College of Science
Academic Report for 2005-2006
Executive Summary
1. 2005-2006 Highlights
a. Programmatic achievements
§ Initiatives in support of student engagement and success
§ Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant to support Undergraduate Instruction and Research was renewed through the leadership of Dan Arp in Botany and Plant Pathology and the efforts of numerous faculty members in this and other Colleges.
§ Course offerings in e-campus have expanded significantly which has helped us to provide access and expand the reach of our programs
§ First four year BS degrees in Computational Physics. Two degree recipients were accepted to Princeton.
§ New GIS certificate programs launched last year now have a combined approximately 100 students
§ Major research/scholarship initiatives
§ Funding of an NSF Science and Technology Center with OHSU (lead PI) and UW; Bruce Menge of Zoology one of the principal PIs
§ The College, in partnership with ONAMI and the Research Office brought Mas Subramanian to the Department of Chemistry to reinvigorate the Center for Advanced Materials Research)
§ Botany and Plant Pathology topped all University departments in new grant and contract awards at $8.96M. $5.8 of that was through the College of Agricultural Sciences, $3.1M through the College of Science.
§ Major outreach/engagement initiatives
§ The College has been a partner with Oregon Sea Grant in developing a program in Free Choice Learning.
§ The College continues to coordinate and sponsor Discovery Days, a hands-on learning opportunity for K-12 students that includes participation from a number of OSU departments and community organizations
§ The Catalyst, a new student publication for Undergraduate Research in Biological Sciences at OSU established
§ National/International impact of programs and initiatives
§ Ed Brook’s ice core work featured in national and international media
§ Jane Lubchenco featured editorial in the International Herald Tribune.
§ Oregon State University scientists have announced a major discovery in basic plant biology that was featured in numerous international and national news outlets.
b. Faculty recognition and awards
• Jane Lubchenco, received the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Balz Frei was named a recipient of the Discovery Award by the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon.
• Dawn Wright received the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs (OABA) Education Award.
• Joe Beckman, Bruce Menge, and Jane Lubchenco were noted by ISI Web of Knowledge as among the nations most “Highly Cited” scientists.
c. Student recognition and awards
§ Over 70% of our students were admitted to medical schools including Harvard, OHSU, Mayo Clinic, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins
§ Goldwater Scholarships to Eddie O’Donnell, Tari Tan and Anahita Fallahi in Biochemistry and Biophysics
§ Anvi Bonn (Biochemistry) selected as a Gates Millenium Scholar
§ Chana Dudoit (Zoology undergraduate) received the Young Crusader's award from the Oregon Invasive Species Council for her work on surveying and reporting the spread of Japanese Eelgrass in Oregon's Estuaries.
2. Strategic Plan Implementation
a. Focus for 2005-2006: Enhancing student success, increasing research and outreach, and enhancing diversity and community
§ For each focus area, list the initiatives undertaken and the outcome at the end of the year (include international dimensions within diversity)
Significant effort was spent on financial assessment of the College and implementation of budget restructuring that affects all activities in the College. We initiated discussion of a consolidation of life science units and the creation of a School of Earth Sciences, both of which have major implications for our educational programs and our research directions. We instituted a working group on Community and Diversity but have not been able to complete a College assessment. We completed three major recruitments, including Mas Subramanian in Chemistry to the Harris Chair, Shan de Silva through the Provost’s Faculty Diversity Initiative, and John Faulk and Lynn Dierking in Free Choice Learning in Science and Mathematics Education, in collaboration with Sea Grant.
§ Provide a brief self-assessment of the unit efforts in the three areas: what worked; areas that need improvement; major barriers
The major barriers to making progress are similar in all three areas: time and resources. We discovered, again this year, that the immediate issue of coping with budget reductions while continuing to manage course access and faculty hiring overwhelmed many of the longer-term initiatives we had hoped to make progress on. Coordination of initiatives and strategy across University units is proving to be a major challenge.
b. Summarize major unit activities during 2005-2006 that helped promote one or more of the thematic areas
Support of hiring in initiatives in all of the five thematic areas. Participation in funding of a Science and Technology Center for coastal ocean observing. Recruitment of Mas Subramanian in materials sciences and Shan de Silva to develop an Earth Hazards Institute.
c. Summarize major accomplishments for 2005-2006 in support of the OSU Capital Campaign
Hiring of a new Development Director for the College. Highest fundraising total in College history. Support for scholarships, facilities, and faculty development, as well as Dean’s unrestricted accounts Planning for Science Complex and initial conversations with potential lead donors
3. Other initiatives and their outcomes [e.g., Faculty/Staff Professional Development Activities]
The College continues to consolidate business services for most of our units into a single, integrated financial office. Most departments except those joint with Agriculture will be assimilated into this system this year.
4. Scorecard
a. Performance on college-level metrics
The College reached a new high in private giving this year, with over $4.5M in gifts and pledges. Grant and contract expenditures continue to increase and we are making progress on some of the other metrics. The most disappointing area is the student to faculty ratio. The financial projections suggest that this ration will increase in the next two to three years, rather than decreasing, because we will be unable to replace the same number of faculty that are retiring. Progress on metrics 2-1 through 2.5 are directly dependent on the number and quality of our faculty. Our number is nearly double the ratio at many of our peers, and is the single most challenging metric we face.
b. Leveraging resources
§ Initiatives to leverage state resources
We continue to seek avenues to develop funding independent of the state, since our programs and strategies are not in general appropriate for direct lobbing of the Legislature.
§ Initiatives to improve administrative efficiencies
We are continuing the consolidation of business services across departments in the College.
5. Assessment of your 2005-2006 Priorities
Reviewing this list is somewhat discouraging, in that we did not make progress on very many of the original priorities. As noted above, much of our time and energy was spent on considering financial planning for the future of the College, implementing an initial rebudgeting, and laying the groundwork for some major organizational changes in the College which are required if we are to remain fiscally sustainable. The College leadership needs to set a much more modest set of goals and focus on completing those in the coming year.
6. Proposed Goals for 2005-2006, particularly in the areas of
• Complete the budget redistribution process started in FY06.
• Complete the planning for reorganization of life sciences after discussion with the College of Agricultural Sciences for implementation in FY08.
• Complete at least four faculty hires in the coming year; this may prove extremely challenging given the lack of resources for setup commitments.
• Complete the initial phases of the General Science degree restructuring (this is related to the Life Sciences programs).
• Continue with COAS discussions about the Earth Systems Institute.
• Complete a diversity and community assessment for the College.
• Initiate a long-term planning exercise for facilities development. The Science Complex will address only a part of the issues for the Department of Chemistry and the issues are becoming increasingly damaging to the research programs in Gilbert, Cordley, and Weniger.
College of Science
Academic Report for 2004-2005
1. 2005-2006 Highlights
a. Programmatic achievements
o Initiatives in support of student engagement and success
The College has a wide array of student programs at every level. I have limited the examples here to a representative sampling of progress in the College:
Continued work on the development of learning outcomes and assessment tools in all of our academic programs. Progress has not been as rapid on this as we wished.
Ongoing review and revision of Professional Teacher Licensure Program in science and mathematics education incorporating the skills and knowledge of new faculty and responding to evaluation feedback bringing a new level of coherence and rigor to the program.
Increased collaborative efforts with College of Education’s Double Degree.
Shawn Rowe, Rebekah Elliott, and Nam Hwa Kang in Science and Mathematics Education were awarded Center for Teaching and Learning grants.
Rebekah Elliott was awarded a Stewart Foundation grant to develop video, case-based learning
opportunities in collaboration with the Math department and the College of Education
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant to support Undergraduate Instruction and Research was renewed through the leadership of Dan Arp in Botany and Plant Pathology and the efforts of numerous faculty members in this and other Colleges.
The new GIS certificate programs launched last year now have a combined approximately 100 students. Limited by access to the upper division GIS and remote sensing classes.
Our course offerings in e-campus have expanded significantly which has helped us to provide access and expand the reach of our programs. In Geosciences our e-campus enrollments have increased by 50% to 1800 SCH and projected to increase by another 50% next year
Strongly positive review of both the undergraduate and graduate programs in Microbiology program review held spring 2005.
Dr. Mary Burke has used “Quizdom,” the instant electronic response system in MB303 General Microbiology to assess success in understanding on a real-time basis. This is another area where we are trying to improve student learning in large service courses.
Publication of "A First Course in Scientific Computing" by Princeton Univ Press (Landau)
Winner of 2005 Choice Award by American Library Assoc
First four year BS degrees in Computational Physics. Two degree recipients were accepted to Princeton.
Second year of Hewlett foundation project, in which Pat Canan and Henri Jansen teamed up to improve teaching of the introductory physics with calculus course (geared towards engineers)
Initial discussions with OHSU about developing a first-year medical student program on the Corvallis campus
Background work with LBCC and Chemeketa CC on the development of a BS degree-completion pathway to complement their nursing programs
• Major research/scholarship initiatives
The College has a diverse and successful portfolio of research and scholarship endeavors. I note here some of the major accomplishments of the faculty, including efforts focused on graduate recruitment and education, which are essential parts of our research work:
o Faculty members in the College were active participants in most of the funded Provost’s Initiatives, including:
§ Ecosystem Informatics (Mathematics, a new hire)
§ Rural Communities (Geosciences, new hire on board)
§ Computational Biology (Microbiology, Zoology, Botany, Biochemistry, each with new hires in this area)
§ Subsurface Biosphere (Botany, Microbiology)
§ Water and watersheds (Geosciences, Microbiology; Michael Campagna’s tenure home will be in Geosciences)
The College is providing major financial backing in the faculty positions in all of these areas.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant has been renewed at 1.5M for 4 yrs. Dan Arp, Distinguished Professor of Botany and Plant Pathology is serving as PI.
Funding of an NSF Science and Technology Center with OHSU (lead PI) and UW; Bruce Menge of Zoology one of the principal PIs
The College, in partnership with ONAMI and the Research Office brought Mas Subramanian to the Department of Chemistry to reinvigorate the Center for Advanced Materials Research and to expand our program in materials science.
Botany and Plant Pathology topped all University departments in new grant and contract awards at $8.96M. $5.8 of that was through the College of Agricultural Sciences, $3.1M through the College of Science.
Rebekah Elliott (Science and Math Education) in Partnership with WestED received funding for Researching Mathematics Leader Learning through NSF-TPC program, $2,017,115.
Maggie Niess in Science and Math Education developed collaborative proposals with Dray (Math) on Preparing Middle School Teachers to Teach Mathematics
Larry Flick, Co-PI, NSF project Framing Student Success, interviewed graduating seniors, collected survey and transcript data on course selection and persistence in STEM courses. Investigating the impact of a program of instructional support and career information on student achievement and planning for post-high school education.
Nam Hwa Kang ( Science and Math Education) collaborated with Engineering in a proposal to HP which has just been funded!! This was one of 40 successful proposals out of 300 nationwide. She will be evaluating the effect of technology use on engineer students' learning.
Andy Karplus (Biochemistry and Biophysics) helped lead a large collaborative NIH grant funded to study cellular response to oxidative stress (L. Poole (Wake Forest) PI, Karplus (OSU) coinvestigator)
Our recent hires have stimulated continuing success in our programs in climate research. OSU is now one of the major paleoclimate research centers in the United States.
Kate Field (Microbiology) coordinated the submission of an NSF IGERT interdisciplinary graduate program grant proposal "Waterborne Pathogens: Evolution, Ecology, and Environment." This program brings together faculty from several colleges and departments.
Work by Viktor Podolskiy in Physics (V.A. Podolskiy, N.A. Kuhta, G.W. Milton "Optimizing the superlens: manipulating geometry to enhance the resolution" – Appl. Phys. Lett 87 231113 (2005)) was reprinted in photonics.com, sciencedaily.com, gazette times, impactlab.com, scienceblog.com, bitsofnews.com, manzanitaoregonnews.com and another of his papers was named one of the ~20 best publications of J.Mod.Opt during Jan.2005-Feb.2006 [see JOPA highlights 2005]
Physics participates in a leading project in transparent electronics and transparent electronic materials. Janet Tate collaborates with John Wager (EECS) and Douglas Keszler (CH) in a research project to develop the emerging field of transparent electronics. The group has demonstrated some of the best performances in transparent n-channel transistors and recently demonstrated prototype transparent inverters and ring oscillators.