Dear All,

As some of you might be aware we had a bomb scare last week – caused by a mysterious parcel wrapped in duct tape and left at the mailbox on the South side of our building. Fortunately, it turned out to be a fancy pair of shoes.  Be aware that this particular mailbox is only meant for regular mail in the form on envelopes. The police and bomb squad acted promptly. The procedures and equipment they deployed give one confidence in their expertise and ability to ensure our safety. Thank you to all who were in the building for the calm and orderly way in which you dealt with the situation and the disruption in caused to classes and your work.

Much kudos to all involved in organizing the 5th Graduate Student Conference – this was another triumph, showcasing the growing professionalism of our grad students, their confidence in presentation of and the rigor of their emerging scholarship.  It was heartening to see so many faculty participating and taking such pride in their students’ progress. This conference is prelude to AERA where we join our various subdisciplinary knowledge communities to continue our journey of discovery, networking with other scholars and making an impact.

Of course, our research activities and the impact of our scholarship is what mark our excellence and relevance as well as our status as a Research 1 university.  Over the last five years many of you have been involved in increasing the number and the dollar value of our research revenues, and consequently doubling our research expenditures. The numbers of faculty serving as PIs has been increasing annually and is now at 75%. This effort resulted in a steady upward shift in our US News and World Report ranking, culminating in a #19 ranking in 2013. Unfortunately, a number of factors have coalesced this last year (including the completion of some large grants, the sequester which eliminated funding rounds, extensions on expenditure targets, and hiring patterns that have not yet augmented grant activity) resulting in expenditures decreasing by $1.5 million and the level of funding per faculty dropping. Consequently our College ranking has dropped to 26. Parallel to this, we also experienced some slippage in the reputational ranking of our programs. Whilst this is disappointing news, we should regard it as no more than a blip in our otherwise positive trajectory.  We have turned around our trajectory before, and we will do so again. As demonstrated by the improved performance of our online programs, which are now ranked at #9, we are capable of working together in a determined way to achieve excellence and meet targets.

There are signs already that efforts put in place to ramp up our research outputs are yielding results. The College has already exceeded the number of proposals it submitted in FY13 with one full fiscal year quarter remaining in FY14 (Source DMI: 86 proposals in FY13 – 90 proposals in FY14 YTD).  It should be noted that these proposal numbers do not include subledger accounts or campus competitions such as campus research board.  Additionally, the amount of initial requests (total project budget requests) has seen an increase from $39,619,158 at the end of the third quarter of FY13 to $58,748,526 YTD in FY14.

As an insight into the competitions our faculty are pursuing, the recent NSF Cyberlearning competition saw six College submissions for a total initial request amount of $4,335,957. These proposals included collaborations with Engineering, NCSA, Computer Science, Illinois Innovation Institute and the Beckman Institute. The IES/SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) competition, having the same sponsor deadline as the NSF Cyberlearning competition saw 3 submissions for a total request amount of $911,714.College proposal traffic for April, May and June is expected to be heavy and to continue in the footprint established in the first three quarters of this year.

The scenario building exercise led by your elected faculty serving on CEC is an opportunity for all of us to get together and study the reasons for these movements and decide where we want to be, not only in terms of the rankings but a broad range of other values and aspirations.  All of us in our scholarly community have the power to make a difference and determine our College’s future.

Another metric used by campus, called Academic Analytics clearly demonstrates how much above the national mean we are on many meaningful metrics. As problematic as these metrics and ranking systems are, they have consequences, and it is our responsibility to make sure they do not misrepresent our work. Be assured that we will be taking swift and determined actions to ensure that our metrics, those we select and others measure us by, reflect the quality of College and its work.

The Spring Break provides us with an opportunity to replenish our spirit and energy.  Our Chancellor has extolled us to use this time to do something different. I agree that our sense of purpose and creativity is oftentimes recharged by a change of focus or context. Let’s hope too that the softer breezes of Spring soon come our way. It has been a long and hard winter.

All the best,

Dean Mary Kalantzis