2024–25 Priorities Related to People
We are developing students, faculty and staff.
- Mentoring & leadership: Our continued attention to mentoring initiatives will ensure that more community members have clear opportunities to align with the people they work most closely with around expectations, personal and professional development needs and what it means to play a role in our unique scientific community. Particular areas of focus include graduate student and postdoc mentoring by faculty, as well as mentoring of undergraduates, with new professional development opportunities provided by the Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) and STEM Muse. A new Staff Leadership Fellows program will launch this year as a part of ongoing staff development programming.
We are paying attention to our culture.
- Gathering to learn: The college continued to host interesting and engaging guest authors for conversations at the intersection of personal identity and our disciplines. These special lunch-and-learn-style opportunities have allowed for conversation, often centered on experiences of belonging and acceptance in spaces for science and technology. We also shepherded a series of department-level retreats to support strategic decision-making and broad-based buy-in for more local-level priorities and concerns across the natural sciences.
- Graduate student-faculty relations: With a new associate dean for graduate education joining the dean’s office, the college is increasing its focus on supporting faculty members’ ability to be outstanding mentors, while highlighting and celebrating those within the faculty who are effectively leading the way.
Further Context
The original language for the College of Natural Sciences plan for people was developed in 2022. Find details and past progress in the sections below.
Plans for Faculty, Staff and Students
We seek to attract and retain outstanding, high-potential faculty, students and staff and cultivate excellence.
Faculty Training and Workshops
- The college has begun implementing a series of trainings and workshops in support of faculty members’ success. These include: New Faculty Orientation, Let’s Get Started, Mentoring for Success in Teaching, a variety of resources from a dedicated group of instructional consultants in the Office of STEM Education Excellence and the New Faculty Network for Professional-Track Faculty.
Emerging Leaders Program
- This program brings together regularly mid-career faculty members in Natural Sciences to connect with the dean’s office leadership and develop themselves as leaders. Participants explore timely university topics, build community across departments among excellent faculty at similar career stages and foster stronger, recurring connections between faculty and college/university leadership.
Initiative Investing in Professional-Track Faculty
- CNS is working to improve the clarity and transparency of professional-track faculty roles and affiliated pathways to promotion. This includes better defining and aligning workload expectations in our recruitment processes, systematic reviews and promotion processes so that faculty are supported in purposeful teaching, service, research and mentorship. In alignment with department and college priorities, we aim to do all of this while also creating new methods of recognition and support for professional faculty, such as awards, summer support and professional development leaves.
Staff Training and Leadership Development
- This effort aims to foster collaboration and sharing of best practices, while building a stronger sense of support among college staff through communities of practice; to equip personnel with professional development opportunities that enable them to be more effective in their current roles and better prepared for future growth opportunities; and to work collaboratively with staff to build intentional organizational culture aligned with our college values.
Building Pathways to Awards and Recognition
- To celebrate excellence at all levels, the college is proactively identifying, supporting and nominating people here for prestigious awards and recognition so that CNS remains a place of continuous personal, professional and career growth.
Plans for College Culture
We aim to foster a community that brings people from many backgrounds together, valuing the respectful exchange of different ideas and perspectives.
Early Career Faculty Fellows and Recruitment Competition
- We are partnering with the provost’s office as we work to attract and hire candidates with outstanding scholarly records.
World Changers Display and Narrative Project
- In our buildings and spaces throughout the college, we are amplifying the stories of STEM trailblazers.
New Equations College Discussion Series
- Each long semester, we are coming together with guest speakers as a college community to have difficult and important conversations about overlapping areas of identity, lived experience and science.
Faculty and Graduate Student CNS Fellowships
- CNS will be offering prestigious, compensated opportunities for students and faculty to work closely with college leadership on a series of initiatives.
Seeking Scholarships and Fellowships to Support More Students
- The CNS Office of Development is actively seeking greater philanthropic support for graduate student scholars and undergraduates so that talented students of limited financial means can attend the College of Natural Sciences and meet their potential here.
Earlier Progress Related to People
Updates Prior to 2024
- Donor support for students: Students of limited financial means have benefited from record fundraising in recent years. Hundreds of undergraduates additionally benefited from philanthropic support that allowed them to engage in research, internships or study experiences abroad, including through the summer.
- Staff training & leadership development: The college hired a senior training coordinator who built programs to better prepare staff for future growth opportunities, as well as be more effective in their current roles through dozens of professional development courses and workshops for hundreds of employees. Topics covered included communication skills, productivity, leadership, teamwork, self-development, orientation to the college for new employees and support for managers from all organizational levels.
- New Equations author series: Hosting interesting and engaging authors continues to be a strategy the college uses to develop as a listening and learning community. As part of the 2023 Texas Science Festival, the College of Natural Sciences hosted MacArthur Fellow, botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose wisdom rests with both scientific and indigenous knowledge. In the following academic year, Ruha Benjamin, whose work and books focus on race, technology, and data science, and science journalist Sabrina Imbler participated in the series.
- Professional-track faculty: A task force convened and suggested changes in practice and resources to support investments in professional-track faculty members’ success in the college, currently being implemented. Dean David Vanden Bout helped lead a campus-wide task force on professional-track faculty for the provost’s office.
-
Faculty development and offerings: Emerging Leaders, comprised of faculty from every department in the college, formed and met with college and campus leaders and one another to discuss issues ranging from the University to free speech to implications of AI. To ensure faculty have what they need for a strong start in research, teaching and service, a new process for onboarding faculty in the college launched with a revamped orientation and a multi-session program throughout the first year for new professional-track and tenure-track faculty. Finally, faculty fellowships were established to diversify the perspectives and voices in the dean’s office, provide opportunities for faculty to gain new experiences with leadership and receive compensation for contributions that help to advance key college priorities and advance early- and mid-career individuals in their careers. New programs have led to faculty working on problems that need extra attention, such as initiatives related to education technology and micro-credentials for undergraduates (badging).