The COS Academic Programs, Personnel & Policy (APPP) Implementation Team prepared and presented recommendations to the COS Steering Committee regarding the future college affiliation of all academic programs and personnel associated with the departments of Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, and Environmental and Molecular Toxicology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

Lists indicating which academic programs and which personnel would transition to COS and which would remain in CALS were shared with the four departments and, soon after, Provost Warwick Arden and Sr. Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives Duane Larick met with the departments at two forums on October 2. Minor revisions were made to the lists as a result of the feedback received.

The majority of academic programs in the current four departments will be administratively housed in COS, with three graduate degrees in microbiology to be joint COS/CALS programs, and approximately 198 FTEs (Full Time Equivalents) funded through state accounts will transition from CALS to COS. The memo includes program breakdowns by department and FTE breakdowns by job category and department.

By early November, the provost plans to have more details about the financial implications of the redistribution of programs and personnel and will provide another update once that information is available.

Previous COS Updates

8/30/12 - Provost Arden on College of Sciences Update (T/TT Faculty Announcement)

5/11/12 – Provost Arden on College of Sciences Steering Committee

4/20/12 – Chancellor Woodson’s Announcement Regarding College of Sciences

4/16/12 – Provost Arden’s Recommendations to Chancellor Woodson on Administrative Structure for Academic Science Programs

The memo lays out work performed by the new college’s steering committee, including the scope of academic disciplines and the requisite faculty to be included in the new college’s biological science component. Forty-four tenured or tenure-track faculty will transition to the new college out of a roster of 63 possible faculty members from the departments of biology, environmental and molecular toxicology, genetics and microbiology. The remaining 19 faculty members will stay in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The memo also includes information on the College of Sciences implementation team and the next steps in the process of creating the new college.

With the stroke of a pen, Chancellor Randy Woodson has given his approval to a sweeping restructuring of the university’s business operations, setting in motion a flurry of activity that will ultimately transform the way NC State does business from the ground up.

In a memo endorsing the effort, Woodson touted the benefits promised by the reorganization. Better service, reduced cost and enhanced opportunities for staff were at the top of the list. At the same time, he touched on the challenges ahead, including “a schedule that is as aggressive as possible.” >>Read the full article in the Bulletin

More about Business Operations Centers

Colleges, which have each established their own nominating procedures, are limited in the number of nominees they can submit based on the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty FTEs in each college.  Nominations are limited to assistant professors who have been reappointed for a second term, all associate professors, and professors within the first three years of appointment at that rank. Nominations from the colleges the 2012-2013 academic year are due to the provost in mid-September.

The provost has created a University Faculty Scholars Program administrative advisory committee which is composed of senior faculty from each college. The committee will review the nominations and make recommendations to the provost, who will make the final decision on awardees. The provost plans to name the University Faculty Scholars by November 1.

Read the provost’s 5/11/12 memo to learn more

Provost Arden will chair the Steering Committee, with Dr. Duane Larick, Senior Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives, serving as the vice chair and administrative lead of the committee. Other members of the Steering Committee are the deans of the six STEM colleges: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Natural Resources, College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, College of Textiles, and College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Steering Committee will have its initial meeting later this month with the goal of presenting its plans by October 2012, if possible.

Read the provost’s 5/11/12 memo

The provost has also asked Dr. Margery Overton, Professor of Civil Engineering, and Dr. Laura Severin, Professor of English, to serve part-time as Special Assistants to the Provost for the 2012-13 academic year in support of key strategic initiatives.

Read the provost’s 5/10/12 memo

The provost also announced that the Shelton Leadership Center, formerly housed within the Office of Extension, Engagement, and Economic Development will report to the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Outreach and Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the Poole College of Management and that the Office of Faculty Development and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Dr. Betsy Brown, will continue to provide support in the areas of engaged teaching and learning.

Read the provost’s 5/10/12 memo

The new college will include the physical and chemical sciences, the mathematical and statistical sciences, earth system sciences, and the biological sciences. As part of the realignment, the undergraduate biology program will move from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to the College of Sciences.

Find out more from the Chancellor’s announcement regarding
the new College of Sciences.

The new initiatives – which include a number of student-success and faculty-investment measures and an enrollment plan for the year 2020 – bring shape to strategic planning and realignment, invest in priorities and put the university in position to become a stronger, more efficient and more effective institution.

Focus on Faculty

The Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program invests $5 million in about three dozen new tenure-track or tenured faculty in a dozen multi-disciplinary “cluster” areas like environmental health science or personalized medicine. Investing in new faculty in targeted areas is an important part of the strategic plan and is one of our main priorities.

The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund provides “seed” money for researchers to help bring ideas and inventions to the marketplace. Four faculty projects received funding last summer; more awards will be granted later this year.

The University Faculty Scholars Program, slated to go into effect in the 2012-13 academic year, will recognize and reward up to 20 faculty members with $10,000 annually for five years for program support.

Solidifying Student Success

A task force appointed to study undergraduate student success noted that supporting students for optimal success – which means retaining students after their freshman year, timely graduation and educational and personal growth – requires a more coordinated, integrated and flexible administrative structure that emphasizes both the academic and non-academic student experience.

Merging the Undergraduate Academic Programs office and the Student Affairs office into one unit – the new Division of Academic and Student Affairs, or DASA – is on track for full implementation by July 1, 2012.

The new division consolidates a number of programs into four main sections: academic programs and services, arts NC State, campus life, and student development, health and wellness. A search for a vice chancellor to head DASA is under way.

In another important change, full-time, on-campus students will no longer need to pay an additional fee for taking one or more distance-education classes. Students enrolled in a distance-education degree program will be charged on a per-credit-hour basis, consistent with UNC system policy. These changes will go into effect in the fall 2012 semester.

An Enrollment Plan for 2020

Replacing a previous enrollment plan that projected faster growth, a recently approved long-range plan calls for student enrollment to grow to 37,000 by the year 2020. The new plan replaces a previous enrollment growth plan that projected 40,000 students by 2017.

The new enrollment projections better fit the framework provided by the university’s strategic plan and aim to improve the quality of our academic programs while maintaining access for North Carolinians.

Much of the proposed growth over the next eight years – from the current total student population of more than 34,000 – will be in graduate student populations, especially doctoral students.

Investing in tenured and tenure-track faculty to mentor and train graduate students is critical to the plan. In the last decade, the total student body grew by more than 20 percent while tenured and tenure-track faculty grew by just 1 percent.

The full 2020 enrollment plan can be found here: http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/enrollmentplan/2020_enrollment_plan.htm.

Past Realignment Activities

The new initiatives aren’t the first steps in realigning the university. A number of offices have already been streamlined – including the consolidation of two equity and diversity offices into the new Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and the discontinuation the Office of Extension, Engagement and Economic Development – and an extensive review of all policies, rules and regulations to further cut red tape has been undertaken.

Additional Realignment Activities

In the coming weeks and months, you will hear more about other strategic reviews wrapping up, including the review of academic programs, and recommendations stemming from reports by the Academic Science Program Task Force and the Business Operations Realignment Steering Team.

For more information about strategic planning, check out the new website that has all the information and updates you’ll need as the strategic plan continues its evolution into an action plan.

A single implementation plan was synthesized from the draft reports submitted by the five Implementation Planning Teams by identifying key actions that addressed multiple strategic plan goals and could begin within the next three years or were already underway. The actions were then categorized into three sets of overarching actions:

• Refine and Invest in Areas of Emphasis
• Enhance Student, Faculty, and Staff Success
• Improve Institutional Effectiveness While Growing and Realigning Resources

The Implementation Plan, a living document that will be updated periodically, was developed in a matrix format to make it easier to track actions across multiple goals, years, and responsibilities.

Metrics to assess NC State’s progress toward meeting its strategic goals were also chosen and shared with the Board of Trustees, with most of the performance measures selected being university-wide and global in nature, rather than related to specific actions in the Implementation Plan. Baseline values for each metric are being established and target values will be set in the coming months.

View the Implementation Plan and Metrics in matrix format [pdf]