Dear Colleagues,
I would like to start by telling you all, “Thank You!”
I know this has been one of our busiest years in a very long time. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate all your efforts through this challenging year of growth, even while you have continued your daily work of research, scholarship, outreach, and helping our students succeed.
As we “zoom out” (to borrow a phrase from Tonya Peeples, ADVANCE grant guest this week) for a moment and reflect on this year, we realize that we all have felt the effects of our increasing enrollments, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, and through our expansion of some of our programs in Everett and Bremerton to meet statewide needs. Many of you have been participating on search committees this year as we have brought many, many faculty candidates to campus for interviews. Our search committees have done amazing jobs and should be congratulated for their good work. Although we are still finishing up some interviews, we are making offers and have already made some really exciting new hires. With the high-quality of candidates that we have seen, competition for them is keen, but I think we are up to the challenge. The candidates with whom I’ve talked have been attracted to the fact that we are strategically building in specific signature research themes, and they have also been appreciative of the opportunities for collaboration afforded by this approach. The candidate pools have had more diversity than we have ever seen in the past, and I congratulate the search committees for this accomplishment as well.
Many of you may know that we are also updating our strategic plan. As we go about this process, we are working first to make our plan consistent with the university. If you have not done so, I invite you to take a look and comment on the most recent revision of the university’s draft strategic plan. The Provost will be holding a series of town hall-style sessions in Pullman and the regional campuses to gather feedback on the draft plan. Those sessions will be as follows:
- Pullman, 3:30-5 p.m. Monday, March 31, CUE 202
- Tri-Cities, 2-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, CIC 120
- Vancouver, 3-4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, VDEN 129
- Spokane, 10-11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 17, SAC 20
If you have thoughts or comments on the university plan that you feel should inform our process in the college, I would be very interested to hear them. In the first draft of the CEA strategic plan, we have modeled our vision and mission statements after those from the university plan and propose adopting the WSU listed values – not only does this make sense, it also allows us to focus our energies on setting goals, developing the implementation plan, determining benchmarks and metrics, and identifying resources that will be directed toward our strategic priorities. For example, we will use the strategic plan to determine how to invest our discretionary resources, which include discretionary, private funds and the college portion of indirect cost returns on research funding. We have established a small committee comprised of department chairs and a couple of faculty members, and we will soon have a college website to communicate with all of you about their progress. We will keep you posted throughout the spring and summer.
The proposed CEA Vision and Mission Statements are given below.
Vision
The College of Engineering and Architecture will be among the nation’s leading engineering and design programs within a land grant university.
Mission
As a core college in a land grant university, our mission is threefold:
- To conduct fundamental and applied disciplinary and cross-cutting research that leads to new knowledge, transformative technology and innovative designs.
- To educate students through state-of-the-art programs, preparing them for professional careers in engineering and design and helping them to become leaders in a complex global society.
- To engage people, industry and communities to improve quality of life and enhance the economy of the state, nation, and world.
Finally, I invite you to join me in congratulating our faculty who have received awards, promotions or who were granted tenure this spring. They include Jennifer Adam, Steve Brown, Karl Englund, Thomas Jobson, Sinisa Mesarovic, Andrew O’Fallon, Partha Pande, Timothy VanReken, and Haifang Wen. Chuck Pezeshki will receive the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Instruction. Andrew O’Fallon will receive the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Non-tenure Track Faculty, and Kelvin Lynn will be promoted to Regents Professor. Congratulations to all these faculty members!
I hope all goes well for you as the academic year comes to a close. And can you believe it? Graduation is just around the corner. Thank you, again, for all you have done for CEA and WSU.
Sincerely,
Candis Claiborn, Professor and Dean