Follow up: Reflecting on the FAS to plan its future

To: FAS faculty and staff
Cc: President's Office, Provost's Office

Dear FAS faculty and staff,

As you heard from President McInnis and Provost Strobel earlier this semester, the university has begun the process of identifying the next Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. And as Provost Strobel wrote this morning, the next Dean of the FAS will be given the opportunity to develop a strategic plan for the FAS. A strategic planning process is a tremendous opportunity for our community to imagine the next decade of the FAS, to articulate ambitions, and to identify the steps that we can take, together, to achieve those ambitions.

As you learned from the Provost’s message, I would like to provide my successor with what we are calling a situational assessment: a collection of materials that could support the strategic planning process. The aim is to supply the next FAS Dean with information about where FAS stands today and to recount how we arrived here. The materials will describe the ways in which we have grown and the challenges we have encountered; offer information about the achievements and challenges of the past decade; and document some of the opportunities FAS has embraced and some we have forgone. Think of it as something between a State of the Union address and a file cabinet filled with documents and data.

The goal of this exercise is to best position the incoming FAS Dean to plan for FAS’s future, informed by an understanding of its past and present. Over the last decade the FAS faculty has expanded, we have invested and grown in long-standing and emerging areas of academic inquiry, our undergraduate population has increased, and we have developed cultures and processes that enable the FAS to function collegially and effectively.

The situational assessment will allow us to reflect on how these changes—and many others—have shaped the FAS. I will also be turning to departmental leadership for help in gathering data and information about the FAS’s departments and programs so that we can ensure that the situational assessment accurately captures local-level dynamics. I offer my thanks in advance to chairs and staff: the FAS Dean’s Office team will be reaching out to you for information from your units, and I am grateful to you for helping us to gather these data.

In addition, on behalf of the next FAS dean I want to invite you—the faculty and staff of the FAS—to begin reflecting on our opportunities and challenges: what might we hope our intellectual community will look like in five years, in ten?

The strategic planning process will offer an exceptional opportunity for FAS to articulate goals and ambitions as a community. I look forward to engaging with you in the coming months as we paint a picture of the FAS today; and I know that my successor will benefit from your insight as they work with you to plan for the FAS of the future.

With warmth and gratitude,

Tamar

Tamar Szabó Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science