BioSci Staff Meeting
July 12th, 2016
Stephens Room, 3503 Thomas Hall
Jerry LeBlanc: Thank you for coming. Smaller group than last time, probably because of summer. Or
everyone is so content with the way things are now (laughter)…A lot has been happening and I want to
bring you up to speed on what’s happening, and then turn the tides, and if you have any questions we
can tackle those.
One of the major efforts is the graduate program that’s associated with the department. One of the
casualties of the reorganization is the grad programs were fractured. Some can function fine as
fractured, but certainly a lot of faculty felt that as a result of some of those fractures they fell down in
the middle and had no program that served them and their students, so we’ve been playing with that
and figuring how best to deal with it, and we’ve prepared a formal request to establish a Ph.D. program
(Integrative Biological Sciences). The idea is that, consistent with the forming of the department and
forming of the college of sciences, the department will provide an opportunity to train in an
interdisciplinary fashion in the form of clusters; people that have a common interest can come together
to solve problems. Training may be different specific to their area of interest. In this process there are
some deadlines. The first is for the request to establish a program and I hope to get that to the council
of deans by sept. I misjudged that faculty do different things in the summer so I’m getting nervous that
sept is coming too quickly but our goal is fall for the internal review process. If approved we submit the
request to establish the program, which is a significantly larger undertaking with many people involved.
Hires
We’ve had a few over the last 3-5 months, which have been in the newsletter, but in case you haven’t
seen them, Holly Menninger, who many of you may know is now a member of our department—she is a
Ph.D., and was formerly Director of Public Science over at the College, and she asked to affiliate with our
department and was approved, so she is now a member of our faculty as an Extension Assistant
Professor. Her duties aren’t going to change. She will continue to do outreach for the college, but
benefits us as she is committed to the department to improve and increase our outreach activities. The
reality is we’re the most active in terms of outreach in COS, and hope to grow that involvement. Looking
around, some of you do participate actively in outreach activities. I love it when I go to things and see
staff members who are teaching kids. We have many creative minds here and that’s one way to expand
it. If you have any interest in outreach activities, send me a note and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Switching gears, one concern I was getting was that NTT faculty didn’t have a well-defined career path;
people start in a position, 10 years later they have the same title, want to advance but didn’t know how,
etc., so we’re addressing that. We’ve prepared a road map for NTT faculty to help them plan their
advancement. It will go to the college and the university for approval.
I’ve gotten distracted and need to mention more hires. Dr. Ann Ross: She was with CHASS, she’s a
forensic anthropologist, human anatomist, and felt really out of place in CHASS so requested to transfer
to us, interviewed, was voted in, and is now a member of BioSci. She studies the bones of dead people;
she’s the North Carolina Bones, you know the tv program, and the state uses her to investigate. You can
visit her lab, but I’ll warn you, it smells pretty bad (laughter). She’s assured me that was an off-day,
though. She’s also very engaged in outreach and a darling of the press; they love to write about the
things she does.
Also, Joy Little and Claire Gordy will be joining us in August as Teaching Assistant Professors, and be
teaching principles of Genetics and be responsible for redesigning those labs so they’re research-based.
We also have Gavin Conant joining us (Associate Professor), who works on the computer rather than in
the lab. He is a Spousal hire; Engineering recruited his wife and he interviewed very well, and faculty
voted yes. We’re still waiting on internal approval but he’s anxious to come and we’re anxious to have
him.
Lastly, Kurt Marsden is a neuro physiologist and he’s the candidate we decided on during our search last
year... Kurt just wants a lot (laughter). So we’re still negotiating. I don’t know if it’ll work out or not, but
we’re still negotiating. He’s in no hurry to come as he’s still finishing up his post-doc.
As you may have also seen in the newsletter, COS received some endowed professorships from SAS, and
these are chunks of money to bring in a big name person; the money is invested and the interest that
that money generates goes to the investigator. They received one 2-million dollar endowed
professorship, and two 1-million dollar endowed professorships, and the dean is really anxious to fill
them and he’s anxious to give us one of them. If you know of someone that you admire as a scientist,
send me a note and I’ll look into it. This is not the kind of thing you advertise; you identify and go after
them.
Now, the question was raised at our last meeting about the progress with our website. We are heavily
engaged in revamping the website, working with the college and making good progress. October 15th is
the projected launch date. We’ve mapped the site, we’re now preparing material, the college is hiring a
professional writer, and the next step will be photos, so if any of you have any great photos, as long as
you’re sober (laughter), please send them along. I can’t guarantee it’ll make it to the website, but we
will send it on, so looking for adversity of pictures.
I mentioned the newsletter, we’re getting that out weekly, and I’m trying to get away from it being just
a list of dates, so I try and inform the department of things, and I’ve encouraged faculty to send me
blurbs, so I’m putting out the call for all of you, as well. If you’ve attained recognition, please send me a
note and we’ll get it in the newsletter. If you want to write something, if you want to write 10 tips to PI’s
to make labs run better (laughter)…it can even be anonymous if you wish. Again, I can’t guarantee it’ll
be published, but we’ll take a look at it if you send it on.
I’m sure you all have seen the demise of Harreslon, and just to sort of bring you up to the Dean’s vision
of the sciences, he has envisioned the “Imagination Corridor”; Harrelson will come down and they’re
going to put a green space there for the time being, but the plan is to build for COS. The University is
saying to the dean, ‘find the money and you can build it,’ so when it happens, I don’t know—there will
have to be a major fundraising event. But there is an app the college has put out, and I’ll ask you to tour
the Imagination Corridor.
Lara Mekeel: Would you like me to pull it up?
Jerry: That’d be great.
While Lara works to pull up the app, Jerry: Now the bad news: I was informed last week by the dean
that the college is facing a significant deficit and we need to tighten the belt and get on track with
respect to our spending, and I don’t know that that’s a big surprise to anyone, but the provost is pulling
out, and what it means is that over the next several months, there will be an effort to see where we can
trim, find what we need to run, and operate from that level. I want us all to do it together, so I’m putting
it out there right now. I don’t have any info yet, but I hope we can work together to find what could be
done to cut cost or increase income without compromising our principals, like quality education, training
of grad students, etc. And also a word of caution: if you send me a note asking for money for a
discretionary thing, for morale for example, the answer is going to be no, because we’ve just got to stop
spending until we get word from the college.
Lara Mekeel has the Imagination Corridor pulled up on the projector: So the app is called Roundme
(roundme.com) and you can download it to an ipad or other devices. This is the dean’s vision, and
though it’s in its infant stages, this is an artist’s rendering of what it could look like. This is the sciences
hub building that replaces Harrelson, and when you’re on your phone or iPad, you can spin around and
it’ll spin with you, so it’s a little cooler than being on a computer, but you can take a virtual tour.
Jerry: Is this intended to be a public space?
Lara: Yes, completely public. I think the dean really wants this to be a place for people to come on to NC
State’s campus and experience science first-hand. (Going back to the virtual tour) Those are people
playing Pokemon Go (laughter), David Clark Labs, real places, then they have this thing called drop
pavilions, etc… If you think of the corridor as spanning from DCL to SAS you can incorporate these
science things, pop up labs in front of SAS—remember the science circus? This looks like a sophisticated
design for that. (Scrolling through further features) This is an atmospheric simulator, looks like this might
be on the upper level of one of the buildings. I think the idea is to have labs, to have public space,
classrooms, pop-up pod for experiments, etc. Again, this is just an idea, it’s a possibility. It was just kind
of nice to see in our staff meeting with the Dean, that he was very excited about this idea, so this is just
how the corridor brings together learning and science.
Jerry: Thank you Lara. Okay, that’s all I have. Any questions? Jill you missed it all (laughter). Any
question? Concerns? Everyone happy?
Meeting closes at 10:30 a.m.