State of the Fisher College, November 18, 2011
Presented by Dean David A. Vanko at the Fisher College Fall Forum
 As you all know, and as people outside of the college are well aware, the Fisher College of Science & Mathematics is regarded very highly and recognized for its significant contributions to the Towson University mission. Of course, we are under a lot of stress brought on by the anemic economy. We’ve experienced a pause in enrollment growth, yet more students keep coming to the natural sciences, the physical sciences, the computing sciences, and mathematics. Fortunately the university has made investments in our college, with five new faculty lines last year and, hopefully, one more this year. Further, with the new School of Emerging Technologies, we have a new staff position for the Director. We appreciate these investments and, frankly, hope for more in the future.
A new university president will join us in January 2012. I was honored to serve on the search committee that identified three excellent finalists whose names were forwarded to the Board of Regents. The Regents interviewed all three and chose Dr. Maravene Loeschke. No stranger to Towson University, Dr. Loeschke is remembered by many who worked with her prior to her departure from TU in 2002. Two weeks ago I was at a conference talking with David Brakke and Saeed Ghahramani, two previous deans of this college. Both had warm memories of Dr. Loeschke and told me, and I quote, “Mar will be very good to science and math.” That, of course, is a very good forecast.
For Dr. Loeschke’s transition book, each college was asked to put together a one-page executive summary, and of course we did so. Dr. Gasparich and I drafted it, and then had the opportunity to vet it through the College Council before the deadline for turning it in. This executive summary provides a short but comprehensive view of the breadth of the Fisher College’s activities and initiatives and, in my opinion, provides a pretty impressive picture. I encourage you to have a look at it – we will post it to the FCSM web site along with the text of this address.
I want to highlight some of the new initiatives that began this year. First, we have finally started the School of Emerging Technologies. With Dr. Mike O’Leary as the founding Director, you will soon be hearing more and more as the school begins to take shape and conduct activities. Mike has convened a faculty advisory body, has begun drafting an RFP for interdisciplinary faculty and student research projects, sponsored a lecture, and submitted a grant proposal. All that in little more than one month! The Master of Science in Applied Information Technology is the only academic program in the SET at this time, and I can tell you that funding for the school comes completely from the MS in AIT revenues – no other funds have been diverted from elsewhere in the college.
We’ve also launched, officially, the Glen Arboretum Board of Directors, and Professor Emeritus Jim Hull leads that group as the Arboretum Director. Jim now has a modest continuing budget for beginning the work of advancing the master plan created for the Glen about ten years ago. I should point out that Dr. Welsh’s support for both the SET and the Glen Arboretum was critical, and we are very appreciative.
A new project last year, and which is continuing this year with major Department of Education funding, is our Cherry Hill mathematics outreach and professional development project. Professors Bamberger, Yarnevich and Macks have been working with math teachers in Cherry Hill elementary/middle schools, and are expanding that work this year.
This was the second year that we have operated the Towson University Field Station at Camp Running Bear in Monkton, Maryland, directed by Professor Emeritus Don Forester. In addition to the second annual open house for the public, this year has seen the first TU course actually being taught at the field station – that is Dr. Haines’ class in environmental education.
The Fisher College has many fine programs, some of which have the advantage of having the option of being accredited. Usually, where accreditations are possible, we seek them as a kind of stamp of approval. This year, we’ve applied for a very prestigious stamp of approval – to be recognized as a Center of Actuarial Excellence. I hope to be able to announce next year that we’ve received this recognition, but even if we don’t, the fact that the Society of Actuaries even visited us speaks to the quality of the application prepared by the actuarial science group in the mathematics department. Congratulations!
Also new this year are the classes and programs leading to middle school certification to teach mathematics and science. Now these are certifications for students earning an education degree, not an FCSM degree. But I don’t think that’s an important distinction. What’s important is that students who want to teach science or math in middle school are learning their content and how to teach science and math from the Fisher College. They are our students and I look forward to the first graduates becoming teachers within the next year.
Finally, we’ve undertaken a year-long initiative to develop college- and department-level Diversity Action Plans. The College plan was completed last year, and departments are completing their custom plans this semester. We commonly speak about diversity, possibly more than we actually take action. Our planning process is designed to help us collect our thoughts about diversity – What does diversity mean? Where are we exemplary? Where do we need help? – and then to plan some systematic actions. I appreciate everyone’s enthusiastic support of this process!
Let me turn now to a short list of challenges for 2011-2012. First and foremost is the strain imposed on our operating budgets. Last year our total operating budget was reduced by more than $300,000 and we lost a staff position through retirement – this constituted a major reduction. While some of the funds have been restored, we are still making adjustments and getting used to a new era of austerity. We are carefully tapping into our self-support funds, but in some areas we’re doing so at a worrying rate. The dean’s office and the chairs are all continuing to work on this challenge, I promise you.
Another challenge this year is obtaining the capital funds to begin designing the Smith Hall addition. Dr. Welsh sent testimony to the legislature this past summer that made a very strong case for restoring this project to the Governor’s capital budget, and again I want to say how much we appreciate that!
Some other challenges that we’re focusing on this year include expanding the new BS in Information Technology degree to Harford County; planning for how to sustain some very successful grant-supported programs like TOPS (Towson Opportunities in STEM) and BEST (Baltimore Excellence in STEM Teaching); and creating a new mission, vision and strategic plan for the Center for Science and Mathematics Education.
These are all very specific challenges. I want to end with two more general challenges – tasks that we are all working on all the time, and tasks that we must always pay attention to. The first is our continued attention to the curriculum. I know we all want to keep our curriculum fresh, up-to-date, rigorous and effective in preparing our students. I certainly trust the entire faculty with this task. But demands from outsiders that we constantly assess our programs are sometimes taken as a sign that we can’t be trusted to deliver a high quality curriculum. I would like to suggest, though, that if we embrace the concept of assessment we can use that process to maintain a high quality curriculum, which is a challenge that we must always continue to work on.
Second, you know how much I value the tremendous work that our faculty members do in the area of seeking and obtaining extramural funding. We simply have to supplement our meager state funds, which are barely enough to keep our instructional programs running. These are the resources that allow us to do what we love to do – explore our disciplines, pose interesting questions, discover new things, and share this very cool journey with our colleagues and, especially, our students. So please keep those grant proposals coming!
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to announce the next Fisher Endowed Professor. We have had four previous endowed chair holders, and I was able to calculate that while we’ve invested $180,000 in those four professors, their collective extramural funding awarded after they were named amounts to $1,013,144, a 563% return rate. So, there’s no pressure for the fifth Jess & Mildred Fisher Endowed Professor in the Biological and Physical Sciences, Dr. Matthew Hemm from the Department of Biological Sciences. Professor Hemm previously served as a Postdoctoral Researcher and a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He earned his B.S. degree from the College of William and Mary, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Purdue University. Dr. Hemm teaches Molecular Biology and his research focus is the abundance and function of small proteins. His studies show that small proteins and the short genes that encode them can be prevalent and that they can have very specific functions. Dr. Hemm is currently publishing a paper with four undergraduate co-authors. Congratulations, Matt.
I appreciate all the hard work and the impressive results of our faculty, staff and students. Thank you so much for making my work in the dean’s office a pleasure. I hope everyone has a great year, and 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 |
