Presented by Acting Dean David A. Vanko at the Fisher College Fall Forum
Good afternoon and welcome to the Fisher College’s annual Fall Forum – I’m so glad that all of you could attend today. Before I begin with some brief remarks about our college, I would like to introduce a few VIPs who have been able to join us today. Our new Provost, Dr. Marcia Welsh, and several others are up at Harford Community College this afternoon to attend the opening of Harford’s new science wing, and we certainly understand the importance of Towson having a good showing there. We’ll be sure to fill them in on all that happens here today. Joining us, though, are several guests, and I will start with Mrs. Donna Mayer, Associate Vice President for Development, and a real Fisher College supporter. Donna is our primary contact with the Fisher Foundation and we appreciate her continued hard work on behalf of the college.
We’re also very pleased to welcome two guests from the Cherry Hill Learning Zone effort that is being led by Dr. Ray Lorion, the Dean of the College of Education. Joining us is Mrs. Denise Gordon, the Principal of Southside Academy, the high school located in the Cherry Hill neighborhood, and Mrs. Esme Bentil-Dawson, who is the vice-principal at Southside Academy. Welcome, Denise and Esme. I hope you have a chance to meet many Fisher College faculty and staff members today, and they get a chance to talk with you about our future STEM efforts in Cherry Hill.
As is customary, to begin our festivities, I would now like to invite our five department chairs to introduce their new faculty and staff. We will call upon the departments in alphabetical order.
First, Professor Richard Seigel, the chairperson of the Department of Biological Sciences, will introduce our new colleagues in Biology. [Dr. Seigel introduces David Hearn and Matthew Hemm.]
Professor Richard Preisler, the chairperson of the Department of Chemistry. [Dr. Preisler introduces Ellen Hondrogiannis and Sonali Raje. He’ll also introduce new MB3 Administrative Assistant Angela Kromm.]
Filling in for Professor Yanggon Kim, who is our acting chairperson of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Dr. Chuck Dierbach. [Dr. Dierbach introduces Wei Yu.]
Professor Raouf Boules, the chairperson of the Department Mathematics. [Dr. Boules introduces Chengguo Weng.]
Next, Professor David Schaefer, who is the chairperson of the Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences. [Dr. Schaefer introduces Reisalie Barreto-Espino, Ron Hermann and James Overduin.]
It’s also my pleasure to introduce Ms. Tissa Thomas, who is our Project Administrator for the new National Science Foundation grant supporting our Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Tissa is a 2008 graduate of the MBBB program. Since graduating she has worked part-time with the TOPS team, and now she has joined us in the dean’s office to run the Noyce program. Welcome, Tissa. And finally, Mrs. Mary Jane Pennell is the new Administrative Assistant for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study’s ecology education effort, a NSF-funded grant being run by the Center for Science and Mathematics Education. Welcome, Mary Jane!
And to all, thank you for introducing these very impressive new colleagues. We pledge to you, our new faculty, our best efforts to help you attain your professional goals – to see that you become excellent teachers, to support you in your scholarship efforts, and to mentor you in all aspects of the profession. To our new staff members, welcome and thank you for joining us and thank you, in advance, for your hard work and dedication. I urge everyone to remember that we are a team –we will achieve our vision as a College only if everyone, with a common purpose, does their fair share to the best of their ability.
There is a time for every season, and, this year, we lost one of our own. I ask everyone, if you are able, to please stand and observe a moment of silence in memory of Professor Nordulf Debye, who passed away on October 9. … Thank you. If you haven’t already, I encourage everyone to read about Nordulf on the Fisher College home page.
It has now been two years since I became your acting dean, and this is my third annual address to the college. Previously, I focused my remarks on five themes that have been on the college’s agenda: Enrollment growth, Space, STEM initiatives (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Grants, and Gifts. Frankly, that outline is getting a little old, but I’ll visit these five points one more time, and then conclude with some more general observations.
(1) Enrollment Growth
Our first topic is enrollment, and the university’s growth trajectory. Enrollment growth has been driving us for the past few years, but this year enrollments were held steady. With no prospect of increased budgets, Towson simply could not afford to admit more students. Therefore we have a pause in enrollment growth, a time during which President Caret has said he hopes we will take stock of recent changes and enter a phase of “maturation.” In other words, we need to catch our breath and shore up our operations. For example, we haven’t been hiring tenure-track faculty at nearly the ideal rate, and we look forward to being able to do so in the future as soon as budgets again begin to grow. In the meantime, we have to be smart. The large number of recent new students are completing their lower division and General Education classes, and are moving into the upper division majors courses. We lovingly refer to these students as the “pig in the python.” Get ready for whopping enrollments in your classes that used to be more manageable – they may soon be bursting at the seams. This will be particularly apparent when majors need or ask for independent studies, research experiences, and internships. We’ll do our best to maintain quality for all of these students.
Last year, I mentioned that new laboratory fees were being discussed in the Resource Planning and Advisory Committee, and being pushed hard by our representative, Dr. Rich Seigel. Recall that, years ago, if a department opened more sections of a cost-intensive class, they could be assured of the resources to run that section through the old “lab fee.” The entrepreneurial spirit of that system disappeared when lab fees were swept up into a single technology fee. Then, for several years, as enrollment grew, no new operating funds were added to department budgets even as the revenue from technology fees grew! The new laboratory fees have been put into place to help solve the problem of more students, more sections, yet no new resources. With the new lab fees, now when we open a new section of Anatomy and Physiology, Chemistry or General Astronomy, the offering department isn’t penalized.
So, this year, the first year of the new lab fees, the overall operating budget of the Fisher College was increased by 20%. This sounds like a lot, but considering how long we have been expanding our programs with no new funding, my view is that this revenue helps, but it does not bring us to where we should be. We will use these resources to re-equip and to enhance instruction, and we’ll put identifying stickers on the computers, balances, microscopes, and other items that we have provided to students using their lab fees.
(2) Space
The university still plans to construct a new, 70,000 square foot building addition for science, coupled with a complete renovation of Smith Hall. Discussions about the vision for this new addition and renovation will soon begin in earnest. Science chairs and directors, faculty, and the College Council have all begun to think about how best to take advantage of this opportunity. My understanding is that TU will soon hire a consulting firm with expertise in science construction and renovation, and they will begin to assist us in determining how best to fulfill our vision for the new Smith Hall.
Another space issue is our acquisition of the old CGIS space on the third floor of the 7800 York Road building. We have used some of that space to relieve pressure in the Mathematics department, and to locate a new office for our new chairperson of the pre-professional programs, Dr. George Harrison. We are reserving a fair amount of space in that area for the eventual School of Emerging Technologies, which is still awaiting funding from the university
(3) STEM- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
As I proclaimed last year in this venue, the Fisher College is STEM at TU – no question about it. Here are some of the new STEM initiatives that we are involved in. We have two new programs on the horizon. The MS in Applied Physics, a certified Professional Science Masters Program, was approved by the State and will begin to accept students next Fall. And the BS in Information Technology was passed by the university and is now at the Maryland Higher Education Commission. We plan to begin that program in the Fall, as well.
We are finalizing a memorandum of understanding with the university system that will bring the education and outreach unit of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) to be a part of Towson. This group runs the programs called SciTech and MDLoanerLab, and they reach hundreds of teachers and their classrooms each year with biotechnology education and outreach. Our vision is to grow the UMBI E&O unit in size and impact, and to create the Towson University Center for STEM Excellence at the Columbus Center on Pier VI at the Inner Harbor. We plan to coordinate and focus a number of new programs to tackle the thorny issue of providing a quality STEM education to all children. We are launching the BEST project – Baltimore Excellence in STEM Teachers – with a $1M earmark grant from NASA. We are using the new NOYCE grant from NSF to train STEM teachers who are committed to making a difference by establishing their careers in high-needs school systems. We are leveraging NSF funding for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study that is devoted to STEM education, and with all of these projects we hope to focus many and even most of our efforts on the budding new relationships that are being established with the schools and the community in Cherry Hill. This is why I am so happy that Denise Gordon and Esme Bentil-Dawson have come here today. These are two fantastic educational leaders whom I have only recently met, but I can assure you that I am excited about the potential for us to work together toward a common vision of student success and, especially, student success through strong science, technology, engineering and mathematics experiences.
(4) Grants
The success of the Fisher College in obtaining extramural funding continues to amaze not only me, but also the whole university. Last year, TU obtained about $26M in external funding, of which about $10M was due to units in Academic Affairs. The Fisher College accounted for between 3 and 4 million of that – to be expected, I suppose, since we have more opportunities to write grants. Nevertheless, I am thrilled with what our faculty members are doing. This year, we have already written proposals totaling over $6M (compared to about $8M for all of last year), and we have already been informed of over $3M of new grants. And it is only October, just 4 months into the fiscal year. You can see why I am particularly proud, as we should all be, of our efforts.
(5) Gifts.
State support for higher education has been strong, but in the past few years especially, it has not kept pace with costs and with our needs. Like all universities, we rely on gifts to help elevate us to the highest levels of achievement. Certainly, the $10M Fisher gift comes to mind as a milestone in our evolution. But gifts large and small are needed and appreciated. One that I’d like to highlight today is the Fisher College’s 2009 graduating class gift. Last year, the STEM Leaders (our Fisher College student leadership organization), decided to collect money for a senior class gift. This is the first such effort that I know of in the college. They collected enough money to purchase a nice bench, constructed of recycled materials. The bench is located in the 7800 building, because the collection jar that collected the most money was from the Computer and Information Sciences department. Congratulations, Computer folks!
This year, I would like to devote some time and effort to obtain a new gift. In a few moments, we will be distributing faculty and staff awards – for excellence in teaching, excellence in research, excellence in service, and others. I want to add a new award next year, and that would be for excellence in contributions to the public schools. This award would highlight and celebrate the very important work of our faculty (or staff) who are dedicated to STEM education and who make a difference in schools such as Southside Academy. I can think of a number of faculty members who would qualify for such an award if it existed already. What I think we should do is highlight the importance of collaborating with the schools, and provide a way to recognize and reward true excellence in this area. If you encourage me, I will devote time and effort this year to building up a foundation fund to be used to finance this award, and hopefully we will be able to make this award next year.
In closing, let me just say that I think the Fisher College is outstanding. It deserves its own award! What makes it outstanding is the quality of our staff, the quality of our faculty, and of course the quality of our students. So many people bring extraordinary gifts and talents to our enterprise! In addition to today’s award winners, and at the risk of forgetting someone, I just want to mention how proud we are of Professor Cody Sandifer, who this past year won a system-wide Regent’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; Professor Steven Lev, who was recognized by the system as an Elkins Professor; Professors Jonathan Lazar and Heidi Feng, who won best paper award at a prestigious professional meeting, and then were recognized by the Maryland Daily Record as one of a small group of “2009 Innovators of the Year;” Professor John LaPolla, who is the Maryland Academy of Science’s Outstanding Young Scientist for 2009, and Dr. Tim Brunker, our newest Fisher Professor.
My hope is that we continue to excel and to improve. My hope is that we can all agree on our core values and our vision, and that we can continually seek to be better at achieving that vision. During this year’s conversations about the next university strategic plan, I hope that we will take time to examine and rearticulate our vision as a college, not so much seeking to change it radically, but seeking to refine it and to improve as much as we can.
Thank you for all you do. Please enjoy the rest of today’s celebration.
The Jess and Mildred Fisher
College of Science and Mathematics
Smith Hall, Room 312 (campus map)
Phone: 410-704-2121
Fax: 410-704-2604
E-mail: fcsm@towson.edu
Good afternoon and welcome to the Fisher College’s annual Fall Forum – I’m so glad that all of you could attend today. Before I begin with some brief remarks about our college, I would like to introduce a few VIPs who have been able to join us today. Our new Provost, Dr. Marcia Welsh, and several others are up at Harford Community College this afternoon to attend the opening of Harford’s new science wing, and we certainly understand the importance of Towson having a good showing there. We’ll be sure to fill them in on all that happens here today. Joining us, though, are several guests, and I will start with Mrs. Donna Mayer, Associate Vice President for Development, and a real Fisher College supporter. Donna is our primary contact with the Fisher Foundation and we appreciate her continued hard work on behalf of the college.