Chancellor Plowman and Provost Zomchick,
 
          Thank you for arranging to meet with us on Thursday November 11 at 1PM. While I give below some topics for possible discussion, I suggest that we might focus more on "big picture" issues that arise from the successful approval of the Strategic Vision. The Vision has many components and I suggest we consider ways that the faculty and other stakeholders might assist in prioritizing efforts on the wide range of transformational progress and operational metrics that are included. While it is laudable to have these all specified, given the great flexibility Deans have in the BAM, it could be beneficial to have some overall campus buy-in on priorities that Deans might utilize in making allocation decisions within their units. Similarly, such a set of prioritizations might assist the BAM Allocation Review Committee in assessing the overall value to campus efforts from the many support units that Committee will be considering for resource allocations. This ties in directly with the Academic Structure review process since it will be challenging to identify the trade-offs between alternative academic structures without some firmer overall prioritization of the goals in the Strategic Vision. 

    Some more specific issues we might discuss are:

1. The relative roles of graduate and undergraduate education in the Strategic Vision, particularly as it is affected by BAM. Much of graduate education is supported by GTAs and it is far from clear that investing in these is financially feasible for Deans in the BAM. The flexibility inherent in the range of course options in the new calendar, Winter mini-term being an example, induces challenges with regard to GTA assignments. 

2. The trends in faculty appointments have been to move heavily towards NTT yet UTK has not done what UTHSC has done over the past decade (reduce TT faculty by 50% and increase NTT faculty by 150%). If Deans control allocations moving forward, there could be continual "slippage" in current faculty allocations. The Senate Budget and Planning Committee has under consideration a reporting template to track such changes by Colleges, but of course has no authority to do anything other than comment. 

3. Faculty effort for 9-month appointments has been clarified by the Provost with regard to service in January, but this still leaves unsettled issues regarding compliance and effort allocation on grants. Regarding the calendar, might we consider expanding the Fall semester past Thanksgiving so that it starts later in August and thus allows much of August to be considered a "summer month" for grant effort purposes?

4. To counteract the decline (by $5M per year according to VC Crawford) in external research support from UTB/ORNL, ways to prioritize hiring of research faculty to bring in more external support might be appropriate. However the BAM really doesn't have a mechanism to encourage Deans to do so, particularly if indeed all the F&A does not return to Colleges. 

5. I have been sitting in and actively commenting on the System ERP planning and did not hear any mention of how this will affect the CRM planning going on for UTK. The ERP will be a major transition but appears as best I can tell to allow (no matter which vendor is chosen) to be able to provide the types of data needed for BAM analysis which would I think have to go on outside the ERP as it is being done now. 

Stay well,
        Lou
11/10/2021