College of Science

Index to College Hiring Priorities

See the CHPC Final Report (link included above) for a listing of all College of Science faculty search authorizations (both departmental and COALESCE) for the 2007-2008 academic year. You can also find it on Science Central (College of Science intranet); the allocations are listed at the end of the section on "College Hiring Priorities."

College Hiring Priorities Committee

The College Hiring Priorities Committee (CHPC) was formed to collect and evaluate ideas about the College of Science 's future multidisciplinary hiring priorities, and to recommend procedures for hiring authorization and departmental coordination.  The CHPC has representation from each department in the College and is chaired by Associate Dean for Research Jeff Bolin:

Through COALESCE and normal departmental hiring, the College's faculty size has grown by 61 faculty lines, counting a dozen unfilled positions. All "new" strategic plan slots that were given to the College from the Provost's office have been exhausted. For future searches, the plan is to allocate roughly 20% of the normal search authorizations for searches in targeted multidisciplinary priorities, which equates to about three faculty slots per year. The faculty slots will be allocated to leverage other hiring commitments made by multiple departments and colleges in order to ensure strong buy-in and coordination and to magnify the effect.

The CHCP established the process and criteria for soliciting and evaluating multidisciplinary hiring proposals that have been developed by Science faculty. In March 2007, Faculty were invited to submit short white papers identifying potential areas for strategic hiring for the College of Science that link multiple disciplines in the College and/or across the Purdue academic community.  It is understood the College will always have the important goal of enhancing its core disciplines.  The strategic hiring areas are intended to augment that goal by establishing research teams capable of addressing larger opportunities that span multiple disciplines. 

The process has engaged faculty, identified important opportunities, and coordinated with other colleges in the university.  As with the COALESCE areas the process has been "bottom up" to get faculty input and buy-in. Draft white papers were due on Friday, March 30th. The white papers in final form were due on Monday, April 30th. A College of Science Planning Retreat was held on May 9, 2007 at which all faculty had the opportunity to listen to short presentations by authors of the white paper proposals and discuss multidisciplinary priorities. 

Following the May 9th Retreat, the CHCP prepared a report (see "Final Report" in the links at the top of this page) identifying all multidisciplinary hiring areas that would be well-matched to the criteria if validated in the future by a coupled hiring commitment from one or more departments (or colleges).  The CHCP report was delivered to the Heads and Dean, to the leaders of other potentially interested units of the University, and published on the web for all faculty to access. 

Procedures for requesting COALESCE positions have been developed. The forms are online, available from the links at the top of this page. The faculty search authorizations for the current hiring season are given in detail in the Final Report (see link at top of page).