Report from the Working Group to Evaluate the Proposed Merger of the Colleges of Chemical and Life Sciences and of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences

A Working Group appointed with equal representation from CLFS and CMPS was charged by Provost Farvardin to discuss and evaluate the merits of the merger of the two colleges and to make recommendations to him concerning whether or not the merger should be implemented, and the time frame for integration, and recommendations regarding the process of integration if merger is the conclusion of the Working Group. Members of the Working Group are:

Norma Andrews (CBMG - CLFS)

Michael Brown (Geology - CMPS)

Larry Davis (Computer Science - CMPS)

Bonnie Dorr (Computer Science – Associate Dean, CMPS)

Mike Doyle (Chemistry and Biochemistry - CLFS)

Bob Infantino (Biology - Associate Dean, CLFS)

Bill Jeffery (Biology - CLFS)

Dean Kitchen (Assistant Dean - CMPS)

Rajarshi Roy (Physics; Director, Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology - CMPS)

Barbara Thorne (Entomology - Director BISI, CLFS)

Stuart Vogel (Astronomy - CMPS)

Jerry Wilkinson (Biology - CLFS)

Mahlon Straszheim (Associate Provost) Convener

The Provost expected that the members would receive considerable input from their colleagues so that the collective views of the two colleges would be represented.

ScienceCollege Merger: Intellectual Merit.

Scientific activities are becoming multidisciplinary at a fast rate, increasingly relying on expertise that is currently represented by the academic departments within CLFS and CMPS. The advantages of interdisciplinary liaisons and larger scale inherent in the new college offer synergies that would be beneficial to the members of both CLFS and CMPS. There is widespread agreement among members of both Colleges that the merger will: enhance opportunities for collaboration; increase resources for, and output in, research; and provide opportunities for development of innovative new education programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The merger of CLFS and CMPS will not affect existing cross-college liaisons and activities, and the Working Group envisages that such arrangements will increase in the future.

The new college will promote joint research and educational activities with other colleges that advance both basic and applied scientific research, taking advantage of synergies across colleges. This will include interdisciplinary research and study in such topics as the environment and sustainability, energy, biotechnology, and health and nutrition sciences. Examples of successful interdisciplinary collaborations include the Maryland NanoCenter; the Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences Program; the University of Maryland Energy Research Center; the rapidly emerging Maryland Pathogen Research Institute, and the soon to be established Institute for Biosciences and Biotechnology Research.

A 2009 report produced jointly by the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council) ( illustrates the intellectual connections and potential impact that a better integration of the various scientific disciplines can have on finding solutions to key societal needs:

One example of an extremely transformative collaboration between physical scientists, computer scientists and biologists is the human genome project. In this case, scientists from these disciplines worked together not only to develop the technology and achieve a basic scientific goal, but to chart pathways by which these fundamental advances would lead to societal benefits. The impact of this visionary initiative has been playing out in a time scale that would have been difficult to imagine even a decade ago. It is now possible, and it will become increasingly necessary, to move from the study of individual cells or organisms to those involving whole systems and collective interactions.

More quantitatively, Columbia University computer scientist Bradford Paley and colleagues categorized about 800,000 scholarly papers grouped into 23 broad areas of scientific enquiry from mental health to fluid mechanics, building the “Science’s Family Tree” shown below (Discover, June 2007). The bigger a node is on this network diagram, the more papers it contains. Black lines connect nodes that contain the same papers; these links create the structure of the map and pull similar scientific disciplines closer to one another. This illustrates how interconnected the various science disciplines already are, and it becomes easy to imagine how additional cross-disciplinary work can improve this landscape.

The merger of CLFS and CMPS brings together many of the science disciplines shown above in a single college, integrating the expertise of faculty and students in bioscience, physical, earth and computer science, and mathematics. Such powerful combination of complementary expertise, which is well aligned with current national scientific goals, will bring the additional benefit of an enhanced ability of the university to attract excellent faculty and leadership, as well as more federal, foundation and private funding for the new college. This will facilitate support for students at all levels in research and education, as has been extensively discussed in recent NAS and HHMI reports [nap.edu/html/bio2010/reportbrief.pdf,

ScienceCollege Merger: Implementation

The proposed merger is not based on an assumption that there is one right organizational approach or that the future reorganization should take a particular form. Our expectation is that units throughout both colleges will learn from their interactions over time, and that these experiences will inform judgments on how the organization of the new college evolves. The following principles guide our recommendations:

  • The goal of the new college will be to effectively promote the realization of the intellectual vision that is the basis for the merger;
  • Excellence will be promoted throughout all programs of the new college;
  • During the transition, existing commitments will be honored and every effort will be made to assure fairness for all parties.

Specific Recommendations:

The Working Group recommends that CLFS and CMPS merge as soon as is administratively possible, but no later than the beginning of the Fall 2010 semester.

There is consensus that the merger should occur without delay to allow existing activities and developing initiatives to continue uninterrupted to the extent possible. Furthermore, a timely merger will allow the reorganization required to create the new college to be well advanced prior to the recruitment of an outstanding individual as Dean from summer 2011. Completing the formal merger and establishing effective leadership and administrative processes as soon as possible is very important in presenting the future opportunities of the new college most favorably to outstanding prospective candidates for the position of Dean of the new college. The Working Group supports the possible appointment of Steve Halperin to lead the new college with the full authority of a Dean, with the expectation that an external search will be initiated in Fall 2010.

When the merger is implemented the new college will combine the present structures and activities of the two former colleges largely in their present form. The new college will include the continuation of all existing units and their activities, all faculty appointments and associated contracts, all degree programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and other special programs and activities. During the transitional year, faculty hired into the former colleges will be evaluated for tenure and promotion of Assistant Professors under the guidelines that existed in their current units and the former colleges prior to the date that the new college is created. Faculty hired into the new college will be evaluated for tenure and promotion under the revised guidelines of the new college.

Programs in both colleges that currently perform similar functions in different ways, reflecting the best judgments of each unit and college, will continue unchanged. For example, programs such as the BISI graduate program and the Biological Sciences (BSCI) undergraduate programs are administered at the College level reflecting cohesion of efforts that impact several departments (BIOL, CBMG, and ENTM) and are supported with an appropriate structure and level of resources. During the transitional year these administrative arrangements will be maintained as will those programs that operate out of individual departments. As the new college evolves, so the structure of the administrative arrangements also may evolve. Awarding of discretionary funds should not change because of this merger.

The Working Group recommends that a trusted faculty member from each of the former Colleges be appointed to serve as facilitators for the first two years in dealing with transitional issues between the former colleges, particularly to understand and evaluate the benefits of their respective academic structures to promote best practices. Such facilitators will shoulder some of the work as the new college moves forward during the transitional year. There is general understanding that the day-to-day lives of professorial and research faculty, and students will change little in the recommended merger.

We further recommend that the administrative practices of each of the former colleges be reviewed before adopting ‘best practices’ for the new college. To this end, we recommend that representatives of both former colleges be appointed to coordinate the review. Whereas it is likely that administrative efficiencies and budgetary savings can eventually be realized as a result of the merger, the Working Group recommends that the elimination of positions and budgetary savings not be a focus of the transitional year, except in the case where university budget reductions force such a consideration. We envision that administrative groups with similar tasks in the former colleges will work jointly to identify best practices, discuss the scope of work to be accomplished in the new college and explore how to achieve this work with the personnel in the administrative groups, with a view to building a robust and effective administrative infrastructure to support the ambitious agenda of the new college. The evolution of the college administration will be achieved over time.