SUBJECT: October Updates from the Provost Office

Dear Colleagues, 

I hope you are enjoying the fall semester. Most of you are busy with students and research projects as well as providing service to the University. The semester is moving along at a fast pace with many events taking place on our campus, as you can see below. We also want to share with you the Provost Office priorities for this academic year:

• Create programming around building community
• Increase support for faculty with research development and productivity
• Support faculty facing AI challenges in their courses and scholarly pursuits
• Increase career readiness initiatives for our students 
• Achieve a successful Carnegie Foundation Elective Community Engagement reclassification 
• Create a process for developing interdisciplinary programs
• Assess block tuition and students success

Faculty Panel: Democracy, Civil Engagement, and the 2024 Elections
Wednesday, October 16, 4-5:30 pm, 1st Floor of the Mardigian Library

Please join us for a discussion on Democracy, Civil Engagement, and the 2024 elections! We will hear from your colleagues across the colleges about issues facing our nation and the upcoming election. Presenters include Pamela Aronson (Professor of Sociology), Julio Borquez (Associate Professor of Political Science), Tim Kiska (Professor of Communications), Hafiz Malik  (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering), and Lisa Martin (Department Chair / Professor of Health and Human Services & Women's and Gender Studies). We hope to see you there!

Faculty and Staff Training For Student Mental Health
As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive campus environment, the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services is pleased to announce a second date for their new training focused on Supporting Students’ Mental Health.This training is designed to equip you with the tools and strategies needed to recognize, respond to, and support students who may be facing mental health challenges. With increasing demands on our students’ emotional and psychological well-being, it’s important for us as educators and staff to be well-prepared to offer compassionate and effective assistance.

Training Details
Date: Monday, November 4th, 2024
Time: 2-4 pm
Location: RUC 1225

This training will be offered several times throughout the year and thus are limiting sign up to 25 individuals to provide space for quality interactions. Your role in promoting mental well-being is crucial, and we believe this training will provide valuable insights and practical approaches for ensuring our students thrive academically and personally. Please RSVP by completing our Google Form. If you have any questions or require additional information, feel free to reach out.

Hub Panel on GenAI and Writing Classes
For those who missed the Hub’s informative faculty panel last week Reckoning with AI Writing in the Wake of Pandemic Teaching, this blog post will catch you up. Thank you to the fantastic faculty panelists Jennifer Coon, John Taylor, Mike MacDonald, and Shelly Jarenski and to the Hub for creating much needed space for these conversations. If the panel (or blog) raises any questions or ideas for you, you can book a GenAI Consultation with an Instructional Designer. The Hub instructional designers have been following the impacts of GenAI on university teaching very closely and can assist you in thinking through this complex teaching issue, providing you with outside resources, and redesigning assignments and assessments to best meet your learning goals.

Hanover Research Reports for New and Existing Academic Programs
The Provost’s Office in partnership with Business Affairs has renewed our contract with Higher Education Solutions | Hanover Research for another 3 years. Hanover provides all of our colleges and programs with the opportunity for a detailed analysis of critical elements of new and existing academic program viability (student demand, labor market demand, and market saturation). As a reminder, all new program proposals are required to have a Hanover report included when going through the curriculum approval process. To schedule a scoping call with Hanover for research analysis, reach out to Associate Provost Linker: [email protected] to be added to the Hanover queue. Following scoping calls reports generally take six weeks to complete. 

Arts Initiative
Thank you to the faculty members in the arts who attended a meeting facilitated by the Provost’s Office to connect our campus with the leadership team at Ann Arbor’s Arts Initiative. The Arts Initiative aims to expand access to the arts on all three campuses and there are funding opportunities available to Dearborn faculty. Some of these opportunities have October deadlines, so there's still time to apply. Additionally, please share with your students this call for student artwork for a three-campus juried exhibition with the theme Take Care. 

EIC Sustainability Fellows
The Environmental Interpretive Center (EIC), along with the Office of the Provost, recently launched a new student initiative to support interdisciplinary collaborations on sustainability. Four EIC Collegiate Sustainability Fellows were selected, with each student representing a different college. The goal is to further strengthen the role EIC plays in sustainability initiatives on and off campus and to do so in a way that includes the expertise and experiences from all academic programs on campus. Their work will go a long way in boosting EIC's footprint on and off-campus, improving effectiveness of sustainability related efforts at the EIC, and diversifying the participants that engage in environmental sustainability and equity. Please join me in congratulating the 2024-2025 EIC Sustainability Fellows Diana Mtairek (Ph.D. in Education - CEHHS), Kirill Nartov (M.S. in Data Science - CECS), Anisa Elezi (B.B.A. in Digital Marketing - COB), and Leah Williams (A.B. in Urban and Regional Studies - CASL)!

Knack Tutoring Faculty Info Session 
The Office of Academic Success (OAS) launched a new tutoring program this semester, Knack, to support students in all undergraduate courses. Join OAS and a Knack partner at a faculty info session on October 14, 2024 at 2:00 pm in 1211 Mardigian Library to learn more about the tool and how you can help promote student success by promoting Knack! Register here to attend. 

Wolverine Mentor Collective 
Starting at a new campus can be challenging sometimes, and the Wolverine Mentor Collective (WMC) is available to enhance the student experience by connecting incoming students to current UM-Dearborn Wolverines, or alumni in some cases.  After three years of offering the program to incoming students as “opt-in,” we saw higher rates of retention with those students who received a mentor.  As a result, we made the strategic decision to run WMC as an “opt-out” program for all undergraduate students - making mentorship available to all.  This year 940 incoming undergraduate and 240 incoming graduate students have been paired with a current student mentor (235) to ensure their transition into UM-Dearborn is successful. Enrollment Management and Experience+ are excited by this year’s student engagement as is our Mentor Collective partner who recently highlighted our program in Higher Ed Dive. 

Early Warning 
Take advantage of our campus's early warning program which is designed to help to support student learning and success by identifying students who are in need of additional help. The link to submit an alert can be accessed on the Faculty and Staff website, under “Grading and Course Resources” or the Early Warning webpage. While you will be able to notify staff of at-risk students throughout the entire semester, submitting alerts early is important! The selective drop date for this semester is November 4. We encourage you to submit your alerts before this date to ensure the most options for your students’ success in the course. Please provide any comments and if possible, grades for students in the comment section. For more information on which offices respond to each alert reason or the program overall, please visit the Early Warning webpage. Each semester, hundreds of students are identified as being at risk of failing by their faculty members and are connected to the campus resources they need, thanks to your engagement in the Early Warning Program.

OCEL Urban Futures Panel
Friday, November 8, 12:30-2:00 pm, 1st floor of the Mardigian Library. 

The Office of Community-Engaged Learning and The Office of the Provost are proud to host Connecting Communities: An Urban Futures panel discussion on regional transportation. Join us at 12:30 for refreshments and resources provided by Transportation Riders United before the panel starts at 1:00. Our esteemed panelists will be Samir Deshpande (Dearborn Department of Public Health), Fred Feng (College of Engineering and Computer Science), Jacob Napieralski (Director of the Environmental Interpretive Center), and Finn Bell (College of Education, Health, and Human Services), with short remarks by Armen Zakarian (Vice Provost of Research). Register using this link!

Michigan Health Equity Initiative for Graduate Students
In partnership with the Ann Arbor campus, we are excited to launch the Michigan Health Equity Challenge, available to our graduate students. You can find out more information about this program on the Michigan Health Equity Challenge website. Applications are due November 8th, and the challenge will run from January-March 2025. Please reach out to Armen Zakarian ([email protected]) with any questions!

Spring Career Fair - Save the Date!
The Spring 2025 Career Fair will be held on Thursday, March 13th. Please mark your calendars now - this is a great opportunity for our students and local and regional businesses! More information to follow. 

Thank you for your time in reading this monthly newsletter, we hope you find it helpful! Please remember that you can find this and all of our previous communications on our webpage. 

All the very best and thanks for all you do for our students and our campus,

Gabriella

Gabriella Scarlatta
Provost & Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs