Increasingly, there is a concern that U.S. College graduates cannot adequately solve problems and think critically. As a set of cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills provide students with tangible academic, personal, and professional benefits that may ultimately address these concerns. As an instructional method, writing has long been perceived as a way to improve critical thinking. Studies have shown that writing significantly improved critical thinking skills when compared to non-writing instructional methods.

Student performance could also be greatly enhanced if problem based learning (PBL) became a common fixture across the curriculum. Through problem based learning, the student is trained to reason his/her way through a set of discipline-specific problems. This can be done in small groups that have been partitioned from the much larger class. Such an approach will increase student involvement, excitement, and participation resulting in more effective student learning and performance.

Student performance should be measured based upon the student’s ability to perform tasks of greater and greater difficulty. While standardized examination may measure the mastery of certain specific subject matter, the ability of students to conduct analyses of complex problems and to describe an approach to their solutions in writing is the most significant measure of competency. Ultimately, `students should have the literary, mathematical, and scientific knowledge to be able to address contemporary situations.

Excellence in science and technology education comes from innovative teaching techniques and effective instructional materials. This requires one to change the traditional ways of delivering educational materials. In the traditional teaching methods, lecturers offer course materials in a classroom where students listen, take notes, copy materials, execute homework and complete assignments. In many cases students fail to grasp the complete transfer of knowledge from the professor effectively, despite personally having sound technical knowledge in the subject area. This occurs because it is often hard for students to take notes and listen with good comprehension simultaneously. The literature on active learning is replete with methods of engaging students to achieve more effective learning than the traditional lecturing approach. Some educationists stressed the importance of cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and presenting information in various learning styles.

Excellence in instruction is key as effective teaching methods produce effective student learning. This requires adequate preparation and effective delivery in a motivated classroom environment. Adequate preparation requires thoughtful organizing and planning, not just the continuing evaluating or updating the material content; but material content should also contain learning activities that lead students to take part in dynamic and interactive exchanges in a class session.

The challenge is for faculty members to take full responsibility by actively doing everything in a teaching session to not only cause students to learn relevant materials confidently, but also to help them to adapt to new changes by refreshing and updating their current level of knowledge and skills that will fulfill new roles in their learning process.

The goal of accreditation and certifications are to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. The end result of having accreditation and certifications is that students and future employers are assured of the quality of education. This results in an increase in enrollment as well as placement.

The need for international education programs has grown with the rise of increased communication across international boundaries because of better communication systems, improved transportation systems and the proliferation of multinational corporations. Thus, in order for our students to truly become agents for global change, they must have exposure to other cultures.

The College will identify long-range research program thrusts that have potential for yielding “cutting-edge” research projects that have significant scientific and developmental interest and will have its students engaged in the research and discovery process. The demonstration of successful research and the implementation of research results will attract a variety of funding sources.

The College will enhance the scholarly research atmosphere by attracting eminent scholars to speak and give seminars on the most contemporary research areas of the time.

The College will provide recognitions, awards, and other incentives for outstanding teaching, research and community service.

The College will promote interdisciplinary research throughout all of its departments and programs and will encourage such participation with other schools and colleges throughout the University.

The College will enhance the potential for the transfer of research results and developed products to the marketplace.

The College has an aggressive program of public outreach to its various constituent communities. The College must establish a presence in the community and make its “brand” highly recognizable as the “go to” institution for science and technology. The current crisis in science education must be addressed with innovative programs to assist students in the public schools to view science and mathematics as desired subjects to study.Departments have a history of offering summer STEM enrichment programs, generally funded by federal sources and focusing primarily on middle and high school students and teachers. Going forward, faculty members and departments will support community-based STEM organizations in hosting Saturday Academies and after school programs.

The College encourages the development and deployment of short courses and certification programs for the general public, including, but not limited to, those for which continuing education units (CEU) can be awarded. The committee has begun working with the College of Continuing Education to identify viable courses and professional development demands to put in place an appropriate infrastructure for managing COSET activities.

Faculty members are encouraged to be active with one or more professional societies in their technical areas and to advise students in establishing at least one department sponsored professional society student affiliate organization.

The College encourages all faculty members to incorporate service learning projects in their course work expectations. Service-learning gives students the opportunity to apply their classroom learning to address real-life community challenges, thereby helping them to integrate learning and application. The committee has established relationships with public libraries, community centers, and recreation centers to provide an array of settings for service learning projects. The committee will continue efforts to acquire funds to support students who are engaged in service-learning activities.

The recruitment of students into the STEM fields of study has become an especially daunting task. There has been a steady decline in the numbers of students attempting the study of science and mathematics over the past several decades. The number of entering freshmen who declare intentions to study any form of computing has declined 70% in the last decade according to the National Science Foundation. A nation explosion in non-college ready graduates from high schools is a concern in higher education across the nation. The College shall address these issues with a concerted effort to establish relationships with the school systems, community organizations, business organizations, and other stakeholders in order to provide assistance to improve the production of science students.

The graduation rates of students in the College must be improved as it has potential for impacting the appropriated funds. The 4-year cohort is especially difficult to manage because of financial needs and capabilities of the student body

Several of the College’s graduate programs have very low productivity. Graduate programs in computational interdisciplinary science have the greatest potential for employment of graduates who do not go to professional schools. A simple search for jobs for computational scientists yielded 3700 hits, computational biology yielded 1324 hits, computational physics yielded 1067 hits, computational environmental science yielded 254hits, and computational mathematics yielded 3005 hits from across the web. The evidence suggests that increasing the computation science in all of the graduate programs of the College would significantly increase the employability of our graduates.

The programs of the College must be focused toward an eventual employment outcome for all graduates. This means that the employment demand in each area should be included in the planning of curricula, academic programs, and the advisement of students in all degree programs. The current COSETs of a college education require most students to incur significant debt that, in most cases, is unforgivable, as it is a debt to the U.S. Government. Students today graduate with a debt load that previous generations did not have. Therefore, students should have a long range academic plan that will enable them to enter into careers that will provide for the liquidation of this debt within ten years.

The strategic vision of the College for increasing fundingfrom all sources is a two pronged approach to secure large scale and small scale funding. Large scale funding, in excess of $1,000,000 per year, is obtained by establishing a long range research program plan (LRRPP) that is in the direction of interest of selected funding sources. The LRRPP must be well defined and marketed to the funding sources interested in that research direction. The LRRPP must take advantage of the capabilities of the College to integrate all of its departments and programs for maximum strength. The LRRPP must identify research directions with potential for maximal return on the investment. The College is the primary unit in the University for such scientific research and development activity, which could be highly instrumental in the sustainability of the University.

The College monitors announcements for small scale funding, less than $1,000,000 per year, and responds to the immediate announcements of funding sources for which faculty have qualifications. Current areas of special opportunity are science, mathematics, and computing education in the P-16 range. The College shall identify the directions of research that will have the greatest potential in both categories.

In order to ensure that the management and operations of the College are transparent there must be explicit policies and procedures that are public and easy to understand and implement. It is estimated that the action items below will require two full time equivalent years to accomplish

The College resource plan must be defined in terms of the College’s goals and objectives and those of departments, centers, and programs. The action items below are intended to define the systems through which the College performs its allocation of resources.

A design plan for the enhancement of the College environment should make possible the beautification and comfort of the facilities. The facility must provide an enjoyable environment for students and faculty to work and study.

The College shall be pro-active in the implementation of information technology and computing applications that foster its mission. It should make the current cutting edge technologies available and implement new technologies to enhance the achievement of its goals and objectives. These tasks are estimated to take five full time equivalent years. The action items are listed in priority order.