New School Faculty Transition Team (FTT)

Updated November 2016

Chair: Bill Currie, Professor of Natural Resources and Environment, SNRE

Reporting to: Dan Brown, Interim Dean, SNRE

Charge:

Maintaining the momentum of the group that worked last year to recommend a new school, but expanding on the vision they presented, develop a set of recommendations that can be provided to the new dean immediately upon arrival to help guide him or her in building the new school. Specifically:

  1. Identify faculty (and staff) outside of SNRE who might be interested in being part of the new school and bring them into conversations early. Have each of the working groups (in #3-5 below) consist of both current SNRE faculty and others who are excited by and want to be part of the new school.
  1. Develop a list of characteristics and incentives that would attract faculty to the new school. Think through how joint/partial appointments should be structured and what process(es) should be instituted to guide the transition of faculty to/from the new school.
  1. Create and overseea working groupto develop and then implement a process for identifying themes around which the new school shouldinitially be organized. Develop and recommend a process for reviewing and changing themes over time.
  1. Create and oversee a working group to develop proposals around curricular innovations for the new school, including but not necessarily limited to:
  • New curricular approaches that draw on the campus and local community as living laboratories
  • Online opportunities
  • Expansion of CUGS
  • New joint degree graduate programs
  • Potential changes to the professional master’s degree
  1. Create and oversee a working group to recommend changes to faculty administrative processes in the new school that will enable it to be more nimble, more “porous”, and better aligned with the expansive vision laid out in the report. Focus specifically onschool level bylaws, policies and procedures for faculty governance, faculty evaluation processes and incentives, and faculty mentoring.
  1. Coalesce around a simple statement of how the new school will be different from what currently exists.

Membership:

Brad Cardinale, professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE, and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, LSA.

Tim Dvonch, associate professor, environmental health sciences, SPH.

Paige Fisher, assistant professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE.

Seth Guikema, associate professor of industrial and operations engineering and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, CoE.

Gabrielle Hecht, professor of history, LSA.

Drew Horning, managing director, Graham Sustainability Institute.

MaryCarol Hunter, associate professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE.

Eric Kort, assistant professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, CoE.

Tom Lyon, Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, professor of business economics and public policy, Ross School, and professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE.

Jen Maigret, associate professor of architecture, Taubman College.

Josh Newell, assistant professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE.

Ivette Perfecto, George Willis Pack Professor and professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE.

Jennifer Read, director of the U-M Water Center.

David Uhlman, Jeffrey F. Liss Professor from Practice and director of environmental law and policy program and lecturer, Law School.

Michaela Zint, acting associate dean for academic affairs and professor of natural resources and environment, SNRE; professor of environment, LSA; and professor of education, SOE.