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• Dean's Friday Messages
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• 2023-2024

Dear colleagues,

First, I said I wouldn’t send you any messages over the summer. Then, I said I’d send you one last Monday. And now here I am with my tail between my legs, and a message beneath my fingers. But I thought you might appreciate some updates about developments in recent weeks both in A&S and beyond. In no particular order:

• Faculty and staff convocation
  • A reminder that all W&M faculty and staff are invited to the Faculty and Staff Convocation on Friday, July 19, 9-11 am in the Wren Yard. Please register to attend here. 
• New members of the Board of Visitors
  • The Governor recently announced five new members of W&M’s Board of Visitors. As you know, the BOV sets our budget every year and also works with the President and the W&M community to set long-term priorities. I know one of the new BOV members and am happy to report that he is an enthusiastic supporter of A&S. I look forward to meeting the other four, and I encourage you to stop by a BOV meeting so you can get to know a little bit about how the Board works. (I know you probably won't, but I'm determined to keep trying).
• Salary letters for faculty
  • A reminder that these will be sent out by University Human Resources in early August. Staff should already have received their letters.

• Future of Arts & Sciences
  I am very grateful to the Future of A&S committee for the hard work they have done and continue to do on gathering, analyzing and organizing feedback on the future direction of A&S. They will be releasing an interim report in August in time for the beginning of the fall semester. During the fall semester, they will be working with the A&S community to develop suggestions for further discussion. A final report will be released in early 2025.
• Registration and enrollment
  We are working over the summer with the Registrar’s Office to continue our implementation of PATH and will be making some tweaks to the process for the next round (including limiting the number of waitlists students can sign up for to 5 and opening waitlists by social class so seniors get priority). As the waitlists have had time to play out, most (90+%) students have settled into a full-time schedule for the fall. There are fewer than 30 students graduating in December who still need specific courses for Fall 2024, and the OUAA is working with unit leaders to identify solutions. As we approach New and Transfer student registration, we will continue to monitor class capacity and availability.
  We look forward to welcoming 1,643 new students and 212 transfer students to Arts & Sciences in Fall 2024. These numbers are right on target for what we were expecting and planning for, and they are unlikely to move much between now and late August.
• Searches
  Search authorizations for next year have just gone out. I will be sending out a longer message about search authorizations in August, describing how we made our decisions, and giving you more information about which positions we authorized. For the moment – so as not to intrude on your summer with a marathon message – I am happy to report the following:
  • We have just sent out 38 search authorizations for searches 2024-25 with appointment date in August 2025. Of these 38 positions, 26 are TTE and 12 are Teaching Faculty (not visiting). In total, we received 56 requests for TTE faculty and 21 requests for Teaching Faculty. I wish we could have funded them all.
  • We look forward to welcoming 15 new TTE faculty and 13 new Teaching Faculty to A&S in 2024-25. This figure does not include visiting positions.