College of Arts & Sciences Adds 59 Faculty

Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences Dean Mark Peceny took the helm of the university’s largest col­lege just one year ago. A 20-year vet­eran in polit­i­cal sci­ence, Peceny said, “Our charge is to make the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico a national leader by devel­op­ing a flag­ship uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tional model for the emerg­ing Amer­i­can major­ity,” he said.

“We give more peo­ple the chance to suc­ceed than other flag­ship uni­ver­si­ties. Our stu­dent body is eth­ni­cally diverse. They come to us with dif­fer­ent lev­els of prepa­ra­tion for higher edu­ca­tion. They come with­out the advan­tages most stu­dents have who attend a flag­ship insti­tu­tion,” Peceny said. “We give them a chance to grad­u­ate from a dis­tin­guished university.”

Peceny said that as the United States pop­u­la­tion fur­ther diver­si­fies, UNM can be a national model for how higher edu­ca­tion deals with soci­etal inequities which result in dif­fer­ent lev­els of prepa­ra­tion that stu­dents get.

UNM has, he said, a top notch fac­ulty engaged in cut­ting edge research. “Our stu­dents have the oppor­tu­nity to engage in research as under­grad­u­ates while also start­ing to see them­selves as future grad­u­ate stu­dents,” he said.

“UNM has to fig­ure out simul­ta­ne­ously how to teach Math 120 more effec­tively while also look­ing toward prepar­ing stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in oppor­tu­ni­ties like the Bio­med­ical Research Sym­po­sium,” he said. “If we fig­ure that out, we will be a model for our stu­dents and the nation.”

Peceny points to the “Killer Class List” posted on his recy­cle bin. Math 120 is always on that list. “Eight out of the 10 killer classes are math. Math 120 is the gate­way course to the core cur­ricu­lum. Stu­dents take it over and over again with­out suc­cess. We have to get them through that and into the core cur­ricu­lum,” he said.

Peceny looks to the new MaLL, or Math Learn­ing Lab, to help stu­dents get the help they need to be suc­cess­ful math stu­dents. The dean and math fac­ulty redesigned con­tent deliv­ery that replaces lec­tures with time in a learn­ing lab where stu­dents use self-paced, computer-based resources to learn and be assessed. The project is an exper­i­ment that will attempt to improve the low pass rates for Math 120. The MaLL will be staffed with teach­ers, grad­u­ate stu­dents and select under­grad­u­ates who will assist stu­dents indi­vid­u­ally as they move through the mate­r­ial. The MaLL begins on a small scale this fall and will expand to cover all sec­tions of Math 120 in the spring.

“Math 120 is only one small part of the tremen­dous ser­vice role that the Depart­ment of Math and Stats plays for stu­dents across the uni­ver­sity, and over the next few years we hope to build fac­ulty strength in pure math, applied math and sta­tis­tics as well as spe­cial­ists in teach­ing pre-calculus math,” he said.

The Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences has “their hands in every­thing,” Peceny said, because it is the largest col­lege with 20 depart­ments, 10 inter­dis­ci­pli­nary pro­grams, 10 research cen­ters and insti­tutes and other enti­ties that report through indi­vid­ual departments.

“We serve almost half of all under­grad­u­ate stu­dents and just under half of all grad­u­ate stu­dents on main cam­pus,” he said. To address the needs of all those stu­dents, Arts and Sci­ences needs fac­ulty. Lots of faculty.

“I inher­ited a hir­ing plan for eight fac­ulty, plus per­haps a few more from the com­mon pool from the provost’s office,” he said. Start­ing from scratch he worked with depart­ments to develop hir­ing plans that moved the num­ber of hires from eight to 33 to be funded inter­nally. Eight more were to come from the provost. Part of the fund­ing came from online courses through Extended University.

In a memo to Provost Chaouki Abdal­lah, Peceny explained that fac­ulty and admin­is­tra­tors have had con­cerns about online course deliv­ery and the fund­ing model for use of that rev­enue. “If fac­ulty real­ize that E.U. is not a replace­ment for tenure track fac­ulty, but a cen­tral engine of growth in the ranks of the tenure track fac­ulty, they are more likely to accept it as an impor­tant part of our teach­ing mis­sion. If cen­tral admin­is­tra­tors real­ize we are invest­ing our E.U. rev­enue in tenure track posi­tions, they are less likely to chal­lenge the finan­cial model that makes this invest­ment possible.”

The Depart­ment of For­eign Lan­guages and Lit­er­a­tures is get­ting some help in address­ing crit­i­cal lan­guages – those lan­guages deemed crit­i­cal by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment because of cur­rent inter­na­tional affairs. “We added tenure track fac­ulty in Ara­bic and Chi­nese. We added lec­tur­ers in Chi­nese and Japan­ese, too,” Peceny said. He noted that the hires build the lan­guage pro­grams and also pro­vide instruc­tion in cul­ture and his­tory of those regions. “Stu­dents need to under­stand the world. It is our role as a flag­ship uni­ver­sity to see that they have that opportunity.”

Peceny said that in two years A&S has dou­bled the num­ber of African Amer­i­cans in tenure track posi­tions in the col­lege. They also increased the num­ber of His­panic and female faculty.

All together, A&S is adding 59 tenure track fac­ulty and 12 new lec­tur­ers. An addi­tional 12 lec­tur­ers were reas­signed from other des­ig­na­tions, par­tic­u­larly the pro­fes­sional staff in speech and hear­ing sci­ences, Peceny said, adding that every depart­ment gained either a tenure track fac­ulty or lecturer.