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Semi-Annual Dean’s Report on the State of The College of Behavioral and Social
Sciences
Spring, 2003
Joel Kassiola
May 12, 2003
Once again, it is my pleasure and privilege to report to you, the esteemed and outstanding members of the faculty and staff of The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the state of our College as we approach the end of the Spring, 2003 semester (a semester that saw the war in Iraq and its aftermath; see below for the College’s actions in response to the war). Now, as with the past Reports on the state of the College (as I end my 8th academic year as your Dean), there is much to report because, as you experience every day on campus, this is an institution characterized by intensity, energy, creativity and change. I am pleased to report the great achievement for the future of the College regarding our unprecedented number of new extraordinary faculty hires, some other good Programmatic news, many promising activities in development, and some, alas, ominous preliminary proposals for the 2003-2004 College budget as a product of the State budget crisis. The latter has hung over daily activities and conversations since the Governor’s January, 2003 Budget Address but, as we would expect from the resilient and committed faculty and Administration at SFSU and BSS, the budget has not deterred us from making long-term decisions for the best interest of the College, its faculty and students. As usual, I welcome your comments on this Report.
New Faculty Hires for Fall, 2003
As we began the recruiting year in the Fall, 2002, we in the College Office knew that it would be a very hectic year conducting 24 new faculty searches. That number, as far as we can tell, is unprecedented in the College’s history, and added to the large number of new faculty we hired last year who arrived this past Fall, we are engaged in nothing less than the transformation of the BSSCollege faculty. While there is one more search that remains incomplete, my report on the hiring can only be summed up in the most superlative terms, I am convinced that the results of these searches will be viewed in hindsight and with knowledge of the new hires as nothing less than spectacular.
I have gotten to know our new colleagues and I am delighted to say that they are most accomplished professionally and in their Ph.D training, as well as deeply committed to making their own contribution to our important mission that combines excellence in both teaching, scholarship and contributions to the community and campus. Our success rate in our searches was superb in both the number of searches completed (18 out of 23, and much above the CSU success rate of completed searches) and the number of #1 ranked candidates who accepted our offers of appointment (15 out of 18 completed appointments). These results are simply great and I very much look forward to introducing our new cohort of BSS faculty to you and the entire University in the Fall. I am certain that you will be most pleased with the results of the immense time and energy expended by the many faculty search committees whom I would like to thank publicly for their important efforts on behalf of the future of the College. My own workload regarding the faculty searches was “over the top” sometimes producing interviewing three visiting candidates in one day, and in one very special day, I spent the entire day interviewing four candidates and observing either their teaching or research talks! I estimate that I spent approximately 300 hours interviewing 125 candidates and meeting with committees and discussing the conditions of appointment to the successful hires; an amazing amount of work for me and for the entire College but the payoff will be great and long-lasting as the new arrivals make their mark on the College.
One last point about the hiring of new faculty that I am most pleased to report. Last Fall, I reported on the expression of concern among our faculty regarding how we can improve the diversity, along many dimensions, in the hiring of BSS faculty. You may recall that I agreed to several requests to achieve this important College goal, including the creation of a College Task Force on Diversity in Faculty Hiring that was Chaired by Associate Dean Marjorie Seashore. I want to express my gratitude to the members of that hard-working group, and its excellent leader, Dean Seashore, that have met continuously since the Fall and will be reporting its recommendations to the Council and College very shortly. This year, with increased sensitivity and added commitment, the College has made significant progress regarding this issue, and I am confident will make even more when the specific recommendations of the Task Force are implemented. I met the largest number of finalist candidates of color in my tenure as Dean and the highest percentage of women were hired probably in the history of the College. We will not rest on our laurels and will continue to focus on the need to have the BSSCollege recruit the most diverse faculty in the CSU because such faculty recruitment is vital to our mission of serving our students and our various communities. And, regarding one form of diversity, national origin, as befits a College curriculum that is quite internationalized, we have hired the best faculty from around the world who call the following nations as their native lands: China, India, Germany, Brazil, Kenya, and Turkey. Their worldly experience, I know, will be most appreciated by our own nationally diverse student body.
News from BSS Programs
The Human Sexuality Studies Program had an auspices Spring, 2003 semester that saw the gala inauguration (attended by President Corrigan, Provost Gemello, and former Surgeon General, ) and most successful launch of the FordFoundation-fundedNationalSexualityResourceCenter (NSRC) located in the Mission District. Under the leadership of Director Gil Herdt, the HMSX faculty and Program have been recognized by Ford as the outstanding Program in Sexuality Studies with a Social Sciences orientation in the world and has given the HMSX Program the huge responsibility and opportunity of being the leader in its worldwide effort to increase sexual knowledge and scholarship by hosting the NSRC and its own website that will disseminate information, scholarly research, and links to other sources of knowledge around the world. The SFSU Ford NSRC will be the flagship location of three other such Ford-sponsored sexuality centers located in Brazil, Nigeria and China. It is both a great responsibility and opportunity that I know our HMSX faculty will rise to. The Program hosted an international conference of Ford Program Officers and led by the Vice President of the Foundation who personally told me that our Program was the best in the world and that they would continue to fund our outstanding work. Kudos to Director Herdt and all of his colleagues who made the NSRC a reality and continue to make HMSX the leading program of its type.
The Public Research Institute under the able leadership of its Director James Wiley has had a remarkable year garnering grants and contracts, once again, over $1.3 million including a prestigious and competitive contract to survey thousands of small pox vaccine patients for its after-effects. Given the high visibility and importance of this small pox program, it was a true distinction to have PRI earn this contract. Congratulations to Director Wiley and his outstanding PRI staff for their continued creativity and hard work! As the new faculty arrive in BSS with their new research program, and existing faculty learn more about the outstanding social science research capacity that we possess with BSS’s PRI, I am confident that PRI will play an even more important role in the future of the College and SFSU as a whole.
Furthermore, Director Wiley was named co-PI on a path-breaking NIH anti-cancer grant that involves a partnership between BSS and SFSU faculty and the faculty of UCSF. This multi-million dollar joint grant will create a Center for its operations in soon-to-be-leased, off-campus space, in nearby Daly City in a new office building built as part of the Daly City-BART-to-SFO line complex. Along with this Center, the plans are that PRI will move its entire operation to the state-of-the-art office building in Daly City that is likely to be put on the current SFSU Shuttle Van service route to the BART Station and back to campus. In the not-too-distant-future, we will be able visit PRI and its terrific staff in their new digs in Daly City.
Exciting New Developments in Progress
There are so many new projects and initiatives in progress that I must be selective (and please forgive me if I have left out a specific project that you are working on but there is not sufficient space to include them all in this ever-busy and creative College).
- San Francisco 2020 Planning Project
The College has been asked by President Corrigan to get involved in a possible City-wide planning project (modeled after a similar and successful endeavor in Chicago) to look at what the issues might be and how to address them in the City of San Francisco in the year 2020. It is possible that SFSU will be the lead academic institution in providing analyses of the forthcoming issues and prospective policies to address them. This would be a most exciting opportunity for the many BSS faculty who are policy oriented and I await further developments regarding this initiative. If you are interested in participating in this project, please do let me know.
- Indian Valley Campus of The College of Marin
The College was asked to participate (and I went along for a tour and met with the President of The College of Marin) in the possible partnership, modeled after our successful and path-breaking partnership with Canada Community College in San Mateo, between SFSU and The College of Marin’s currently under-utilized Indian Valley Campus (IVC) located in Novato. I found a gorgeous, well-equipped campus of about 300 acres, that could be the location of BSS courses offered to students in the County of Marin who would be spared travel time and costs to our 19th Avenue campus. Also, with our Romberg Tiburon Center (RTC) for Environmental Studies located in nearby Tiburon, there might be collaborations between the College of Marin and RTC to better serve our Marin students. It was agreed that the earliest that courses might be offered at IVC would be the Spring, 2004. So, if you want to teach in a bucolic setting in Marin do let me know.
3. Catalogue of BSS Faculty Research Interests
As the Dean of the College, I have access to and knowledge of all of the faculty’s research interests. This is an awesome responsibility to carry since no one else in the University is aware of the many important and sundry research activities engaged in by our energetic and creative faculty. I have always felt uneasy about this exclusive knowledge and have sought ways to publicly disseminate our faculty’s wonderful array of research topics and designs to not only to other SFSU faculty, our internal public relations staff and Central Administration, but also to our own BSS faculty who might not know about a BSS colleague who is working on an overlapping project. Therefore, effective publicity and public knowledge about our faculty research interests has been a top priority for me. I am delighted to report, that thanks to the creative energies of our new BSSCollege staff member, Katherine Johnson, we are in the midst of gathering information from all the BSS faculty about their research projects and interests that will be used to publish a BSS Catalogue of Faculty Research Interests. The goal for this project is to provide an updated (and continuous updatable because it will be online) and comprehensive source of information about what the BSS faculty are doing in their research endeavors. This will information will be important in creating collaborations between faculty on campus, in reaching out to media outlets, and to possible funders. Thanks to Kathy for her work on this important project. If you have not yet replied to the online questionnaire regarding your research program, you still have time before we go to press with the publication.
4. Faculty Brown-Bag Lunch Research Presentations
One of the major outcomes of the many discussions at the University Asilomar Retreat this past January was the expressed need by faculty for more faculty-faculty conversations and exchanges about their respective research. I have always viewed this admirable goal as a very important priority because with our conflicting schedules and large numbers, it is very possible to have faculty engaged in research on the same or similar topic and be unaware of possible collaborations and discussions that would benefit all parties. Hence the idea of BSS Faculty Brown-Bag Lunch Research Presentations. I view this an informal faculty exchange of ideas presented by BSS faculty about their current research in progress. Even if one is unable to attend the presentation publicity about the topic can inform the BSS faculty community of the themes of our faculty’s research for discussion and possible collaboration later. I have asked Professor Pauline Velez of the Department of Psychology to be the Convenor of the Brown-Bag Lunch Presentations. So, if you want to be part of the inaugural year of what I hope will become a new BSS tradition, please let Professor Velez know about your interest. I hope we can have all BSS faculty look upon the Brown-Bag Presentations as opportunities to inform their colleagues about their work and get valuable feedback from them about their work-in-progress. Thanks Professor Velez for agreeing to serve as Convenor of the first year of this important faculty development initiative.
5. Webvising and DataCenter
I am most gratified to report that our multi-year effort in having BSS students be empowered to obtain advising information via the web has finally been implement this semester. We currently have approximately 600 students connected in 8 BSS Programs—and growing as this goes to press—who are using the immense power of this software program designed right here at BSS by Andrew Roderick, the BSS Computing Director, and an outside consultant, Chet . We have received raves from my administrative colleagues who were shown a demonstration of the power of our newly created webvising tool. Also, Andrew and I made a presentation at President Corrigan’s Cabinet where the Program was extremely well-received. We are planning on having all BSS Programs online and all BSS students able to log on to the software program that is not intended to replace one-to-one advising sessions but to make them more effective with preliminary work done beforehand and to reduce the number of in-person visits by eliminating some that could be effectively be completed online with the new program. We are currently in discussions with the College of Business of transferring our program to Business students and hopefully, in time, all SFSU students will be able to take advantage of the power of the webvising tool created in BSS. In addition, the creative work of Andrew and Chet was recognized in a national software development magazine with a cover article on the program. Kudos to Andrew and Chet!
Also, in the important realm of computing and information technology, thanks to the vision of our computing staff and Professor Christopher Bettinger and Director of PRI, James Wiley, we are on the brink of launching a potentially transformational website that will house faculty data for student and faculty use, called the BSSDataCenter. Following the leadership of such a cyberspace “home” for data created by a partnership between Harvard and MIT, and now at several Research I institutions, we are seeking to create a Data Center that will house faculty research data in a secure but accessible manner so that others can benefit from the creative work down by BSS faculty. Such a computer cyberspace “warehouse” for data will permit electronic searching capabilities and use not possible when merely published or sitting in unpublished papers in a faculty member’s office. We have requested, and have just recently received funding from the Central Administration, funds to create the BSSDataCenter that will put us on the leading edge of social science research in the United States! Commendations to Andrew, Professor Bettinger, BSS Computing Network Coordinator, Alex Keller, and their BSS Computing staff for making this exciting possibility a reality.
6. BSSCollege Strategic Plan
As part of the University’s second part of its strategic planning process, all the SFSU colleges have been asked to engage in their own strategic planning process and produce a plan for their future by August 1, 2003. Therefore, I created a BSS Strategic Plan Task Force headed by Associate Dean Marjorie Seashore, the members of which were drawn from the College Council. This group has been meeting diligently and are close to a final report to the Council in time to submit our Report to the University’s CUSP II strategic planning commission in August. The group has reviewed and modified the College’s mission statement and its attendant goals and objectives that we will use in the future. The members have requested an all-day retreat to consider the final document and the results of their deliberations that will be held immediately following the end of the Spring semester. At out All-College meeting in August, I hope to distribute a summary of the strategic plan in order to have a discussion on this important document. We may even have a special All-College faculty meeting during the Fall semester to discuss the important work of the planning task force. Also, this document may be the centerpiece of our scheduled all-day College retreat in January, 2004. Clearly, the importance of this planning work cannot be overemphasized for the College’s future. Deepest thanks for the hard work done by all the Planning Task Force members and especially its leader, Dean Seashore.