2011 State of the College Address

Dean Kirkpatrick’s annual State of the College Address was delivered during the CNS Faculty Advisory Council meeting on November 29, 2011.

Remarks by Dean Kirkpatrick:

Thank you all very much for coming. It’s great to see such a good turnout.

We all know that Michigan State has been through a difficult time the past few years, but the message I hope to leave with you today is one of optimism.

I believe that the University has turned the corner in terms of its budget issues and that science at Michigan State is well positioned to take charge of its own future.

The last couple of years, I have asked you to buy into the idea that it’s a time to be realistic but not pessimistic. From what I’ve seen most people across the college have done this, and I hope I can demonstrate to you today that we are seeing significant positive change.

As always, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has worked so hard over the past few years to position us to be able to focus on our core missions of excellence in research and education.

This includes the chairs and directors, the associate chairs and directors, the directors of graduate and undergraduate studies, the budget managers, the associate deans and everyone in the College office, the faculty, and staff in all the units.

I especially want to recognize the efforts of everyone who is trying to deal with the new Enterprise Business System.

I will admit, though, to being less sanguine that many of the problems that are most vexing to us will be fixed quickly. All I can say is that we will continue to work hard on to advocate for changing it to meet the needs of the people who actually have to do the work.

Let’s take a look at some data about our educational and research programs.

First is enrollment. If your classes seem fuller, it’s true. Enrollment of majors in the college has flattened in the last couple of years, but the undergraduate enrollment is up campus wide.

This year’s freshmen class is about 350 students larger than last year, with many of these students in engineering. For us, this has had its most significant effects in Chemistry and Mathematics. The College office will continue to advocate for increased funding where it is needed as these students work their way through the system. It’s unclear to us how many of these students will end up as CNS majors and whether the University plans to keep the incoming class at this size in the future. We expect to know more next spring.

Next let’s take a quick look at the budget. This year the total recurring budget for the College increased by 2.5% principally due to salary increases and university support for programs. As always, we allocated the 1% annual reduction uniformly on to all units except those with budgets that are effectively all salary.  The 0.5% recurring reduction was taken at the College level and not passed onto the departments.  Since the only money the college really has is the faculty salary turnover, in the end this will reduce the size of the faculty by about 4 people. The non-recurring budget is up 6.3% principally due to increases in off-campus and on-line instruction and in IDC generation.

College faculty have received many new research grants this year, and we can’t recognize every one of them here. There are a few I do want to highlight, though. Shannon Manning, Claire Vieille, Carolyn Malmstrom and Catherine Lindell received USDA NIFA grants. Elena Litchman and Rob Last received major NSF grants. And people in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics are very involved in the malaria grant led by Terrie Taylor.

We also received some significant equipment and training grants from NSF and NIH. The complex materials group received an equipment grant for a femtosecond electron beam source. Walt Esselman and Dave DeWitt received a grant for flow cytometry and cell sorting.

Training grants are very important to our mission of graduate education, and I do want to recognize Gemma Reguera and her group on the NSF-IGERT grant as well as Titus Brown on the grant for his next-generation sequencing workshop. Finally, this coming year has the GLBRC up for renewal this year, and we all wish them well. CNS has committed three faculty lines in support of this renewal.

The quality of the young faculty we are hiring is clearly demonstrated by the number of early career awards they are receiving. I want to recognize our new CAREER award winners this year: Tom Hamann, Pengpeng Zhang, Ignacio Uriarte-Tuero, Dapeng Zhan and Eva Farre. And I especially want to recognize Elena Litchman from KBS and Zoology for being selected as one of the 94 nationwide Presidential CAREER Award Winners.

This is also a great opportunity to recognize the winners of other national major awards. Sheng Yang He has received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator award. He is the first HHMI investigator at Michigan State and is in the first group of HHMI investigators in the plant sciences. Matt Hedden, Ignacio Uriarte-Tuero, and Dapeng Zhan, all from the Department of Mathematics, were awarded Sloan Foundation Fellowships. Diane Ebert-May from Plant Biology was named the Carnegie Foundation Michigan Professor of the Year.

We have several new AAAS Fellows, and I want to congratulate all of them. 4 faculty were named fellows in 2010, and 9 more will be officially named fellows in late December.  (Nine Scientists Named AAAS Fellows).

1. Chip Brock: Physics and Astronomy
2. Paul Mantica: Chemistry
3. James Peska: Food Science and Human Nutrition and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Finally, I want to recognize the new holders of endowed positions in the College. Dave Kramer is the holder of the Hannah Professorship in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics. Rob Last is the Barnett Rosenberg Chair of Biochemsitry.

We have many more faculty who deserve endowed positions, and the Advancement office is working hard to generate funding for them. I hope to have several more to announce next year.

One thing a University must do to maintain and build its leadership position is continue to develop new programs even in the face of budget constraints. This year we have instituted a number of new initiatives and changes that will serve us well. We have started the Institute for Mathematics and Science Education jointly with the College of Education and hired Joe Krajcik as the director. This Institute was funded by the Provost’s office, and the College is firmly committed to making Michigan State a leader in math and science education.  We have a societal responsibility to do this at both the K-12 and university levels, we have a very strong partner the College of Education, and there is a lot of external funding to support it.

In parallel, we have eliminated the Division of Science and Mathematics Education and formed the Program in Mathematics’ Education to house the Math Ed. Ph.D. program. The undergraduate courses for the College of Education elementary education majors and CNS secondary education majors and the master’s degree in science education have been moved to the Center for Integrative Studies.

We have also initiated the BioMolecular Science Gateway graduate recruiting program. This program integrates recruiting of graduate students across a number of biology departments, and I am confident that it will increase the number and quality of the students we bring in in these areas. I appreciate the contributions of associate dean Rich Schwartz and everyone else involved in bringing this program to fruition.

We are expanding the Neuroscience Program with some faculty hires in both CNS and the College of Social Science, and we hope to have a new undergraduate major available for next fall.

Finally, we have instituted this fall new undergraduate programs in Advanced Mathematics and Actuarial Science.

There is very significant news concerning private fund raising. To remain competitive, Michigan State needs to greatly expand its endowment. During the last campaign that ended in 2007, MSU raised about $1.4B and CNS about $90M.

Our focus will be on endowed faculty positions, endowed graduate fellowships, endowed discretionary funds, endowed undergraduate research scholarships, and funds to renovate our teaching laboratories. Most of the departments are now engaged in defining major, overarching themes and specific goals and objectives. The College Advancement office will be working closely with the departments to refine these objectives and to integrate them into a coherent College-wide program.

We recently announced $7M gift to the Department of Geological Sciences to support endowed faculty positions and graduate fellowships.

Finally, let me conclude where I started. Your departments and programs, the College, Michigan State, and American higher education are under stress and are undergoing significant changes. In many cases, these will be disruptive, and the expectations for us individually and collectively will only increase. We still have great strengths, though, and our greatest strength is people – the faculty, advisors, staff, and graduate assistants who make this place work.

Let me again thank everyone who has worked so hard to keep us moving forward. I look forward to continuing to work with all of you.