Message from the Dean

The 2011-2012 academic year has been an exciting one for the College of Social & Behavioral Science, providing a great foundation for several initiatives to be launched in 2013. Let me offer a quick thank you to our faculty and staff for their hard work, commitment and overall excellence. As you’ll see in this report, their work is cutting-edge and impactful, not just at a local level, but nationally and internationally.

The pace of research in the college continues to be fast, with remarkable and sustained growth in funded research. In comparison to 2007 numbers, the college increased funded research 500% (from $422,854 to $3.6 million last year) and 400% in comparison to 2008 numbers. That growth has been sustained for a second consecutive year. This year the college grew almost another $1 million to $4.3 million in annual funded research. In comparison to 2007 numbers, that’s a tenfold increase. Our faculty members have done an exceptional job! Most important, though, the number of faculty engaged in funded research has expanded dramatically. In 2009, a total of 42 faculty submitted proposals for funding. In 2011 that number doubled, with 85 faculty submitting proposals. This represents approximately 66% of tenure-line faculty in the college. Despite dramatic increases in newly funded proposals this past year we still had 80 faculty submitting grant proposals. As these numbers demonstrate, the college has made a serious commitment to and fully embraced our research mission. Accordingly, the college launched a new program this past year, the junior faculty research leave program. This program allows junior faculty to receive a competitive and fully funded research leave during their third year, providing a unique opportunity to concentrate on their specific research program. This is indeed a rare program, with few universities nationally providing such support for junior faculty members.

Even with our strong commitment to research, the college recognizes that we are here to serve the needs of our students, both undergraduate and graduate. This year we launched our “Classroom to Careers” initiative, increasing the number of external internships available to our students. We also centralized our advising efforts, providing new and expanded support to advising staff in the college. I am pleased to say that our efforts have been well received by the local community, with quick expansion of available opportunities, some of them actually providing paid positions. Some new partnerships have also emerged. For example, we’ll be partnering with Overstock.com, as they’ve agreed to provide a number of guaranteed internship slots for our students. The college is committed to not only providing the best education possible for our students, but also one that translates to specific and measureable job skills and placements, something we’ll be monitoring over the next several years. Keep an eye out for our new “student dashboard” that will be on our webpage soon.

Consistent with our commitment to our students, and in recognition of the escalating costs of higher education, we’ll be launching a national student scholarship endowment campaign in the fall. Our goal is to double available scholarship funds for our students. We’ve been able to increase scholarship dollars almost 50% over the last two years, but we still fall far short of what is needed. We’ll be hosting several dinners around the country in the spring of 2013. I hope that you’ll be able to attend, as there’s not a single more important effort than increasing the funding available to support our students.

I also want to share that we will be launching a building campaign in the fall. It will be the first building campaign in almost 50 years for the college. That’s right, 50 years. Over the course of the last five decades, the needs of the college have grown dramatically. I hope you will consider attending one of our events and seriously think about donating to our effort.

Let me close by thanking our associate deans, Jeff Kentor and Jessie Fan, for their hard work and dedication, along with the Dean’s Office staff. Kristina Bailey, Sarah Moyer, Rick Pike, Dennis Bryant, Emily Washburn, Gina Shipley, and Renee Morita all do an excellent job and are here to help. If you’d like to connect with the college, please don’t hesitate to call or email me; I’d welcome the chance to talk.

Warm Regards,

M. David Rudd

Dean