Provost's Column

January 12, 2023

Happy new year, and welcome to the 2023 spring semester! It is an exciting time to be at IUB, and I look forward to a wonderful new year together.

As we enter 2023, we are continuing to make great progress in charting our future direction for IU and the Bloomington campus. Our IUB 2030 strategic planning teams are busily reviewing and prioritizing the recommendations from the 25 working groups that completed their work in December. In the coming days, working drafts will be shared with academic and administrative units for additional feedback and refinement. In February, we will share a full draft and host two town halls for our entire community to offer further perspectives on the emerging plan. We expect to introduce our completed 2030 plan in March, alongside other IU campuses. 

I am incredibly grateful for the hundreds of faculty, staff, and students serving on planning teams and, particularly, for the innovative ideas and in-depth dialogues that are helping to bring our best opportunities into clearer focus. I am thrilled by the possibilities we have together to improve student success, expand meaningful research and creative activity, and increase our collective impact on Indiana and the world over the years to come. I continue to encourage you to engage fully in this process to build on our established and emerging strengths for the betterment of all.

I am also excited to share that we have approved funding and recruitment is underway for the initial round of our Faculty 100 hiring initiative. There was strong interest from across IUB schools and faculties, as we received more than 75 proposals for nearly 100 new potential faculty positions.

Members of the Faculty 100 review committee, along with the offices of the Vice President for Research and the Vice President for Capital Planning and Facilities, spent hours carefully reviewing and prioritizing the 75 proposals.

In this initial round, ultimately 29 proposals were selected for phase-one funding, all of which were shared online in December.

This initial phase focused on the recruitment of mid-career hires whose research portfolios closely interconnect with current and emerging faculty strengths. Many of these approved hires are clustered in the College, in areas as diverse as “Cognitive Approaches to Arts & Humanities” and “Microbiomes: Models of Metabolic Regulation in Development and Disease / Prevention of the Next Pandemic.” Other schools with approved proposals include Luddy, Maurer, O’Neill, Education, and Optometry. 

We are working closely with deans and faculty on recruitment and will share updates on the hiring supported by this initiative later this semester. I am also pleased to share that we anticipate launching a new, second round of proposals in alignment with the forthcoming IUB 2030 strategic plan later in the spring 2023 semester, further adding to the regular recruitment cycle and hiring from the ongoing Presidential Diversity Hiring Initiative. 

I am thrilled for these opportunities to grow our faculty in strategic ways, and I deeply appreciate our faculty’s leadership and innovation in increasing our impact for the future.

As the semester progresses, we will introduce additional initiatives, including efforts to improve campus funding models, more closely integrate administrative practices across schools and units, and to continue improving the experience of our vital IU staff. I look forward to joining you in these efforts to make our IU community stronger.

Thanks as always for all you are doing to make IU such a special place. Best wishes for an outstanding and productive 2023.