In addition to the traditional disciplines, our faculty and researchers are addressing the world’s most pressing challenges, from sea level rise to food insecurity, by encouraging interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations. These efforts include a synthesis of teaching, entrepreneurship, and engagement with the external local and global community.
Our faculty are promising teacher-scholars as well as senior nationally-recognized researchers. Recent expansions of multidisciplinary clusters and teams in modeling and simulation, biomedical sciences, biomedical engineering, bioelectrics, accelerator physics, computer sciences, and the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative are examples of strong faculty teamwork initiatives.
The number of external awards and recognition for faculty excellence in teaching and research continues to increase. The faculty includes more than 75 elected Fellows of national and international professional associations. ODU has 32 winners of the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, which is the second highest number in the state. In recent years, faculty researchers have won prestigious Fulbright and National Science Foundation CAREER awards, which is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.
The number of faculty with leadership roles in national and international professional organizations continues to increase each year as faculty serve as editors of more than 370 nationally ranked journals. Faculty publications in top-ranked, peer-reviewed periodicals continue to increase, as well as faculty authorship of award-winning books.
To help grow and fortify our team of esteemed faculty and researchers, we need to equip them with the most advanced tools. We need to build a more diverse faculty that better reflects the diversity of our student body and improve the University’s student: faculty ratio. We know that recruitment of highly research-active and creative faculty can be enhanced through additional endowed chair positions, and flexibility to support critical research areas can be enhanced through competitive renewals of endowed chair positions. We also know that retention of faculty is as important as recruitment and need to support the mentoring of junior faculty by senior faculty.
Adding another chapter to the "book of us."