COSM Weekly Issue 86

THE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

COSM WEEKLY

What’s Inside: Get the latest on COSM’s strategic priorities, leadership insights, faculty and staff accomplishments, collaboration opportunities, operational updates, and upcoming events—all designed to keep our College connected, informed, and moving forward together.

THE DEAN’S DISPATCH COSM Faculty and Staff, Let the fun and excitement of a new semester begin. As of Friday, Georgia Southern has nearly 22,000 students on the Statesboro campus, 5,500 on the Armstrong campus, and 1,200 on the Swainsboro campus - nearly 34,500 students overall when totaling all campuses. Sustained enrollment growth across Georgia Southern, and specifically within COSM, is critical to strengthening our college’s resources and regional impact. Higher student enrollment directly boosts tuition revenue and state funding allocations, providing the vital financial backing needed to upgrade our laboratories, fund faculty research, and enhance student support. Simultaneously, expanding our student body allows us to meet Southeast Georgia's skyrocketing demand for skilled STEM talent in fields like data analytics, environmental sustainability, and advanced manufacturing. This demand for a skilled STEM workforce was the centerpiece of our recent visit to the Manus facility in Augusta - they need more chemists, biologists, engineers, etc. to meet the company's ambitious growth plans.

Georgia Southern has grown from a single campus with approximately 18,000 students to six campuses with more than 34,000 students in less than 10 years. This significant expansion was the primary driver for a recent leadership brainstorming session, as we must plan for large enrollment increases with a focus on scalability. To effectively manage this growth while maintaining the quality of our academic environment, we are currently in the exploration phase for several innovative operational changes and the deployment of AI as a new operational tool.

Operational Innovations Being Discussed: We are investigating a variety of strategic shifts to improve our efficiency and focus on teaching and research excellence: Workforce and Teaching Models: We are exploring the increased deployment of graduate students, including utilizing GTAs and qualified MS students for lab and learning support instruction, paired with improved training for GTAs. This includes looking beyond COSM for sources of additional GTAs. Curricular and Scheduling Flexibility: The team is collecting and evaluating data-informed course planning strategies to share with departments, such as new models for offering lectures and labs, curricular revisions, and exploring team-teaching strategies for upper-division and graduate courses.

Potential AI Integration: We are also researching how Artificial Intelligence can be deployed across COSM operations to streamline administrative tasks and enhance the academic experience for our growing student body: Administrative and Budgetary Tools: We are investigating the use of AI for course scheduling and exploring AI agents to assist with leadership processes and the management of budgets and grants.

Faculty and Research Support: Potential initiatives include using AI to help match faculty collaborators for research grants and developing models to support student success in larger classroom environments.

Curriculum and Ethics: We are exploring how to incorporate AI into the curriculum for our majors while providing necessary ethical AI use training to ensure our community is prepared for the evolving professional landscape.

By proactively investigating these, and other, innovative approaches now, we aim to ensure the college remains equipped to manage our expansion while maintaining the quality of our programs.

There will be many more conversations on these topics over the next several months as we work to develop plans and initiatives to help COSM adjust to the Georgia Southern of 2026 and beyond.

Have a great week.

Sincerely, Mike

ASSOCIATE DEAN’S CORNER The COSM Research Metrics Sheet is now fully updated through FY2026, providing a comprehensive picture of the College’s research activity and external funding.

FY2026 Awards — $1.53 Million Approximately $1.2 million in federal funding $915,000 from NIH, an increase from approximately $708,000 in FY2025 $174,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce $60,000 from NOAA $32,270 from NSF, a significant decrease from approximately $3.14 million in FY2025 FY2027 is already off to a strong start, with approximately $632,000 in awards recorded to date. Importantly, this total includes only the first-year allocation of approximately $280,000 from a new $1.6+ million NIH research and training grant awarded to Dr. Sara Gremillion.

These awards currently represent six unique PIs. We have not yet recorded an NSF award in FY2027, highlighting an important opportunity for the College as we move into the new proposal cycle.

Swainsboro Field Station Development Planning continues for the development of a new research field station on the Swainsboro Campus. This fall, we plan to submit a proposal to the NSF Field Stations and Marine Laboratories (FSML) program for a $25,000 planning grant to support development of the station and its long-term research, education, and training mission. If you are interested in being involved in the field station or the NSF planning proposal, please reach out to me. We are especially interested in building a multidisciplinary group of faculty who see opportunities to use the site for research, student training, courses, or long-term environmental monitoring.

The Office of Research has indicated that the next NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) solicitation is expected to open sometime this fall. Faculty interested in pursuing major research equipment should begin thinking now about potential instrumentation needs and collaborative teams.

NIH Bootcamp Opportunity Kristen Beales in the Office of Research will be leading an NIH Bootcamp for faculty preparing NIH proposals. The program will include: Monthly NIH-focused trainings and workshops Proposal development support Access to proposal reviews and feedback The Bootcamp is intended primarily for faculty targeting NIH submissions in January or February. If you are interested in participating, please let me know by September 1.

Have a Research Question or Want to Meet?

If you would like to meet with me this semester, discuss a research or funding idea, or have a specific research-related question you would like answered, please complete this short form.

Stephen Greiman Associate Dean of Research & Ext Affairs

STRAIGHT TO THE SOURCE Straight to the Source: Welcome to Straight to the Source, our new weekly Q&A section dedicated to keeping communication open, honest, and timely across the College of Science and Mathematics. In our recent employee engagement survey, many of you shared a desire for clearer insight into the "why" behind college-level decisions, as well as more prompt updates on key developments. We heard you. Moving forward, leadership will use this space each week to address your questions directly via our new permanent feedback link.

Have a question about a recent decision, an upcoming initiative, or overall strategy? Submit your question below, and check back here every week for direct answers straight from CSM leadership.

QUALTICS SURVEY This week’s question (unedited): In general, we have observed a very promising and excellent momentum steering the College toward positive direction that can help build the quality academic programs grow and reputable in research and education with our groups of national and world-class standard.

Meanwhile, the faculty's scholarship and graduate students program are in need of support from the upper level, e.g., math department has the responsibility of conducting teaching and research on a considerable scale. However, they might need more GA/TA positions in maintaining their graduate program, and more lines of faculty who can do higher level advanced research.

Leadership Response: This is a timely and important question, thank you for asking it. Growth of graduate program enrollment is a significant priority for COSM and Georgia Southern. It is critical that we explore all available options to recruit and enroll more graduate students into our programs. In response to this specific question about increases in graduate student support, let’s split the graduate assistants into two groups.

Graduate Teaching Assistants: Funding for graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is primarily available from two sources: the COSM allocation that we receive from the College of Graduate Students and a small COSM budget we have that can support GTAs, part-time faculty, and faculty overloads. Allocation of GTA budgets to the departments is generally tied to the teaching needs of the department and how departments deploy those GTA funds to support the teaching capacity in the department. For a department to increase its GTA allocation, they would need to make a budget request via the annual budget prioritization process with a strong justification for how those new funds would be used to support the teaching mission of the department - additional course capacities, student success, etc.

There have been conversations with the several department chairs about opportunities for FY2028 budget requests to support additional GTAs based on the recent enrollment growth we have experienced. When these are directly tied to instructional needs, I think there will be strong support for the additional funds (but no guarantees).

Graduate Research Assistants: Funding for graduate research assistants (GRAs) is primarily available from external grants and new faculty startup funding packages. Additionally, there are occasional internal grants available through the Office of Research & Innovation and COSM that can support GRAs. If you want more GRAs, write more grants. If it were only that easy! As a College, we need to make a strategic and concerted effort to increase the number of graduate students supported via GRA positions. Our grantsmanship continues to grow utilizing Hanover, the Office of Research and Innovation, and other support mechanisms.

We are making progress, but there is more work to be done.

In terms of the need for additional faculty lines, the department chairs have been asked to strategically look at their teaching needs to identify the best instructor type (tenure track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, or graduate teaching assistants) that is needed to fill each specific situation. The answer is not always that we need more faculty. In some instances, the best solution to an area of need for additional teaching capacity could be more GTA positions. For example, the Department of Mathematics has a heavy teaching load focused on teaching learning support courses for the entry level mathematics courses. We could hire additional full time faculty to help address this need. However, the more strategic option could be to hire additional mathematics graduate students as GTAs to cover these needs. By deploying graduate students, the mathematics program gets enrollment growth and the faculty get access to a larger graduate students population to participate in their research efforts. This is a triple win!!

SMART CENTER SMART Center (Armstrong Campus and Online) The Science & Mathematics Academic Resource & Tutorial (SMART) Center offers free tutoring to the Armstrong campus by student tutors in Anatomy and Physiology, Biology, General and Organic Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, and Mathematics.

In-person tutoring: Available on a drop-in basis and does not require an appointment (Science Center room 132).

Virtual tutoring: Appointments can be made through the Penji App. More information about our services, current schedules, and step-by-step instructions to create virtual appointments can be found at the SMART Center website.

COSM KUDOS Members of the COSM leadership team recently visited the Manus facility in Augusta, Georgia, for a valuable discussion on the future of manufacturing and workforce development.

We believe advancing manufacturing innovation goes hand in hand with investing in the people and communities that drive it forward. During our visit, we explored opportunities for collaboration focused on strengthening manufacturing capabilities, improving operational efficiency, and supporting the region’s growing workforce needs.

We also discussed opportunities to develop sustainable talent pipelines and further establish Augusta as a center for manufacturing and industrial excellence.

Thank you to the Manus team for hosting us and sharing your vision. We look forward to exploring the possibilities ahead and building a stronger future for manufacturing and workforce development in the Augusta region.

COSM EVENTS CALENDAR Stone Distinguished Lecture Series

Hosted by The Department of Mathematical Sciences Monday August 24, 2026 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Math Department Lecture Armstrong Campus UH 120 Using Math to Invent Solutions to Large-Scale Human Problems in Education and Healthcare Why are we learning this? — the dreaded question often received by math professors. The speaker will share his story of using his math-professor background to devise new solutions to two practical problems that affect our whole society: disease control and education. His original research specialty was combinatorics, and both graph theory and game theory feature as inspirations in his work. During the COVID lockdown, he invented an app (Novid) which solves the incentive misalignment problem intrinsic in contact tracing: in the traditional approach, people are asked to isolate to protect others against infection, not to save themselves.

He has also been working for a decade at the intersection of education and technology. His latest creation there is a new, massively-scalable ecosystem for teaching middle school students creative math problem solving, powered by a unique incentive alignment structure that involves professionally trained actors and comedians. He will also share about his journey which led to this discovery, which involved giving hundreds of talks in public parks all around the country.

Tuesday August 25, 2026 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

College of Education Lecture Statesboro Campus Math/Physics 3314 Transforming Rural STEM Opportunities For The AI Age Before ChatGPT, conventional wisdom held that learning could be measured by students’ mastery of sequenced knowledge and curricular standards. Today, AI can outperform most students on those same exams and is rapidly reshaping the workforce, particularly for new graduates. The speaker will explore the essential skills needed in a post-AI world, with a focus on developing critical thinking through mathematics.

He will also share his current work bringing practical math opportunities to rural communities through an innovative ecosystem combining livestreaming, math expertise, and professional actors to inspire and challenge students who have reached the limits of locally available resources.

Tuesday August 25, 2026 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Statesboro Campus in the Russell Union Ballroom Building a Thought Full World: Creativity + Love of Humanity AI and technology are pulling people apart. With addictive artificial pleasures. And soon, artificial friends. The basic biology of our human species relies on people loving people. Some to physically create new generations. Some to support them. While thinking for themselves. With creativity to handle the unprecedented. Or else there will be no more people. Meanwhile, technology is advancing at breakneck speed. Without urgent large-scale collective action, society is on the fast track to a dead world. Kept in place by AI. Any world-scale solution must creatively discover win-win situations that align incentives. The speaker, a social entrepreneur, will share his experience innovating an ecosystem which teaches both creativity and love for humanity at the same time. Powered by combining the faraway worlds of professional actors, mathematicians, and Internet live-streaming. He will also discuss the future of AI, and strategies for thriving.

COUR 2026-2027 Call For Faculty Mentors For COUR Emerging Researchers Program The College of Science and Mathematics Office of Undergraduate Research (COUR) is looking for researchactive faculty to serve as mentors for undergraduate research students as part of our Emerging Researchers Program, which aims to offer up to 13 hours per week of paid research experience to COSM students eligible for federal work-study. The Emerging Researchers Program has funding for 13 student positions for Fall 2026.

To serve as a research mentor for a student as part of the COUR Emerging Researchers Program, faculty should provide the following information through the COUR Emerging Researchers Program Mentor Google Form: An abstract (no more than ½ page) for each project available to students; and 2-3 sentences describing the work students would be doing as part of that project To have a student begin in your lab in the Fall semester, please complete and submit the form

by September 4. Faculty may submit multiple projects, if applicable. For any questions, please email Heather Joesting (hjoesting@georgiasouthern.edu).

RESPONDER LINK Call For Proposals For 2026-2027 COUR Research Grant The COSM College Office of Undergraduate Research (COUR) invites proposals for the 2026-2027 COUR Research Awards. These awards are designed to support undergraduate research in COSM by enhancing experiential learning for students. Awards up to $3000 will be made to the best submitted proposals to cover the following: Up to $1000 for supplies/equipment and travel associated with the research project (with the exception of conference travel); Up to $2000 for an undergraduate student stipend; and To qualify, faculty must include plans to mentor a student enrolled as an undergraduate major or minor in one of the departments under COSM. For more information and to view application instructions, visit https://www.georgiasouthern.edu/cosm/cour or email Dr. Heather Joesting at hjoesting@georgiasouthern.edu.

LINK TO 2026-2027 APPLICATION FORM

COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS VISIT US ONLINE AT GEORGIASOUTHERN.EDU/COSM

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