Strategic Academic Focusing must consider where future investments in academic programs and support infrastructure are best made.
As a first step in the process, we want to hear from faculty and campus units.
We need articulation of growth trajectory and evaluation metrics for faculty-identified academic programs. Your ideas or responses are not restricted to the 2009 Strategic Plan.
We ask that you address the five broad questions found in the September 26 memo. Briefly:
THIS PROPOSAL HAS BEEN SUBSUMED IN THE PROPOSAL TITLED: HUMAN HEALTH SCIENCES
Engaged Transformation of Poverty (ETP) in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) aims to study and support how UC Merced addresses the impact of poverty within our immediate region through research connected to California, national, and international analogs. The term “engaged” calls for more purposeful connection and synergy between UC Merced’s academic mission and the goals of SJV stakeholders and decision-makers. ETP will strategically catalyze and facilitate faculty and student capacity for research that capitalizes on our unique opportunities to address poverty in the region.
Research in the computational sciences is one of the current and growing strengths of UC Merced. From its opening in 2003, UC Merced has attracted large extramural grants for computationally oriented research and academic programs and there is a strong computational emphasis in many of our graduate program and undergraduate majors.
The Merritt Writing Program (MWP) is distinctively focused on teaching within the guiding context of a research university that is student-centered. With research-based learning as a guiding standard, the MWP will intensify field-specific course offerings and interdisciplinary connections to develop a Writing Major and a Masters in Fine Arts. To augment interdisciplinary scholarship, the MWP will develop integrative general education programming and implement writing-in-the-disciplines curricula for institutional priority areas.
As UC Merced expands its initial vision of interdisciplinary research and teaching, it moves increasingly to national significance and prominence. One prominent area of research, study, and education is surprisingly absent from UCM, although since its inception it has defined the term interdisciplinary: women’s studies.
Sociology is the scientific study of society, social institutions, social relationships, and human organization. The Sociology faculty at UC Merced are building a vibrant and collegial intellectual group, marked by outstanding scholarship and participation in interdisciplinary communities of inquiry. We have designed UC Merced's sociology program to help the university fulfill its mission by addressing issues of importance to the Central Valley, with a focus on social inequality (race, class and gender), education, health, immigration, and political participation.
This proposal is now subsumed in the new proposal for a School of Innovation, Management, and Economics.
