Introduction:

The office of Academic Affairs has been involved in a number of activities to improve the quality of teaching and learning, as well as to stimulate new avenues of interdisciplinary research.

Teaching and Learning

Conditionally Admitted Students: Poor student retention is the key issue hurting IUPUI’s academic reputation. Starting this summer, IUPUI is requiring at-risk students to successfully complete a free summer program before enrolling in the fall. This simple step will help to remove academic deficiencies and will increase the six-year graduation rate by about 4 percentage points. The Summer Academy Bridge Program, which helps orient students to campus life before the fall semester begins, has also been expanded twofold.

A number of projects based on CTE funding are in the process of implementation. Some are designed to provide a mixture of need- and merit-based support to talented students. Others projects will play an important role in making sure that admitted students are retained at the university and have a rich undergraduate educational experience of the highest quality.

Enhancing Undergraduate Academic Success:  This program uses graduate students to give personalized help to students in certain gateway courses.  It has a doubly beneficial effect, since it will promote undergraduate success, while simultaneously boosting graduate student support, especially in the School of Science.

IUPUI Roads Scholar Program: This program recognizes full-time undergraduate students who achieve a cumulative GPA above 3.7 for a previous academic year by paying for their campus parking permit for the following fall semester.

Academic Improvement Scholarships: These will be awarded to students whose academic performance has improved significantly since the transition from high school to college.  Scholarships will be awarded beginning with the student’s sophomore year, and will be an effective tool to promote the critical first- to second-year retention and to encourage persistence to graduation.

A formal process and timeline for performing three-year faculty reviews was formulated. This process, which was extensively discussed and passed by the Faculty Council, is now in effect.

Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Raising IUPUI’s research efforts to a higher level is essential to bringing more recognition to the campus. The faculty talent and desire are there to a large extent, but this effort needs to be nurtured with incentives, recognition, and flexible seed funding.

The Signature Center Initiative provided a good outlet for faculty to come up with creative interdisciplinary proposals based on their expertise. There was good buy-in from all sides, especially since the Deans matched the funding provided by the central administration. The submission of 71 proposals, mostly of very high quality, was an indication of pent-up creativity. The selection process involving faculty committees worked very efficiently. Although we are off to a great start with 19 potential signature centers, there is so much interest in this initiative that we plan to fund about 7 to 10 more proposals in the second round later this year.

Civic Engagement

Educational Outreach: The Cutting Edge lecture series and the IUPUI Poetry Contest are both examples of events run by the Office of Academic Affairs to improve outreach and future recruitment from Indianapolis based high schools.

Diversity

The SRUF (Support for the Recruitment of Underrepresented Faculty) program was formulated and implemented in consultation with the Deans Council and the Faculty Council.  It provides $50K for the first year and $25K thereafter as long as an underrepresented faculty member remains on the faculty at IUPUI. About 10 new hires have been made under this program. When fully used, this program will support 20 underrepresented faculty.

We have increased considerably the Norman Brown Diversity and Leadership Scholars program. Based on past experience, this expansion of a successful ongoing undergraduate scholarship program will improve both the diversity of the student body as well as the graduation rate.