03-12-11 Reinvestment

Dear Friends of the College:

 This letter comes to you during a wonderful time of the year.  All of us in the College hope the spirit of the season fills your home as 2003 comes to a close.  Here at Texas A&M, we are excited about the growth that will occur through a plan to increase the number of faculty at Texas A&M University.  In this letter I want to give you some background about this plan, how this will be implemented, and how this initiative will help advance our goals in the College of Liberal Arts.

 For more than two years you have heard me and others at Texas A&M refer to Vision 2020, the long-range plan to move the University into the upper echelons of nationally ranked public institutions.  We have embraced this plan and its goals.  It guided our planning as we moved forward into One Spirit One Vision – The Texas A&M Campaign.  During his first few months in office, Dr. Gates discovered that in the past decade, eight of the nine colleges had experienced declines in the number of tenured/tenure track faculty.  This decline in the number of faculty had repercussions in almost every aspect of undergraduate education, negatively impacted graduated education, and consequently, Texas A&M’s reputation nationally had begun to suffer.  The College of Liberal Arts, for example, had lost 32 permanent faculty positions since 1993.  Dr. Gates chose to reverse this trend by resolving to hire almost 450 new faculty over the next five years, increasing the number of faculty at Texas A&M by roughly 25 percent.

 Last spring, the Deans, Dr. Gates, and Provost David B. Prior held a retreat to discuss the need for and to develop a plan to hire more faculty.  The Deans were asked to submit proposals on how they would use funds to hire additional faculty to advance nationally prominent academic programs in their respective colleges, and how many faculty would be needed to accomplish this goal.  Dr. Gates and Provost Prior reviewed all the proposals and, in light of the pending budget allocation for the University, set hiring targets for each college based on each unit’s proposal.

 In all, using 2003-2004 as the first year, Texas A&M intends to hire 447 new faculty by August 2008.  The College of Liberal Arts will add a total of 64 faculty, including 16 faculty for this year plus the 12 faculty we added in the previous year (2002-2003).  Initially we will target 36 hires in select subfields in six academically strong departments:  economics (microeconomics), English (British Literature), history (comparative border studies), political science (international relations), psychology (social psychology), and sociology (race and ethnic studies).  As you recall, departments develop national visibility by building in subfields within their discipline.

Another important consideration is that these departments support large undergraduate degree programs and have demonstrated the capacity to recruit high-quality minority and women faculty.  We anticipate being able to offer more than 100 new sections of courses annually with these 36 hires, including sorely needed upper division courses, additional graduate classes, and increased numbers of honors classes.  The College will allocate the remaining new faculty positions as programmatic needs change in three to four years.  We expect to have opportunities for new initiatives and new hires in 2006, 2007, and 2008. 

 For the College, adding 64 new faculty in strong and emerging academic programs will mean more classes, a renewed commitment to academic excellence, and an even stronger connection to our land grant mission of teaching, research, and service.  Our departments are now working diligently to attract diverse pools of applicants and to hire the very best candidates.  Added to the more than 40 new and replacement hires that departments have brought to campus in the past two years, the new faculty in the college will be truly transformational.

 I hope this letter provides a better understanding of the University’s plans for enhancing the quality of education for Texas A&M students now and in the future.  If you have any questions, please call or e-mail me.  I value your friendship and would welcome your comments.

 Sincerely,

Charles A. Johnson

Dean