Dear Colleagues,
I hope you had a restful Thanksgiving break, and I’m sure everyone is looking forward to the end of the semester and the holidays.
Earlier this semester, I told you about the 5% budget reallocation process initiated by the Provost’s and President’s offices. The 5% cut is intended for reallocation to strategic priorities as well as to fund salary increases that were implemented last January but not funded by the state until July 1, 2015. In the Voiland College, that cut, which will be effective July 1, 2016, is being distributed equally across every unit in the college that receives “permanent” state funding for salaries and operations. In order to partially meet the 5% reduction, we are deferring a number of our faculty and staff searches. However, we do have approval for, and are going forward with, a small subset of our original hiring plans. (Each unit is responsible for determining how they will fully implement their portion of the 5% cut.)
As you should have heard by now, in the spring of 2016, the university will release a call for proposals for reinvestment in support of the WSU Strategic Plan, specifically for themes one and two, which are the central emphases of the plan. They are: (1) a transformational student experience; and (2) a preeminent research portfolio. If you haven’t looked at it lately, I would encourage you to revisit the WSU Strategic Plan. Given the strong growth in research, enrollment, and impact by the VCEA in recent years, I feel confident that we will be able to compete successfully for reallocated funds so that we may continue to grow our enrollments, increase the diversity of our student body, and advance our research programs.
The university intends to strategically reinvest some of the captured funds to build out emerging areas of research excellence as well as continued emphasis in WSU’s current research strengths. WSU is looking for interdisciplinary collaborations and for being responsive to the needs of Washington State. The metrics WSU will use to indicate success include continued growth in research expenditures, expansion of scholarly outputs, further intellectual property development, and graduate student enrollment growth, particularly for doctoral students. The university will benchmark its research productivity against that of the Association of American Universities (AAU) member institutions, particularly those that are our peer institutions.
The Grand Challenges identified by WSU will be used to coalesce interdisciplinary research activity throughout the university. For our college, they should lead to future success in our research, entrepreneurial, and educational endeavors. These Grand Challenges easily incorporate our own signature research themes as well as other, emerging areas of excellence. Recall the Grand Challenges are around sustainable health; sustainable resources in food, energy, and water; advancing opportunity and equity; improving quality of life through smart systems; and national security research. The Voiland College can be major players in all of these themes, and these compelling challenges will benefit the college and help attract students to our programs.
The other major strategic theme for investment is around the student experience at WSU. The university will continue to focus on enhancing the quality and relevance of the student experience, through more personalized student services, expanding learning opportunities outside the classroom, mentored research, and building community. As a result, WSU expects to see enrollment growth in both freshmen and transfer student admissions; significant improvements in student retention; and increased diversity of the student body. In the Voiland College, we are looking forward to developing and launching initiatives with these same goals.
The RFP has not been finalized, but here are a few things we are anticipating:
- This will be a limited submission process, so only a select few proposals can go forward from each college. The precise number will be announced when the full RFP is released.
- Proposals will be submitted by the college deans only (with the possible exceptions that may include one proposal from the Office of Undergraduate Education and Office of Student Affairs).
- EVERY proposal must involve a interdisciplinary group, and must include two or more colleges.
- Proposals can either be aimed at student success (increasing retention and the student experience) or research grand challenges as defined by the Vice President for Research grand challenges.
- Funds requested can be either permanent or one-time.
- The campuses other than Pullman are similarly conducting a reallocation process, for reinvestment at those locations.
- There may also be a smaller seed grant RFP, probably at the same time.
- The RFP will likely be released around the first of February.
- If you have ideas, comments, or questions, about how we can advance the university’s strategic priorities, I would encourage you to discuss them with your chair or director, or Dave Field, John Schneider, or myself. We hope to put together some teams to work with colleagues in other colleges in the near future.
Have a safe and wonderful holiday season.
Sincerely,
Candis Claiborn
Dean, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture