From the Dean: Response to 5-year review

As reported in an earlier COEfyi post, the provost completed my 5-year review in June. I want to share with you the major findings from my 5-year review and how I plan to respond to the recommendations for improvement. I appreciate all who participated in the process and offered their feedback to strengthen our College. I know the review process was conducted at a busy time of the spring semester and based on the limited data on which summary conclusions were made, I am open to additional opportunities to hear your thoughts.

Strengths

Effective communication with external stakeholders
Commitment to staff development
Support of the teaching, research, and service missions of the College and student success
Responding to externally imposed initiatives and challenges
Hiring a strong administrative team, including associate deans, staff
Professional characteristics of being approachable, open-minded, focused, decisive, a big-picture thinker

Areas for improvement

Internal communication:

Starting with this post, I will write regular COEfyi posts to share data, updates, previews of initiatives/external mandates on the horizon, and rationales for decisions.
We will have two College-wide meetings each semester for information sharing and discussion. The fall meetings will be held Friday, Sept. 27 from 10-11:30 a.m. and Monday, Nov. 4 from 9-10:30 a.m. Both meetings will be held in Aderhold Hall Room 206 with a Zoom option. I have developed a tentative list of topics for COEfyi posts and College-wide meetings, but I welcome your input. Provost Hu will join us for the first 30 minutes on September 27 to talk about enrollment management, artificial intelligence initiatives, and the School of Medicine and take questions.
Each department has the option to invite me to one or more faculty/staff meetings, and the format of that meeting is up to the department (e.g., listening session in which department members inform me about issues of interest to them, specific topics you would like me to address, open Q&A, etc.).
I will continue to meet regularly with leadership of Faculty Senate and the Staff Representative Group (SRG), and to attend Senate and SRG meetings as requested.

Future of DEI Office: I convened a committee of students, staff, and faculty in the spring to discuss the future of the DEI Office. I shared a summary of that work at the fall meeting, and you can access those slides. The committee will begin meeting again soon, and there will be opportunities for input from all stakeholders.

Transparency in decision-making: We are a large College nested within a larger system of agencies to which we are accountable, and it is impossible for everyone to have all the information all the time, so trust in our leaders—staff, faculty, and administrators—is crucial. Leaders must provide clear, concise summaries of issues and new processes, and reciprocally, they must faithfully communicate the needs and accomplishments of their units to other leaders to inform decision-making. I am committed to working collaboratively to advance our mission in a generative and fiscally responsible manner that is responsive to the needs of Georgia/the country/the world and our respective disciplines. To do this, we need to have conversations across units about how to advance the goals of programs and departments while considering the needs of the College and University and keeping our commitments to students, scholarship, and service at the core of our decision-making. Budget is a zero-sum game only if we constrain ourselves to shifting resources between units, but if we look at what new things we can do together and which of our current activities we need to stop doing, we can actually increase our impact, opportunities, and budget. Leadership often involves making difficult decisions, especially when navigating complex challenges, competing priorities, and limited resources, and thoughtful decision-making at every level enables a more focused and impactful approach to advancing our goals.

Vision for the College: Respondents offered mixed views on whether or not I have a vision for the College and how well I communicate that vision. Some expressed concern that my approach to the budget downturn is reactive rather than proactive. I see the vision for the College as something that is collaboratively constructed as we did with the strategic plan. Although some aspects of the strategic plan had to be downsized due to COVID, many parts of the plan are still being enacted. Through COEfyi posts, College meetings, departmental meetings, and other venues, I will work to more clearly communicate how we are enacting our collective vision for the College and where we still have work to do.

Again, I thank everyone for participating in the 5-year review process, and I remain open to additional feedback and suggestions.

Denise A. Spangler