Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science plans to launch additional scholarship programs, a $6 million innovation center and endowed faculty and fellowship positions — all through an initiative funded by alumni donations, called the Transformation Plan.

Dean Teresa Dahlberg, in a recent interview with The Daily Orange, addressed the college’s plan, which is part of the university’s broader Academic Strategic Plan.

Chancellor Kent Syverud, in a speech last month, said all of the university’s schools and colleges now have their individual Academic Strategic Plans drafted.

Dahlberg said the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s initiative seeks to expand student diversity, create broader career opportunities, increase inter-university collaboration and grow research.

“Basically any strategic plan is about setting aspirational goals for the future,” Dahlberg said. “In any university or organization, you want to undertake continuous improvement.”

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The six initiatives in the plan will be funded by alumni, Dahlberg said. Goals in the plan’s first draft included $10 million for “people,” $15 million for programs and $25 million for physical space.

Dahlberg said these four goals were chosen because the priority was making a degree from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, “more valuable.”

Officials have worked on the college’s “Academic Achievement Plan” for several years, Dahlberg said. When Chancellor Kent Syverud released the Academic Strategic Plan, a university-wide academic initiative, the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s achievement plan was edited to more closely align with the university’s.

Dahlberg said the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s student makeup is roughly 20 percent underrepresented minorities, and about 25 to 28 percent women. Those statistics are in line with national trends, but Dahlberg said SU hopes to increase those percentages.

Two initiatives included in the Transformation Plan are the ECS Ambassador Scholars Program and ECS Leadership Scholars Program, which would provide scholarship amounts of $28,000 to students recruited to the college. The ECS Ambassador Scholars Program aims to increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities.

That program, which has evolved in the last five years from the Donofrio Scholarship program, has yielded a 95 percent graduation rate, Dahlberg said.

The ECS Leadership Scholars Program targets high-performing students, specifically in the Renée Crown Honors Program who want to advance research in the intersection of technology and people.

Other initiatives in the Transformation Plan include Invent@SU, a collaborative six-week intensive invention and entrepreneurship summer program, hosted either on SU’s campus or in New York City.

“It’s not about being something just for engineering students,” Dahlberg said. “It’s about filling a niche or gap in the whole SU entrepreneurship ecosystem available for all students.”

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As part of an effort to increase the college’s retention rate, which currently stands at about 80 percent over the course of two years, Dahlberg said she hopes to increase career services and student services. Currently, she said only about 30 to 50 percent of the students use the services offered, so one of the initiatives of the Transformation Plan is to build an innovation center on the south side of Link Hall.

Dahlberg added that 70 percent of the $6 million needed for that project has already been collected for the Innovation Center, which will house all career and student services in an open, atrium-like facility.

The dean said she’s currently unsure of how many faculty positions will open due to the plan, but John Liu, the university’s vice president for research, has the intention to hire 100 new faculty in various specific research fields, using Invest Syracuse funds.

“As we continue to evolve, as those cluster areas, those cross-campus themes are defined, then the ones that we feel we contribute to, we will certainly put on our Transformation Plan,” Dahlberg said.

Dahlberg said the Transformation Plan isn’t about “completion,” and that it’s always in a draft stage to be continuously edited.

”We’re always going to continue to be changing,” Dahlberg said.

Published on February 13, 2018 at 10:19 pm

Contact Catherine: ccleffer@syr.edu | @ccleffert