faculty led conferences and visiting speakers. The FLAS grant is $250,000 per year for four years and awards students studying East Asian languages at KU full tuition and living expenses.
CEAS also provides outreach activities to state community colleges and K-12 schools as noted earlier. Regional outreach is part of the NRC grant requirements and over the last 25 years CEAS has developed strong community and state-wide relationships. The goal of the outreach activities and workshops is to increase knowledge and East Asian studies material in the community college and K-12 curriculum.
English Department CIP 23.0101, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue CIP 23.1302, MFA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. KU’s English Department promotes the study of the English language, rhetoric, and literature written in English, and it cultivates the study and craft of writing. The unit aims to serve communities within and beyond the University through its teaching, research, and creative work, recognizing the impact of words and stories on our environments. At the core of this service, the Department reflects critically on language and stories of shared humanity across media. Faculty sustain a diverse, inclusive culture that fosters inquiry, creativity, and curiosity as sources of knowledge and strategies for civic engagement and problem solving in a changing world. The unit’s mission is driven by an ethical imperative to expand access to the program and field, by an imperative to promote justice, and by the knowledge that diversity enhances the English field and the University as a whole in innovative directions.
As part of this mission, KU English is the home of writing instruction at KU, providing 100-150 sections of writing courses every semester to help fulfill KU’s core goal to strengthen written communication. English courses also support KU’s other core general education goals, including humanities methodologies, critical thinking, research, and diversity and global awareness.
22 The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The KU English faculty has a record of research and teaching excellence in literature and cultural criticism, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, and English language studies, and includes three distinguished professors and multiple NEH-funded researchers. The excellent reputation of the department is due, in part, to the scholarly productivity of the faculty. While Academic Analytics does not capture the full breadth of the scholarly productivity, collectively during the review period, faculty published or had in press 66 referred journal articles, 56 books/monographs, 117 book chapters, and 289 creative works. They have made almost 685 presentations – 424 of which were invited, had 17 appointments for editorial work/membership on editorial boards, and received two copyrights for published work. Also, during the review period faculty received 105 honors and awards – 76 of which were for research.
The data above speak to consistent external and internal recognition of faculty excellence. In just the last two years since the Academic Analytics data were collected, for instance, faculty have garnered an additional 17 external grants and 9 major awards, in addition to a host of internal grants. Three faculty were awarded NEH grants, one was awarded a National Humanities Center Grant, and one was awarded an American Philosophical Society grant. Two were awarded the mid-career University Scholarly Achievement Award, and one won the Higuchi Award for distinguished humanities research—all marquee awards for research at KU. One has been given the rare honor of being named a Dean’s Professor and a J. Michael Young Academic 11 Advising Award for her research, teaching, and mentorship; another has received the Chancellors Club Career Teaching Professorship; another won the Mortar Board Award; a non-tenure-track faculty member was inducted into the KU Women’s Hall of Fame and won the Frazer Teaching Award. One faculty member was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; another won a World Fantasy Award, the top international and national award for science/speculative fiction writing. One faculty member secured a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for another unit as well as a collaborative, interdisciplinary Mellon grant. These are just some of the honors and grants that have been received since the Academic Analytics update. The number of national/international and university awards, in a tenure-track/tenured faculty that has been reduced from 34.5 to 24.01 FTE in less than a decade, is exceptional and speaks to the faculty’s outstanding commitment to and reputation for supporting the teaching and research mission of the university.
The Department is also home to two internationally recognized research centers. The Project on the History of Black Writing, directed by Distinguished Professor Maryemma Graham, continues its outreach and grant-winning success, while working as a hub for undergraduate and graduate student research and professionalization. The Gunn Center for Science Fiction, meanwhile, continues to attract students to its programs from around the world, especially through the annual Gunn Center/Campbell Conference.
Quality of undergraduate programs as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program; Data from the assessment of ENGL 101 and ENGL 102, the First-and-Second Year English Program which provides the University with two introductory writing courses, showed that a high majority of students (96%) demonstrate basic, satisfactory, or exemplary competency in all areas, with special strength in “rhetorical flexibility within and beyond academic writing,” and “revising to improve writing.”
At 191 and 92 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. The Department almost doubled the percentage of underrepresented students in
23 its undergraduate programs with an increase from 9.9% in 2011 to 18% in 2019. It also recently restructured the undergraduate degrees in response to changes in the field, and – equally as important – the interests and academic pathways of students by ensuring integrative learning across the various sub- fields of English. This revision favors of a cross-field flexibility driven by students’ academic passions and career goals and also introduces a common foundational academic experience, ENGL 300: Introduction to English Studies, that takes advantage of the Department’s unique combination of literary studies, rhetoric and composition, English language studies, and creative writing. However, a substantial population of students remains interested in taking an interdisciplinary approach to their studies; for this group, the possibility of a “Custom Emphasis” was created that allows for a broader program of English Studies coursework to comprise the degree.
The Department continues to have some of the most robust pursuit of Honors theses of any KU program, with approximately one third of the College’s Honors theses awarded to English majors for several years running. Additionally, departmental students have been very successful in award competitions, including the 2020 Spencer Museum of Art’s Brousseau Award, the 2018 and 2019 Lawrence Arts Center’s Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award, the 2018 New Theatre Guild Foundation Award, the 2018 O’Brate Foundation Scholarship, the 2019 J. Michael Young Opportunity Award, and multiple Honors Opportunity Awards.
In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 71% of undergraduates are employed in Kansas/Missouri a median wage of $40,157 five years after graduation. The new undergraduate English major makes a clear and compelling connection between the flexible, durable skills taught and the multi- faceted careers that some recent undergraduate have embarked. These include editorial work in publishing, higher education administration, international law and gender policy, digital marketing and consulting, medicine, television writing and producing, and radio production.
Quality of graduate programs as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program; The quality of the graduate program is based on a number of metrics, including admissions, time-to- degree, exit surveys, and job placement data. The application volume has increased in recent years, however the Department has made efforts to be more selective in admissions decisions, accepting just 5% of all applicants in 2020 (vs. 10% 18 in 2019 and 24% in 2018). While the low acceptance rate allows for the focus on a more selective set of recruits and the use of resources most efficiently, the steadiness of the total application pool is evidence of the unit’s strong reputation. In fact, the U.S. News & World Report listed KU’s English Graduate Program as #67 among all universities (both public and private) and #40 among public universities. Moreover, time-to-degree numbers have improved dramatically, particularly among PhD students whose median time to under 5 years. Exit surveys generally have been positive, but the unit tries to be proactive in responding to lower-than-ideal scores when presented.
The achievements of the unit’s graduate students offer further evidence of program success. Students have won Fulbright fellowships, FLAS awards, and recognition for their contributions to NEH projects. They have received recognition internally through competitive awards like the Argersinger Outstanding Dissertation Award, the Outstanding Thesis Award, Hall Center Grants, and more. They also participate in public-facing scholarship, including library presentations, creative performances, activism, and more.
Graduate students from traditionally underrepresented groups comprised 20% of the total amount of graduate students – a trend the Department expects to continue. Annual average graduates from the MA
24 and MFA programs meet KBOR minima. At 59 and 8 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the PhD program exceed KBOR minima.
The job market for English graduate students has been evolving for some time as the number of positions in higher education continues to shrink. Even before the pandemic, English departments across the nation have reimagined the profession to consider a wider array of career opportunities that utilize the skills and expertise taught in English graduate programs. The pandemic has only intensified these dynamics. Impressively, KU’s English graduate programs have had great success in career placement. Graduates have been placed in top-tier tenure-track positions. Many other recent graduates have found tenure-track positions at smaller four-year colleges. Others have broadened their commitments to education through administrative roles at KU and elsewhere.
A major reason for the Department’s continued success with job placement is its robust advising structure that provides students with faculty mentors for the duration of their stay in the program, rotating set of yearly teaching mentors, yearly progress evaluations, and the work of the Professionalization and Job Placement Officer. The unit’s mentoring structure helps students leave the program as superb researchers and teachers, and with the knowledge that these aptitudes have value in many professional contexts. The program is proud that its job seekers are brilliant, diverse, and well supported so they will be ready to take advantage of the range of opportunities that present themselves.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The Department houses and actively promotes public-facing humanities scholarship and programming, including organized local and community-focused readings and reading groups, support for visiting writers of broad interest to the KU community and beyond. In so doing, the Department works both within academic circles and in broader local, regional, national, and international communities to promote the importance of the humanities.
The Department supports KU through curricular service. It runs the First and Second-Year English program which provides the University with two introductory writing courses, ENGL 101 and ENGL 102, that satisfy Goal 2.1 Written Communication for the KU Core. The overwhelming majority of first-year students across the University take these courses. In Fall of 2019 and Spring of 2020, ENGL 101, 102 and 105 courses enrolled almost 13,000 SCH. The Department’s 200-level courses (which also satisfy Goal 2.1) generated over 3,000 additional SCH. These courses all serve as the foundation for writing skills that students practice through their studies in other disciplinary contexts. As many studies have shown, transfer-oriented learning objectives in first-year writing courses actively facilitates the transfer of writing skills across different contexts.
English faculty have made major contributions to service at the Department, College, University, and professional levels. Faculty not only Chair the Department, but are also currently chairing American Studies as well as the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Faculty also have regularly been active members of major College and University committees, including the College committees on undergraduate and graduate studies, both College and University promotion and tenure committees, College and University sabbatical committees, and the University Core Curriculum Committee, and all levels of faculty governance. In addition, faculty edit journals, run theater festivals, review book manuscripts and promotion cases, organize scholarly and public conferences, and lead and participate in a host of other service activities that serve the profession and a range of local, regional, national, and
25 international audiences and communities.
Cost Effectiveness. From AY 2016 –AY 2019, the English Department generated 24,688 student credit hours annually. It serves a number of non-majors through its general education offerings. Enrollment in the English minor has been growing from a headcount of 59 in Fall 2016 to 82 in Fall 2019. The undergraduate and doctoral degrees exceed KBOR minima for the number of majors and graduates, the department makes efficient use of its resources, and KU recommends the programs continue.
Department of Theatre & Dance CIP 50.0301, BA/BFA, Dance: Continue CIP 50.0501, BA/BGS/BFA and MA/MFA/PhD, Theatre: Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. Though Theatre and Dance have been taught at KU since the 1920s, the Department of Theatre & Dance in its current form was formed July 1, 2018, as a merger between the Department of Theatre and the Department of Dance to support collaboration and make more efficient use of available resources. The merger has fostered greater opportunities and support for the University Theatre and the University Dance Company, as well as providing a more diverse curriculum to recruit students to degree programs.
The Department plays a significant role in the teaching, research and service missions of KU by offering nationally-recognized graduate programs as well as high-quality undergraduate programs that serve approximately 150 majors and more than 60 minors. Faculty are active in research and creative activity at a very high level of productivity and many have established international reputations in their area of specialty. Through its production program, students have the opportunity to collaborate with faculty on creative activity, and these activities are regularly shared with the local Lawrence community via public performance. Faculty hold leadership roles in national and international professional organizations and the unit regularly provides service to the KU, Lawrence and Kansas communities.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. As of Fall 2020, the Department has 11 tenured or tenure-track faculty, down from 20 as recently as Spring 2015. Theatre and Dance faculty are extremely productive relative to national standards, both in terms of traditional scholarly productivity and creative research. In the most recent Academic Analytics dataset, the Theatre Ph.D. program was tied for 5th out of 28 doctoral programs in Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism nationally, as measured by Scholarly Research Index, trailing only Columbia, University of Washington, Northwestern, and City University of New York (CUNY). The three tenure/tenure track Dance faculty are internationally recognized experts in their subfield and in Academic Analytics benchmarking KU Dance faculty rate well above the national median in awards received and books published. With regard to creative activity, faculty are highly productive, collectively producing an average of more than 60 creative works per year. In addition to raw metrics, faculty enjoy national and international reputations, as evidenced by invitations to speak, perform, design, direct and/or choreograph at universities and arts organizations across the US, as well as in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Quality of program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. Undergraduate Theatre and Dance majors regularly have direct, small-class experience with tenured and
26 tenure-track faculty members as early as their first year in the program. This contributes to a strong sense of belonging, which helps with retention and progression which are near University means. Undergraduate programs offer a robust range of practical technique classes along with more traditional academic coursework. In addition to the formal curricula, students have ample opportunity to perform and/or work backstage in productions. How much production activity is required varies by degree plan, but all students are encouraged to apply what they learn in the classroom to the laboratory environment. Most performances are directed or choreographed by members of the faculty or professional guest artists, giving the students significant additional personalized instructional time.
The graduate programs – all in Theatre – are enhanced by the research productivity of the faculty, as detailed in the previous section and such productivity is a central asset of the programs. Graduate students have direct access to some of the most innovative work in theatre and performance studies. Accordingly, the “quality of graduate teaching” consistently stands out as a highlight of the University’s graduate student satisfaction surveys. As one of the nation’s oldest PhD programs in Theatre and Performance Studies, the Department is also able to leverage a large alumni network of distinguished scholars who help serve as members of the unit’s professional advisory board. Though limited in ability to grow due to budgetary concerns, the Department has been successful in efforts to increase the demographic diversity of its graduate student population which has risen significantly since the last review. In part because of the small size of the program, students are provided with strong, networked mentoring, as well as a variety of research and creative opportunities. The strength of the graduate curriculum and its impact can be further measured by higher-than-average completion rate and lower-than-average time to degree statistics.
Since the last review cycle, both Dance and Theatre programs have invested significant time in curriculum review and degree-level assessment- the success of which is evidenced by student demand as noted below.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. A key element of performing arts instruction is small class sizes. This reflects the highly individualized approach to instruction necessary for the creative arts, as well as the physical limitations of studio and shop spaces. Guidance from the National Association of Schools of Dance recommends maximum class sizes of 16-20, depending on the size of the studio space. Despite this limitation, the program meets KBOR’s minima requirements and is also very productive beyond the major. Dance attracts students who are interested in the minor as well as students who take dance classes to fulfill general education requirements. In Fall 2019, 43 students were enrolled in the dance minor. There are six Dance classes offered in the KU Core and all dance courses have a total annual headcount enrollment of more than 600 students. The Theatre program averages 50 junior/senior majors and 21 graduates annually.
Based on the most recent data available to the University Career Center, more than 85% of those with a recent Dance degree are either employed full-time or continuing their education while 67% of recent undergraduates in Theatre are employed full-time (higher than the university-wide mean). While many graduates work professionally as actors, dancers, directors, and choreography, students often find employment in the broader arts and entertainment sector. Other graduates use the creative and team- building skills they learn in Theatre and Dance to pursue careers in media, sales, education, law, and public service. More than 20% of students in the department pursue double-majors across various disciplines including Art History and Chemical Engineering.
For graduate programs, the reputation of the faculty in particular drive student demand while also
27 facilitating professional networking for graduates. This combination drives KU’s placement rate for PhD graduates in Theatre in academia. While the pool of tenure-track positions in Theatre is shrinking nationally (due to industry-wide institutional change, not a reduction in demand for theatre courses), KU PhD graduates remain very much in demand. In a 2018 national study of all Ph.D. placements in Theatre and Performance Studies, KU’s tenure-track placement rate of 75% was the best among all public universities, and second highest overall, trailing only Brown University.
In general, those that graduate with an MFA and who have pursued teaching positions have had little difficulty securing them. However, that is not necessarily the goal for all graduates. Many pursue work as professional scenographers (scenic, lighting, and/or costume designers), which most often means freelancing. Others take on positions in arts management.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The Department provides value to the campus and Lawrence communities through the production activity to its students. When a mainstage play or Dance concert is produced, it impacts hundreds of people on and off campus and generates revenues for local businesses. The Deparment also brings nationally renowned guest-artists to campus, hosts matinees and workshops for K-12 students, and makes its theatre spaces available for other schools’ graduation activities or as socially-distanced lecture halls.
In service to the discipline, faculty have held leadership roles in major national and international organizations, including but not limited to: American Society for Theatre Research (executive committee); International Federation for Theatre Research (executive committee); American Theatre and Drama Society (governing board); Association for Theatre in Higher Education (President, Vice-President, Conference Planner, Focus Group Representative); College of Fellows of the American Theatre (governing board); Congress on Research in Dance (program committee chair); Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (Vice-President); National Alliance for Musical Theatre (selection committee); National New Play Network (selection committee); and Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (nominating committee).
Since the last review, faculty have served on the editorial boards of several distinguished journals, including: Ecumenica, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Journal of Religion and Theatre, La Musa y Duende, Revista Internacionalde Flamenco, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Topics. The Theatre and Dance Faculty have also served on review panels for: Canadian Research Council, Fulbright Scholars Program, Israel Science Foundation, Loire Valley Institute for Advance Studies, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, National Endowment for the Humanities, Netherlands Institute for Advance Study, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Department hosts the highly-regarded Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, founded at KU in 1986. The journal is available internationally via Project MUSE and earns enough revenue thereby to be financially self-supporting. In addition, our faculty have completed many dozens of peer reviews of manuscripts, adjudications of performances and exhibits, and external evaluations for tenure and promotion.
Cost Effectiveness. On a per credit hour basis, Theatre and Dance are comparable to the applied sciences in that instruction requires specialized lab facilities (three performance spaces, multiple studio classrooms, costume shop,
28 scene shop, lighting lab) and industry-standard equipment in order to deliver curriculum. However, the Department makes efficient use of its limited resources.
The Department has successfully developed a number of revenue streams to offset its costs. These include course fees, ticket sales, Endowment funds, and expendable donations which significantly offset the cost to the State of Kansas of operating the Department. At the end of FY 2020, the Department had an invested endowment balance of $4.9M which generates annual income for scholarships, guest artists, support of faculty research, and other strategic priorities.
In addition, because production activities are open not just to majors, but to students from across campus, the University Theatre and University Dance Company have traditionally received significant financial support from the Student Senate, evidencing the value of this programming to the KU community as a whole.
KU recommends continuing all degree programs. The Dance program is run efficiently and provides opportunities for students across the university via the major, the minor, and the contribution to general education. This is the smallest the Dance faculty has been in at least 15 years and yet the program remains viable through its recent merger with Theatre.
The Theatre programs are also run efficiently given the small size of the faculty. All Theatre programs meet KBOR minima with the exception of those at the master’s level. However, these programs are graduate-feeder programs for the PhD and courses for the master’s programs also count toward the doctorate. As such, there is no additional cost to offer the master’s level programs. In addition, the Department has had significant success in generating revenue in the form of ticket sales, in raising endowment funds, and developing other income streams.
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures CIP 16.0300, BA/MA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The teaching mission of the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department (EALC) is to prepare students to live and work in an interconnected world in which the countries of East Asia play increasingly important roles. The department aims to help students develop competence in cross-cultural exchange and communication through the comprehensive and systematic study of the languages, literatures, cultures, and societies of East Asia. With these skills they are able to interact with the peoples of East Asia in meaningful and productive ways, and can build and sustain critical collaborative relationships with East Asian countries and communities. EALC aims to provide rigorous training to students so that they may achieve linguistic proficiency, cultural understanding, and critical thinking skills, in order to prepare them for success as global citizens and community members and leaders.
In our geographical region (Kansas, Missouri & Nebraska), EALC is a magnet for students who aspire to advanced proficiency in East Asian languages. As the only location within these three states where fourth- year level Chinese, Japanese, and Korean courses are offered regularly, and where, thanks to Title VI grants, the less commonly taught languages of Tibetan, and Uyghur are also offered.
29 The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Currently, 6.5 tenured faculty members are in the department and are distributed between three languages: 4 for Chinese, 1.5 for Japanese and 1 for Korean. With Dr. Sanako Mitsugi’s resignation in summer 2019 and Drs. Elaine Gerbert’s and Maggie Childs’ upcoming retirement in 2021 and 2022 respectively, tenured/tenure-track FTE will be reduced to 5.0FTE unless new faculty hires are authorized. Faculty hires in Japanese and Korean are a priority.
Departmental faculty are productive scholars within their respective fields. Collectively during the review period, faculty published or have in press 33 referred journal articles, 11 books/monographs, and 12 book chapters. They have made almost 150 presentations –more than half of which were invited, have received 23 honors and awards, and have had three appointments for editorial work/membership on editorial boards. During the review period of FY 11 – FY 18, total external research expenditures exceeded $630,000.
Book and article publications per faculty member far exceed the AAU median for peer institutions (at 100% and 70% respectively). Citations per faculty also exceed the median (60%). These data demonstrate the considerable productivity and impact of EALC faculty as well-recognized scholars in our respective disciplines. An external review report affirmed the main strengths of the EALC department as a prestigious program with a long history “as the heart of what has been an area of excellence in East Asian Studies at the university as a whole”.
Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. EALC offers six different concentrations for undergraduate majors: Chinese Language and Literature, Japanese Language and Literature, East Asian Studies with Chinese language, East Asian Studies with Japanese language, East Asian Studies with Korean language, and Double Language. EALC teaches a broad range of language, literature, and culture courses to give students advanced language ability in listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, combined with an in-depth, systematic understanding of East Asia’s centuries-old traditions, as well as the latest developments in its contemporary cultures and societies. This allows students to interact and work with the peoples of East Asia in meaningful and productive ways. With the support of the Office of Study Abroad, faculty actively help students identify and apply for suitable study-abroad programs so they can immerse themselves in the linguistic and cultural environment of their chosen language. The unit’s content courses provide both breadth and depth of understanding of East Asian cultures and to emphasize the development of students’ critical thinking, as well as public speaking and writing skills.
EALC ensures that Kansas has a cohort of BA graduates every year who understand the languages and cultures of East Asia and are ready to work for the many companies and institutions that require these skills, or continue with graduate work in this field. EALC also conducts Oral Proficiency Interview (OPT) test to empower students with an objective credential that they can use in their future studies and career paths. The department distributes exit assessment surveys to graduating senior students and conducted focus group sessions to receive students’ feedback. Faculty annually review the collected data, and discuss various ways to improve student learning.
Since EALC does not have large numbers of graduate students, it offers almost no regularly dedicated graduate-level courses. Coursework thus primarily consists of 500- or 700-level courses that include
30 undergraduates but require additional work at the graduate level. Additional graduate student course needs are handled by offering directed-reading and thesis-writing classes. If graduate numbers allowed it, it would greatly help the graduate program if at least a small number of dedicated graduate-level content courses were offered. These would be open to undergraduates (with the necessary prerequisites) but the course would be taught at the graduate level. This would allow a greater number of students to benefit from the research expertise of faculty.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. The undergraduate program has been growing in contrast to the national downward trend in the Humanities. At 61 and 25 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the undergraduate degree program exceeds KBOR minima. The EALC minor also is an attractive option for students, enrolling 38 students in Fall 2019. In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 64% of EALC undergraduates are employed in region after graduation with median earnings of $32,126 five years after graduation.
However, the MA program is significantly below KBOR minima for average annual enrollments and graduates. The department is exploring or implementing the following actions to strengthen enrollments: better advertise the research strengths of the faculty to attract applicants, creating graduate teaching and research assistantships, increasing active recruitment and streamlining admissions procedures, creating a non-thesis option, creating a 4+1 option, and better collaboration with the Center for East Asian Studies to streamline MA options.
MA graduates go onto doctoral programs. Graduates of the Chinese program have enrolled in PhD programs at Chicago, Yale, Harvard and other top schools, and other top schools, and gone on to academic careers including at SOAS University in London. Others have gone on to careers in which they are making use of their language skills, such as working in Geospatial Intelligence (Washington, D.C.) and as certified translators in the Social Security Administration. A graduate of the Chinese MA program is working at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, and another is the new chair of Chinese programs at the six Bard Early College campuses in Cleveland, Ohio. A graduate of the Japanese MA program is now doing a Ph.D. at Princeton, and quite a few graduates of the Japanese program are teaching in Japan in the JET program, which has become more competitive in recent years. A graduate of the Korean MA program began to teach at Kalamazoo College in 2019. The fact that a good number of MA students go on to further study of East Asia or to work in East Asia is evidence that EALC is realizing its teaching mission.
Other MA graduates have gone into the private or government sectors. One student completed a joint EALC MA/MBA and has done well in the field of marketing. Another who completed a joint EALC MA/law degree is working at Amazon in Tokyo.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. In addition to teaching and research activities, EALC faculty also have an excellent track record of providing active service to their disciplines by serving on conference committees, journal editorial boards as well as in professional organizations. Maggie Childs served on committees of American Association of Teachers of Japanese and was elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. She regularly reviews manuscripts and writes book reviews. She also provided program review for the University of Vermont and the University of New Mexico. Childs served as a poetry contest judge for the Kansas Authors Contest (2016).
31 Elaine Gerbert served as a Haiku poetry contest judge in 2017 and manuscript reviewer for a number of academic publishers and journals. Yan Li served as reviewer for Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and other national and international conferences in the field. Keith McMahon has served on the editorial boards of Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China and Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture as well as two five-year terms as program reviewer for programs in Hong Kong University’s Chinese Department. He has also acted as reviewer for a large number of tenure-andpromotion cases, grant applications, book manuscripts and journal articles. Crispin Williams served as a reviewer of journal articles and monographs on early China, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – Summer Stipend competition in 2018, and an Editorial Board Member of the Society for the Study of Early China since 2017. Faye Xiao has served on the editorial board of Journal of International and Global Studies and as reviewer for many awards, academic publishers and journals in the field. Currently she works as a guest editor for two special issues on contemporary Chinese workers’ literature for the literary journals of World Literature Today and Chinese Literature Today. Kyoim Yun served on the editorial board of the Journal of Shamanic Practice (2008-2015) and a reviewer for grants, book proposals, journal articles, and tenure applications.
EALC faculty have also provided constant service to the Department and the University. Maggie Childs was the EALC chair between 2008 and 2019. Elaine Gerbert has been serving as the Director of Undergraduate Studies since 2008, as well as the Study Abroad Advisor for Japanese –Language Programs, and served on the College Committee for Appointments, Promotion and Tenure, GRF Selection Committee, and Hall Center Faculty Research Fellowship Committee. Yan Li has been serving as the Coordinator of the Chinese language program since 2008 and served on the Center of East Asian Studies (CEAS) advisory committee and the Foreign Language Area Studies Scholarship (FLAS) Committee. Keith McMahon has been serving as the Director of Graduate Studies since 2003 and served on multiple tenure-and-promotion review committees in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Crispin Williams has been serving as the Study-Abroad Advisor for Chinese-Language Programs since 2005, served on the Hall Center's NEH Fellowship PreSubmission Review Panel in 2014, the CLAS General Research Fund Committee in 2017, and on the CEAS advisory committee. Faye Xiao has started serving as the EALC chair since July 2019 and served on various committees in EALC, CEAS, Hall Center, and International Programs at KU. Kyoim Yun has played an important role in developing the Korean Studies Program at KU, including working as the coordinator of the Korean language program and helping with the Korean program coordination even after hiring a lecturer dedicated to it. She has also served on the faculty search committees in EALC and Art History, and on General Research Fund Review committee in 2016 among many others.
Cost Effectiveness. The department, on a five-year average, annually produces approximately 4,500 student credit hours. Language classes in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and less-commonly-taught languages serve the entire university. Elementary and intermediate language lecture-classes range in size from around 15 to 35 students, with 10-15 students in drill sessions. Advanced language classes have 10 to 20 students. Non- language lecture classes enroll up to 55 students. EALC faculty’s workloads (in terms of the number of sections taught per faculty member and student credit hours per faculty member) exceed those of faculty in similar programs of peer AAU institutions in the field indicating the department is efficient with its instructional resources. The FY 21 operating budget for the department is under $1 million and estimated tuition revenue generated exceeds its operating budget.
32 Economics Department CIP 40,0601, BA/BGS/BS, Continue CIP 45.0603, MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and the role of the institution. The Department of Economics strives to be a strong and effective leader in raising the statute and visibility of KU as a public Research I university and a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) through the synergy of its research, teaching and service. In the last decade, the department has made significant progress towards this goal by increasing research productivity and funding, updating its curriculum at undergraduate and graduate level, streamlining degree programs, and enhancing outreach efforts. As an Economics Department at a Research I university, the Department contributes in numerous ways to the research mission of the university. The research-active faculty are working on important problems that advance the understanding of theoretical and applied microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics.
Strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Since the last review, the Economics department has been in a period of decline in terms of the number of faculty. The department had 20-22 FTE faculty for much of its history, Since the last program review, the department has lost eight tenured faculty (four retirements, three departures for other positions, and one death). Seven faculty have been hired since that time, and department faculty total 16. In the field of economics, scholarly productivity is measured by the quantity and quality of publications in refereed journals. Associated measures include total number of peer-reviewed publications, citations, awards received and research grant funding. Between 2010-2018 faculty in the department published over 128 papers in refereed journals. In addition the faculty have published 26 chapters in books as well as 15 books and presented research at 461 conferences, workshops, and campus seminars.
The overall productivity of the economics department compares favorably with Research I peers. In particular, more than half of the department’s faculty fall into the top two quintiles of research productivity as measured by Academic Analytics’ combination of citations, articles and grants. Six of the department’s nine full and distinguished professors are in the top quintile.
According to the Academic Analytics Data, the KU economics department ranks at the 90th percentile of total awards and above the 85th percentile in awards per faculty which is an AAU metric. Based on the Academic Analytics peer group and the metrics evaluated by the AAU, the departments research productivity and related impact is very high, ranking above the 80th percentile on most metrics. In terms of federal research grants, when compared with peer institutions KU ranks at close to the 100th percentile. Total external funding expenditures from 2010-2019 was greater than $5.5 million.
Quality of the programs as assessed by the curriculum and impact on students. The Economics Department recently established a pedagogical innovation to improve student learning in the bachelor’s programs in the form of the Center for Undergraduate Research in Economics (CURE).
Prior to the creation of the Center, a single faculty member worked with a single undergraduate student. While this one-on-one mentoring offered wonderful opportunities to shape the professional trajectory of excellent students, the courses accommodated only a tiny slice of the majors and practically none of the non- majors. CURE offers the opportunity to scale up and accommodate more students. The department also introduced curricular changes to ensure students are appropriately prepared in statistics.
33 Additional innovations include a 5 year (4+1) combined bachelor’s and master’s program. This Accelerated MA program allows students to double count four courses (12 credit hours) toward requirements for both the graduate and undergraduate degrees, and therefore complete the 138 credit hours (120 for the bachelor’s degree, and 18 graduate credit hours for the master’s degree) for the two degrees in only five years instead of the normal six years. This complements its existing M.A.-J.D. program.
For the PhD program in economics, the department recently established several innovations to improve student learning. These improvements streamline the foundational mathematics and quantitative preparation of PhD students, reorganize core courses so that students may move to research and specializations early, provide incentives and milestones to produce research on an annual basis, provide guidance on the determination of a dissertation advisor, and establish a time frame for the comprehensive oral exam. Although it will take time to transition to the new steady state, recent data indicate lower median time-to-degree.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. At 214 and 109 respectively, annual average junior/senior majors in and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. According to Degreestats, 69% of graduates are employed in region with a median salary of $62,616 five years after graduation.
The need and demand for graduate programs in economics is robust. For the PhD program, the unit’s steady state total number of students is about 43-46 students and 11 graduates annually. The MA program averages 15 awards each year. The MA program is expected to grow with the recent addition of the 5 year (4+1) combined bachelor’s and master’s program. Both programs are expected to also benefit from the 2019 change in CIP codes. This allows international graduates in economics to be eligible for up to 36 months of Optional Practical Training (OPT) and helps them with visa requirements for immigration purposes.
Placement of PhD students in economics remains strong, spanning the spectrum of academic and non- academic positions. Recent academic placements include Baylor University, Boise State University, Colgate University, Georgia State University, Jinan University, King Saud University, Ordu University, Pontifica Universidad Javeriana Cali, Rhodes College, State University of New York at Fredonia, Syiah Kuala University, Tbilsi State University, Texas Tech University, Bowling Green State University, University of Iowa, University of Johannesburg, University of Puget Sound, University of Redlands, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Weber State University, and West Texas A&M University, among others.
Placements at government and quasi-government organizations include Bureau of Economic Analysis, Central Bank of Turkey, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, International Monetary Fund, Kansas Department of Revenue, National Council of Applied Economic Research, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Reserve Bank of India, Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency, U.S. Small Business Administration, and State of Kansas, among others. Placements at corporations, consulting firms, and think tanks include American Express, Bank of America, Economists Inc., Charles River Associates, Conversant First Tennessee Bank, G.R. Holdings, Moody’s Analytics, Laifer Capital, MedAssurant, Monsanto Corporation, National Association of Home Builders, and Walmart Home Office, among others. Graduates are also involved in international entrepreneurial start-ups.
34 The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The faculty played an important role and made significant contributions in serving the discipline of economics. faculty members are (or have been) Editors in Chief, Co-editors, Associate Editors, or Guest Editors of 31 journals. Several faculty members presently serve or have served various professional organizations as President, Executive Directors, Officers, or as Committee Members, including the following: • Elizabeth Asiedu is the founder and the current President of the Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists (AAAWE) and is currently a Board member after being President of the African Finance Economic Association. • Bill Barnett is the Founder and Board member of the Society for Economic Measurement. He was President of the society from its founding in 2013 for a five year term in office. His current position on the society’s Executive Committee is Founder and Past President. He also is Founder and Director of the Institute for Nonlinear Dynamical Inference in Moscow and Founder and Director of the Advances in Monetary and Financial Measurement program at the Center for Financial Stability in New York City. • Bernard Cornet is currently the Executive Secretary of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET) after being its President; he is also the Chair of the European Workshop in Economic Theory, the European annual conference of the SAET. • Mohamed El Hodiri is a Board member of Vestnik Buryatskovo Gosudarstvennii universiteta Ekonomiki i Manegement. • Donna Ginther has served on the Board of Trustees of the Southern Economic Association and on the Board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession of the American Economic Association. • Joshua Rosemblum is a Board Member of National Center for Women and Information Technology, Social Science Advisory Board.
Faculty members have also been part of the organization or scientific committees of conferences all over the world, of the advisory panel of experts of Federal Reserve Banks, and of workshops of professional organization, in particular for the annual meetings of the Society of Economic Measurement (SEC): Frankfurt (2019), Xiamen (2018), MIT (2017), Thessaloniki (2016), Paris (2015), Chicago (2014) and for the annual European meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory(SAET): Berlin (2019), Paris (2018), Salamanca, (2017), Glasgow (2016), Naples (2015), Paris (2014), Vienna (2013), Exeter (2012), Vigo (2011), Cracow (2010).
Faculty members routinely serve as referees of articles for numerous research journals or books, as discussants of keynote speakers in international conferences, as grant reviewers of the NSF or other national and international agencies, as external reviewers of other American universities (P&T reviewers). Additionally, a few faculty members also served on external evaluation committees and Advisory Boards in international academic institutions: Bill Barnett is in the Advisory Board of the Center for Financial Development and Stability, Henan University, China, Bernard Cornet is in the Scientific Board of the International QEM Master, Sorbonne University, France, Zongwu Cai is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Center for Statistical Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Cost Effectiveness. The department is cost-effective, generating more than 12,000 student credit hour annually with an FY 21 operating budget of approximately $3.4 million. KU recommends continuing all programs
35 Department of Film and Media Studies CIP 50.0601, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and the role of the institution. The Department of Film and Media Studies (FMS) believes that Film and Media are an essential part of how individuals and communities participate in a free and democratic society. Its internationally- recognized faculty are scholars and practitioners who are training the next generation of leaders to be ethical, responsible, and literate media makers engaged with their communities and prepared to make a difference. As a result, FMS serves its disciplines, the University, and the world at large in its capacities as teachers, scholars, and artists.
The Department’s new home in Summerfield Hall serves as an asset to student education. With 14,000 square feet of production space, an industry-standard soundstage and recording studios provide the space and technology for student to hone skills in a professional environment. Visiting artists and guest speakers work with students in these spaces and FMS is expanding professional development opportunities with growing client-based use of its facilities.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Since the last external review, FMS has implemented measures to support and increase faculty scholarship and creative research. As a result, FMS faculty have been significantly productive in their scholarly and professional activities. Since 2011, one Assistant Professor and three Associate Professors were successfully promoted to the ranks of Associate Professor and Full Professor, respectively, and another Assistant Professor is on track to apply next year. Such productivity is remarkable considering that FMS lost five of its tenure-track faculty due to retirement since the last review period, and currently has eight faculty. However, two more faculty have recently announced their retirement effective the end of this academic year (AY 21), reducing the number of faculty to six beginning in AY22.
During the period under review, FMS studies faculty published 24 peer-reviewed journal articles, four single-authored book monographs, three edited volumes, 16 published chapters in books, gave 67 scholarly and professional presentations/invited lectures, and received 34 honors/awards. Further, Studies faculty are completing contracted books and several have major peer-reviewed articles on track for completion by the end of this academic year. FMS faculty are sought out to professionally evaluate manuscripts from major academic presses and journals and serve on editorial boards. FMS faculty members have obtained fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, The Japan Foundation, and many others.
FMS Production faculty engage in practice-based creative research which includes and media production, screenwriting, sound design, cinematography, editing, and documentary film production. During the period under review, FMS Production faculty directed four feature-length films, two television programs, three feature-length documentaries, wrote seven film scripts, two television scripts, one documentary script, produced seven films, were selected and/or invited to screen their films at 112 major venues, attended 16 academic conferences, gave 38 professional presentations/workshops, and won 12 awards, including Professor Kevin Willmott, who won a 2019 Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay (BlackKklansman).
36 FMS faculty actively engage in scholarship pursuing social justice and media literacy in a range of venues. During the period under review, some of these activities include the following: - In 2019, Assistant Professor Joshua Miner served as Senior Personnel for a $30,000 NEA Folk & Traditional Art Grant to conduct the KU Indigenous Cultures Festival. - Professor Tamara Falicov’s research on international film festivals and distribution has taken her around the globe. In Fall 2019, she taught a film finance seminar at the Icaro film festival of Guatemala with Colombian producer Ana Maria Pullido. - Associate Professor Robert Hurst was thrice selected from a highly competitive national group of applicants to participate in the U.S. State Department-funded American Film Showcase, which is designed to promote understanding between the United States and nations around the world. Professor Hurst conducted programs in Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji in 2017; in 2018 and 2019, Professor Hurst traveled to Sri Lanka and Lagos, Nigeria, where he again worked with U.S. Embassies and Consulates to promote socially engaged methods of filmmaking with local filmmakers and film organizations.
Quality of undergraduate programs as assessed by the curriculum and impact on students. The Department of Film and Media Studies offers two degree tracks and two programs of study within each track: The Bachelor of Arts (BA) with the option to focus on Culture & Studies or Production; and the Bachelor of General Studies (BGS) with the option to focus on Culture & Studies or Production. The BA track serves a student population the majority of whom are considering continuing their education in a graduate program. The Bachelor of General Studies degree track generally serves students who are interested in pursuing a career in film or media production upon graduation. The curriculum and goals of the undergraduate majors encourages the blending of theory with practice, thus exemplifying FMS’ mission statement to unite the inquiry of the academic with the practice and technique of the artist.
Since the last external review, the Department has adjusted the curriculum of the degree tracks to reflect the KU Core Goals and Strategic Plan of the College, standardize student learning outcomes, and expand outreach and mentorship opportunities. Now two required courses aid in professionalization and integration of skills (Goal 6). Fourteen additional courses have been approved as part of the KU Core, fulfilling Goals 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
In 2015 the department implemented a multi-year initiative to reform course offerings, evaluate and assess student learning, and facilitate progress toward graduation in BA, BGS, and Minor programs. This resulted in streamlining existing courses and requirements within all majors, transforming core courses using flipped, blended, and active learning strategies; creating online and interdisciplinary courses. Minor requirements were revised to create more flexibility and allow for increased specialization within this program of study. As a result, undergraduate majors within the program increased from 130 to 285 from 2015 to 2019. New on-campus facilities – which include a state-of-the-art soundstage, animation lab, and recording studio – have further grown interest in the program and serve an increasing numbers of students.
Quality of graduate programs as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. The graduate program draws students primarily from universities in the Midwest as well as internationally, with above average scores on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), above average GPAs, and a diverse interest in the areas of strength within Film and Media Studies. All admitted MA and Ph.D. students are funded through teaching assistantships (GTA). Since 2011, the Department has
37 awarded 11 MA and 17 Ph.D. degrees. FMS graduate students routinely publish their research in peer- reviewed journals, present at leading conferences in the field, and receive awards and grants at the university-level.
The Department supports graduate students by assigning each new student a faculty mentor who guides them through the program. Students are provided detailed timelines to aid them in managing their time to degree. In addition, the Department in 2019 revised MA and PhD requirements and credit hours to maintain academic rigor while decreasing time to degree.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. The Department combines the advantages of a comprehensive liberal arts education with specific, practice-based skills. The BA and BGS in Production are calibrated primarily toward one sector – film and media – the ubiquitous presence of this kind of technology and practice across every industry provides opportunities for students not only in, for instance, Los Angles (where Jayhawk alumni have a very strong presence) but in Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; London; and around the world. Further, the BA and BGS in Culture and Studies provides students with the in-depth critical and analytical tools that position them not just for work but for further professional training; in the last three years alone, more than a dozen graduates have enrolled in law, business, and medical schools.
Graduates are well-positioned to compete in part through their proximity to the U.S. Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry - the largest in the world. At $717 billion, it represents a third of the global M&E industry, and includes motion pictures, television programs and commercials, streaming content, music and audio recordings, broadcast, radio, book publishing, video games, and ancillary services and products. The curriculum is designed to develop practical and critical skills central to this industry. FMS has further tuned the curriculum to offer not only courses in film production and studies, but also in emerging media. This includes courses in Storytelling with Digital Media, Videogame Theory and Design, animation, and visual effects.
Through the Department’s Career Week in Los Angeles, its Professional Advisory Board (PAB) and alumni network, students regularly meet with professionals for mentoring. Additionally, in Fall 2020 each student in the capstone course met with a professional in their field of interest. These mentors provide valuable perspective and advice; further, we consult yearly with the PAB on curricular issues related to the industry, adjusting the curriculum to meet current needs.
Internships are at the heart of practical training. Students use internships to identify their specific area of interest. The variety of opportunities available is demonstrated in the types and locations – Los Angeles; New York; Washington, D.C.; London (BBC); and Hong Kong. Students who use internships to set their sights have a big early-career jump after they graduate.
With 270 undergraduate majors and 50 minors, enrollment has grown in the last decade. Dramatic improvements in the Department’s four-year graduation rate and four-year retention rate demonstrate the success of revisions to curricula and programming, and additionally are a result of a wise investment in people and facilities by the University.
At the graduate level, faculty provide rigorous and varied training to prepare students for placement both inside and outside academia. FMS graduates obtain jobs in a variety of academic institutions. FMS has
38 placed Ph.D. graduates in tenure-track positions at research institutions including University of Arkansas and Coventry University (UK) and teaching institutions including University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Bridgewater State University, and University of Central Missouri. Ph.D. graduates have also been placed in renewable, non-tenure track positions at leading research institutions such as the University of Iowa and Indiana University. Many M.A. students earn their Ph.D. at KU or US and international research institutions or find employment within education, politics, or arts administration.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The Department takes special pride in its contributions to the international and multicultural interests of the greater University. The faculty includes specialists in African-American, Asian and Latin American history and culture, and the unit maintains close ties with American Studies, Music, Spanish and Portuguese.
The Department contributes to the cultural life of the university and state through varied professional and community service. From advising local film and educational groups to serving on appraisal panels for numerous arts and humanities agencies at the state and national levels, along with involvements on the Kansas and Greater Kansas City Film Commissions. A selection of local, regional and national service examples includes Professor Tamara Falicov, who has served on the boards of the Kansas City Film Commission and Women in Film & TV of Kansas City; Professor Robert Hurst, who in Fall 2020 served as a Media Arts Reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts; and Professor Kevin Willmott, who has served as a juror at the Tallgrass Festival (Wichita), Kansas City International Film Festival, and Lawrence Arts Festival among many others. We make many international presentations as well, through conferences, film festivals and cultural diplomacy missions, all of which enhance KU’s international profile.
Cost Effectiveness. FMS recognizes that KU is faced with unprecedented fiscal challenges. The department’s goal in the last decade has been to balance world-class scholarship, excellence in education and cost-effectiveness. As of Fall 2020 the Department counts eight tenure-track faculty who serve 270 undergraduate majors and 50 minors. Over the fiver-year period 2016-2020, FMS student credit hour production averages 5,000. The doctoral program meets KBOR minima for enrollments and graduates. The master’s programs are below KBOR minima, but the courses are embedded in the doctoral program, making the master’s programs cost-effective.
In the period under review FMS has developed new initiatives, such as client-based rental of facilities, which provide students with practical experience and also diversify funding for departmental activities. Faculty and professional staff further act as excellent stewards of the millions of dollars in technology and production space invested in the Department, taking scrupulous care and utilizing spaces and technology to their fullest extent, with an eye toward growing the reputation and draw of the Department regionally and nationally. KU recommends continuing all programs.
39 Center for Global & International Studies CIP 30.2001, BA/MA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The role of the programs within Global & International Studies (CGIS) is to provide students with a curriculum that seeks to prepare them for the complicated and internationalized world that typifies public life. CGIS offers international expertise, education, and global perspectives on the world through undergraduate and graduate degree programs. CGIS organizes and co-sponsors community and campus activities covering topics of transnational scope. Programs are structured to facilitate skill-building for students in the areas of critical thinking, independent research and writing, and cross-cultural competence. In the private and public sector jobs that many KU students desire, these are the top traits mentioned by employers. Although CGIS programs have certainly highly valued market-demanded skills, these qualities also fit the characteristics of the model citizens and individuals that are prized at a university. The goal of CGIS is to prepare University of Kansas students for the global economy and internationally focused careers in Kansas, the United States and abroad.
The interdisciplinary nature of CGIS programs are focused on an understanding of the dynamics of the contemporary world and also speak to the fact that CGIS degrees are a hallmark liberal arts & science degree for the 21st century. CGIS typically draws students from history, sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics - courses that highlight particular world dynamics and cultural and social realities in various contexts around the globe. Added to that, the core courses required of all students target critical thinking skills, academic and professional writing development, independent and systematic research skills, and foreign language development with a view toward post-graduation employment.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Faculty teaching CGIS courses are some of the best that the university offers across more than 25 programs and departments. CGIS sole in-house faculty is assistant teaching professor – a position that is not on the tenure-track. A tenured faculty member with a split appointment between Humanities and Spanish & Portuguese is serving as the Center’s Acting Director for AY 2021.
The assistant teaching professor mentors students, and the award-winning success of his students from year to year demonstrate his productivity in this capacity. GIST undergraduate students, under his mentorship win undergraduate research awards, Global Scholars awards, present at conferences, and become nominees for Truman, Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships. CGIS can also count steadily on faculty from different disciplines and this allows students to tailor their experiences and interests.
The same is true of the MA in Global and International Studies, which has attracted students interested in areas such as public service, international politics, international development programs, world economies, among others. It MA attracts both domestic and international students.
40 MA students are primarily enrolled in the one-year Interagency Studies Program (ISP) track which was established in 2010, and is designed primarily for officers pursuing their Intermediate Level Education (ILE) program at the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Ft. Leavenworth. The objective of ISP track is to prepare military officers for working in interagency environments by expanding their abilities to conceptualize and address issues beyond their military training.
Faculty for the one-year MA program at Fort Leavenworth includes 3 full professors (Kennedy, Obadare, & Joslyn), two associates (Hanley & Goodyear) and two assistants (Wuthrich & Carter), all of whom have proven to be excellent instructors and productive researchers – though they are homed in other departments. Along with these faculty, a veteran from the State Department teaches relevant courses. The quality of faculty and their excellent course instruction has led the GIST MA program to be consistently desired by incoming cohorts to Fort Leavenworth with a near max-capacity cohort every year.
Quality of program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; demonstrated student need and employment demand. The high quality of the program can be easily assessed by its high demand at the undergraduate level and by the student success rate. Currently there are 171 majors (95 of which are at the junior/senior level) and 27 minors. In AY 2020 the unit awarded 26 BA degrees. Both enrollments and graduates exceed KBOR minima.
Students work closely with the Center and, despite the variety of regional focuses that they have, are provided a unified and strong academic experience. The result of that is a large range of awards, both at KU and beyond. This year, for example, four undergraduate majors received KU’s Undergraduate Research Award, which included a $1,000 scholarship for their mentored research and creative projects. Six students have internships with the International Relations Council in Kansas City, two of them at the MA level. Since 2016, 34 GIST students have interned in Kansas City with globally minded organizations such as “People to People International” and the “International Relations Council.”
Students and alumni have consistently been the recipients of many prestigious fellowships and scholarships. They have included, recently, the Charles B. Rangel Fellowship from Howard University, which provides about $100,000 for graduate school as students prepare for a career in the US Foreign Service. A student was awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship for International Study Abroad Sponsored by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Gilman Scholars are selected from a group of highly competitive undergraduates for study abroad funding. Recipients are awarded up to $5,000 for study or interning abroad. That particular student will study in South Korea in summer 2021. Last year one student also received the Freeman Foundation Scholarship, which provides awards between $2,500 - $5,000 to undergraduate and graduate students participating in credit-bearing internships of six weeks duration or longer in East or Southeast Asia. Another student was a Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellow and received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship for Spain. Students have also been selected for the FMSO Security Affairs Research (paid) Fellowship and to be the Hall Center Scholar (2018-2019) at KU.
41 The institutions where students are placed for graduate school are also evidence of the work that is done in the Center and the quality of CGIS students. In 2020, for example, one of undergraduate major received graduate school offers from Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, the University of Chicago, and Trinity College Dublin, all of them with significant funding. A student was accepted into museum studies programs at University of Leicester and University College London in 2018. Two students were accepted into Harvard University’s Law Program in 2017. That year another student was admitted to Law School at Georgetown and Duke. Degreestats indicates 47% of graduates are employed in the region with a median wage of $48,389 five years after graduation.
CGIS students also receive a number of other fellowships and awards that include the Foreign Military Studies Office award, the University Awards, Class of 1913 Award, the Rusty Leffel Concerned Student Award, the very prestigious Bureau of Political-Military Affairs from the US State Department, Outstanding Presentation awards for the Undergraduate Research Symposium, and the Fulbright Teaching Assistant Award. Students have also interned with the USAID, in the Global Development Lab, Virtual Student Foreign Services, US Department of State, the US Mission to the United Nations, as Eastern Europe and Ukraine Desk Intern for the US Department of State, with the Russian, European, and Nuclear Projects at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), at the Russia and Europe Research Office with the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), with Stanford University’s Rural Education Action Program, Xi’an in China. One student received the Truman, Udall, Boren, Gilman and Schwarzman Fellowships all at once in 2017.
Enrollment in the MA program averages 34 students and annual degrees awarded averages 24 over the five year span AY 2016-2020. Both enrollments and graduate exceed KBOR minima. MA students have received important fellowships such as the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award and have gone on to jobs in public service, international human rights, international business, as well as moved on to PhD programs in a variety of fields, including Political Science, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Educational Technology at KU and beyond.
MA students are especially prepared to understand the complexities of the current world moment. The MA students in the ISP track constantly insist on the positive impact of the curriculum. Graduates, as they move up the ladder of the military or find themselves filling desirable positions in other public service and international institutions, often declare to others the importance of the CGIS program on the career aspirations. The courses combine transferable theories in the social sciences with deep dives into specific contexts and places in ways that are extremely relevant and helpful to the students’ current and future careers.
Service to the Discipline, the University and Beyond The Center’s contributions to KU and general education are many. CGIS builds upon the resources the university offers in area studies, world languages, and international programs, and work to enhance and develop cross regional and interdisciplinary academic, research and outreach programs with local, regional, and national impact. Many of CGIS students pursue double majors with fields such as journalism, education, and history. Given the multidisciplinary dimension of CGIS courses, they are often cross-listed with departments such as Political Sciences, Geography, African and African American Studies, and History.
42
CGIS students must learn a foreign language and study abroad. Although CGIS promote many of the area studies centers’ activities of global reach to its students and the university community at large, it also creates and promote a variety of its own activities, including academic lectures, round tables, informal conversations, and the like. Last year, for example, CGIS organized the webinar "Portraits of a Global Pandemic: Regional Responses," which gathered KU regional specialists and Prof. Renato Lima de Oliveira from MIT and the Asia School of Business to offer an overview of different national/regional contexts during the pandemics. In 2018, Prof. Mariano Siskind, Chair of the Romance Languages Department at Harvard University, gave a talk about his new book about globalization. Every year GCIS organizes the “Global Food for Thought” event, where a KU faculty and/or graduate student talks about his or her research. Led by Assistant Teaching Professor Brian Lagotte, several of CGIS undergraduate students annually present at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. The unit also helps students prepare to go on the job market by inviting speakers to campus to talk about professional opportunities of global/international scope. A common guest is a United States diplomat.
Cost Effectiveness. The Center is very cost-effective with an FY 21 operating budget of under $500,000 and the unit generated more than 2,000 student credit hours in AY 2020. Most of classes for CGIS degrees are taught by KU faculty from other departments, making the program cost-effective. KU recommends all CGIS degree programs continue.
Humanities CIP 24.0103, Bachelor of Arts, Discontinue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. Established in 1947, the Humanities Degree Program is the oldest free-standing program in the United States. TKU’s Humanities Program in its current iteration originated from a merger of the Western Civilization Reading Program, started in 1945, and the Humanities Program, established in 1947. The Western Civilization Program began in the aftermath of World War II as a response to the tumultuous events of the early twentieth century. Faculty from across the university designed and taught a common curriculum based on foundational works in the Western tradition to prepare students to become informed and engaged citizens. In 1997 the two programs merged.
The Humanities Program engages in interdisciplinary teaching and research about what it means to be human. Humanistic thinking is essential because it provides wisdom, perspective, and context for the human condition and draws from multiple disciplines in the pursuit of greater understanding, which is in keeping with KU’s mission to lift students and society by educating the citizens of Kanas, the U.S. and beyond.
Faculty profile: Number of faculty dedicated solely to the program: • of fall 2020, the faculty consists of seven tenured/tenure-track professors Five faculty have 100% appointments in the Humanities; two have 0.50 FTE appointments in Humanities
43 and 0.50 FTE in History and Spanish and Portuguese, respectively). The department is also supported by one non-tenure track teaching professor, two lecturers, and an associate director. Of note, 1 tenured faculty member and 1 lecturer will be retiring at the end of the year, reducing the FTE of the department. Number of faculty teaching core, elective, and general education courses: • Given the small size of the faculty and program, faculty teach core, elective, and general education courses. The Humanities degree has two tracks. There are five required courses for the Global Humanities track and three required courses for the Peace and Conflict Studies track. A minimum of 21 hours of electives must be taken beyond the required courses for the Peace and Conflict Studies track while a minimum of 15 hours is required for the Global Humanities track. As befitting of an interdisciplinary degree, these electives are satisfied from a choice of Humanities courses and courses taught in other departments. There are 28 Humanities courses in the KU Core that fulfill general education requirements. The KU Core has six goals and KU undergraduate students must fulfill all six goals. Humanities offers courses to fulfill each of the goals.
Program Productivity Beyond Number of Majors. Beyond the undergraduate major, the Humanities Program offers two minors, an undergraduate certificate in World Literature, and a graduate certificate in Peace and Conflict Studies. The Program has increased its outreach activities to better connect with the local community and educates students from disciplines across campus. In 2014, the Program developed and taught HUM 175 Kansas Environment and Culture for KU’s Academic Accelerator Program. This required significant time and effort on the part of HUM faculty and administrators with the expectation of sizable SCH for the Program along with the possibility of recruiting additional HUM majors. In addition, the Program actively embraced the KU Core as a curricular challenge and the Core now includes numerous Humanities courses that fulfill general education requirements. Several faculty members recently participated in a workshop to further implement career opportunities and experiential learning into the Program’s curriculum, and the Program has begun offering affordable short study abroad experiences during summer and winter break.
The program faculty has an outstanding level of success in the area of awards; 70% of the department's faculty has received internal and external funding for research. Faculty have been awarded scholarly prizes for their work. The publication productivity of the faculty is similarly impressive. Since 2010 faculty published 6 books, 1 creative work, 7 edited volumes, 22 articles in refereed journals, 29 book chapters, and 17 other published works (non-refereed articles, reviews, invited op-eds, etc.).
Employment Demand. The Humanities Program has designed its curriculum around the idea that students today need skills that allow them to be flexible in the workplace—from work in education to healthcare to service in the public and private sectors. Students not only acquire the competencies needed to succeed in multiple professions, they grapple with the humanistic values of equality, empathy, dignity, human well-being, and justice. Graduates of the Program have entered the fields of business and banking, law, teaching, writing and editorial work, and many have successfully completed graduate study in a variety of subject areas. Degreestats indicates 43% of graduates stay in the region, but does not report a median wage. Payscale.com lists median earnings for the degree as $64,092.
44 Cost Effectiveness and Program Strengths and Weaknesses. The biggest challenge the program experiences is prolonged, significant difficulty in attracting majors and minors. The number of total majors (freshmen-senior) has been falling significantly. Specifically, the program had 27 majors in Fall 2015 but only 7 majors in Fall 2019, a 74% decrease in a 5-year window. The minor in Peace and Conflict Studies shows a similar trend (i.e., 60% drop) and the minor in Humanities has always been low. The pattern for overall SCH is similar with a 39% drop in credit hours over the same window, although the unit continues to produce a large number of credit hours for the size of its faculty, averaging more than 5,279 SCH annually for the most recent five year period. Popular general education courses that regularly enroll a large number of students include: • Introduction to Humanities (HUM 110), which enrolled 285 students in AY 2020 • Western Civilization 1 (HUM 204), which enrolled 249 students in AY 2020 • Western Civilization 2 (HUM 205), which enrolled 118 students in AY 2020 • Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS 120), which enrolled 75 students in AY2020
The Program’s strength is in its faculty. With numerous teaching awards among the faculty and consistently high teaching evaluations across the board, the faculty offer thoughtfully designed courses that explore multiple facets of the human experience, including cultural traditions, historical events, and pressing political problems. The small size of most of classes (usually under 25) means that faculty develop close bonds with students, foster a sense of community in the classroom, and support individualized learning. Faculty have deep connections with numerous units across KU, and several hold joint appointments in other departments. In its teaching and research, the program collaborates regularly with an even wider range of departments and schools at KU. These ties translate into recommendations and connections that enable students to take advantage of KU’s vast resources. KU’s size is one of its strengths, but it can be daunting to students who are new to the Jayhawk community.
The Program’s impact on KU reaches beyond humanities departments and units; it has strong ties with social sciences and STEM departments. The Program has made significant efforts in the past three years to reach out to students in professional schools with relevant courses such as HUM 373 Aviation in American Culture, HUM 363 Perspectives on Science, Math and Engineering along with curriculum-specific sections of Western Civilization I and II for students in the School of Architecture. Many of Humanities courses are available in several formats, both in person and on- line. The Program was able to transition online in Spring 2020 with relative ease thanks to its small size and close-knit classroom communities. The shift was aided greatly by the fact that several faculty have deep knowledge of online and hybrid teaching methods. One of these experts is now a Faculty Consultant with the Center for Teaching Excellence charged with supporting instructors in humanities departments across campus.
Recommendation and Justification: KU recommends discontinuing the degree program and the academic unit, pending the University’s formal review process. Enrollment in the major is low and has been declining. However, the courses in the Humanities are highly valuable to KU and to its students as reflected in their contributions to general education with strong SCH production. Moving courses to other departments will preserve these contributions, however, it is possible at least 2.0FTE positions would not continue.
45 History Department CIP 54.0101, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. As a nationally and internationally prominent department at a major research university, KU historians appreciate the complexity and diversity of the human experience, question simple explanations, evaluate evidence in multiple forms, and offer insightful interpretations with clarity of expression. The department faculty aspire to be a leading student-centered, research-intensive department that attracts and retains talented and intellectually curious students from across Kansas and beyond. The History Department contributes to the mission of the University to “make discoveries that change the world” by supporting innovative new scholarship and excellence in teaching on many aspects of our shared human past.
The strength of the program is derived from faculty with a distinguished record of research and teaching and from the exceptional students who commit to graduate study at KU. The program’s reputation has only been enhanced in recent years, as is demonstrated by the fact that the department jumped seven spots in the US News & World Report rankings for public university graduate programs in History for 2017 (tied for 41st overall with Boston College and UC-San Diego). The program is now a top 20 public university graduate program, and the top-ranked PhD- granting program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at KU by this reputation-based ranking.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The Department continues to serve KU’s mission, despite a significant loss in the number of full- time faculty since 2015. Before 2015, the department typically had around 35 faculty members, but now has 24. The departures and retirements have resulted in the Department having no assistant professors, 12 associate professors, 7 full professors, and 5 distinguished professors.
Current faculty published 157 articles in the past decade, with 22 more currently accepted and awaiting publication. Collectively, 20 were monographs published or currently in press in the past decade. History faculty are active participants at scholarly conferences, presenting 264 papers in the past decade. Department faculty are much in demand as guest lecturers having delivered 252 presentations at other academic institutions in the past decade. When data compiled by the department are compared with the averages from Academic Analytics (AA), it ranks near the top in most categories. KU faculty average 7.5 articles per faculty member, compared with 2 in the AA norm for the top quintile. KU history faculty average 3.4 awards per faculty member (combining the fellowships and awards categories), compared with 3 in the AA norm for the top quintile. Thanks to the expert grant-writing of Megan Greene and Elizabeth MacGonagle in their capacity as directors of the Center for East Asian Studies and the Kansas African Studies Center, respectively, the departmental grant average per faculty member is well over $600,000 per person. In the book category, faculty have published an average of 2 books (monographs, edited volumes, and translations) per faculty member since 2011, which places the History department in the 90th percentile in the country in terms of books per faculty member.
Historians compete for fellowships to support their research and writing, and grants to cover the
46 costs of travel to research sites and conferences. The most prestigious of these fellowships won by department faculty since 2011 are from the National Endowment for the Humanities (won by Erik Scott), Fulbright (won by Nathan Wood and Kim Warren), American Council of Learned Societies (won by Erik Scott and Beth Bailey), Mellon (won by Megan Greene and Andrew Isenberg), Woodrow Wilson Foundation (won by Marie Brown), Carnegie (won by Gregory Cushman), Rachel Carson Center for the Environment and Society (won by Gregory Cushman, Sara Gregg and Andrew Isenberg), Title VIII (won by Erik Scott), DAAD (won by Andrew Denning), and American Philosophical Society (won by Andrew Denning, Erik Scott, and Robert Schwaller).
Faculty have also successfully secured funding from institutions outside the humanities; Gregory Cushman received two grants and Eric Rath received one grant from the National Science Foundation. Christopher Forth received a grant from the Australian Research Council. Additionally, History faculty in their roles as directors of Area Studies centers have brought substantial grant money. Megan Greene has been PI on grants from the Department of Education (Title VI), Language Training Center, Longview Foundation, Japan Foundation, Project GO, and others. Altogether, she has brought nearly $10 million to KU in the past decade. As Director of the Kansas African Studies Center, Elizabeth MacGonagle brought in over $6 million in grants to KU from Title VI and NEH. Overall, current History faculty have won 51 major external fellowships and grants in the past decade.
Current KU history faculty have won 30 awards and prizes from professional associations in the past decade, which places the unit in the 90th percentile compared to other history programs according to Academic Analytics. This recognition testifies to the high regard in which they are held for their scholarship, mentoring, and service. For example, Beth Bailey and David Farber were elected to the Society of American Historians. Several faculty have received prizes for their books in the past decade, testifying to their quality and innovativeness: Marie Brown, Gregory Cushman, Andrew Denning, Sara Gregg, Andrew Isenberg, and David Roediger. Department faculty have also won some of KU’s most prestigious internal awards.
Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. At 125 and 61 respectively, the annual average number of junior/senior majors and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. The median time to degree is 4.0 years. In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 69% of undergraduates are employed in the region with a median wage of $46,767 five years after graduation.
In a world of increased access to information and misinformation, the historian’s expertise in primary source research, bias recognition, critical thinking, and crafting synthetic arguments is ever more important. Undergraduates acquire skills to conduct original historical research and to critically assess extant interpretations. Critically, undergraduate students’ continued enrollment in History courses as electives and as major courses is evidence that student interest in historical topics and their perceived need for skills in historical thinking and analysis remains strong.
Some graduates find positions at historical societies and libraries, become K-12 teachers, or enter other professions. To help History students pursuing the BGS degree to fulfill their professionalization requirement, the Department has created a professionalization course that is also open to students pursuing the BA degree. More pursue graduate degrees, particularly in Law,
47 Library and Information Science, and Education. Some continue in the field of History, earning MA and PhD degrees at prestigious universities, such as Oxford, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Texas.
The doctoral program exceeds minima with 49 students, on average, annually enrolled and 8 graduates averaged annually. The unit receives 32 applications a year for admission. Its excellent record of winning University Graduate Fellowships and Chancellor’s Fellowships has greatly enhanced its ability to recruit students. But responsibly funding students has meant a necessary contraction. In 2008, 37 percent of those who applied were admitted while in 2018 only 14 percent were admitted. Considering trends in employment for History PhDs, in both academic and non- academic employment, and the limited availability of resources at KU for funding graduate student research and teaching, the size of the program is appropriate.
Fully acknowledging the ever-shifting sands of academic employment for Humanities PhDs, the doctoral placement record has been quite good. Over the past decade, 50% of graduates have secured tenured or tenure-track employment while the average for programs is 40%. Yet, more must be done to hold and, if possible, extend these gains. To better understand the challenges, the History Department will participate in the Council of Graduate Schools’ Career Pathways Project, a pilot initiative designed to help universities collect data on the career trajectories of their alumni. In addition, the department intends to build a more robust alumni network to help connect current students to alumni who can mentor them in their respective professions. Finally, among the goals set for the next three years is a commitment to helping doctoral students develop skills that will make them more competitive in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. Developing courses and integrating other opportunities into the curriculum for students to earn expertise in public and digital history is a major objective. Hiring a faculty member who can train students in these areas is an urgent priority.
At 3 graduates per year, the MA program is slightly below KBOR minima for average annual graduates. This in part is the result of intentional recruitment of students interested in pursuing the PhD degree, although students may still opt for the MA if desired. Even though there is not intentional recruitment for the MA, the department attracts 23 applicants annually.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The following table illustrates just some of the service to the profession and KU undertaken by faculty: Service to the Profession Service to KU 3 Journal editorships—ongoing 5 Center/Program, directorships 8 Journal associate editorships 47 Center/Program, other positions 3 Journal special issues edited 23 College/University, standing committees 37 Editorial boards-journals 58 College/University, short-term and ad hoc committees 9 Editorial boards-publication series 4 Faculty/University Senate 2 Heads of professional association 30 Hall Center for the Humanities committees 39 Positions in governing body of 23 Department officer positions professional association 46 Grant, fellowship, or prize committees
48 Cost Effectiveness. When KU’s History Department is compared with history departments in other peer institutions, faculty teach more and larger classes. From 2012 to 2016 departmental faculty (tenure and non- tenure track) consistently taught more than the average in other peer universities. Meanwhile, the student credit hour per FTE as a department has remained steady, even when taken into consideration that within that period the History Department lost a number of faculty due to retirement or departure from KU. This means that the remaining faculty during this period increased the number of students they taught, and also increased the size of their classes.
The History Department also serves a significant number of non-majors. Thus, the footprint of the department is much larger than the Bachelor’s program itself. Annual student hour production routinely tops 8,000. History faculty aim to continue to meet elective student demand and accommodate non-majors in courses. Moreover, given the large number of non-majors served by history courses, faculty are working to encourage high achieving non-majors to also declare a history degree track, either as a double major or minor. Since 2017, more than 100 students (headcount) are annually enrolled in the minor. Finally, the department seeks to increase student credit hours by offering a greater number of courses online and admitting more BA/MA students in its recently approved 4+1 program.
The Department does raise money—about $28,000 per year, almost entirely in small donations. The newly endowed Pittaway Professorship in Military History—established in late 2018 with a $500,000 gift—provides generous research funding for Professor Adrian Lewis, and the Department has three other endowed professorships that similarly support the faculty holding them. Faculty and graduate students have had major success in obtaining extramural support. The unit has shown itself to be responsible stewards of its resources and has excelled despite challenges and limitations.
History of Art Department CIP 57.0703, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The mission of the discipline of art history is to explore the world of art and the world through art. Art History degree programs lift students and society by fostering appreciation for and knowledge of the visual arts throughout history and across the globe. The department’s teaching, research, and outreach help to build healthy communities by fostering awareness and understanding of art as a fundamental expression of human ideas, feelings, values and beliefs; art is essential to the vitality of any society. The original research of departmental faculty and students changes the world by increasing knowledge of the complex and manifold meanings of art in specific historical, social, cultural, religious, political, economic and philosophical contexts.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The excellent reputation of the department is due largely to the scholarly productivity of the faculty. All faculty are prominent in their individual fields. While Academic Analytics does not capture the full breadth of the scholarly productivity, collectively during the review period, faculty published or had in press 21 referred journal articles, 16 books, 41 book chapters, and 80 other
49 published works. They have made almost 280 presentations – 185 of which were invited, and had 10 appointments for editorial work/membership on editorial boards.
Also, during the review period faculty received 50 honors and awards – many of which are prestigious. Fellowships and awards, both in the United States and abroad, include the ACLS, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Kress Foundation, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, Stanford University, The Library of Congress, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, and the New York Public Library.
Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program; At 29 and 13 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. Undergraduate students rate the department well on “quality of instruction in the major”, “intellectual challenge of major courses,” “availability of major courses,” “availability of personal interest courses,” “integration of major courses,” and “ease of obtaining general education courses.” This confirms the department’s excellent reputation for undergraduate teaching. Regardless, the department continually strives for improvement and is rethinking the undergraduate curriculum to truly foster a global curriculum and may also expand the curriculum into the growing field of digital humanities. In terms of career development, the department began hosting internship workshops, and will standardize expectations for its undergraduate capstone course that is required for career preparation.
In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 57% of undergraduates are employed in Kansas/Missouri after graduation. However, the wage data may represent the fact that many program graduates – indeed many seniors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences enroll in graduate or professional schools upon completion of their bachelor’s degree.
Annual average enrollments in and graduates from the MA program also exceed KBOR minima. The department has a 4+1 program that recruits talented seniors into the master’s program and also admits applicants directly in the MA. This approach has resulted in a robust program. The department also plans to pursue a joint MA with Museum Studies. The department measures the need and demand for the MA degree principally through the success alumni realize in gaining employment or admission to a PhD or additional master’s program. Post-KU trajectories of master’s alumni since fall 2011 indicate many MA graduates have attained employment and/or pursued additional graduate study.
Likewise, at 27 and 4 respectively, annual average enrollments in and graduates from the PhD program exceed KBOR minima. The need and demand for the doctoral degree is principally measured through the success that alumni realize in gaining employment. For the review period, six doctoral alumni hold tenure-track art history teaching positions; eleven hold full-time curatorial positions; and six hold lecturer, adjunct, or visiting assistant professor positions. Those with curatorial positions are employed at top museums in the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art at Kansas City, and the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College. The remainder, save one, are employed in a variety of positions including translator and writer for an art museum, public program manager for an art museum, as independent curators, and as a design examiner at the US Patent Office.
50 The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. Through exhibitions, public talks and community forums, the faculty engage broadly with the public. David Cateforis won KU’s 2018 Community Engaged Scholarship Award for his long- term collaboration with the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College. Faculty also have curated highly praised exhibitions. Anne D. Hedeman co-curated with Elizabeth Morrison Imagining the Past in France, 1250- 1500 for the J. Paul Getty Museum; John Pultz curated an exhibition, Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West for Exhibits USA in Kansas City; Sherry Fowler and Maki Kaneko co-curated an exhibition at the Beach Museum of Art, Voices: Art Linking Asia and the West.
Faculty also provide considerable service to the university as noted by service on the following committees which are but a highlight of all the service to the University: Teaching and Learning: Evaluation and Improvement Subcommittee of the KU Higher Learning Commission Reaccreditation Committee; Hall Center for the Humanities Executive Committee; Fine Arts and Humanities Librarian search committee; University Senate Libraries Committee; University Scholarly Achievement Award Committee; Newberry Library/KU Consortium Committee; CLAS Humanities General Research Fund selection committee; University Committee for Promotion and Tenure; Advisory Board for the Center for East Asian Studies; Vice Chancellor for Research Book Award Committee; FLAS Fellowship Selection Committee; Hall Center for the Humanities Fellowship Selection Committee; University Press of Kansas Editorial Committee; and CLAS Faculty Development Focus Group.
Cost Effectiveness. The History of Art Department generates, on average, 4,500 student credit hours annually. It serves a number of non-majors through its general education offerings. In fall 2019 the History of Art minor had a headcount of 80 undergraduates. All degrees meet KBOR minima, the department makes efficient use of its resources, and KU recommends the programs continue.
Indigenous Studies Program CIP 05.0202, Master of Arts – Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The mission of the Indigenous Studies Program (ISP) is to support multidisciplinary research and professional development solidly grounded in Indigenous methodologies, issues, and perspectives. The program does so by equipping students with the knowledge and skills to conduct theoretical and applied research and to develop innovative solutions to issues facing Indigenous communities; educating students to become innovative and capable scholars, leaders, and mentors who bring Indigenous perspectives to academic settings, government and other public service, and the private sector; and connecting students with Indigenous Nations and communities in our region, the U.S., and the world. In particular, ISP engages with and supports Haskell Indian Nations University students, faculty, and staff through the sharing of academic resources and knowledge.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The Indigenous Studies Program (ISP) is a small program, but has an important role within the overall mission of KU; however, ISP itself has one tenure lines, and affiliate faculty with
51 appointments in other departments. The MA program is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and the Program views its role as a catalyst for ensuring a vigorous presence of teaching, research, and service solidly grounded in Indigenous methodologies, issues, and perspectives. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the master’s program, it draws on faculty from more than 15 departments at KU with expertise relevant to the Program. Examples of departments with affiliate faculty include Anthropology, Linguistics, Film and Media Studies, Visual Art as well as faculty in the School of Law and from the School of Journalism. The Program Director has a half-time appointment with the Environmental Studies Program and a half-time appointment with ISP.
To the extent that this section applies to the Program, affiliated faculty contribute to the mission and values of multidisciplinary and Indigenous perspectives and methods in their research and teaching. ISP has a number of eminent scholars among its affiliated faculty. For instance, Professor Sarah Deer, a MacArthur grant recipient and recent inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame, has played a central role in developing the Native American component of the U.S. Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and has made key contributions to the emergence of Indigenous feminisms. Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, Robert Warrior was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018. Warrior, who was one of the six founders and the first elected president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, actively contributes to dialogue on the direction and future of Native Studies. His scholarly work, international reputation, and experience in addressing the organizational and intellectual infrastructural needs of Indigenous studies serve as an important resource for the future of the Indigenous Studies Program. Significantly, Professor Deer is the only member of the KU faculty who is a MacArthur Fellow, and Professor Warrior is one of only two current members of the KU faculty to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Indigenous Studies Program draws on a breadth and depth of faculty expertise at KU, including a wide range of disciplines spanning the arts, sciences, humanities, social sciences, and medical research. Professor Andrew McKenzie (who serves on the ISP executive committee), and Lecturer Philip Duncan work on a range of issues concerning Native language revitalization. Professors Catherine Preston and Joshua Miner in the Department of Film and Media Studies investigate the intersection of media and Indigenous issues. Professor Miner focuses on Native new media producers in areas such as public health advocacy, with a special emphasis on how social media facilitates Indigenous content creation and social mobilization. Professor Preston examines visual culture in the construction of identity and memory. Another faculty member in the School of the Arts, Professor Norman Akers, is an accomplished painter who teaches painting and printmaking as an associate professor in the Department of Visual Art. Professor Peter Welsh, who served as the interim ISP director after the departure of Stephanie Fitzgerald, focuses on representations of Indigenous peoples in museums.
KU’s Indigenous Studies Program benefits from a large number of affiliates who work in the sciences and health professions. Professor Matthew Gillispie (Speech-Language-Hearing) engages in clinical research and intervention involving culturally responsive services for children with speech, language, and literacy 5 disorders, with his work representing the latest generation of work in this area that began at KU decades ago. Faculty in environmental sciences contribute to ISP, as well. Professor Kelly Kindscher (Environmental Studies and the Kansas Biological Survey) is an ethnobotanist who specializes in native prairies and medicinal plants and works closely with archival documentation from Indigenous communities on their uses of Indigenous plants.
52 Professor Jay Johnson (Geography) studies a range of issues having to do with postcolonialism and cultural geography. Professor Brent Metz (Anthropology) works in Guatemala, where he has a long-term project studying the quality of life and the politics of identity among Ch’orti-Maya subsistence farmers. This also is the area where ISP’s new director, Professor Joseph Brewer (Environmental Studies), does his scholarly work, in which he looks at both natural environmental processes as well as ways that Indigenous peoples’ knowledge of their environment informs state and federal natural resource management policy. Faculty continue to do outstanding work that is both internationally and nationally recognized, being awarded prestigious research grants from the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, for example.
The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; demostrated student and employer demand. In the years since the last program review in Spring 2010, ISP has both restructured and contracted. All joint appointments were eliminated except for the Program Director, who has a .5 FTE appointment. A one-year moratorium on admissions was instituted for AY 2011-2012. For the next five years, from 2011-16, attention was focused on graduating enrolled students. Also since the last program review, the director position has undergone significant turnover, stabilizing in Spring 2019 with the appointment of Dr. Joseph Brewer.
Since Fall 2016, program enrollment in the MA has tripled from 5 to 14 and in AY 2019 five students graduated so the ISP program now meets KBOR minima for the number of graduates. Two of the students who graduated in 2019 have been admitted to Ph.D. programs – in art history (University of Iowa) and American studies (KU). A third student has been accepted to KU’s Film and Media Studies master’s program. ISP also developed an undergraduate minor which has a small, but stable, enrollment. Other options the Program offers include a joint master’s and Juris Doctorate with KU Law, a graduate certificate, a dual graduate certificate with the Professional Science Master’s in Environmental Assessment, and options for students outside the program to take coursework.
While ISP is fortunate in having numerous KU faculty affiliated with it, their primary teaching responsibilities are to their home units. Understanding ISP would benefit from having faculty directly appointed to the Program, in June 2019 ISP received approval to conduct a search for a tenure-track and/or tenured faculty hire. As a result, in Fall 2020, Dr. Kent Blansett began his position as the Langston Hughes Associate Professor with a joint appointment in ISP and History. His appointment will support growth for the Program.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. For the review period, the Indigenous Studies Program did not have faculty lines. However, across the university, ISP affiliate faculty in a range of departments and programs contribute time and energy to advancing the program. The diverse backgrounds of affiliate faculty offer a corresponding diversity of involvement in their various disciplines. The following faculty are examples of the diverse yet paramount roles they hold in their fields. There are too many amazing things affiliate faculty are doing to list them all, but each one listed here plays a national and/or international role in their discipline. • Robert Warrior serves in numerous professional capacities, and is internationally known
53 for his scholarly and organization-building work. Warrior is past president of the American Studies Association and was the founding president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. He currently co-edits Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAISA’s journal) and the Indigenous Americas series at the University of Minnesota Press. • Andrew McKenzie serves in several capacities for the Linguistic Society of America, such as the editorial board of Semantics & Pragmatics and the Committee on Endangered Languages and Their Preservation. He also offers service to his Kiowa community in various capacities, such as being part of the planning committee for the Kiowa Youth Language Fair. • Sarah Deer is extremely active in service beyond the university. On the national level, she was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to chair the Attorney General’s Task Force on Sexual Assault in Indian Country, as well as to be a member of the Attorney General’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence. She also served as secretary for the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association and is a member of Amnesty International USA's Maze of Injustice Advisory Committee. • Norman Akers chairs the Osage Nation’s Traditional Cultural Advisors Committee and is an advisor representing Grayhorse district for the Osage Nation. Akers has also served as a research advisor for the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma, and as a judge for the Eiteljorg Museum’s 19th Annual Indian Market & Festival in Indianapolis. • Jay T. Johnson is associate chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science, an author, and a director of C-FIRST, a research center where he is the principal investigator of numerous National Science Foundation grants that bring Indigenous people from all over the world together to build networks for mentoring Indigenous graduate students. Johnson has organized numerous meetings in geographies like New Zealand, Hawaii, Nisqually, Washington, Salish Kootenai, Montana, and Lawrence, Kansas, to capture best Indigenous practices and ideologies for sustainability science. • Joseph Brewer has been the principal investigator of NSF grants collaborating with Gwich’in and Koyukon communities in Alaska on sustainable energy, language, and forestry projects. Brewer created an all-expenses-paid internship with the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments where students can learn about tribal government and participate in service learning opportunities by sharing their skills with Alaska Native communities in education, policy, government, natural resources, and self-determination. • Matt Gillispie is a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Native American Caucus, and served as member to ASHA's Multicultural Issues Board from 2013-15.
Cost Effectiveness. Though the degree program in the unit is undersubscribed when evaluated by KBOR’s minima requirements for majors and graduates, the Program’s AY 2021 operating budget is slightly over $200,000. The Program has made strides in increasing the number of majors and graduates and in AY 2019 achieved KBOR minima for the number of graduates.
KU recommends continuing the MA program. The Indigenous Studies Program is critical to KU’s mission. The degree has a unique curriculum and the Program fosters strong connections with
54 Haskell Indian Nations University. The Program has a new director completing his second year who has made great strides in rebuilding, and the Program recently hired a tenured faculty member with .75FTE appointment in ISP and .25FTE in History.
Office of Graduate Studies Interdisciplinary Studies CIP 30.9999 MA/MS/PhD, Continue
For more than thirty years KU has offered the Interdisciplinary Studies program to students whose research and academic interests cross the traditional disciplinary lines and who cannot, through the curricula of existing disciplinary programs, pursue a degree program that suits their interdisciplinary interests. The program is housed in the Office of Graduate Studies – an administrative unit.
The multidisciplinary nature of the graduate programs in Interdisciplinary Studies allow students and faculty to create a custom plan of study that is tailored to the students’ aspirations for careers in which expertise that spans more than one field is essential. The Office of Graduate Studies (OGS) convenes admissions committees when a student applies to the Interdisciplinary Studies doctoral program. Once admitted, each participating school and department is responsible for mentoring the student. The student’s faculty advisor is required to submit annual reports to the Office of Graduate Studies on the student’s progress.
While only one Interdisciplinary Studies degree has been awarded during the review period, given the specialized nature of the program that is to be expected. The program is cost-effective. All requirements for degrees can be fulfilled by courses routinely offered by the University. No faculty are assigned to the program and what little administrative support the program requires is done by existing staff in OGS. As such, KU is recommending the program continue.
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies CIP 05.0134, Master of Arts - Continue BA/BGS - merge as a concentration with Global and International Studies
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. Established in 1961, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) has been designated and funded by the US DoE as a Comprehensive National Resource Center (NRC) on Latin America in 1983-1988; 1994-2006; 2010-2014; and 2018-2022; during these periods the US DoE has also funded Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students, which cover tuition costs plus a stipend. The current US DoE NRC and FLAS grants to CLACS total $1.7 million over the four-year grant cycle.
CLACS is a leading research center linking faculty, students, and the community from across Kansas, the country, and the world in the interdisciplinary study of the histories, cultures, politics, institutions, economics, and societies of Latin America and the Caribbean. CLACS advances knowledge and seeks solutions to pressing questions related to Latin America and the Caribbean. CLACS works to place this region in a global conversation and to promote a diversity of viewpoints and voices on campus and in the community. Finally, CLACS seeks to provide an
55 environment for learning and working where differences are valued and each person is supported and offered an equitable opportunity to achieve their academic and professional goals.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. CLACS has no tenure lines. Both degree programs housed in the Center are fundamentally interdisciplinary, and the center views its role as a catalyst for ensuring a vigorous presence of teaching, research, and community outreach related to Latin America. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Center’s programs, it draws on more than 115 faculty members at KU with expertise in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, as well as faculty in the School of Business, School of Education, School of Architecture and Design, and the KU Medical Center. The Center Director, a tenured faculty member, has a half-time appointment in an academic department and a half-time appointment with CLACS.
While CLACS is fortunate in having numerous KU faculty affiliated with its center, their primary teaching responsibilities are to their home units. Having only .5 FTE tenure-line faculty assigned to the program as Director has significantly hindered the Center and its degrees.
The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students & student demand. The undergraduate degree program requires three core classes (LAA 100, LAA 300 and LAA 550) typically taught by Center staff, graduate teaching assistants, or one of three lecturers. A minimum of 24 credit hours is fulfilled by taking courses from one of the affiliate departments. Core language classes for the undergraduate degree are offered through the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, the Department of African & African-American Studies (Haitian Creole), or through CLACS (Kaqchikel Maya, K’iche’ Maya, Miskitu, Quechua, and Yucatec Maya). Students must reach proficiency level which is typically done in 16 credit hours.
The Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships funded through the US DoE are available to students interested in learning a less commonly taught language (LCTL) such as Kaqchikel, Quechua, K’iche’ Maya, Mískitu, Haitian Creole, Guaraní, and Portuguese, and provide up to $18,000 for tuition/fees and a $15,000 stipend during the academic year for graduate students or $10,000 for tuition/fees and $5000 for the year for undergraduates. For both graduate and undergraduate students, summer fellowships are also available at $5,000 for tuition/fees and $2,500 for subsistence. A strength of the degree programs is their focus on LCTLs, which has made CLACS competitive for federal funding; course enrollments in these languages are often funded by federal grants. Less commonly taught languages, due to the comparatively smaller numbers of the populations that speak them globally, are often under-enrolled, and CLACS’s LCTL language courses are no exception; these languages have not had widespread appeal across campus (although some of these courses are now attracting some non-degree-seeking students from other universities across the nation, since the format has moved online during COVID-19).
The Center is also an inaugural member of the Tinker Field Research Collaborative, which funds CLACS and ten other Centers nationwide (CLACS funding is $15,000 a year for five years) to support graduate student travel and research in Latin America. The U.S. Department of Education NRC grant, in addition, funds faculty research, travel, and collaborative projects by an estimated
56 $20,000 per year, with additional grant funds off-setting Study Abroad costs to make study abroad more affordable for KU’s students traveling to Latin America.
While the number of majors and degrees awarded have been consistent for both the undergraduate and graduate program, the number of students attracted to and graduating from the programs has been low and are below KBOR minima.
CLACS offers a minor which attracts fewer than 10 students annually. The minor provides students with a solid foundation of instruction on Latin American/Caribbean topics to supplement their primary field. Students emerge with excellent training to enter the professional world or continue in graduate or professional study related to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cost Effectiveness and Employment Demand. Degreestats data are not available, but Payscale.com median earnings for the undergraduate degree are $61,753. The undergraduate and graduate degree programs are cost-effective since they rely on faculty in other departments and some of the Center’s activities are supported by grants. In addition, a four-year, $804,000 grant from the US Department of Education (which has designated KU CLACS a “National Resource Center”) funds a significant portion of the CLACS instructional budget for lecturers and GTAs (varying by year but approximately 68% of the total instructional budget for AY 2020-21). For AY 20 direct instructional expenditures for the unit were $758,209 - 95% covered by estimated tuition generated, endowment income, and external research funding.
Recommendation. KU recommends merging the undergraduate major with the undergraduate degree in Global & International Studies (GIST) and offering it as a concentration within the GIST degree (with details of the new concentration requirements and advising structure to be worked out by CLACS in consultation with GIST) while recommending continuation of the MA program. The undergraduate major in Global and International Studies is a natural home for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS) since the GIST program provides students with tools to understand the rapid and profound changes that are occurring internationally and transnationally throughout the world and across various regions. GIST already recommends students add a minor in area studies, including LACS, so adding a concentration to the GIST degree is a natural next step. GIST had 95 junior/senior majors in Fall 2020 and awarded 26 degrees in AY 2020, creating a strong pipeline for a LACS concentration.
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences CIP 24.0101, BGS in Liberal Arts & Sciences, Continue
Number of faculty dedicated solely to the program • There are no faculty dedicated solely to this program. This program utilizes courses from departments across the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. • All courses offered for the liberal arts and sciences-BGS degree are already taught for the majors in those departments.
57 Number of department faculty teaching: • All requirements for the liberal arts and sciences-BGS degree can be fulfilled by courses routinely offered across the College for the majors in those departments. • The capstone course for this program fulfills the KU Core Goal 6 requirement for liberal arts and sciences-BGS students and also serves other students across the College. Faculty who teach this course have home departments and teach for those students as well.
Program Overview. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) at KU has long offered a non-major option for students. Beginning in fall 2009 the non-major curriculum was refreshed by the College’s undergraduate curriculum committee to reflect the current requirements for the liberal arts and sciences-BGS (LA&S-BGS) degree.
This degree program allows students from across the university to develop a pathway that is specific to their often changing and evolving interests, without having to switch majors. The curriculum is designed to ensure graduates with this degree have a breadth of knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences, and can also specialize in courses that give them the skills required for their post-graduation plans. Beginning in 2015, the College expanded the program with the inclusion of an online pathway.
Students in the LA&S-BGS degree often have strong career prospects that require a bachelor’s degree but not in a specific field of study. Therefore this degree option has broad career applicability for students. Further the capstone course for LA&S-BGS allows students to synthesize their education based on the 5 broad areas of the liberal arts and sciences at KU: interdisciplinary studies, social sciences, humanities, arts, and natural sciences, and apply their knowledge to a final capstone project.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. At 174 and 115 respectively, annual average junior/senior majors in and graduates from the BGS exceed KBOR minima. According to Payscale.com, students with a bachelors in liberal or general studies have a starting salary around $60,000 and go into careers such as human resources, marketing director, operations and management. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is expected over the next ten years in areas such as project management, general management, operations, marketing research and analysis, etc. These are the exact careers that students who pursue the liberal arts and sciences-BGS degree are skilled to do. The Board of Regents’ Degreestats website indicates 69% of graduates are employed in the region with a median wage of $45,950 five years after graduation. The strength of the liberal arts and sciences-BGS program is the flexibility it allows for students who are close to earning their degree in overall hours, but have not managed to find a major or need to switch at the last minute. This degree option is also valuable to a growing population of students who want to earn their bachelor’s before going to nursing school.
Further the LA&S-BGS degree is a great option for transfer students and adult learners who need a flexible pathway to a bachelor’s degree and/or need general professional skill improvement such in areas such as critical thinking, written and oral communication, and research and analysis skills.
58 Cost Effectiveness. CLAS recommends expanding the program to provide focused concentrations for students to pursue that are directly related to post-graduation goals. Not all students that pursue this option plan to go into a career, as some do go on to graduate school. Therefore, a professional study concentration is likely needed in addition to career pathways.
Annual average junior/senior majors in and graduates from the BGS exceed KBOR minima. The program serves a diverse group of students and is very attractive to online students as well as adult learners. The program is cost-effective since students take courses the majority of their coursework in other departments and because the program has no tenure/tenure-track faculty assigned to it. KU is recommending the program continue.
Museum Studies CIP 30.1401, MA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. KU's Museum Studies Program aligns well with the university mission. The program’s mission is to engage in critical examination of museum theory and practice; extend the potential of museums to serve society; and prepare students for leadership in museums. The program accomplishes this mission by following its strategic plan’s goals to strengthen and diversify its teaching resources; diversify the graduate student cohort; expand student opportunities; and establish KU as the country's intellectual center for museum studies.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strength, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. After the most recent external review in 2011, the program was significantly restructured. Most significant was that, for the first time in its 30-year existence, a full-time dedicated program director was hired. The program has 1.5FTE faculty directly assigned. The director serves as the sole full-time faculty line – splitting time between teaching and program administration. There is also one half-time faculty line. The program is also supported by lecturers who are either full-time staff in another position at the university or full-time staff in a museum in the area.
Given that the majority of faculty teaching in the program are homed in other units, their museum studies productivity is judged in that light. Moreover, many who teach in the program are active museum professionals, whose scholarly work is not directed along standard academic channels. For instance, Brittany Keegan, who co-teaches MUSE 703 Introduction to Museum Exhibits and MUSE 704 Introduction to Collections Management and Utilization, is an active curator who organizes multiple exhibitions and manages the collections of the Watkins Museum of History. Most affiliate faculty hold research or professional positions in the Biodiversity Institute or the Spencer Museum of Art, where their work advances knowledge about their particular discipline, be it art history, biology, or paleontology.
The greatest strengths of the Museum Studies faculty are the depth and richness of the experience they have in museums, combined with their commitment to advancing the field by inspiring a new generation of students. They consistently earn high marks on course evaluations, with students noting the real-world experience instructors bring to the classroom in terms of hands-on, practical
59 projects and hard-won lessons learned. Both faculty members with formal lines in Museum Studies have spent decades in museums.
The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. Museum Studies attracts students from a wide range of disciplines. Students come with backgrounds in history, anthropology, art history, biology, English, business, historic preservation, and paleontology, among others. This diversity positions the program to emphasize interdisciplinary learning.
The most significant innovation implemented is the creation of a dual degree. In this arrangement, students can complete two master’s degrees in three years by taking courses that count toward their degree in two different programs. This option has been formalized with KU’s Department of African & African-American Studies, and it is the first of its kind in the U.S. Students have enrolled in the dual degree program each year since its inception. A similar arrangement is close to completion with the History of Art department. Museum Studies is particularly well-suited to this type of innovation because of its inherent – necessary – multidisciplinary approach.
As a professionally focused program, the degree combines courses focused on practice as well as theory. Students are encouraged to orient their studies toward an established area of museum practice – collections, public programming, exhibitions, and leadership – and are offered courses that focus on each of those areas. They are then encouraged to identify courses across the university that build their skillset in a focused way. For instance, a student whose interests center on collections management would take MUSE courses in collections care as well as an art history course on the history of photography or an anthropology course on ceramic technology.
Two other essential elements of the program are internships and research. All students are required to complete an internship under the supervision of a museum professional. These take place on campus or around the country and allow students to work closely with professionals as they refine their knowledge and skills. Students have interned at the Smithsonian Institution as well as at smaller sites such as Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Students produce a final product based on individual research, and again, these span a wide range. The Museum Studies Program also does a good job of moving students through the program efficiently. With only a few exceptions, students graduate in two years with very low attrition.
There are a number of ways to enhance the Museum Studies Program including expanding to offer concepts in fields not currently offered such as nonprofit management, grant writing and development, new media for public presentations, material culture theory, informal learning theory, and design theory. However, the Program’s budget combined with barriers to utilizing the expertise of curators, archivists, or collection managers at KU limit such enhancements.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. The program has demonstrated its effectiveness by the strength of its applicant pool and success of its graduates. Of the 90 students who have graduated from the program in the last 10 years, 77% of them currently work in the field or have gone on to further studies in related disciplines. Graduates from the MUSE program hold positions in large and small institutions across the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, and
60 the National Museum of the Marine Corps. In the region, there are alumni at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, the Kansas Museum of History, and the University of Kansas Medical Center. They work as curators, museum managers, registrars, educators, and exhibitions developers, as well as in a wide range of museum specialties.
Recent changes in admissions requirements increased the quality and diversity of the applicant pool. While the Program exceeds KBOR minima for majors and graduates, faculty limit the number of students accepted to avoid flooding the field with graduates who would not be able to find jobs.
The service the program provides to the discipline, university, and beyond. Museum Studies faculty are active contributors to the field and to the university. Welsh has served as a field reviewer for the Institute for Museum and Library Services (a federal program), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Kansas Humanities. He has reviewed manuscripts for the Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship and Museum Anthropology, and has been invited to conduct external reviews of museum studies programs. He has served on a variety of university committees for the College. Olsen serves on the Museum Studies Program Executive Committee and its Search Committee; she has also sat on the Graduate Studies Advisory Committee and the Biodiversity Institute Executive Committee. She has been an advisor, curator or co-developer on major traveling exhibitions at the British Museum, American Museum of Natural History, International Museum of the Horse (Lexington, Ky.), and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh, Pa.). Olsen’s professional service also includes authoring, co- authoring, or editing five books and numerous articles, speaking at professional societies’ conferences, and performing fieldwork in regions such as Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Saudi Arabia. The Museum Studies Program also relies on lecturers whose principal responsibilities center on units such as Conservation Services at KU Libraries and the Watkins Museum of History. Whitney Baker is a member of the Editorial Committee of the journal Collections, as well as having Professional Associate status in American Institute of Conservation. Steve Nowak is active in the Kansas Museums Association and the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area Advisory Committee. Brittany Keegan has been active with the Kansas Museums Association, and Robert Keckeisen is a member of the Topeka Symphony.
Cost Effectiveness. Due to the small size of the tenure/tenure-track faculty (1.5FTE), the director has been responsible for teaching all core courses, and for the majority of student advising. The Program is dependent on the other, .5% faculty member and lecturers for the majority of the professionally focused courses, and encourages students to take courses across the university. The students take advantage of the diversity of offerings, and have taken courses in fields ranging from architecture to zoology. In addition, all lecturing faculty also play an active role in advising students, supervising student internships, and serving on students’ M.A. committees. The AY21 operating budget for the program is $371,242. KU is recommending the program continue.
61 Philosophy Department CIP 38.0101, BA/BGS/MA/PhD, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. The Department of Philosophy serves the mission of KU in four major educational capacities. First, as a service unit for the KU Core. Second, as an undergraduate degree-granting program. Third, as a Master of Arts-granting program. Fourth, as a Ph.D.-granting program. Of particular note, is the Department’s role as a service unit to the University - a key element in KU's ability to sustain its mission to "educate leaders". Philosophy offers courses that are designed to educate students in the art of critical thinking itself. How to think critically, in other words, whatever else you're thinking about. Given the state of our public discourse, it is more crucial than ever that leaders (in any field) should understand basic logical concepts, basic forms of reasoning, and to recognize logical fallacy when they see it. In this, Philosophy plays a cornerstone role enrolling thousands of students annually – including more than 1,000 in PHIL 160 Introduction to Ethics. PHIL 160 is KU’s most popular ethical reasoning course for fulfilling KU Core Goal 5.1. Philosophy is very proud of its record of educating students in the rigorous study of these fundamental concepts and their application.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. Taking into account the small size of the faculty (14 during the review period), an external review team found the Department is a research leader in the discipline. The Department of Philosophy has three main research foci: ethics (including applied ethics and metaethics), the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of science and the sciences (including philosophy of mathematics). While Academic Analytics does not capture the full breadth of the scholarly productivity, collectively during the review period, faculty published or have in press 112 referred journal articles, 13 books/monographs, 61 book chapters, and 51 other works. They have made 350 presentations – more than half of which were invited, have received 37 honors and awards, and have had 26 appointments for editorial work/membership on editorial boards.
Between 2012 and 2017, the top 15 homes for the Department's publications were in the following highly-regarded journals (in order): Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Quarterly, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Noûs, The Philosophical Review, Journal of the History of Philosophy, the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Biology and Philosophy, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
While grant dollars in philosophy are rare, faculty have successfully secured grants in substantial amounts since the last program review. Grants have been received from: The Murphy Institute at Tulane University (Dorsey, $60,000; Raibley, $60,000); The National Endowment for Humanities (Lascano, $50,400); Templeton Foundation (Lascano, $60,000; Cokelet, $47,500; Cokelet, et. al., $189,938); The National Security Administration Science of Security Project (Symons, $500,000); and The National Science Foundation (Maley, $155,000; Symons, et. al., $2.5m). These are significant grants, and the Department has taken a number of steps to continue to support external grant applications to increase the amount of money coming into the Department.
62 Quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students; demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. At 30 and 13 respectively, annual average junior/senior majors in and graduates from the bachelor programs exceed KBOR minima. Since the last external review, major counts have generally held steady in both graduate and undergraduate categories. This is seen as a comparatively good sign for the department, insofar as major counts in humanities departments have declined during that time. However, the Department hopes to increase its major count with the addition of further introductory courses (which further exposes undergraduates to philosophy). Departmental faculty are also in the process of bringing a version of the extremely popular Philosophy 160 course online, and will (in future years) be offering a new introductory course, Philosophy 170, the Meaning of Life.
In terms of employment, Degreestats demonstrates 47% of undergraduates are employed in region after graduation. However, the wage data may represent the fact that many are enrolled in graduate or professional schools or work outside the region.
Likewise the doctoral program exceeds meets or exceeds minima with 21 average annually enrolled and 2 graduates averaged annually. At 4 graduates per year, the MA program is slightly below KBOR minima for average annual graduates. This in part is the result of intentional recruitment of students interested in pursuing the PhD degree, although students may still opt for the MA if desired.
Upon entering the graduate program, all students are officially mentored by the director of graduate studies. Students also receive additional guidance as instructors from their GTA supervisors and as philosophers from their instructors in courses, and those faculty members whose interests align with theirs. In addition, every entering student, in their first semester, enrolls in Philosophy 800 which is intended to train students in the rigors of philosophical writing, and to provide an individualized assessment of their strengths and weaknesses as compared to other entering students.
Once the student is at the comprehensive exam stage, he/she/they are also assigned a dissertation advisor. This arrangement continues until the student wishes to enter the job market. At that point the student will have two additional advisors/mentors, the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) and the Director of Placement (DP), who oversee the student's job applications and work with the student to enter the philosophy job market. Working with the DGS and DP sometimes outlasts the relationship with the student's dissertation advisor, as the DP and DGS will continue to provide mentoring to the student in question even beyond the Ph.D. and leaving KU---anytime, in other words, the student seeks to apply for employment (until tenure).
The Department is very proud of the diversity of its graduate student population. Students of color (including black, Latinx, and south Asian students) amount to 34% of the graduate student population. If expanded to include all non-white students, that number jumps to 52%. In this case, success breeds success. The program is becoming known as one that is welcoming to students of all ethnic backgrounds in part because of its success in recruiting students from such backgrounds.
63 Though this is not true for all, most who enter a doctoral in philosophy are seeking academic employment in some form or other. And so the success of any program in the field must at least to some extent be judged by its success in getting students jobs that they seek. Of course, any such program must be judged against the background of the exceptionally bad job market in philosophy, and in academia more broadly, over the past decade.
This being said, the Department’s placement record has some bright spots. Taking 2013 as a jumping-off point (the academic year following the last external review), the Department graduated 21 students. Of those, 11 are currently in tenure-track positions, or the equivalent (e.g., Instructional Assistant Professors, 8th Circuit Clerkship, etc.). Four are in continuing positions that are non-tenure-track. One has a postdoc. Five have not yet obtained academic employment (or are no longer seeking it).
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The department has been extremely active in service to the discipline of Philosophy. In addition to the peer review work that faculty conduct (with all the major journals and book presses), they have 37 (according to Faculty PRO) instances of editorial work and membership on editorial boards. This includes, for instance, Dale Dorsey (who is associate editor at the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy), Scott Jenkins (associate editor of the Journal of Nietzsche Studies), Ben Eggleston (co-editor of the Cambridge Elements (Ethics) book series), Marcy Lascano (associate editor of the New Narratives in the History of Philosophy book series, Oxford Press), and John Symons (Texts in Philosophy book series, College Publications).
Furthermore, faculty have been active in Philosophy's national society, the American Philosophical Association (APA). Since the last external review, Dale Dorsey (program committee, Central Division), Marcy Lascano (program committee, Pacific Division), Ben Caplan (chair, program committee, Central Division), Brad Cokelet (program committee, Eastern Division), Eileen Nutting (program committee, Central Division), John Symons (Committee on International Cooperation), Erin Frykholm (session organizer, Hume Society, Central Division), Sarah Robins (program committee, Central Division), Armin Schulz (Committee on International Cooperation) have all been active in administrative roles for the APA. This is in addition to a broad range of organization and committee work for smaller professional organizations (including, for instance, the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, among others).
In addition to service to the profession, faculty have a strong record of service to the University. Department members serving on the UCCC (Eileen Nutting), CUSA (Jason Raibley), CCPT (John Symons), College Research Excellence Fund (John Symons, Armin Schulz), College Academic Council (Brad Cokelet), Faculty Research Committee (Faculty Senate, Sarah Robins), Hall Center Executive Committee (Sarah Robins, Marcy Lascano), Graduate Studies Committee (Armin Schulz), GRF Review Committee (Brad Cokelet, chair), Curricular Integration Committee (Marcy Lascano), and in CLAS Administration (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Ben Eggleston).
Cost Effectiveness. The Philosophy Department generates, 9,425 student credit hours annually when averaged over the five year period AY 15- AY 19. It serves a number of non-majors through its general education offerings as well as its minor which had a headcount of 55 students in Fall 2020. It is also worth
64 noting that key courses are regularly offered online, which contributes to KU's ongoing outreach to students who would not otherwise be able to complete a University education. In addition, the Department produces a level of student credit hours per FTE that is well beyond the average for AAU peers. All undergraduate and doctoral degrees meet KBOR minima, the department makes efficient use of its resources, and KU recommends the programs continue.
Religious Studies CIP 38.0201, BA/BGS and MA, Continue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and role of the institution. In 1977 the University of Kansas established a Department of Religious Studies rooted in the teachings and curriculum of the Kansas School of Religion (KSR). KSR was founded in 1921 as an interdenominational cooperative with a curriculum that included the historical critical study of traditions other than Christianity as well as Christian traditions. In the early 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions that explicitly authorized the non-devotional teaching of religion in public institutions. KSR began to look to the state of Kansas for support, and in 1977 the University of Kansas established a Department of Religious Studies that incorporated the non- devotional teaching work of the KSR.
The department engages in the critical study of religion as an enduring aspect of human culture, with attention to religious traditions and beliefs in all their diverse historical, regional, and cultural complexity. Instruction and research about religion in an academic context are central to the university’s mission of educating future leaders and global citizens.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. In Fall 2013 the department included 10 tenure/tenure track faculty. As of this submission, the department has 5.5 FTE which will further reduce to 5.0 FTE in AY 2022. Reductions are primarily due to retirement and there are no plans to refill the positions.
The strength of the Department of Religious Studies at KU is the quality and dedication of the faculty. Though the department is small, with just 5.5 FTE tenured/tenure-track faculty, it has an outsized influence on KU in many ways. The curriculum supports other units in the College, in some cases providing required courses for their programs. It also speaks to the rich disciplinary, linguistic, and area studies diversities of its faculty specializations.
Since its last review, department faculty have published, or have in press, a total of 9 books (including two revised editions); 11 edited volumes and special journal issues; 25 refereed journal articles; and 39 book chapters (3 of which entail translations; 2 revised for republication). Over the past decade, department faculty have also maintained a consistent record of research presentations. Invited lecturers at major academic institutions total 27 (5 international; 2 regional); aggregate invited and other conference and professional society paper presentations number 118 (38 of which were international; 18 regional), for a total combined figure of 145 professional presentations of research.
Five faculty have been awarded a total of six competitive year-long to multi-year research grants
65 or fellowships, including Brody (University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral), Lindsey (JSPS/SSRC, for 2 yrs.), Miller (NEH, multi-yr.), Stevenson (ACLS and NEH fellowships, each yr.-long), Zahn (University of Wisconsin, Madison, postdoctoral). Three faculty have received a total of five summer or shorter term research grants and fellowships: Miller (NEH Archival Res Grant), Zogry (NEH and AAR summer research grants; 2 total), Stevenson (ACLS summer research grant and International Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Tokyo, summer residential fellow; 2 total). Two faculty have received national recognition for a total of four outstanding books (Brody, National Jewish Book Award Finalist; Miller, three Choice and one RQ Outstanding Academic Book citations for total of 3 books), and two awards were received for distinguished professional contribution and service (Miller, Communal Studies Association Distinguished Service Award; Mirecki, Lifetime Membership in the International Association of Manichaean Studies). Finally, two faculty have been invited for a total of five semesters to year-long appointments as visiting professors: Miller (Dartmouth College), Stevenson (Leiden University, Numata Professorship in Buddhist Studies, 2 times; Harvard University, which had to be declined; University of California, Berkeley, declined for health reasons).
The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. As the only degree-granting program in religious studies at a public university in Kansas, the department remains committed to educating and mentoring students, contributing to religious literacy on campus and beyond, and producing high-quality scholarship. Undergraduates rate the quality of instruction, the ease of meeting with instructors, the challenge of classes, interest in classes, and the quality of academic advising/guidance at the highest level. Likewise, graduate students rate the quality of graduate instruction as very good to excellent. Assessment rubrics illustrate that faculty are dedicated to students and their input, and challenge them as well as care about their academic progress and well-being. Faculty continue to update the undergraduate curriculum, offering a variety of new in-person courses while expanding the number of online classes. These efforts have increased student credit hour enrollment in online courses from seven percent in AY 2018 to 38% in AY 2020. The online format makes religious studies courses accessible to a wider array of students. It is now possible to complete the minor in religious studies solely through online coursework.
The department recently completely revamped its graduate curriculum, with focus on theory-and- method-oriented seminars especially suited to engaging students with a variety of specialized interests around a common set of theoretical questions. These changes better prepare students for success both in the MA program and in potential PhD study. The success of these initiatives can be seen in the assessment rubrics, which indicate that student satisfaction with the curriculum has greatly improved. The MA program provides intensive, individualized attention to graduate students which equips them with the resources necessary to successfully complete their program and prepare for the next step, whether that be PhD study or employment. One measure of quality is the number of students who are accepted to PhD programs. Despite the unit’s small size, in the past ten years it has placed students in some of the most prestigious doctoral programs in the country, including Indiana, Brown, Duke, Syracuse, UT-Austin, and UVA, among others.
Demonstrated student need, employer demand, and cost effectiveness. Religious Studies programs are of value to a wide range of employers by providing a productive workforce that is innovative and multidisciplinary. The transferable skills gained by the study of
66 religion include appropriate methodologies in diverse areas of research, the ability to evaluate evidence and argument, problem solving, the making of informed choices, appreciation for diversity, creative thinking, teamwork, time management, and diverse communication skills. While most students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree tend to leave the region or pursue graduate degrees at KU or elsewhere, Payscale.com indicates those with religious studies undergraduate degrees earn between $51,379 and $57,321.
After completion of the MA degree, graduates find full-time employment if they want it. However, many move on to PhD programs; for example, 17 graduated MA students from the period 2014- 20 are currently enrolled in (or have recently completed) PhD programs and several will soon apply for post-docs or tenure-track positions in higher education. MA graduates prior to 2014 who earned PhD degrees have all found employment in their chosen fields, further demonstrating employer demand for professors and/or administrators who have completed the MA program and then completed the PhD While the number of students enrolled in the MA program is below minima, the number of graduates – four – is close to KBOR minima, indicating that students are well-supported, both financially and academically.
The first and foremost step a university can take towards cost-effectiveness is ensuring the retention and success of the students it admits. A primary factor in student retention is the perception that professors are approachable, and care about the students’ education. As a small department, Religious Studies is key to this effort. Moreover, the program is cost-effective. Despite being one of the smallest departments in the College, the department delivers the major and all its courses. Departmental courses accounted for an average of 1,888 student credit hours per year from AY 2018-2020. The cost to run the department is relatively low, and its production of student credit hours provides support for the program. In addition, the department has a modest endowment which provides full support for graduate students.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. Religious Studies offers 32 courses in the KU Core. The department continues to serve general education at KU with its recent development of three new courses for the KU Core and an additional two in development to satisfy Goal 5 Social Responsibility & Ethics. Though often regarded as professional service, election as executive editor or member of the editorial board for a professional journal or book series, as well as election to steering committees and national and international 11 professional societies, demonstrates respect from distinguished colleagues in one’s field. Between time of appointment and 2020, 3 faculty (Miller, Stevenson, Zahn) have served as executive journal editors for a total of 4 peer-reviewed journals; 3 faculty (Zahn, Stevenson, Miller) on a total of 6 peer-reviewed journal editorial boards; 2 faculty (Stevenson, Miller) as editors/co-editors for 2 peer-reviewed university-press book series; 2 faculty (Zahn, Miller) on editorial boards for 4 peer-reviewed book series; and one (Zogry) on the UPK editorial committee. During this same time period, 4 faculty (Brody, Miller, Zahn, Zogry) have been elected to serve as an officer or member on 9 standing committees of a total of 6 national/international professional societies, online workshops, or national grant agencies; 4 faculty (Miller, Mirecki, Stevenson, Zogry) to serve on 8 unit steering committees in 4 national/international professional societies; and one as unit steering committee co-chair for a national/international professional society (Zogry, two 3-year terms + 1 year).
67 Service to the public—talks and interviews delivered through a variety of venues and platforms, both national and international, and to difference audiences, both public and scholarly—is outreach the full faculty not only enjoys but understands as part of the mission of a state university to inform and engage the public. Rather than promoting particular religious viewpoints, religious studies scholars, by contrast, strive to understand and compare religions in terms of their internal logics and significance to their adherents.
Recommendation: KU recommends continuing the unit’s degree programs. Junior/Senior majors at the undergraduate level have increased from an average of 15 to an average of 18 for the three year period Fall 2017-2019. In AY 2018 the department awarded 12 undergraduate degrees and in AY 2020 increased to 15 degrees awarded — both of which are above KBOR minima for the number of graduates. The program makes substantive contributions to the general education curriculum. With the increase in both online and general education offerings, and the ability of the program to offer its minor through online coursework, such contributions will continue to grow. . Additionally, the graduate program recently has revamped its curriculum to make students even more competitive in their future endeavors.
These recent changes have potential to offer new avenues for student recruitment. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences will work with the department to increase the number of majors, building on the progress the department has made in meeting KBOR minima for graduates. Religious Studies also offers a strong cost-benefit ratio in terms of operating expenses. As demonstrated during the Board’s strategic alignment review, the department is cost-effective. It generates almost $1 million annually in estimated tuition, external research funding and endowment funding, an amount that exceeds the cost to run the unit.
Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies CIP 05.0110 Master of Arts - Continue Bachelor of Arts - merge as a concentration with Slavic and Eurasian Languages & Literatures
Program Support for University Mission. KU’s Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies Program has been an interdisciplinary academic program since 1959 and became a Center in 1965. The beginnings of the Center go back to the Committee on Slavic and Soviet Area Studies (SSAS), founded in 1958. It originated in recognition of the challenges posed to the U.S. educational system by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik and was instrumental in KU gaining national prominence as a leader in teaching and research about this area of the world. The program had its first director in 1960 and became a U.S. Department of Education Title VI Comprehensive National Resource Center (NRC) in 1965 and received Title VI funding through 2014. The center was again awarded NRC funding from the Department of Education, 2020-22.
The mission of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES), both as a resource center and as an academic program, is to meet the national need for Russian, East European & Eurasian specialists in all sectors by producing students with superior training in language and area studies and to be a resource locally, regionally, and nationally. The CREES mission aligns with the international dimension of KU’s overall mission as well as its teaching,
68 research, and service components.
The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. CREES programs have no faculty dedicated solely to them; the programs are fundamentally interdisciplinary and the center views its role as a catalyst for ensuring a vigorous presence of teaching, research, and community outreach related to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. All CREES degrees require students to take courses across a number of humanities and social sciences programs. Because of the interdisciplinary nature, programs draw on more than 45 faculty members and courses from 14 different KU departments and schools. Core language classes for the degree are provided through the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages & Literatures; other core courses are taught by a CREES staff member. Electives are fulfilled by taking courses from one of the affiliate departments and those courses taught by faculty in those departments.
Program Productivity Beyond Number of Majors. Since 1995, CREES has run an intensive summer Ukrainian language program in Lviv, Ukraine, which is the only in-house Ukrainian language study abroad program operated by a U.S. university and thus has unique value for the entire U.S. university system The role of outreach in area studies centers serves the critical functions of (a) educating the public, (b) integrating faculty and building professional community, (c) recruiting future students, (d) garnering prestige in the academic, government, business, and public arenas, and (e) enhancing institutional and individual funding opportunities. CREES has done a tremendous job in fulfilling these functions despite very limited resources. KU is the only university between the Mississippi and Pacific coast, with the exception of UT-Austin, with a REES center doing public outreach.
There is currently only one high school in the state of Kansas teaching Russian language. In conjunction with the Slavic and Eurasian Languages & Literatures Department (SELL), CREES was recently awarded a $120,000 institutional grant from the U.S.-Russia Foundation to work in partnership with Kansas high schools and the Kansas Department of Education to articulate the professional advantages of a critical language like Russian. As part of this grant-funded effort, KU will offer one year of elementary Russian online at no cost to high school students in Kansas.
Many CREES-affiliated faculty do exemplary individual public work with op-eds, translations, lectures at military bases, contributing content to the internet, organization of panels. CREES’s outreach events are many and well attended. Over 10,000 people were impacted by CREES outreach programming from 2014-2018, many of whom viewed videos, instructional materials, and other resources on CREES’s website or its YouTube channel. Some CREES videos on YouTube have had as many as 1.5 thousand viewers. CREES also hosts the WWI Commemoration website, which 90,000 viewers have visited. CREES’s outreach data for Fall 2018–Fall 2019 documents 106 events at which an estimated 855 people attended, along with weekly brownbag series.
Cost Effectiveness and Employment Demand. In a 2017 comprehensive survey of alumni over the last 50 years, results indicated a history of consistently high-quality training for area specialists in successful careers with 54% still using skills they learned in the program. As indicated by job placement data, CREES graduates have gone on to become specialists and leaders in a wide range
69 of fields, from government and higher education to NGOs and the private sector. Degreestats indicates 64% of program graduates at the undergraduate level are employed in the region and have median earnings of $49,010 five years after graduation. AY 20 direct instructional expenditures for the unit were $289,046 representing .0004 of KU’s operating budget.
The cost-effectiveness of CREES has been positively impacted by the reduction of 2.0 FTE program staff since the last program review. However, the remaining 2.5 FTE staff handled roughly the same amount of work. This review will result in the Center reducing the number of events, creating more collaborative opportunities with other departments, and to strive for greater impact per event to reduce staff workload. In addition, Title VI funding will allow for the hiring of a half-time office manager.
Program Strengths and Weaknesses. While CREES is fortunate in having numerous KU faculty affiliated with its center, their primary teaching responsibilities are to their home units. Not having a full-time in-house teaching faculty member and relying on part-time lecturers and teaching by staff for core courses has significantly hindered the Center and enrollment in degree programs. The unit has a number of curricular changes planned, including the development of an undergraduate online certificate primarily for active-duty military. With CREES being awarded Title VI funding again, they will be able to hire a visiting faculty member for two years with the grant funding which could result in additional content courses relevant to the region as well additional enrollments and graduates for the MA program which are below KBOR minima.
Recommendation: KU has recommended merging the undergraduate REES major with the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages & Literatures (SELL) and offering it as a concentration within the SELL degree where it would offer students of language, literature, and culture more interdisciplinary study options in history, geography, political science, and the professional schools. CREES works very closely with the SELL, by providing an interdisciplinary approach to their work on language, literature, and culture. The MA program is recommended to continue.
Visual Art Department CIP 50.0702, Visual Art, BA/BFA and MFA, Continue CIP 13.1302, Visual Art Education, BAE and MA, Discontinue
Centrality of the program to fulfilling the mission and the role of the institution. KU is a major, comprehensive research and teaching university that serves as a center for learning, scholarship, and creative endeavor. The Department of Visual Art supports the core mission of the university by providing artistic, scholastic and interdisciplinary instruction across eight areas of inquiry: Ceramics, Expanded Media, Metalsmithing/Jewelry, Painting, Printmaking, Textiles/Fibers, Sculpture and Visual Art Education, providing students with professional degree granting programs, internationally recognized faculty and a low student to faculty ratio that provides comprehensive and rigorous opportunities to learn and to excel in a competitive field. The Department also supports the University’s commitment to serve the state of Kansas, by supporting outreach activities such as workshops, portfolio reviews, lectures and exhibitions in public schools and other government agencies.
70 The quality of the program as assessed by the strengths, productivity, and qualifications of the faculty. The Department of Visual Art has twenty-two full time faculty, all holding terminal degrees in their fields. The faculty have accumulated an impressive record of 853 solo and group exhibitions at museum, art center and gallery venues. The scope of these exhibitions demonstrates the faculty productivity at the local, national and international level. A brief list of professional achievements includes animated film and video screenings in Berlin, Germany, Barcelona, Spain, and Auckland, New Zealand, collaborative multimedia performances in Chicago, IL and New York, NY. In 2015, faculty in sculpture and ceramics participated in an artist exchange in Shenzhen, China that led to faculty hosting artists from China, during the 2016, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference in Kansas City. Faculty have been acknowledged with awards for research and teaching, including the Hall Center Creative Work Fellowship, Research Excellence Initiative, College of Arts and Sciences, and the Diversity Scholars Program, Center for Teaching Excellence, with sabbatical leaves and numerous travel grants. The many important collections that have acquired artworks by the faculty are a testament to their importance in the field and ensure their longevity in the public sphere. A selection of the collections that include art work by Visual Art faculty; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Public Library and the Frans Masereel Centre, Kasterlee, Belgium.
The quality of the program as assessed by its curriculum and impact on students. The foundation of the Visual Art program is a collection of beginning courses for two semesters that include Drawing I (Art 101), Drawing II (Art 102), Art Concepts and Practice (Art 103) and Art Principles and Practice (Art 104). Some students are quite advanced in their drawing and making skills when they arrive on campus. Other students new to campus have had little opportunity to hone abilities in drawing, critical thinking, and art practice. The foundation classes prepare students for intensive and concentrated study in Visual Art. Broad studio opportunities and environments provide remarkable exposure to 2-D, 3-D and 4-D media. Students choose 5 of 7 possible fundamental courses in focused areas: Ceramics, Expanded Media, Metalsmithing/Jewelry, Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Textiles/Fibers. Students build knowledge of art practice across media, which assists their ability to begin to focus their interests, build their skills and recognize aptitude. In the Visual Art Education program students take a similar array of courses.
The junior and senior level courses lead the students to their capstone experience and prepare them for a creative career in the arts. Students learn to prepare grant applications, draft resumes, propose exhibition plans, or business plans, apply for screening opportunities, present public art interventions, apply to graduate school, or other post-graduation opportunities (Fulbright, art residencies, internships, Peace Corps, Teach for America, AmeriCorps, International teaching, etc.). During the final two semesters students meet together with a professor in a seminar setting to develop and hone their individual creative research. This provides students with professional and immersive experiences that are carried on for their creative careers after graduation. In the Visual Art Education program students combine professional courses in pedagogy and studio art, enabling them to be K-12 licensed educators.
71 At the graduate level, the department offers a 3-year Masters of Fine Arts program with concentrations in all the areas of study. This highly competitive and diverse program maintains a contemporary approach to teaching studio arts as well as philosophy and critical theory in the arts. The first two years of the program are transformative for MFA candidates as they all participate in an intensive graduate seminar. Community building, critical thinking and individuality are emphasized through the program. In the final year, students complete their thesis working closely with a committee of 3-4 faculty members.
Demonstrated student need and employer demand for the program. Students enrolled in departmental courses and programs aim to deepen their visual art knowledge and skills while preparing to be artists, critics, arts administrators, small business owners, and teachers in schools, museums and community settings. Student demand exceeds KBOR minima requirements for the Visual Art program. For the five year period AY 15 through AY 19, undergraduate junior/senior majors and degrees awarded annually average 68 and 34, respectively. At 22 and 7 respectively, graduate program enrollments and degrees awarded annually during the same five-year period also exceed minima.
Study and practice in the visual arts prepare students to be flexible, reflective, open-minded, and curious individuals who recognize that active and continual learning is essential to professional success. Fortunately, there are many options for employment in the arts as well as opportunities to exhibit and work in numerous settings in the arts. According to the National Endowment for the Arts Report (2019):
Nearly 2.5 million workers are artists as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The following data includes those who are either self-employed or wage-and-salary workers. In addition to the 2.5 million artists in this category, there are approximately 333,000 workers who hold secondary jobs as artists.
Graduates from the Department of Visual Art have proven to be very competitive in the arts job market, many are professional artists, public art administrators, designers, professors, art handlers, art directors, filmmakers, curators and hold many other arts related occupations. Statistics indicate that Visual Art graduates earn, on average, $59,525 after five years in the profession.
The service the program provides to the discipline, the university, and beyond. The Department of Visual Art provides service to the discipline, the School of the Arts, The College of Liberal Arts, the University the community and beyond, in the following ways. As commensurate with the university mission, the Department of Visual Art is committed to offering the highest quality undergraduate, professional and graduate programs. The department does so by providing professional degrees, masters degrees and in collaboration with other departments, offers courses to fulfil degrees in Art History and Theatre. Visual Art also has a robust Minor offered to students across the University. These programs contribute to the discipline of visual art and creative arts through outstanding and diverse programs, that share distinction in national and international recognition. The arts and other creative enterprises are enriched locally, nationally and internationally by the students who earn these degrees and go on to be productive members of the arts.
72 The Visual Art Department provides service to the State of Kansas through its research programs and research centers. KU's academic programs, arts facilities and public programs provide cultural enrichment opportunities for the larger community.
The Department is dedicated to preparing students for lives of learning and for the challenges educated citizens will encounter in an increasingly complex and diverse global community. Moreover, students from these creative programs are equipped for creative problem solving, collaborative experiences and a diverse array of career opportunities that exist in the arts globally. Graduates are expected to be able to think critically, to plan intelligently, and to contribute creatively to diverse communities. The Department has the distinction of having educated a growing number of renowned artists and educators who have shaped the field of contemporary art as we know it, and contributed to communities far and wide, locally, nationally and internationally.
Cost Effectiveness. The Department of Visual Art offers crucial one-on-one instruction in studio art and specialized instruction in small class settings, typically 8 -18 students per class. Visual Art faculty teach four courses per year, in addition to one-on-one graduate instruction, as well as conduct research and perform service. This assures the department realizes maximum instructional efficiency of its full- time faculty resources. This efficiency is indicated by the unit’s direct instructional expenditures in AY 2020 totaling $3.65M - 85% of which was offset by estimated tuition, fees, and endowment and research funding. Faculty also hold administrative positions within the department including, Department Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies.
While the academic unit has faced many challenges over the previous 10 years including but not limited to; faculty that have required significant medical leaves, retiring faculty that have not been replaced, a structural relocation from the School of Fine Art to CLAS, and increasing tuition which has recently stabilized. Despite these challenges the unit has recently seen a rise in credit hour production from a low of 4,616 SCH in AY 17 to 5,088 SCH in AY 20. The department has implemented strategies that have helped realize this goal including the addition of an undergraduate Minor and inclusion of courses in the general education curriculum. From 2014 to 2020 there has been a 35.6% increase in 300 and below level courses and 300-699 level courses stabilized in 2018 and increased in 2020. For the Minor, head count enrollment more than doubled from 2016 to 2020 from 48 to 113. Sixty Minors were awarded during that timeframe.
In October 2020, KU initiated discontinuance of the Bachelor of Visual Art Education and the MA in Visual Art Education (CIP 13.1302). Both the bachelors and masters are below KBOR minima for enrollment and degrees earned and have been routinely under-enrolled for the past 8-10 years. Faculty retirements also played a role. Currently there is only one tenured/tenure-track faculty member in the department with skills in visual art education due to the recent retirement of the other tenure/tenure-track faculty member. These two faculty have routinely been assisted by a Visiting Assistant Professor/lecturer. KU does not have the financial ability to re-build the faculty in this specialty, particularly in light of the relatively low student demand for the program. Closure of the program will generate annual savings of at least $100,000.
KU recommends continuing the BA, BFA, and MFA Visual Arts (CIP 50,0702). The degrees, Minors, and courses are highly sought after by students, enrollments and graduates exceed KBOR minima, and the unit has successfully grown despite a number of challenges.
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