I hope this message finds everyone well-rested and energized for the end of semester after the Thanksgiving break!
As you’ll know from President Maric’s announcement yesterday, she has appointed me as Provost, and I’m grateful for the trust that she and the Board of Trustees have placed in me. Since taking up the position on an interim basis six months ago, I’ve come to have an even greater appreciation for the talent and dedication of our faculty and staff and the potential of our amazing students across every field. We’ve experienced many challenges and transitions together over the past few years, and one of my primary goals is to create a stable institutional environment so that we can fully achieve our dynamic and innovative potential across our teaching, research, and engagement missions. I’m looking forward to working with each of you to make UConn – and the world beyond our campuses – a better place.
The focus of our Provost’s Office newsletter this month is student success. Simply put, student success is a measure of how our students are growing and thriving in every dimension of their experience at UConn. They are succeeding academically, making steady progress toward completing their degrees, and attaining knowledge and skills that will enable them to be life-long learners and launch satisfying and successful careers. They are forming friendships, finding mentors, and growing in their capacity to understand, respect, and embrace the many dimensions of our diversity. They are learning how to cultivate their own wellbeing, emotionally, physically and financially, which serves as a foundation for those complex and challenging academic and social experiences. And they are giving back to their communities – they are growing in responsibility, purpose, and leadership and driving change both on campus and off.
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Anne D’Alleva Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
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ACADEMIC UPDATES & REMINDERS
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New Gen-Ed Common Curriculum Guidelines & Implementation
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At a special meeting of the University Senate on Monday, November 14, 2022, the Implementation Guidelines for the Common Curriculum for Leadership and Global Citizenship and related Senate by-law amendments were approved. This was the last approval step in a multi-year project to re-envision a general education curriculum that reflects our commitments to be forward-looking, responsive to students, increasingly flexible while maintaining high scholarly standards. The new curriculum offers relevant, challenging coursework that empowers students with a strong sense of moral, ethical, and social responsibility and the capacity to be proactive in a world that desperately needs them. The new curriculum will roll out in Fall 2025.
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Faculty Compensation Policy
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The University replaced the “Policy on Extra Compensation for Full-Time Faculty in AAUP” with the revised “Faculty Compensation Policy” effective November 11, 2022. This policy establishes the standards under which regular payroll faculty may receive compensation from the University or external entities. This applies to all regular payroll faculty excluding UConn Health, and covers regular compensation, summer salary, overload pay, and payments for prizes and awards.
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Life-Transformative Education
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The Life-Transformative Education Initiative continues to find ways to embed the guiding principles of LTE into the life and culture of our students. LTE is a framework to support the development of identity, agency, and purpose for all UConn students. In this work, we are part of the national Coalition for Life-Transformative Education, focused on embedding long-term outcomes into our work on student success.
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At the University of Connecticut, we are all committed to ensuring we are providing all UConn students with the most effective educational programs possible. Program-level assessment work focuses on improvement by first identifying what students should be learning (program-level student learning objectives). Data can then be gathered to understand student outcomes in relation to these learning objectives. This allows programs to identify what is currently working, and where changes might be needed. In many cases, these efforts will be building on work that is already happening.
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Resources for Pregnant or Parenting Students
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We know that the past two years have presented enormous challenges for us all. It has been made clear that the boundaries between our professional/academic and our personal lives are more porous than we had previously acknowledged. To this end, we encourage our faculty and staff to be open to potentially difficult conversations for our students who are balancing these responsibilities. We want to share a new website that is available for students who are pregnant and/or have parenting responsibilities. This website will help students discover and navigate resources available to them, https://studentparents.uconn.edu/.
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2022 Undergraduate First Destination Outcomes
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The Center for Career Development (CCD) has released the 2022 Undergraduate First Destination Outcomes which indicates that 90% of the 2022 graduating class have reported favorable outcomes at the six-month post graduation milestone. The full outcomes report will be available on the CCD website on December 15th.
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With the winter storm season upon us, we’d like to refresh your knowledge about operations at UConn’s Storrs and regional campuses during inclement weather.
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Reading Days are Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11, and Thursday, December 15. Per the University Senate By-Laws, Reading Days are protected time for students to prepare for the final exam and assessment period.
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Final exams begin on Monday, December 12 and end on Sunday, December 18.
In very limited instances, undergraduate students may request rescheduling for an exam. They must make such a request through the Dean of Students Office for the Storrs campus or each regional campus student services office, and as early as possible. The reasons for such a request include “bunched” finals and immediate illness. A student whose absence is excused by the Dean of Students Office or regional student services staff shall have an opportunity to take a final without penalty. Please consult the Dean of Students website and the Registrar’s website for further detail.
***Please note, the above does not apply to the School of Law, School of Medicine, or School of Dental Medicine.***
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Appointment of Director of UConn Waterbury
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Dr. Fumiko Hoeft has been appointed as the next director of UConn Waterbury. Selected from a talented pool of applicants, Dr. Hoeft has demonstrated a commitment to student success in academics and beyond and has shared an exciting vision for the future of the UConn Waterbury campus and its connections with the wider Waterbury community. Dr. Hoeft is a prolific researcher and an exemplary member of the UConn community. Dr. Hoeft joined UConn in 2018 as director of BIRC and professor of psychological sciences. In addition to her appointment as professor of psychological sciences, she also holds appointments as professor of computer science, mathematics, neuroscience, psychiatry, pediatrics, and educational psychology at UConn.
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UConn Reads is a stimulating program that invites all members of the extended UConn community (students, staff members, faculty members, alumni, friends) to join in an engaging discussion about a book that has been selected to spark multidisciplinary conversations, critical debates, and an array of supporting activities. The program is being orchestrated by the Office of the Provost, and the book selected for this year’s program is “Light from Uncommon Stars," by Ryka Aoki.
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Interfolio Information Session Recording & Future Opportunities
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On November 15, the Provost’s Office hosted a virtual information session to provide an overview of the purchase of Interfolio’s Review, Promotion and Tenure and Dossier Modules. A recording of the information session and details for additional opportunities to learn more about the system and our roll out are available on the Interfolio @ UConn webpage.
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Dean of the School of Nursing Search
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Dean of the School of Social Work Search
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A national search is underway to identify candidates for the next Dean of the School of Social Work. The search is chaired by Kent Holsinger, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Listening Sessions took place earlier this month and applications will be open in the coming weeks.
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Marissa Greenberg Post-Event Summary
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On November 9 and 10, the Office of the Provost, in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and the UConn Humanities Institute, hosted Dr. Marissa Greenberg, Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. In a public presentation, followed by two hands-on workshops, one for faculty and one for graduate assistants, Dr. Greenberg demonstrated the value of this approach in shifting our pedagogical orientation from a deficit mindset to an asset mindset.
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Highlighting Interdisciplinary Scholarship at UConn
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UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP) brings together individuals with diverse scientific, clinical, and methodological expertise and supports their evolution into collaborative investigators who conduct innovative interdisciplinary research that impacts public health and well-being. At its core, InCHIP and its investigators aim to improve human health through research. But human health does not exist in a vacuum -- it reflects myriad processes and mechanisms at levels ranging from the molecular to the political. To truly improve the condition of human health requires us to acknowledge this complexity, embrace the need for collaboration across fields of research, and encourage creative approaches that unearth and leverage mechanisms that tip the scales.
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Academic Affairs Spotlight
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The Office of the Provost and the units that report in academic affairs are staffed and led by an outstanding group of talented and dedicated colleagues. This month we are spotlighting Jeffrey Shoulson, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
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IMPORTANT DATES, DEADLINES & EVENTS
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Reaffirming UConn's Commitment to Diversity in Admissions: UConn's Response to the U.S. Supreme Court Cases (SFFA v. Harvard/UNC)
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Please join us for a presentation and panel discussion on the impending decisions of the Supreme Court on the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC cases. University leaders and scholars in the areas of admissions and diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education will share insights on the issues at hand and anticipated decisions, how the outcome may affect UConn, and how we plan to respond.
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