October 2019
Dear Friends,
It is hard to believe it has already been a month since my last campus communication. And somewhere in that mix, autumn arrived. I was told this campus was beautiful, but wow, is it ever in the fall. Take a break sometime and just walk around and enjoy it. My favorite spot has been from a seated location at home football games. If you come upon something stunning, take a picture and email it to me at
provost@wpunj.edu
. I’ll share with colleagues in Marketing and Public Relations and they just might use it in their telling of the WP story.
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This month for me was especially active. Just when I thought I met most folks, I connected with a whole bunch more. This has been particularly true among external persons to the University. For example, I have been engaging with leaders in Wayne and Paterson, alumni at Homecoming and tailgates, and with the
emeriti
faculty. There is a lot of pride and optimism among so many around us who care deeply about this place and its contribution to them personally and/or to the communities where they live or represent.
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Passaic Board of Freeholders honors William Paterson for its work with local students with disabilities and special needs.
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I also met 56 pre-tenure faculty vicariously through their reappointment portfolios. We have a reading room in the Provost's Office where these materials get placed once they arrive from the colleges. I have spent some hours on evenings and weekends reviewing each one. This has been immensely helpful to me to deeply understand what it means to be a faculty member here through teaching, scholarship, and service. There are some extraordinarily gifted persons in the mix who represent the future of the University and I am excited to call them colleagues.
Here are a few additional notables for me in recent weeks:
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- Offering a few words of wisdom on leadership to the newest SGA officers at their induction ceremony.
- The launch of WP Online, our collaboration with Academic Partnerships to offer adult learner-friendly online graduate programs starting in summer and fall 2020. A campus stakeholder orientation will occur Nov. 13-15. Gamin Bartle, initiative coordinator, has or will be in touch with the key campus persons involved with student onboarding or program delivery.
- Although the official reports won't come for a few months, the nursing and business accreditation teams spoke positively about what they learned and observed.
- My experience watching the Nursing Simulation Lab in action. In the event I ever find myself needing nursing care, I will be asking for a WP graduate!
- Engaging with the Department Chair Council with respect to leading their departments (spoiler alert – they care a lot; by way of immediate example, support them in their effort to strategically build a spring schedule that balances the competing needs for instructional budget stewardship and the enabling of ART opportunities).
- The faculty in sociology, kinesiology, women’s and gender studies, public health, physics, and math – thank you for letting me join your department meetings and learn what is on your minds.
- Meeting with the CWA and IFPTE leadership who care deeply for WP’s future, and with the latter, getting to share my own story of farm work as a youth and carpentry in high school and college to help pay for school.
- Finally, on the personal front, apple picking in Vermont, visiting my family for the weekend back in Indiana, and Cyclebar spin class with my daughter for which we finished #1 and #2, and I was the old geezer in the room! I think my oxygen-depriving climbing experience helped.
Josh Powers
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
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Academic News
Here we list information of particular note related to the Division of Academic Affairs.
- Academic Affairs has built a website for resources to assist with the academic reorganization effort and discussions, something in which all departments should engage. Please browse to see what others around the country are doing to differentiate themselves in powerful ways to align societal needs with internal capabilities for enrollment growth.
- At Faculty Senate on 10/22, the Provost answered more questions on travel funding. In brief, the funds were deployed to departments based on a calculation of the total pooled amounts gathered from all sources (recall in the past that one had to request separately to three sources – department, dean, provost) divided by the number of FT T/TT faculty this fall (which may have grown or declined from last year and thus a different allocation). That worked out to $600/faculty. BUT, departments do not have to allocate the funds that way. This figure was only for enabling the total departmental fund deployment. See the guidelines for ways to allocate travel funds within the department and since it is not unusual for only a subset of faculty desiring to travel in a given year. Furthermore, your dean’s office may have Foundation funds to assist should such a need arise.
- Also at Faculty Senate on 10/22, the Provost spoke about ART and its interface with the instructional budget. His PowerPoint is available on the Faculty Senate website. He provided nine years of trend data that visually captures the WP story of faculty deployment vis-à-vis enrollment decline. He reinforced the point that ART is an important part of who we are as a means of supporting scholarship, and at present, we are roughly, on average, a 3-3 faculty load campus with one of the lowest faculty-student ratios in the state. In an environment of enrollment decline, however, it means we have to be more vigilant in deploying instruction in the right places and with larger class sizes on average so less pressure is placed on the need for adjunct deployment. Class size caps are not easy decisions since we all have notions about what is or is not an appropriate number of students in a classroom. What the research tells us, though, is that course size is not by definition a predictor of student learning outcome attainment; many other factors play a role, and some very strongly.
- The Office of Marketing and Public Relations continues to shine a light on the great work of our faculty and students through its full range of communications channels, such as the University website, WP Magazine, WP News e-newsletter, the University’s social media page, and by generating publicity in the local, regional, and national media. The University’s website had more than 18 million visits in the past 12 months; each twice-annual edition of WP Magazine reaches close to 100,000 readers – including alumni, parents, faculty, staff, donors, and friends in the community; and recent news about our faculty and students has appeared in such outlets as The Record, News 12 New Jersey, NBC News, Hispanic Outlook on Education, and Reader’s Digest, among many others. This positive visibility supports University branding as we work to engage prospective students and their influencers, new and returning donors, alumni, state and federal decision makers, and the general public. To ensure that our Marketing and Public Relations team is on top of all of the latest faculty and student news, they have created an online questionnaire. Please take a few minutes to let them know about your work and your noteworthy students, and contact them directly with any news going forward. The survey can be found here. Future news updates can be sent to danielsm11@wpunj.edu.
Important Dates
- Promotions in Rank applications due: November 1, 2019
- Faculty Range Adjustment applications due: February 3, 2020
- Professional Staff Performance-Based Promotions due: February 3, 2020
Facts & Figures
Here we provide data and/or charts that in some way tell a WP story.
Higher Education Levels Across New Jersey
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Passaic County ranking in population among 22 NJ counties:
#8
Percentage of Passaic County residents with at least an associate’s degree:
34 percent
(3rd from bottom)
An opportunity for William Paterson…
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Sample Kudos Shared in Starfish
This month’s sample kudos (i.e., positive feedback) shared by faculty, and their impact on student engagement and effort…
“
Thank you so much for telling me this. When first picked the class I thought, ‘Oh God, it’s a 3 hour night class’, but now I look forward to going to class every Wednesday. I am learning so much. Again, thank you so much this definitely makes me feel like my efforts are being acknowledged. Have a great weekend!”
“This made my day. I am indeed taking the class seriously, and it feels great to know the effort has been noticed and appreciated. Thank you for reaching out.”
And then here’s an example of its impact on both the student and the faculty instructor:
From the Academic Success Center executive director to the student:
“Your professor reported you're doing wonderfully in their CELL BIOLOGY class! It sounds like you're taking the class very seriously and it shows!”
From the student:
“It’s a great class with an excellent professor! Thanks so much for your encouraging words, I’ll keep up the hard work.”
From the Academic Success Center executive director to the faculty instructor:
“I thought you would want to hear your student’s response to your kudos. I always like to pass on positive student feedback to faculty.”
From the faculty instructor:
“Thank you for sharing that! I really appreciate it!”
Resources You Can Use
Here we feature a few WP or external resources that you might find helpful in your work, or your life.
This summer Provost Powers, in one of his communications to the University, shared an article that was one of the most influential in his thinking about students and student success. It was called
Who Get’s to Graduate?
. He invited others to share one of their most influential reads in this regard. Here were noted ones offered:
The Provost’s Office is in Raubinger 100; stop by and visit us.
Meg, Lissette, Claudia T., Claudia C., Jonathan, Sandy, and Josh
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