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Innovation and Entrepreneurship
First, let me comment on some highlights of the innovative and entrepreneurial strides we've taken this past year.
We created the "Master of Professional Studies in -------" to allow campus units to create degree and certificate programs that serve the needs of targeted organizations, be they government or private, national or international. The Graduate Certificate program in Arabic was approved in record time, 6 weeks, and students are currently in classes. Eight or nine additional offerings are in development. The Master of Mathematics of Advanced Industrial Technology is another new professional master's program being offered for the first time this fall.
During this year we are creating a department of bioengineering by assembling faculty from engineering and other campus units, by creating split appointments across different colleges and different University System of Maryland institutions and by recruiting new faculty positions. The new department should be formed by the beginning of the next academic year. It follows the creation of the Ph.D. program in bioengineering three years ago that has attracted excellent students and has the participation of 51 faculty appointed in 22 departments including 6 in the School of Engineering, 12 from other campus units and 3 from other System institutions.
The first new research building, M Square One, in our research park will be four stories and 120,000. It is scheduled for completion in the Fall 2006. Its tenants will include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, research teams like the Earth System Modeling collaborations, and also private sector firms who want to be close to the University and other tenants.
Campus fund raising totals hit an all time high: $121 million in private gifts last year, the first $100 million plus year in university history. You might be interested to know that over the past nine years the number of faculty and staff annual donors has doubled, and their total contribution is, get this, $25.4 million. This past year 25% of our faculty and staff were donors to this campaign. Thank you very much.
The new Field Committee model allows faculty to create and publicize topical fields of study that stretch across usual administrative lines. The Burger's Program for Fluid Dynamics with 60 faculty located in 17 campus units was the first Field Committee established. A second is in nano science and technology, and I understand that at least two others are in process.
The new College Park Professor position provides opportunity to appoint a distinguished person at the Professor rank without guarantee of salary and tenure. A department proposes the candidate and approval requires passing through the complete APT process. I know about two candidate proposals and I expect others are in preparation.
The Career Center has created a program linking students with corporations and government agencies for mentoring, training, and internships. Following a successful pilot program last year, the program now links to Lockheed Martin, IBM, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Baltimore Gas & Electric, Booz Allen Hamilton, Target, Chevy Chase Bank and Legg Mason, and also to the Central Intelligence Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Transportation, Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. This program uses our location in the nation's capital and our wealth of well-positioned alumni to bring value added opportunities to our students. Well done.
Because of increasing graduation rates, more students can be admitted for the Spring semester without increasing the campus maximum headcount. The Freshman Connection Program, being run by the Office of Summer and Winter Terms, seeks to increase Spring admissions to the campus by at least 600 beginning in the Spring of 2007. The program will also assist those students admitted in the Spring to catch up with the preceding Fall class if they wish. Issues like housing and class priority are being worked on. The longer-term goal is to increase Spring freshmen admitted to about 900. In this way we can serve the increasing number of students without increasing campus maximum head count.
The University has become a national leader on Language. In addition to the language programs in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, language at Maryland includes contributions from the Center for the Advanced Study of Language, the Persian Studies Center, the Confucius Institute, the National Foreign Language Center, and the UM Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) with its distinguished linguists, computer scientists, and cognitive psychologists plus contributions from faculty in education, anthropology, business and library science. The Language mission derives from security, the global marketplace, and simply the importance of language and culture in today's world. The faculty from many areas and leadership in ARHU are commended for their strategic formulation of this long-term mission.
Partnerships
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