Please accept my personal and warmest New Year’s greetings. As we move into a new calendar year, we mark the halfway point in the academic year – and what a year it has been. This fall semester was particularly special as Wright State kicked off its 50th anniversary celebration with a number of excellent events, but none better than the homecoming brunch with numerous founding faculty and alumni from the earliest graduating classes in attendance. These people were true pioneers who took a chance on a fledgling institution and laid the foundation for what we have become. Inspiring, heartwarming and historical, I will treasure the brief time spent with these folks.
As a college, we welcomed several new degree programs to the fold this fall. These have all gotten off to great starts and represent important areas of unmet need at the university. I have no doubt that the college’s growth in the coming years will center on these new programs in neuroscience, biochemistry/molecular biology and public health science. We are also moving rapidly toward new options in data science, actuarial science and others – stay tuned for more on these topics. Even as the university traverses a necessary phase of reassessment and contraction, the alignment of our goals to the needs of the region, state and country will continue to inform our approach to education.
As such, Wright State’s College of Science and Mathematics (CoSM) will continue to focus on our mandate to prepare our students to meet the needs of the regional workforce. I have had the honor of meeting with many corporate and governmental partners in southwest Ohio over the past year, particularly within the technology fields. My goal was to better understand what it is that they want from us. The responses I received were very clear and encompassed two common themes, repeated over and over again: 1) they want to hire Wright State science and math graduates – indeed, they want more of them; and 2) they want us to expose those graduates to real-world skills that will allow them to hit the ground running as they leave campus and move into positions and roles that will allow them to help keep this region competitive with the rest of the world.
All I can say is “message received”. Since my arrival I have talked repeatedly of my desire to expand CoSM’s focus on experiential learning. We have already made strides in the area of undergraduate research, and are rapidly and effectively expanding our Applying Scientific Knowledge (ASK) program and our undergraduate research support system. These were needed upgrades, but now it is time to move to the next level.
This spring we hope to launch our next big college initiative as we focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. This proposed CoSM program will consist of a series of weekend-long events that will allow students with interests in research, innovation and entrepreneurship to work in teams to address technologically demanding, market-driven problems proposed by one or more collaborators from the private sector or government agencies. These “innovation sessions” will culminate with teams making group presentations on their solutions and event moderators selecting winning ideas. Winning team members will receive a prize and, in some cases, enhanced access to opportunities to work with the external companies or agencies on future research internships or on pushing their ideas toward fruition. Goals of the program are to enhance the entrepreneurial/innovative mindset of CoSM students while fostering closer ties with the private sector and exposing students to experiences of regional workforce relevance. We hope also to enforce the role of Wright State University as a regional entity committed to serving the workforce and economic needs of the community as we integrate our collegiate strengths (problem solving, hypothesis development, experimental design) with entrepreneurial efforts underway in other colleges (product design, market analysis, business modeling, etc.).
I’m convinced that this is the future of growth in CoSM. All of the pieces are in place for Wright State University to help Dayton become the innovative center of the country again, and there is no reason to wait - 2018 is the year to make a start. Coupled with recent (and impressive) research advances in the college, it is my hope that better regional interactions and partnerships will also positively impact the research mission of the college. If you want to learn more, shoot me an Email and I will gladly share the details of any and all of our new programs with you.
Once again, please accept my sincerest hopes for success, health and happiness in 2018.
