Dear Faculty Members:
Welcome to the 2011-12 academic year. I am excited to be back in my home state and serving at the helm of this fine institution. I'd like to extend a special welcome to new faculty who are joining the university. This year promises to be filled with opportunities as well as challenges, and I'm eager to help our campus progress to its next level of development.
Since my term began on July 1, I've spent much of my time meeting with key stakeholders, getting up to speed on the inner workings of campus operations, learning about our academic and research programs, and identifying the campus' most pressing priorities. The process has given me even more respect for what you have accomplished during the six years since the campus opened. I sincerely congratulate you.
During UC Merced's initial years, the campus' goals centered on building a solid foundation, increasing student enrollment, attracting strong faculty and staff, and strengthening baseline programs and operations.
As the campus begins its seventh year, I consider UC Merced well positioned to move forward with building depth in programs already established, growing graduate enrollment and building greater external awareness of research themes that will differentiate UC Merced from our sister campuses and other research universities. We are a young institution that has managed to get off to a very good start — a commendable accomplishment given the economic difficulties facing the state and nation. Equally important, we are a rapidly emerging force for change at a critical time in California's history — a message I will deliver repeatedly up and down the state, and in our nation's capital, in the coming months.
I firmly believe our campus' future is secure and promising. Commitments from the UC Office of the President and Board of Regents combined with strong backing by the Valley's legislative leaders ensure the campus will continue to mature at a steady pace despite the difficult economic environment. Even so, we cannot assume our needs will continue to be met without considerable effort to build awareness and secure additional funding. Accordingly, I am spending a great deal of time meeting with University of California leadership, key legislators, corporations, private donors and others whose support will be vital to our growth and research programs.
In addition to the funding needed for operational and capital budgets, we are keenly aware of the shrinking pool of federal research funding and its impact on your ability to continue expanding your research portfolios. As such, we will need to move even more aggressively than in the past to expand the campus' partnerships with non-governmental entities and industry to pursue alternative funding sources. And we must press even harder for research support from foundations and private donors.
As you may know, UC Merced received initial accreditation in July from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Our baseline programs have proven to be solid and well conceived, and are effectively preparing students for successful careers anywhere in the global marketplace.
As our student population continues to grow (5,000 expected this year), so has our faculty. We now have 144 ladder-rank professors, including 18 new professors this academic year, and 120 lecturers.
Faculty members are securing major grants, winning impressive academic awards and conducting cutting-edge research on issues of vital importance to the San Joaquin Valley, state and society as a whole. Your efforts are bringing distinction to UC Merced while clearly demonstrating our viability and showcasing our contributions. It is noteworthy that you’ve accomplished all this despite a student-to-ladder-rank-faculty ratio that clearly isn’t where we would like it to be. This will be a major challenge for us going forward.
I am also pleased to welcome our new dean of the School of Natural Sciences, Juan C. Meza, who will begin Sept. 1. Dr. Meza is an accomplished researcher and a distinguished leader with an exemplary track record. Before joining UC Merced, he served as head of the High Performance Computing Research Department and acting director of the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Meza's research interests include applied mathematics and computer science with an eye toward computational research, including nonlinear optimization and parallel computing methods. We are delighted to have him as part of our stellar team of scholars who embrace our campus' interdisciplinary approach to research, teaching and learning. I extend my sincere appreciation to Professor Michael Colvin for ably and graciously serving as interim dean.
Even as we welcome enrollment and workforce growth, we remain keenly aware of the space shortage on campus and continue to explore possible solutions. As we move forward, it will be important to develop a clear, transparent process and accompanying criteria to help leadership strategically decide the allocation of administrative and support staff space both on and off campus. And we will aggressively seek creative ways for financing the continued capital development of the campus. None of this will be easy but I am committed to working diligently to address our current space challenges and future campus development needs.
Meanwhile, the new Social Sciences and Management Building will provide some relief from space constraints. The 101,000-square-foot structure houses teaching lab space, art studio spaces, seminar rooms, general classrooms, research lab offices and an entrepreneurship center. The addition more than doubles the physical space for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. In addition, plans continue to progress regarding the Science & Engineering 2 Building, and we are waiting for the state to confirm a lease revenue bond sale, which is expected to occur this fall. If the state provides construction funding this fall for the building, we anticipate occupancy in late 2014. Lastly, we expect to receive funding this fall for a proposed student services building, which could be ready for use by fall 2013.
In my effort to keep you apprised on matters that are of direct concern to the faculty, I want to advise you that Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Keith Alley has shared with me his plans to retire at the end of the 2011-12 academic year. I am extremely grateful for his close collaboration during my initial months as chancellor and for his willingness to remain throughout the year to ensure a smooth transition at the executive leadership level. I will soon seek nominations for a search committee that will include representation from the faculties of each of our schools. We will be assisted in this national search by Isaacson Miller — a firm that knows our campus and its challenges quite well and whose consultants will help us build a robust pool of qualified candidates.
Finally, I encourage you to continue to develop your connection with the campus and surrounding community by attending academic lectures, performances, sports, and art and cultural events throughout the year. The best way to learn about upcoming activities and to promote your own events is by visiting the UC Merced Events Calendar.
- Panorama, a publication for faculty and staff
- Campus gateway website
- Happenings channel on MyUCMerced campus portal
Thank you for all you've done and will continue to do to make UC Merced a beacon of hope and opportunity for so many.
I wish you a successful and productive year, and I look forward to meeting and working closely with all of you.
Sincerely,
Dorothy Leland
Chancellor
