Provost’s Monthly Academic Report (Nov. 2024)
Message from the Provost
Dear Colleagues,
From ConnectEd general education and our interdisciplinary Practical AI minor, to our undergraduate and graduate degrees in fields such as Information Systems and Computer Science, several thousand students are enrolled in AI-related courses and programs at VCU this semester. That’s great news for them, and it’s a testament to the wisdom and hard work of the professors who are creating these opportunities at record speed.
Generative AI is reality today. The technology and algorithms that make it possible are finding their way into our computers, smartphones, televisions, automobiles, and you name it. The ability to understand, engage, and leverage these tools will determine the success our graduates achieve throughout their working lives, regardless of their career fields.
VCU’s Board of Visitors understand this reality. That’s why the Rector asked me, along with Alex Henson, the university’s Chief Information Officer, to update the board on how VCU is responding to these technology-driven changes at its October retreat – the latest chapter in the ongoing conversation we are having with them about Gen AI.
Students are hungry to learn about this technology. I have been traveling across campus, guest lecturing in classes about AI to engaged students who ask prescient questions about how AI will impact their future careers and what VCU is doing to prepare them for the future. In fact, we have published a new web page for them to stay current on the opportunities VCU is offering in this space. We welcome your help to make it as inclusive and informative as it can be. Please let us know if there’s something that isn’t on there but should be.
This is an exciting time to be in higher education, and to be working at VCU. Each of you can be a pioneer as we determine what the future will be and prioritize the usage of AI for the public good! To learn more, check out the newly updated Gen AI and Teaching Guidelines for Faculty as well as the Gen AI Guidelines for Students. As always, thank you for all that you do for VCU and the students that we serve together.
Best regards,
Fotis
Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D.
Provost and senior vice president for academic affairs
Celebrating VCU Faculty
- A faculty member from the School of Education, Professor Yaoying Xu, has received a $1.2 million grant from the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. This grant will go toward Project REAL, which focuses on integrating cultural responsiveness with knowledge around early childhood socioemotional research with teaching practice and effective policymaking.
- Eleven VCU faculty members, who rank in the top 50 in their respective fields, have made a new listing of the world’s most-cited scientists. The 2024 Stanford Elsevier report highlights the top 2% globally. From the School of Medicine, three faculty members were ranked in the top 1,000 of all researchers worldwide based on activity from the previous year.
- Arun Sanyal, MD, Internal Medicine (259)
- Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, Psychiatry (352)
- Jasmohan S. Bajaj, MD, Internal Medicine (848)
- Russell Barkley, Ph.D., Psychiatry (714) placed among the top 1,000
- W. Greg Miller, Ph.D., Pathology
- Ashraf S. Gorgey, Ph.D., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
- Steven H. Woolf, MD; Family Medicine
- the late Lindon Eaves, Ph.D., Human and Molecular Genetics
- Shawn O. Utsey, Ph.D., Department of Psychology
- Jonathan M. Bloom, Ph.D.
- Richard A. Glennon, Ph.D., Medicinal Chemistry
- Lisa F. Brown, Ph.D., RN, from VCU’s School of Nursing, has been inducted as a fellow for the American Academy of Nursing, one of the field’s most prestigious honors. This is for her work with improving maternal competence, particularly in mother-premature infant feeding interactions and developing interventions to support mothers in establishing feeding practices vital to infant health and development.
- Ka Un Lao, Ph.D., an assistant professor in VCU’s Department of Chemistry, has been recognized by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Computers in Chemistry for his research in on integrating knowledge from non-chemistry fields – such as differential geometry, set theory and machine learning – with electronic structure theory to accelerate quantum chemistry calculations. Lao is one of four spring 2025 winners of ACS COMP’s OpenEye Cadence Molecular Sciences Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry, following his receiving of ACS COMP’s Excellent Graduate Student Award in 2015 and its Outstanding Postdoctoral Award in 2018.
Leadership Update
I am pleased to announce that we have concluded our national search and have selected Gary Cuddeback, Ph.D. as dean of the VCU School of Social Work, effective immediately. Dr. Cuddeback has served as the school’s interim dean since July, 2023. Read the full announcement.
Initiative Updates
- Seeking faculty fellows! In the coming weeks, my office will make a call for our next group of Faculty Fellows for VCU’s SACSCOC Quality Enhancement Plan, which we call Every Ram’s a Researcher. The call will go to the Council of Deans, who will nominate or forward to their faculty. If you teach in general education, or have considered teaching in general education, and if you want to make a significant contribution to undergraduate research at VCU, please be on the lookout for this call.
- VCU has surpassed the $500 million mark in sponsored research funding for the first time. The fiscal year 2024 total of $506 million represents the sixth consecutive year of record-setting funding, and it reflects an 86% increase over six years and 9% over last year. Read the announcement.
- VCU Institute for Women’s Health is the sole recipient of a five-year, $3.8M grant to advance gender diversity in the STEMM workforce. The grant brings together experts from the VCU School of Medicine, College of Engineering, School of Education and Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Susan Kornstein, MD, executive director of the IWH, Barbara Boyan, Ph.D., director of the VCU Institute for Engineering and Medicine and Mangala Subramaniam, Ph.D., senior vice provost for faculty affairs, will lead the initiative as co-principal investigators.
- VCU earned recognition as top tier in the 2024 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award recipients. This is the sixth straight year the VCU has won recognition as a Diversity Champion.
- VCU’s Division of Community Engagement is holding its annual Connect Conference on Nov. 1, and talking about the new tools it is creating to understand our impact as it leads the charge to earn reclassification as a Carnegie Community Engaged University.
- VCU student Josh Galarza has been named a National Book Award finalist for his work ‘The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in The Sky.’ He is one of five finalists for the 2024 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
- VCU’s RTR Teacher Residency Program, part of the School of Education’s Center for Teacher Leadership, has received a $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The money from this three-year grant will go into recruitment, preparation and development of a strong and diverse educational workforce for America’s workforce. Additionally, there is possibility that this grant be extended for an additional two years, totaling $9.5 million over the span of a five year period.
- VCU celebrates Indigenous Peoples History Month each November. The Office of Multicultural Student Affairs (OMSA) has an amazing slate of programs for the month, which will be posted on their website and Instagram account during the first week of November.
- VCU Libraries, in support of open and affordable course materials across the VCU community, announces that a new round of VIVA Open Adopt Grants is open for applications. These $2,000 grants empower Virginia faculty with the resources and time they need to integrate existing open or no-cost materials into a syllabus. Awardees will receive support from VIVA in adopting existing OER, including access to Pressbooks, ISKME’s Open Author Tool, and copyright consultations. Applications are due Nov. 13. More information is available on the VIVA Open Adopt Grants website.
- On November 6th, University Counseling Services will host the Paws for Stress Program from 11:30 am until 1:00 pm in the University Commons. Students are invited to attend, interact with the dogs, and learn about strategies to manage stress – especially sociopolitical stress. Check out the program’s website link for additional information about managing stress.
- There will be a Flu Shot Clinic for students on November 7 from 10a-2p in University Commons. We invite students to attend and get their flu shot.
Quest 2028 Data Point
IRDS recently developed the First-Time in College Retention Dashboard which examines Fall to Spring and Fall to Fall retention over time, with break-outs by College and Race & Ethnicity. In this dashboard we define retention rate as the percentage of students who start in a particular fall term (entering term) and register for courses in the subsequent Fall/Spring terms for any number of credits. We split retention groups into Fall to Spring and Fall to Fall. For example, a student entering in Fall but does not return for the following Spring semester is not retained. That same student could, however, return for the following Fall semester and be considered retained from Fall to Fall.
The dashboard allows users to access relevant filters to gather information on retention of specific groups at VCU. For example, on the Comparison Groups page, if the Legal Sex filter is set to ‘Female’ and the Housing filter is set to ‘Living on-campus’, then the dashboard will display the retention rate for female students who live on campus. In 2020, female students who live on campus had a retention rate of 80.8%, compared to female students who did not live on campus in 2020 had a retention rate of 73.1%.
Each page provides new filters for users to examine that allows different units to find valuable and relevant information. To learn more about how IRDS resources can support your work, email us.
Upcoming Events
Gen AI & Teaching & Learning Series
In this interactive session, we invite faculty to share their current thoughts, and experiences regarding the impact of Gen AI on teaching and learning in their classrooms. As Gen AI continues to evolve, so do faculty experiences. Hear from your colleagues about how it is shaping classroom dynamics, influencing student learning, and affecting course design. This discussion aims to gather faculty feedback on the current landscape, explore emerging concerns, and identify opportunities related to the integration of Gen AI in academic courses.
Title: Gauging the Landscape: Current Faculty Perspectives on Gen AI in the Classroom
Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
Time: 10:00-11:15 am
Location: Academic Learning Commons, Room 4100
Registration link
Monthly Session for Faculty – Faculty Well Being
Faculty well-being involves balancing life and work (yes life, first!). Faculty must be intentional in finding this balance, assessing their time use, and engaging in self-care; even as we focus on caring for the family, the patient,and the student.
What do we mean when we talk about faculty well being? How do we mitigate burnout? This interactive session will explore what faculty well being is, what the role of the institution is in developing a culture of well being.
Date: Monday, November 11, 2024
Time: 10:00-11:15 am
Location: Richmond Salon II
Registration link
Department Chair Monthly Forum – Broadening your Lens as Department Chair: Anticipating and Responding to Complex Situations
Department chairs have a variety of responsibilities that require interactions with administration, faculty, staff and students. Department chairs have to often address complex situations influenced by multiple factors. This session offers legal and practical guidance to department chairs about when and how to document interactions, the types of conversations to initiate; and how to gain clarity to inform appropriate responses and/or actions.
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Time: 10:00-11:00 am
Location: Richmond Salon II
Registration: By invitation only
2024 Conference for Associate Professors
The second annual Conference for Associate Professors – term and tenured – serves as a professional development opportunity. The conference will include a keynote, a panel session and the possibility to network among faculty.
Theme: Paving the Way to Full Professor
Date: Monday, November 18, 2024
Time: 8:30 am -12:00 pm
Location: Cabell Library Lecture Hall, Room 303
Registration link
2024 FALL GLOBAL INITIATIVES MASTER CLASS SERIES: Global Engagement Strategies
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is one type of virtual exchange where students from two partner institutions engage in purposeful interaction in a joint course which has the potential to contribute to intercultural and global learning. COIL can work with a course that faculty currently teach, or a completely new course can be developed. Class students may interact synchronously or asynchronously for a few weeks or an entire term through whichever technologies are most relevant and useful.
Culturally diverse students work together on a project, class discussions, or similar group work with discipline-based and intercultural learning outcomes. Casey will introduce participants to some evidence-informed principles of COIL including constructing global or intercultural learning outcomes, discuss the benefits, finding partners, and consider technologies for constructing a COIL experience.
Title: Fundamentals of Designing a COIL or Global Learning Doesn’t Just Happen
Date: December 10, 2024
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Location: Student Commons, Richmond Salons III-IV
Registration Link
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