College

Question:   List what you believe are the three top issues you think are most important for faculty in your COLLEGE
Items in Ariel 12 pts font are actual responses
Format of responses: (Issue Rank [1, 2, 3]) <Response>
Edited responses are in […]

Governance

Agility

(2) Responding to emerging opportunities in the city and on the campus

(3) Maintaining current awareness of campus priorities

Shared Governance

(1) Assure a full process of shared governance

(2) Shared governance

Department-Level Governance

(1) Improving the governance of a couple of departments

(3) Reorganization of the college departments and doctoral programs

Planning

(2) Developing a realistic, pragmatic and implementable plan for the future of the college, understanding that such a plan will always be a compromise between the ideal and the practical

(2) Excessive reliance on numerical metrics such as number of papers published and dollars brought in, almost at the expense of scholarship

Policies

(1) Policies governing students progress towards graduation and completion of degrees

(2) For faculty policies governing the quality of professional opportunities and recognition of contributions of faculty

(3) Work on issues of Academic Honesty and Ethics

Other

(1) Stronger governance

(1) Firm written commitments by Dean

(3) Administrative structure, specifically, the problems that have arisen since the merging of the arts and social sciences

(2) Greater autonomy from a university central bureaucracy that micromanages or, at a minimum, greater transparency in the rules that are applied. Do we really need, for example, a Dean for Graduate and Professional Studies?

Students

Recruiting Students

(2) Support for recruiting students at undergraduate and graduate levels

(3) Attraction and retention of minority student body

Serving Students

(3) A coherent approach to undergraduate (and perhaps graduate as well) writing and research; the QEP initiative is a good start in this direction but it ultimately needs to take shape at the college level

(3) Developing a coherent approach to providing for the academic needs of two very distinct and separate student bodies within the same college

(3) Improving services to students (advising, career counseling, tutoring)

(3) Mentor students on a more personal level, including entering freshmen, graduating seniors (to transition to graduate school) and graduate students

(3) Recruiting better students and new faculty

Graduate Program

(1) Ph.D. programs

Student Quality

(1) Improve student quality

(3) Increase in undergraduate student quality

Faculty

Faculty Recruitment

Attraction and Retention

(2) Attraction and retention of minority faculty

Increasing Quality of Hires

(1) Attracting good faculty

Increasing Quantity of Hires

Increasing Tenure Track Faculty

(1) Provide tenure track positions; stop using instructional and research faculty as default for tenure track

(1) Overreliance on adjunct faculty

General Need for Increase

(1) New hires

(2) Have a competitive budget to support recruitment and double faculty size in departments

(2) More faculty

Faculty Support and Development

(1) Rebuilding junior faculty confidence in the concept that the future will not just be a version of the failed past that they (rather than their senior colleagues) will have to deal with moving forward in the next decade

(2) Mentor tenure track faculty

(2) Development of the clinical faculty, career mindset rather than just a job, a greater commitment to the academic academy

Salary and Benefits

Set-Up Packages

(1) Obtaining more resources for new faculty set up packages

Pay Fairness

(1) Salaries & salary equity

(1) Salary inequities among faculty

(2) Salary [Fairness] ([XXX] faculty seem to earn less than faculty from other colleges)

(3) Compensation for supervising doctoral students and other related duties

(3) Disparities in faculty salaries and startup packages

Benefits

(3) Benefits

Salary Compression

(1) Faculty salary issues above; the year UH provided NO merit or cost of living raises was more of an faculty issue than was acknowledged by our Administration. Doing so midyear at reducted level did not compensate

(1) Salary compression

(3) Salary compression

Salary Inversion

(1) Salaries they do not compare favorably to Carnegie I schools and it is causing us increasing difficulty in hiring without grotesque salary inversions

Salary Increase

(1) Faculty Salaries

(1) Faculty salary

(1) Salary increase

(2) Faculty Salaries

Research

Research Support

Internal Support

Funding

(1) More investment in research

(2) Financial support for Faculty travel and Research

(2) Funding for research and teaching

(2) Increase research funding, especially for smaller projects that just need things like subject money

(2) More research and travel funds available, continued support for faculty research

Infrastructure

(2) Dysfunctional University Grants & Contracts shop

(3) Improve support for grant writing

(3) Research support

External Support

(2) Lack of a client base for research, and dependence upon local community agencies for client centered research

(2) More development on external funding

(3) Research Infrastructure at UH level. Collaborative research agreements with Medical Center complexes, to ensure we can participate equally at those sites with research

Research Quality and Output

(1) The research push and mistaken view of what constitutes research

Facilities

Library

Support

(1) More aggressive support for more library resources serving the disciplines in the college. The UH is seriously under resourced when it comes to databases and electronic resources needed for research and teaching

(1) Strengthening administrative and faculty support for the library

(2) Insuring that both the faculty and university administration support the libraries

(3) That the faculty and university administration recognizes the Library as a very valuable asset

Cooperation

(1) Making sure the Library is involved in advancing the University’s push to a tier 1 institution

(2) Ensuring role of librarians and library in Tier 1 initiative (including research clusters" model)

Space Allocation Fairness

(1) Remove inequities in quality and quantity of lab/office space

More Space

(1) More office and teaching space requires new building

(1) New building, more space

(2) Completion of SEC building

(2) Space

(3) New or improved building that, at a minimum, will replace the space destroyed in Tropical Storm Allison […]

Improvements

(1) Adequacy of facilities and efficient use thereof

(2) Decaying infrastructure

(3) Building renovations

Other

(2) Health science center

(3) Health Sciences Center

(3) Increase computing resources

New Offerings

(2) Establishing good programs in [X] and [X]

(3) Broaden scope of service delivery to beyond the campus

Staff

(1) Increase in resources for staff (in order to help faculty and students perform better)

Interdepartmental Collaboration

(1) Increase interdepartmental dialogue and research efforts

(1) Starting interdisciplinary research centers

(1) Increase visibility and resources for interdisciplinary programs

Outside Reach

(2) Increase in community visibility and community support ($$$)

(2) Increasing fund raising efforts

Intradepartmental Faculty Relationships

(3) Increase interaction between clinic and basic science faculty

College Excellence

(1) Advancement of Excellence in the College

Other (?)

(2) Increase IDC returns by 2 fold

(3) Set up cores and run these cores effectively

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