If the University of Connecticut”™s promised expansion is to occur in the way of new faculty, we may be waiting longer.
As a University of Connecticut spokesman confirmed the school is considering a physical and philosophical expansion of its Stamford campus, the school has yet to make any immediate movement on the most obvious front: trolling for new faculty.
Spring is a prime season for faculty hiring as the end of the academic year looms and departments finalize their fiscal budgets for the coming school year. While UConn”™s flagship campus in Storrs lists 35 open professor and lecturer positions, just two openings exist for the Stamford campus and one of those is to split time in Waterbury and Hartford as well.
A year after the dean of the UConn School of Business touted Stamford as a center for the digital arts and as that industry continues to bloom in Fairfield County, it is Storrs that is adding an expert in 3D for digital arts, television, biosciences and other fields ”“ as is Fairfield University.
As Stamford launches a startup incubator some in state government see as a model, it is Storrs that is adding two full-time faculty focused on entrepreneurship and at UConn Hartford a third.
And with Fairfield County a world center for high finance, it is Storrs that is adding three positions in financial engineering and corporate finance.
By contrast, UConn is freeing up money for a full-time lecturer to build up an early childhood education discipline in Stamford, and a professor to teach organizational behavior and possibly entrepreneurship, not just in Stamford but possibly Waterbury and Hartford as well.
While UConn offers more than 100 majors at its Storrs campus, UConn Stamford lists about a tenth of that number. And UConn Stamford has just three graduate programs ”“ an evening and weekend MBA program, a master”™s in financial risk management and a master”™s of accounting offered online.
Jud Saviskas, who leads business programs at UConn Stamford, referred questions to Michael Kirk, a UConn spokesman in Storrs, who in an email called Stamford a “high priority” ”“ without saying how high of a priority.
“The university is looking at various options for possibly expanding academic offerings and the physical space,” Kirk said. “Though they are only under discussion at this point, these options include increasing the number of majors offered on the campus and/or strengthening existing majors through more course offerings and additional faculty. With regard to the physical space, again, nothing is definite but options include working to expand its current footprint or expanding to space nearby.
“When the university has a clear plan on paper, we”™ll certainly make that known,” he said. “Probably over the next few weeks or months.”
Several business leaders in Stamford have said the lack of a comprehensive university is the city”™s biggest drawback, and one that seemingly does not compute given Stamford”™s proximity to New York City with the recruitment opportunities it offers.
“I think it”™s an outstanding opportunity,” said Steve Gallucci, managing partner in charge of Deloitte”™s Stamford office, in response to a question during a recent interview. “I mean, what you are certainly seeing in New York in terms of Cornell building out Roosevelt Island, and other universities really looking at building out their platform ”¦Â Believe me, if UConn were to say, ”˜We”™re going to do a huge expansion in downtown Stamford,”™ that would be a huge move.”
Since becoming UConn president this year, Susan Herbst has made her biggest moves far from Stamford. After the state roped in Jackson Laboratory in Maine to undertake a major expansion in Farmington, Herbst last month recruited Dr. Frank Torti to become dean of the UConn School of Medicine, with Torti currently head of a Wake Forest University cancer center and previously acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
In her biweekly blog in early February, Herbst conjured images of a “Connecticut research triangle” linking Farmington, New Haven and Hartford. In Stamford, however, she has floated little more than links between the campuses and area businesses via a Stamford “learning accelerator.”
With a student body of 1,300 full-time students and at least 400 more part-timers, UConn maintains a stable of about 100 professors and lecturers evenly split between full-time and those handling only a partial class load.
In testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly last month, Connecticut Board of Regents President Robert Kennedy addressed the question of how schools split their faculty appointments, with Kennedy having no oversight for the UConn system.
“Many of those adjuncts or part-time faculty are very, very good,” Kennedy said. “It”™s not casting aspersions on the quality and what they bring to the classroom ”“ but they”™re there for a very specific purpose. And ”¦ some of them have cobbled together two or three teaching gigs in order to put together a full-time salary.
“I don’t know that it would ever be possible to determine what the optimal ratio of part-time to full-time faculty is,” Kennedy said. “But I think when it approaches the majority of faculty ”¦ that”™s not a healthy or good situation for the students. And it is budget related. As budgets have been decreased, college administrations ”¦ (have gone) a little bit cheaper route because they can still meet the classroom need, but not necessarily hire full-time people with all the fringe benefits and other things.”
For her part, Herbst is focused on raising money for future expenditures by elevating UConn”™s overall endowment, with the university planning to hire 300 additional faculty.
Unanswered is where those new professors will call home.
“I want to urge our students to hold me and our administration accountable for delivering the high-quality education that they deserve,” Herbst wrote.
