Objective: Grow research groups focused on foundational research
- Encourage and support the development of structured, interconnected groups focused on foundational research.
- Build researcher connections around existing and emerging strengths, within and across units.
- Engage undergraduate and graduate students in research groups.
Objective: Enhance resources to support foundational research
- Attract and support excellent faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students conducting foundational research.
- Articulate opportunities to support researchers and research groups engaged in foundational research.
Objective: Highlight the value of foundational research and scholarship
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Build broad appreciation of the essential value of foundational mathematics through outreach and communications.
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Identify foundational research as a core strength for the Faculty of Mathematics in internal and external communications and marketing.
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Identify and advocate for the use of discipline-sensitive measures of research impact and excellence that accurately assess foundational research.
Objective: Systematically revise curriculum to reflect our changing world.
- Encourage and facilitate regular curriculum review.
- Employ smaller-scale refreshes to update content.
- Consider the perspectives of students, recent graduates, domain professionals and industry partners in curriculum development.
Objective: Facilitate teaching development and innovation
- Enhance formative teaching evaluation from peers and students.
- Foster the adoption of evidence-based teaching approaches and educational technology that best meet students’ diverse needs.
- Incentivize, support, and reduce barriers to teaching innovation.
- Support scholarship of teaching and learning and the use of evidence to assess the effectiveness of teaching innovations.
Objective: Support the development of students as ethical, collaborative problem solvers
- Increase opportunities for student problem solving and collaboration through pedagogical approaches such as group learning and project-based assessments.
- Collaborate with campus experts to develop discipline-responsive content to engage all students in ethics.
- Nurture student accountability for learning.
Objective: Attract high quality graduate students
- Enhance funding available for research-based graduate students.
- Increase clarity and transparency in funding information communicated to prospective graduate students.
- Expand professional master’s programs in impactful key areas that are of interest to diverse prospective student audiences.
Objective: Realize a consistently high standard of graduate student supervision
- Establish and monitor expectations for graduate student supervision.
- Ensure clarity and consistency in the application and communication of graduate studies policies, procedures and decisions.
Objective: Support graduate work-integrated learning and connections to industry
- Expand work-integrated learning opportunities that are responsive to the unique needs of graduate students, including curricular integration in professional master’s programs.
- Increase opportunities for graduate student links with industry and supports for graduate students interested in industry paths.
Objective: Enhance graduate student teaching and teaching assistant experiences
- Encourage graduate student participation in teaching training programs provided within their units and by Faculty and University offices.
- Expand opportunities for graduate students to lead tutorials and teach classes.
- Identify and implement best practices across the Faculty related to teaching assistant roles, scheduling, evaluation and recognition.
Objective: Amplify research and education that is connected to local and global needs
- Identify and encourage research that addresses global challenges and contributes to the Global Futures (societal, health, sustainable, technological and economic) articulated in the Waterloo at 100 vision.
- Increase student engagement with global issues and societal challenges.
- Expand industry-partnered relationships with researchers and students.
Objective: Foster interdisciplinary research and education
- Increase opportunities, incentives and space for interdisciplinary research.
- Establish clear criteria that value interdisciplinary research for faculty recruitment, performance review and promotion.
- Facilitate and encourage co-supervision of graduate students across disciplines.
- Effectively support collaborative programs, options and specializations in select strategic areas.
- Encourage students to take courses outside their disciplines of focus.
- Foster opportunities for students in other Faculties to increase their mathematical, computational and statistical literacy.
Objective: Expand innovation, social and policy engagement, and entrepreneurship
- Develop systems, supports and incentives to facilitate public policy engagement.
- Increase student and employee exposure to entrepreneurship, including a focus on social innovation.
- Incentivize and facilitate the commercialization of intellectual property and the development of foundational research towards industrial partnership and commercialization.
Objective: Expand the international reach of the Faculty of Mathematics
- Encourage and facilitate international research collaboration.
- Attract top international faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and visitors.
- Sustain outreach and recruitment work to further diversify the international communities from which the Faculty attracts strong students.
Objective: Foster increased collaboration and consultation.
- Increase engagement and consultation with students and employees.
- Leverage collaboration to enhance operations and improve employee experience.
Objective: Strengthen equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI) and Indigenization work
- Expand capacity to apply and uphold our Equity and Inclusive Communities Principles.
- Identify and address EDI barriers to student and employee participation.
Objective: Increase operational resilience and agility
- Support the efficient, effective stewardship of resources available to the Faculty.
- Identify and respond to opportunities to sustain robust operations.
Objective: Build community and nurture well-being
- Grow the sense of community in the Faculty of Mathematics.
- Support the well-being of students and employees.