July 13, 2015
I’ve often said that people make a university great. And that’s especially true for UCF. We have outstanding faculty and staff members who are dedicated to lifting the lives and livelihoods of our students, conducting cutting-edge research and making a difference in our community and across the globe.
Last year, UCF launched a hiring campaign to recruit 200 new faculty members – 100 new positions and 100 to replace faculty who had left or retired.
I’m very pleased that this year, we expect to hire another 200 faculty members to join our Knights family – 100 of which are new tenured or tenure-earning faculty positions.
The 100 new faculty positions are made possible because of new performance funding that UCF will receive from the state based upon our university’s academic performance, our students’ graduation and retention rates, and other metrics set by the Florida Board of Governors. The Florida Legislature included these funds in the state budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year, which began July 1.
Nearly 90 percent of the $14.7 million UCF will receive in new performance funding this year will help us hire new faculty. The rest will help hire staff to further strengthen our departments. We expect that at least 30 staff positions will be created in the coming year.
Together, these new hires will allow us to continue advancing our scholarship and research, better serve our students and increase our number of tenured and tenure-earning faculty across UCF.
Of the 100 new faculty lines:
— 50 have been allocated to the colleges and the Office of Research and Commercialization;
— 33 have been allocated to the new faculty clusters in areas of strategic importance for the university;
— and, 17 are being held for a special hiring program that recognizes diversity and provides us resources for opportunity hires, which will strengthen our recruitment of nationally or internationally recognized scholars. More information about this program will be available before the fall semester.
New Faculty Clusters
More than 40 proposals were submitted by our faculty to our inaugural Faculty Cluster Initiative, created last year to encourage university-wide interdisciplinary scholarship, educational opportunities and collaboration, as well as to build upon our unique areas of strength and strategic importance.
Of those submissions, we selected six faculty clusters to move forward. The clusters are: cyber security, renewable energy, coastal systems, genomics and bioinformatics, prosthetics, and energy conversion and propulsion. I look forward to the great work from these clusters and am encouraged by the enthusiasm and interdisciplinary collaboration from all of our faculty members who submitted proposals.
Thank you, as always, for your continued dedication to strengthening our faculty, which remains my top priority. This is an exciting time for us to recruit so many outstanding scholars to our university. It’s also an important reminder of our collective work to advance UCF’s academic mission and foster success among our students, faculty and staff.
I can’t wait to see how our new colleagues will join us in developing the future of UCF.