The challenges that we face from this are at both the programmatic level and the operational level. Most of them arise from being a very small but broad expertise department.

At the programmatic level, the most significant challenge that we face is the integration of research and education in "hard (primarily inorganic)" and "soft (primarily organic)" materials. This is both a challenge and an opportunity. We believe that success in achieving this will provide significant new opportunities for education and research for our faculty and students. A case can be made that significant scientific and technological advances will be made at the interface between inorganic and organic materials and this will require expertise and knowledge in both. We are well positioned to succeed in this but it will require learning from each other and mutual appreciation of the expertise and scientific issues in the two sub disciplines. It will also require very well thought out and strategic recruitment of faculty members.

Another significant challenge related to faculty size is the sometimes conflicting requirements of expertise for education (at the UG level) and research. We are starting to see this in a few notable areas. These include metallic materials and semi-conducting materials. In both of these, we have significant educational needs but we have not recruited faculty members due to our strategic research priorities and limited number of faculty positions. Finally, as was shown and discussed in the section on benchmarking, it is clear that we are significantly smaller than our peers and also in order to be nationally recognized, the size of the department is important. The standing of the department is important in being able to recruit graduate students and faculty members. It is also important in being able to attract research funding (especially large multi-investigator funding for research centers).

At the operational level, the small department poses a specific set of problems. An example of this is that we have the same number of committees and representatives in College level councils as larger departments. Therefore, our faculty have more service demands on their time. A related issue is that we do not have backups for any of our administrative positions. The Department does not have an Associate Chair and there are no backups for any of the staff positions (e.g. one fiscal position, one academic counselor).

We are paying significant attention to these challenges and exploring strategies to address them within the Department, with the Dean and with our peers.

The laboratories in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering need continual upgrades in equipment and facilities to provide for a first class education for both our undergraduate and graduate students. These laboratories have been upgraded since 1989 as a result of private contributions of $1.5M and funding from the state and federal governments. Expenditures for equipment used exclusively for teaching totaled over $850,000 over the past 10 years. These funds have allowed upgrades in the areas of materials processing, computer analysis and control, sample preparation, spectroscopy and analysis, and x-ray diffraction.

However, the task of equipment replacement and upgrading is never complete due to the explosive growth of analytical capabilities, research expertise and educational opportunities. With the advent of computer-controlled analysis and measurement systems, another challenging area is the need to upgrade computing systems and software. Overall, it is estimated that over $150,000 annually will be required over the next decade to ensure that the Department has fully updated laboratories in the year 2015. Funding for these laboratory facilities upgrades will come from a combination of private donations, state appropriations, indirect cost return funds and grants from the federal agencies. These activities are ongoing, with different emphases depending on the availability of funds and the likelihood of success. Upgrade and maintenance of equipment is a high priority in our development campaign for private donations.

The large growth in research has led to a situation in which we are becoming space limited in terms of further expanding the research programs. Research in MS&E is inherently space intensive. We are working on a variety of strategies to address the space problem. These include shared lab spaces, common labs for research and education, sharing educational lab space between different courses that are offered in different quarters and negotiations with the College and University. Many of these approaches are already underway. One of the immediate goals is to develop a transparent research space assignment policy.

The situation is much more critical in the area of staff support. The significant increase in research funding has not been matched by increase in staff support. As a result of this, our staff members work load has increased and some of the support that the faculty needs is not being provided. We are working with the staff members and the faculty to address this issue. We have recruited temporary and hourly helpers to alleviate some of this problem but a longer term solution needs to be developed.

We have seen some success in recruiting top quality graduate and UG students. One measure of the quality of our students has been the significant number of awards that they have received. However, much more needs to be done in this area. We are increasingly competing with the best graduate programs nationally and the best UG programs in the College for the outstanding students. One way to attract high quality students is through scholarships and fellowships. Developing endowments for this is the highest campaign priority for the department.

We will continue to enhance the mentoring of graduate students. One recent example of mentoring graduate students is the development of student-led Graduate Seminar Series. In addition, we continue to increase the engagement of graduate students in departmental level decisions (e.g. prioritizing of equipment needs, selection of equipment, hiring of staff members, recruitment of graduate students). The faculty is also engaged in a identifying collaboration, visiting and fellowship opportunities for graduate students.

With the significant increase in research support, we have seen a dramatic increase in research associates (post docs) in the department. This is a very recent phenomena and we are just starting to appreciate the need for mentoring this group. We have started to think about this and this will be a priority in the near future.