Carolina Alumni Review - September/October 2007

HEART OF THE UNIVERSITY

‘If our society
is ever going
to do something
about global
warming,
poverty,
inequality,
epidemic
diseases and
other issues
affecting our
world, we need
some new ideas.
It is crucial
to expose our
students to what
it is like to have
a new idea
and to follow it
through.’

A few days before he took over as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in July, Holden Thorp ’ 86 spoke to the Board of Directors of the General Alumni Association about his vision for the University’s largest academic unit, including his thoughts about how Carolina compares with some other highly regarded universities. He had spent some time reading what his predecessors and deans at other universities had written about the College of Arts and Sciences — they all seemed to believe it is “the heart of the University.” His remarks were adapted for this article.

The purpose of the College of Arts and Sciences, as I see it, is to promote original thought and produce the people and ideas needed to solve the world’s

biggest problems. As the largest academic unit in the nation’s first public university, the college has a special responsibility to be mindful of society’s most pressing issues and to create an environment that encourages our students and faculty to address them — in the classroom, in the field or laboratory, and in the local and global community. The college’s core values — originality, curiosity, transparency and diversity — help us fulfill this vital public mission.

I believe that a thorough liberal arts education is the best preparation for leadership in the 21st century and that Carolina is unusually well-equipped to provide this

through the College of Arts and Sciences. Indeed, thousands of Carolina alumni who have succeeded in business are graduates of the college. Lots of successful entrepreneurs have come from the college, and — more specifically —

from the humanities and social sciences. The college gives students the tools to understand the issues and the people they will work with.

With regard to diversity, the college, like most of our peers, is not doing as well as we should at matching the demographics of the faculty to the demographics of the students. For example, nearly half of our doctoral students in the sciences are women, but fewer than one in five members of the science faculty are female. That’s a lot of brain power left on the table. Similar disparities exist between the ethnic diversity of our student body and our fac-

JUSTIN SMITH ’07

ulty, and the changing population profile of North Carolina adds to this.

My goals as dean are to maintain the great academic programs in the college and move a few more into the top tier, build appreciation for Carolina as a research university with a world-class undergraduate program, increase the interaction of undergraduates with idea generation and originality, encourage entrepreneurship, increase the academic profile of the fine arts, foster leadership culture, and be proactive about increasing faculty diversity and about keeping our best faculty.

The dean’s job, as I see it, is to a) raise money, b) tell our story and c) oversee the largest school on campus. This means helping senior associate deans, department chairs and other managers to ensure that faculty and students succeed.

Structure of the college

The management of the college includes senior associate deans for undergraduate education, the social sciences, the fine arts and humanities, and the sciences; a director of international programs; a chief financial officer, who manages a $225 million budget; and a development director and staff, who raised $56 million in private gifts in the past fiscal year alone, surpassing the college’s $350 million goal in the Carolina First campaign.

The college has more than 14,000 undergraduate students and 2, 100 graduate students, and about 710 tenure-track faculty to teach and mentor them. Our undergraduate classes are a mix of large lectures, small discussion sections and seminars where students will learn from distinguished scholars as well as graduate students and junior faculty. We have a higher percentage of small classes than just about any other major public research university, and we encourage undergraduates to take part in small seminars and research projects led by senior faculty even as early as their first year. Sixty percent of freshmen enroll in first-year seminars, classes of 19 or fewer students taught by leading faculty.