Updates From The Dean - Issue 26

On Aug 1, 2024, I celebrated the one year anniversary of starting the position as Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Georgia Southern. Over the summer, I spent some time reflecting on this first year. I am as humbled and honored today at serving as your dean as I was when I started a year ago. This is a great College with wonderful faculty, staff, and students. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your team.

As I review your accomplishments and the data showing COSM’s productivity, I am confident that we have passed an inflection point on our trajectory. Our enrollment data for the Fall, 2024 semester looks very strong. The incoming freshman class numbers are extremely impressive and exciting - we are up by 116 new freshman students for Fall 2024 as compared to fall 2025. This is more than 25% growth in new freshman students!! This is just one data point of many that shows growth and expansion of our impact and operations. Now, we have to tell our story loudly and broadly so that others see your great accomplishments and how strong COSM really is.

With the growth in freshman students, it will be critical that we focus on retention of our students. To help with these efforts, I am planning to add an administrative fellow position dedicated to teaching excellence and innovation, more on this coming soon. This position will compliment our admin fellows for undergraduate research as well as student success.

Unfortunately, one of our student success initiatives fell victim to Hurricane Debby. We had to cancel the STEM Basecamp this year. I want to thank everyone associated with developing Basecamp. Everything was ready to go. We intend to offer this program next year and have already begun discussions with other colleges about options to expand the program in fall 2025.

Finally, I hope everyone has a great semester and academic year. With Hurricane Debby, we are off to a challenging start. Progress is being made in COSM thanks to our outstanding faculty and staff - THANK YOU!!

Sincerely,

Mike