Draft Progress report. Objective 1 (Under the Education Pillar): Become the leading education provider of choice in selected areas.

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1 Draft Progress report Introduction: The vision of AUC is to be a world class university internationally recognized for its leadership and excellence in teaching, research, creative expression, and service. We will build on our existing strengths to become the leading university in the Middle East and the destination of choice for students and faculty from around the world seeking in depth cultural exposure combined with outstanding academic programs, cutting edge research, and an ethically engaged, diverse community of scholars. The mission of world class university universities includes both sharing and creating knowledge. To enhance its academic standing, AUC must increase its support of scholarly research and creative achievement. Accordingly, the main goal of AUC in strategic plan is to expand and improve its research and innovation portfolio. Five objectives are designed to achieve the main goal for the research and outreach in strategic plan. These objectives and are: Objective 1 (Under the Education Pillar): Become the leading education provider of choice in selected areas. Tactic 1.1: Introduce new innovative graduate programs. Time Frame: Continuing Resources: Tactic 1.2: Strengthen the capacity of graduate programs to recruit and educate a diverse body of the very best students Resources: Graduate Scholarships and Endowed Chairs, Tactic 1.3: Study the feasibility of establishing medical school in AUC Resources: $150,000-$200,000 fund to carry out a thorough and comprehensive study Tactic 1.4: Develop criteria to assess the establishment of academic programs proposals and that to assess the performance of current academic programs Resources: 2-5 courses release time 1

2 Wednesday, April 09, 2014 Tactic 1.5: Eliminate, consolidate, or downsize academic departments or programs that are no longer strategically important to the university Objective 2 (Under the Research Pillar): Support strong research areas of focus where AUC can have a comparative advantage. Tactic 2.1: Establish widely acknowledged global leadership in at least three priority research areas Resources: Annual fund of $500,000 - $1,000,000 Tactic 2.2: Establish a coherent, balanced portfolio of world-leading research centers and institutes focused on recognized priorities, with high outputs in terms of quality and volume. Resources: Annual fund of $200,000 - $ 500,000 Tactic 2.3: Invest strategically in the research infrastructure across AUC and underpin activities with the latest research management system Resources: Annual fund of $2,000,000 Tactic 2.4: Develop and Implement a robust research performance mechanisms and management frameworks Resources: Annual fund of $50,000 Tactic 2.5: Promote AUC as a partner of choice in areas of focus where AUC can have a comparative advantage Resources: Annual fund of $50,000 2

3 Objective 3 (Under the Research Pillar): Develop and implement a sustainable model to support research, creative achievements and innovation to enhance AUC research productivity Tactic 3.1: Review tenure and promotion criteria in order to encourage active faculty in research to carry out more research and to enhance the quality of their research Tactic 3.2: Review faculty workload. o Action 3.2.1: Encourage schools to work with its departments to reduce the teaching load to 3+2 across the board without affecting the budget and the quality of education. o Action 3.2.2: Re-distribute the teaching load among faculty in order to allow active faculty in research to reduce their teaching load (2+2) and to increase their research output. Resources: Increasing the faculty lines by 10-15% o Action 3.2.3: Set a ceiling to the number of committees a faculty may serve on. Tactic 3.3: Define AUC research output and measure and enhance its quality. o Action 3.3.1: Identify top tier conferences and journals and encourage faculty to publish in those conferences and journals. o Action 3.3.2: Recruit high quality students as well as high quality teaching and research faculty. 3

4 Resources: Increasing the number of Merit Scholarships and the Endowed Chairs by 40% during the next 5 years o Action 3.3.3: Establish a special fund to facilitate interviewing faculty candidates on campus Resources: $100,000 annually o Action 3.3.4: Increase the size and proportion of our graduate student population across all schools to 30 per cent by 2019, and improve the standard of development and support we have established for our graduate students Resources: Needs further study o Action 3.3.5: Link AUC research capability to similar activities at research intensive institutions Resources: $30,000 annually o Action 3.3.6: Rigorously review all current research centers and institutes, and eliminate those that do not generate significant research activity Tactic 3.4: Increase the volume of externally funded and collaborative research by %70 by 2019 o Action 3.4.1: Boost the visibility of OSP among AUC faculty Resources: $10,000 annually o Action 3.4.2: Support and enhance AUC researchers grant funding competitiveness and success Time Frame: 3 years Resources: Hiring two more staff in OSP and increasing OSP operation budget by %30 over the proposed three years 4

5 o Action 3.4.3: Review, propose and implement new representative methods to calculate the cost of release time. Time Frame: 6 month o Action 3.4.4: Create separate job lines for postdoctoral fellows not to count them from the faculty lines Time Frame: 6 month Tactic 3.5: Ensure our research outputs are appropriately managed and widely disseminated in order to improve scholarship, knowledge and technology transfer o Action 3.5.1: Enrich AUC portfolio of patents by 20% annually Resources: $100,000 annually o Action 3.5.2: Accelerate development of new technology and commercialization of AUC discoveries Resources: $300,000 annually Objective 4 (Under the Research Pillar): Enhance AUC research international visibility and collaboration Tactic 4.1: Decentralize the management of the research based websites Tactic 4.2: Improve AUC publications citations by 100% by

6 Tactic 4.3: Develop rigorous standards for AUC research Programs Tactic 4.4: Promote AUC as a hub for international scholars Resources: $50,000 annually Tactic 4.5: Establish and maintain AUC research day Resources: $30,000 annually 6