College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Strategic Plan
CHASS centers the diversity of human experience in educational attainment and world-class research in Inland Southern California
Pillars
Research
Center CHASS as an R1 knocking at AAU’s door
Public Engagement
Embrace our place in Inland California and among its people
Student Experience
Celebrate our students as innovators and disruptors
Budget & Organization
See the big picture and its alignment to our mission
Our Future
Envision where we go together from here
Strategic Goal I
Build financial stability, resiliency, and sustainability
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Increase net revenue
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Align curricular offering, student success, enrollment management, and admissions to maximize yield rates, CHASS majors, and full-time FTE counts
- Institutionalize summer session funding pilot
- Expand remote summer offerings
- Develop an out-of-state and international undergraduate recruitment strategy
- Institutionalize MA Funding Incentive
- Expand 4+1 and 3+2 MA programs
- Incentivize grant-writing activities and education
- Strengthen post-award support
- Launched MA in economics and introduced the concept of 4+1 and 3+2 MA to chairs and directors
- Expand philanthropically-supported student success
- Expand number and scope of Endowed, Named, and Term Chairs
- Advocate on behalf of CHASS at state and federal levels
- Develop closer connections with federal agency and foundation program officers
- Center the arts in development activities
- Prepare CHASS for next Campus Capital Campaign
- In partnerships with Government Relations, National Humanities Alliance, and Consortium for Advocacy in the Social Sciences, college leadership active participants in advocacy days in Sacramento and Washington, DC
- Inaugural Dean’s Speaker Series featured CHASS alum Simon Tam
- Prepare and train faculty to engage with development activities
- Grow our giving base
- Create an alumni fund
- Increase participation in Dean’s Scholarship Funds
- Faculty & Staff Giving Campaign
- Increase participation in Graduate Student Assistance Fund
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Improve financial models
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Institutionalize data transparency
- Incentivize local investment/returns in fellowships and awards, entrepreneurial activity, and sponsored research
- Establish Dean’s Advisory Committee on fiscal matters
- Develop CHASS-specific dashboards including forecasting and modeling
- Future forecasting should include considerations for adequate reserves
- Roll out better dashboards by department
- Increase financial literacy among chairs and directors
- Strengthen resilience through cash management and rainy-day funds
- Reimagine temporary teaching budgeting and allocations
- Developed new data dashboards utilizing Institutional Research data to inform departments about goals and progress
Strategic Goal II
Invest in the success of the people who teach, do research, work, learn, and live at UCR
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Improve undergrad student success & experience
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Develop new academic programs in areas of high demand for frosh and transfers
- Expand course modality and credit load offerings, including systemwide online course development
- Transition academic advising to holistic student success model
- Developed two new academic departments which would translate into three new majors: Environmental Studies and Health Equity, Black Study
- Increased permanent online course offerings (Since Fall of 2021, 143 CHASS courses have been approved for online instruction)
- Expand CHASS F1RST and Transfers F1RST
- Reduce class sizes, especially in Social Sciences and upper-division Humanities courses
- Expand senior capstone opportunities, especially across the Social Sciences
- Incentivize CHASS participation in University Honors
- Bring career-mapping into academic programs and student success
- Improve participation rates for EAP/FLEAP, MMUF, SROP, UCDC, California College Corps, and other UCR/UC high-impact programs
- Expand our summer program offerings
- Expand the internship program following the model of Political Science
- Began setting clear goals on unit and college graduate rates utilizing UC 2030 for metrics/dashboards/progress
- Enhance and expand faculty participation in undergraduate student academic advising and mentorship
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Improve graduate student success & pipelines
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Improve graduate funding (grant and fellowship submissions by students)
- Develop metrics on size of graduate program/faculty
- Pipeline workshops for UC PPFP applications
- Offer more diverse teaching opportunities to diversify and expand training for graduate students
- Expand training and curricular development for more diverse career outcomes for PhD students
- Address attrition and failure rates and time-to-degree across departments (benchmarking to UC and national rates)
- Reimagine graduate advising
- In partnership with National Humanities Center, 20 students completed training “Meaningful Teaching and Learning in the Humanities Classroom”
- Developed graduate student job opportunities application
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Address faculty equity & professional growth
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Embrace multiple pathways that recognize and reward variety of academic contributions
- Embrace data transparency on salaries, retention, service,
- Amplify rewards and recognitions for faculty, for internal and external audiences
- Two CHASS faculty selected to be ELEVATE fellows at Rutgers Center for the Study of Minority Serving Institutions
- Center diversity and inclusion as constitutive of faculty excellence
- Advance inclusive and equitable search and selection process
- Make Principles of Community legible and meaningful
- Appropriately compensate chairs, directors, and supervisors
- Addressing salary inversions, compressions
- Education of chairs as administrators
- Fund competitive leadership training and networking opportunities for faculty and staff
- New schedule for chairs’ compensation launched FY23, with 25% year-over-year increases through FY26
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Address staff flexibility & professional growth
- INITIATIVES
- PROGRESS
- Increase staffing across the College, benchmarking ratios to campus, UC, and association norms (staff:faculty; staff:student)
- Institutionalize strategic workplace flexibility
- Expand mentorship and leadership programs among staff
- Formalize onboarding and career pathing from entry level to supervisory positions
- Amplify rewards and recognitions for faculty
- Improve staff retention ratios
- Develop CHASS Student-to-Staff Pathway
- Making Principles of Community legible and meaningful
Strategic Goal III
Expand the visibility and scope of influence of UCR locally, nationally, and globally
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Strengthen AAU membership candidacy
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Foster faculty research environment that is typical for AAU institutions
- Intentional mapping our strengths to AAU metrics and standards
- Grow sponsored research activities
- Strategically grow UC graduate education and postdoctoral opportunities
- Identify the strength of distinctive research collections
- California Museum of Photography
- Embrace the opportunities to tell our shared and unique AAU-worthy stories
- Restore faculty research support programs put on hiatus during pandemic-caused budget crisis (Chip-In, subvention, computer replacement)
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Serve as an Anchor Institution for economic development in Inland Empire
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Grow CHASS voice in equitable and sustainable regional economic development
- Position CHASS as arts incubator in regional development
- Coordinate existing research agendas across college to be well-positioned as active partners in OASIS and other regional development initiatives
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Achieve national classifications
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Increase National Academy and AAAS members
- Increase national association recognition for faculty and staff (CUPA HR, CUCSA, NACADA)
- Recognize community engagement as a metric of excellence
- Recognize performing and visual arts activity as community engagement
- UCR ARTS achieved American Alliance of Museum accreditation (March 2022)
- Actively engaged in Carnegie community engagement classification bid
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Build world-class facilities and marquee events for the arts, humanities, and social sciences
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Elevate CHASS facilities into campus capital planning
- Expand CHASS footprint in Downtown Riverside
- Activate engagement with campus landscape and Library special collections
- Ensure existing facilities are ADA compliant, safe, and secure
- Via Lottery Funds, engaged in a $3M+ investment in CHASS building upgrades, repairs, and new labs for social sciences and the humanities
- Maximize efficient post-pandemic usage of currently assigned CHASS space
- Modernize and upgrade technology in existing facilities for instruction and student success
- Contribute to expansion of public art on campus
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Strengthen research communication and outreach
INITIATIVES PROGRESS - Deepen and expand marketing and communications portfolio
- Develop an Alumni Engagement strategy
- Develop faculty outreach and comms trainings
- Develop relations with community employers