Welcome back for the 2015-2016 academic year! I hope you had a wonderful summer and are refreshed and ready for another transformative year in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute. The busy and exciting academic year we completed in June has set up another year full of opportunities, decisions and announcements.
During the summer months, we continued to strengthen our leadership position in STEM higher education, our offerings for students, and our reach with industry and other partners. Our successes include:
- The Bachelor of Science degree in Transdisciplinary Studies has been approved by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and is awaiting final approval by the Higher Learning Commission. The transdisciplinary studies in technology major is on the Common Application for Fall 2016 applicants.
- In June, President Mitch Daniels announced our involvement and leadership role in the Purdue Polytechnic Indianapolis High School. It will be a charter school modeled after our own approach to STEM education and a potential pipeline for even more qualified and diverse students for Polytechnic programs.
- The School of Construction Management Technology placed its first pre-freshman interns with industry partners, providing workforce experience before students step foot on campus.
- The City of Anderson has embraced our plans to expand our academic programs at Purdue Polytechnic Anderson, and a new building has been approved. The plans for the building personify the Polytechnic learning environment: more learning by doing, an integration of industry projects, collaboration and exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation.
- Faculty across the college continue to provide expertise and leadership in their disciplines, including Julia Taylor, who is one of a handful of professors selected to be part of a team helping to define the next-generation course in natural language curricula using IBM Watson.
- At the end of the fiscal year, we learned we had more then tripled our cash donations from the previous year. Donations and pledges for 2014-15 totaled nearly $16.5 million.
- Research in the college has also been on the rise; we set a record with $21,028,216 million in funded proposals at an extremely efficient rate of 67%.
Looking ahead, we have many more projects and milestones that deserve our attention as we continue to transform the curricula and culture of the Polytechnic.
As we begin our first full academic year as the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, we have even more great news to celebrate regarding enrollment. Our enrollment has grown for the second consecutive year, thanks to the dedicated efforts or our recruitment team, the marketing team, and the faculty and staff who made our prospective students feel welcome and excited about the college. The numbers:
- 3,291 undergraduate students registered for fall classes, representing an increase of 76 students over census last year
- 407 graduate students, which is an increase of 44 compared to this point last year.
The Polytechnic First-Year Experience, under the leadership of Dawn Laux and Nathan Mentzer, will debut this fall. It features an integration of themes and projects among the expanded TECH 12000 (Design Thinking in Technology) course, ENGL10600, COMM 11400, and major-specific introductory courses for all first-year students. We will continue to expand the number of industry-sponsored capstone projects in more academic areas, and faculty also will solidify the second-year curricula for all programs.
Building on two years of first-year enrollment growth, we will also need to leverage our new majors and degrees to attract more students to our programs in West Lafayette and at our eight Statewide locations.
The Polytechnic budget has had a positive impact on the hiring of faculty and staff for the college. I would like to welcome the new faculty and staff to the college.
This coming academic year shows great promise and I am looking forward to our continuing efforts to transform the college and show university-wide leadership in learning, research, and engagement. I look forward to working with you as we continue to move the Polytechnic Institute from Good to Great.
Comments
Just wanted to voice my opinion that the transition from the College of Technology to this new name is dumb as shit. If you listen to your students you would understand that, moreover changing a name has no effect on an organization, but I guess you just want to make a name for yourself as the one that made this transition. I plan on writing a detailed letter of my dissatisfaction with the new name and other issues at Purdue upon my graduation, hopefully you will listen to this and everyone else that is dissatisfied