NHS News

Dean's Corner

Welcome to the fall 2009 edition of the NHS News! The 2009-10 year marks the College’s fifth year, an important milestone in our development. With our policies and procedures now well-established, we are in the position to be more externally engaged and have undertaken a number of activities in this regard. Chief among these is the establishment of our NHS Advisory Board, a body that will provide valuable input to our College and assist us in identifying our future directions. The first area in which we have solicited the Board’s comment deals with our communications efforts. The College recently launched a redesigned website, featuring expanded resources for alumni and community members. We wish to provide needed resources for our website users as well as to better tell our College’s “story.” For example, our website now features a College snapshot in the form of our NHS by the Numbers page as well as a Points of Pride resource. Readers with suggestions for website improvements are encouraged to contact Beckie Croissant at rebecca.croissant@unco.edu.

With the national economic downturn, many universities have been forced to institute hiring freezes. We are fortunate that our institution’s careful planning has permitted us to undertake needed searches, and we welcomed this fall fourteen new full-time faculty members. We appreciate the energy and enthusiasm these newcomers bring. Many of these individuals will participate in research and scholarly activities, efforts that may be facilitated through grants from external funding agencies. Indeed, a key rationale for the College’s establishment was to foster the acquisition of grant funds. To this end, we have instituted a new Grant-writing Incentive Program, which will support two NHS faculty members this spring. In addition to our grant-writing efforts, the College continues our fundraising activities as we seek to raise $7 million by 2014 for student, faculty, and academic program support. Our progress was greatly accelerated through the generosity of Biological Sciences’ alumna Dr. Mary Jo Drew, who has announced a planned gift valued at about $1.5 million. The gift will support student scholarships and research and create a distinguished professorship.

These and other activities are described in the following pages. I invite you to read about our efforts and, as always, thank you for your readership and interest in the College.

Best,

Denise A. Battles, Dean