Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter has announced the first of three rounds of new-faculty funding under the Hiring Investment Program, or HIP, aimed at taking UC Davis in new and creative directions.

The provost approved nine proposals in five thematic areas:

• Fundamental Research at the Bounds of Our Universe and Our Understanding
• Environmental Resilience in the Anthropocene
• Understanding and Addressing Poverty and Social Inequality
• Exploring and Building in the Digital World: Digital Humanities and Industrial Design
• Human Genomics and Human Health

He assigned a total of 25 full-time-equivalent faculty positions. See the list of approved proposals, including FTE allocations.

In response to his invitation last December, the faculty submitted 76 proposals, asking for 339 FTEs.

“The proposals submitted as part of the HIP process illustrate once again the special strength of our faculty in developing visionary, interdisciplinary programs that address the important challenges facing our state, nation and the world,” Hexter said in a May 22 email announcing that the HIP decisions had been posted online.

In five of the nine approved proposals, the FTEs will be divided among two or more colleges and schools.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi commented: “If we are going to live up to our ambition of solving the world’s most difficult challenges, it is essential that we transcend the traditional boundaries of academic disciplines.”

The Hiring Investment Plan, Katehi said, “keeps UC Davis on the frontier of scholarly inquiry and will also attract top talent to our already world-class faculty.”

HIP will fund about 60 to 65 positions altogether (the next rounds are set for 2016 and 2018), allowing the university to more readily make hires in programs that extend beyond one department or college, or, in some cases, extend the disciplinary range of a single department in a transformative manner.

The HIP positions represent about 10 percent of the university’s anticipated faculty hiring over the next six to seven years.

“Between the growth directly associated with the 2020 Initiative and the need to replace faculty who retire or separate, we estimate that we will hire 550 to 600 faculty in that time frame,” said Professor Ken Burtis, faculty adviser to the chancellor and provost, who has worked intensively on the 2020 Initiative and the Hiring Investment Program.

Schools, colleges and divisions will support the other 90 percent of the new hires.

Hexter concluded his May 22 email announcing the HIP results by noting that the university’s plan to hire so many faculty in the coming years “represent(s) an unequaled opportunity for UC Davis to achieve its goal of substantially increasing the diversity of the faculty in every dimension, which bodes well for the future of the campus.”

Proposal review and feedback

The provost assigned the task of the initial assessment of HIP proposals to 28 faculty readers and representatives from the Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget.

After receiving their evaluations, the provost sent 24 proposals forward for review by a 16-member faculty committee, including some of the first-round faculty readers and others who were added for their disciplinary expertise, who participated with the provost and Professor Burtis in a daylong session.

“Although it was only possible to fund a fraction (25/339) of the FTE requested in the 76 HIP proposals, the process nonetheless stimulated lively interdisciplinary conversations across many areas of campus, and led to far more good ideas than could be supported,” Hexter said in his email.

The chancellor and provost both hope that some of the proposals not selected in the first round of HIP will be supported in the context of the much larger number of college-funded searches that will occur over the coming years.

Burtis said feedback is available to everyone who submitted proposals. The provost will, in addition, and on the advice of the review committee, meet with several groups to encourage them to find partners in other units — with the goal of developing promising ideas into truly transformational proposals, either in the context of the next HIP competition in 2016 or through other means.

Hexter and Burtis also invited feedback on this first round of HIP and suggestions to improve the subsequent rounds.

For the 25 FTEs approved in the first round, 19 searches will begin in the fall and the other six will be staged over the following year as outlined in the proposals. HIP is providing $6 million in start-up funds to the colleges, divisions and in support of the new hires.

The provost and deans are already engaged in discussions about office and research space and other resource issues that must be addressed to implement the search plans approved under the HIP process.

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