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A Note From The Dean

Dear CAS Community,

As the dust of beginning a new academic year settles and we move beyond the midpoint of the fall semester, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on our goals and the accomplishments we’re already seeing.

We initiated this academic year with a continuing focus on our College mission, vision, and strategic priorities. Our approach — small tweaks to great — is already reaping rewards as we’ve realized: 1. a stable student headcount; 2. improvements in our retention and persistence outcomes; 3. significant expansion of our faculty and staff ranks; 4. growth in our menu of degree programs; 5. progress in our planning for facilities’ upgrades; 6. continuous improvement in our technology infrastructure; 7. enhancements in our outreach to students; 8. and innovation in our faculty development supports.

In August, we welcomed record numbers of new students including first time in college, transfer, and graduate students. We also welcomed 13 new faculty members and expanded our expertise in biology, early childhood education, rehabilitation counseling, speech-language pathology, homeland security, human development, mathematics, political science, and psychology; we look forward to welcoming additional new faculty hires in January. We also launched two long-awaited new academic programs — the BA in Digital Media and the MA in Adult Education.

We’ve expanded our student outreach menu, and we’ve embedded critical touch points at two levels across fall and spring. We’re streamlining our out of class activities and better integrating our curricular and co-curricular elements to serve students. As we observe changes in our student demographic and student patterns of attendance, we’re responding with flexible schedules, one-stop administrative supports, and increased availability of courses.

We’re listening to the voices of our faculty members and responding with needed supports. We have launched or will launch the following new faculty initiatives in research and leadership this fall.

  • Research Academy. Through this initiative, we will provide targeted support to five faculty members in the natural and social and behavioral sciences for three academic years. The goal is to support the growth of a bench research team by better supporting the space, time, and resource needs of the scientists. Our first five-member cohort includes faculty members in biology, criminal justice, and psychology at the early, mid, and senior levels of career.
  • Dialogues in Leadership. This series is designed to support the leadership aspirations of faculty across the College. We will accept our first class of 10 in January 2018. The program will run 10 weeks across the spring 2018 semester and be led by higher education leaders from around the country. A complete description is linked here. The call for applications opens November 15.
  • Centers of Innovation and Research. We’ve conceptualized three new Centers to attach to our academic programming — Urban Perspectives and Policy, Child and Family Study, and Humanities Practice. The Centers are envisioned to support faculty research and creative expression and enhance teaching, professional practice, and service delivery. We will use the academic year to fully develop our ideas and seek funding. You can read more here.

And last, but not least, we have a front runner in our chair survey! Click here for the result!

I’m excited about the road we’re on and look forward to updating you on our progress across the year. Please be on the lookout for our updated fact book and fact movie in the coming weeks.

Your dream, our guidance!

Best,

April Massey, Ph.D.
Dean