December 1999

Advisory Groups Play Increasing Role at George Mason By Emily Yaghmour Recently, President Alan Merten charged each of the deans and academic directors at the university to establish an advisory board for his or her unit. Some units, like the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) and the Institute for Computational Sciences and Informatics (CSI), have had advisory boards for years. Others are in the process of assembling them. One of the most valuable roles an advisory board can play is to be a sounding board for administrators and faculty. Murray Black, director of CSI, credits the institute's 11-member board with helping it promote itself more effectively. The board serves as a good "red" team, says Black: "We create something and the board provides feedback." The recently assembled board of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) will play a similar role for Dean Daniele Struppa. It will provide him with advice on planning and strategic operations for the college. Another role the advisory board often plays is that of networking for the unit it represents. That is one of the most important roles of the board of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR). Its 26-member board consists of prominent Northern Virginia citizens, including a retired state legislator, an ambassador, two international journalists, a newspaper executive, and others prominent in business and government affairs. According to Joan Drake, ICAR's administrative manager, the board has helped the institute establish connections over the years with international and local organizations and groups to which the institute provides training and consultation. Rita Carty, the dean of the College of Nursing and Health Science, also has made networking one of the primary responsibilities of the nursing board. Although the college has had a board for almost eight years, the terms of the 10 members who now serve on it expire soon, so Carty is reconstituting it. In addition to seeking leaders from the community and from the health-care work force, she is also seeking those who have ties to particular communities with which the college wants to create connections. For example, she says, we have very low numbers of Hispanic students in the college, despite a substantial Hispanic population in the area. She would like to enlist leaders in the Hispanic community to help recruit Hispanic students and to help find scholarship funds for them. "We are interested in helping the Hispanic community see nursing as a good career opportunity for its young men and women and even for its adults." Like Carty, Kingsley Haynes, director of The Institute of Public Policy (TIPP), expects his board to help the institute identify and connect with new communities to serve. He has just begun to assemble an institute-wide advisory board for TIPPŃthough some units within the institute have had firmly established advisory groups for seven or more years. Another role advisory boards increasingly play is that of fund raising. As George Mason grows, its need for support from the private sector increases, says Judith Jobbitt, vice president of University Development and Alumni Affairs and president of the GMU Foundation. "We are now turning to advisory boards for assistance in obtaining private funding. In fact, many members of Mason's existing boards have already contributed significantly to the university's fund-raising efforts," she says. "Board members can be instrumental in providing us with information about, and entrŽe to, a variety of funding sources," says Jobbitt. Lloyd Griffiths, dean of the School of Information Technology and Engineering (IT&E), formed a board for his school two years ago. In addition to seeking the advice and counsel of the board, Griffiths will be working closely with the board to assist with the school's fund-raising goal by taking advantage of the board's many business contacts and relationships in Northern Virginia. The eight-member board consists of presidents and CEOs of area high-tech firms. For the most part, advisory boards at the college, school, and institute levels do not provide extensive advice on curriculum development. But advisory committees, which are designed to serve specific departments, are being formed to do just that. Since one of the goals of the university is to help provide qualified employees for the high-tech industry, company representatives are being asked to sit on advisory committees in order to communicate to faculty and administrators the kinds of skills they need from their workers. Committee members are a "source of useful information about what the real world is looking for," says Henry Hamburger, Computer Science chair. Hamburger recently organized a committee of six members, including a George Mason computer science alum with her own company, a CEO of a large Internet company, and a division director at the Naval Research Lab. At the same time, Hamburger points out, our role cannot be that of a training institute, which merely teaches its students to use specific software packages. We have to maintain a balance between equipping students with specific skills of immediate necessity to companies and imparting deeper and more general knowledge that students can use to adapt to change throughout their lives, he says. Hamburger has been pleased with the sensitivity members of his committee have demonstrated regarding this dual obligation. Recently, Lloyd Griffiths and Stephen Nash, IT&E's associate dean for graduate studies and research, extended the advisory committee concept to the academic program level. They organized an ad hoc group to assist in the development of a single degree program: the M.S. in Telecommunications. George Mason already has an M.A. in Telecommunications, which is administered by CAS. While the M.A. program covers the marketing, software systems, and international aspects of telecommunications, the M.S. program focuses to a greater extent on the technical aspects of the field, while still including some of the courses required by the M.A. program. This is the first time that IT&E has invited an advisory group composed of industry leaders to be involved in the actual development of a program. The advisory group suggested not only the kinds of classes the program might include but even where they should be offered. As Andre Manitius, Electrical and Computer Engineering chair, puts it, they use their knowledge of the market to make suggestions about program content.