LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD
KU EDITION
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1996 23A
New dean works toward CLAS act
- The dean of KU's largest academic unit wants to personalize the undergraduate experience.
BY GWYN MELLINGER
JOURNAL-WORLD WRITER
In Sally Frost-Mason, Kansas University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has found not only a dean but an advocate for the value of a liberal arts degree.
In April, Frost-Mason was chosen to lead the College, which is the largest academic unit at KU with 15,000 students. Making sure undergraduates aren't lost in that crowd is Frost-Mason's highest priority.
Frost-Mason recognizes the experience that incoming freshmen have in the College may color their perceptions about being at KU. Undergraduates can expect to receive more personalized attention through the network of faculty advisers and other expanded programs, she said.
"How does a student coming from a small town in western Kansas react to a class with 500 students in it? In some cases that's bigger than their entire home-town," she said.
"Nearly every undergraduate that comes into the university starts out in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences," Frost-Mason said.
Even those who apply for admission to the professional schools must complete course requirements in the College. Frost-Mason says that is where students get the foundation for their college education.
In addition, as the value of a well-rounded liberal arts education is repeatedly demonstrated in the workplace, employers are increasingly seeing the bachelor of arts degree as an asset.
Frost-Mason said her visits with employers at a School of Business job fair last year bore out that point.
"There wasn't one employer out there who didn't have a liberal arts degree at the top of their list," she said. "They're looking for people who have the broad kind of training that you get with a liberal arts degree."
Even though Frost-Mason is a biologist, her own undergraduate degree is a bachelor of arts.
To enrich the undergraduate experience at KU, Frost-Mason hopes to provide research opportunities that will inspire students to pursue post-graduate education. Such an experience at the University of Kentucky convinced Frost-Mason, who was the first member of her family to graduate from college, that she wanted to be a teacher and researcher.
"I'm one of these people who is just passionate about getting undergraduates involved in research projects," she said, noting that those opportunities are a selling point for incoming freshmen choosing between KU and a four-year liberal arts college.
"That's what makes KU different from other smaller schools that don't have a research mission," she said.
During the next year, students and faculty will benefit from
campus infrastructure improvements.
By fall of 1997, the rebuilt Budig Hall-Hoch Auditorium will be available for large lecture courses.
In addition, computers will be more widely available in the College.
"Come this fall I don't believe there will be any unit in the College who isn't networked," she said. "We also will have made significant inroads toward providing computers for students in the form of various computer labs."
One of those will be located in Budig-Hoch.
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Engineering school gears for changes
Continued from page 11A
engineering courses this fall. About 625 graduate students will be enrolled in the KU engineering program.
Thanks to school projects with government programs and businesses, work at the engineering school goes beyond classroom walls.
For instance, Locke said, the civil engineering program recently took part in a Kansas Department of Transportation study of a new type of tractor-trailer tire. The study's findings revealed that the new tire would damage roads, prompting the Legislature to ban the tires from Kansas highways.
Locke said the study helped save the state a projected $20 million in damage over a three- to four-year period.
KU's private-business ventures include development of a new high-speed data transfer system for U.S. Sprint telecommunications.
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That attitude extends to students. Locke said that for the past three years, engineering students have taught science at Lawrence elementary schools.
"There's an impression of faculty that we know the most important problems in the world
"The people who get involved in that — the teachers and the students — really get a lot out of that," Locke said. "We see it as helping them with their education skills."
— just ask us, " Locke said. "I think it's important to recognize that first, the mindset of our faculty is different. They're willing to recognize other ideas. And second, we're doing things to help."
Locke points to participation in contests as another plus for KU. Last year, KU won a national aircraft design contest sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and were in the top four of a design contest held this year by NASA and the FAA.
Another 1996 highlight: For the second time, NASA has accepted a set of experiments prepared by KU students for launch on the space shuttle.
"We've got several student groups doing work outside the classroom that I think is beneficial to them," Locke said.
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