A New School Year

With every new school year, we welcome nearly 3,000 new undergraduates to campus and another 900 transfer students. It’s always a pleasure for me to participate in FASETs during the summer, and an honor to welcome the students and their families. Convocation last Sunday was ceremonious but also celebratory and light-hearted, with new students being invited to recite the honor code, be reminded unambiguously that this is a diverse and inclusive campus, and don their RAT caps and – this year, at least – a pair of safety goggles.

Seeing such excitement and enthusiasm during FASET, I joke with audiences that their excitement won’t last, the serious point being that within a few weeks of any new, exciting experience we tend to feel comfortable and even take things for granted. Coming to Tech is no different. We want students to feel comfortable here; it’s their new home away from home. But they owe it to themselves to stay a little excited and not to take us for granted, and we owe it to them to remind them of this constantly. There’s a reason they feel excited in July and August, and it’s the same reason they should feel excited in January and this time next year. To succeed at Tech, students have to work hard. But they also need to be engaged and, yes, have fun.

So, it was great to see such a campus-wide geek-out the other afternoon, when the eclipse provided a perfect excuse for students new and old to gather together, re-connect, make new friends, and celebrate one of the great wonders of nature. When we are immersed in helping students master scientific subject matter, find research advisers, or technology-based career opportunities, it’s easy to forget that science and learning are sources of inspiration and are animated by the human instinct to explain and understand just for their own sakes. There would be no scientific method, formulae or theories, no engineering or healthcare, no social critiques of science and scientism – no Georgia Tech, indeed – if the ancients hadn’t occasionally looked up and around them and said “wow!” We moderns need to do this, too, and yesterday we did. In public. In goggles.

I hope that in starting the new year, we’ll all embrace that sense of “wow,” and occasionally remind ourselves what a great place this is to be, and what a great community of students we are privileged to serve. In fact, now everyone is back, I’ve instituted a few changes I wanted to tell you all about, some of which were announced and previewed in the spring, and others hot off the press. It may be true that I’m not going around saying “wow!” all the time (I’m too British for such displays of earnest enthusiasm), but this is an exciting time for all of us.

A New OUE

First, I’m very pleased to let you know Chris Reaves has been promoted to Executive Director of CAE.  Chris began in January 2011 as the Director of Undergraduate Research and Student Innovation; was appointed Interim Director of CAE in January 2015; and then permanent Director of CAE in May 2016.  His promotion to Executive Director reflects the impressive leadership he’s provided to CAE and its programs—specifically growing Living Learning Communities, GT1000 and 2000, and Student Innovation Programs. With the success of the ACC InVenture Prize that he helped to establish, the ACC Academic Consortium will be calling on Chris increasingly over the next two years as Dr. Dave Brown, its current coordinator, plans retirement. Please congratulate Chris, and tell him “wow!”

As you will be frequently reminded when the Whistle blows, the new academic schedule kicks in in earnest this semester. Steven Girardot and Joe Hughes (ECE) did a wonderful job in bringing these recommendations together last year, and it’s thanks to many of you in collaboration with others across campus that they are being implemented smoothly. Steven and Joe, of course, also led the task force to introduce the new academic calendar, which has been in force all year and now feels so comfortable and unexciting that Dead Weeks seem like ancient history. Perhaps I should not tempt fate, but I’m co-chairing a committee with Julia Kubanek and Amanda Jones on space planning, which involves staff and faculty from all academic units, which we hope to make similarly wide-ranging recommendations about academic space planning for teaching and research. (In my experience, though, the “excitement” about space planning never wears off, and “wow” is not the word that comes unbidden to most people’s lips.)

In addition, as I began discussing last spring and at our summer town hall, I am committed to spending more time leading initiatives in undergraduate education at the Institute level, especially those requiring collaboration with the academic faculty and administrations of the schools and colleges. The Commission on the Next in Education, which was convened by the provost in 2015 is close to issuing a major report that will provide directions for academic strategy and innovation as far out as 2040. I’m responsible collating proposals for the short-term undergraduate initiatives, and together with the proposals that have already come out of the Strategic Planning effort, these will start to transform our students’ experiences.

With the increasingly higher profile of undergraduate education and requirements on my time to play an even  greater strategic role across campus, I have made several changes this academic year: 

• Beth Spencer, was promoted to Director of Undergraduate Academic Advising in May.  Given the importance of academic advising to our students’ progression through the curriculum and its centrality to our institutional academic strategy, Beth is now reporting directly to me and has joined the OUE leadership team. Very soon, she will co-lead an institute-wide task force on academic advising. An announcement about that will be forthcoming.
• De Morris Walker, Director of Summer Session Initiatives, has also joined the OUE leadership team. Re-thinking our summer programs and our students’ use of campus resources over the summer are important institutional goals and will help to harmonize our undergraduate and graduate education strategies. De Morris is leading that effort and is working closely with all the associate deans.
• I’ve asked Steven Girardot to take on more responsibility and leadership for OUE’s co-curricular units and programs in addition to his current responsibilities for internal administration, operations and, for the sake of continuity, some ongoing academic initiatives (viz. Summer Session and CCG).  Therefore, CAS, C2D2, and CAE now report directly to Steven. CSLS and the Honors Program will remain directly reporting to me because of the significant curricular contributions of both programs to all six colleges. All directors/executive directors who report to either Steven or me remain a part of the OUE leadership team.
• Steven will also be working closely with Roberta Berry and our OUE 2020 initiative that she’s leading. I spoke at length about OUE 2020 at our spring retreat. Now that it is up and running, I’d like to thank all the participants; we’re all expecting wow-worthy creativity from the group.
• I want to stress to you all what I told Don, Michelle, and Chris in person that this change in reporting in no way indicates any notion on my part that CAS, C2D2 or CAE are less central to the success of students or our strategy going forward. Quite the contrary, I do not believe that I can continue to provide the best leadership for these units’ services while I start concentrate more on institutional and curricular issues, and I am certain that Steven’s existing knowledge of operations and leadership presence across campus will serve these units better. I will continue to act as needed as a resource for the directors and staff of CAS, C2D2 and CAE to facilitate curricular improvements and interactions where needed. 

(CLICK HERE to view the new OUE organizational structure.)

So much more than this is happening. Project One’s theme this year is happiness (thank you, Lacy), we have a new living-learning community for pre-health students (thank you, Kari and Francisco), we are doing more and more tutoring services for at-risk undergraduates (thank you, Don) and we have a significantly changed career education emphasis in GT 1000 (thank you, Michelle). There are too many other examples to mention. So, in the spirit of “wow,” do remember to bottle up some of that enthusiasm that you feel when you see our first-year students – as I tell them themselves to do during FASET – and when the evenings start to draw in uncork it occasionally and take a whiff of that sense of excitement.