HARPUR COLLEGE

As Dean of Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, Donald Nieman faces the challenge of managing Binghamton University’s largest college, with 7,500 undergraduate and 1,500 graduate students.

Nieman said his goal is to strengthen Harpur’s reputation as a college of arts and sciences by recruiting outstanding students and faculty, while also creating strong, contemporary academic programs in more than 30 different departments.

‘Harpur provides students with the skills that allow them to be successful in a world where their careers will change,’ Nieman said.

Although Harpur College lost approximately $4 million ‘ over 10 percent of its budget ‘ in the last two years, Nieman said Harpur College has worked hard to use all available resources more effectively and generate new resources to develop new initiatives.

One of these initiatives, called the Harpur Fellows program, provides funding from Harpur College to students looking to solve problems in the community of their choice, whether it is around the county or in another country.

Harpur Fellows is one of several programs Nieman hopes Harpur College will be able to develop further in the next four years, in spite of more financial challenges ahead.

‘I’m not a miracle worker,’ Nieman said, ‘but I’m a great believer that if you look at a problem you can come up with creative solutions. They might not be perfect, but they can make things better.’

Before coming to Binghamton in July 2008, Nieman was the Dean of arts and sciences at Bowling Green University in Ohio for 14 years.

WATSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Amid budget restrictions and tough economic times, Krishnaswami ‘Hari’ Srihari, dean of the Watson School of Engineering since June 2009, has actually seen a significant increase in his school’s research budget.

Srihari said that though overall budget constraints have made it difficult to hire new faculty and grow as a school, Watson’s research budget has increased from $10 million last year to $17 million.

He also said no programs have yet been cut from the Watson School.

‘We’re working as hard as we can to make sure budget cuts don’t negatively impact our education,’ Srihari said.

Srihari, who earned a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in industrial engineering and operations research, joined the BU faculty in the fall of 1988 as an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Watson.

As dean, Srihari’s overall goal for Watson is to implement new, contemporary initiatives that would benefit all Watson students despite limited resources.

‘Our students are both the customer and the product,’ Srihari said of the school’s 2,400 undergraduate and graduate students. ‘Every action of the Watson School must have the focus of enhancing the educational experience of the student.’

In fact, Watson is introducing a new interdisciplinary minor in sustainability engineering in the fall that would address the need to find and use renewable, clean sources of energy while helping students get ‘green-collar’ jobs after graduating.

‘We look at educational programs that help ensure that our students are very well-prepared for and can take advantage of an evolving economy,’ Srihari said.

SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Upinder Dhillon, dean of the School of Management (SOM), came to Binghamton as a finance professor in the fall of 1987 continuing a career that previously included a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering, eight years working in the Indian petrochemical industry and earning an MBA and doctorate in finance at Louisiana State University.

According to Dhillon, SOM, with some 1,400 undergraduate students, is ranked as one of the best business schools in the country. His goals are to keep up this standard by increasing the quality of both the incoming students as well as the programs that are offered.

This fall, Dhillon said SOM will introduce a new career assessment component to its professional development program for incoming undergraduate freshmen and first-year MBA students that will provide students with mentors from financial firms.

This fall, SOM will also launch a new executive MBA program based in Manhattan aimed at working professionals. This program is in addition to the existing professional MBA program for graduate and post-graduate students in New York City.

Financial problems, however, are SOM’s biggest issue. According to Dhillon, SOM has lost a significant number of faculty members, in addition to losing money set aside for other important activities. He said that since there wasn’t enough money to expand programs, the school would be in ‘maintenance mode’ to guarantee the quality of their existing programs.

‘It’s a question of ensuring excellence,’ Dhillon said. ‘We don’t want to be a mediocre school and University.’

However, Dhillon said BU’s new president would be able to help the situation by garnering financial support among communities and stakeholders at the state and local levels.

‘Everyone wants the University to do well,’ Dhillon said. ‘If you engage them, you can do wonders.’

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

S. G. Grant, dean of Binghamton University’s School of Education, never thought he would put his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in education to use as a dean.

Grant got his start as a faculty member at SUNY Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education and worked his way up to Associate Dean, but BU soon caught his attention.

Grant came to BU in July 2008 and became the first permanent dean of the School of Education since the College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA) was separated from the School of Education and Human Development in 2006.

‘I was excited by the opportunity to grow a new school,’ Grant said.

The School of Education offers graduate students programs to prepare them to become teachers and school administrators, as well as a doctorate program that stands alongside that of other schools in the state of New York, according to Grant.

Undergraduates can also take a few education courses that always fill up quickly, Grant said.

Although budget cuts have not hit the School of Education hard in terms of academics, Grant said the budget problems have prevented the school from hiring more faculty members. He said the cuts have also pushed them to offer off-campus programs aimed at people in the Binghamton area to help bring in additional revenue to fund faculty travel expenses.

Grant’s goal for the next four years is to diversify the School of Education by improving the ESL and foreign language graduate programs, bringing more students of underrepresented minorities into teaching, and building a national reputation.

‘We’re on the upward track, not content to sit down on our laurels,’ Grant said. ‘People are really pushing in ambitious kinds of ways.’

COLLEGE OF COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

When the College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA) was created in 2006, Patricia Ingraham was there to make sure it could grow and develop successfully.

For 21 years, Ingraham was a distinguished professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School who directed large research projects and ran Maxwell’s Campbell Institute before she became the dean of CCPA.

‘What won my heart at Binghamton was creating an exciting new college to offer a lot of challenges,’ Ingraham said.

Ingraham, who received her doctorate in political science from BU, said CCPA offers students the opportunity to look at individual and group growth and development in families, schools and non-profit organizations.

The University Downtown Center also allows the school’s students ‘ about 700 in all ‘ to interact directly with local organizations in Downtown Binghamton as a practical component to their education.

Although budget cuts have forced CCPA to reduce its adjunct faculty, course offerings, and occasional contributions to CCPA student groups and activities, Ingraham said the CCPA faculty is looking for outside funds and teaming up with the School of Education and Harpur College to weather the financial trouble.

‘There’s so many things we could do, and to choose the things we can do is an ongoing challenge,’ Ingraham said.

In the future, Ingraham said she hopes CCPA will be able to expand its undergraduate offerings in social work while developing new non-profit and philanthropy programs.

Ingraham said she is also looking to expand CCPA’s study abroad programs, with one exchange program already in place with Shenzhen University (Guangdong, China) and another being developed with a university in South Africa.

DECKER SCHOOL OF NURSING

Like many incoming students, Decker School of Nursing Dean Joyce Ferrario was drawn to the position because of the unique challenges it poses.

Ferrario was the clinical chief of gerontological nursing at the University of Rochester for four years before coming to Binghamton in the fall of 1985.

‘I was happy being a teacher, but I liked the problem-solving part of administration,’ Ferrario said.

Ferrario’s primary goal for Decker is to maintain educational programs while growing research and scholarship opportunities, something she called ‘a day-to-day struggle’ due to the need to balance limited resources.

Due to budget cuts, Ferrario said several Decker faculty members could not be rehired and the junior year nursing curriculum enrollment was cut from 120 students to 80.

However, an expansion is occurring as well.

According to Ferrario, Decker will be admitting its first class of post-masters students to the new Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program this fall, which was put in place in response to an American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) announcement stating that all advanced practice nurses would be required to have a doctoral degree from 2015 onward.

Ferrario said Decker is also working on improving the simulation exercises undergraduates use with the ‘Sim Family’ of robots, which are designed to help students learn how to diagnose and treat patients in real-life scenarios.