Monthly Letter to Faculty: August 2023
Welcome back to all our returning faculty. I hope this summer brought you genuine renewal and you are looking forward to the new academic year, with new students, new colleagues, new research, new courses and new conversations, opportunities and challenges.
And the warmest of welcomes to our newest faculty whose diverse areas of teaching and scholarly expertise will further strengthen the academic excellence and commitment to student-faculty engagement that makes Wake Forest University such a great university. We are committed to helping you thrive here.
This is my first of what will be monthly letters to you – the faculty of Wake Forest – and there is no better time to start them than the beginning of the academic year. Through these letters, I look forward to providing important updates, highlighting our academic excellence, and sharing my thoughts on the current landscape of higher education with you.
Response to the Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action
Universities across the country have been preparing new policies and practices and our enrollment offices in all our schools have been no exception. In consultation with our legal counsel, our undergraduate admissions office has revised its practices to ensure our compliance. The Graduate and Professional Schools are also consulting with our legal counsel to ensure compliance in their respective enrollment operations. VP of Enrollment Eric Maguire will be hosting an enrollment practitioners luncheon on Wednesday, September 6th for our enrollment staff across the university. This critical work ensures our commitment to recruiting and enrolling academically qualified students of diverse backgrounds. We are committed to sustaining our inclusive, diverse learning community in compliance with the SCOTUS decision.
Wake Forest welcomes new students and new leaders
Great news on the incoming students front. The College is welcoming a talented and diverse set of 1,396 first-year undergraduates from a pool of 17,501 applications for an outstanding admit rate of 22%.
Our School of Law is welcoming an exceptional first-year class as well, with an acceptance rate of 31% and a highest-ever GPA median of 3.79 and highest-ever LSAT median score of 165.
The School of Business will celebrate several significant milestones this year: the 75th anniversary of business education at Wake Forest University, the 50th anniversary of the first graduating class of MBA students, and the 10th anniversary of the opening of Farrell Hall. Business has 1,500 students across three graduate programs (MSM, MSA, MSBA), working professional programs (MBA) and undergraduate programs in Winston-Salem, Charlotte, and online.
The School for Professional Studies will welcome 160 new graduate students this new semester, reflecting a five-fold increase over last fall’s new class, and a total SPS enrollment of about 300 graduate students. SPS is launching two new degree programs this fall: in collaboration with faculty from our Department of Education, a new master’s in educational leadership, and in partnership with our School of Medicine, a new master’s in health administration.
The School of Divinity and the School of Law are happy to announce that Dr. John E. Carter, a 2010 alumnus of the School of Divinity, has been jointly appointed visiting assistant professor of religion, law, and public life. He is an affiliate with the Program for Leadership and Character, and will provide leadership for the dual MDiv/JD degree program.
The Z. Smith Reynolds Library is proud to announce it has awarded its first five inaugural student employee scholarships. Few academic libraries have a student employee scholarship program to support their student workers and help ease the cost of attendance, making ours a distinctive program in the higher education landscape.
In related news, Wake Forest’s six impressive deans met with me at our Wake Washington Center at the beginning of the month to kick off planning for the academic year. We are thrilled to welcome our newest deans, Jackie Krasas, Dean of the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Andy Klein, Dean of the Law School to the Deans’ Council and to Wake Forest. Meanwhile, the search for the next Dean of the Divinity School is proceeding smoothly. I am grateful to the search committee for their dedication to this vitally important work across the summer.
Since arriving July 1, our new Executive Vice President Jackie Travisano has been partnering closely with the Office of the Provost on budgeting, University space planning, and the implementation of our new Student Information System, and has already launched the new Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). Our new Interim University Registrar Polly Griffin joined Wake Forest on August 1 and is working with her staff to implement best practices in support of student success.
Shared Governance and Strategic Framing
Governance did not take a respite across the summer months. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee partnered with the Provost’s Office by providing excellent advice that helped shape the new OIE, giving input on a transparent faculty handbook revision process, and by offering feedback on the Draft Strategic Frame. In regard to Strategic Framing, I am delighted to report that the President and I will be sharing the Framework next week. It is an aspirational, dynamic and flexible guide that will help us build substantive excellence across the university, remove barriers as they arise and solve challenges for years to come.
Intellectual Community
We all know that Wake Forest cannot flourish and prosper without the strength and imagination of its intellectual community. Our Wake Forest Centers and Institute are critical sites for this important work that ultimately impacts not just our faculty, but our students and staff, and our wider communities and the world. All the more reason I am pleased to announce that Professor of English Jennifer Greiman will begin directing the Humanities Institute on January 1, following Winifred W. Palmer Professor of English Dean Franco’s exemplary 7-year directorship. The Humanities Institute is a key locus of humanistic inquiry at Wake Forest that generates ideas, connects colleagues and builds networks across all schools and disciplines. I look forward to sharing more news about our Office’s support for Wake Forest’s thriving intellectual community in the months ahead.
New Opportunities
Meanwhile, as you make your plans for academic travel this year on behalf of your teaching and research, please know that the Provost’s Office has doubled its supplementary Provost’s Fund for Faculty Travel to $2,000 per academic year for faculty in the college, library, graduate and professional schools.
Finally, I am delighted to announce that the Provost’s Office is creating a new Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs to begin January 1 or July 1. This role will enable us to better support faculty needs across all the schools. By the end of this week, a position description will be posted on the Internal Career Portal. Please take a look and send in nominations (self-nominations are fine) by September 7th to Denise Griggs at griggsd@wfu.edu.
This is an energizing time in the life of Wake Forest University. We could not deliver such an extraordinary education to all our students, in all their diversity, without your expertise, knowledge, and dedication. I could not be more grateful to each of you for your commitment, and I could not be more honored to be part of such a remarkable community of educators. I hope you will join us tomorrow, at 4:00 pm in Wait Chapel for New Student Convocation to welcome our newest Wake Foresters.
Sincerely,
Michele