OATdb Archive - Sam Houston State University

OATdb Archive

2013 - 2014

Sciences, College Of

Goal

To Further Excellence In Teaching

The College of Sciences will provide the resources,support, and mechanisms to assist departments and faculty in their efforts to improve teaching throughout the college curriculum.

Objective

Recruit Highly Credentialed Faculty

The college will strive to hire faculty who posses the terminal degree from R1 universities.

KPI

Highly Credentialed Faculty

Eighty percent of new faculty hires will possess the terminal degree from R1 institutions

Result

Faculty Hires

100% of new TT faculty hired had terminal degree from a Research University

Action

Recruit Highly Qualified Faculty

We place ads in prominent locations for individuals looking for academic positions, utilize networks of colleagues to promote the positions, and use list serves of professional areas to highlight our openings. These have created generally large pools from which to select candidates.

Goal

To Promote Excellence In Creative Activities And Research

The College of Sciences will provide the resources and support to facilitate scientific inquiry among faculty and students in the college.

Objective

Provide Appropriate Faculty Travel Funds

The college will solicit travel requests from faculty members, then request, acquire and allocate appropriate funding for proposed travel.

KPI

Faculty Travel Funds

The college will solicit travel requests from faculty members, prioritize these requests, and acquire the necessary funds to facilitate the research and developmental goals of the faculty. Our goal will be to fund 75% of the requests.

Result

Travel Funding

We funded all travel requests received for 100% funding

Action

Travel Funds

We provide funding from the Graduate School through Graduate fee funding, Graduate advising funding, and through special funding outside of these requests. College of Sciences discretionary funding is used on a case by case basis to support travel for research, teaching, and service purposes.

Goal

To Bring Visibility To Programs In The College

The College of Sciences will actively publish faculty and student accomplishments through local and national media and increase public exposure to scholarly and artistic events on campus.

Objective

Visibility

The College of Sciences will publicize research and creative accomplishments of faculty and departments in the Heritage magazine, on the website, and in other publications.

KPI

Visibility

We will seek to have at least 10 publications of research and creative accomplishments in journals, newsletters, and on websites.

Result

Publicity Of College Activities

We exceeded 10 publications highlighting college activities

Action

Publicize College

The Dean's office provides story ideas to our Web Developer who then writes the stories with assistance from departments and faculty members. Faculty are encouraged to contact the web developer directly to publicize exciting news. Departments have also begun listing their weekly seminar speakers to highlight the College activities.

Goal

To Provide A Rigorous, Current Curriculum

The College of Sciences will encourage the development of new programs that reflect discpline specific and societal changes. The College will adhere to a formal, rigorous curriculum review process.

Objective

Accreditation Of Programs

The college will identify all programs that are eligible for accreditation through professional organizations and initiate the accreditation or reaccreditation in each case.

KPI

Program Accreditation

Programs that are eligible for accreditation from outside agencies will seek or renew accreditation. For 2013-2014, the goal is to continue revisions to the computer science curriculum to meet ABET standards.

Result

Accreditation

We submitted the interim ABET report for continued accreditation of undergradute Computer Science.

Action

Accreditation

Science programs ain our College re not typically accreditated, except for Computer Science and Engineering Technology. We will seek ABET accreditation in the future for the Engineering Technology program as we add faculty and students.

Objective

Restructure College Curriculum Process

The college will establish fixed deadlines for submission of materials to the college curriculum committee and review items thoroughly in a timely manner.

KPI

College Curriculum Calendar

The calendar for the college curriculum process will be modified and strictly enforced. Our goal is that all proposals will be submitted by the deadline.

KPI

Approval Of Submitted Curriculum Proposals

At least 90% of curriculum proposals approved by the COS committee will be approved by the University curriculum committee.

Result

Curriculum

All proposal were submitted on time to the College Curriculum committee

Action

Timeliness Of Curriculum

The Associate Dean of Assessment and Curriculum sends all department chairs and department curriculum committees timely notification of deadlines to ensure all curriculum items have been approved for the general curriculum report.

Goal

To Enhance The Quality Of Graduate Programs In The College

The College of Sciences will provide resources, planning and direction that will assist departments in growing quality graduate programs.

Objective

Provide Adequate Assistantships For Graduate Students

The college will allocate competitive assistantships in a manner that allows each program to recruit the quality and quantity of graduate students necessary to offer a viable graduate program.

KPI

Percentage Of Graduate Students On Assistantship

The college will produce a TA report that includes at least 85% full time graduate students who are receiving assistantships in COAS

Result

TA Funding

We were unable to increase the percentage of TA's funded by our office as no additional funding was given to the college

Action

Funding For TA

We described the funding needs for TA to the advancement office but they were not able to find donors for this request.

Objective

Provide Adequate Graduate Scholarships

The college will provide an adequate number of $1500 scholarships to assist in the recruitment and retention of high caliber graduate students. Due to low overall stipends and an inability to waive tuition, merit scholarships are needed to attract out-of-state and international students to graduate programs.

KPI

Percentage Of Graduate Students On Scholarship

The college will produce a report of at least 30 scholarship recipients that includes the percentage of full time graduate students who receive scholarships through the COS office

Result

Number Of TA Funded

We exceeded the desired goal of 30 TA lines funded. 96 TA lines were funded during this period.

Action

Scholarships

We described the need for donors to provide funding for additional scholarships for graduate students to the advancement office but no donors were identified to meet this request.

Update to previous cycle's plan for continuous improvement We met all of our goals with the excpetion of meeting 85% of the TA positions funded. We were unable to get additonal funding from the Office of Advancement in support of this goal.

We implemented using national searches for all of our tenure track faculty positions. This resulted in a high quality pool of candidates. With the exception of Computer Sciences, we were able to recruit our first choice candidates for all open faculty positions.

We met all of the travel requests needs that were proposed to the College of Sciences Dean's Office. We implemented a limit of no more than 2 awards per person and a rate scale for in-state, in-country, and international travel to ration funds for mutliple use and maximum impact.

Our campus news visibillity was much improved with an updated website and timely news stories/item submissions. We continued to promote College of Sciences news items to the University Relations personnel to highlight as University stories.

We no longer offer Nursing in this college but we obtained national accreditation from CCNE before transferrring this program to the College of Health Sciences. Computer Science was reaccredited and we continue to provide information to ABET in the interim period. We are wiaiting for additional faculty to be funded in Engineering Technology before beginning attempts to obtain ABET accreditation in this area. Funding was requested for three faculty but none was received.

Information regarding deadlines for curriculum planning and proposals has been provided well in advance and all departments have met this goal.

Graduate funding has been the largest challenge as the College of Sciences programs require stipends in most programs to attract graduate students. Donors prefer to give funds to undergraduate students and we have not received funding specifically for graduate students.

Plan for continuous improvement We will continue to use a variety of media to advertise open faculty positions with the goal of having a large and diverse faculty applicant pool.

We will supplement travel funding with discretionary funds if needed. We have a proposed budget of $10,000 to allow for this if requested.

We will resubmit to ABET for continued accreditation for the CS undergraduate degree program and continue to explore options for ABET accreditation for the Engineering Technology program once we have sufficient numbers of faculty to qualify.

We will continue to publicize departmental seminars, special guest speakers, departmental conferences on campus, and special achievements of students and faculty.

We will request additional funding for graduate positions and stipend amounts/scholarships in our budget request and from the Graduate Studies office.

We will solicit funding from donors for graduate scholarships trhough the advancement office.

We will present a detaiiled fundraising plan to the Office of Advancment that they can use to present to potential donors to allow us to reach 85% of all graduate students funded.