February 4, 2008
The College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering plans
for a signature future
We think we can develop a series of powerful initiatives that will increase the range and depths of our programs,” says Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering.
shauser@rochester.edu
As a professor of electrical and computer engineering
and an amateur musician, Mark Bocko has long seen the potential for
building stronger partnerships between the College of Arts, Sciences, and
Engineering and the Eastman School.
So when it came time to think of initiatives that
would distinguish Rochester by capitalizing on its strengths, Bocko had
more than a decade of experience from which to draw. Many faculty in Arts,
Sciences, and Engineering and at the Eastman School have been collaborating
in informal ways, and taking advantage of the resources available to both
units makes perfect sense, he says.
“It’s a natural connection,” says
Bocko, who has worked with David Headlam, a professor of music theory at
the Eastman School, on several projects since 1995. “Many faculty
have recognized that a program here combining music, engineering, and
science could quickly become a premier program given the prominence of the
Eastman School.”
That idea—generated through a working group of
faculty—has become a proposal to establish a new Center for Music and
Sound, one of three new proposed signature initiatives that connect the
humanities to the sciences and engineering. The programs are key elements
in a new strategic plan that outlines how the University hopes to position
one of its key academic units in the coming decade.
The culmination of a two-year process involving
faculty, staff, students, and alumni, the plan will be presented to the
Board of Trustees this spring as part of the University’s overall
strategic planning process.
The plan is designed to capitalize on the
College’s cohesive, collegial atmosphere, its innovative curriculum,
its strong research profile, and its close ties to the Medical Center, the
Simon School, and the Warner School.
Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean
of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, says the aim is to
provide signature opportunities for students while also extending core
strengths in research, graduate education, and undergraduate education.
“We think we can develop a series of
powerful initiatives that will increase the range and depths of our
programs,” Lennie says. “At the same time, we recognize that
students at all levels need increasingly sophisticated and broad
intellectual training. Their ability to think critically and flexibly is
the key to their future success in diverse occupations.”
“This is not a blueprint, but a pretty well
thought-out idea of where we want to go,” Lennie says.
Among the strategies:
The plan calls for more robust programs and scholarly
opportunities focused on the world outside the United States. Those include
a new international
relations major that’s set to begin this fall.
It also envisions new area studies programs that focus on particular
regions of the world, such as East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and
Africa and the African diaspora.
The plan proposes taking advantage of the
College’s strengths and resources in the Rochester area to establish
signature programs. In addition to the proposed Center for Music and Sound,
a Center for Humanities and Image Technology would bring together the work
of several departments to build partnerships with the internationally
renowned George Eastman House. A third signature program would focus on
archeology, architecture, and engineering.
The plan targets scientific areas, including genomics,
computational and physical biology, nanoscience, and alternative energy, as
a way not only to maintain competitiveness in key fields, but also to
strengthen partnerships among departments and with other units of the
University.
The plan proposes enlarged opportunities for students
to pursue programs in healthrelated fields, business, and other areas
in collaboration with the School of Medicine and Dentistry and with the
Simon School.
The goal, as the plan puts it, is to “ensure
balanced progress on multiple fronts: strengthening our core departments,
protecting our competitiveness in key areas, defining signature domains in
which we can not only excel but become preeminent, and offering a broad and
powerfully attractive portfolio of undergraduate programs.”
One theme that emerged early in the process is that
for Rochester to achieve distinction in particular fields, the size of the
arts, sciences, and engineering faculty needs to grow.
The plan recommends the addition of about 80 new
faculty members—about a 25 percent increase over current
numbers—to help establish new programs and to beef up targeted
strengths in existing departments. The plan calls for a commensurate
increase in the size of undergraduate and graduate student enrollments.
Joan Saab, director of the Graduate Program in Visual
and Cultural Studies who was involved in the planning process at several
levels and across several groups, says she was impressed by the engagement
of those who participated and with the administrative response to the ideas
of faculty and staff.
“The faculty has had a voice, and the voice has
been heard in the planning process,” she says. “It was nice to
see that people were listening and also for them to see the possibilities
for growth.”
One area set to grow this fall is a new master’s
degree program offered by the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. In keeping with the strategic plan, the new program features a
concentration in musical acoustics and signal processing and is expected to
draw students who have backgrounds in music as well as those from
engineering.
It’s the kind of program that few other
institutions could mount, Bocko says.
“We have this great music school. We have real
strengths in engineering,” Bocko says. “There’s great
potential here.”
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