SciTech Strategic Plan

College of Science and Technology DRAFT 5-Year Strategic Plan
Updated 10/4/06 by ad hoc College of Science and Technology Strategic Planning Committee


Objective 1. Recruit motivated students who are interested in science and technology.

  • *Target interested high school and freshman students, and encourage student preparedness.
  • *Identify where our successful students come from and what makes them choose us.
  • *Strategically target calculus-ready students and Promise scholars, even when they don’t initially declare interest in our programs or areas.
  • *Foster a strong working relationship and close communication with the Advising Center, recruiters and Gear Up.
  • *Develop and maintain a cohesive, standardized public relations and recruiting campaign.
  • Engage in a long-term strategy to generate prepared students by providing high quality teacher education programs in science, math and technology.
  • Target non-traditional groups (adults, home-schooled students, foreign students, etc.)

Success Indicator: Increase or maintain number of qualified incoming students in our programs and areas, relative to a 3-year average baseline from 2004-2006.



Objective 2. Support and retain students from WV and elsewhere as they make the transition to college and grow into independent learners.

  • *Make peer mentoring available to students in our programs.
  • *Provide more supportive, intrusive advising for incoming students in our programs.
  • Encourage students to attend meetings of student clubs in our College
  • Design and offer introductory courses (programmatic and service courses, as well as liberal studies courses and possible science and technology freshman seminar courses) that assist students in the transition to college.
  • Get our majors into the same sections of other courses (e.g., English, math, other LS courses) to create a learning community.

Success Indicator: Student retention and success in our programs increases.



Objective 3. Cultivate a College of Science and Technology learning environment where high academic expectations are matched with equally high levels of opportunity, support and flexibility from the first course through the final capstone experience.

  • *Provide a seamless curriculum with coordinated scheduling, attention to logical income and outcome requirements, explicit knowledge transfer from course to course, and faculty exchanges between classes.
  • *Develop and publicize specific course incomes (prerequisites) and outcomes, linked to program outcomes.
  • *Provide teaching that focuses on clearly-defined high expectations, opportunity, support and flexibility for student learning.
  • *Use excellent advising to encourage and challenge students to maintain flexibility for a variety of career paths and curricular options.
  • Involve every science and technology undergraduate in at least one individualized scholarly project.
  • Engage in a College-wide dialogue about how we decide if students are learning.
  • Create a College of Science and Technology floor in a residence hall, with RA's from our College.

Success Indicator: Learning outcomes are defined for every course and program. Faculty in client (subsequent) courses report that students possess needed “incomes” (i.e., specified prerequisite outcomes from previous courses, including courses in other disciplines in the College.)



Objective 4. Support students as they make the transition from college into professional life.

  • *Include professional and career preparation skills throughout the curriculum.
  • Forge a strong relationship with Career Services to encourage career preparation activities such as mock interviews and resume development.
  • Work together as faculty to share information about how to prepare students for their futures.

Success Indicator: Students gain employment related to their education, or gain acceptance into professional or graduate schools.



Objective 5. Forge strong alliances with schools, state agencies, businesses, industry and other community groups in our service region.

  • *Cultivate the Academic Alliance with public school faculty and administrators in our ~13-county region.
  • Actively seek internship opportunities for students.
  • Maintain productive, annual contact with program alumni.
  • Identify and develop needed formal partnerships with groups above.
  • Maintain and publicize public outreach activities that provide service to the community and involve our students.
  • Implement and promote external Professional/Industrial Advisory Committees for each program.

Success Indicator: Increased number, quality and variety of internships, increased quality of alliances (based on rubric), increased participation in our outreach efforts.



Objective 6. Provide and promote professional development opportunities for faculty and staff that are targeted at accomplishment of our mission.

  • *Deans and chairs work actively with all probationary faculty to provide and promote opportunities that are directed at mission-based objectives.
  • Work with administration to create faculty development activities specific to our College needs.
  • Implement a Promotion and Tenure mentor program.
  • Ask College committees to review College policies to ensure that mission and objectives are used to help make decisions.
    • Ask Professional Development and Travel committee to ensure that the mission and objectives guide funding decisions.
    • Ask ad hoc Annual Evaluation committee to ensure that the SciTech annual evaluation system is set up to reward faculty and program work in support of our mission.
  • Create workshop or discussion opportunities for us to share ideas about how we teach and assess and shared curriculum.

Success Indicator: All faculty should be well prepared for tenure and promotion opportunities, and staff will be well prepared for relevant advancement. Our mission will be advanced.

 

* = Actively-pursued objective for 2006-7 academic year.