2009
Moving Forward:
Strategic Planning for the
College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Endorsed by the
College of Behavioral & Social Sciences,
University of Maryland, College Park October 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND
Introduction
Mission & Vision Statement
Strengths, Weaknesses & Opportunities
1
1
2
THE STRATEGIC PLAN
Part 1: Undergraduate Education
Vision
Current State of Undergraduate Program
Goals & Strategies
7
7
8
Part 2: Graduate Education
Vision
Current State of Graduate Program
Goals & Strategies
13
13
14
Part 3: Research & Scholarship
Vision
Context
Goals & Strategies
19
19
19
Part 4: Partnerships, Outreach & Engagement
Vision
23
Goals & Strategies
23
Moving Forward:
The College of Behavioral & Social Sciences >>
THE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR THE
COLLEGE OF BEHAVIORAL & SOCIAL SCIENCES
In our strategic plan we follow the structure of the campus plan in discussing undergraduate
education, graduate education, research and partnership. Strategic indicators and critical
enablers discussed separately in the campus plan are integrated into the earlier chapters of
the college plan.
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Overview and Background >>
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INTRODUCTION
The College’s Rise
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This strategic plan will serve as a blueprint for the growth and
development over the next 10 years for the College of
Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS), recognized both
nationally and internationally for excellence in research,
instruction and service. The future is bright, and we will build
upon our current strengths to move to the next level of
distinction.
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Our college has superb faculty engaged in cutting
edge research and productive outreach to local,
state, federal and global communities.
We have internationally recognized scholarship
that provides the bases of scientific and
behavioral research for disciplines beyond the
college.
The continued increase in rankings in the various
disciplines of our college is key to the university’s
improvement in national and international
rankings.
Our faculty are committed to providing excellence
in teaching.
A World-Class Social Sciences College is Vital to the
University
Social sciences at Maryland were ranked 18th in
the world in the 2007 Shanghai Jiao Tong
University study.
The Academic Analytics Faculty Productivity Index
ranked Maryland social sciences 10th in the
country.
That study singled out a number of our
departments and programs: criminology – 1st;
cognitive science – 5th; political science – 7th; and
geography – 9th.
U.S. News & World Report ranks a number of our
programs in the top tier of public institutions:
o Criminology – 1st
o Hearing and speech sciences
ƒ Speech pathology – 18th
ƒ Audiology – 24th
o Economics – 22nd overall, 7th among public
universities
ƒ Public finance specialty – 10th
ƒ International economics specialty – 15th
o Sociology – 20th overall, 10th among public
universities
ƒ Sex and gender specialty – 5th
ƒ Sociology of population – 8th
o Political science – 28th overall, 14th among
public universities
o Psychology – 40th overall, 21st among public
universities
ƒ Counseling psychology – 1st
ƒ Industrial organization specialty – 5th
The college will play an essential role in campus efforts to
improve its national and international rankings. Our peer
institutions all have four or more social science disciplines that
are in the top five. We contend that it is impossible for our
campus to move forward unless our college also advances.
The college faces a number of difficult challenges, particularly in
the context of a serious economic recession. Despite the
challenges this entails, we are committed to continue our rise as
a premier constellation of behavioral and social sciences
departments.
Our Strategic Plan: Scope and Structure
The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences has an
exceptional faculty that has received many national and
international honors. As we noted above, our faculty includes a
Nobel Prize winner and three members of the National
Academy of Sciences, in addition to 10 Distinguished University
Professors. Over the last four years 27 percent of the newly
named Distinguished Scholar-Teachers were from our college,
even though our faculty represents just 12 percent of the total
campus faculty.
Our plan includes four intertwined elements: research,
undergraduate education, graduate education and
engagement with the external community.
MISSION AND VISION STATEMENT
The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is committed to
conducting theoretical, experimental, field, and applied
scholarship of the highest quality, as recognized by our peers,
policy and decision makers and other stakeholders. The college
is committed to lead in developing new areas of research that
will significantly impact both scholarship and society. Our
A broad range of studies and rankings point to the productivity
of our faculty:
1
Overview and Background
politics (GVPT), and psychology (PSYC) are four of the five
largest undergraduate programs on campus and have a total of
more than 4,700 majors. African American studies (AASD),
anthropology (ANTH), and hearing and speech sciences (HESP)
each have just 6-10 tenured or tenure-track faculty; ECON, GVPT,
and PSYC each have 29-35. All of the departments except AASD
have graduate programs. In Fall 2009 the college had a total of
5,524 undergraduate majors. Additionally, the college provides
five concentrations in the interdisciplinary environmental
science and policy (ENSP) major, including: global
environmental change (geography); land use (geography);
marine and coastal management (geography); politics and
policy (government and politics); and society and
environmental issues (sociology).
research is of direct service to the campus, local communities,
the state and the nation. In the classroom and through direct
training and other research opportunities, our undergraduate
and graduate students understand, evaluate, and conduct basic
and applied research, becoming a new generation of highly
qualified and engaged behavioral and social science graduates.
The college’s undergraduate educational programs give our
students the knowledge and skills necessary to address the
pressing needs of individuals and society in a rapidly evolving
world. We will strengthen our commitment to provide a firstclass educational experience for our undergraduates, imparting
an education that demands critical thinking and intellectual
growth. Our students will have the skills valued by employers
immediately upon graduation. We will give our students who
wish to pursue graduate work the analytical skills and
background they need to be successful in the very best
graduate programs.
The college has 40 centers housed in departments and five
research centers that report directly to the dean: the Center for
Substance Abuse Research (CESAR); the Maryland Population
Research Center (MPRC); the National Consortium for the Study
of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START); the Public
Safety Training and Technical Assistance Program (PSTTAP); and
the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector
(IRIS). In addition, our college is the administrative home of the
Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) program, whose
director is a member of the college’s faculty.
The range and quality of graduate training in the College of
Behavioral and Social Sciences will be a primary factor in the
continuing rise of the University of Maryland in national and
international rankings. We will be a major source for top tier
universities seeking assistant professors and post-doctoral
fellows trained in cutting edge, interdisciplinary social and
behavioral science, as well as for public and private sector
organizations nationwide seeking social and behavioral
scientists prepared to address social issues and polices of prime
importance to the nation and world.
Momentum
A central focus of the college's scholarship is the study of the
behavior of individuals and societies and the factors affecting
them. This focus allows us to make important contributions to
virtually every essential policy issue facing the state, the country
and the world. Researchers in our college have been involved in
many of the most important contemporary policy debates. For
example:
STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Strengths
Location
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The college is committed to take full advantage of the campus
location, within miles of the state capital, the nation’s capital,
and a huge variety of public and private research and policy
centers. Such proximity offers immense opportunities for both
undergraduate and graduate student training and experiential
learning and for faculty, whose expanding array of research
exploits and intersects with this institutional nexus and
information-rich environment.
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Quality and Breadth of Academic Programs
The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences includes 10
departments. As Table 1 shows, the departments vary greatly
in terms of number of faculty and majors. Criminology and
criminology justice (CCJS), economics (ECON), government and
2
Professor Raymond Paternoster of the
Department of Criminology has played an
important role in the ongoing debate in Maryland
over the death penalty. Professor Paternoster was
the author of the Maryland Death Penalty Study
(2003). He has worked directly with Governor
O'Malley's death penalty commission and he
headed the American Bar Association's Death
Penalty Moratorium Research Committee.
Professor Carmen Reinhart's recent papers and a
new book examine the current economic crisis in
historical perspective. These works are having an
impact on current debate about the crisis in the
economics profession, in the media and in policy
circles that is far greater than that of any other
single scholar.
Overview and Background
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Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for
Peace and Development, has played a key role in
Middle East policy debates for decades. He has
served as advisor to the United States Mission to
the United Nations (1990-91), as advisor to former
Congressman Lee Hamilton, and as a member of
the United States delegation to the Trilateral USIsraeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee,
which was mandated by the Wye River
Agreements. He also served on the Iraq Study
Group as a member of the Strategic Environment
Working Group.
The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations have
recognized the African American Studies
Department as one of the leaders among its peers
in the nation and the premier site for scholarship
on race, gender and labor.
Culture of Innovation, Collaboration and Partnership
Our faculty address problems from a broad range of
perspectives and use many different analytical approaches. For
example:
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Some of our faculty use sophisticated scientific
equipment in their research. Monita Chatterjee of
hearing and speech sciences studies ways to
improve the performance of cochlear implants. A
number of PSYC, ECON, and HESP faculty use
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to
study the neural mechanisms underlying human
cognition and language. In a later section we
present our plans regarding a new Brain
Imagining Center based upon a recently
successful National Science Foundation (NSF) bid.
Many of the geography faculty use satellite
remote sensing in their research on climate
change.
Other faculty rely on qualitative techniques. Tony
Whitehead in anthropology and Joseph
Richardson in African American studies are
ethnographers whose current research interests
focus on the social context of re-entry and the
reintegration of African American males into the
work force, their communities and families
following incarceration.
Some of the research in our college requires the
painstaking development of new, complex data
sets. Sonalde Desai and Reeve Vanneman in
sociology, in collaboration with the National
Council of Applied Research in Delhi, recently
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3
completed a multisectoral survey of 40,000
households across India that provides a rich
resource for research on the relationship between
poverty, gender, inequality and human
development. John Haltiwanger in economics
played a pivotal role in the U.S. Census Bureau’s
efforts to develop longitudinal establishment data
bases and longitudinal matched employeremployee data bases.
Many of our faculty work directly with individuals.
The Hearing and Speech Clinic has provided
speech, language and hearing services to
residents of the State of Maryland since 1949. The
department’s Language-Learning EarlyAdvantage Program (LEAP) serves as a research
laboratory to investigate the efficacy of
intervention strategies for specific language
impairment in young children while at the same
time providing an individualized communication
enrichment preschool program. The Center for
Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research
(CAPER) in the Department of Psychology is a
translational research center focused on
understanding the mechanisms underlying the
development and maintenance of addictive
behaviors and their co-occurring psychological
conditions including mood, anxiety and
personality disorders.
Some of our researchers look to our past and our
heritage. Mark Leone in anthropology has
directed Archaeology in Annapolis since 1981, a
project that focuses on the historical archaeology
of Annapolis. He has also done extensive field
work at the Wye House plantation where
Frederick Douglass was a slave. Paul Shackel in
anthropology has done extensive work on New
Philadelphia, Illinois. New Philadelphia was
established by Frank McWorter, a freed slave, in
Overview and Background
most productive faculty. While our college has been able to hire
a number of great scholars, they become obvious targets for our
peer universities who also want to improve their rankings.
Every year the college faces major challenges in retaining our
best scholars.
1836; the town was designated a National Historic
Landmark in January, 2009.
Weaknesses
Undergraduate Education Program
Facilities
The campus strategic plan lays out a bold and ambitious vision
for enhancing undergraduate education. The plan says in part
that the campus will:
We generate roughly twice as many credit hours and twice as
many research dollars per square foot of space as does the
campus overall. We are badly in need of additional workspace
and enhanced classroom and seminar facilities.
. . . increase academic rigor in instruction; increase the
role of tenured/tenure-track faculty in undergraduate
teaching and the number of undergraduate classes
taught by tenured/tenure-track faculty; reduce
undergraduate class size; promote the development of
departmental/collegiate honors and other programs that
challenge high-achieving students; promote teaching
activities that help to establish high standards and set
high expectations for students in introductory courses;
increase the global scope and content of our programs;
recruit and enroll high-achieving undergraduates and
improve the diversity of students. . .
Opportunities
Research and Scholarship
We have set an ambitious goal to improve the rankings of our
departments. 1 By 2019:
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Our college is the key to realizing this vision. We play such a
pivotal role in undergraduate education that it is impossible for
the campus to meet its goals unless the college is in a position
to realize these same goals. The college has nearly 5,600
majors; to put this in perspective, we have roughly the same
number of undergraduates (in all majors) as Brown, Stanford or
Duke. The college grants nearly 30 percent of all Maryland
undergraduate degrees in most years. And our impact extends
well beyond our majors – nearly half of all of the students in our
undergraduate classes are from other colleges. If the college
wishes to challenge our best students, it has to be an exciting
and attractive opportunity for the brightest high school seniors
in the state. If we do not offer a rigorous undergraduate
curriculum because our college is so large, then the campus
cannot reach its goals.
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Two of our departments will be in top 10 (CCJS
and GEOG).
Three will be in top 15 (CCJS, ECON and GEOG).
Six will be in top 20 (CCJS, ECON, GEOG, GVPT,
HESP and SOCY).
All eight departments that have doctoral
programs will be in the top 30.
We recognize that this is an ambitious goal. We also will take
steps to increase external research funding. Our FY08
sponsored research expenditures were $42.8 million. This is the
third highest on campus, behind computer, mathematics, and
physical sciences and engineering. It is very unusual for the
social sciences to generate this level of support given that there
is far less funding available from external sources than in many
other fields. Our sponsored research portfolio was second
nationally only to the University of Michigan in terms of external
research funding in the social sciences. These measures will
also help us in our effort to recruit excellent graduate students
and provide them with the training essential to ensure their
competitive position as they enter the academic and
professional job markets.
With such large demand, we face tremendous challenges. Our
average undergraduate class size, 63 students, is the highest of
all of the colleges and is nearly double the campus average,
thus diminishing the likelihood of class discussions, student
presentations, and close faculty-student interaction. Students
confront problems accessing behavioral and social science
courses in the major they wish to take.
Keeping the State’s Best Students at Maryland
We have articulated bold and exciting strategies for improving
undergraduate education in the college. We envision a
program that includes: smaller classes; new Bachelor of Science
Retention of Excellent Faculty
1
We have not included JPSM in the discussion of rankings. The
only comparable program is at the University of Michigan (which is
a partner in JPSM).
Our success will depend on our ability to recruit and retain our
4
Overview and Background
last 10 years, there are signals that the situation is improving,
with the acquisition of the former journalism building. When
the School of Journalism moves into its new facility in Spring
2010, work will begin to thoroughly rejuvenate the building
they now occupy. We have developed a plan to house several
units there, whose primary emphasis lies in international
relations. Their proximity will provide us with an opportunity to
build upon the synergies associated with their inter-related
research projects. As behavioral and social scientists, we are
well aware of the importance of physical proximity for fostering
synergistic interactions. Multidisciplinary research, especially,
requires regular exchange of ideas and approaches. A state-ofthe-art facility, centrally located to the college, offers the chance
for our leading researchers to meet, exchange ideas and create
new initiatives. We contend that our success in this new facility
will make the case for the long-anticipated and long-delayed
behavioral and social sciences research building even more
compelling today than it was when it was originally proposed
10 years ago.
degrees in government and politics and economics; enhanced
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degree requirements in
psychology; new undergraduate research opportunities; a law
and society certificate or pre-law program as either a College
Park Honors or College Park Scholars program; an Emerging
Behavioral and Social Scientist Program; and a College Honors
Program. Students, staff and faculty alike have highly diverse
backgrounds and this has generated both an impressive
breadth of course and program offerings and a lively level of
interest, motivation and skills for successfully pursuing the
issues so important in today’s globalized and multi-cultural
world. We will ensure the continuation of the college’s
excellent record at maintaining diversity in its undergraduate
programs. We will be the school of choice for the most talented
students from Maryland and surrounding states.
Diversity
Our college is among the most diverse academic communities
in the United States. Our plan is to take aggressive measures to
preserve and enhance the diversity of our curriculum, research
and people at every rank, including faculty and staff, and our
undergraduate and graduate student bodies.
Engagement with the External Community
Approximately 80 percent of our alumni remain in or return to
the Washington, D.C. area after graduation. The college will
accelerate its effort to strengthen ties to this important and
growing community, and more generally, to take better
advantage of our strategic location.
Facilities
Although we have received very little additional space over the
Table 1: Fall 2009 Majors and Tenure/Tenure-Track Faculty
College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Undergraduate
Majors
Graduate
Majors
Total
Majors
BSOS*
AASP
ANTH
CCJS
ECON
GEOG
GVPT
HESP
JPSM
PSYC
SOCY
5524
30
138
1233
1208
154†
1034‡
175
0
1120
406◊
871
0
36
80
133
76
144
100
40
82
79
6395
30
174
1313
1341
198
1130
275
40
1202
476
Tenure/Tenure
174
6
10
13
35
12
33
8
3
29
24
Track Faculty
* The college's majors include 26 undergraduate undecided students, 52 NACS graduate students and 49 geospatial
information sciences graduate students.
* The college faculty data includes the START Center.
† Data includes geography majors, geographic information science majors, and environmental science and policy majors
(concentrations: global environmental change; land use; and marine and coastal management).
‡ Data includes government and politics majors and environmental science and policy majors (concentration: politics and
policy).
◊ Data includes sociology majors and environmental science and policy majors (concentration: society and environmental
issues).
Source: IRPA, student data updated Fall 2009 and employee data updated January 2008.
5
to meet the needs of employers and the demands of graduate
schools. We will provide incentives to encourage faculty
contributions to undergraduate education. We will implement
lessons derived from outcome assessments and student
evaluations. We will employ new information technologies as
tools to improve the learning experience of students and
enhance faculty and advising efficiency. We will ensure the
continuation of the college’s excellent record of diversity in its
undergraduate programs.
Part 1:
Undergraduate Education >>
VISION
The aim of our college’s undergraduate program is to impart to
our students the knowledge and skills necessary to address the
pressing needs of individuals and society in a rapidly evolving
world. We do this by providing our undergraduates with an
education that demands critical thinking and intellectual
growth. We provide our students with a solid grounding in the
fundamentals before introducing them to the latest techniques,
knowledge and modes of analysis central to the diverse
disciplines of the behavioral and social sciences.
THE CURRENT STATE OF THE COLLEGE OF BEHAVIORAL AND
SOCIAL SCIENCES UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM
Strengths
One of the college’s leading strengths is our distinguished,
dedicated and world-renowned faculty body. Even in the face
of very large student numbers, these faculty are eager to bring
their research experience to the classroom. They are successful
in obtaining top graduate school and professional placements
for their students. Undergraduates who choose to major in our
college in their first year are highly talented: in Fall 2009 they
had an average SAT of 1292 and a high school grade point
average of 3.94. Every year our college graduates large
numbers of students with very high grade point averages. We
give a high quality education to our very best students, but we
can do better.
Our vision for the future is to pursue the ambitious goals laid
out in the campus strategic plan for enhancing undergraduate
education. With appropriate resources, by 2019 the College of
Behavioral and Social Sciences will ensure that the depth,
breadth and overall quality of its undergraduate programs will
be a model for the campus. These programs will be the primary
reason the brightest students from across this nation and from
around the world pursue undergraduate degrees in the
behavioral and social sciences at the University of Maryland,
College Park. We will be the school of choice for the most
talented students from Maryland and surrounding states.
The university’s close proximity to Washington, D.C. offers
students unparalleled opportunities in international, federal,
nonprofit and for profit organizations. These opportunities are
further enhanced by the increasing number of behavioral and
social science research centers that incorporate undergraduate
students into their research and policy-oriented activities. This
complements the well-established contributions of living and
learning programs such as CIVICUS and the College Park
Scholars International Studies Program. One consequence of
encouraging such a community of faculty and students has
been a very active Dean’s Student Advisory Council, comprising
highly energized, informed and engaged students. The council
provides an opportunity for students to gain first-hand
experience in tackling important issues affecting the
undergraduate experience in the college.
Our best graduates will be trained so well that they will thrive
on arrival at the best graduate programs in the world. They will
be competitive for the best positions in government and in the
private sector. All students will possess valuable skills to offer to
employers immediately upon graduation. We will continue to
provide to the State of Maryland, and to the broader labor
market, talented graduates who can function effectively in
today's knowledge-based economy. Our graduates will become
responsible and informed community leaders who possess the
skills necessary to address the complex issues of a rapidly
evolving, diverse and international community. By fostering the
development of our students’ human capital, our college will be
a major contributor to the social, political and economic
development of the state.
The college has made an unwavering commitment to rigor and
excellence in all it undertakes, whether or not extra resources
flow to our college. We will remain steadfast in pursuing the
campus goals of reducing class sizes and increasing faculty-tostudent ratios. If extra resources do not flow, this will mean
increasing the quality of our programs through a reduction in
their size. Whatever the size of our programs, we will continue
to pursue quality by enhancing and upgrading our curriculum
The directors of undergraduate programs and academic
advisors do an outstanding job given the pressures of student
numbers. The college has high retention and graduation rates
among both first-year admits and majors who enter the college
as juniors.
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Part 1: Undergraduate Education
provide students with concrete career advice, coaching,
mentoring and networking.
Students, staff and faculty alike have highly diverse
backgrounds and this has generated both an impressive
breadth of course and program offerings and a lively level of
interest, motivation and skills for successfully pursuing the
issues so important in today’s globalized and multicultural
world.
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
Goal 1: Greater emphasis on closer interactions between our
college’s faculty and students.
Weaknesses
Strategies
The student-to-tenure-track faculty ratio in our college is the
second highest on campus, a consequence of low funding
relative to student demand for the college’s teaching. As a
consequence, predominantly large classes diminish the quality
of interactions between faculty and students at all levels. Too
many classes are taught by temporary adjuncts or graduate
students. These factors can undermine academic rigor, deny
students the opportunity to engage in specialized research
assignments and deprive them of mentoring from established
faculty, lessening the possibility of obtaining influential
recommendation letters.
A.
Reduce average class sizes. In the classroom, the chief
inhibiting factor to close interactions is class size. By the
year 2019, the college aims to lower its average class size to
the campus average of 36 students (down from the current
63). All upper level courses will be capped at 25 students.
By Fall 2010, the college will implement a plan to reduce
the gap between college and campus class size averages by
an amount each year that is appropriate given the above
goal.
B.
Limit size of 400-level classes. The current strategy is to
begin reducing the average 400-level class size by
restricting the majority of such courses to majors only.
C.
Restrict double majors. The college will restrict the number
of double majors by imposing minimum levels of academic
performance.
It is significant that there is a campus goal to attract the best
students, yet most students majoring in the behavioral and
social sciences suffer from a bi-modal distribution of student
quality, with large numbers of high quality students and even
larger numbers of less well-qualified. The latter
disproportionately consist of external transfer students and
those rejected from limited enrollment programs outside the
college. This bi-modal distribution makes teaching very difficult
in junior and senior courses.
D.
Increase presence of tenured and tenure-track faculty in the
classroom. Master teachers will be added, where
appropriate, to help reduce class sizes. Each faculty
member in the college will be required to teach at least one
undergraduate course each academic year. By Fall 2010
the college will recommend to the campus the specific
number of students to whom the college can provide a
quality education given different projections of the flow of
resources.
Within resource constraints, the college will continue to pursue
existing opportunities for increasing efficiency and raising
quality. Ongoing curriculum and program reviews herald
productive enhancements; high quality faculty create
opportunities for undergraduate students to work at the cutting
edge of social science research; our location gives plentiful
internship opportunities for students to gain experience in
behavioral and social science applications; our subject matter
naturally leads to enhanced study abroad programs to promote
greater appreciation of global social science issues; our college
includes disciplines that naturally lead to interdisciplinary
studies inside and outside the college; and we are generating
more opportunities for interactions with college alumni to
Outside the classroom the chief factor limiting faculty-student
interaction is the sheer number of students per faculty who seek
special attention. The above elements of the college’s strategy
will immediately reduce the number of students per faculty
member and provide students with greater opportunities to
interact on an individual basis. By 2019, no student will
complain about a lack of interaction with faculty leading to
difficulties in obtaining letters of recommendation.
Chronic low levels of funding negatively affect other elements
of quality. The number of academic advisors per major is small,
instructional facilities are often outdated and poorly
maintained, and there is an absence of communal meeting
places for students, a particular problem for the four largest
academic major departments.
Goal 2: Renewed commitment to academic rigor.
A focus on student numbers impedes a commitment to quality.
The college must renew its commitment to the highest
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Part 1: Undergraduate Education
offerings and to produce a strategy for incorporating and
monitoring academic rigor in all major courses. Superior
academic excellence will be the standard, and faculty will
be expected to demonstrate excellence in classroom
performance.
academic standards. In order to recruit and retain the most
talented students, it is imperative that our undergraduate
programs become known for demanding academic rigor. When
rigor is the norm, we will enhance the prospects for our
graduates to attend premier graduate and professional schools
and to enter the professional workforce at a high entry level.
Goal 3: Increase the yield of top high school students admitted
to the university as majors in the behavioral and social
sciences.
Strategies
A.
Create new high-end degree modules. As resources become
available to hire additional faculty, the Departments of
Government and Politics and Economics will offer new
rigorous Bachelor of Science program concentrations to
attract and educate the very best students, and psychology
will strengthen its Bachelor of Science program to enhance
rigor.
B.
Launch a new honors college. As more outstanding faculty
are hired, the college will offer a honors college to recruit
and educate the best and brightest incoming students in
the behavioral and social sciences. Grounded in the idea of
a liberal education, this new program will serve as a
weighty complement to the current disciplinary-specific
education of undergraduates.
C.
Develop new program in law-related studies. As new
resources are available we will develop a new program to
meet the needs of our students who plan to go to law
school. Several alternative formats: the new program
might take the form of a pre-law certificate or a new
College Park Scholars or honors program. The program will
include courses from several departments including ECON,
GVPT, and CCJS, and courses from outside the college, such
as history and philosophy. The program will also include
internship opportunities; the extensive college alumni
network in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Annapolis will
be an invaluable asset to the proposed new program.
D.
E.
Strategies
Elevate expectations in current curricula. As faculty-student
ratios fall, problem sets, writing exercises, research
assignments and oral presentations will be the norm for all
upper-level courses. Behavioral and social science classes
will allow for formative faculty feedback to the student.
Intellectual discourse between faculty and students will be
enhanced by offering more courses that do not exceed 20
students. Such courses will be a natural link between the
regular curriculum and structured research opportunities
that will lead to independent research projects for our
undergraduate students.
Elevate program expectations. The college will require each
academic unit to re-evaluate its current major course
9
A.
Hire an undergraduate recruitment officer. The increases in
quality just outlined will naturally enhance the college’s
ability to attract the best and the brightest applicants to
the university. However, we must leverage this
opportunity. Many of the colleges and schools on campus
have a full-time staff person whose sole responsibility is
undergraduate recruitment. With current staff levels
insufficient compared to current and projected demands,
this is the model our college will adopt once additional
resources are available. A recruitment staff person would
meet an important need and allow the college to
effectively offer programs that could enhance the
recruitment of talented students to the campus. This
recruitment officer would develop recruitment materials,
create enrichment programs and coordinate recruitment
activities for the college.
B.
Expand Young Scholars Curriculum. Many talented
prospective students are not exposed to the wide variety of
research activities in which behavioral and social science
faculty engage. The college will offer a variety of new
courses through the Young Scholars Program to expose
middle and high school students to our various disciplines
and exciting research.
C.
Enhanced recruitment to emphasize diversity. Many talented
students of color from Maryland leave the state in order to
attend college. The college will develop enrichment
programs specifically for these middle and high school
students to increase the attractiveness of the behavioral
and social science disciplines and to guide their academic
preparation for admission to the university and study in our
college.
D.
Provide merit scholarships for the best and the brightest of the
college’s entering class. This will be part of the responsibility
of the new undergraduate recruitment officer. The college
does not have full scholarships for incoming freshman or
transfer students that some of the other schools and
colleges on campus have. The college will charge its
Part 1: Undergraduate Education
•
especially encourage these faculty members
to work with the Center for Teaching
Excellence. Incentives for faculty who do
improve their evaluations after taking
advantage of training opportunities will be
provided.
High end: Faculty members who have the
best course evaluations will be encouraged to
develop mentoring relationships with junior
faculty. Incentives will be proposed, whether
honorary or monetary, as a reward for faculty
members for these mentoring relationships.
Each department will be tasked with developing specific
strategies to improve quality of instruction. This can be
accomplished by standing committees already in existence in
each department and will utilize the results of the learning
outcomes assessments and course evaluation.
development office to identify donors who will endow full
scholarships for our college’s freshman and transfer
students.
Goal 4: Improve support for and management of the college’s
instructional program so that our students are provided with
the tools and guidance needed for an excellent undergraduate
education.
Goal 5: Enhance the advising system, enabling students to
make informed decisions on major, course selection and
preparation for education or employment after graduation.
Strategies
Strategies
A.
Increased technology-enhanced instruction. An excellent
undergraduate education is predicated on instructors
having access to the best technologies. Our college will
renew efforts to enhance resource flows for such purposes.
The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), the Office of
Information Technology (OIT) and the Office of Academic
Computing Services (OACS) will be used to help faculty
develop teaching strategies that are based on current
research and on the latest technology. Creating a culture
where excellent teaching is the norm will benefit
undergraduates enrolled in our courses. Providing
incentives to faculty to improve instruction will help to
implement this strategy.
B.
Exploit learning outcome assessment information. The
college will use learning outcomes assessments to monitor
which courses enhance student learning. As data become
available that indicate student success in achieving
outcomes, this information will be shared with faculty to
encourage course revisions if appropriate.
C.
Use course evaluation data.
• Low end: The college will implement stronger
approaches to improve the performance of
faculty members who are found to have
course evaluations significantly below
expectations. Department chairs will
10
A.
Reduce advisor-student ratio. A 2003 National Academic
Advising Association study reports that an average advising
caseload at four year colleges nationwide is 153 students
per full-time advisor. The college's average caseload is 271
students per advisor. In the larger departments, caseloads
are upwards of 400. The college will reduce the advisorstudent ratio.
B.
Enhance the advising efficiency. Efficiency is enhanced by
better advising. Through increases in the availability of
advisers, students can make better informed decisions
about major requirements, course selection, and
professional and graduate program preparation. Informed
students graduate in a timely manner and do better in
starting their careers or entering graduate schools.
Moreover, in the past few years, advising has become more
reliant on evolving technology. Training for advisors in
how to utilize new technologies will increase efficiency to a
greater extent.
C.
Expand scope of advisor responsibilities. Our advisers will
expand the scope of their responsibilities. As students look
forward to life after graduation, we need to help them
develop their career plans by developing programs that
address individual career development objectives. For
students who are thinking about applying to the university,
Part 1: Undergraduate Education
it is important for advisors in our college to develop
relationships with colleagues in the Maryland community
colleges, which send a large number of their students to
our campus. By imparting a better understanding of the
demands of the university, implementing assistance with
the transition to our campus, and facilitating the transfer of
courses, our college would produce better success for our
transfer students. Relationships between specific
behavioral and social science majors and Maryland
community colleges will encourage the seamless transition
of students to our college. This will address a large concern
mentioned in other sections of this document—the varying
quality of transfer students who come to the university.
D.
Increase student opportunities. Advisers will develop
stronger relations with departmental honors and program
directors to provide graduate school preparation
workshops, to organize procedures that help students to
access summer research internships and to create
opportunities for students to identify individual research
opportunities with faculty.
11
our college is characterized by a notable degree of
heterogeneity across and in some cases, even within
departments. Some programs resemble those found in the life
sciences, physical sciences and engineering programs, while
others resemble arts and humanities programs. Still others
utilize interdisciplinary training models that push the frontiers
of collaborative, cutting edge training and science across
University of Maryland, College Park colleges and schools (such
as NACS) and even beyond the university (such as JPSM), and
still others develop skills required to deliver services and/or
meld research and clinical practice skills (e.g., psychology and
hearing and speech sciences).
Part 2:
Graduate Education >>
VISION
Our goal is excellence in graduate education, broadly
construed. To this end, the college will endeavor to balance the
needs of our highly ranked research doctoral programs and our
highly ranked graduate programs that prepare working
professionals (such as hearing and speech sciences, survey
methods, criminology and clinical psychology).
Placement
THE CURRENT STATE OF THE COLLEGE OF BEHAVIORAL AND
SOCIAL SCIENCES GRADUATE PROGRAMS
Many of the college’s doctoral programs have placement
records that compare very favorably with peer universities such
as UNC-Chapel Hill, Berkeley and Michigan. For example, a 2007
article in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education concludes that
Maryland’s Criminology and Criminal Justice programs
produced more “academic stars” than any other program in the
country. In the last two years, economics placed students at
Cornell University (two students; 18th in the most recent U.S.
News & World Report rankings of economics programs), New
York University (12th in the U.S. News & World Report rankings),
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management (4th
in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of business schools),
and the London School of Economics (widely regarded as the
leading economics department outside the United States).
Overview of Graduate Training in Our College
The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences comprises 10
departments focused on understanding the antecedents,
consequences and regulators of behavior regardless of level of
focus (neural, individual, group, organizational or societal).
Unlike other universities, in which these departments are
usually housed in different colleges (e.g., College of Arts and
Sciences or College of Business), the University of Maryland
recognizes that many of the problems the world faces today
and will face in the future are the result of the increasingly
dense network of interactions between and among individuals,
institutions and societies who are physically separated but
politically, economically, socially, culturally and environmentally
connected. Our college is optimally situated to do research on
these problems due to the associations fostered among the
separate disciplines by the college. It is through synergistic
efforts that creative ideas can be generated to solve these new
and complex problems.
Full-time and Part-Time Students
The campus strategic plan argues that as a rule, all doctoral
students should be full-time students. We offer two
observations on this issue. First, for most of our college’s
programs that is already the case. In economics, psychology,
sociology, and NACS at least 90 percent of the doctoral students
are full-time; in all but one of the rest, between 80 and 90
percent of the students are full-time.
All of the college’s departments offer graduate training, with
the exception of the African American Studies Department. The
graduate education programs in our college are designed to
prepare students for research, policy and service careers in the
behavioral and social sciences. Our departments provide
training at the master’s and doctoral levels and for those
interested in both applied training and research training.
Although the focus and tenor of this section will reflect the
emphasis we place on doctoral education, it is important to
note that master’s level education is important in many of our
disciplines.
Second, there is a strong case that it would be unwise to try to
reduce the number of part-time students much further. Dr.
Mote often describes our proximity to the federal government,
international organizations, and “think tanks” as “our unfair
advantage.” Our location implies we should have at least some
part-time students in our doctoral programs:
•
While the goals and structure of most of our programs resemble
those of other leading social science colleges and departments,
13
Some of our economics doctoral students will
have opportunities to complete their dissertations
while working at the International Monetary Fund
or the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Part 2: Graduate Education
•
•
•
•
•
candidates who will enhance the diversity in our graduate
programs. These special cases are reviewed by the dean’s office
and are funded only with the dean’s approval.
Geography has had part-time graduate students
from NASA, USGS, NOAA and NGA who pursued
their Ph.D.s while conducting much of their
research as federal employees.
The U.S. Census Bureau might decide to allow one
of its employees to pursue a Ph.D. in JPSM while
continuing to work part-time.
HESP Ph.D. students can gain excellent research
experience while working at NIH.
A very strong government and politics student
might choose to begin dissertation research while
taking a temporary position on Capitol Hill.
The Smithsonian might want one of its people to
pursue a Ph.D. part-time in anthropology.
Block Grant Fellowships
Block grants for fellowships offered through the graduate
school are an invaluable tool in our efforts to recruit and
educate exceptional graduate students. It would be impossible
for our graduate programs to compete with leading public
universities like Michigan, Berkeley and UCLA, let alone private
universities like Harvard, Princeton and Stanford without these
funds.
We are, however, very concerned about the distribution of block
grant fellowship funds across campus. The first row of Table 2
shows the history of block grant fellowships in our college over
the last six years. As that table shows, the block grant funds we
received from the graduate school fell from $979,900 in 2004 to
$645,700 predicted for Fall 2009. This represents a drop of 34
percent; in real terms, our college’s block grant fellowship funds
have been cut nearly in half since 2004.
We will thus allow flexibility to be used to attract or retain the
intellectual leaders we are seeking to train. Allowing some
room for those who are taking advantage of our location can
lead to interesting and productive cross-pollination.
Diversity
We are proud of our record of accomplishments in fostering
diversity in our doctoral programs. According to NSF data,
Maryland ranks 3rd in the country in the number of Ph.D.s
granted to African Americans in the behavioral and social
sciences since 1998. Over the same period, Maryland ranked
8th in the number of Ph.D.s to all underrepresented minorities
in the behavioral and social sciences since 1998.
Our college has used its own funds to offset part of this
decrease. Last year we gave our programs $211,000 to
augment the $673,500 from the graduate school. This is a clear
sign of our college’s commitment to excellence in our graduate
programs. It is not at all clear that we will be able to maintain
this level of support in light of pending budget cuts.
We lost block grant fellowship funds because the campus
shifted from an allocation model that focused on the strength of
individual graduate programs to a model that – for all intents
and purposes – allocates funds based on program size (40
percent of the allocation is based on number of doctoral
students and 40 percent is based on the number of doctoral
degrees awarded). As might be expected, our college finds it
ironic that the campus felt strongly that the best way to allocate
graduate student resources was based on size of program, but
has largely rejected that model at the undergraduate level.
The college participates in an alliance with the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Florida, the
University of Miami and Howard University to broaden the
participation of under-represented doctoral recipients in social,
behavioral and economic doctoral programs. We are
generously supported through the National Science Foundation
Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program,
support made only to those universities that have a
demonstrated track record in training diverse students. These
funds allow us to augment our efforts to attract students to our
programs through our summer training program, support our
own undergraduate and doctoral students through travel and
research activities, provide research enhancement experiences
to our doctoral students, and support our departments as they
develop their own strategies and activities.
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
Goal 1: Our faculty remain our primary asset with regard to
graduate education. Therefore, our first goal is to improve the
capacity of our already impressive faculty so that they may
provide a top-notch education to our graduate students. We
will accomplish this by building collaboration among the
departments, the dean’s office, and the university to allocate
resources to increase faculty numbers and quality, and
The college recognizes the need to provide attractive funding
packages in order to attract the best and brightest to our
graduate programs. The college sets aside additional funds
each year for departments to access when there are special
targets of opportunity to attract exceptional doctoral training
14
Part 2: Graduate Education
therefore their ability to provide quality mentoring
relationships with graduate students.
Strategies
A.
Leverage the resources of the college and university
through centers, partnerships, collaborations and other
incentives so that faculty can simultaneously strengthen
their research portfolios while providing excellent research
experiences and mentoring to graduate students. Funds
for redistribution will be allocated through a mechanism
that documents how the quality of faculty research and the
quality of graduate education are both enhanced.
B.
Increase the number of our faculty working on the cutting
edge of science in their discipline. These faculty are the
best models for the education of graduate students, and
we will work with the provost to identify our faculty needs
and seek assistance in recruiting and retaining these
faculty.
faculty or others inexperienced with educating and training
graduate students.
Goal 2: Successful graduate training programs rely on
outstanding research activities and facilities in which to
immerse their students. Our goal is to intensify the linkages
between faculty research and graduate education, and to
enhance graduate educational opportunities through the
existing research centers and those centers and initiatives
proposed in the research section of this strategic plan.
D.
We will develop a college-wide research forum for our
graduate students in which graduate programs will be
encouraged to contribute and participate. For disciplinespecific reasons, departments will develop (or continue)
their own programs. The goals of such a forum will be to
expose graduate students to the wide range of research
conducted in our college, foster collaborations
(interdisciplinary and discipline specific), and serve as a
venue for students to present their research and receive
formative and constructive feedback.
E.
We will work with the Office of the Vice President for
Research to disseminate information about research
opportunities for graduate students on campus and in the
metropolitan area.
Strategies
A.
B.
C.
We will strengthen the culture of graduate student
mentoring as a priority among the faculty by creating
incentives and removing work-load barriers.
Goal 3: Our goal is to enable students to take advantage of
every opportunity to develop the skills necessary to become
excellent independent researchers and professionals.
Existing research centers and newly planned initiatives (see
the research section of our strategic plan) will identify
activities that may provide unique graduate educational
opportunities. Participation in graduate education will be
part of the overall review of centers and new research
initiatives and will be a factor in judging the performance
of the centers and initiatives.
Strategies
A.
We will develop documents, handbooks and other
resources to be distributed among faculty to make them
more aware of best practices in graduate training in the
social and behavioral sciences and more aware of
opportunities and resources for graduate training on
campus and nationally. Proposed handbooks include one
for directors of graduate studies and another for junior
15
We will make the provision of an effective mix of funding
for our graduate students a priority. This mix of funding
will include the provision of fellowships, research
assistantships and teaching assistantships at various points
throughout their studies. Given the heterogeneity of our
training programs, it will not be the wisest course to fund
all students in the same manner (e.g., the campus strategic
plan goal of fully funded full-time students for the duration
of their educational program). We will rely on the
departments and specific graduate programs to explore
and determine the best, most appropriate mix of funding
for their students. (Please see the earlier section on block
Part 2: Graduate Education
grant funding for a discussion of the challenge of providing
adequate funding for our students.)
B.
We will use funds reallocated to our college from the
provost and from the graduate school’s block grant
fellowship program to move us toward our goal of
providing competitive levels of funding for our graduate
students. We will continue to use college funds to
supplement our block grant fellowship funding.
C.
We will increase the number of students competing for and
receiving graduate fellowships from the graduate school
and external sources by undertaking an aggressive
campaign to educate our students and faculty about
available support mechanisms and by providing guidance
and mentorship on the development of strong
applications. We will work with the Office of the Vice
President for Research and the graduate school to identify
sources of external funding for students in the social and
behavioral sciences and we will provide that information to
our graduate students in an effective, accessible manner.
D.
E.
We will seek to identify and successfully compete for a
larger number of graduate training grants. We will
accomplish this by encouraging our research centers and
new research initiatives to build training collaborations
(especially interdisciplinary) aimed at strengthening
graduate education.
B.
Each department will articulate a process for mentoring
graduate students in their discipline. Programs will utilize
exit interviews with graduate students to identify
successful mentors and mentoring processes and apply this
information as needed to improve the graduate
educational experience in their department. The dean’s
office will work with units to secure resources necessary to
improve mentoring activities.
C.
The college will work with departments to develop
interdisciplinary as well as discipline-specific training to
foster students’ abilities in grant writing, professional
manuscript preparation, conference presentation skills and
teaching. Outcomes of these efforts will be measured by
the number of professional achievements (conference
presentations, research publications) seen during the
course of students’ academic programs.
D.
Currently, our severe facility and space constraints make it
impossible for many departments to provide adequate and
up-to-date research and work/study spaces for all their
graduate students. When the university and our college
address the serious space and facility shortcomings in our
departments, proposals for improvements will also include
providing adequate research and work/study space for
graduate students.
Goal 5: Recruit, retain and graduate the highest caliber
students who reflect our national diversity.
We will establish a college-level fund to provide
dissertation support, support for pilot studies, summer
training and research fellowships, and travel to professional
conferences.
Strategies
A.
Each program will undertake a review of its graduate
application pool, acceptance, enrollment and retention
data, progress to degree data, and graduation data on a
yearly basis to scan for best practices, identify barriers and
identify areas in need of improvement. Our college has
already developed a report for this purpose (GASPPS:
Graduate Application, Support, Progress, and Placement
Survey).
B.
We will work with each graduate program to develop a
recruitment, enrollment, retention and placement plan for
diverse students that draws from the review described in
goal five, strategy “A.” These recruitment and retention
plans will be presented to members of the college’s
directors of graduate studies group for peer feedback and
for identification of best practices that might be adopted
by other programs in the college. Each recruitment and
retention plan must describe concrete plans for recruiting a
diverse graduate student body and plans for reducing any
Goal 4: Work with our departments to adopt the best practices
and essential elements for excellence in graduate education
within their specific disciplines.
Strategies
A.
Each department will review and adjust curricula to reflect
changes in knowledge and technical skills required of
successful program graduates, and we will hold
departments accountable through the a dean’s office
review of departments. When external reviews of
programs identify programmatic needs or additional
resources that could move programs significantly further in
their respective rankings, the dean’s office will work with
programs to allocate or advocate for the necessary
resources.
16
Part 2: Graduate Education
observed disparities across markers of progress,
accomplishment and placement.
C.
D.
E.
Goal 6: Our goal is to place our graduates in top tier
universities as faculty or post-doctoral fellows, or in important
research positions in international and federal agencies,
private industry or other highly visible organizations.
The dean’s office will contribute to recruitment and
retention resources provided by the graduate school’s
block grant fellowship fund to increase the amount of
funds available for fellowships or other training support
enhancements. These resources will be allocated in a way
that aligns the graduate funding with the university’s and
the college’s strategic plan for graduate programs.
Strategies
Each department will identify potential undergraduate
feeder programs for its discipline, including those that
enroll significant numbers of under-represented
populations, and will develop plans to actively recruit these
students.
A.
As just stated, each program will develop a plan for
monitoring and evaluating placement unique to its own
curricular goals and discipline. We will pay special
attention to ensure that disparities in placement of our
diverse students do not occur.
B.
Departments will work with their alumni to mentor,
network and facilitate placement of their current students
and recent graduates.
Each program will review its Web site to improve the ability
of prospective graduate students to explore graduate
education opportunities and learn about the programs in
each department.
Table 2: Source of Block Grant Fellowship Funding for College of Behavioral & Social Sciences Students:
Graduate School
BSOS
Total
Fall 2004
$979,874
$83,446
$1,063,320
Fall 2005
$710,000
$175,197
$885,197
Fall 2006
$670,000
$174,665
$844,665
17
Fall 2007
$680,600
$183,245
$863,845
Fall 2008
$673,500
$211,048
$884,548
Fall 2009
$645,700
$195,140
$840,840
CONTEXT
Part 3:
Research and Scholarship >>
Much of our research benefits from substantial external funding
and currently such funding places us 2nd in the nation.
Furthermore, many of the opportunities discussed below are
capable of attracting very substantial external resources.
Success for all types of research requires resources to attract the
best faculty and to provide them with appropriate levels of
support. Perhaps the greatest constraint in developing our
research activities is the fact that our departments are strikingly
and disproportionately understaffed to fulfill their teaching
mission, and this situation places undue burdens on the
deployment of faculty time for research.
VISION
Our goal is always to achieve excellence in scholarship, and to
create and teach great behavioral and social science. Behavioral
and social scientists study human phenomena at every level of
analysis, from the micro-processes within the human mind, to
the actions and decisions of individual agents, to the processes
that structure social, cultural, economic and political systems.
Integration across these broad levels of analysis is essential for
scientific progress and for understanding and addressing
pressing social issues such as economic and political instability,
societal and individual health, growing racial, ethnic, and
gender diversity, crime and terrorism, drug addiction, human
responses to global change, and threats to social justice. In
addressing these issues, behavioral and social scientists extend
their reach to other disciplines and connect with the
environmental, computational and life sciences.
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
Goal 1: The college will work substantially to improve
opportunities to perform research and expand its research
activities.
Strategies
Members of the college will develop many new research
initiatives, several of which are inherently interdisciplinary.
Several of the college’s most successful initiatives in the last
decade have been multidisciplinary efforts bringing together
outstanding faculty from different departments to create new
mixes of colleagues that generate new ideas and research
strategies through cross-fertilization. The Maryland Population
Research Center, for example, combines a broad range of social
sciences. The Joint Program in Survey Methodology focuses on
creating expertise in a research method common to all
behavioral and social disciplines.
A.
Improved balance between research and teaching
expectations.
• Increase faculty in those units with very high
numbers of majors.
• Seek increases in graduate students and
support staff.
• Improve rewards for faculty who are
successful as scholar-teachers.
B.
Improve infrastructure.
• Increased space – need to develop focused
plans for the use of the behavioral and social
sciences research building.
• Need for new specialized facilities, notably a
Brain Imaging Center.
• Carry out strategic assessment of
improvements in existing physical
infrastructure and paying particular attention
to refurbishment of specialized laboratory
facilities, especially in psychology.
• Seek opportunities for extra university
funding for facilities improvement (e.g., from
NSF).
• Carry out a strategic assessment of
computing needs in the college and develop
an implementation plan to satisfy them.
C.
New activities must promote the diversity goals of the
college.
Members of the college will always work to bring the benefits of
their world-class research to graduate and undergraduate
programs both in the classroom and in the laboratory, leading
to published papers and student participation in conferences.
Increased resources should be allocated to improve research
opportunities for both undergraduates and graduates.
In developing our research programs we will continue to forge
linkages with local, state, national and international
partnerships. The last in particular is a major strength of the
college: our faculty have active research collaborations in
numerous countries throughout the world.
19
Part 3: Research and Scholarship
•
Enhance the university’s national reputation
as a leader in producing scholars among
under-represented minorities.
Goal 2: The college will foster enhanced research activities
within academic departments and centers.
Strategies
A.
Maintain and improve the strengths of existing academic
departments.
• Any new resources the college receives must
be used to strengthen individual
departments. New resources therefore have
to be devoted to maintaining and
strengthening core research activities of
departments and units.
• Each unit will develop plans allowing them to
claim national or international pre-eminence
in at least one subfield.
•
•
E.
B.
Improve recognition of departmental contributions.
• Ensure that faculty contributions through
research units are monitored and recorded.
New policies are being adopted in the college
to ensure and promote mutual benefits to
departments and interdisciplinary centers.
• Benefits to departments are in part financial
(e.g., DRIF return) but at least as important is
that departments are properly recognized for
the research that their tenured faculty
perform in extra departmental centers.
C.
Hire and retain outstanding faculty.
• Every unit must develop a strategic hiring
plan in keeping with their own strategic
plans.
• Reduce teaching loads for faculty who are
active in research, especially for more junior
faculty, to encourage grant preparation and
research development.
• Reward faculty who are actively engaged in
research with incentives such as travel
money, research support, resident assistant
support and reduced teaching loads.
• Work to improve diversity, taking into
account the under-representation of
minorities.
D.
Improve staff support for grant preparation
departmentally and at the college level.
The college recognizes that small units in
particular will benefit from improved support
for grant preparation at the college level and
steps are being taken to remedy this.
Allocate college funding more strategically to foster future
research activities.
• More strategic focusing of college and unit
resources to act as a stimulus for new
activities, encouraging both disciplinary
research and cross-unit interdisciplinary
research that benefits departments.
• In developing new activities it will be
necessary to demonstrate either that these
are essential for the success of the behavioral
and social sciences on campus or that this
new activity will be uniquely successful.
• New initiatives must demonstrate that they
will achieve national or international
prominence.
• New initiatives must make good use of and
build on existing faculty strengths.
Goal 3: The college will implement strategies to foster the
creation of major new interdisciplinary research activities.
Strategies
A.
Improve support for seeking external grant and contract
funding.
20
Expansion of multidisciplinary activities.
• Seed funding of research across departmental
boundaries.
• New resources will also be used to support
new, often interdisciplinary initiatives. In
deciding which of these initiatives should be
supported the college will use the following
criteria to prioritize them. a) New
Part 3: Research and Scholarship
interdisciplinary activities must demonstrably
strengthen units within the college, for
example through the recruitment of
outstanding scholars to those departments
and by enhancing research opportunities for
graduate and undergraduate students in
departmental programs. b) Centers outside
of units should only be encouraged when
they facilitate interdisciplinary research that
would be impossible to achieve within
individual academic units and when they
strengthen individual departments and units.
c) In setting up new centers, careful attention
must be paid to their future financial
sustainability. New centers must be capable
of raising significant resources in the short to
medium term. Centers should help with the
acquisition of grants, for example, through
provision of high level disciplinary and
interdisciplinary grant support. Successful
centers typically continue to receive some
state funding in the longer terms.
B.
•
Three new interdisciplinary centers will be established in
the next one to two years.
• Brain Imaging Center. Based on the successful
NSF bid for an fMRI, an interdisciplinary Brain
Imagining Center will be established. A
strength on which the center can build is
college and campus-wide expertise in
cognitive science and neuroscience, active
research programs in these domains, and
research infrastructure that now supports an
impressive level of research productivity.
Neuroimaging techniques are being rapidly
developed for the study of central questions
in behavioral and social sciences, including
racial prejudice, criminal behavior and
psychopathy, cross cultural differences and
similarities in human functioning, and
political attitudes, to name just some of the
relevant topics.
• Center for International Studies. We propose
to create the Center for International Studies
to serve as an umbrella organization for the
international research in our college. The
center will coordinate, encourage, develop,
support, and provide oversight for the
programs and activities of institutional units,
interface with institutions both in this country
and abroad, support teaching and research,
and be a visible face for international
•
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activities at the university. It will also provide
a clearing house for these programs and
assist with the logistics of travel and living
abroad.
Center for Human Dimensions of Global
Change. The proposed Center for Human
Dimensions of Global Change will have as its
primary focus research from a social sciences
perspective on how the earth’s environment
is being altered by human activities and how
humans will deal with these dramatic
changes. The center would focus on the
impacts of climate and land use change on
human systems, on human vulnerability,
resilience adaptation and mitigation to global
change as they relate to key areas such as
sustainable food, fiber and water supply,
health and global change and patterns of
resource consumption. The center would
explicitly carry out research on socioeconomic factors such as the relationships
between institutions, governance and the
environment, the impact of the current
demographic explosion on human and
environmental systems, the impacts and
sustainability of urban growth, especially in
developing countries, and the importance of
human welfare, livelihoods and social equity.
Other future centers. Future centers and other
interdisciplinary efforts will be developed in
the future using the criteria outlined above.
C.
Encourage interdisciplinary research.
• Seek opportunities for joint appointments
between units within and among colleges.
• Promote interdisciplinary communication
among productive faculty interested in
forging larger centers, and administrative
support for preparation of large scale
funding.
• Promote post-doctoral programs to enhance
research agenda of departments and centers.
D.
Review periodically all college-level centers.
• Introduce oversight committees or boards to
monitor and strengthen each center's
mission, function and budget.
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
Part 4:
Partnerships, Outreach
and Engagement >>
Goal 1: The college will successfully complete the Great
Expectations campaign and will then build a fundraising
program capable of generating increased giving in support of
the college’s priorities.
VISION
Strategies
A central focus of the college is the study of the behavior of
individuals and societies and the factors affecting them,
including climate change, economic globalization, international
political relations, domestic and international terrorism,
population and demographic shifts, ethnic and racial identity
and culture, to name only a few. Our research extends from the
smallest neuron to global networks and connectivity. Given
such far reaching implications, developing a sophisticated
external relations program charged with facilitating
collaboration and generating support to sustain our momentum
will be a high priority during the next 10 years.
The college’s external relations team will facilitate
collaborations and support for the college. Our alumni are our
largest audience. There are currently more than 51,000
behavioral and social science alums, with more than 80 percent
living in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia. The
diversity of our alumni reflects the diversity of the college.
The initiatives below are designed to bridge gaps between our
students, faculty, programs and projects, our alumni family, and
practitioners in the Washington, D.C. region. They are intended
to broaden educational offerings and opportunities for
undergraduate and graduate students in public policy and
applied research arenas. They are also intended to strengthen
and diversify the reach of the faculty by creating new
opportunities for university scholars to expand their research,
broaden their student contact, and to bring policy makers and
skilled professionals to College Park. In sum, these efforts
should spark a mutually beneficial relationship that raises the
level and profile of our college’s programs.
The campus strategic plan notes: “as word gets out, the pride of
our loyal alumni will grow even stronger, and the numbers of those
who maintain their ties will increase.” We predict that as our
alumni and friends learn more of our story, and devote their
time and energy into the college, they will be increasingly
willing to invest in our future.
23
A.
We will establish a qualified major gifts program, with an
extensive list of qualified major gift prospects.
• We will create a formalized stewardship
program connecting donors with their
scholarship recipient(s)/faculty chair/award
winner and provide the donors with an
annual report on the accomplishments their
contributions have allowed us to achieve.
B.
The college’s board of visitors and alumni chapter board
will be comprised of active and engaged volunteers. The
subcommittees formed to craft the strategic plan will
continue, charged now with implementation of these
plans. Additional subcommittees for development,
nominations and an executive committee will be recruited.
C.
Working to complement the alumni relations program, the
college will design a series of events, lectures, dinners and
VIP invitations to campus functions exclusively for our
college’s donors. The events will highlight college
accomplishments achieved through donor investment,
with a goal of garnering additional support.
D.
The development office will raise funds to support a range
of initiatives:
• Endowed chairs and professorships.
• Enhancement of the former journalism
building.
• Undergraduate and graduate scholarships.
• Establish a network to promote
undergraduate internships and international
experiences.
E.
The development office, in collaboration with the Maryland
Fund for Excellence, will provide annual fundraising
support for departments and centers, providing analysis of
the results and recommendations for future outreach.
Part 4: Partnerships, Outreach and Engagement
Goal 2: The college will strengthen its marketing and
communications program to raise public awareness of the
accomplishments in the college, departments and centers, as
well as by individual faculty members.
•
Strategies
A.
The college’s communications, alumni relations and
development staff are charged with proactively utilizing
the dean, his senior staff and volunteer boards to help
promote accomplishments and activities in the college.
The following actions will be part of that effort:
• Promote attendance (and where applicable,
participation) at high-visibility events.
• Host regular on-campus luncheons with a
small group of students and alumni. These
are opportunities for informational
exchanges.
• Engage in regular communication with
alumni, parents, donors and friends.
• Involve the dean’s senior staff in outreach
efforts with students, alumni, parents and
friends. Align the staff’s expertise and natural
involvement with the appropriate audience.
The staff may choose to meet with individuals
or as a small group.
• Encourage members of the board of visitors
and alumni chapter board to host lunches,
make phone calls, write letters, serve as
mentors, engage fellow alums and the like.
The board of visitors and alumni chapter
board members are encouraged to attend
(and participate, where applicable) highvisibility events.
B.
Utilize alumni and volunteers in our marketing and
outreach.
C.
Coordinate marketing efforts with the university’s
marketing office and alumni association.
• Take advantage of alumni association events
to target our college’s graduates. The
college’s alumni relations and development
unit will identify ways for the college to have
a prominent presence at these events.
• The college’s communications unit will
identify opportunities to integrate our
marketing efforts with those of the
university’s marketing office. For example,
this unit will profile the work of faculty
members whose research is noteworthy and
who are doing work on “hot button” issues.
Finding high-visibility opportunities to
market our students, faculty, programs and
centers are also essential.
Establish a speaker’s bureau for the college, a
list of “stars” from each unit; proactively
market the list to the media and other key
constituents, including the university’s
marketing office.
Goal 3: The alumni relations team will promote activities that
create a sense of life-long reciprocal relationships with
alumni, strengthening programs to expand the college’s
family, friends, and alumni, and use their ties to the University
of Maryland and the College of Behavioral and Social
Sciences.
Strategies
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A.
Recruit an active alumni chapter board.
B.
All components of the alumni relations program will act as
a resource for the development program. Alumni relations
officers and volunteers will be trained to speak to
development priorities and to identify and refer potential
prospects to development officers.
C.
In an effort to better represent the diversity of the college
and alumni interests, we aim to increase the number of
collaborations with our college colleagues across campus
and with the alumni association and central development
offices. Equally, we hope to better market activities outside
of the college to our alumni and friends.
D.
Echoing strategy “A” of goal four in the external relations,
development and communications section of the campus
strategic plan (p. 41), we aim to inspire greater involvement
among our current student population, cultivating a
"…pride in the university [and college], life-long allegiance
and involvement, and a commitment to sustaining Maryland's
excellence through volunteer service and philanthropy."
• Expand the college's mentorship program.
• Create a checklist of requirements for
internships for both the alumni offering
opportunities and the students looking to
benefit from the experience. Asking alumni
for internships will become a routine part of
college outreach.
• Include students in all alumni events.
Part 4: Partnerships, Outreach and Engagement
•
•
•
Strengthen the ties between the alumni office
and the advising offices to help facilitate all of
these plans.
D.
Enhance outreach activities.
• Assist undergraduates and graduate students
seeking placement in federal agencies or on
Capitol Hill (for either credit or
compensation).
• Establish a speaker’s bureau to bring alumni
to campus.
• Coordinate with embassies/diplomatic
programs to facilitate student/faculty
participation and to enrich cultural
understanding.
E.
Strengthen our linkages with locally based federal
agencies’ research activities including NIH, EPA, NASA,
USGS and EPA.
• Engage more outstanding researchers from
federal agencies in our research and teaching
programs.
• Encourage, where possible, joint applications
for funding.
Goal 4: Take better advantage of our location.
Strategies
A.
Increase our student presence in Washington, D.C. and help
to develop a stronger network of established internships.
B.
Increase the college presence in Washington, D.C.
• Identify and reach out to all University of
Maryland graduates involved in the national
and international policy arena, including
public policy experts, public relations
executives, lobbyists, lawyers, association
executives, elected officials and the media to
establish a broader resource base. Do not
limit to behavioral and social science alumni.
• Establish a college institute to be housed in
an existing policy/education institute, which
is located in Washington, D.C.; seek
public/private partnerships to sponsor
conferences in Washington, D.C.
• Pursue academic presence/affiliation with
public policy institutes (e.g., Brookings, CFR,
AEI, etc.) for faculty enhancement as adjunct
professors.
• Actively work with all branches of the federal
government to encourage use of college
affiliated research in policy development and
national debate.
C.
college and practitioners in Washington, D.C.,
both by bringing the University of Maryland
to Washington, D.C. and by bringing
Washington, D.C. to the university.
Create a dedicated portfolio of opportunities
for intersections between our students,
faculty, programs and facilities with
practitioners in Washington, D.C.
Establish endowed chairs in all of our
departments to attract faculty who can
compete on a world stage and whose
expertise is sought by policymakers.
Goal 5: Teaching, scholarship, and outreach activities at the
college will reflect the reality of global interdependence.
Students and researchers will be prepared to live, work and
thrive in the current and future world environment.
Strategies
Bridge the gap between Maryland and practitioners:
leadership, curriculum and faculty.
• Evaluate faculty capabilities and interests to
encourage stronger linkages between the
25
A.
Establish a reporting mechanism for international travel.
When a professor's schedule permits, the college should
utilize faculty travel abroad to host gatherings of local
alumni and corporate friends.
B.
Forge partnerships with foreign/United States business
alliances such as the U.S. India Business Alliance and utilize
their models of best practices for exchanges and
delegations, and collaborate to send students and faculty
Part 4: Partnerships, Outreach and Engagement
abroad, welcome business delegations to College Park, and
provide recruiting and employment opportunities.
C.
Further develop our partnership with the Ralph Bunche
Society to provide international leadership skills to minority
students.
D.
In conjunction with the call to better utilize our location
within the beltway, we will create a series of collaborative
lectures and events hosted at local embassies aimed at an
audience composed of alumni and local international
communities.
26