QUEST, 1998.50, 198-205
O 1998 American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education
Building Strong Academic
Programs for the Future:
Practical Experience at the
University of Colorado-Boulder
Russell L. Moore
At the University of Colorado-Boulder, departmental governance and decision making are democratic in nature. Substantive changes in policy and curriculum culminate from faculty discussion and consensus building. Major changes in
the course of the department usually represent a blend or compromise between
numerous plans of action. In many cases, substantive changes in the direction of
the department are not unanimously endorsed. This is democracy in action. In our
department, the chair is a faculty member who is free to express personal viewpoints on departmental issues, has one equally weighted, faculty vote, and is additionally charged with carrying out the collective will of the faculty and effectively
presenting faculty viewpoints to higher administration. This information is provided for two reasons. First, the rather drastic changes that have occurred in Kinesiology at the University-Colorado at Boulder represent those engineered and endorsed by a departmental majority; they were not the result of the unilateral actions of past or current chairs. Second, the viewpoints presented in this article
regarding the recipe for building a strong department are those of a single faculty
member who is currently acting as chair. Finally, it is important to recognize that what
has worked at the University of Colorado may or may not work at other institutions.
Building a Strong Academic Program in Kinesiology
Building a strong academic program in kinesiology is largely dependent on
two seemingly obvious but critical features. The first is the definition of strong,
and the second is the context or institutional culture in which this definition is
being used. A clear understanding of the latter is of paramount importance in gaining institutional support for faculty recruitment plans and curricular and programmatic changes. Administrative support for developing a programmatic theme will
only be provided if the attendant strengths of the program are valued by the host
institution and consistent with its goals.
Russell L. Moore is with the Department of Kinesiology at the University of
Colorado-Boulder, Campus Box 354, Boulder, CO 80309-0354
BUILDING STRONG ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
199
Organizational Profile
The University offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate degrees
and is comprised of several colleges and schools, including Engineering and Applied Sciences, Architecture and Planning, Education, Law, Music, Business Administration, and Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences is by far the
largest on the Boulder campus, contains over 40 departments and programs, and
has been subdivided into three divisions: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and
Arts and Humanities. At our institution, Kinesiology is in the Natural Sciences
Division of the College of Arts and Sciences. The Natural Sciences Division includes several departments, including Biochemistry, Chemistry, Environmental
Population Organismic (EPO) Biology, Kinesiology, Molecular Cellular Developmental (MCD) Biology, Physics, Psychology, Geology, Environmental Studies,
and Astrophysics Planetary Atmospheric Sciences. A Life Sciences cluster within
the Natural Sciences Division is comprised of EPO Biology, MCD Biology, Kinesiology, and Psychology.
Fiscal Profile
The University of Colorado is a Research I university that recently ranked
11th among public and 19th among all universities in the acquisition of federal
research dollars. The total annual budget exceeds $500 million and derives from
the following sources: 39% from restricted funds (grants, contracts, indirect cost
recoveries, gifts), 26% from appropriated tuition, 23% from auxiliary activities
(self-generated funds, such as the bookstore, residence halls, intercollegiate athletics, and continuing education), 11% from state appropriations, and 1% from
other sources. As can be seen from this profile, the day-to-day operations of the
University of Colorado heavily rely on extramural funds and tuition dollars. Needless to say, the university values the faculty's ability to attract both students (i.e.,
tuition) and extramural grants and contracts.
Brief Historical Background
In the mid-1980s, several events appear to have been central in the development of the Department of Kinesiology. In the mid-1980s, the Colorado Cornmission of Higher Education (CCHE') expressed a strong sentiment that programmatic duplication across the state's numerous 4-year institutions should be minimized. At that time, the existing Department of Physical Education, Recreation,
and Dance, with the blessing of college and university officials, reorganized to
form a Department of Kinesiology. The reorganization resulted in housing recreation faculty in the College of Business and Administration.Pedagogy and teacher
training was deemphasized and eventually eliminated, leaving the responsibility
for these important missions to other institutions in Colorado. Dance is now represented in the Department of Theater and Dance. Faculty numbers in this reorganization went from over 20 to less than 10, leaving a smaller Department of Kinesiology that was charged with becoming a more vigorous participant in Colorado's
'The CCHE is the ultimate higher education,policy-making body in the state and has
oversight responsibilities for all of Colorado's 2- and 4-year colleges and universities,graduate programs, and professional schools.
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major research university. Finally, this charge was formally encouraged and endorsed in the form of a departmental program review2 in the mid-1980s, which
recommended that efforts be made to increase the research and scholarly productivity of the new Kinesiology Department.
The stage was set for a marked change in the direction of the Department of
Kinesiology. At this point, it should be made clear that the direction that the department would take was to be determined by the department itself. Although the
program review of the mid-1980s made very broad recommendations, it was up to
the department to decide how to specifically respond to the recommendations.
Finally, it should be made clear that at the University of Colorado, program review
recommendations requiring significant financial resources do not in any way imply a fiscal responsibility by the university to bring about the recommended changes;
these are issues left to be handled by the department.
The Evolution of the Department
From these university and departmental profiles, it is obvious that administrative support for changes in the direction of the Kinesiology Department is given
more freely when those changes cause significant increases in student enrollment
(tuition) and the acquisition of extramural funds and associated indirect cost recovery.
Student Interest
Increasing enrollment in the kinesiology major has not been a problem since
the department was formed in the mid-1980s. Between 1986 and 1993, the number of undergraduatekinesiology majors increased from approximately 160 to 760;
since 1994, the number of kinesiology majors has stabilized at 700-750. Several
key factors appear to have contributed to this striking increase in student interest.
First, the reduced faculty size and the organizationalchanges that were made
in forming the Department of Kinesiology were necessarily accompanied by a
significant reduction in course offerings (e.g. elimination of recreation and pedagogy courses) and a more focused curricular emphasis on kinesiology core courses
(e.g., biomechanics, exercise physiology, motor control, and sports psychology).
Students were afforded the opportunity to take a degree in a life science that had as
a thematic core the human at work and in performance. This is inherently interesting to our undergraduate student population. Additionally, our small faculty was
consequently better able to focus on instructional quality issues.
Second, the rigor of the undergraduate kinesiology curriculum has progressively increased to become comparable to the other Life Sciences Departments in
our college. Increasing curricular rigor did not have a negative effect on student
interest in kinesiology. On the contrary, this type of change seems to have legitimized the kinesiology major. This has resulted in an increased quality of students
who are now choosing to declare kinesiology as a major.
2Anextremely important feature at the University of Colorado culture is the program
review. Once every 7 years, each department conducts a comprehensive self-study and undergoes a rigorous internal and external review that culminates in a series of recomrnendations and future goals.
BUILDING STRONG ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
20 1
Third, a recent program review heartily endorsed the department's chosen
thematic focus on physical activity, disease prevention, and aging. Our cumculum
continues to evolve to reflect this theme and provides a logical and timely link to
changes in national health care and research policies to the extent that the importance of physical activity in disease prevention and the promotion of successful
aging have been clearly and unequivocally acknowledged. This translates into increased student interest, since the kinesiology major clearly affords students career options in increasingly popular professions, including medicine and the alIied
health sciences (e.g., physical therapy, physician assistance, or nursing). These are
major factors underlying the strong interest in the kinesiology major at the University of Colorado.
Kinesiology is now the fourth largest major in the College of Arts and Sciences. The pragmatic significance of this statistic is that Kinesiology is one of the
larger tuition and student credit hour generators in the college. Additionally, our
relatively small, hardworking, and innovative faculty have been able to devise
instructional strategies (e.g., computer-assisted instruction and integrated strands
of our curriculum) that have maintained teaching efficacy at or above the college
norm, even though Kinesiology operates with an atypically high student:faculty
ratio. These efforts have culminated in Kinesiology being among the most cost
effective in the Natural Sciences Division. This type of information has been very
important in garnering administrative support for hiring both junior and senior
level faculty in Kinesiology, even at times when hiring has been virtually frozen in
the university. Additionally, this information continues to be critical in making
cases for instructional budget reallocations to Kinesiology from other entities on
campus. In short, this information has been invaluable to Kinesiology in the University of Colorado-Boulder culture.
Extramural Funds
In light of the fiscal profile of the University of Colorado and the academic
neighborhood in which Kinesiology resides on campus, developing extramurally
supported research programs is clearly both necessary and valued. This is not conjecture but a message that was clearly sent to Kinesiology by recommendations
from two successive program reviews (mid-1980s and 1993). In the Natural Sciences Division of our college, there is strong agreement among the member departments on the pragmatic and philosophical reasons for grant writing and developing strong exh-amurally funded research programs. Some of these will be identified here.
First, without exception, all research costs money. Research or an area of
inquiry is never cost neutral to the department, the college, and the university. For
example, the typical faculty member at our university receives significant research
subsidy from the state to the extent that approximately 40% of an academic year
salary provides for time to write research grants and participate in research and
scholarly activities. Any investigative endeavor that involves using research supplies, staff time, paper, pencils, computers, libraries, Xerox machines, paper clips,
and so on costs someone something. There is a general understanding in our campus culture that these costs should be defrayed by dedicated extramural research
grants and contracts. (Every department receives an annual base budget, but this is
solely for the support of the department's teaching activities and is not intended to
support faculty research.)
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BUILDING STRONG ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
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funded, research programs. Since 1993, the application of this and other stringent
criteria in our hiring process resulted in several faculty searches that ended with
positions being unfilled. It can be argued that downsides of this unsuccessfuI recruiting were that significant faculty time was wasted and a number of very talented and capable candidates were not given employment offers. The upside is
that since 1992, the funding successes of each new faculty member have made it
easier to gain administrative support of subsequent faculty recruiting. As a result,
the department is still well positioned for future controlled growth.
Hiring more grant active faculty since 1992 has also been accompanied by a
marked increase in the submission of grant proposals from new and old faculty
alike. In effect, the grant-writing culture has continued to change in our department. Our faculty now receive significant extramural funds to support basic and
applied research and innovation in graduate and undergraduate classroom and laboratory teaching. The development of a differentiated workload policy in our department is now beginning to provide faculty with both incentive and opportunity
to mount sustained efforts in classroom teaching and research-related activities.
Overall, the trend for an increased number of grants submitted from the department and, more importantly, faculty participating in this endeavor is encouraging.
Although we are on our way, there is much work left to be done.
The Big Picture Today
It should be pointed out that the preceding text markedly oversimplifies the
practical aspects involved in Kinesiology's evolution at the University of Colorado. If things were as clear and simple as presented, our ongoing transformation
would have progressed much farther much faster. The department has had to contend with numerous difficulties over the last 10 years. Just a few of these are identified here.
For numerous practical and philosophical reasons, the development of strategies to bring about changes in our curriculum and the faculty's emphasis and
viewpoint of scholarly productivity and grant writing cannot be considered independently. From a practical standpoint, it is important to understand that major,
long-range changes in curricular focus will affect student interest in the major,
which will ultimately be reflected in student enrollment. Additionally, major thematic changes will influence faculty hiring strategies, which will in turn have a
significant effect on the research and scholarly productivity profile of the department. The development of mechanisms to promote faculty, grant-writing activities
cannot be considered independently of the undergraduate teaching mission of the
department and university. For example, the impact of faculty course load adjustments and reallocations on the delivery of our curriculum must be clearly recognized before any plan can be implemented.
The preceding paragraph illustrates the idea that the department's research
and teaching missions are inseparable and extensively intertwined. This reality
brings with it a number of daunting practical challenges. Viewed in another way,
this complexity also provides for a number of exciting programmatic possibilities.
The resources and activities existing at a major, research university afford unique
opportunities for integrating cutting-edge research and scholarly activities into the
undergraduate curriculum. Innovation is the key element in exploiting these
opportunities. Our undergraduate and graduate students participate in a
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research-based seminar course that is specifically designed for upper division undergraduate and graduate students. Students are provided the opportunity to attend
seminars given by distinguished visiting professors and local faculty.
Additionally, the students attend related recitation sessions on a weekly basis, meeting with the seminar speaker and engaging in critical discussions about
the topics presented. Another unique feature of our curriculum is the inclusion of
lower- and upper-division, scientific writing courses, which are provided by two,
regularly rostered, Kinesiology faculty. The departmental, scientific writing courses
satisfy university writing requirements and provide writing instruction in the context of a thematic area of interest to our majors. Efforts are ongoing to embed our
writing instructional activities in our core curriculum (e.g., the emphasis on writing instruction is not confined to our writing courses but appears throughout the
kinesiology core). In this regard, the Kinesiology, writing instructors have been
very successful in acquiring significant intramural and extramural grant support to
develop innovative technology-based methods to provide scientific writing instruction to our undergraduates in the context of a kinesiology theme.
A variety of mechanisms exist at the University of Colorado to encourage
undergraduate student participation in research and scholarly activities. In our department, a student wishing to graduate with honors must maintain a high, gradepoint average and must write and successfully defend an honors thesis. A variety
of extramural funding mechanisms explicitly designed to support and encourage
undergraduate participation in life-sciences research provide students with stipend
support during the academic year and the summer. Two years ago, the University
of Colorado undergraduate Journal of Kinesiology was created and receives support from the college and our alumni. The journal provides students with a unique
vehicle for publishing our best undergraduate, student-research projects and honors theses. With university support, our department will soon implement a combined BAIMS program that will afford highly motivated and talented undergraduates the opportunity to engage in an intense kinesiology curriculum that includes a
requirement for independent scholarly achievement. Students who stay on hack
will be able to matriculate with a combined BAIMS in 5 vears. All of our extramurally funded faculty include serious and committed undergraduate students in their
research programs. The net effect of these activities is that the number and quality
of undergraduates seeking to participate in some sort of research experience is
increasing.
Summary
Hopefully, the preceding text provides some practical and philosophical insights into our departmental evolution over the last 10 years. Kinesiology at the
University of Colorado continues to change. In our particular academic environment, we maintain that favorable evolutionary adaptations are those that culminate in increased student interest in kinesiology and an increased, faculty funding
potential and scholarly productivity. The challenge is to devise practical plans for
bringing about these types of changes and to gain faculty consensus for implementing the plans. The latter is no small task in view of the fact that in an environment with finite resources, making significant changes in departmental focus inevitably involves strategically redirecting resources and programmatic emphasis.
In a department that makes decisions by consensus, the stresses and strains of
BUILDING STRONG ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
205
department politics can be significant and unpleasant. On the other hand, if and
when tough decisions are made, they are implemented with the support of a faculty majority.
Academic departments must continuously strive to achieve excellence. An
important part of the process is to define excellence and to devise realistic strategies to achieve it. Once devised, a strategic plan must be continuously reassessed
and optimized to fit into ever-changing academic and societal environments. The
perception that an academic department "has arrived" is a dangerous, if not fatal
concept. Departmental evolution is an ongoing process of finding innovativeways
to improve every aspect of departmental performance. In the final analysis, the
value and success of every academic department is defined by its ability keep up
with and fit into the changing world around us.