Welcome and Introductions

The following new members introduced themselves

  • Sarah Miller, Assistant Dean for Inclusive Excellence
  • Mark Gross, Director of ATLAS

Brief Items

  • Dean’s Faculty Fellowships Applications due Feb 20; the amount provided to the departments for teaching replacement will be raised to $8000 starting next year
  • Dean’s Graduate Assistantships and Fellowships Nominations due on a rolling basis, with Mar 20 close
  • Data for alcohol policy will include summarizing gifts made to entertainment funds and how much came from faculty and staff; a brief survey of attendees also showed it is common for faculty to pay for alcohol out of pocket when entertaining seminar visitors, prospective faculty, etc

RASEI Hires

The possibility that RASEI growth lines will be rostered in RASEI instead of departments was discussed. The main motivation appears to be to strengthen faculty affinity for RASEI, but it was pointed out that such would likely occur when SEEC is complete and RASEI faculty have space there.

Capital Projects Update

The Fleming Idea Forge is on track for August 2014 completion, though it is coming in over budget due to the addition of an air-handling unit and so some components may need to be delayed for a second phase. The office renovations for SEEC on East Campus are expected to be complete in late Fall 2014, though on a rolling basis so that some tenants may move in as soon as Summer 2014; the new lab building will not be done until 2015. The classroom finish in the Biotech Building is expected to be complete in late Fall 2014. The 5th wing of the Biotech Building is to be designed with campus funds in FY15, with state funds requested for construction in FY16. The program planning for the Aerospace Building on East Campus is proceeding, with state funds requested for design as soon as FY15.

Faculty and Exempt Staff Evaluation Processes

These processes will be similar to last year. For exempt professionals, forms and the process timeline will be sent out this week (done). Staff will have two weeks to complete their self-evaluations for this cycle and goals for the next cycle. Supervisors will have two weeks to gather input, add their comments, and provide an initial rating. The dean’s office will have one week to complete a review and address any questions with departments and programs, and then supervisors need to meet with employees and obtain their signatures on the form by the end of February. For faculty, FRPAs are due from faculty on Feb 1, and the Performance Evaluation Narratives are due Feb 14. The former are required by campus; the latter are encouraged by our college but are at the option of each department and program (last year, 3 departments and all programs used the narratives for essentially all faculty, 2 departments used the narratives for junior faculty, and one department did not use them). Data and guidance for faculty evaluations will be provided by the dean’s office in mid-February, with evaluations to be returned to the dean’s office by the end of March.

Undergraduate Enrollment Growth

Rob made a presentation on undergraduate enrollment growth. During 2007 – 2012, our compound annual growth rate averaged 2.7%, whereas that of our peer group and also aspirational group was 4.2%, and that of all engineering colleges in the US was 4.7%. We will need to have a higher compound annual growth rate of 5.7% from 2013 to 2020 to reach a goal of 5400 undergraduates (the average size of our peer and aspirational schools). However, our growth is already accelerating, and Rob used a mass-balance model to project that we will meet our intermediate goal of 4300 undergraduates in Fall 2016 (up from 3657 in Fall 2013) with less than 3% annual increases in new freshmen. The number of transfer students is increasing, and is expected to account for about one third of our new undergraduates during this period. Finally, enrollments by discipline were compared to our peers. We are larger than the average of our peers in aerospace, chemical and environmental engineering, almost the same in mechanical, and smaller in architectural, civil, and electrical/computer engineering and in computer science. It is estimated that new majors in General Engineering Plus and Technology, Arts and Media will each account for about 200 new students.

In Attendance

Rob Davis, JoAnn Zelasko, Sarah Miller, Mary Steiner, Doug Smith, Jeff Sczechowski, Kurt Maute, Diane Sieber, Will Medlin, Balaji Rajagopalan, Jim Martin, Mike Lightner, Jana Milford, Mark Gross