Ideas from Faculty Dinners 2008
The president and her husband have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to get to know the faculty at a series of dinners over the past year. University faculty members have been randomly selected for the dinners so that no two faculty from the same department are at dinner at the same time. Discussions have been interesting and lively. In 2008, the dinner guests were asked to say where they would like to see Lehigh within ten years. Here is a collection of the responses thus far, categorized by subject area:
Our faculty and staff
- Don't lose traditions of great undergraduate teaching
- Continue to connect with students in ways others cannot; prepare them for the world they will exist in, teaching them important life skills inside and outside the classroom
- Be a place where people like to work and are happy; happy professors make the best teachers and researchers
- Hire research-excellent faculty, known in their fields
- Investment in undergraduate teaching
- Real faculty input in decision making
- 360 degree review for administration
- Governance processes that are more consultative and collaborative and less hierarchical
- Evaluate what works for who and why
- Key to faculty--good mid-level superstars
- Attract better young faculty
- Our most valuable resource is time
- Retain value of undergrad teaching
- Stronger sense of faculty community
- More time to think creatively
- More professors who become national thought leaders in their fields
Our curriculum
- Grow in disciplines that support health and medicine, increase hospital collaborations
- Make Lehigh a place where graduate students come because of their passion and because they want to study (not just to get a degree)
- Improve our graduate program, develop critical mass while still addressing needs of undergraduates
- High-quality undergraduate education
- Lead in liberal arts education
- Move outside disciplinary boxes; challenge departmental barriers
- Achieve elite status in graduate education
- Establish a law school, perhaps not full service but focusing on areas of relevance to Lehigh: intellectual property, education law, etc.
- Excellence in education
- Customizable Ph.D. offerings
- Name the IBE program
- Offer Ph.D. in business beyond economics
- Truly great arts and sciences program--the heart of the university
- Balance with electronic teaching
- Emphasize study of languages and literature
- Examine the role of technology in teaching
- Environmental topics integrated into all curriculum
- Have a medical school that is closely aligned with a hospital or hospitals
- Leader in bioengineering (biometrics, COT imaging)
Our students
- Make Lehigh's intellectual climate one that attracts students who want to learn and be challenged
- Diversify student population
- Produce students who will promote themselves better and be proud of their Lehigh degree
- Increase graduate student population
- Imbue our students with the value of evidence-based work
- Integrate grad students on campus
- More undergraduates with intellectual curiosity
- Help our students become free and informed citizens
- Graduate fellowships: Attract the best grad students
- Raise graduate students to the same level of importance as undergraduates
- Student body mix combining creative engineers, less vocation-fixated business students, and a more diverse group of educationally curious CAS students
Research
- Make our research programs stronger
- Be famous for research; in turn, this will attract the best graduate students
- Fully develop our own research identity; benefit from niche areas and our strengths
- Emphasize fundamentals and basic research
- Become more well known nationally and internationally for research
- Achieve elite status in research
- Excellence in research
- Find a research niche that puts us ahead of the competition
- Grow research--the quality of undergraduate education grows with the quality of graduate education
- Prominent research initiative
- Improvement in research resources and support
- Enhanced leave of absence for research
- Recognition as a world-class research institution while continuing our emphasis on teaching undergraduates
- Build a highly respected research family (students, collaborators, etc.)
- Endowment sufficient to support basic research
- Balance between research and teaching
Campus
- Provide alternatives to Greek life for social and intellectual community, spaces like the Humanities Center and South Mountain College
- Better connections across parts of campus, including Mountaintop
- Enhance engagement with South Bethlehem
- Value the fraternities, but bring them along to the current century
- Be a place for lively and open respectful debate with people having opinions different from our own
- Grad student dorm on the lower campus
- A conference center shared with the South Side
Sports
- Win a national wrestling championship!
Our identity
- Do not try to be someone else; work out our unique identities
- Value the arts and other disciplines; help students to live and breathe art culture and language
- Keep the balance, our niche in teaching student experiences and research; keep "feel," don't try to be another place; maintain character
- Have seamless collaborations
- "Lehigh" means "strong" in Mandarin; maintain our own character, use resources efficiently
- Don't model on other places; keep "feel"
- Not just another Ivy--have a great campus and faculty balance with engineering and arts and sciences and business
- Move up 5 to 10 positions in the rankings
- Be competitive with the same pool of institutions at the graduate level that we now compete with at the undergraduate level
- We don't know how good we are--build bridges across campus
- No walls between the four colleges
- Gain the reputation to turn away top students, attract top faculty, and become a destination for international scholars on sabbatical
- Recognized nationally and internationally for truly accomplishing the goals stated in our (revised and updated) mission statement
- Become a more diversified national school (vs. a regional school)
- A medium-sized school with our distinguished competitive advantages in selected subjects
- Serve a niche rather than be a university that tries to cater to all
Engaging the world around us
- Contribute internationally and for societal good; be a place that embraces diversity
- Leadership in environmental initiative and issues
- Excited about Lehigh's global programs--want to include international experiences for graduate students; global opportunities for all
- Enhance our international strategy
- Increase study abroad--up to two semesters, use peer pressure if not required
- Globalize: Require an international experience, bring international students and scholars in--bringing abroad here
- Provide more international internships
- Full integration into the nation and world service
- Lehigh as the center of global universities; students sharing virtually and in person
- High-performance computing; TeraGrid
- Establish a world-leading geo and energy lab
- Save the world! (maybe within 20 years)
- Take advantage of the casino, make it a positive for Lehigh
- Internationalization
- Leader in green energy development: green buildings, green transportation (hybrid buses), research into renewable energy)
