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(Special meeting of the dean and department chairs)

Alcohol policy

The CU system office turned down our request to allow for other sources of funds, such as auxiliary revenues, to be used to purchase alcohol for official functions and events. Rob has asked the campus if we can pilot our own program, and is awaiting an answer.

ME degrees

Other than for the Engineering Management Program, relatively few Masters of Engineering degrees are issued by our college. Most department chairs expressed support for the possibility of elimination of these degrees (but keeping the ME for EMP) – Rob will ask the Provost’s office if it wishes us to explore this possibility as part of a broader effort to eliminate some less-used degrees as the campus is adding new degree programs.

Rob attend a faculty meeting

Rob would like to attend a portion of a faculty meeting for each department in the next few months, to go over growth plans and other updates.

Non-resident Tuition Differential Waivers

The Provost’s office pays the non-resident tuition differential for graduate students on appointments. Rob reminded the chairs that US citizens and permanent residents are expected to become Colorado residents within one year, and that this expectation should be included in offer letters. Not doing so is costly to the Provost’s office and also counts against the overall cap on non-residents at CU-ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ.

Faculty Diversity Hiring

In an effort to increase our faculty diversity, Sarah Miller is forming a Faculty Inclusive Excellence Team, to include one representative from each faculty search committee. Strategies included best practices for attracting diverse candidates, preparing and distributing a college-wide ad, and a postdoctoral program for future faculty. More generally, it was discussed that recruiting success could be improved by making early offers, using named faculty fellowships, preparing a Q&A fact sheet with unique features of CU (parental leave policy, dean’s faculty fellowships, sabbatical supplements, etc), and being targeted in our interview selections (Skype interviews first, candidates with affinity for CU and with facility needs that match what we have to offer).

Strategic Plan Infrastructure

Rob reviewed the infrastructure requirements to accomplish our strategic plan:

1. Add 100 tenure-line faculty, or 10-15 per year for the next 7 – 10 years,
2. add staff, teaching faculty and research faculty, as well,
3. add $21 M in continuing budget (50% increase from current, or doubling from 6 years ago) in the next 6-7 years, and
4. add over 300,000 assignable square feet, or doubling from 6 years ago, including Biotech, Fleming, SEEC, ATLAS, and Aerospace buildings.

Departmental Participation

While new programs such as General Engineering Plus and the ATLAS Technology, Arts and Media BS degree will accommodate some of the planned growth, each department can expect to continue to grow in students, faculty and staff. The departments should undertake strategic and tactical planning on how to build excellence, improved rankings, and cohesive administration and communications as they become larger.

EAC Meeting on Oct 24

The morning will include a 15-min presentation by each department chair, followed by a question and answer session with all the chairs. The EAC members would like to hear about strategic planning in the departments and how it meshes with the college strategic plan. A template of four slides was discussed: (1) Progress to date, (2) SWOT analysis, (3) Goals for 2020, (4) Initial strategy to meet goals. Rob will send out a template of the four slides and prepopulate data after we have this year’s census numbers. It was suggested that department-level comparison data with other institutions also be provided.

In Attendance

Rob Davis, Scott Palo (for Penny Axelrad), Dan Schwartz, Balaji Rajagopalan, Jim Martin, Bob Erickson, Clayton Lewis