DATE: March 20, 2001
TO: Board of Regents
FROM: Geoffrey Gamble
President,
MSU-Bozeman
RE: Campus Report for the March,
2001 Board of Regents Meeting
1. Status
of Key Administrative Searches
The committee charged
with finding a new Dean of the College of Engineering is in the final stages of
its work. Finalists for the position are: Kynric
Pell, former Dean of Engineering at the University of Wyoming; James Peterson, Associate Dean for
Research and Graduate Programs in the College of Engineering at Washington
state University; Dennis Horn, Dean
of Engineering at Gonzaga University; and Steven
Abt, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in the College of
Engineering at Colorado State University. Vice Provost Joe Fedock is chairing
the search.
The Search Committee
for the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs is, according to
committee chair Bruce McLeod, Dean of Graduate Studies, “…nearing the single
digit stage.” Sixty plus applications were received and campus interviews are
slated to begin in mid to late April and wrap up prior to commencement, which
is on May 12.
2. The Final Report of the
Recruitment and Retention Task Force has been presented
to President Gamble and can be accessed at the Reports Page on the MSU Web
site, www.montana.edu/airc/report/.
The report uses cost benefit approach to reviewing programs and services that
can help the campus achieve an appropriate number and mix of students. Vice
Provost Pamela Hill and Director of New student Services Ronda Russell
co-chaired the Task Force.
3. If
you missed CBS’s Late Late Show with
Craig Kilborn on March 13, you missed a chance to see an audience entirely
made up of MSU alumni and friends who were invited by Kilborn, a 1990 graduate
from the Film and Television program (now Media and Theater Arts). He was as
excited to have fellow Bobcats in the audience as they were to be there. He
waived a school pennant, sang the fight song, was emphatic about his choice of
institutions and remarked that as a Bobcat basketball player, he once led the
Big Sky Conference in turnovers.
4. The
campus has initiated a major
restructuring of its planning and budgeting efforts. In an address to the
campus on March 1, President Gamble outlined the new process that will see the
budget being guided by the work of the Long Range Plan, driven by data, judged
by business principles and built by the newly created 21 member University
Planning, Budgeting and Analysis Committee (UPBAC). The committee’s charge is
to deliver a proposal for a balanced budget to the President’s desk by May 21.
Details of the plan can be viewed at http://www.montana.edu/president/.
5.
EPSCoR Infrastructure Grant Funded
The
Montana University System’s most recent proposal to the National Science
Foundation EPSCoR Program has been funded at a total of $13.5 million,
including state match, over three years. This newest project focuses on
enhancing research activities in the MUS that improve the state’s science and
technology infrastructure that, in turn, can contribute to the state’s growing
high-tech economy. Key to the proposal is developing integrated and complementary
research programs at MSU and UM.
Increasing the quality and number of graduate students; expanding the
involvement of undergraduates in research; increasing the representation of
underrepresented groups, especially Native Americans, through education and
outreach programs with the tribal colleges, are among the overall objectives of
this significant program.
6.
Two MSU Skiers
earned All-America honors at the recent
NCAA Championships in Middlebury, VT. Freshman Maria Kalnaes placed tenth
in the 15-kilometer freestyle race and Marianne Magnus, also a freshman
finished fifth overall in the women's five-kilometer classic race. Both are
from Oslo, Norway. At the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in
Fayetteville, AR, MSU Pole-vaulter Shannon Agee, a junior from Helena, set a
new school and Big Sky Conference record clearing 13-feet, 1.5-inches to place
tenth and earn All-America honors.