Dr. Christopher Culbertson, the dean of arts and sciences and professor of chemistry at Kansas State University, presents himself in an open forum to UCF over his candidacy for the new UCF dean of the College of Sciences in the SPRK building on Thursday. Culbertson was the final of three candidates to present themselves in forums over the past two weeks.
Rachel Jones
Dr. Christopher Culbertson, dean of arts and sciences and professor of chemistry at Kansas State University, pitched his plans Thursday in the UCF SPRK building conference room as a candidate for the College of Sciences dean position.
Culbertson’s forum marked the final in the series for the college’s dean search.
During his forum, he said above all — should he be selected as dean — he intends to lead the college with transparency and efficiency. This includes being highly collaborative with faculty and staff.
He said he already does so and practices this leadership style in his current dean position at Kansas State University, including monthly meetings with the Kansas State Faculty Senate.
Culbertson has held his current position for four years. During this tenure, he was able to increase the first-time freshman enrollment rate by 45% over three years and the four-year graduation rate by 13%, he said.
Culbertson hopes to bring similar metric success to UCF, which aligns with the university’s overall goals, such as increasing faculty retention, increasing graduate research and promoting student success, he said.
“There’s an issue with the high faculty-to-student ratio,” Culbertson said, citing an article from The Charge for local insight into the UCF community.
“Faculty and staff workloads and morale — there’s a challenge in that area. And on top of all of that, we have AI driving change in the workplace,” he added.
Culbertson said he sees artificial intelligence as a tool to promote success, if used correctly, and seeks to strategically integrate it into the College of Science’s framework, he said.
“It’s imperative now that we adopt AI to help us streamline, reduce the cost of education and make our students more successful in the process,” Culbertson said. “I think that there’s a good opportunity to personalize learning at a large scale for foundational courses [with AI].”
Culbertson’s proposal to integrate AI tutoring, developed from discipline-based educational research, starts at the beginning of the learning process, he said. The goal of the AI agents is to free up faculty time and increase student-to-faculty interaction.
“This is not so that faculty are replaced,” Culbertson said. “We’re going to be mentors, coaches and designers of the learning experience.”
Talat Rahman, UCF trustee chair professor and Pegasus professor of physics, said she left Culbertson’s forum with questions regarding his proposed AI integration and how it would affect faculty contentment. But, she said, she liked the way Culbertson has made an effort to understand UCF.
“He seemed to be aware of what is going on at UCF,” Rahman said. “I was glad to see that he was aware of the fact that faculty morale is low.”
Dr. John Buckwalter invited the UCF community to submit feedback on the dean candidates before midnight on Feb. 23 to the College of Sciences Dean Search webpage.
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