UGE Budget

Everybody talks about the budget, but nobody does anything about it.

Adapted from Mark Twain.

The legislature delivered a higher education bill a couple of weeks ago, and the University’s budget office delivered a collegiate budget to CLA on May 31. As I described in a blog post last fall, central typically comes up with state O&M or tuition funding to cover our compensation package (2% this year), requires us to “reallocate” (i.e., cut) a certain amount, and then allows us to ask for money back in the form of requests to make investments in various areas. This year CLA’s reallocation was $1.6 million, and our new funding for investment was $150,000. Ouch. That leaves a mark.

Liberal Education III

When we last left our heroes, they were struggling to figure out what liberal education should be at the University of Minnesota. In today’s episode, they update their ideas based on discussion at the third liberal education open forum.

Spring 2017

I hope you are all enjoying your MLK holiday. I read Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” this morning, and it is just as inspiring today as it was more than 50 years ago. It’s a new semester, and we should all be inspired as we begin a new semester.

We are UGE

The t-shirts we give incoming students are emblazoned with “WE ARE LIBERAL ARTS.” It’s proud; it’s unapologetic; it’s in your face. I like it. In the process of trying to create an “annual report” for the Office of Undergraduate Education, I had to come to grips with who were are in UGE, and come to grips with it in such a way that I can explain to outsiders who we are and what we do. It took me seven pages to list our primary areas along with brief explanations what we do in those areas and how many people work in those areas.

Budget Basics for UGE

CLA Undergraduate Education is a big unit with a big budget. There seems to be a lot of mystery, folklore, and curiosity about our budget, and CLA budgeting more generally, so here is a brief introduction to the budget in CLA and UGE.

UGE Shout-outs at the State of the College Address

Dean John Coleman gave his annual State of the College address at the CLA Assembly meeting on September 20, 2016. For those who were unable to attend, the text of his message can be found here (in John’s blog). John has a very nice exposition on how the liberal arts build empathy and compassion, imagination, and community. For those who were unable to attend and who are impatient, let me just summarize by saying that Undergraduate Education received several shout-outs for our accomplishments over the past couple of years. 

What's in a name?

 A blog by any other name would read as sweet.

Welcome, everyone, to What’s Now? What’s Next? I’ll be sharing news, previews, thoughts, plans, hopes, and all the other maunderings of an associate dean, but I hope you find them keyed to your interests as part of our UGE community.

I was told that the most critical thing about starting a blog was creating the right name. Gary’s Blog was not going to cut it, so I needed to come up with something better. I thought about going all high brow. How does Gaudeamus sound? Let us Rejoice! It comes from a 1287 manuscript in Latin and is the first word in the lyrics to Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture; it tells students to seize the day. Of course, one verse a little later gets a bit risque (I will leave this to your imagination), so perhaps I have not yet found the perfect title.