Dear Colleagues,
As we know, research is one of the biggest drivers of our economy and Washington State University’s Drive to 25 initiative.
Voiland College has seen steady growth in our research expenditures, which now exceed $33 million a year. Based on our analysis, however, we have both the capacity and the need to grow our research portfolio much further in order to reach the university’s Drive to 25 goals.
One of the key strategies for our research success is support for faculty, especially our younger faculty members. A few years ago, we expanded our research portfolio by recruiting dozens of tenure-track faculty to Voiland College. Now we are beginning to see the benefits of this investment with expanded revenue streams that are helping us correct the college’s unbalanced budget.
Thanks to the generosity of one of Voiland College’s strongest supporters, we recently formed a young faculty network, which over the course of the next five years, will help provide opportunities for our faculty to get additional training and support that will help them in the hyper-competitive world of NSF, Dept. of Defense, Dept. of Energy, and other federal, state, and industry-funded research.
The guiding objectives of this effort include:
- Creating a sense of community, network, and belonging among our faculty;
- Providing resources to support the development of new skills;
- Enhancing the robustness of faculty mentoring programs; and
- Reducing barriers to utilization of faculty resources.
Initial members of this steering committee include: Steven Saunders, Daehyun Kim, Assefaw Gebremedhin, Roland Chen, Min-Kyu Song; Courtney Gardner, and Anne Anderson.
If you have any recommendations for networking, training, support, or other activities that could further enable the success of our faculty research, please don’t hesitate to contact them, or myself, at any time.
I look forward to sharing the opportunities that we develop in the near future!
Go Cougs!
Mary Rezac (preferred pronouns: she/her/hers)
Dean
Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
Washington State University
526 Carpenter Hall
PO Box 642250
Pullman, WA 99164-2250
Email: mary.rezac@wsu.edu
Phone: (509) 335-5593
Twitter: @VCEA_Dean
vcea.wsu.edu