Environmental Engineering and Science Graduate Degrees Proposal

Scott Summers presented an overview of proposed MS and PhD degrees in Environmental Engineering and Science, along with student interest and some large grants in this area. There was general endorsement of these proposed degrees.

Crowd Funding and Social Media

Interest was expressed in a future presentation (see below) by CU communications on this topic. It has now been scheduled for the 2/10/2014 Administrative Council meeting, with additional guests invited. It was suggested that Stein Sture and/or Tricia Rankin attend, as research can potentially be supported by crowdfunding. It was also suggested that Jessica Wright and/or someone else from her team attend, as crowdfunding could be a source of philanthropic support though is not currently allowed by the CU development effort.

FRPAs

Rob Davis gave a reminder of the Feb 1 due date; about 15% had been submitted by 23 January.

Admissions

Rob noted that undergraduate applications are up about 30% for our college, as well as for the entire campus, thought to be primarily due to use of the common application for the first time and increased recruiting efforts in other states and abroad. Our college has had 6727 applications and 1493 offers of admissions as of 1/24/14, with increased quality and diversity. We expect to make close to 3000 offers. There have not been large shifts in popularity among majors, and we continue to work with the admissions team to not over-admit students in the most popular majors.

Graduate Growth Data and Modeling

Rob made a presentation on growth of our graduate programs. At the master’s level, we have grown at about 5% per year over the past five years, similar to our peers, and we would need to continue to grow at about 5% each year to reach a goal of 1300 MS students (up from 919 in Fall 2013) by Fall 2020. At the PhD level, we have grown about 7% per year over the past five years, which is faster than our peers, and we would need to increase our growth rate to about 10% per year to reach a goal of 1400 PhD students (up from 704 in Fall 2013) by Fall 2020. The latter will be difficult and may take longer to achieve, even if we add 10% more new PhD students each year, due to the several years required to fill the pipeline. Compared to the average of our peer institutions, our graduate enrollments are generally higher in Aero, ChE and Civil, and lower in CS and ME, while EE is considerably higher at the MS level and somewhat lower at the PhD level.

In Attendance

Rob Davis, Doug Smith, Sarah Miller, Kurt Maute, Jeff Sczechowski, Diane Sieber, Penny Axelrad, Dan Schwartz, Balaji Rajagopalan, Mike Lightner, Todd Murray, Mark Gross, Scott Summers (first item only)