The University of Florida Board of Trustees approved tenure for 17 new faculty members, the termination of three majors and reaffirmed the school’s policies and goals in hiring, administration and construction during its meeting on Thursday.
“We have an unprecedented number of tenure-on-hire cases today,” said Scott Angle, UF’s provost. “I have never seen anything like this in my academic career.
The online master’s program in international construction management and the master’s degree in classical studies will both be dissolved because of poor enrollment rates. The decision will need to be approved by the Board of Governors.
The undergraduate major in horticultural science will be consolidated into the plant science degree.
William Inboden, director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, a UF facility created in 2022 dedicated to education in Western civilization, updated the progress and plans made by the center.
Inboden said the center had received 1,100 applicants for faculty in the last 14 months.
“We are in the process of developing five new majors,” said Inboden, who expressed gratitude about the growth of the center. “A new academic unit can’t really succeed without the support of leadership.”
UF President Ben Sasse also commented on the success and experimental nature of the Hamilton Center.
“Hamilton is committed to a style of teaching that is focused on big debates,” Sasse said.
Sasse emphasized at the meeting that he wanted the administration to focus on quality of instruction rather than quantity. The chair of the board, Morteza Hosseini, agreed with the outlook.
“We never want to do anything at the cost of quality,” Hosseini said.
In her update, Danaya Wright, the board’s faculty senate chair, presented the efforts to reduce inefficiencies within UF’s administration.
“Many staff are wearing too many hats,” Wright said. “We want to improve faculty experience now and going forward.”
Wright said that around 40% of faculty time was wasted on administrative burdens and solutions would need time to actualize.
“We’re still collecting a lot of data,” Wright said. “This is something we don’t want to stop.”
David Kratzer, senior vice president of construction, facilities and auxiliary operations at UF, spoke on the difficulties of the 692 major and minor ongoing construction projects throughout the university.
“It’s a little breathtaking,” Kratzer said. “We have 41 major projects currently on campus that we’re looking at.”
Still in the planning stages are $1.4 billion worth of projects. These projects have been performing poorly in terms of time and budget constraints, Kratzer said.
“How are we doing on time, on budget?” Kratzer asked. “Not well at all.”
The lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, deferred maintenance, outdated software and poor scheduling all contributed to this inefficiency, said Kratzer. New software, as well as a new scheduling position, alleviated these issues, and Kratzer said his team is more than capable.
“I don’t know another team at the university that is more collaborative,” Kratzer said.
Sasse addressed the setbacks experienced by on-campus construction.
“We’re going to need to hit reset on some of those projects,” Sasse said, adding that they couldn’t “somehow magically get out of this bind.”