Letter from the Chair - Summer 2016
As my term as department chair comes to an end, my thoughts naturally turn to reflect upon the past four years. In 2012, the big news was ChBE’s move into the new Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building. At the time, lab space was generous, classroom space was incomplete, the hallways echoed hollowly, and one could even glimpse vacant offices. In 2016, the building is humming with activity and bursting at the seams; in fact, an expansion is well underway. In 2012, we marveled that our undergraduate enrollment had surpassed 500, doubling the numbers from recent memory. Now, our department counts more than 800 students in our undergraduate degree programs. In 2012, we pointed with pride to annual research expenditures that had surpassed the $13 million mark; our most recent annual expenditures exceeded $16 million. While our faculty has not grown at this same astronomical pace, we have welcomed four new tenure-line professors to the department. A reinvigorated external advisory board has taken incredible initiative, urging the department to pursue exciting new projects (e.g. our new alumni mentoring program) and providing new resources through their foundation of the 1904 Society. And as we have detailed in our newsletters, our students, alumni, and faculty continue to garner accolades and demonstrate extraordinary leadership within the university, the country, and internationally. While challenges remain, the department is on a great trajectory.
The support that I have received as chair has been phenomenal, and I could fill this page with the names of people who deserve recognition. However, I would particularly like to acknowledge my associate chairs – Janet DeGrazia, Will Medlin, and Charles Musgrave – whose leadership has been instrumental. And a special thanks goes to Wendy Young; her initiative and creativity have had a tremendous impact in ways that are too numerous to count. Finally, I’m delighted to introduce my successor as department chair, Professor Charles Musgrave, who will begin his term on July 1, 2016. The department is in very good hands.
- Dan Schwartz, department chair