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University Daily Kansan, November 10, 1981
Committee maps road to improvement
By SHARON APPELBAUM Staff Reporter
The long-range planning committee has given the University of Kansas a direction in life.
The committee, composed of the three vice chancellors, three professors and a student, recently released its 65-page report outlining recommendations for University improvement.
"It's a broad road map of the institution," Robert Cobb, executive vice chancellor, said yesterday. "We investigate the routes and bays."
The introduction of the report states that the committee didn't intend to simply list goals for the University.
"I instead," the report said, "what was needed was a careful evaluation of our current situation and specific, recommendations for improvement."
SOME OF THE recommendations were:
- Improving undergraduate
education by requiring a core of liberal arts courses and by emphasizing advising.
- Working on ways to get funds for research and financial assistance for students.
- Determining why students leave The University of Kansas before they graduate and ways to keep them here.
- Documenting the quality of
  faculty, programs, students, and
  library and laboratory equipment,
  relating those figures to the
  public.
- Retaining faculty
Lawrence Sherr, professor of business and chairman of the committee, said the committee would soon begin working on new research at University and, at the same time, follow up on the ones just released.
"Planning is a continuous process," Sherr said. "You don't write a report and let it stand."
necessarily turn into rules and regulations
Cobb said, however, that the report was a working document and that the recommendations wouldn't
"This is not 101 hardy-dandy new ways to get things done," he said. "That's not the way institutions work. There will be dramatic progress here, modest progress there."
THE UNIVERSITY has already put some of the recommendations into effect.
For example, Chancellor Gene A. Budig said he was working on getting private business and individuals to participate in the students and for research programs.
The report asks that faculty members speak to the public about the University. Brugas has asked him to represent the company him on his trip around the state.
To promote research, the University issued the first of its quarterly publications called Explore this semester.
Sherrill said that with the vice chancellors on the committee, the report was bound to reflect activities that were about to surface.
And Cobb said Budig might have
thought of some of the recommendations on his own.
"It was serendipity," Cobb said. "When he started he hadn't seen the report. Since he's seen it, he finds himself in full agreement."
Many of the recommendations will be elaborated in a report to be released later this month from the Department of Undergraduate Education.
THAT REPORT, which will be released through the office of academic affairs, will include recommendations on liberal arts requirements, advising and teaching, Sherr said.
Cobb said some of the long range planning committee's recommendations were good but were beyond the nower of the University.
For example, the report recommends that the University stop depending on enrollment for funding and that the number of new faculty members hired should be based on a ratio of students to one professor or administrator.
But Cobb said that decision was up to the Kansas Legislature.
New library building needed, dean says
"What we are asking for is the sort of space most college and university libraries already have," Ranz said yesterday. "It's not unreasonable."
"We are well behind our peer institutions in available space. The library system can seat only one-third of them and they feel they should be able to seat."
For Jim Ranz, dean of libraries, a new library building has to come. The only question is when.
UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS decided to conduct a structural engineering study of the sculpture after several KU engineering faculty members examined the sculpture and recommended a safety check, he said.
MCCOTT said the University would hire an engineering firm by the end of this week, but he would not name the contractor until after the contract had been signed.
"the sculpture will be more accessible to the public," he said, "and we want to make sure the structure will be safe and secure of people climbing on it or whatever."
claimed the sculpture is unsafe for people to climb on and that it may collapse with additional stress placed on it.
The idea for a new library was proposed in a November 1976 study done by a Libraries Facilities Planning Committee. This suggestion to renovate Watson Library
Some of the welding on the large black metal sculpture may have broken when it was moved to Lawrence last spring, Wiekherd said, or during an unsuccessful attempt to erect the sculpture about a month ago.
The 40-ton "Salina Piece," originally completed in 1969 by Kansas City scultor Dale Eldred, will remain disassembled near its installation site at Sunnyside Avenue and Sunflower Hill, the study is complete, Wiechert said.
By STEVE ROBRAHN
The sculpture had formerly been displayed near Salina on private property owned by art collector and artist Sen. John Simpson, Wicherdick. Weichert said
a safety study of the "Salina Piece" abstract sculpture could delay its installation a month, KU officials announced yesterday.
The new library was to be located behind Hoch, perhaps on the site of the Military Science Building.
"It could take a month," said Allen Wiechert, director of facilities planning. "counting the time it will take for contracts to be made with the firm and the time it may take for them to do the work."
'Salina Piece' assembly waiting for safety study
report, because the site was central to the investigation and in the mainstream of student traffic.
"It will take some time for the engineers to analyze it and make a recommendation," he said.
"Eventually, even if the library were not placed there, the (Military Science) building would have to go. It's pretty old and pretty small," said Ranz.
The sculpture has come under fire recently from a group of alumni and from people who live in the neighborhood. In other concerns, the groups have
Staff Reporter
Facilities operations has repainted parts of the sculpture at least twice after vandals painted messages of opposition on it.
In 1976, the cost of a library at that site was estimated at $17,485,000; but after another survey was done by the University Library, the cost of library's cost had risen to $24.7 million.
an attempt to erect "Salina Piece" failed on Oct. 9, when the sculpture fell to the ground after being elevated to its normal 45-degree angle.
In an earlier interview, Jerry Hewett, an architect from Peat, Marwick and Mitchell, the New York accounting firm hired the legislative to do the study, said the survey was not done specifically to show the need for the proposed library, but only to see if more space was needed.
THIS SURVEY is the latest of seven studies that have been done to determine if expansion is necessary in the library system. The first was done in 1965 by a dean of library administrations from the University of Illinois, KU, he said, had a reader space shortage of 44,000 square feet and he warned that book stack space would be exhausted by 1968.
Since the Oct. 9 attempt to raise the sculpture, poor weather and prior commitments of the sculptor have further delayed installation.
The location was selected, said the Library Facilities Planning Committee
The new library will hold all the branch libraries, such as music, engineering, science and technology, summer fields, Snow, Dyche and Summer fields halls.
David Holroyd, who represents a group of 10 KU alumni opposing the sculpture, said yesterday that his group would wait for a public report on the sculpture's safety before beginning a newspaper advertising campaign to persuade KU officials to abandon plans to install it.
A $100,000 survey financed by the Kansas Legislature is now in progress to see if the University and two other Regent institutions, Kansas State and Wichita State universities, need $40 million for additional library space.
"They've got their hands full."
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"What we at the library have to realize," said John Glinn, associate dean of libraries; "is that the state wants us to work on branches to worry about all over Kansas."
Despite the number of studies, the only significant addition to the physical facilities of the libraries has been the construction of the Spencer Research Library, occupied in 1988.
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