Student Success and Opportunity

IUB will ensure the long-term success of all students — undergraduates, graduates, professional students, online, and lifelong learners — by providing the highest quality of education through a rich, diverse, and engaging environment.

Created six new IUB 2030 working groups focused on driving progress on student success initiatives:

• Academic advising
• Experiential learning
• First-year seminar
• First-year transition
• Student involvement and belonging
• Transfer student transition (includes four sub-groups)

Many new academic programs approved and in development to prepare students for high-demand fields (8 with final approval, 41 in various stages of discussion/approval)

Undergraduate programs with final approval:

• American and Indigenous Studies program (College of Arts and Sciences)
• B.S.Ed. in Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Counseling and Student Services (Education)
• Minor in Climate Change Sciences (College of Arts and Sciences)
• Minor in Leadership, Advocacy, and Public Service (O’Neill)
• Minor in Early Childhood Education (Education)

Graduate programs with final approval:

• Master’s concentration in Sustainable Environmental Policy and Planning in Master of Environmental Sustainability (O’Neill)
• Graduate area certificate in Human Capital Management (Kelley)
• Master of Science in Management (Kelley) 

Experiential learning

The experiential learning working group developed a report with recommendations for ensuring every undergraduate student participates in experiential learning activities while at IUB.

Project Inspire: Enhancing campus learning spaces

New funding was committed to renovate 2–3 dozen classrooms in Merrill Hall and biology and chemistry labs, with construction beginning in summer 2024.

Crimson Course Transformation

Select IUB schools began participating in this new initiative this year to improve student support in courses with high rates of D, F, and W grades.

IUB is seeing early progress with the lowest DFW rate in at least a decade—2% during academic year 2023–24, with even more improvement in select classes.

Instructors from nine courses participating in the Crimson Course Transformation will provide:

• Equity-focused analysis of student performance
• Feedback from students about their experiences in the course
• Workshops on equity-minded instructional strategies.

Piloted and finalized a faculty-initiated early academic alert system for students

• Enhanced the campuswide, faculty-initiated early alert system to identify challenges for students and provide support.
• Faculty will be reminded of the faculty-initiated early alert through attendance and early feedback emails.

Enhancements for graduate and professional students in areas of career development and advising, workload challenges, improving time to degree, enhanced mentoring, recruiting/retaining a diverse student population:

• Significant expansion of one-to-one career coaching
• New professional development programs launched (Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship program and annual Three-Minute Thesis event, Preparing Future Faculty Conference, Career Diversity Symposium, Big10 Academic Alliance Postdoc Organization)
• New director of graduate career coaching hired
• New director of graduate admissions hired
• New assistant dean for student development hired

New minimum stipend for a half-time (20 hrs/wk), 10-month appointment for student academic appointees (effective July 1, 2024)

Benchmarking will be done through the Bloomington Faculty Council’s SAA Affairs Committee in fall 2024 to ensure IUB stays in the top half of the Big Ten on stipends.

Forty-two new Accelerated Master’s Program (AMP) pathways have been approved or are in the approval process.

There has been over a 50% increase in annual master’s degrees proposed over the IUB 10-year average.

Transformative Research and Creativity

IUB will engage in high-impact research and creative activity, advance knowledge, and contribute to the well-being people in Indiana and beyond.

Research lab renovations

• $45 million was committed by the IU Board of Trustees for major research lab renovations that will enable IUB to significantly expand research capabilities.
• Five strategic research neighborhoods are being created to facilitate more collaboration and shared resources.

NSWC Crane partnership in areas of microelectronics and nanotechnology

IU is investing $111 million to boost research in microelectronics and nanotechnology.

Transformational research areas—aging and the environment

• Steering committees were formed and leadership was identified for the aging and environment research areas.
• Kick-off events were held in April 2024 to convene approximately 120 faculty in each area to expand collaboration opportunities.
• Biweekly research digests were initiated for each area to share external funding and collaboration opportunities.

New IUB research incentive plan created

• The new plan will go into effect on July 1, 2024, and be evaluated annually.
• It is intended to incentivize high-impact research and creative activity.
• Plan targets four key areas:
  • Indirect cost recovery sharing
  • Salary coverage on externally funded grants and contracts
  • Externally funded graduate research assistantships
  • Prestigious award leave

Accelerating grant-seeking among research-eligible faculty

• The pre-award services team in IU Research's Proposal Development Services (PDS) group was formed and is running at full strength. It has begun serving half the departments in the College as well as the School of Education and some centers, institutes, and museums (CIMs).
• A new program to seed large grants continues to be in development, including seeking potential PIs in IUB 2030 research areas.
• A new proposal development team was created through the Indiana Clinical and  Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI), which will support NIH grant applications in the social and behavioral sciences, especially in the transformational research areas focused on aging and environment. The team pulls together experts in the area of the proposal, as well as seed funding, methodological experts, and a mock study section for reviewing grants.
• A new research innovation collaborative grant program called Emerging Frontiers launched at the end of spring 2024.
• Proposal consulting pilot programs are launching through Center for Evaluation, Policy, and Research (CEPR) and Center for Survey Research (CSR) to provide expert reviews of research design and evaluation plans for faculty extramural grant submissions. The services are offered at no cost to faculty.