The UNK administration is looking to prevent further budget cuts and bolster the University’s future by restructuring UNK’s colleges. This spring marks the first step in a long iterative process toward that goal with the first draft.
Tim Jares, dean of the College of Business and Technology, compared it to when he played basketball in high school.
“I probably liked to play offense more than I liked to play defense,” Jares said. “It’s more fun, right? Sort of at the end of the day, what this is about is instead of reacting to the external environment, it’s being proactive.”
The idea came from talks in the Dean’s Council and a “genuine desire” to figure out how to change the repeated cycle of cuts, according to Jares.
This includes focusing on areas of rural health, rural education and rural business. Evan Boyd, dean of the Calvin T. Ryan Library, compared the draft to “very light scaffolding.”
“We’re not even to the point of making decisions,” Boyd said. “We were at the point of, ‘We have a big idea. Let’s get feedback on this big idea. Let’s go through an iterative process to see where this might lead, and if it goes nowhere, then it goes nowhere.’”
While where departments end up has been thought about amongst the deans, Boyd said they do not want to force it on people.
“We decided that because we want people to really think about where they want to be, we’re not coming forward with ideas on where people should be, in terms of what college they should be a part of,” Boyd said.
Paul Twigg, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said that the proposed restructuring would also allow the colleges to support faculty and students more equally.
“I oversee two-thirds of the faculty on campus,” Twigg said. “Yet, if you look at things like professional development, which means the means to support faculty going to conferences, students presenting their research or things like that, are very unequal.”
The deans and Julie Shaffer, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, will continue to meet with faculty and staff members, with another revision to the draft being the next step.
“We’ll give (the revised draft) back to folks and really make everyone say where they might fit, if they fit, so that we can have the super big discussion in the fall,” Boyd said.
The hope is to not only make the University stronger, but to have a plan in place by next spring.
“What we’re trying to do is stop from eliminating more programs,” Jares said. “We feel that if we don’t do this, (there will be) another cycle of cuts. There’s no way we don’t eliminate more programs, and we’re trying to prevent that.”