Dear Colleagues,
 

Given that Martha Peterson’s current appointment as Acting Dean of the Graduate School/Acting Associate Provost for Graduate and Professional Education ends on June 30, it is necessary to either reappoint or appoint another Acting Dean of the Graduate School/Associate Provost for Graduate and Professional Education, starting July 1, 2022, until a new dean can be hired.
 

Governing Regulation VIII (GR VIII) states that I shall request a recommendation on matters of acting appointments from a committee, which includes faculty members from that unit. Further, GR VIII specifies that input should be sought from staff employees of the unit and others who may be affected.
 

Thus, in accordance with GR VIII, I am forming a committee of faculty members from the Graduate Council, faculty representatives from the Martin and Patterson Schools, staff members from the Graduate School and graduate students. I will meet with that committee soon after it is formed to solicit their recommendations for candidates.
 

In addition, anyone on the graduate faculty, on the staff of the Graduate School or on the faculties or staffs of the Martin and Patterson Schools is welcome to suggest names of candidates.

Please submit your recommendations for an acting dean/associate provost, with a brief justification, to me at provost@uky.edu. All recommendations and justifications will be treated as confidential. To ensure full consideration, provide your recommendations to me no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, June 13.
 

Based on these recommendations, I will consider the names suggested and engage in conversations with candidates of interest.
 

With this critical input, I will select an acting dean/associate provost and announce the appointment in June.
 

Thank you very much for your assistance in this important matter.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.
Provost

The following message from Provost DiPaola was sent to all of campus on Thursday, May 19, 2022. 

Dear Colleagues,

I am excited to announce that Ana M. Franco-Watkins has accepted our offer to become dean of the UK College of Arts and Sciences. Pending Board of Trustees approval, she will join the UK family on July 1, 2022.

Dr. Franco-Watkins currently serves as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University where she has an impressive background as an educator, researcher and leader. Her vision for the College of Arts and Sciences aligns with the aspirational goals of our strategic plan and of our mission to advance Kentucky.

Dr. Franco-Watkins has served as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University since 2021. In this role, she has helped develop a shared, strategic vision for the college, oversaw a restructure and realignment of student services, expanded initiatives for inclusive excellence and successfully stewarded the college’s $68 million budget.

Before serving as interim dean, Dr. Franco-Watkins was chair of the department of psychological sciences for four years. She also served as graduate director of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and undergraduate director of the Department of Psychological Sciences.

She was a first-generation student and holds a doctorate from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree from The College of William and Mary and a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

We are thrilled to welcome her to our institution. 

I want to also thank Christian Brady for his strong leadership of the College of Arts and Sciences during his tenure as interim dean. He has truly been a partner as we worked on this search process and transition.

I also extend my deep gratitude to search committee chairs Jay Miller and Carrie Oser for their service and their commitment to finding the best possible individual for this role. All members of the search committee devoted considerable time and effort throughout this successful process. Finally, I want to really thank all the faculty, staff and students for partnering with us this year as we worked together through this search process.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Franco-Watkins to our community. We look forward to a bright future for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.

Provost

The following message from Acting Provost DiPaola and Vice President for Institutional Diversity Katrice Albert was sent to faculty and staff on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. 

Dear Colleagues,

As a Wildcat family, we welcome many faiths, cultures, identities and beliefs. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan occurs this year April 2 - May 1.

Ramadan is a time when observant Muslims, as a tribute to their faith, refrain from eating, drinking or smoking during daylight hours. During this time period, observant Muslims may not be able to work at their full capacity during the afternoon and early evening. While Muslim students may not ask for any accommodations, it is important for all students to know that we are a community that cares.

Expressing our support and solidarity to students who choose to participate in Ramadan is essential. If you have instructional activities scheduled during these times, you may consider allowing your students to conclude their daily fast before completing their work in the late evening.

Additionally, May 2, the first day of final examinations, will be a religious high holiday for Muslims. As a reminder, Muslim students have the right to seek accommodation so that they can attend this religious event.

We are in this together now more than ever.

Sincerely,

Robert S. DiPaola, Acting Provost

Katrice Albert, Vice President for Institutional Diversity

The following message from Acting Provost DiPaola was sent to all faculty and provost area staff on Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. 

Dear Colleagues,

In December 2021, I announced several changes related to teaching, learning and academic innovation at UK. These changes included that the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) would be overseen by the Office for Faculty Advancement as well as the creation of a senior-level position within the Provost area to focus solely on online learning, which would be filled on an acting basis until a national search could be completed. I am pleased to provide updates regarding these changes.

First, Trey Conatser has been appointed as the Acting Director of CELT. This appointment takes effect March 1, 2022.

Since 2016, Trey has worked as a member of the CELT team, serving as a Faculty Instructional Consultant and most recently as Associate Director. In all of these roles, he has worked to foster a culture of innovation, inclusion and engagement in teaching and learning. CELT has greatly expanded its reach and impact over the last few years, and it will continue to look for ways to collaborate with instructors and other staff across the university to fulfill our critical teaching mission.

Second, Dr. Justin “Jay” Miller has been appointed as the Acting Director of UK Online Education. Dr. Miller’s appointment takes effect March 1, 2022 and will continue through December 31, 2022 or until the position is filled on a permanent basis.

Dr. Miller has served as Dean of the College of Social Work and Dorothy A. Miller Research Professor of Social Work Education since July 2019 and will continue to serve in these roles. During this time, he has led the college in launching fully online Bachelor of Arts in Social Work and Doctorate of Social Work programs, both of which have contributed to a doubling of the college’s enrollment, from 605 students in 2019-2020 to 1,689 students in 2021-2022.

In making appointments to these critical posts, I have received recommendations from multiple campus stakeholders and have consulted with Senate Council Chair Cramer.

I greatly appreciate the willingness of these individuals to serve in these important roles. Please join me in congratulating and thanking them.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.

Acting Provost

The following communication was distributed to faculty, staff and students on February 17, 2022. If you have any questions about the search, please contact Anna Chalfant (anna.chalfant@uky.edu) in the Office of the Provost.

Dear Colleagues,

In December 2021, I announced a nomination and application process for the Associate Provost for Faculty Advancement position.

We are continuing to accept applications from internal and external candidates before moving to the next step in the process. We are still considering all current applications as well as reposting the position to allow for additional applications.

You may continue to nominate candidates for this position by sending an email to provost@uky.edu until 5 p.m. on March 2. All nominations will be confidential. All nominated individuals will be contacted with instructions regarding the application process.

Interested candidates, regardless of whether they receive a nomination as described above, may submit applications via the UK Jobs posting until 11:59 p.m. on March 18. All applications submitted, during either the initial or extended application process, will receive full consideration by the search committee.

If you have any questions, please contact Anna Chalfant (anna.chalfant@uky.edu).

Thank you for your assistance in this important manner.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.
Acting Provost

The following communication was distributed to faculty, staff and students in the College of Nursing on February 10, 2022. If you have any questions about the search, please contact Anna Chalfant (anna.chalfant@uky.edu) in the Office of the Provost.

Colleagues:

As you may know, Dean Heath has informed me of her intention to retire. Since August 2014, Janie Heath, PhD, APRN-BC, FAAN, FNAP, FAANP, has led the University of Kentucky College of Nursing as Dean in its mission to envision, engage and empower the next generation of nurses. She has — from the beginning of her tenure at UK — created a culture of excellence to help save lives, transform communities and inspire hope through education, research, practice and service.

Under her leadership the College of Nursing has realized several notable achievements:

• Raised the academic program profile to national prominence among public institutions, including high rankings by U.S. News and World Report as well as the National Institute for Nursing Research.
• Expanded the college’s research portfolio to $36 million in active research and training awards.
• Increased the number of graduates from undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate certificate programs as well as an increase in retention rates for the undergraduate program.
• Achieved NCLEX first-time pass rates among the top in the state and the nation, averaging 98-100%.
• Prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including increased undergraduate enrollment for under-represented minority (URM) students and increased recruitment of URM faculty.
• Expanded efforts related to rural health outreach, academic and clinical partnerships with organizations such as Eastern State Hospital and faculty practice initiatives, including operation of a Nurse Practitioner managed clinic in Wilmore, Kentucky.
• Focused on student, faculty and staff mental health and wellness through a program called Cultivate Practices for Resilience (CPR).
• Cultivated philanthropy, increasing the number of new gifts as well as the number of overall donors.

Again, I want to emphasize how appreciative we are to Dean Heath. I hope you will join me in thanking her for her service to the institution, as we work with her to create a successful transition.

We will soon begin a national search process for a new Dean of the College of Nursing starting this month. The first step in this process is a request for nominations for members of the search committee.

If you would like to nominate an individual to serve on the search committee, please send their name, contact information and a brief justification to Anna Chalfant (anna.chalfant@uky.edu). Please submit your nominations by February 17 at 5 p.m.

Thank you very much for participating in this important process.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.

Acting Provost

The following message from Acting Provost DiPaola was sent to faculty on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. 

Colleagues,

Welcome back from what I hope has been a time of rest and renewal over the holidays.

As President Capilouto wrote to the campus earlier this week, we are planning another mostly in-person semester with clear priorities:

• To keep our campus safe and our people healthy and well.
• To ensure that our students can succeed as we honor our mission of service to Kentucky.

We can do both. Our record the last two years in the face of enormous challenges underscores the fact that these priorities are, in many ways, interdependent. The data are clear. Our students do better when they are on campus and learning in person, led by our outstanding faculty and supported by remarkable teachers and staff.

Knowing that we need to live with COVID for the foreseeable future, our campus is set up to be a safe environment, where we have implemented many safety measures including easily available primary vaccination and boosters; masking, with new KN95 masks being distributed; readily available testing; and teams of experts regularly monitoring, advising and adjusting as needed to keep us safe. In fact, the data also are clear that our campus – and, yes, our classrooms – are among the safest places to be in our region. We will continue to monitor the situation, however, and be ready to pivot plans if needed.

In that context, for us at UK with so many safety measures in place, moving an in-person class early in the semester online for one or two weeks is not backed by the data and the science of the likely trajectory of the virus, and does not meet the spirit of what we have promised students and families, who are now expecting and planning (sometimes at great cost) to start on Monday the 10th in person.

However, we understand that given the current variant transmission, short term disruptions may occur, and accommodations may be needed should an instructor become COVID positive for example. To help, we have processes in place to provide support including Health Corps and a COVID-19 advisory group with experts to help advise. We put great trust in our instructors as some of these disruptions occur, and we will help with questions and accommodations for short term needs should a faulty member become ill, for example. In this regard, our instructors stepped up last semester to minimize such disruptions to maintain as best possible a residential experience for our students.

We also work closely together between the Provost’s office, the Office of Institutional Equity and Equal Opportunity and Senate Council leadership to quickly consider requests for modality changes. We have consistently done this with a sense of compassion and a commitment to our people as well as our students. Questions about these processes can be directed to Senior Associate Provost Katie Cardarelli: kathryn.cardarelli@uky.edu.

I know you share this deep commitment to students, faculty and staff. With the best advice from our experts and national guidance, we can work together to achieve what we all do best: serving our most purposeful mission in the safest possible way. In addition to our expert and national guidance, we met this week with the START team, campus leadership, faculty senate leadership, staff senate leaders, student leaders and many others to plan to intensify our efforts to enhance the safety of our campus.

We will continue to push vaccinations. Right now, more than 90 percent of our campus is vaccinated. Booster shots provide an added layer of protection and level of immunity against the Omicron strain.

We will continue require testing on a weekly basis for those who are unvaccinated.

We will provide more and better masks. Per recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are beginning the process of distributing KN95 masks to our campus community. Our mask mandate for all indoor settings remains in place as an additional mitigation strategy. Based on input by your faculty senate, staff senate and student leadership, as well as many others, we will increase education on mask use, increase supplies for the future and communicate about options for mask reuse.

We will follow the data and the emerging scientific evidence. Our START team – comprised of clinicians, scientists and health experts – met before the end of last semester and again this week. We have reviewed the operational playbook for the semester, which you can read here.

We will support our community – and our students – where there is need and provide access to resources. Two years ago, we created UK Health Corps – a hub with dozens of trained professionals who work tirelessly to support students and our community. Questions can be directed to this integrated support center: 859-218-SAFE or healthcorps@uky.edu.

We will continue constant communication with elected faculty, staff, students and others to ensure we are gathering feedback and exchanging ideas.

We will be flexible. As we have before, if we need to adjust to keep our community safe, we will not hesitate to do so.

Because of you, our efforts have worked. As a community, we are the most vaccinated place in the Commonwealth and among the safest for our people to live, work and learn.

We are not an outlier in our efforts. Most colleges and universities are working to return to on-time and in-person instruction as the predominant mode of teaching and learning. You can read more about some of our sister institutions here: Most colleges resuming in-person classes.

We also are called as a compassionate campus to support each other. We have done that, too, and will continue to do so because that is who we are as a community. Thank for you for all you do and all you represent for our students and our state.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.

Acting Provost

Dear Colleagues:

The Search Committee for Associate Provost for Faculty Advancement has created a leadership profile for the position. The leadership profile can be found on the Office of the Provost website.

We are now ready to begin accepting confidential nominations and applications for the position.

You may nominate candidates for this position by sending an email to provost@uky.edu until 5 p.m. on December 22. All nominations will be confidential. All nominated individuals will be contacted with instructions regarding the application process.

Interested candidates, regardless of whether they receive a nomination as described above, may submit applications via the UK Jobs posting until 11:59 p.m. on January 4, 2022. All applications submitted will receive full consideration by the search committee.

If you have any questions, please contact Anna Chalfant (anna.chalfant@uky.edu).

Thank you very much for your assistance in this important matter.

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D.

Acting Provost

The following message was sent to faculty on Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021. 

Dear Colleagues,

Many of our students, faculty and staff and their families were affected in various ways by the historic storms Friday evening. For some, these effects will necessarily continue into finals week. Students could be experiencing significant injuries or deaths within their households or other circumstances, which the instructor of record would reasonably find cause for absence (Senate Rule 5.2.5.2).

We want to remind instructors of their responsibility for evaluating the reasonableness of the students’ causes for absence and encourage instructors to exercise this responsibility thoughtfully and generously given the severity of these storms.

The way a student’s absence during finals week is excused is also a matter of some instructor discretion. To help instructors understand their options, we worked together to propose the following considerations:

• Instructors may arrange for students to complete a final exam via an alternative format (e.g., online).
• Instructors may work with affected students to establish a later final exam or submission date. If feasible, this date would fall within the semester.
• If the date will fall later than necessary to meet the grading deadline for the semester (Dec. 20 at 5:00 pm), the student may request an I (incomplete) grade (Senate Rule 5.1.2.2).
• It should be noted that students cannot graduate with an I grade on their transcripts, so instructors should inform students of this prior to agreeing to assign an I grade.
• The instructor may not elect to simply calculate the student's grade on the basis of the other course requirements, unless the student agrees in writing. Senate Council encourages instructors to use this discretion to the benefit of our affected students.

We hope this helps, and we are always available to answer questions as we work together to get through this challenging time.

Robert DiPaola (MD), Acting Provost

Aaron Cramer, Senate Council Chair 

Colleagues,

This afternoon, I have the bittersweet task of informing you that Dr. Kathi Kern has let me know of her intention to leave the Provost’s office and return to the faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences later this spring.

For several years, Kathi has led campus efforts around our online learning strategy as well as faculty development and training through the Center for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). She has led in both of these strategically pivotal spaces with intellect and skill as well as a sense of vision and, as always, keen humor and optimism.

As tough as it is to see her move on, I know teaching remains her first love and the College of Arts and Sciences and its students will be the undeniable beneficiary of this move. Many across our campus know that Kathi is a master teacher, with more than a generation of UK students looking to her for mentorship.

Consider the fact that Kathi has won the Chancellor/Provost’s Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Alumni Great Teacher Award and the College of Education’s “Teachers Who Made a Difference Award” – a trifecta of honors that demonstrate how her fellow faculty, students and other stakeholders recognize her excellence in the classroom and deep commitment to students. She also spent a year as a visiting scholar at Princeton.

She took those skills – and insatiable sense of curiosity about how to do things better in her chosen profession – to the Provost’s office.

Kathi was the inaugural director of CELT, where she has spent more than a decade establishing and building out an innovative teaching and learning support unit, utilized by faculty across the campus. It also has been central to our efforts to cultivate a robust teaching community across disciplines.

One example, among many, of innovative approaches to teaching and learning is the effort in 2015 that Dr. Kern and her team initiated with conversations and inquiry around race and teaching. Those conversations continue to this day as programs centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the learning environment.

Similarly, Dr. Kern’s leadership of the UK Online initiative has led to the expansion of the university’s online footprint with high-quality, innovative, faculty-driven online programs launched at an unprecedented rate during COVID-19, from 37 to 87 programs since 2018.

In collaboration with the University Senate and faculty across the institution, Kathi and her team supported both new and established online programs to increase UK’s online enrollments and expand access to the benefits of a UK education to learners both near and far.

Nowhere has this combination of skills and effort been more invaluable than in helping navigate through a global pandemic. In March 2020, Kathi and her teams provided seamless and strong support for faculty and instructors as UK shifted all classes to a remote format in less than two weeks.

During this time, demand for instructional support surged like never before, and Dr. Kern led her teams as well as the institution’s academic course delivery workstream to maintain and, ultimately, strengthen the UK’s ability to fulfill its critical teaching mission for the Commonwealth and beyond.

Not surprisingly, Kathi has graciously accepted my request that she stay on in the Provost’s office for a time during the spring semester to help work through this transition period.

We will create a senior-level position to focus solely on online learning as we need to take the strong foundation that Kathi has helped build through COVID-19 and accelerate and expand our efforts. That will involve a national search. I will also appoint an acting director for a period of time as that search will likely take a number  of months. Finally, I will ask the Office for Faculty Advancement to oversee the important work being done in CELT.

But there will be ample time for transitions. Today, I know you all join me in celebrating Kathi’s significant accomplishments and steadfast devotion to this intellectual community, our faculty and the students who we are called to serve.

Thank you, Kathi.

Robert S. DiPaola