Dear CLAS Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Assistants:

Welcome to the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year! I hope you've had a great summer, whether you spent it teaching, researching, creating, relaxing, or all of the above.

I’ve had many conversations during the summer with faculty, staff, and students about their ideas, plans, hopes, and concerns about this academic year. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reach out to me and our CLAS Associate Deans—it’s vitally important for us to listen carefully and to learn from your experiences, and it is our privilege do so.

I am, as always, impressed and inspired by your innovation and dedication to your work and our teaching and research missions. CLAS is truly at the heart of the University of Iowa and plays a special role that I acclaim in every meeting I have with our campus leadership. Each of you contributes to our college’s excellence by shaping Iowa’s teaching, research, and public engagement in crucial ways, using our CLAS Strategic Plan as a guide. I hope you share the pride that I feel in that.

Consider these facts:

• We shape UI undergraduate education. We touch almost every student through our Gen Ed CLAS Core, and about two-thirds of them remain in CLAS until graduation. The university looks to us—to you—for innovation in teaching and student success. For instance, the UI awarded a highly competitive P3 grant to CLAS Professor Shaun Vecera so he can lead a cross-campus team in infusing the research- and evidence-based Learning@Iowa platform throughout all UI undergraduate programs.
  
  
• About one-third of all UI graduate students study in CLAS, far more than any other single college. Our graduate instructors and graduate assistants help shape UI teaching and research, and we are leading the campus in encouraging new and creative approaches to dissertations and theses. Our graduate programs are strong and in demand—8 of 21 UI graduate programs ranked in the top 25 nationally are in CLAS.
  
  
• CLAS scholars, scientists, and artists are remarkably productive in bringing in external research funding, with our annual total increasing by millions for each of the past 4 years. In 2021, CLAS research funding rose by over 70% compared to 2020, with NASA’s $115 million award to CLAS researchers on the TRACERS project—the UI’s biggest grant ever—leading the way. Our own CLAS Grant Support Office provides pre- and post-award support to grant-seekers in every CLAS department, and is one of just a handful of such offices across Big Ten liberal arts colleges. And just since 2019, CLAS faculty have won three Guggenheim fellowships, three National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, four Fulbright Scholar awards, three American Council of Learned Societies fellowships, six NSF CAREER awards, four national book awards, and fellowships at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other prestigious institutions.
  
  
• Our 2020-21 “Pursuing Racial Justice” theme year featured 15 virtual sessions, open to the campus and the public, that looked at DEI foci through intersectional lenses. Our 2020 DEI Annual Report is a model of using storytelling and quantitative data to both highlight our successes and identify many areas in which we need to do better. We are currently working on our 2021-22 CLAS DEI Action Plan, and look forward to sharing it with the community soon.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. But the story is clear—CLAS’s leadership and innovation are essential to the University of Iowa. Thank you for all that you do for our college, our campus community, and your disciplines.

I know that many of us find ourselves once again approaching this new academic year with our excitement mixed with trepidation. Our hopes of putting the stress of last year’s pandemic disruptions behind us have waned as the summer progressed. I, and our CLAS Associate Deans, have spoken to many of you about your struggles and concerns as we all face continuing uncertainty about how new coronavirus variants may impact your workplaces, affect our mission, and disrupt your scholarship.

Please know that we see you, we hear you, and we are doing all we can to ensure that our faculty's and grad students' research and teaching success will grow in the coming year, with expert and creative support from staff colleagues in so many roles throughout the college. 

I personally invite you to reach out to me should there be ways I can support you during this year.  As I have shared with many of you, I am a “high-touch person.” I'm never too busy to lend an ear, a hand, or support to the wonderful faculty and staff who make up the community of CLAS.

With all best wishes for a fulfilling 2021-22,

Sara

Sara Sanders, PhD, MSW
Dean and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
UI Alumni Association Dean’s Chair
   in the Liberal Arts and Sciences