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SIPS leadership meeting minutes

Starting in 2024, SIPS leadership meeting minutes are being added to this post, with the most recent meeting at the top. When new minutes are added, a link will be provided in the SIPS Monday News & Events. This change has been made with the goal of increasing information transparency throughout the School

SIPS Executive Committee Minutes
Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Tour of Plant Science building Phase I renovation scheduled for Monday, February 26 at 2pm. Meet in hallway outside 135 Plant Science. (Meeting invitations sent out through Outlook.)

Annual reviews with faculty should be going on now. Joss distributed list of 10 questions to be sent to faculty for their consideration before their performance dialog meeting. Invitations to section heads for check-in meetings with Joss will be sent out soon.

  • SIPS Faculty Teaching forum
    • Topics will include:
      • Conversations in CALS on teaching efforts and equity
      • Emerging course needs and vision for SIPS
      • CALS distribution requirements for FA24
  • Updates from CALS Chairs Meeting (Joss Rose)
    See attached CALS Chairs Meeting Summary 2/8/2024
  • Current faculty search updates
    • Biodiversity – Faculty meet on Friday, February 23 to vote on which candidate to make an offer to. Chelsea has created a website for the Biodiversity Moonshot.
    • GIS – Zoom interviews for 8 candidates going on now.
    • Ecophysiology – 75 applicants are currently being reviewed. Pool has been approved by the Senior Associates Dean’s office.
    • Urban Plant Ecology – Job ad posted in AJO. Goal is to bring candidates to campus in May.
    • LIHREC SRA – Offer made with deadline for response Friday, February 23.
    • CEA – Plant Pathology – 7 candidates approved by Senior Associates Dean’s office for Zoom interviews which will be held on March 7.
    • Seed Biology – 18 applicants; Waiting for list of candidates for Zoom interviews to be approved by Senior Associates Dean’s office.
  • Faculty recruitment/Search-a-thon 2024-2025
    • Another event to be scheduled.
    • Considerations for hiring:
      • Think about cluster hires across years when requesting new faculty positions.
      • Space is at a premium – think strategically about lab/office space; sharing of resources.
      • Future needs around teaching.
      • Retirements
  • Other
    Suggestion to hold a formal SIPS orientation for new faculty as one group and then split into teaching and extension groups.

SIPS Executive Committee Minutes
Wednesday, February 7, 2024

General Updates (Joss)

  • BTI/USDA/SIPS engagement: topics/themes?

Welcome reception for Silvia Restrepo went very well; about 100 attendees.

Agreed that regular events should be held perhaps in the format of lightning talks on themes pertinent to BTI/USDA/SIPS.

  • Grad student visits: challenges/concerns?

No concerns. Shelby (GFA for SCS and PBG) has done a terrific job in supporting recruitment.

  • Grand Challenge Fellowships round 2

Coming soon. In general, process for round 1 worked well.

  • Dean’s presentation
  • SIPS report
  • Annual reviews and performance dialogs

Plant Science Building Renovation Update

  • Phase 1 is on track to finish by end of 2025. Phase 2 is in the design phase and now includes the Annex which was previously not being considered for renovation.
  • Coming soon – a tour of the renovation site for SIPS Leadership.

Faculty positions:

  • Administrative operations, updates, challenges (Cindy)
    • See attachment of Gantt chart for visual of the faculty search schedule from now through Fall 2025/Spring 2026.
    • See attachment of CALS/SIPS faculty search guidelines divided into responsibilities (Director, Section Head, Admin, etc) for each stage of a search.
    • Administrative staff are responsible for other tasks in addition to faculty searches, so we trying to find the balance between workload and providing the best support possible. One way to do this is to keep improving the faculty search process.
  • Moonshots
  • Community faculty renewal conversations and “Search-a-thon” ideas. (Rebecca)

Please review summary of position pitches from first Search-a-thon meeting. Consider if some pitches could be merged, are there corrections/updates, are there faculty needs missing from this list?

  • Updates from Section Heads on conversations in faculty meetings.
  • Pre-fill needs: mission critical roles. Potential faculty retirements.
  • Significance of space availability, space renovations
  • Admin ca
  • Onboarding packages for new faculty

Annual Reviews and Performance Dialogs

SIPS Executive Committee Minutes
Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Joss (SIPS Director)

  • Think about leveraging new faculty startup funds for equipment needs/replacements.
  • Bill Miller – MPS program director as of July 1.
  • Dan Buckley – Section Head for SCS as of July 1.
  • 2 remaining Moonshot searches should start soon with goal of campus visits in Fall 2024.

Mohamed (Graduate student representative)

  • Graduate students elected a representative to the DI Council
  • Holding regular social events every 2 weeks.
  • Professional development activities starting in February; goal is to connect with alumni to share their career experiences; suggestions of alumni to contact are welcome.
  • Recruitment

Met recently with graduate student organizing committee and SIPS Graduate Field Coordinators

  • 1102 will be a touchdown space for recruits hangout between meetings
  • SIPS social hour on February 9th
  • SCS/PBG will sponsor joint facilities tour.

Andrew (Postdoctoral representative)

  • Sent survey to postdocs and found out the following:
    • Want more social events.
    • Want more professional development opportunities.
    • Question – what category do postdocs fall in – faculty, staff??
    • How build networks as postdocs are hired all year round, so there is no real cohort.
    • Lack of postdoc orientation process.
  • Trying to recruit more leadership to help guide the group.
  • SIPS postdoc group now connected with BTI postdocs that work with plants.
  • To boost successful interviewing for future job prospects, Joss suggested holding program on chalk talks – what are they and how prepare effectively.
  • Suggestion – SIPS postdocs can join the Cornell University Student Association of the Geneva Experiment Station (SAGES) which could help promote engagement across campuses.

Magdalen (Assistant Director)

  • Administrative staff working on effective communication on who does what in SIPS is reflected in recent updates to the SIPS Professional Staff page on the SIPS website. https://cals.cornell.edu/school-integrative-plant-science/about/people/sips-professional-staff. More updates coming soon.
  • New centralized process for managing faculty searches lead by Cindy is working well to ensure consistent processes and opportunity for backup support if needed. All search inquiries should be directed to Cindy.
  • Magdalen – Head assistants and Cindy have spent a lot of time with process development in various capacities within SIPS.
  • Joss – they are also working on faculty orientation process.
  • Frank – kudos to Michele Blackmore for her efforts supporting Urban Plant Ecology search.

Marvin (Director of Undergraduate Studies)

  • From Leah Cook to course instructors – Please realistically estimate your course enrollment caps rather than estimating low caps and then increasing enrollment numbers one by one as students ask to enroll in the course. This latter strategy has two consequences – instructors may be limited by the size of the classroom to accept more students as classroom assignments are based on estimated enrollment and it creates a heavy workload on admin staff to accommodate each additional enrollment request as they must be handled individually by issuing a unique code that will enable enrollment.
  • New course management system for CALS will be implemented next academic year with SIPS serving as the inaugural user. All SIPS courses will need to entered into the new system, so any course changes/updates need to be made soon. Also, all courses will use the PLS course code.
  • Lots of new required learning outcomes coming from CALS (e.g., ethics, sustainability and more) and SIPS needs to figure out which courses or create courses to meet requirements.

Frank (Director, AgSci)

  • Currently 124 AgSci majors.
  • 1st year cohorts from Plant Sci and AgSci joined together for some activities for the first time. This worked well.
  • Newly formed advisory committee with members from across the college is working well – reviewing curriculum, etc.
  • Kudos to Leah for her work on restructuring the AgSci administrative support role.
  • Currently there is an informal internship requirement within the program. Should an internship be an academic requirement? Should there be an administrative structure to manage this process? A learning contract benefits both student and faculty.

Jean-Luc Jannink (DGS Council)

  • Recruitment is Feb 8 & 9.
  • Process to assign TA’s will start soon.
  • Time to start thinking about next round of grand challenge fellowships.

Bill (Section Head, Plant Biology) – absent

  • Joss – Campus visits Biodiversity faculty search occurring now.
    Dan Buckley (MPS program)
  • Admissions coming up.
  • Approval received from college registrar to have flexibility on degree requirement courses.

Toni (Section Head, Soil and Crop sciences) – absent
Mike Gore (Section Head, Plant Breeding and Genetics) – absent
Gillian (Section Head, Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology)

  • Welcome back Awais
  • Reminder – PPPMB seminar Jan 31, Dr Silvia Restrepo BTI president.
  • LIHREC search – offer made.
  • CEA faculty search – many applicants; closing date end of January; in person interviews late April/early May with research seminar in Geneva and chalk talk in Ithaca.
  • PPPMB Faculty renewal talks ongoing.

Justine (Section Head, Horticulture)

  • Retirement party for Bruce Reisch is February 2nd in Geneva.
  • RTE listening session with Marcia Eames-Sheavly:
    • Lack of onboarding for RTE faculty
    • What group do we belong in?
      • Marcia offered to hold session with SIPS administrative staff.
  • Urban Plant Ecology faculty search waiting for approval to post the position in AJO from SrAD.
  • Seed faculty search reviewing for Zoom candidates; good pool of candidates.

Chelsea (Associate Director Faculty/DEI & DEI Council) – absent
Rebecca Nelson (Associate Director of Research)

  • Preparing equipment grant – send ideas for potential purchases to Rebecca.
  • Suggestion to form lab manager group. Will contact Sarah Carpenter and Sandy Harrington who may be able to help get this group started.

Kathie Hodge (Associate Director of Teaching) – absent

Cindy Twardokus (Assistant to the Director and Administrative Lead)

  • Admin staff are very busy doing the following:
  • Completing their own and scheduling meetings for section heads and faculty
  • On-going reappointment, promotion dossier preparation for faculty, RTE, adjunct and courtesy appointments.
    • 6 faculty searches currently in progress
    • Graduate student recruitment preparation
    • Cheyenne Cotton – new admin assistant at the front desk in Emerson doing a great job especially considering the amount of information she has been exposed to during her first 10 days.
    • Susan (Co-Chair Extension) – on leave from EC
    • Awais (Associate Director of Extension) – no report (had to leave meeting early)
      Other
  • Magdalen – contact Magdalen with event requests first to determine if request is within the scope of the SIPS events coordinator’s job. Resources for event planning are available even if requirements for the event are out of scope.
  • Widely used listservs will be added to the SIPS Resources webpage by Magdalen.
  • Andrew – space questions regarding accessibility and safety in some classrooms. Recommendation is to contact Andy Vail.
SIPS Leadership meeting minutes

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