- Office of the Dean
- 2009 Annual Report
- Committees
The College is pleased to report on ongoing and new areas of accomplishment and investment even as we continue to address the realities of an uncertain budgetary environment. Faculty accomplishments in 2008–09 included four Guggenheim recipients, three elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and two new major center grants in critical areas of scientific research. Despite the budget cuts, we were able to pursue faculty hiring, with particularly good results in an environment in which many other top institutions canceled searches. We have resisted the temptation to pause, but instead persist in our efforts to identify and refine academic priorities and to make critical new investments in hiring, to fund initiatives such as the centers in East and South Asia and significant grant matches and start-ups in the sciences, and to support graduate students more competitively.
The accomplishments noted below are not intended to be comprehensive and inclusive of all the successes in the College for 2008–09—note the heavy emphasis on the sciences. Those listed are specific to the four itemized goals from last year’s report.
The College made considerable progress in its program review process, particularly with regard to a new process for following through on the results with individual departments. Each department now receives a detailed letter from the dean’s office, laying out key challenges raised by each review and strategies for consideration and implementation.
We identified the re-establishment of area centers as priorities within our strategic and budget planning. With the assistance of a grants writer specializing in Title VI National Resource Center programs, the College carefully reviewed the current state of its area studies programs in Asia and Eastern Europe, concluding that we are best positioned to seek restored Federal funding and designation in East and South Asia. The College will submit proposals to the U.S. Department of Education in November 2009 for these two centers.
As part of the budget reduction process, we reviewed interdisciplinary programs to determine their level of interaction with faculty and students and contribution toward the teaching and research mission of the College. While this exercise mostly validated the critical role these programs play for faculty and students, we did identify several areas for change.
The College established a new student-initiated interdisciplinary major in Global Development Studies addressing issues of social justice, sustainable economic development, global interconnection, and public service. The development of an Institute for Global Humanities has emerged as a priority initiative, with specific plans for large-scale collaboration and support under discussion with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and other potential partners.
The Carter G. Woodson Institute organized a multi-disciplinary The Problem of Punishment symposium, bringing together scholars, policy makers, social analysts, activists, formerly incarcerated persons, and members of the broader community to consider the crisis of ever-escalating incarceration rates in the United States. The project was one of 16 projects funded with a Page-Barbour Award. Other collaborative projects included Plastics (Chemistry, Studio Art, and Psychology) and Forced Migration (History, Sociology, Jewish Studies, and Russian and East European Studies).
While the College reduced its original hiring plans from 35 to 15 new searches during 2008–09, we did make progress in adding to our diversity with hires in Anthropology, Politics, Biology, and Statistics. Of the 14 new tenured/tenure-track hires, four were from non-white ethnicities, including one African American male, one Hispanic female and two international faculty members (both Asian). We also succeeded in retaining a promising junior African American faculty member. Regarding gender, four of the 14 new hires were female—on par with the 33 percent female proportion among current full-time faculty in the College.
Despite the constrained budgetary environment, the College continues to make important investments and strides in enhancing the profile of its science programs, as evidenced by the quality of recent hiring, grant activity, and improvements to research facilities. Major accomplishments included the following:
We are nearing completion of the program planning phase for the new physical and life sciences building. At occupancy, we anticipate approximately 20 research groups drawn from Biology and Chemistry, most with shared interests in biochemistry/chemical biology, on the four main floors of the building. This also allows for considerable future capacity, approximately 25 percent, for new hires to complement existing research groups. The basement of the building will focus on major shared instrumentation facilities, such as facilities and instrumentation for optical laser research (physics and chemistry) and the Keck Center for Cellular Imaging (College, Engineering, and Medicine). Longer-term, we expect the basement will house a new neuroscience imaging facility.
Astronomy joined the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III project in November 2008. This consortium of 28 universities and astronomical institutions will conduct four astronomical surveys over the next six years, including the first comprehensive spectroscopic survey of giant red stars throughout the Milky Way (led by U.Va.). In addition, we have identified additional near-term funding to continue our involvement in the Large Binocular Telescope project, bridging the gap caused by falling endowment values supporting the project and increasing operating/construction costs.
Chemistry received two highly significant and visible grant awards in 2009, including Brooks Pate’s NSF Center for Chemistry of the Universe ($1.5 million with potential for $40 million) and Brent Gunnoe’s Department of Energy Center for Catalysis ($11 million). Both of these projects were supported with matching funds from the College and align with key strategic directions for developing the sciences.
In Biology, Robert Grainger received a $1 million grant to support his research on normal organogenesis and human genetic diseases and the Keck Center for Cellular Imaging received $500,000 for white light laser confocal/spectral imaging microscopy equipment.
Chemistry and Physics continue their positions among the top ten programs in the nation in terms of the numbers of undergraduate majors produced. The 267 B.A. and B.S. degrees awarded in Biology are the most since 1996. Overall, the College continues to expand undergraduate participation in the sciences, as evidenced in the growth in science degrees awarded (839 in 1998 to 898 in 2006 to 912 in 2008) and declared science majors (1,455 in 1998 to 1,829 in 2006 to 1,919 in 2008). Ten undergraduate students in Biology co-authored papers in peer–reviewed publications in 2008-09.
A Whyburn Post-Doctoral Fellow in Mathematics garnered international attention for his role in a three-member team solving a longstanding problem in algebraic topology (the Kervaire Invariant Problem), which is expected to impact the fields of quantum theory and string theory. Subsequently, he joined the faculty in a tenure-track position.
Physics hosted three notable international and national meetings in Charlottesville in 2008-09: the 18th International Symposium on Spin Physics, the U.S.-CMS Collaboration Meeting, and the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics meeting of the American Physical Society. These programs reflect the high standing of the nuclear, high energy, and atomic physics groups and enhance the visibility of our programs.
The College established a blue-ribbon external advisory committee to advise the dean and department on elevating Mathematics into the first-tier of programs. The committee includes three highly respected mathematicians from the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Being able to hire in the current economic climate yielded several successful additions to our science departments in 2008-09, including new hires in Environmental Sciences (one tenure-track, one research faculty), Psychology, Biology (two tenure-track), Mathematics, and Statistics. Overall, the College has made 27 tenure-track science hires in the past three years.
Through May 2009, the College had been awarded $41.6 million in external grants, already surpassing the total for all of 2007-08 ($40.1 million) with one month remaining in the fiscal year. From April to June 2009, 31 College faculty have submitted a combined 38 proposals totaling $17.2 million to programs supported with Federal stimulus funding.
Faculty and administrative staff from the College (Garret Hall), Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and dean’s office have played critical roles supporting and assisting the conversion to the new student information system to ensure minimal interruption in operations and implementation of new functions. Staff, particularly in the College’s technology units, coordinated a substantial effort to review paper and electronic files for Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information to position the College for compliance with new laws and University policies. An initial audit praised the College (Biology department in this case) for its effort. Faculty have continued to participate in both the College’s planning efforts over the past year as well as larger institutional efforts, such as the V-RISE and Venture Summit initiatives led by the Vice President for Research.