It's Back to School Time

Hard to believe but here it is, time for a new semester.

I hope to see many of you at convocation on Sunday, September 6. And I also hope that many of you have had a chance to read Unbowed, Wangari Mathaai's memoir.

The summer has flown by but I trust that we are all looking forward to a fruitful academic year.
A few quick reminders:

• Richard "Rick" Kline has been named Associate Dean and will be working with the department chairs on the schedule; working with faculty and Victor Goldsmith and others in Sponsored Research on grants, especially those from stimulus funding, and will be coordinating our interdisciplinary work. You can find Richard's office across the hall from mine in New York.
• We will be coming back to a reorganized School with four departments for this next transition year; please refer to the Restructuring Document that was distributed in June for more details.
• Faculty, please make sure that your chair and Fran O'Gara both know your office hours.

I'll be at One Martine Avenue on Monday, at 163 William Street on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and off on Friday next week.



The following week I'll be in New York on Tuesday morning and in Pleasantville on Tuesday afternoon, then New York on Thursday and Pleasantville on Wednesday and Friday.

I look forward to seeing you at Convocation, at Academy Day, and around campus.

Enjoy this last weekend of the summer!

School Restructuring

The project that is currently consuming most of my time and effort (aside from next year's budget!) is evaluating the structure of the school. We've currently got two task forces going-one on the academic side and one on the administrative side.

Some of you are wondering why I am handling these as two separate issues. I see the focus of the two groups as very different; the academic side of the School is charged with determining an academic structure that will foster and facilitate interdisciplinary programs while keeping a strong, focused computing/IT core. Much of that work will involve thinking about academic programs. The administrative structure needs to support faculty, staff and students on multiple locations at all levels-undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, external.

The Academic Restructuring Group will be meeting every Wednesday from now until April 29. Our goal is to have recommendations in place by May 1.

We had an excellent meeting and I believe that we are all very positive about our ability to coalesce around a set of recommendations. We also agreed that I would use my blog to post summaries of our meetings.

Here is what we've worked out so far:

Outcome from Week 1: What kind of school do we want to be?

“We want to be a school that offers strong, relevant, and attractive programs leading to degrees and minors internal and external to Seidenberg that are simultaneously (a) mutually beneficial and (b) leverage the interests of faculty.”

What is a strong core program? Technically challenging and intellectually stimulating

What is a relevant core program? Relevant to student body, and to the external community (both for-profit & not-for-profit)

What is an attractive core program? It draws enrollment, attracts potential students and is generally appealing to non-computing and administrative personnel.

What are the interests of the faculty? Research, teaching, etc…

To realize this vision, we need to consider ways to make this happen. Over the next weeks we will be discussing the following issues/topics:

Week 2:

Focus on core programs that are responsive to the needs of

• External Schools (interdisciplinary)

• Internal (core programs)

Week 3:

Special programs – DPS, NACTEL, Online, International, CLOUT, CIS 101 (enrollment, cost, margin)

Week 4:

Structure and governance of the school

Week 5:

Resources and faculty issues

Week 6:

Marketing above 5 outcomes to University Administration & Seidenberg Faculty

I also met with my direct reports, and we are looking at the administrative side of the school. In particular, we are defining what functions need to be done, which of the functions are location specific, and which are school wide. We will be using this to identify what resources are available where, and how we might make the best use of all of the talent in the School. We will be producing a set of recommendations by May 15.

I extend my thanks to everyone who is working with me in this transformation of our school.

Addendum

Two things that need to be added:

1. I'm at the Grad Center on Monday and Thursday, downtown on Tuesday, midtown on Wednesday and in Pleasantville on Friday
2. The Faculty Restructuring Team and I had our organizing "meeting" on Friday. We will be meeting every Wednesday from now until April 29. I'll be using this blog as a way to keep everyone informed. I am also working with an Administrative Restructuring Team to review the administrative structure; we are meeting on Thursday and will continue to meet over the next 7 weeks or so.