Commitment to Learning and Discovery: Progress to Date
This page will be periodically updated with our progress on the strategic plan priorities.
Commitment to Learning and Discovery
| Strategies & Actions | Owner / Status | Update |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy: Enhance learning throughout our community for students, faculty and staff. | ||
| Action: Identify, pursue and implement strategies to improve the success of all MSOE students including the elimination of equity gaps for underrepresented students. | Meier/Ross/Bergen/Sabel/Mitchell/Meyer Ongoing |
Create an “explorer” pathway (2024); Address underpreparedness in precalculus through co-requisite support (2024); Rising Raiders Scholars (2024); Student Nursing Association - table leads for the DEIB Student Reception (2024); Virtual welcome for high school students to promote senior design scholars (2024); Nursing Living Learning Community Overnight Shadow Visits (2024); Defined the benchmarks and best practices for pre-college credit for students (2024); CS is piloting a pre-college model (2024); Co-Requisite Recommendations (2023); Nursing Living Learning Community (2023), aligned with DEIB plan/survey; JumpStart 2.0 (2023); Introduced comprehensive use of predictive and real-time data analytics (2023); Launched the Achieve Team, Math Intervention Team, and Anatomy and Physiology JumpStart Team (2022). |
| Action: Facilitate, recognize and reward engagement by our faculty, staff and administrators in professional development that supports instructional innovation. | Baumgartner/Villegas Ongoing |
AI Ambassadors (2024); Course buyots have been provided for the development of online courses in partnership with EverSpring (2023); Faculty Expectations Documents; KEEN Grant support; CREATE facilitates instructional innovation - recognition and rewards continuously evolving |
| Action: Put systems in place to continuously evaluate and improve the learning and teaching experience across all modalities. | Domack/Villegas/Faculty Senate Ongoing |
Recommendations to expand faculty evaluations beyond student evaluations (Report 2024); Student Course Evaluation - across modalities; Everspring is building out a quality online instruction (2023); Student learning outcomes are assessed and evaluated; programs make changes to improve; repeat process for continuous improvement; CREATE gathers faculty self-reported data re: MSOE Mindset and high impact practices (quantitative) |
| Action: Engage the K-12 community to inspire children about STEM, foster excitement about what they can accomplish, and strengthen our mutually beneficial relationships with schools. |
Taylor/Villegas/Mitchell/Bergen Ongoing
|
WE Energies STEM Center serves as Milwaukee's premier STEM destination center, creating and supporting inclusive, meaningful STEM experiences for all students to explore the possibilities of their future, regardless of where their post-high school journey may take them; Various departments across campus provide student competitions, including CAECM and EECS; Outside of the classroom, students are provided opportunities to engage the community through the American Family Senior Design Scholars, Rising Raiders Scholars, All-in MKE, and the CREATE Institute; host annual Explore Summit for PLTW students |
| Strategy: Enhance our educational programs to deepen experiential learning and focus on the development of the professional. | ||
| Action: Ensure a robust framework is in place to periodically review all existing and proposed new undergraduate and graduate degree programs for health, institutional alignment, instructional approaches, and ability to meet the needs of our constituencies. | Baumgartner/Matson/Sebastanovic Ongoing |
Consultant Kaufman Hall supporting the creation of a financial model for continued programmatic evaluation (2024); Establish periodic review in alignment with the accreditation cycle (this process is distinct from the periodic program process that assesses and evaluates student learning outcomes) |
| Action: Evaluate the ways in which we grant academic credit to our students. | Baumgartner Complete |
Completed as a result of strengthening our transfer agreement process (2024) |
| Action: Identify and establish the infrastructure, practices and policies necessary to increase interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty. | Baumgartner/Villegas Complete |
Applied AI Ambassadors (2024); CREATE facilitates through Brown Bag Conversations, professional development series, and KEEN Grant support |
| Strategy: Ensure that all students use real-world projects and initiatives in their field of study or extracurricular interest to benefit society and the communities where we live and work. | ||
| Action: Expand the work of the CREATE Institute in coordinating, tracking and assessing project-based experiential learning opportunities across campus and connecting these opportunities to the MSOE Mindset and Common Learning Outcome development. | Villegas Ongoing |
Utilize EduSource to coordinate project-based experiential learning opportunities (2023); |
| Action: Provide professional development and support for faculty to integrate project-based learning and other high-impact practices into the curriculum in ways that promote student development, strengthen industry connections, and meet the needs of community partners. | Villegas Ongoing |
Kick-Off Celebration (2024); President's Learning Series (2024); Considering dedicated time for faculty to engage in internal Professional Development (PD), including designating a required weekly free hour in semester calendar; integration into PEAS; summer PD with stipends; monetarily rewarded completion badges |
| Action: Create a robust student professional development series that leverages and strengthens industry partnerships, supports general education goals and professional preparation, and fosters growth of the MSOE Mindset. | Villegas/Baumgartner Ongoing |
Career Connections Center provides professional preparation experiences, including resume and cover letter development, mock interviewing, and career coaching (2024); CAP declined a proposed Professional Development Series (2021) |
| Action: Expand current initiatives and collaborations to strengthen commitment to obtain the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. | Villegas/Taylor Ongoing |
Career Connections Center provides professional preparation experiences, including resume and cover letter development, mock interviewing, and career coaching (2024); CAP declined a proposed Professional Development Series (2021) |
| Strategy: Develop a funded, nationally-recognized, application-oriented undergraduate research program | ||
| Action: Align faculty hiring, retention and promotion practices to recognize undergraduate research emphasis. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Faculty evaluation system includes recognition of undergraduate research (2021) |
| Action: Assign workload for faculty advising undergraduate research projects. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Workload policies and practices to be addressed by faculty senate (2025) |
| Action: Allocate space and equipment for undergraduate researchers and explore establishing an undergraduate research living-learning community | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Undergraduate Research Proposal presented to Strategic Investment Fund Committee (2024) |
| Action: Specify undergraduate research curricular applicability for every undergraduate program at MSOE and institute a curricular colloquia series for undergraduate researchers. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Proposal re: undergraduate research program submitted to the Strategic Investment Fund Committee (2024); Committee on curricular component of undergraduate research (2022) |
| Strategy: Enable all full-time faculty to engage in ongoing, meaningful and productive scholarly activities | ||
| Action: Formalize support for faculty and staff throughout the research process, from development, submission, and management of research proposals to ensuring the tools are in place to conduct the research. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
NSF Proposal submitted to build research capacity MSOE (Kedziora-2024); exploring pre- and post-grant support position (Kamara-2024); external evaluation of grant support at MSOE (Kamara-2024) |
| Action: Facilitate widespread faculty scholarly activities and professional development with mentorship beyond the first year, teaching assignments, space allocation, equipment and recognition. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Task force created (2019). Co-chairs: Steve Williams and Patrick Jung. A series of recommendations for broadening facilitation of faculty scholarly activities and professional development have been developed. Discuss resources. CREATE hosts Communities of Practice; faculty externships (CS and SE); Kohn Fellowship for Educational Research; Pieper Chair; Teaching loads make scholarly work during the academic year more difficult; could increase participation in opportunities for faculty; Focus on ability to support faculty in areas where their passions are located; |
| Action: Develop hiring, retention and promotion policies that allow for varied faculty workloads, where teaching, research and service are balanced in ways that meet the needs of the university and recognize the contributions of faculty. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Workload policies and practices to be addressed by faculty senate (2025) |
| Action: Create policies so first-year faculty can establish and/or transition scholarly work to MSOE. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Develop policy that defines resource and provides departmental oversight (2025); first-time faculty are provided break in teaching load (department specific) (2024) |
| Strategy: Raise awareness and understanding of scholarship throughout MSOE. | ||
| Action: Ensure all faculty understand and embrace the definition of scholarship at MSOE, building on work already accomplished in this area. | Baumgartner Completed |
Formalized definition of scholarship in the faculty handbook (2019) |
| Action: Investigate ways to share and celebrate scholarship activity of faculty and staff, within MSOE and beyond, promoting scholarly achievements and “milestone” status reports from faculty and students on projects. | Thachenkary/Baumgartner Ongoing |
Faculty and staff achievements highlighted across marketing and communications channels including MSOE newsroom success stories, media and public relations annual plan, Dimensions, Expertfile, Raider Roundup, quarterly mailings and e-newsletters, and social media (2024) |
| Strategy: Advance our mission and build on our distinctive strengths and values by leveraging online, blended and technology-enhanced classroom instruction in ways that improve learning, increase revenue, and enhance MSOE’s reach and reputation. | ||
| Action: Generate an overarching plan to guide strategic adaptation and use of new modalities of learning. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Create Strategic Plan (2024) |
| Action: Reimagine our post-graduate and non-degree programs to enhance the MSOE experience and better meet the life-long learning needs of our constituents. | Baumgartner/Kroeninger Ongoing |
Create Strategic Plan (2024) |
| Action: Ensure that blended and online offerings robustly engage students with real-world projects in ways equivalent to the opportunities students have on campus. | Baumgartner Ongoing |
Create Strategic Plan (2024); Online courses for Machine Learning (2023); Center for Professional Education (2023); Announcement of Everspring (2022) |
| Action: Ensure that all necessary infrastructures and systems are in place for long-term success including systems that stimulate innovation in online and technology-enhanced learning and instruction. |
Baumgartner/Williams Ongoing |
Inclusive Access Timeline and Policies Created (2023) |