Top 25: Two Current Efforts
As in any journey, once you’ve mapped your course, it’s time to start driving.
That’s exactly what we’re doing—driving forward in our quest to be a Top 25 public research university.
We developed Vol Vision/Top 25 by scrutinizing every aspect of our operation, benchmarking ourselves against the very best universities in the nation, and then focusing on what we need to do to make improvements in our priority areas—undergraduate education, graduate education, research, faculty and staff, and resources and infrastructure. We have more than sixty action plans, and faculty and staff are working to close the gaps between UT Knoxville and Top 25 institutions.
Here’s a look at two efforts now under way:
Undergraduate research
Susan Riechert, distinguished service professor in ecology and evolutionary biology and co-director of VolsTeach, started as an English major at the University of Wisconsin—until she took a field zoology course. That course and its professor gave her the chance to explore her curiosity about nature. Soon, she was collecting, preserving, and identifying spiders for the UW Zoological Museum.
“My research and museum experiences as an undergrad made me realize that I could be a professor and pursue puzzles that interest me. There are so many in nature. You get one piece done, and another crops up. My experience also made me feel comfortable around researchers and faculty, so that when I went on to grad school, I already felt more of a colleague than a student,” she said.
Riechert is one of about twenty faculty members who share their own undergraduate research experiences on the Office of Research website.
This new feature is one of several Office of Research efforts to pique the interest of undergraduates to help them understand the value of doing research and want to pursue the growing number of undergraduate research opportunities at UT Knoxville.
“We want students to understand the impact these experiences can have,” said Sharon Pound, an editor in the Office of Research who has been helping the office tell its story better via the website, student@tennessee (the weekly student e-newsletter), brochures, and presentations.
For instance, representatives of the Office of Research staff now talk with high school seniors at admissions open houses.
“The sooner the students understand the opportunities and start exploring them, the more impact it has, both on retention and graduation rates,” Pound said.
In addition, student and faculty committees have been formed to help advise the Office of Research. Committee members act as communicators, talking to their colleges and departments about assistance available from the Office of Research while bringing the office information about opportunities and events happening at the college and department level.
It’s all about improving the communication on a big campus “so the right hand lets the left hand know what the other is doing,” Pound said.
The faculty advisory committee includes Tricia Stuth, associate professor of architecture; Rosalind Hackett, professor of religious studies; Ben Feldmeyer, assistant professor of sociology; Michael Gant, professor of political science; Jon Levin, professor of physics; Carolyn Staples, professor of art; Lisa Fall, associate professor of advertising and public relations; David Cihak, associate professor of education; Kathleen Thompson, clinical professor of nursing; Matthew Theriot, associate professor of social work; and Nate Sanders, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
The Office of Research is also conducting its second inventory of undergraduate research opportunities on campus. A year ago, a survey was done and a list of nearly 1,200 research activities was gathered. Faculty are now being asked to report if they mentored a student during the fall 2010, spring 2011, summer 2011, and fall 2011 semesters. The website now includes tools that allows faculty to easily post current undergraduate research opportunities in faculty labs, clinics, and offices. With all of this information at their fingertips, current and prospective students can find research positions or read about what others have done to get ideas for potential research experiences.
As Riechert notes as she reflects on her own undergraduate research experience, “Too many undergraduates come with a narrow view of their career possibilities. Research broadens your vision and career choices. It’s important to pursue something that you’re interested in.”
Graduate Education
One of the things we learned in reviewing our graduate education programs was that our application process has been unduly cumbersome for students and faculty. In addition, we knew we needed to increase the communication between the Graduate School office and the more than 100 graduate programs operating on campus.
When graduate students apply to UT, they must first meet the minimum grade and English fluency requirements to be admitted to the Graduate School. Once they’ve gained admission, they must apply to their specific graduate program.
That often meant students had to visit multiple offices on campus and fill out multiple application forms. It was laborious and often required repetitive work.
The Graduate School has been working with the various programs to streamline the application process so students can deal with one office and fill out a single application that includes general and program-specific questions.
The Graduate School also now allows applicants to submit copies of their college transcripts rather than having their institutions send official copies to UT Knoxville at the onset. Once students have been admitted, they can then arrange to have an original copy sent to the Graduate School.
“The old way caused time delays because it took some universities a long time to process the request and some transcripts got lost in the mail,” said Greg Tipps, associate director for graduate admissions. “This new system, especially for the international students, is a big time saver and money saver.”
The Graduate School is also improving its communication with the campus’s individual graduate programs by improving its weekly applicant list. It’s now an electronic spreadsheet format that can be easily sorted and manipulated by departments, giving departments a ready-made tool for corresponding with applicants, as well as comparing and reviewing applicants.