Dear Colleagues:

Since coming to Wake Forest six months ago, I have been most impressed by the quality and vibrancy of your academic work.  I am also pleased by the many ways the University supports your endeavors, and I want to make sure each of you has the information you need to secure that support.  This letter is to let you know about a new way of communicating that my office is developing—an occasional newsletter you will receive via e-mail to share information about academic activities and achievements, explain how to get support for your work and announce collaborative opportunities for you to consider. 

As a beginning, this first edition contains news about resources for strategic projects and for capital improvements and explains how to apply for those resources in the future.  It also gives information about colleagues receiving paid research leaves for 2008-2009, funding for research and creative work received so far this academic year, Founders’ Day Convocation, the business dean search, the Nathan and Julie Hatch Prize at the Summer Research Institute conducted by Harris Manchester College at Oxford University, initiatives to support our academic leaders, and undergraduate applications for the incoming class of 2008.

Our idea is to collect all the announcements about resource opportunities on a special web page we are designing for faculty.   Please look for news about that soon.  

We in the Provost’s Office are aware of how busy you are, and we promise to write only when there is important information to share.  We are also dedicated to offering a useful, lively way to connect scholars across Wake Forest and invite your comments, suggestions and critique at any time.  Please send those ideas directly to me at jmt@wfu.edu.

In the meantime, I wish each of you a happy and productive New Year and I look forward to seeing you on campus.

With warm regards, 

Jill Tiefenthaler

Provost

 

Competition for Strategic Project and Capital Improvement Support is Strong

This year’s strategic initiative and capital funding application processes were a great success, with final decisions about funding in process now.  As that work is underway, you might be interested in this summary of requests. 

Requests for support for strategic projects totaled approximately 2 million dollars, and capital funding requests totaled approximately 6 million dollars.  All these applications showcase the depth of intellectual talent and vitality that characterizes Wake Forest each and every day.  With such a rich pool of innovative projects, we are well on our way to meeting our strategic goals.  Here are a few details that represent the diversity of ideas you have presented. 

Strategic project requests include support for creative research and collaboration between faculty and students through the development of an Undergraduate Research Center, funds for various speaker series, additions to the library collection for historical research on Latin America, Britain, Africa, China and South Asia, support for intercampus PhD program development, student scholarships in math, music, theatre, and dance, seed funds for a post-doc program, and conference travel for faculty.  

 Capital project and equipment requests include renovation of the 24-hour study rooms in the library, renovating a room in Winston Hall as a Confocal Microscope Facility, multimedia equipment for instruction in Worrell House, renovation of several classrooms and offices, a Steinway grand piano, and image acquisition equipment.

Awards will be announced in February.  Within the next few months, our website at http://www.wfu.edu/provost  will provide information about how to seek this kind of support in the future. 

Announcing the Nathan and Julie Hatch Prize for Faculty Development

The Provost’s Office announces a new faculty development award to support a week of research and writing, June 29-July 6, 2008, at the Summer Research Institute conducted by Harris Manchester College at Oxford University.  The award will go to that faculty member whose research project, regardless of discipline, shows the most scholarly promise and best demonstrates the pivotal role of a week of sustained research and writing with access to the renowned Bodleian Library. 

This award is given by Robert Conway, a Harris Manchester College Board Member, in honor of Nathan and Julie Hatch.  All faculty from the undergraduate college and Calloway, Babcock, Divinity, Medical, and Law Schools are eligible to apply.  All room and board as well as transportation expenses will be covered. 

If you are interested, please submit a CV and a letter of intent describing your current research project by February 15th to Michele Gillespie, associate provost for academic initiatives, 204 Reynolda Hall.  For more information, see http://www.hmc.ox.ac.uk/ and/or contact Michele Gillespie gillesmk@wfu.edu.

 

Undergraduate Applications at All-time High

The Admissions Office is pleased to report a record-breaking 21 percent increase in applications for the first-year class of 2008. As of the application deadline, 8702 applications had been filed. The previous record of 7484 was set in 2005.  The Admissions Office also enjoyed an outstanding early decision pool with 730 applications and 332 offers of admission.

Director of Admissions Martha Allman credits substantial increases and refinements in admissions recruitment activities as well as a revamped on-line application delivery system for the increase.  As they enter the “reading season,” we send congratulations to the admissions staff for a job well done.

 

Professor Herman Eure to Deliver Founders’ Day Convocation Address

Professor of Biology and Associate Dean of the College Herman Eure will give this year’s Founders’ Day Convocation address.  His talk, “Using Our Past As A Road Map For Charting Our Future: The Evolutionary History of Wake Forest University,” will look at the relationship between evolutionary theory and the development of today’s modern Wake Forest, as well as convey his hopes for the future.  He is well qualified to make these observations, having been a member of this community since 1974.

Founder’s Day Convocation is one of the few times we all come together as a community—students, faculty, staff and alumni—to consider who we are, where we have been and who we want to be.  This year convocation will be held on Thursday, February 7, at 4:30 p.m. in Wait Chapel.  Please come and encourage your students and colleagues to join you.

 

Update on Business Dean Search

In the last few weeks of the fall semester, the search committee approved two important documents: the ad that appeared in The Economist and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the position prospectus.  You can find these documents on the Business Dean website: http://groups.wfu.edu/businessdean/committee.html

The search is now entering the “outreach” phase, during which you won’t hear much news to maintain confidentiality for candidates.  Our search consultant, Lisa Prigohzy-Milius, will contact sources and prospective candidates as a list of potential candidates is developed.  Please review the prospectus and contact a member of the search committee or the consultant if you wish to nominate candidates.  The names of the committee members and contact information for Ms. Prigohzy-Milius are listed on the website.  Our goal is to appoint a new dean this summer. 

 

Update on Initiative to Strengthen the Role of the University Senate

As an advisory body to the administration and the Board of Trustees, the University Senate has a special place in the governance structure of the University. It is the only officially-constituted forum in which elected representatives from each unit meet regularly with senior administrators to discuss matters of University-wide concern.  Under the leadership of its president, David Coates, the Senate is changing its mode of operation in a number of important ways.

The Senate is resetting its structure to give the provost, the senior vice-president for finance and the vice-president for administration direct liaison with a committee. The Senate is also strengthening the role of two committees—the committee that bridges the University’s various campuses and the committee that nominates individuals for honorary degrees.  Now the Senate will host two general meetings each year.  At one of those, the president will address all faculty and staff in the State of the University address.  In the second, the senior vice-president for finance will address all Reynolda-based faculty and staff at the end of the budget cycle. Details of both those meetings will be announced soon.  

These changes are designed to advance the Senate’s goal to help members of the Wake Forest community share information and goals.  Thanks to the Senate for increasing the ways to become involved in the University’s future.    

 

Research and Creative Work Awards up 23 percent

In the first six months of 07/08, faculty members received 51 new awards to support their work. Totaling about 5.3 million dollars, these awards are up 23 percent over the same time period last year.  New awards include a three-year National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation award to the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts under the direction of Betsy Gatewood. Miles Silman (biology) received a second award from the NSF to support his work on “Understanding Diurnal Cycles of Orographic Clouds.”  A third award went to Jennifer Burg (computer science) to support her project “Linking Science, Art, and Practice in Digital Sound.”  Jeff Holdridge (English) received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support a Northern Irish poetry project.  The Laboratory for Public Archeology, under the direction of Ken Robinson, was awarded six new contracts over the past six months. 

Congratulations to all who received these awards.  For information about support for those who seek external funding, see the website of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at http://www.wfu.edu/rsp.

 

New Initiative to Support Academic Leaders

The Provost’s Office is pleased to participate in the inaugural Career Development Seminar for Emerging Women Leaders and to congratulate the four Reynolda campus faculty members who were selected for this year’s program.  This ten-month program will accommodate 12 women from all schools at Wake Forest.  Presenters are highly regarded experts, executive coaches and senior WFU faculty and administrators. The Center for Creative Leadership will oversee a 360 assessment on each class member and provide a feedback session. Congratulations to the Reynolda participants for 2008: Christy Buchanan (psychology), Nina Lucas (theatre and dance), Shannon Mihalko (health & exercise science) and Ulrike Wiethaus (humanities).

The CDSEWL Program is sponsored by the Women's Health Center of Excellence for Research, Leadership, and Education (WHCoE) Leadership & Mentoring Program, in collaboration with the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program graduates and the Wake Forest University Women’s Forum. It is supported by the Reynolda provost, deans, and department chairs. 

 

Congratulations to Scholars Awarded Reynolds Leaves for 2008-2009

The following colleagues from the College and Calloway were awarded research leaves for next year.  Please join me in congratulating them on their compelling project proposals.  We all look forward to their progress on their scholarly work during their leaves.

Edward Allen (mathematics) “Combinatorics and the Modeling of Biological Networks”

David Anderson (biology) “Study of Nazca Boobies at the Charles Darwin Research Station in Galapagos”

Sylvain Boko (economics) “Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development: The Role of Decentralized Governance”

Stephen Boyd (religion) “The Role of Religion in the Ways Individuals and Communities Understand Themselves”

Michaelle Browers (political science) “Arab-Shiَ i Political Thought since 1959: Political Activism and The Quest for Freedom”

Mary Dalton (communications) “Sixty Years of Teachers on Television”

Mary DeShazer (English and women & gender studies) “Breast Cancer and Creativity: The Art of Healing”

Jacquelyn Fetrow, (physics and computer science) “Modeling Transcriptional Regulatory Networks”

Cynthia Gendrich (theatre & dance) “The Comic Actress, Mary Anne Vincent”

Willie Hinze (chemistry) “Separation of Chiral Molecules”

Bruce King (chemistry) “The Physiological Signaling Role of Carbon Monoxide”

Ellen Kirkman (mathematics) “The Invariant Theory of Artin – Schelter Regular Algebras”

David Levy (music) “Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony”

Stephen Robinson (mathematics), “Nonlinear Elliptic Boundary Value Problems”

Luis Roniger (political science) “Models of Citizenship & Democracy in Latin America”

James Schirillo (psychology) “Study of Perception of Portrait Lateralization”

Jeanne Simonelli (anthropology) "Crossing between Worlds”

Margaret Smith (art) “Main Line to Tobacco Road: Charles Barton Keen and the Southern Migration of the Early Twentieth Century Philadelphia Country House”

Ian Taplin (sociology) “Managing Luxury amidst Market Uncertainty: Status, Quality, Networks and Identity Amongst Napa Valley Wine Producers”

Todd Torgersen (computer science) “Computational Techniques for Multi-Lens Imaging Systems”

Laura Veach (counseling) “Policy Implementations Regarding Brief Interventions in the Trauma Unit”

Page West (Calloway School) “Knowledge in Evolutionary Organizations:  Competitive Position and Sustainability of Entrepreneurial Firms”

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Thank you for your attention to this first edition of our newsletter.  The Provost’s Office seeks your comments, suggestions, and ideas for its development.  To comment or suggest items to include, please be in touch with Provost Tiefenthaler at jmt@wfu.edu