for the Faculty and Staff of Washington State
University
from Robert C. Bates, Provost and Executive Vice
President
Number 11
October 2006
Advancing Our Reputation in Research, Scholarship and the Arts
During the past year, our faculty have made substantial contributions to advancing Washington State University's position as one of America's leading research institutions. Increasingly, faculty are being recognized for leadership in their disciplines, for the use of research to motivate and enhance the education of undergraduate and graduate students, and to lead activities that positively impact the lives not only of Washington's citizens but people around the world.
The prestige of our faculty is a key factor in our institutional reputation. Thus, I am extremely pleased to join with others in recognizing veterinary pathologist Guy Palmer for his election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. With this election, he becomes one of only 1,600 medical scientists in the U.S. who lead national medical research. Of that total, just 16 are veterinarians and five have direct ties to WSU's College of Veterinary Medicine, a remarkable statistic.
Dr. Palmer's work concerns how microbial pathogens evade the immune response to establish persistent infection and how this leads to shifts in microbial transmission, including disease outbreaks. His research thus has significant impacts on the health of animals and humans in our country and in the developing world.
Other faculty have received significant recognition this year. Rachel Halverson, Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures was recognized as a Fulbright American Scholar. This is an example of an award recognized as highly prestigious by the Association of American Universities.
WSU was recognized, based on citation impact, as the 13th most impactful institution nationally and 24th in the world in Agricultural Sciences. Such recognition is the result of the work of individuals such as Barry Swanson, recognized as the 22nd most cited author in agricultural sciences. A Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition, he is best known for his work in the control of microbial contaminants in food, as well as in fat substitutes and vegetable processing.
Our research and scholarship also helps us provide a superb academic experience for our students. This past year, Anthropology Professor Tim Kohler led a collaborative team in winning a $3 million Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training grant from the National Science Foundation. It is designed to bridge the gap between anthropology and biology and to produce professionals versed in evolutionary approaches that integrate the study of biology and culture.
Another NSF-funded project, this one for $1.8 million and led by Bioengineering Professor Denny Davis, uses culturally relevant engineering applications in mathematics to energize graduate students, K-12 teachers and students, and university faculty to reform mathematics education and heighten engineering career aspirations.
None of this could have been achieved without external sponsorship for faculty work and university activities. Expenditures for WSU's sponsored research activities -- a broadly used measure of the quality of a university and its faculty -- reached an all time high during this period. We are pleased that total research expenditures will exceed $185 million for FY 2005. Public service expenditures will account for an additional $64.3 million. Combined, this is nearly $250 million to collectively support our research and public service missions.
We are continuing our efforts to enhance faculty success through programs such as the Grantwriters, in which more than 160 faculty from every college, campus, and many extension locations participated, as well as initiatives such as Missions to DC and Missions to NY.
At the same time, we are working to improve the transfer of research results to benefit society. We have strengthened the WSU Research Foundation, hired Keith Jones as Director and launched new programs such as the Technology Gap Fund to increase commercialization of WSU-developed technologies. As a result, invention disclosures have more than doubled in the past year. To facilitate the ethical transfer of research from the university, we have revised our Conflict of Interest policy, which was adopted in July as Executive Policy 27 (see Web link below).
Preparing for the Self-Study for Regional Institutional Accreditation
We have started preparations for our required ten-year regional accreditation process. While the visit of the evaluation team in April 2009 seems like a long way off, a significant amount of work, including an institution wide self-study, needs to be accomplished.
Our task is a substantial one. We evaluate ourselves as an institution against a set of standards that has been developed and revised over time by our peers - the membership of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. This process calls us to reflect on the institution, in all its parts and as a whole, and then to document that we are who we claim to be. It also calls us to reflect on where we want to be headed and whether we are effectively moving in that direction.
We will invest considerable resources in this project in terms of the time and energy of a lot of people within the WSU community. It will be a reasonable expenditure of resources only if the university benefits significantly. I believe we can, especially since the accreditation process aligns very nicely with a need to assess our progress implementing the goals identified in our Strategic Plan and then updating the plan as necessary.
We are almost five years into implementation of our Strategic Plan, so we are at the point where we need to take stock of our accomplishments, as well as of the challenges ahead. We need to examine in depth why we have made significant progress on some sub-goals, but not on others. We will continue to celebrate our successes, and there are many. But if we have not achieved as much as we hoped in other areas, or are ready to challenge ourselves to higher goals, we need to decide together if we need new sub-goals and new strategies to move us forward.
As we begin preparing a Regional Accreditation self-study, I want to point out several overarching themes that we know the evaluation team will be looking for, and that you'll hear about frequently over the next few years:
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Do we have a clear mission from which all activity flows?
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Is our Strategic Plan supported by our budget decisions?
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Is assessment of student learning outcomes used in all areas to improve teaching and learning?
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Do we use evidence-based analysis and planning for institutional improvement?
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Does the entire University community know about Accreditation 2009 and has there been widespread participation in the self-study process?
Larry James, Associate Executive Vice President, is chairing the Steering Committee, whose members have recently been appointed. The work of this committee -- including the appointment of study committees to address each of the NWCCU standards -- will get underway soon. These standards can be found at the WSU Accreditation Web site. Below is a Web link.
There are many ways you can be involved. You may be asked -- or want to volunteer -- to serve on a study committee addressing a specific standard and goal. Or you may serve on your departmental or college self-study group, or perhaps respond to a survey, or meet with the Evaluation Team during their visit. I am counting on everyone's contribution to make this a productive project that moves us toward our collective vision for the future of Washington State University.
New Tools to Support and Document Learning
Several new initiatives are helping us provide a great undergraduate experience in a research university. These include:
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the ePortfolio that allows students, faculty, and staff to build online collaborative learning environments to, for example, display and share documents and multimedia, and conduct discussions and dialogues. All can be stored indefinitely, providing public evidence of teaching and learning outcomes. The ePortfolio uses the Microsoft SharePoint MySite accessed at my.wsu.edu. Our students returning to school quickly found the mySite link. By mid October, 4,000 people at WSU had created personal accounts.
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a new "myClass" SharePoint tool for faculty, developed by the Center for Teaching. Learning and Technology and Information Technology. Currently being pilot tested, it promotes posting of syllabi, lecture notes, and more. Dubbed a "light" version of a learning management system, it is also user friendly. It is anticipated that all faculty will have access to the myClass technology by summer.
A link to an article about Electronic Portfolios is provided below.
Supporting Our Campus Communities And Beyond
Thank you to the many Combined Fund Drive volunteers around WSU who are encouraging their colleagues to contribute to organizations they believe in through CFD. With 1,900 charitable organizations in the charity guide -- including those serving our campus communities and other locations statewide - CFD is an effective means for state employees to make charitable gifts. A link to charity information by campus community and county is provided below. If you have questions about CFD, please contact Theresa Lehman or Brent Freeman, our CFD co-chairs.
Robert C. Bates
Provost and Executive Vice President
Additional Resources
Online resources:
Office of the Provost
Archive of Past Provost's Dialogues
Robert C. Bates is Provost and Academic Vice President at WSU.