Dear Advisory Council members,
Once again, thank you to everyone who joined last week’s Zoom call. For those of you who weren’t able to attend here is a quick recap of what we discussed.
I started the call sporting a hat gifted to me by Byron LeFlore (thank you, Byron) and a mask made by artist and faculty member, Beili Liu. The mask is made out of a prayer flag from the art installation THIRST that Professor Liu created at Lady Bird Lake in 2013, which featured 14,000 of these flags. Professor Liu is converting 1,000 of the flags into masks to distribute – just one example of the creative and innovative ways our Fine Arts community is responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
My thanks to our members who have given generously to the University’s Student Emergency Fund. For the many students who were already financially insecure, this pandemic has pushed them over the edge. The fund has already distributed more than $1 million, but continues to receive more than 100 applications a day, so we’re extremely grateful for everyone’s help. Some of you have contacted us about giving directly to COFA students, in addition to the UT Student Emergency Fund, and for those donations, I ask that you consider a gift to The Doty Society, our college’s unrestricted student support fund.
Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic
It’s been six weeks since President Fenves announced on March 11 that Spring Break would be extended and classes would resume on the 30th. The next day, he announced all travel and events were canceled, and shortly after that, closed the campus and moved all classes online. All this in less than a week.
A quick aside regarding online learning: It has been around for at least 20 years, and we’ve been a reluctant adopter of this method of teaching. It’s one thing to teach chemistry, history or engineering online, but what does that mean for painting, sculpture, dance or ensemble classes? You can imagine what a stunning challenge this has been for the college.
Our primary goal has been to guarantee the safety of our students, faculty and staff, but secondly, to do everything possible to ensure that students’ educational progress is not interrupted. The Student Emergency Fund has certainly helped students who have lost their jobs in the service or entertainment industry or are struggling to afford laptops or broadband internet connections.
Leadership Changes
Additionally, we have learned that Provost McInnis and President Fenves are leaving to take jobs at SUNY Stony Brook and Emory University, respectively. Please know that these plans were in the works before the pandemic hit. Jay Hartzell, dean of the McCombs School of Business has been named the interim president. Jay is the most collaborative business school dean I’ve worked with, and I have high confidence in him. They’ve named Vice President for Research Dan Jaffe as interim provost. Dan is an astrophysicist by trade, but also is very interested in the arts.
I hope that a new president will be named quickly both for the legislative session in January and to ensure the speedy hiring of a new provost, which will in turn affect the timeline for hiring our new Fine Arts dean. I think internal hires for both positions would be the best and smoothest course, especially in the face of the current crisis.
Introducing Dr. Julie Schell
Julie Schell joined our staff a few years ago to create an Executive and Extended Education Program in the School of Design and Creative Technologies. She is an expert in the psychology of learning, studied at Harvard, and has held positions at Yale and Stanford. Now, at COFA, she has projected that SDCTx will bring in nearly $1 million in earned revenue this year.
When the pandemic hit, we realized many faculty would need coaching to quickly adapt their courses to an online format, so I appointed Julie the new Assistant Dean for Instructional Continuity and Innovation. This is forced innovation, but we want the merits of this system to be preserved in the college.
Quickly Moving Arts Education Online
President Fenves’ announcement that all spring classes would move online meant that the college had to launch more than 500 Fine Arts courses with more than 8,000 students in only 13 days. For context, the development of a new online course typically has a budget of $60,000 to $90,000 with a timeline of six months to a year. In her informative presentation, Julie called it a “historic and unprecedented moment” in the college, and commended our desire “to put arts pedagogy first and technology second.” Julie gave several exciting examples of the new online classes that have come out of this process.
Julie taught nine training sessions over about 10 days with more than 500 faculty members in attendance. She’s also had 75 one-on-one sessions with faculty and continues to offer weekly training sessions for faculty and staff.
In Closing
My thanks again to Julie for taking the time to share the outstanding work of our faculty. I expect she will be a regular featured speaker for the Advisory Council going forward. Thanks also to you, our council members, for your continued and stalwart support. I wish you and your family good health, and I hope to see you again on our next Zoom call in late May.
Excelsior!
Doug Dempster
Dean