Faculty Meetings

Thanks to all of you who attended this week's faculty meetings, and for your feedback on the proposed organizational structure changes. I'm working on a "revised" structure and will be asking the faculty council to elect a "transition team" of faculty to work with me on the implementation details.

I haven't forgotten that I've asked the staff to set goals, too, and I'll be working with staff leadership over the next few weeks to develop a mechanism for goal setting.

And the next few weeks will be busy ones-Susan Downey and I are knee deep in budget discussions with the Provost, President and Finance and Administration.

I'll be emailing faculty evaluation material next week; I'll be asking for self evaluations to be returned to me and the department chairs after the break.

And I'm pleased to announce that we have a Development Director. Dawn Rigney will be joining Pace University on Wednesday March 4. She reports to me and to Philanthropy. She'll be based in Pleasantville during the Spring while she and I get to know each other. Once she gets settled she'll be based in White Plains at the Graduate Center.

This has been a busy couple of days at the downtown campus. Ivan Seidenberg visited the Computer Club and the Seidenberg Scholars on Wednesday. Joe McKay was the guest artist at last night's Digital Gallery reception-the evening was fabulous and provocative. We also had Ernest Von Simpson conducting a four week IT entrepreneurship seminar.

I'll be in Pleasantville on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, New York on Thursday and at the Graduate Center on Wednesday of next week.

Strategic Planning, UPE, Budgeting, Digital Gallery - Lots going on!

Thanks to everyone who attended last week's school meeting. We will all need to work together to redefine and refocus our school and I appreciate your support in the days ahead.

A few things of interest:

• The Strategic Planning Committee is meeting next week to put the final touches on a draft that will be circulated to the community for discussion and comments. We will then focus our School's strategic plan on the goals in the University's strategic plan.

• Monday at the Graduate Center at 5 PM we are inducting students into Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the international honor society for the computing and information disciplines. Please plan to join us as you are able.

• Ivan Seidenberg will be meeting with the Computer Club and the Seidenberg Scholars at the New York campus on Wednesday during common hour.

• The budget process is beginning. The University Budget Committee has been meeting. Dan Farkas, Fred Grossman and I serve on that committee; we also serve on subcommittees. The Budget Committee includes representatives from each location council, and I believe that those representatives will be reporting at the location council meetings.

• It's not too soon to prepare for the Middle States accrediting team visit, March 22 through the 25. You can find the self-study document here. Please make sure that you are familiar with what's in the document, particularly those sections that refer to our School. Members of the team might want to discuss the document with you.
  

In preparation for next year's budget, I'll be circulating materials to faculty for our annual self-evaluations next week. I will be scheduling meetings with each faculty member to discuss this year's accomplishments and goals for the next academic year.

I haven't finalized next week's schedule yet but I know I'll be in Pleasantville Monday morning and at the Graduate Center on Monday afternoon. I'll be at the New York city campus part of every day next week except Monday. I will be attending the Digital Gallery presentation-hope to see some of you there.

Big Week

Tomorrow is our Seidenberg School meeting. Provost Geoff Brackett will be joining us, and I hope to see as many of you as possible at 9:30 tomorrow morning at the Graduate Center.

Congratulations to Jim Lawler who received a Thinkfinity Grant, and to Dan Farkas and Joe Ryan of Dyson College who together received a Thinkfinity Grant (apologies to Dan and Joe-I didn't have my spreadsheet in front of me when I posted yesterday) . We also had a very inspiring day last Friday at the follow up meeting of Dyson College and Seidenberg School faculty exploring collaboration possibilities in digital media. John Molluzzo, Cathy Dwyer, Jennifer Thomas, Richard Kline, Dan Farkas, Hsui-lin Winkler, Lixin Tao and Sung Hyuk Cha joined Will Pappenheimer, Ruth Johnston, Catherine Zimmer, Linda Anstendig, Rebecca Martin, Joe Ryan, Kathleen Roche, Tom Henthorne, PV Viswanath (we made him an honorary Dyson College-Seidenberg School faculty member for the day, even though we know he's from the Lubin School), Zhaohua Dai, Nira Herrmann, Beth Klingner and me. We've reached "critical mass" in some areas and I expect that some small groups will be forming and working on "next steps."

And speaking of digital media, the Seidenberg School and Dyson College collaborate on the Digital Gallery, co-curated by Dr. Frank Marchese and Dr. Jillian McDonald.

The latest exhibit, which opened on February 10, is entitled The Aesthetics of Gaming. The artist Joe McKay will speak publicly about his work on Thurs Feb 26, 5:00 pm, followed by a reception at 6:00 pm. I enjoyed the fall Digital Gallery events very much, and I expect the Spring to be equally provocative. This exhibit is particularly timely as we consider how to bring game engineering and game design courses into our curriculum.

I am looking forward to resting on President's Day. Tuesday I'll be at the Graduate Center, Wednesday I'll be in New York City, mostly in meetings-Management Council (the officers of the University) from 9 until 11:30, Dean's Council from 11:30 until 2:30 and then the Budget Committee is meeting from 3 until 5. Whew-what a day.

Thursday I'm in Pleasantville and Friday I'm in New York, with many fewer meetings.

Catch you on the campus, and enjoy the holiday.

A Busy First Week of February

Tomorrow we'll have the follow up meeting of Dyson and Seidenberg faculty to see how our collaborations in digital media are coming along. We'll have "new" folks so it should be fun.

Yesterday the Computer Club on the NYC had Staci Burke and Mirkeya Cappellan, two Pace graduate students who attended the Grace Hopper Conference, speak about their experiences. Mirkeya attended last year and Staci attended this year. Fran Allen, a great friend of our school who serves on our Advisory Board, was one of the keynote speakers at this year's conference. The conference is sponsored by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

The weather has been a challenge, and it's only February 5. As I write this it's 8 degrees outside my house. I hope that we're done with snow for a little while at least.

Next week I'm in Pleasantville on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon, at the Graduate Center Tuesday and Friday morning, and in New York on Thursday.

I hope to see many of you on Friday for our School meeting with the Provost.