Dear Colleagues,

You may have heard me talk about the dean's discretionary fund bequeathed by Ann Salovich, but I wanted to give you a sense of how we plan to apportion the money this year.

First, to attract exceptional students, we have set aside funds for student scholarships where there exists the greatest need. Second, to support our outstanding faculty and staff, we have established a pool of money for staff development, and we have given pro-rated amounts to the three department heads for their use in faculty development.

Third, to enhance innovation, we have restarted the Design Institute (DI). To that end, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Brad Hokanson (Graphic Design) as the new director of the DI. He has great ideas, evident in his conversations with many of us about what the DI could be, and I want to thank him for his willingness to lead our efforts in this area.

Finally, to help move our organization forward, we have set aside money to seed ideas from faculty and staff that have the greatest promise to generate new revenue and advance our mission in new ways. If you have ideas, please contact Kate Solomonson if a faculty member, Marilyn DeLong if a member of an R&O unit, Kathy Witherow if a staff member, or Kate Maple if it pertains to students. We will gather your ideas over the next several weeks and start planting seeds.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dean Tom Fisher (Architecture) will participate in the GeoDesign Summit plenary on Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 8:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m., in Redlands, California.

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I spent much of last week and this weekend with administrators from architecture, design, and fine arts programs from across the country at a conference entitled Economies. We looked at a range of challenges and opportunities facing higher education in this difficult economic climate. As we know from the dramatic changes that occurred in our fields during and after the Great Depression, prolonged downturns enable us to rethink what we are doing and where we want to go. If we can handle the anxiety that comes with a poor economy, the creativity and ingenuity that arises during such periods can transform institutions, professions, and environments.

President Bruininks's message to us last week reflects that. He has charged three University-level steering committees to look at the scope and mission of the institution, opportunities for cost efficiencies across all units, and ways that we can enhance and diversify our revenue. Those same issues -- reexamining mission, reducing costs, and growing revenue -- came up time and again in my discussion with deans from other universities, so we are in good company.

I hope that our college's Blue Ribbon Committee, like those in other colleges, can contribute content to those steering-committee efforts, for we can't know what to cut or where to grow without first knowing where we want to go in the future. For that, we need your creativity and ingenuity, so do share any ideas you might have with me or one of the committee members.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

A number of you have asked about the composition of the Blue Ribbon Committee, which the provost thought should consist of no more than 10 faculty, staff, students, and community members. After consultation with deans, heads, and directors across the college, I have asked the following colleagues to participate, all of whom have accepted:

Lee Anderson - Architecture
Brad Hokanson - Design, Housing, and Apparel
Janice Linster - Alumni
Martha McDonell - Staff
Tom Meyer - Advisory Board
Kristine Miller - Landscape Architecture
Shona Mosites - Undergraduate Student
Monica Sklar - Graduate Student
Greg Van Bellinger - Advisory Board
Mary Vogel - Research and Outreach

I will urge the committee to think about larger trends affecting higher education and our disciplines as they make recommendations in response to the provost's request to look at what needs more investment, maintenance at current levels, reduced support, or elimination. I will also ask them to gather ideas from, and report back to, their constituent group.

To that end, we have assembled articles from recent issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times education supplement to offer context and spur their discussions. The more good ideas we have for our compact meeting with the Provost in late February about how to move forward, the better we will all be, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts!

Tom

Related links:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "In a Time of Uncertainty, Colleges Hold Fast to the Status Quo"


• The New York Times: "At Public Universities: Less for More"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Canon of College Majors Persists Amid Calls for Change"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Kent State U. Says It Will Pay Bonuses to About 800 Professors"


• Newsweek: "The Three-Year Solution"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Why Colleges Should Offer 3-Year Diplomas"

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I've mentioned in previous Monday Minutes, as well as at the faculty assembly on Friday, the "blue ribbon committee" that the provost has asked each college to convene. We now know that the recommendations of that committee will factor into the University's decisions about investment requests that we will make at our compact meeting with the provost's office in February or early March.

Based on the suggestions we received from all parts of the college, I have invited faculty, staff, students, and members of the college's boards to participate in this short-term task. Everyone in the college will have opportunities to weigh in with the committee on the questions the provost has posed: what needs further investment, what needs maintaining, and where might consolidation or reductions occur? Answers to the questions will help decide where the University invests back into colleges part of the two percent it plans to cut from each college budget next year.

I will urge the committee to step back and think about answers to the provost's questions in terms of the larger trends affecting higher education, such as the demographic changes affecting our student body, the economic changes affecting our fields, and the technological changes affecting our discovery and delivery of knowledge. The more we can think, strategically, about the dynamic transformations happening around us, the better prepared we will be to thrive in the future.

So, watch for more information about this in the next month or two. In the meantime, you have all received a request to complete a web-based survey as part of my comprehensive review. I urge you to participate; your responses will remain confidential, but I would welcome the feedback. These are difficult times in which to lead and opportune times for improvement.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dean Tom Fisher's (Architecture) essay, "Fracture Critical," appears in Places: The Forum of Design for the Public Realm, published by The Design Observer Group. In the essay, which is an adaptation of an essay that will appear in a University of Minnesota Press anthology on the collapse of the I-35W bridge, Fisher identifies four key characteristics of a fracture-critical design: lack of redundancy, interconnectedness, efficiency, and sensitivity to stress.

Posted by Michael Fraase at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I'm pleased to announce the search for an assistant or associate professor in Product Design in the College of Design. I am asking your assistance by nominating individuals for this exciting and critical new opportunity.

As you know, the Product Design program is strongly supported by Provost Sullivan, and this new faculty position is funded through the compact process. The position has been reinvisioned to focus on the intersection of product design and design thinking with human health and well-being in its broadest sense. Specifically, we are looking for a colleague who will forge further connections with health-related initiatives across campus and with the well-established medical and health businesses in Minnesota, take a leadership role in developing new courses in product design and design thinking, participate in planning for a new interdisciplinary product design program with a focus on human health and well-being, create and grow a research program in the field of product design and design thinking, pursue external funding in support of her or his research agenda; and participate in faculty governance at the college and university levels.

Candidates must have a clear vision, a commitment to interdisciplinary work, experience in design or design thinking related to products and systems for human health and well-being, demonstrated or potential leadership skills, a global perspective, and strong collaborative and interpersonal skills. The full position description is available online.

This is a 100%-time, nine-month, tenure-track appointment, with the possibility of tenure at the associate level. The expected start date is August 30, 2010.

Please send the names and contact information for any nominees to Jan Batt at jbatt@umn.edu and Matt Kegler at mkegler@umn.edu. I've attached a copy of the position announcement that you are welcome to forward to interested candidates. Please keep Jan and Matt notified of anyone to whom you send the announcement, so the committee can follow up with all interested individuals.

Thank you for your assistance in recruiting for this important new position.

Tom

• Download Product Design search description (.pdf; 70KB)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

You probably all know by now that Minnesota's Solar Decathlon entry, Icon House, came in fifth overall, which is the highest any first-time participant university has ever achieved since the first competition. We won first place in two of the 10 events, for lighting design and engineering, which testified to the great effort by students from this college and the Institute of Technology.

Both colleges had advisory board meetings and a joint reception at the house in Washington DC on Friday. Our students and faculty looked both elated and exhausted, having hosted public tours almost every day and then running the house through its paces with reviewers sometimes late into the night. So many people -- students, faculty, staff, and donors -- did so much to give of their time, ideas, labor, and funding, and it is of that, as much as the house itself, that we should be proud.

Speaking of giving, the Community Fund Drive (CFD) is underway and we are planning a "rummage sale" as a way to raise money for the drive. The sale will happen this Thursday from noon-1 p.m. in McNeal Hall, and this Friday from noon-1 p.m. in Rapson Hall.

Donations for the sale can be brought in over the next three days. McNeal drop-off location is 32 McNeal, Rapson drop-off location is 67 Rapson. Please consider donating gently used items that you feel a student/staff/faculty population would be interested in purchasing. All proceeds from the rummage sale will go directly to the CFD on behalf of CDes. This is a great opportunity to reduce, reuse, and recycle unused items.

Questions about the sale can be directed to any of the CFD volunteers: Warren Bruland, John Grosen, Sara Grothe, Char Klarquist, Constance Severson, Tiffany Thayer, Kathy Witherow.

Thanks!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dean Tom Fisher (Architecture) is cited in Inside Higher Ed's "New Blueprint for Architecture," on the changes surrounding the studio culture in architecture programs around the US. Architecture students have traditionally spent many nights in their studios working on designs. Recently that's begun to change as architecture programs move to more appropriately schedule project intensive courses and broaden students' education.

The article's author, Jennifer Epstein, quotes Fisher as saying the changes reflect "a trend toward allowing students more flexibility in their studies, a chance to focus on their areas of interest." Fisher notes that students are driving the change, having "grown up in the Internet age and are open to all kinds of knowledge. They want to connect things, move more laterally across disciplines."

The debate continues over architecture undergraduate education and the role of interdisciplinarity. "Some students want to learn design thinking but may apply it in business, law, construction, something else. Others may want to become architects. Our degree offerings should reflect these differences," Fisher tells Epstein, speaking not only as the College of Design dean and School of Architecture faculty member but also as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA).

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues:

The Solar Decathlon team needs your vote! As of 3 p.m. today, ICON House, the University of Minnesota entry, is in seventh place. Judging in the 10 categories occurs through the week, with the winner announced on Friday.

One of the competitions is the "People's Choice Award," in which the house with the greatest number of votes from the public wins. To see short videos of our house and the other competitors, login to the US Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon Web site.

To vote for our house, send a text message by October 14, 2009 to 99503 with the number, HOUSE83, as the message. It takes a few seconds and it would mean a great deal to our students, faculty, and staff who have worked so hard to make this happen.

Our students report getting thousands of comments a day about the warmth and livability of ICON House, as well as the facade, craftsmanship, materials, and student-made furniture. The students reported 2,700 visitors yesterday (Sunday)!

To keep up on the Solar Decathlon competition, the US Department of Energy is publishing a frequently updated leaderboard of Solar Decathlon entrants' scores on its home page. Individual scores for each entrant school are also available. Go Gophers!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Provost Tom Sullivan has asked each college to form a "blue ribbon committee" made up of faculty, staff, students, and outside stakeholders, which would recommend to the college and provost priorities for continued and new investment, as well as strategies for cost savings.

The criteria for suggestions match those developed during the strategic positioning work of four years ago: what would promote excellence, create academic synergies, leverage new resources, advance our comparative advantage, and enhance our academic reputation.

As you know, we are already considering ideas for revenue generation and cost savings, but there is always value in stepping back with a group of colleagues and looking at these issues with fresh eyes.

Over the next week or so, we will seek suggestions for names of people to serve on this committee. We will also solicit input from the entire college community in this process, and will keep you informed as we move forward. Stay tuned.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I have mentioned in a previous Monday minute and at the all-college meeting a new series of themed, interactive dialogues supported by Tim Larsen of Larsen Design, who is a College of Design Advisory Board member. Tim wants to emphasize how design intersects with other fields to add value and create new opportunities. Tentatively called "Design Intersections," the series will have one event each semester, with designers and representatives from other disciplines in a dialogue about the consequences of design-induced change, with the goal of getting people to think about design in new ways and getting designers to see new opportunities in a period of rapid, unpredictable transformation.

The first dialogue, on March 18, 2010 at the Carlson School of Management, will focus on design and business, demonstrating why design and business need each other. But we need your ideas about future topics and speakers. We are looking for surprising combinations of people talking about key questions like: How should we prepare for the future, and what are the tipping points we should be aware of? We hope to create a provocative series that promotes understanding of design among other disciplines and helps position the college in new ways.

Larsen and the college have committed staff time to handling the logistics of these events, so we only need your best ideas and we can take it from there. Please send your suggestions to Lori Mollberg at lmollber@umn.edu. Thank you!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

As you probably know, H1N1 flu has arrived at the University and a small, but steady stream of students have become ill because of it. According to the provost, there are still faculty members who are requiring doctor's notes for an excused absence though that policy has been changed temporarily for students with influenza-like symptoms. Use your judgment, of course, since a very few may try to take advantage of the situation -- people rarely have multiple bouts of flu, for example, so repeated or serial absences should be a red flag.

Also, according to our human resources director, Jan Batt, until further notice, the University has lifted the requirements for obtaining doctor's statements for employee absences for flu-like symptoms.

Graduate education

The provost has also charged two graduate education work groups to make recommendations on how to handle academic issues and student processes related to graduate education. The links below list the work group members, who will send out notification of public forums and other opportunities to provide input:

http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/graduate/academicissuescmte.html
http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/graduate/studentprocessescmte.html

The finalists for the internal search for the vice provost and dean of graduate education have been announced and the public forums scheduled.

Congratulations, Jodie

Finally, I wanted to announce that Jodie Double, director of the college's Digital Collections and Archives, has accepted a similar position at the University of Leeds in the UK. She has done an exceptional job leading the digitization of our slide collection, developing the digital content library in partnership with CLA, and attending to the visual presentation needs of our faculty, staff, and students for many years. Her last day will be October 9. Watch for an invitation to a good-bye event for her on October 8. Thank you, Jodie!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dean Tom Fisher (Architecture) has completed the manuscript for his next book, Ethics for Architects, to be published by the Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. He continues to work on the manuscript for Salmela Architect II, to be published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010.

Fisher also recently began his term as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Posted by Michael Fraase at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

With the opening of the new football stadium on campus, homecoming will become a more important part of every fall semester and we will have several opportunities this year for our college to show our flag.

On Sunday, October 4, from 12:30-2:00 p.m., we will host an alumni and friends reception at Station 19. The adjacent stadium will be open that day for public tours from 1-5 p.m., where you will see the work of our Center for Sustainable Building Research on display. Faculty and staff are welcome to attend either or both events. For more information, go to the alumni section of the college's Web site.

This year, we will also host a Student Scholar Showcase -- an exhibition of student research, art, and design -- in the stadium from 1-4 p.m. on Public Engagement Day, Wednesday, October 7, which will attract an audience of local high schools, colleges, corporations, and nonprofits. Please encourage your students as well as graduates you may still be in contact with from last year to participate; they need to sign up by September 18.

On Thursday evening, Oct 8 there will be an invitation-only awards event related to homecoming, at which three awards will go to Design Student and Alumni Board (DSAB) members: Janice Linster (Interior Design alum and former alumni board president) will receive the U of M Alumni Service Award; Mandy Lange (recent Graphic Design grad and former DSAB student member) will receive the University of Minnesota Alumni Association (UMAA) Student Volunteer of the Year Award for her leadership and service; and the DSAB will receive the Program Extraordinaire Award for "Dirty Laundry."

Then, at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 9, the homecoming parade will take place. The University wants all freshman-admitting colleges to take part, and I urge you to encourage students to participate. Prospective students are a key audience segment for the parade, which will aid in our recruiting efforts.

Interested students should contact Kim Hindbjorgen (khindbjo@umn.edu) or Lori Mollberg (lmollber@umn.edu) For more information on homecoming go to the University's homecoming Web site.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend, and that the first day of classes goes smoothly. We have already had some creative and constructive suggestions following the all-college meeting last week, and I would encourage those who were not able to attend in person to review the slides and send us your thoughts.

In some areas, such as proposing courses to fulfill University-wide liberal education requirements, we don't have a lot of time. The college stands ready to help the departments and the faculty propose courses for this purpose, and as I mentioned in response to a question at one of the departmental retreats last week, the deans and department heads will be meeting this month to make sure that there is sufficient incentive to make it worthwhile for units to pursue this opportunity. It's certainly in the best interest of our disciplines to expose students from across the University to the key knowledge, concepts, and modes of thinking in our fields.

Another opportunity we could use your help with is the Solar Decathlon house. Erected on Buford Place (.pdf; 208Kb), behind the historic barns on the St. Paul campus, the house still needs a lot of finish work to happen before it makes the trip to the mall in Washington DC at the end of this month. Student volunteers are needed. Where appropriate, would you mention this to students who you think might be interested in helping? The Solar Decathlon student teams are working from 8 a.m. on every day this week, and student volunteers can show up at the site as their time allows.

Have a good first week of school!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I urge you to come to our all-college meeting tomorrow morning (September 1). The meeting will run from 9-11 a.m. in 130 Murphy Hall, located on Church Street on the East Bank of the Minneapolis campus, south of Rapson Hall, near Washington Avenue.

We hold our fall all-college meeting in Minneapolis to avoid the State Fair traffic, and will have our spring meeting in St. Paul. For those of you on the St. Paul campus, do consider taking the campus connector bus, since Murphy is close to the bus stop at Northrop Mall and we no longer have money in our budget to validate faculty or staff parking for college meetings.

At the meeting, we'll give you an update on the state of the college and on events that have happened over the summer. We also want to get your input on how best to move forward on several fronts and let you know of some of the highlights of what we might expect this coming academic year. Come to reconnect with colleagues and catch up on where we left off before the summer break. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow -- 130 Murphy Hall, 9 am.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

The college leadership met this morning with the provost and others from his office about our college's plan to erase our deficit during the coming academic year. We talked about several ideas that emerged from faculty and staff discussions in the spring, including a slight increase in the number of students, a future undergraduate design major, potential certificate programs in areas of high demand such as sustainability, and the development and marketing of courses that would attract students from across the University.

The deans and department heads will meet tomorrow to get the departmental perspective on these strategies and we will seek faculty and staff feedback at the all-college meeting next week. In general, the provost's office seemed very supportive of our efforts to generate more revenue and control costs in order to get the college on a better financial footing. At the same, they made it clear that they will monitor our progress and intervene if we fall short of our revenue or expense goals, so we need to take the situation seriously and work together to make things happen. It promises to be an eventful academic year!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Years from now, we may come to know this period as one that gave birth to new disciplines barely imagined a few years ago. One example is the interest of John Finnegan, dean of the School of Public Health, in creating a public health design degree in partnership with us. He sees such a degree addressing a tremendous need for expertise in improving the unsanitary, unsafe, or unhealthy conditions in human settlements around the globe that threaten public health. Were we to develop such a degree, it would be among the first of its kind in the country.

Another example has emerged from conversations I had last week in Redlands, CA with Jack Dangermond, an alumnus of this college and the owner of ESRI, the largest geographical information systems (GIS) company in the world. GIS provides powerful analytical software for mapping geographical information, but Jack sees its untapped potential as a design tool -- which he calls "geodesign" -- that would provide landscape architects, architects, and interior designers a way of evaluating design scenarios linked to data. The first international geodesign conference will occur in Redlands in early January, where I will be giving the opening talk. Whether in public health design or geodesign, the University of Minnesota seems well positioned to help lead in the emergence of these fields.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 10, 2009

Dear Colleagues,

At a meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago in Washington D.C., I heard Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discuss two goals that would bode well for colleges like ours.

One, Secretary Duncan wants to include more design content in the preK-12 curriculum as a vehicle for teaching students teamwork, problem solving, and creativity. He also sees it as a way of reaching those students whose visual and spatial abilities and eye-hand coordination skills rarely get valued in traditional curriculum. Two, he intends to increase substantially the amount of funding for community colleges.

How would this affect us, even if we don't benefit directly from the investments he mentioned? More design-literate students entering college would certainly increase interest in our degrees and courses, while more community college graduates would likely grow the number of potential transfers into our programs. In the meantime, we need to examine our curriculums to ensure that they account for more design-savvy freshman and that they have enough flexibility to accommodate more community college transfers.

It was good to see education once again a high priority in Washington D.C.

Tom

Posted by Laura Weber at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

We submitted a report to the Provost last week identifying revenue-generating ideas that will require his approval. The idea with the shortest timeframe and the most immediate impact on our budget involves our accepting an estimated 64 more undergraduate and graduate students for the fall 2010. I have pasted in the chart from the report to give you a sense of what this means in terms of different types of students:

We are confident that we can accommodate an additional 64 students in our existing programs. The number of students in our programs has actually decreased by 43 students since 2006, even though we have added new faculty, so this represents a net increase of only 21 students from where we were three years ago. The number of professional students has already increased by 16 (12 in Architecture, 4 in Landscape Architecture), so we would need to maintain that in future years. We also have the capacity to increase the number of graduate students by an additional 10, given the number of new faculty.

The $25,000 annual increase in expenses listed above is our estimate of added cost pool charges and general infrastructure costs that will come with additional students.

I will let you know as soon as we get feedback on this from the Provost. We're hoping he says yes!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank all who gave us feedback in response to the virtual presentation I made before the July 4 holiday. Some of you found the UMConnect technology and the presentation itself lacking, and I fully understand. I would have preferred to convey such information in person, but we didn't know the details of our budget until after the end of academic year and I thought it better that you know about the cuts now than wait until the all-college meeting at the beginning of the fall semester. I look forward to a fuller discussion of our options and opportunities with you then.

Your responses, along with those we received from you in the spring, also informed the discussion we had today with the team from Central appointed by the provost to work with us on our financial situation. We need the provost's approval in some areas -- whether or not we can enroll more freshmen, for example -- and we hope to have his decision about such matters before we start our discussions in the college in the fall. Until then, we'll do what we can to keep you informed as we know more, keeping in mind Yogi Berra's observation that, "If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be."

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I have been on vacation last week and will be for most of this week, and so I am taking a break from Monday Minute. I will write again after I am back in the office. Until then, I hope everyone is having a good mid-summer.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

During my vacation last week, I went to a retreat at Philip Johnson's glass house in New Canaan, Connecticut, to participate in a panel discussion on public-interest design, moderated by Maurice Cox, Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts. The mostly professional audience enthusiastically supported the idea of our disciplines taking on the public good, globally, as a central part of our mission, and several people mentioned to me that the work we are doing here, at Minnesota, makes us one of the more active colleges in this area. Sitting there at Johnson's glass house, an icon of mid-20th Century Modernism, you could feel how different the 21st Century will be.

I felt that same sense of a paradigm shift today, at a retreat that the deans had with the president and provost to discuss a preliminary draft of a report that examined alternative ways of financing the University in the future. While we will all hear much more about this in coming months, the over-riding message was that the University would never again receive its primary funding from the state. That will demand that each college take responsibility for its own future and think about itself in more entrepreneurial and global ways than in the past, aligning with what I heard at Johnson's glass house. Public education, like the public interest, has become a fascinating design problem, and we have much to contribute.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

In the presentation I made just before the July 4 holiday, I mentioned that we have opportunities in the midst of our budget woes, although I didn't go into much detail. Let me give you one example.

Tim Larsen, president of the design and interactive firm, Larsen, and a member of the college advisory board, has proposed funding a series of events -- lectures, conversations, mash-ups -- that will look at the value of design thinking in helping address some of the major challenges facing the world. At a meeting we had last week at Larsen's offices, we talked with him and some of his staff about an initial series of talks, panels, and workshops, involving designers and other decision-makers that would focus on the economy, the environment, and health -- three areas that seem to be on almost everyone's mind and that also connect to the work of a number of our faculty.

Our conversation with Larsen has just begun, and as it evolves, we will want your input as to possible speakers and ways of focusing each session. But I wanted to mention it here as one instance of many in which we continue to attract new funding and to find new interest in the work we do in this college. It sometimes feels like one of the those dance moves Michael Jackson could do so well (and that we have seen ad nauseum in the news recently), in which we appear to be walking backward even as we move ahead. We're making progress even if it doesn't always look that way.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colleagues,

Earlier this week, I indicated that I would be recording a message providing more details about our situation and suggesting some ways we can improve ourselves financially. I promise that this presentation is much more manageable than my previous recording which was, admittedly, a bit long-winded.

There are three sections to this presentation, enabling you to watch as time allows:

Financial and Personnel Reductions (runtime 12:09)
Impact of Reductions (runtime 10:28)
Call to Action (runtime 23:01)

The deans and I really do need your feedback and suggestions as we work to move ahead. These conversations will continue into the fall, but in the meantime your thoughts can be directed to our shared email account.

Have a great July 4 weekend.

Tom

Update: Thursday, July 30, 2009: Dean Tom Fisher's presentation's are available:

• Part one (.pdf; 160Kb)


• Part two (.pdf; 176Kb)


• Part three (.pdf; 168Kb)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

By now you have likely heard that the Board of Regents approved cutting 1,240 faculty and staff positions, a little less than seven percent of the 18,000 employees at the University. Layoffs represented 370 jobs or 30 percent of the cut, according to Richard Pfutzenreuter, the University's chief financial officer. Other reductions came from positions eliminated in conjunction with the retirement incentive option (18 percent) and from not filling open faculty positions (17 percent), open staff positions (23 percent), and open student positions (12 percent).

The College of Design has done everything we can to minimize layoffs as well. Out of a full-time faculty and staff of 210, we have eliminated seven positions and reduced two positions to nine-month appointments. Another 21 administrative staff members have reduced appointments in place, equivalent to the reduction of 2.70 full-time positions.

These reductions should remind us that, as a community, we have a lot of work to do this coming academic year to focus on core priorities and develop short- and long-term strategies to build revenue to meet the FY11 reductions and begin replacing the $2.2 million FY10 shortfall.

I'll be recording a message later this week, providing more details about our situation and suggesting some ways we can improve our financial situation. Watch for an e-mail with the link!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Last week I shared general numbers regarding the impact of the budget cuts on college personnel. This week, I wanted to convey some of the effects these cuts will have on the delivery of services in the college.
Because of reductions in their number and appointments, our staff will likely require longer lead times and have slower response times to requests for everything from marketing materials to financial information to course advising. A smaller staff will also have less capacity to accommodate unanticipated needs, whether they involve seeking money, staging events, or loading software. Meanwhile, constrained budgets will mean cut backs in scheduled activities such as the frequency of lectures, the number of printed publications, or the upgrading of technology.

These reductions, in other words, will affect everyone in the college, and I deeply regret the negative impact they will have. I also remain ever grateful to our staff, whether on reduced appointments or not, for taking on more work because of unfilled positions or the reassignment of responsibilities. This coming year, things may take longer or happen less often then they did before, but the more supportive and patient we are with each other, the better off we all will be.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Now that we know our O&M budget parameters -- an eight percent cut ($1.6 million), which would have been deeper without $700,000 in non-recurring bridge money -- we have finalized our financial decisions for next year. We may need to make a few adjustments in the fall when we compare our tuition estimates to actual enrollment, but I don't expect any significant changes to the staff reductions listed here:

Student Services: .85 full-time equivalent (FTE), through voluntary and involuntary reductions

Communications: .3 FTE, through voluntary and involuntary reductions

Alumni Relations: .1 FTE, through voluntary reductions

Development: 1 FTE through attrition

Dean's office: 1.4 FTE through voluntary and involuntary reductions

R&O Admin: 1 FTE through involuntary reductions

Finance: 1 FTE through attrition

Goldstein: 1.5+ FTE through voluntary and involuntary reductions

World Heritage: .5 FTE through involuntary reductions

Academic Resources: 1.5 FTE through attrition and involuntary reductions

I will make a UMConnect presentation that you can watch at your leisure, with more detailed information about what these cuts mean in terms of staff hours and service levels. And I look forward to having discussions with you in the coming months about increasing our revenue, with the goal of, eventually, returning as many staff as possible to fulltime. It has been a difficult and stressful time for the college, and I appreciate your continuing engagement and contributions. This, too, will end.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Last week marked the official end of the academic year from a payroll perspective, and we had the last of a number of farewell fetes for colleagues retiring after many decades of service at the University: Rose Blixt, David Bowers, Clint Hewitt, Arlene Jones-Swenson, and Gloria Williams. Last week also saw the departure of Jan Sickbert for a position in the University of Minnesota Foundation, where she will work with several colleges, including ours. We will miss their tremendous personal dedication and their long institutional memory. Since many faculty and staff could not be at their parting events, I wanted to recognize them here and thank them for their years of commitment and contributions to our academic community.

Last week also brought some good financial news for us. We received word that the University would advance us bridge funds of $700,000 from federal economic stimulus money to give us time to generate new revenues and balance our budget. Although we still have to cut about $400,000, in addition to the $1.2 million in deficit reduction this coming year, the bridge money will give us breathing room and let us pursue some of the most promising revenue ideas.

We also received the first installment of a bequest from the estate of the late Ann Salovich, a lovely woman who cared deeply about the environment and who left major gifts to both the Institute on the Environment and to our college. Specified as a dean's discretionary fund, the Salovich gift will provide us with needed investment money, and I will work with my fellow deans to develop an allocation process. This could not have come at a better time!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

We have received more precise information about our budget for next year, and it isn't good. Earlier this year, the University asked each college to model a 5% and an 8% cut to its budget. For us, getting out of our structural deficit of $1.2 million meant cutting our budget 5%, and we argued that any further reduction would be very painful and too much to do all in one year. Nevertheless, we did as the University requested and showed in our compact what an 8% cut might look like.

On Thursday, the University notified us that they would reduce our central allocation by $1.1 million on top of the $1.2 million deficit we already planned to cut, with the two numbers together comprising roughly 10% of our collegiate budget. We also heard that the provost's office remained open to the possibility of covering at least some of this cut with economic-stimulus funding for one year in order to give us time to generate revenue to fill the financial hole.

The deans and department heads will meet tomorrow morning to discuss options, and I will meet immediately afterward with the provost to advocate for as much bridge funding as possible to reduce the severity of these reductions and to give us time to bring in additional funds. I will let you know how these discussions go. I also plan to do a virtual presentation, which you can watch online and respond by e-mail, to provide you with more details about our situation and our options. I would greatly value your input once you see the presentation and I promise that this one will be shorter than the last!

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Mark Twain once said, "Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often." One action the college has taken has certainly registered with the University.

Our leadership group -- Associate Deans Kate Solomonson and Marilyn DeLong, Assistant Dean Kate Maple, Chief of Staff Kathy Witherow, and I -- may be the only college deans at the U taking a 10 percent reduction in our appointments next academic year in order to help balance our budget. That reduction equals 26 days without pay, which some of us will spread out across the year and others will take mostly during the summer. I commend my four colleagues for joining me in this voluntary reduction; such an action does not happen nearly as often as I think it should among the leaders of organizations in times like these.

That voluntary reduction has brought attention to the budget dilemmas we face as a college. The provost's office has appointed a three-person task force -- Lincoln Kallsen from the budget office, Joe Kelly from human resources, and John Ziegenhagen representing the provost -- to work with us to find a sustainable solution to our budget challenges. I meet with them later this week.

We hope that we can secure some bridge funding from the University to provide start-up money for our most promising new revenue-generating ideas. While some of that revenue may come from existing University students, I think the real opportunity lies in serving the needs of non-traditional students in non-traditional ways, through weekend, summer, and on-line learning. So far, the discussion about this has been mostly words, but we hope to convert that to action very soon, and as often as possible.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

My heartfelt thanks to all who helped with and participated in our graduating student exhibition and party, and our graduation ceremony and reception this past Friday and Saturday. Rapson Hall sparkled with energy, the student work on display looked great, and the sense of elation among the graduating students and their families and friends pervaded the place. Regent Cohen and Vice Provost McMaster, both of whom had attended several commencements, remarked to me how smoothly ours went compared to others, and that had a lot to do with the exceptional planning and preparation that went on beforehand and behind the scenes. So, again, my thanks to all who had a part to play for a job very well done.

Events at the capitol have moved quickly, some of which affect us. You may have seen that the governor line item vetoed the Bell Museum again this year. President Bruininks has said that if it didn't get funded, that the University would take the Bell off of its list of priorities, so I will start having conversations with the University about a Plan B for us. I want to thank everyone who wrote letters or attended legislative hearings regarding the Bell. Eventually a new Bell Museum will be built, but it may not be in a timeframe that works for us. Also, if the governor decides not to call a special session and instead "unallots" higher education, we will likely have to cut more than already anticipated. We heard that we might be getting our letter this week from Central about our contribution to the current budget deficit, and once we know more, I will let you know. Until then, all I can say is that we have a lot of rough seas still ahead of us.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

The college's advisory board met on Friday, May 8, 2009 and offered valuable perspective on the constraints and opportunities we face. Representing a range of disciplines and types of practices, members of the board very much supported our revenue-generating strategy, while urging us to focus, first, on those ideas that build on our strengths and on what we already are doing. Delivering some courses online, offering summer programs for non-traditional students, seeking sponsored research-oriented studios, and fully filling our existing classes were among the tactics the board thought would have the greatest chance of success.

Steven Goldstein, president of the University of Minnesota Foundation, also addressed the advisory board, observing that our college was the only one that has a role in all five areas that the foundation has identified as possible themes for the next campaign: a healthy environment, human health beyond medicine, regional economic development, community-based learning, and internationalization. How effectively we communicate our work in those areas and clarify our uniqueness among other design colleges remains central to our success, said several board members. I couldn't agree more. The more we do what we already excel at, the more people will beat a path to our door.

Tom

PS. Don't forget to come to our Graduating Student Exhibition party from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. this Friday, May 15, 2009 in Rapson Hall, and to our commencement at 3 p.m. this Saturday, May 16, 2009 in Northrop Auditorium.

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I spent part of last week in San Francisco, meeting with alumni and donors and listening to their stories about their days as students in our programs. All of them expressed a real sense of gratitude for the education they received here, and for the friendships with fellow students and faculty members that they developed here.

One of the hard parts about graduation (such as the ceremony about to happen again, on May 16, 2009 at 3 p.m. in Northrop Auditorium), is that the bonds formed with and among students get stretched as people scatter to pursue their careers. But as I saw in San Francisco last week, those bonds remain, sometimes after many decades of being away. It made me appreciate the personal as well as the professional transformation that occurs in the course of an education in our college.

Those California conversations also made me appreciate how influential a particular experience or an isolated insight can have on a person's career. So many of the alumni I talked to mentioned one event that happened in school or one comment made by a professor that has stayed with them all these years, a touchstone that provided a fulcrum for their subsequent vocation. I don't know if the faculty members who taught the courses or gave the explanations that remained with our alumni knew of their impact at the time, but it serves to remind us of the importance to our students of everything we say or do in the classroom or corridor, in a studio, or on study abroad. And it isn't just the content of our comments, but the content of our character -- how we say things as much as what we say -- that matters and that stays with students long after they walk across the stage at commencement.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

When people weren't talking about the global swine-flu outbreak or the out-of-control weekend party in Dinkytown, I heard a lot of conversation today, across the University, about Mark Taylor's op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled, "End the University as We Know It."

Taylor, chair of the religion department at Columbia University and an occasional writer about design, concentrates on graduate humanities education in his comments, but his argument applies to all fields, including ours. In response to the myriad challenges facing higher education, he calls for restructured, interdisciplinary, problem-focused programs, led by non-tenured contract faculty working collaboratively with colleagues in other universities to prepare students for a much wider range of careers.

Taylor's piece will no doubt antagonize many. I think his main argument, however, remains indisputable: higher education must become "more agile, adaptive and imaginative" if it is to thrive in an era of dramatically reduced resources. The academy, in other words, needs redesigning and our disciplines have much to offer. We should show in our own example what alternative scenarios for the future of higher education might entail, doing what Taylor suggests to his students: "take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing."

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An all-college meeting was held during the morning of April 17, 2009, hosted by Dean Tom Fisher (Architecture). Good news about the college's good work could be found amid the floundering economic news. The college's participation in the University's Solar Decathlon effort is proceeding well, the School of Architecture had a successful accreditation visit, research funding is growing, faculty members are winning awards and recognition, and the college's various programs remain in high demand.

Fisher summarized the college's current situation by acknowledging a $1.2 million structural deficit. Fisher went on to outline the steps being taken to address the deficit and the additional cuts likely forthcoming from the University.

• Download Dean Tom Fisher's all-college meeting presentation (.pdf; 296Kb)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I write to you having just returned from Niels Diffrient's lecture this evening in McNeal Hall. One of the great industrial designers of our era, he reminded me, through his work, of the potential synergies that we need to continue to build in our college. Trained as an architect, he has designed interiors and products, paid close attention to the needs of users, worked closely with manufacturers and retailers, and collaborated with graphic designers and textile designers, including his wife, Helena Hernmarck, who lectures tomorrow night in 33 McNeal at 6 p.m. Few colleges have the range of disciplines we have to do such integrated work, and we need to take advantage of our breadth by making connections among our fields, as Diffrient has done so brilliantly in his designs.

This is particularly true in times like these. The poor economic climate can make us all want to hunker down, but that is exactly what we shouldn't do. The solution to our budget challenge lies, in part, in reaching out to others and developing large-enrollment courses that would appeal to students across the University. I can see at least one such course coming out of each of our programs, addressing the widespread interest among students in the designed environment in which we live, work, and shop. Such courses would not only help our student credit hour balance-of-trade, as Brad Hokanson put it in his presentation at the faculty assembly on Friday, but they would also help the general student body become better informed clients, users, and consumers in the future. As Diffrient's lecture tonight showed, good design can pack a hall -- so let's get packing.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear colleagues,

As you may know, the College of Design has plans to unite its dual-campus locations to a pair of buildings on the East Bank: Rapson Hall and the current Bell Museum of Natural History. In order for that to happen, though, the University must secure funding from the state legislature for a portion of the cost of building a new Bell Museum on the Saint Paul campus.

Tomorrow--Tuesday, April 14, 2009--a legislative conference committee will meet to resolve the differences between the Minnesota House and Senate versions of the final package of 2009 capital bonding projects. Funding for the new Bell Museum is currently in the Senate version, but not in the House version. The Bell Museum has asked that its advocates contact the conference committee members (attached) to voice their support. President Bruininks has also indicated that if current efforts fail, it is highly unlikely that the Bell Museum project would be included in the University's 2010 capital investment request, which will set back our efforts at being on one campus.

The Bell Museum has asked that supporters pack the room where the conference committee will meet. The goal is not to be disruptive, only obvious. If you're interested, please meet on the main floor of the State Office building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, St. Paul, by 2:30 p.m. to show the flag for the University, for the Bell, and for our college.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Good things do happen, even amidst today's gloomy economic news. I heard at the end of last week that the provost's office has granted 20 College of Design faculty an annual award as part of the University's Imagine Fund for the arts, humanities, and design. The $1.3 million Imagine Fund, available to tenure-track and tenured faculty at the University, arose out of the recognition that the arts, humanities, and design have many fewer sources of funding than the sciences to support our research. Faculty from all three of our academic departments will each receive $3,000 to do everything from starting new areas of investigation to covering significant research-related travel to preparing completed material for publication. We have listed the award recipients on our CDes MEMO blog.

The University has also established a smaller pool of money to support the work of still-active retired faculty. Roger Martin, emeritus professor in Landscape Architecture, has received support to complete a research project he has been working on. And, I just got back from a meeting in which the deans from three colleges selected three faculty members in DHA to receive funding as part of a legacy Human Ecology Research Fund.

Congratulations to all who have received these awards! In a period of constrained resources, our pursuit of outside support becomes ever more important. I want to encourage everyone in the college to think about how your work might attract external funding. It not only helps bring in additional revenue, but it also presents an excellent opportunity to compete with colleagues across the University. This recent spate of awards shows just how competitive we are.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I write to you from Portland, Oregon, where I have been for the last five days at an annual conference and board meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. In my conversations with deans from around the U.S. and Canada, I realize that our situation in Minnesota pales in comparison to that faced by universities in some other states, where across-the-board budget reductions of 12 to 15% and more have occurred. And yet, unprecedented opportunities also abound.

Spurred by a comment made by Maurice Cox, Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts here on Saturday about his interest in ideas on how to deal with the foreclosure crisis, a group of colleagues from various universities and I have worked since then on a proposal to leverage the expertise of unemployed design and housing professionals and students across the country to help cities deal with the huge number of vacant houses and envision creative ways of rebuilding their communities.

Conversations like this have made it clear to me that we have entered an era of rapid and remarkable change, where ideas that would have been dismissed a year ago may now have real traction at the highest levels of government. Designers may not exactly “love a depression,” as Michael Cannell wrote in the New York Times on January 3rd, but those affected by this deep recession may learn to love, as I do, the determination of designers to help make the world a better place.

Tom

Posted by Laura Weber at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Our meeting last week on the college budget with Lincoln Kallsen in the University's budget office went well. We reviewed with him our proposed plan to get the college out of its structural deficit by the end of FY10, and we will provide him with more details this week. The provost will meet with his staff in early April to make decisions about our budget and compact, so we should know specifically about next year's budget after that.

Meanwhile, we did receive two pieces of good news last week. The House of Representatives released its budget proposal and Governor Pawlenty revised his. Both scenarios call for backfilling a base-budget cut to the University with one-time federal stimulus money, while increasing the base budget somewhat in the 2012-13 biennium. This gives the University a couple of years to adjust to a new, reduced base budget in 2012 by making some strategic cuts, moving some activities off state support, and bringing in new revenue to the institution.

As another bit of good news, the state Senate passed a $367 million dollar capital investment bill, including $24 million for a new Bell Museum. Assuming that that funding makes it through this legislative session, the pre-design phase to renovate the old Bell Museum for our use would likely start in the summer of 2010, according to Lincoln Kallsen. Before then, I would like to start a conversation inside the college about our being on one campus, so stay tuned.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Revenue-generating ideas continue to flow in from all parts of the college, and I will explore many of them with you in my future Monday messages. We want to continue gathering and assessing ideas throughout the semester, with the goal of identifying -- with your input -- the most promising ones by the end of this school year. We will pilot the ideas most easily launched this summer and develop plans for the others, with the goal of implementing them by the summer of 2010 or 2011.

We are not alone in this activity. At a lunch the Twin Cities deans had with the Board of Regents last week, I sat next to Patricia Simmons, the recently re-elected board chair, and Jim Parente, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Jim mentioned an idea that has also been suggested by some of you: setting up summer courses to "teach the teachers." This would enable K-12 teachers and MNSCU faculty from around the state to come to campus to catch up on the cutting-edge work going on in various fields, tapping the most up-to-date knowledge of our research faculty, while taking advantage of teachers' ability to spread that knowledge widely.

We should continue to look for such win-win scenarios. This particular idea might be done better at the scale of the University rather than of a single college, but it shows that what works best for us can also have widespread benefits for many others.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

The deans met with the president and provost this afternoon and we received an update on the state budget and the possible impact of the Federal Economic Stimulus Bill on the University. The new forecast for the state's budget deficit over fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011 is $4.57 billion, slightly better than the previous forecast of a $4.847 billion deficit for FY 2010 and 2011. That improvement stems in part from the cuts that the governor made this year and in part from $1.359 billion in new federal stimulus money coming to the state.

The federal stimulus funding includes $669 million that the state must use to support K-12 and higher education. This money comes with strings attached, including a requirement that the state maintain the University's base budget at its 2006 level: $591 million or $111 million less than the $702 million of our current base budget. The federal stimulus money can backfill much of that $111 million difference, although the money is non-recurring and so the University may face another budget gap in fiscal years 2012 and 2013.

Our college faces both a challenge and an opportunity here. The challenge, as I mentioned last week, lies in our needing to erase the $1.2 million structural deficit in our budget, and we will discuss with central administration next week how to meet that goal while minimizing its negative impact. The opportunity we have with the stimulus funding is that it can help buy us time to develop new revenue streams and put us on a more secure financial footing. The news today, in other words, was not as dire as I had expected, but it also reminded me that, when it comes to growing our revenues, we have no time to lose.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colleagues,

The compact meeting went well last Thursday. Provost Tom Sullivan and his staff responded with considerable interest to our emphasis on new revenue, and the University of Minnesota Foundation President, Steve Goldstein, and his staff strongly supported our campaign concept of connecting design to public/community health, environmental health, and human health. We will have plenty of opportunities to develop new revenue ideas and the campaign themes further over the next few months, but we got a green light to move forward last week.

We also received a clear signal that we need to develop a plan for getting out of the structural deficit in our budget. The deans met all morning today to lay out some options, which we will discuss with the department heads and directors at a meeting this Wednesday. We spend about $1.2 million more than we take in every year and we need to close that gap through some combination of cost reductions and new revenue. At the same time, we need to prepare for cuts to our central allocation, depending upon how much the state reduces its allocation to the University, which in turn will depend upon the state's budget forecast released tomorrow.

There is, in other words, still a lot of fluidity in our situation, but I will continue to communicate with you as events evolve. More next Monday.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colleagues,

I've attached the final compact that we submitted to the Provost's office today. I want to thank the many faculty and staff who gave us input on it, as well as the many revenue-generating ideas that we have received from you since the faculty and staff meetings the week before last. We were able to incorporate several of your suggestions in this document.

We will have our compact meeting with the Provost and his staff this Thursday, and I will let you know, next Monday, how it went.

Cheers,

Tom

• Download Final compact document (.pdf; 108Kb)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colleagues,

The deans and department heads have been busy writing and editing the current draft of our biennial compact. You will recall from my earlier messages that we are working on a compressed timeline, since our meeting with the provost and his team is coming up next Thursday, February 26. We do feel it is important to get your feedback and input on this document before we send it forward.

To that end, please take a few minutes to look over the draft document (.pdf; 100Kb) and share your thoughts. The document is limited to seven pages, plus specific addenda. We would especially appreciate more material on graduate students (in the "exceptional students" section) as well as additional efficiency and productivity ideas. Feedback is due to Kathy Witherow by 12 noon on Friday, February 20.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts, and for accommodating the quick turn-around.

Tom

• Download compact draft document (.pdf; 100Kb)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colleagues,

We received a lot of good feedback from the faculty and staff meetings on Friday, and I want to thank everyone who took the time to participate. I've had helpful suggestions about the use of video conferencing, and we'll keep working on how to moderate the meetings to ensure that everyone feels free to contribute.

The meetings generated a number of good revenue-generating ideas. In terms of curriculum, they included expanding enrollment in some courses able to handle it, offering some of our lecture courses online, expanding our course offerings during the summer, and converting some smaller-enrollment seminars into larger lecture classes that could draw students from across the University and the larger community. Ideas also arose in terms of new certificates, retraining activities, and even new degree programs that could attract a new cohort of traditional and non-traditional students alike. We heard other suggestions of increasing our research activities, particularly federal research that generates indirect-cost recovery and consulting services that generate external sales revenue. Tapping economic stimulus money and the dedicated funds at the state level for the arts and the natural environment also came up as something we should pursue.

Our next step is to draw upon your ideas as we finish a draft of the compact request we'll present to the Provost next week. The deans and department heads will review the draft on Wednesday morning, and we'll send the compact out to faculty and staff for comment by Thursday morning. The time frame they've given us is very tight, so we'll be asking for comments back by 8 a.m. Friday. For longer-term planning, task forces will be formed to assess revenue generating ideas and the implications of the Graduate School's closure. Watch for more about that in a future Monday Minute.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

As you have no doubt gathered from the frequency of my messages this week, there is a lot of information regarding the budget situation that I want to share. The deans and I are committed to keeping the process as transparent as possible. This includes giving you as much detail as we can, as we know it.

Our goal at the faculty and staff meetings on Friday is to generate discussion and ideas to inform our decision making. To aid the use of our time, I have recorded a presentation that covers a number of key points. In the presentation, I outline the provost's criteria and principles, the deans' basis for decision-making, four scenarios for addressing the budget cuts, and a first-draft of answers to the Compact questions set before us.

There is a lot of material to digest. I hope your schedules allow you at least some time to review it before Friday. Please bring your best questions and ideas, no matter how unconventional. We need your participation!

• Dean Tom Fisher's message (UMConnect; runtime 54:25)


• Download Dean Tom Fisher's presentation (.pdf; 616Kb)


• Download the College of Design academic profile data provided by Institutional Research (.pdf; 1.9Mb)

Posted by Michael Fraase at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

We have learned more about the upcoming budget discussions with the provost that I want to share with you. Every college must address the following eight requests at its compact and budget meeting, which in our case will occur on February 26:

1. A candid assessment of our strengths and challenges, given the financial outlook for the next several years and our strategic direction.


2. A prioritized list of legal/contractual, safety, or compliance commitments.


3. Any multi-year commitments from prior compacts.


4. One extremely compelling opportunity that could transform our college and keep it on track vis-a-vis our and the University's strategic goals.


5. A list of our lowest priority activities.


6. A brief description, including dollar estimates, of current and future cost-saving initiatives and productivity gains.


7. A list of activities recommended for elimination or curtailment.


8. Our vision statement and highest priority initiatives for capital campaign gifts.

As President Bruininks' e-mail yesterday indicated, the University has asked each college to model reductions of five percent and eight percent. A five percent reduction to our operations and maintenance (O&M) and tuition translates to $1,169,000, while an eight percent reduction is $1,816,000. While we are keenly aware of the magnitude of the challenge facing the state and University, seeing actual numbers is much more sobering than abstract percentages. These are significant numbers, and to deal with them will require some tough decisions.

I will provide you with more information and some possible options tomorrow in a recorded presentation that you will be able to watch via UMConnect, at your convenience, in preparation for the meetings on Friday. Faculty meet from 10:00 a.m.-noon in 165 Peik (East Bank) and 4 Magrath (Saint Paul), and staff meet from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in 165 Peik (East Bank) and 145 Peters (Saint Paul).

Your feedback and participation in this process is essential.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

As you probably know by now, the governor has recommended a cut of a little more than $150 million to the University over the next two years. This a major reduction in state support. We are reviewing the University's instructions on what this will mean for our college, and I will share that information with you in the next day or two.

We go into the biennium with few options. Once we draw down all reserves in the college to cover the remaining shortfall we incurred when the University established the college, and the $210,000 unallotment to this year's budget, we will end the fiscal year at about a break-even point.

We want to avoid layoffs if at all possible. Our strategy of reducing our staff numbers through attrition will likely yield relatively little cost savings, given the poor job market. Likewise, there remain relatively few cost savings we can squeeze out via further operational efficiencies.

This leaves one real opportunity: bringing in additional revenue to cover our costs. This could mean generating on-line courses (as the governor wants), adding a summer term tied to increased enrollments, developing large service courses that draw students from outside the college, or any number of other possibilities. We need your creative ideas regarding new revenue.

I welcome your thoughts in any form: by commenting on the CDes MEMO blog; sending me an e-mail; and/or attending the college meetings this Friday, February 13. Faculty will meet from 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon in 165 Peik (East Bank) and 4 Magrath (Saint Paul). Staff will meet from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in 165 Peik (East Bank) and 145 Peters (Saint Paul).

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last two-plus years, I have written a longer letter to you every other month. Now, with the country's economic turmoil providing a lot of unsettling news, I plan to write to you more often, and more briefly, about what I know is happening and what we might think about doing in response. I will aim to send an update on Monday of every week, by e-mail and via the college's blog, CDes MEMO.

This week, let me fill you in on the impact of $20 million "unallotment" that the state will remove from the funding it gives the University this current fiscal year. Our college's contribution to this cut is $210,000, or a little more than 1 percent of the total. That amount was calculated based on the amount of reserves we have and the amount of state funding we receive. Since this college has relatively small amounts of both, the reduction to our current budget is a relatively small percentage of the whole.

We have begun budget meetings with all of the units in the college. While the meetings will mainly focus on next year's budget, we will also look at unallocated balances in the current year and decide how to come up with the $210,000 that we owe the University. This may mean postponing some actions and cutting back on others, but we should be able to meet this obligation without too much pain. The real challenge will be meeting the cuts just announced by the Governor on Jan. 27, but more about that next week.

In the meantime, I welcome your comments. Please respond on the blog, using the comment feature; send me an e-mail; and attend the college meetings on February 13.

Tom

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dear Colleagues,

Rahm Emanuel, the soon-to-be chief-of-staff of President-Elect Obama, said recently: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." While none of us would have asked for the global economic crisis that we now face, we also need to see it as a chance to think about our work differently and to look for opportunities that might not have occurred otherwise. We have a college full of creative people, accustomed to generating inventive ideas under constraints, and so I have no doubt that we will do as well as can be expected in the current recession, imagining new ways of doing things.

The economic situation

Before I get to that, let me first convey what I know so far from my meetings with upper administration over the past few weeks. As you know from the news, the governor has decided to "unallot" the University $20 million as part of his need to erase the $426 million deficit this budget year. The University has notified colleges that they will tap unspent balances and reserves to cover this one-time cut, and we are currently assessing what that might mean for us. Of greater concern is the next biennium, when the state will have a $4.8 billion shortfall ($5.3 billion including inflation). The Governor will announce his budget recommendations for the 2010-11 biennium on or before January 27th, so we don't have long to wait to see how he deals with a record deficit or what cuts the University will suffer.

President Bruininks has mentioned several times that he would like to avoid layoffs as much as possible, not only out of concern for the dedicated staff of the University, but also because layoffs only worsen what has become a deflationary downward spiral in the economy. Instead, he wants to accommodate cuts by not refilling vacant positions, which explains the hiring "pause" that he put in place several weeks ago in which every unit needs to seek approval for all new hires. We have had success this month in getting approval to rehire the researchers and adjunct faculty we need to conduct funded research and to teach core classes, but we may have a more difficult time replacing retiring fulltime faculty or staff in this economic climate.

President Bruininks also wants every college to look for new sources of revenue and for new ways of doing things more efficiently and cost effectively, so that the amount of work adjusts to the size of our staff. We have had some experience with this since becoming a college, demonstrating that we can live within our means and adjust the amount or pace of work accordingly. The practices and processes we have evolved over the last two years will serve us well in the next two.

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: November-December, 2008" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

Watching the stock market move up and down like a roller coaster running on rumors, I thought of the writer Farhad Manjoo's new book: True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. In it, Manjoo argues that the fragmentation of media has brought a flood of misinformation that has encouraged increasing numbers of people to respond more readily to ideas that feel true, rather than are factually correct. Manjoo's claim seems borne out by the behavior of the stock market, but it also represents a clarion call to us as educators. We have a responsibility not just to teach our students the knowledge and skills they will need in their chosen fields, but also to help them learn to assess information critically and to draw conclusions based on verifiable facts, however counter those facts may be to how we feel.

National Rankings
The same is true as we assess our own situation in higher education. Every year, the Chronicle of Higher Education publishes the "Almanac Issue," summarizing data about colleges and universities across the U.S. This year's issue, just out, listed the average pay among full-time faculty members in public doctoral institutions in Minnesota as the highest in the country ($95,702). California and New Jersey followed closely behind us, but most of the other states were quite a bit lower, as much as $20,000 to $30,000 below ours. Although Minnesota ranks tenth among the states in the number of higher ed institutions (109), we have only one major, public doctoral institution, the University of Minnesota. High-paying fields like medicine and business comprise a sizable percentage of our faculty, which may account for our high average salary, but this fact runs counter to how many of us feel. While financial support of the U has declined precipitously as a percentage of the state's budget, we remain better funded than many other public research universities, evident in that salary number.

We remain in the top 25 of all institutions, public and private, in most other areas as well. The Chronicle's data shows that we rank 16th in terms of the annual expenditures for our library ($40 million), 24th in the size of our endowment ($2.8 billion, up 26% from last year), 16th in terms of both the level of overall support last year ($289 million) and in the level of corporate support ($49 million), 15th in the amount of R&D expenditures last year ($595 million), and 22nd in the amount of Federal R&D funding we received last year ($326 million). We also stand 22nd among institutions nationally in the number of national merit scholars (96), fifth among all schools in terms of our enrollment (50,402), and fourth in terms of the number of Ph.D.'s granted annually (720).

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: September-October, 2008" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To: College of Design community
From: Tom Fisher
Re: Constitution and bylaws

I am pleased to report that the constitution and bylaws documents have been approved by a majority vote. The documents are now in the hands of the provost and we are awaiting word on their final approval. In the meantime, we will operate under the new governance structure effective fall 2008. Implementation strategies are now being formed, so stay tuned for additional information.

In the meantime, the documents are posted on the CDes Web site for your review.

My sincere thanks goes out to the committee members, who worked long and hard on these documents, and also to those who gave such thoughtful advice and feedback.

Posted by Michael Fraase at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To: College of Design faculty and staff
From: Tom Fisher
Re: Design Institute

In the late 1990s, in Mark Yudof's first year as President of the University, he identified five strategic initiatives he wanted to pursue, one of which was design. He received funding from the State Legislature in support of his five priorities and the Design Initiative was launched as a result of that investment. In November 2000, Janet Abrams came as the first director of the renamed Design Institute. With funding from the State and, in 2001, a $1 million gift from Target, the DI had a tripartite mission: to create connections between the design disciplines across the University; to engage in outreach and public education about design; and to pursue research that would define new areas of design thinking and application.

Many inventive new ideas and projects emerged from the Design Institute under Jan's direction, including the development of "Twin," a dynamic typeface that responds to the Twin Cities' weather and other urban variables; the establishment of a Design Camp for teens, offered six years in a row from 2002; the creation of the "Big Urban Game" in 2003, the first of the genre now widely known as "Big Games"; publication of the "Knowledge Circuit" review of design and new media conferences, on the DI website; two television programs co-produced with TPT; and over a dozen Knowledge Maps on diverse topics. In addition, until late 2007, the DI also administered and formalized the interdisciplinary Design Minor, significantly expanding its enrolment and curriculum, with the creation of eight new elective courses.

In the last two years, the DI has supported "D-labs" in areas such as Design and PK-12 education, and produced Knowledge Maps of the digital fabrication facilities on campus and around the Twin Cities, and of the sustainability research going on at the University. With the publication of its award-winning book Else/Where: Mapping -- New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, in 2006, the Design Institute opened new territory for designers, evident in the popularity of the book, soon to be in its second printing.

With the formation of the new College of Design, however, the University withdrew the central funding for the Design Institute. That left us with the task of rethinking the Design Institute as a "soft funded" center, dependent on outside funding for its entire operation. During this past academic year, the DI staff has made significant efforts to achieve this goal, in a challenging economic climate. But, in view of the short time to secure the DI's full financial independence, Jan Abrams has chosen to pursue a new opportunity. With her departure, we have decided to end, at least for the time being, the experiment that was the Design Institute.

Jan's last day will be on Friday, June 27, while Wendy Friedmeyer will stay on through the summer to complete the current slate of "Parallel Play" projects; Don Haney has successfully found another opportunity at the University. Jan and Wendy invite you to join them at the Design Institute's studio in Northrop, room 308, on Thursday June 26 from 5-7 pm, to help celebrate nearly eight years of intense activity, productivity, camaraderie, and design hi-jinks.

Posted by Michael Fraase at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone has had a productive beginning of the summer. Commencement and the accompanying exhibition ended the year on a high note and we are excited about the new Architecture and DHA faculty who will be joining us this fall, but we also face new challenges ahead, as you will read below.

The commencement ceremony and reception, along with the senior show and thesis and capstone exhibit, all went very well and they showed the dedication of our faculty and staff as well as the inventiveness of our students to great effect. Several parents, alumni, and guests remarked not just about the quality of the work of our students, but also about the strong social and environmental commitments of much of the work on display. With faculty and students on M-term trips to places like Malawi and Istanbul, and with outreach activities underway or being contemplated in places like the Philippines and Indonesia, the Minnesota mindset has taken on a distinctly international flavor.

New Faculty

That internationalism will also be evident among the new faculty coming here next year. In apparel design, we will be joined by Lucy Dunne, currently in Ireland; in architecture, by Benjamin Ibara, originally from Mexico, and Blaine Brownell, with his internationally known materials website (www.transstudio.com); and in retail merchandising, by Hye-Young Kim, originally from Korea, and Juanjuan Wu, originally from China. We are also in the final negotiation stages for the world heritage studies position and the director of the metropolitan design center. The energy and diversity of these new colleagues will further enhance the global reach of the college and position us well in attracting the best students from around the world.

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: May-June, 2008" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

As you undoubtedly know, the long-time head of the School of Architecture and namesake of our Minneapolis facility, Ralph Rapson, passed away on March 29 at the age of 93. There will be a public memorial service in his honor at the Guthrie Theater at 10 am on Monday, April 21. Buses will bring people to the Rapson Hall courtyard for a reception around noon that day. All are welcome. There will also be an open mike in the court for those who want to remember Ralph in the space in which he worked for 30 years. Working up to the day he died, Ralph did what he loved to do, and that may be one of the greatest lessons he could teach any of us.

I don't need to tell any of you how busy the last month or two have been around here. There have been many lectures, symposia, and events and with eight faculty searches underway, with at least three candidates each, the calendar has been packed. I want to thank, publicly, the search committees and faculty who have given so much of their time, as well as the staff in the college and its various units, for your hard work and dedication. The new crop of faculty starting next academic year will not only invigorate us all, but also provide bridges among our various units in exciting new ways.

Such bridging will become even more important for all of us, given the Governor's recent veto of funding for a new Bell Museum, which seems, at this point, likely to stand and which means that our move to one campus will be delayed an additional year or more. We have done a number of things to forge a common culture across our two-campus divide, ranging from lectures and exhibitions occurring in both Minneapolis and St. Paul to the new graduating student show that mixes the work of students from all of our units. I welcome ideas of further things we might do to connect our various parts.

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: March-April, 2008" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

On March 1, every college must submit to the University of Minnesota Foundation its plans for the upcoming capital campaign, the "silent phase" of which has already begun. We have had several conversations about this among the deans, department heads, and center directors, based on discussions at meetings and retreats over the last year. The Foundation has asked each college to identify no more than five themes that we will focus on in the campaign, and it has provided us with a format within which we must describe our ideas. This process has progressed to a point where we now need your input. Although the attached form has gone through two revisions already, it remains still very much a draft and open to your comments and suggestions, which you can send to me by let's say, Monday, February 25, so that we can try to incorporate your thoughts in the final document.

Not that this document will be the final word on our collegiate campaign. The Foundation will gather what each college has identified as its aspirations and then look for common themes across the University in order to define a larger, institution-wide set of campaign goals, of which ours will undoubtedly be a part. So look at this as a first step. We will have several more opportunities to clarify and hone our case statement and your input along the way -- as well as your participation in helping us identify and approach potential donors -- will be invaluable.

Capital campaigns offer us an opportunity to define what we want to become. Some have already asked me what I thought our college might be like in ten years, so let me explore that a bit with you here.

• Download podcast of Dean Fisher's letter (.mp3; 3.7Mb)

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: January-February, 2008" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

This past year has been a good one for our students and our faculty and staff alike. Students in Clothing Design and Retail Merchandising won awards at the International Textile and Apparel Association conference for the best sustainable design, the most innovative research, the best paper in the consumer track, and the undergrad research award. In Housing Studies, one of our students won an award from the Housing Education Research Association for the best undergraduate research paper, while in Graphic Design, a student won third place in the national competition, Exploring Visual Problems and Creating Change. Meanwhile, in Architecture, students won nationally competitive awards in the KPF Traveling Fellowship and the Torske Klubben Fellowship programs, and in Landscape Architecture, one of our students won an honor award in general design from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: November-December, 2007" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

The last two-and-a-half months have certainly been eventful. It began with the I-35W bridge collapse, to which several of our students rushed and helped victims out of cars or the river before emergency vehicles arrived. Then, on the second day of class, our unionized staff went on strike, which was very painful for all of us: those who stood on the picket line and those who did not or could not. Meanwhile, several national conferences held in the Twin Cities this fall have prompted visits to the college by a number of our professional colleagues, who have seemed uniformly impressed by what they saw here. Those experiences have opened my eyes to the quality of life that we often take for granted in Minnesota. The culture of caring about this place and about its people has made this such a great community in which to live and work, even though we have seen that culture slip in recent years as deferred investments and growing inequality have increased. That is also why our giving, at whatever level, to the University’s Community Fund Drive provides an opportunity for all of us to help recover that culture of caring and to show how much we Minnesotans will extend ourselves in helping others. I have made my pledge, as have about 16% of us in the college, and I dearly hope that we can improve upon that percentage before the end of October, when the fund drive ends. Our goal is to get at least a 50% participation rate, at which point I have agreed to humiliate myself by performing a ballad about the college, cleverly written by Kathy Witherow. Give what you can, and meanwhile, I will start practicing my balladeering.

Continue reading "Letter from the dean: September–October, 2007" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Colleagues,

I have waited to write this letter until we received more concrete budget information from Morrill Hall, which did finally arrive by letter last Friday and e-mail this weekend, just in time for our accounting staff to have the college budget submitted by this week. Nothing like just-in-time delivery! The news is better than we had for you at the last all-college meeting, although not as good as we might have hoped. While we will still have a deficit going into next year, it is much smaller than the $1.8 million we feared last month and within the range that we should be able to handle with careful monitoring of expenses and more tuition than our very conservative projections would predict.

Compact

We had many compact requests based on the ideas we heard from the various units of the college, and the Provost has funded a few of our highest priorities. Provost Sullivan continues to be supportive of our efforts to start a top-quality product design program, seeing it as a field that links to every discipline in the college. As a result, he has funded our request for a product design faculty member, with the goal of attracting someone in the area of wearable technology - an area of great potential research funding and interdisciplinary connections. The Provost also funded a new position in World Heritage Studies, capitalizing on our ties with UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and recognizing the connections such a faculty member could make across several of our fields.

In addition to the recurring and start-up funding for those two new faculty positions, Provost Sullivan has funded the materials library staff position and the non-recurring planning money to establish such a library. A materials library would build on the materials collections we already have in several units, such as the fabrics and textiles collection in the Goldstein Museum of Design, and it would enable us to gather new materials of interest to all of the disciplines in the college. This librarian position could also double as the registrar that the Goldstein very much needs, while the planning money will enable us to strategize about how to establish a collection at the leading edge of where material science is going in our fields.

A major disappointment was the decision by the Provost not to fund the third faculty position we had requested in sustainability, although at the end of last week, President Buininks called Deb Swackhamer (Director of the Institute on the Environment) and me to prepare a pre-proposal to a large, local foundation requesting funding for a major sustainability effort across all of the University's campuses. Apparently sustainability was a priority of many colleges in the Twin Cities and all of the coordinate campuses, and our proposal will focus on making environmental education a fundamental part of the entire undergraduate curriculum, as well as establishing practicums in which students can work with faculty and staff on sustainability efforts across the University, borrowing an idea that we have talked about in this college of thinking about our campuses as a "living laboratory."

Continue reading "Letter from the Dean: May-June 2007" »

Posted by Michael Fraase at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)