Message From the Provost

Dear Colleagues,

My message in this newsletter begins with my gratitude to Fr. Fitzgerald for his leadership over the past decade and for his trust and belief in me since I became part of his team a little over a year ago. I have learned a great deal in a short time as we worked together to advance the university’s mission and strategic priorities.

As provost and vice president of academic affairs during this transition in leadership, I will be working closely with my colleagues on cabinet to provide continuity for our community. More information about the presidential search and how members of our community can engage with the process will be provided soon.

In the meantime, I continue to lead academic affairs in collaboration with the deans and their leadership teams. My priorities are to focus on the imperatives of curriculum innovation, enrollment, retention, student success, and educational partnership for revenue generation. At the same time, I am focusing on evolving our Jesuit liberal arts education and cultivating stable leadership that strengthens the educational experiences of our students, who remain at the heart of the academic enterprise.

On the enrollment front, the census shortfall has been sobering news, especially for everyone who worked tirelessly throughout last spring and into the summer months to bring in our first-year class. Although we did not meet our targets, we have enrolled a wonderful group of students who truly want to be here.

I believe this is a moment to reflect not only on our recruitment efforts, but on the equally important work of retaining and serving the students who have chosen USF. We are excited for the diverse and talented group of students who are learning and in community with us.

At this critical time for the University of San Francisco, I have heard from many of you that this is not simply a job, but a choice to serve and support the important work of education. I always appreciate this reminder that what we do matters, and I would like to express my appreciation for your contributions to the lives of our students and the thriving of this community.

Come enjoy a cup of chai, or tea of your choice, and chat with the provost on strategic priorities for the university. 

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 4-5 p.m.
Location: McLaren 251
Topic: Enrollment
RSVP »

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 4-5 p.m.
Location: Faculty and Staff Dining Room, UC 222
Topic: Advising
RSVP »

In the newly released U.S. News & World Report 2025 rankings, USF places No. 1 for diversity, in the top 25 percent overall among national universities, and Nursing jumped an impressive 48 spots to rank in the top 3 percent of undergraduate programs.

Highlights include:

In two new undergraduate U.S. News rankings categories, USF ranks 18th in entrepreneurship and 26th in marketing. USF also placed No. 88 for Best Value Schools and No. 159 in the Best College for Veterans category.

In other recent news, the Sport Management program in the College of Arts and Sciences once again ranked as one of the Top 10 graduate sport management programs in North America. The program also ranks No. 1 on the West Coast and 12th in the world in the industry standard’s annual global rankings published by SportBusiness.

Faculty in the School of Law were recognized as well, climbing to #47 (tied with others) in the 2024 Leiter Scholarly Impact Rankings — a 10-spot jump from last year. The rankings are calculated using law journal citations and reflect the outstanding contributions of our law faculty, whose work continues to shape the legal landscape, both in and out of the classroom.

A summary of fall 2024 census outcomes is available to USF faculty, librarians, and staff as a dashboard on the Census Reports web page. The census data is also detailed in a myUSF announcement shared with faculty, librarians, and staff.

I am pleased to share progress on our strategic plan efforts in the areas of strengthening our community and ensuring we are a radically welcoming, international, and inclusive campus:

ADEI

The Office of ADEI is collaborating with Student Disability Services (SDS) and the Working Group on Universal Access (WGUA) to promote an inclusive learning environment. We are grateful for the work of SDS and WGUA in making available the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) toolkit which helps instructors, trainers, and presenters reach and support all students, embracing disability justice and diverse abilities.

In addition, ADEI sponsored 30 USF faculty members, librarians, graduate students, and staff to attend the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit 2024 (virtual), a forum focused on putting strengths-based approaches in action.

For more information on neurodiversity and building a more supportive community on our campus, please join us for a panel led by USF faculty, staff, and students titled, Deepening the Conversation: Neurodiversity and Resilience on Wednesday, Oct. 2 from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Indigenous Engagement and Native Student Success Working Group

I am grateful for the work of the Indigenous Engagement and Native Student Success Working Group that is helping to advance our relationship with Ramaytush Ohlone and Indigenous communities and address our servingness model for Native students. Tangible steps toward these goals include:

International Strategy

USF has signed a partnership agreement with Taejae University (Seoul, South Korea) that will bring up to 50 undergraduate students to USF for the fall 2025 semester. Taejae is a global hybrid university with a pioneering educational model where students rotate as a residential cohort living in key cities around the world. USF will serve as Taejae’s partner in San Francisco, allowing more international students to benefit from and contribute to our diverse community and enabling them to leverage our distinctive strengths in curriculum, innovation, access to Silicon Valley, community-engaged learning, and vibrant community partnerships. We look forward to the Taejae students’ contributions in our classrooms and our community.

I am thankful to the Center for Global Education for stewarding this partnership. Academic units that are exploring international MOUs (IMOU) or partnership agreements should be in touch with the provost’s office, which coordinates the IMOU process for the university. Those interested in exploring the possibility of an IMOU should contact Sharon Li for further information and guidance.

Horizon Collective

As introduced in last month’s issue, the Horizon Collective is a pilot program to give students a clear runway to a life’s work solving real-world problems in the three areas where students’ interests, global needs, and labor market demands intersect: 1) climate and sustainability, 2) AI and technology, and 3) health and well-being.

Students in the collective will:

The Horizon Collective experience will ladder up all four years — potentially five, for those who enter a 4+1 accelerated bachelor’s and master’s program. It will not only shape students’ job readiness; it will generate interdisciplinary solutions at the local, state, and global level.

We recently tested our concepts in focus groups with prospective students, which yielded promising results. Students found most compelling the opportunities to gain practical, job-relevant skills by working directly with faculty and industry/community experts on real-world projects; to be guided to relevant internships/research assistantships; to work with a personal professional coach; and to receive scholarships to support their endeavors. The findings aligned with findings from our core curriculum redesign survey, which emphasized the essential need to offer field experience, collaborative projects, and community-engaged learning.

As we continue to shape this pilot for launch in fall 2025, next steps include working with OMC and SEM to begin marketing to prospective students; reaching out to departments to inventory where existing faculty research and scholarship intersect with the three critical areas; and exploring ways our pilot concepts can benefit current students.

We will also monitor a number of key indicators to see how this initiative impacts our enrollment, yield rate, selectivity, and retention. The end goal is for students and families to view the University of San Francisco as their top choice.

The 25-member Core Curriculum Redesign Task Force has embarked on the design phase. The task force aims to have a draft proposal by the end of the fall semester to present to the community for feedback, with the goal of presenting a vetted and revised proposal to the Joint University Curriculum Committee in March 2025.

The task force began the design phase with a review of the report from the discovery phase and a two-day core curriculum workshop provided by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Led by Kate Drezek McConnell and Tia Brown McNair, the workshop included discussions on topics such as high-impact educational practices, designing for equity and inclusive excellence, program-level assessment, and strategies for facilitating institutional change. Building from the vision statement generated in phase I, the task force will brainstorm and refine core learning outcomes, operationalize those outcomes into possible core curriculum structures, and refine those into a proposal.

Task force members welcome input from community members at all stages of this process. Please share ideas, comments, or concerns via this survey or email coreredesign@usfca.edu.

Paul Flores, adjunct professor of theater in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a 2024 American Book Award for his debut collection of poetry, WE STILL BE: Poems and Performances, published by El Martillo Press. Flores is an award-winning spoken word artist, poet, playwright, and educator whose work touches on the immigrant story in all its complexities: from the violent — forced migration, gang life, war, incarceration, and separated families — to zooming in on intergenerational relationships and the struggle of preserving important cultural values. The 45th Annual American Book Awards ceremony will take place on Oct. 27 at the SF Jazz Center.

I’m delighted to announce that Zifei "Fay" Chen (associate professor of communication studies and public relations, faculty member in advertising, and program coordinator for the Public Relations Minor program) is the new co-director of CRASE. Chen will serve with co-director Brian Komei Dempster (professor of rhetoric and language, faculty member in Asian Pacific Studies, and director of administration for the Master’s in Asia Pacific Studies program), along with support staff Ifeoma Nzerem and Talia Knowles.

Chen is a strategic communication and public relations educator and researcher who is enthusiastic about connecting the academy with industry. An award-winning and prolific scholar, she has published over 35 refereed journal articles, book chapters, and books. Her research centers on corporate social responsibility and advocacy, startup and entrepreneurial communication, digital communication, and prosocial communication.

I would also like to recognize and thank Annette Regan (associate professor, School of Nursing and Health Professions) for her service to CRASE. As co-director, she provided invaluable leadership, and we are grateful for her work to support faculty research.

USF has launched an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), which oversees all research and instruction that involves vertebrate animals, in order to ensure that the highest ethical and animal welfare standards are met through all applicable federal, state, and university laws and regulations. The university community is asked to submit all projects that involve the observation, care, or use of vertebrate animals in teaching or research to the IACUC for review and comment. The application and more details are available on myUSF.

The USFVotes initiative at the Leo T. McCarthy Center is a testament to the university's commitment to social justice, civic engagement, and community leadership. This initiative empowers students, faculty, and staff to take an active role in shaping our democracy through voter education, registration, and turnout efforts. Read more about how USF is preparing for the November election.

The new ISSS Annual Report (2023–24) is available, reflecting how ISSS is supporting the international community at USF and highlighting key developments in immigration and programming.

Correction to August Newsletter: College of Arts and Sciences Professor William (Billy) Riggs received funding from Waymo to participate in an analysis of curb challenges, and the potential use of curb data specification. In addition, Professor Riggs was recently appointed to the Government Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

School of Education faculty Melissa Ann Canlas and Christine Yeh received $43,727 in supplemental funding from the Department of Education for their AANAPISI program grant to develop a peer counseling program for our Asian American Pacific Islander students.

Camille Coley, associate vice provost for the Office of Sponsored Programs, received a $2,361,186 award from the National Science Foundation to support her project "Collaborative Research: Tri-Alliance for Post-Award Innovation." The goal of the TRI-Alliance is to expand post-award sponsored research capacity, as the partners (Loyola Marymount University, University of San Francisco, and Santa Clara University - with awards totaling $7,242,477) embark on a transformative journey, uniting the collective expertise, experience, and knowledge of the three universities. Through this collaboration, the project aims to empower faculty and unlock their research potential by strengthening post award research support, training, and compliance areas.

Bill Ong Hing, professor of law and a leader in immigration law and advocacy for more than 50 years, has been named the law school's associate dean for faculty scholarship.

Gleeson Librarians Sherise Kimura and Annie Pho were selected as the Association of Research Libraries 2024 Leadership and Career Development Program Fellows. The 13-month fellowship aims to create a community of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color leaders in research libraries and archives that builds upon the existing knowledge and skills of the fellows while encouraging critical exploration of fellows’ individual awareness and attitudes as well as facilitating fellows’ development and advancement of their leadership goals.

Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, associate professor of leadership studies in the School of Education, was awarded a Spencer Vision grant for her project "Culture Wars, Curriculum Conflicts & Public Schools: Building a community of researchers and practitioners to better understand and respond to current conflicts over education." The Spencer Vision grant is a one-year, $75,000 grant that supports collaboration between researchers, educators, and advocates interested in better understanding and responding to the current culture wars being fought over and through education.

The School of Law welcomed 168 new JD candidates in fall 2024, the largest entering class since 2015.

School of Education alumna Rowena Tomaneng (International and Multicultural Education, EdD 2017) was named the deputy chancellor for all California community colleges, where she will lead more than 2 million college students across the state.

If you have a recent success to share, please let us know.

For recent publications or creative work, or if you are interested in a faculty spotlight, please contact the Center for Research, Artistic, and Scholarly Excellent (CRASE).

For teaching-related news and resources, please visit the Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE).

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