In academic year 2018-19 our department adopted a strategic plan for research, teaching, and hiring. Our atmospheric science program had been established a few years before, but the faculty hiring was not yet complete, a wave of retirements had just begun that ultimately took more than one-third of our faculty, and we had just changed our name to Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The five-year strategic plan aimed to maintain our core strengths across the geosciences, to build the atmospheric sciences program, and to recruit faculty in Earth sciences who filled our specific disciplinary gaps but who had research interests that intersected with three unifying themes: climate change, the ‘critical zone’, and Earth’s evolving crust.

Since the plan was adopted we have hired six new tenure track faculty, one new lecturer, and one new research scientist, giving us new expertise in trace metal geochemistry, petrology, basin analysis, paleoclimate, clumped isotope geochemistry, seismology, and climate modeling. Our newest additions, Julia Kelson and David Lilien, are introduced in this issue of the Newsletter. Having dropped from 22 to 14 tenure-track faculty over the four years before the strategic plan was adopted, we have regrown to 19 with one more tenure-track hire expected in the next year in the area of water. We are once again easily able to offer classes in all areas of geosciences, our graduate program is expanding again, and the number of grants and publications we produce is tracking our growth.

Indiana University itself is changing rapidly. In 2021 President Michael McRobbie and Provost Lauren Robel retired and were replaced by Pamela Whitten and Rahul Shrivastav respectively. They embarked on an ambitious plan to reshape the university. Whitten has adopted a centralized “one university” model for the IU system and many activities have been elevated from the Bloomington campus to the university, a process that is still underway. Many policies, procedures, and financial decisions that were previously at the level of College deans or Campus vice-provosts are now considered at the level of University vice-presidents. Their new IU 2030 and IUB 2030 strategic plans are central to decision making.
These changes have had a direct impact on the department. An important source of research funding, the so-called “indirect cost” portion of external grants, that was once largely devolved to College of Arts + Sciences budget has been reapportioned so that 30 % is held by the Vice President for Research office, 10% is given to the department, and 10 % to the principal investigator (PI) of the grant. With 50 % of this income having been taken away from the dean, it is expected that the department and PI will now contribute more to expenses like instrument maintenance and start-up costs for new faculty hires. The campus strategic plan prioritizes hiring in geriatric health, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and environmental health, and the Provost has been rigorously prioritizing faculty hires in these areas over other requests thus slowing the completion of our own strategic hiring plan.

Allocation of research space has also been centralized and reviews of the MSB-II building are currently underway with an eye to consolidating animal-based research in that building. The Provost also initiated a review of the undergraduate majors offered on the Bloomington campus that is still underway, with the possibility of prioritizing new faculty hires in growth areas and deprecating majors where enrollment is below a critical threshold, but also the possibility of prioritizing growth in majors related to environmental science, which would include ours. It is still too early to fully comprehend what impact, if any, these changes will have for our future.

Political and social trends in the state, nation, and world have had some tangible effects on the Bloomington campus in recent months. At least two research collaborations between our faculty and researchers in China have been sidelined by changes cascading from the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and some researchers have had collaborations with Russian and Ukraininan scientists scrutinized. Two campus events related to the Israel-Palestine war were cancelled at short notice. The fate of the Kinsey Institute has been under intense discussion after a state funding moratorium was imposed by the Indiana legislature. And the legislature passed another bill this month titled “state educational institution matters”, colloquially known as SB 202, that could bring the so-called “culture wars” to campus classrooms by allowing students, staff, and faculty to lodge complaints with an external body about “cultural and intellectual diversity” in classes and related to faculty. Because of the bill’s open-ended language, it could conceivably have negative impacts on courses that touch on energy, mining and petroleum extraction, environmental remediation, climate, Earth history, and the history of life given the tenor public discourse on these subjects. Both the IU President and Provost have issued public warnings of unintended consequences such as these. At the time of writing, the state Governor has not yet signed the bill into law.

As you will see in this newsletter, a lot of positive things are happening in the department. You will meet our latest faculty recruits, new postdocs and staff, new grant projects and publications, and more. We are gearing up for the total solar eclipse on April 9 when we will join the entire campus celebrating the science of the Earth and solar system, including a guest appearance by actor William Shatner of Star Trek fame. Next year I will be on research leave at Helsinki University and professor Kaj Johnson, who will serve as acting chair of the department, will report what happens next. As always, special thanks to Arndt Schimmelmann and Ruth Droppo for compiling this newsletter and to the entire department for doing all the things that create the news we have to share.

Enjoy!

P. David Polly
Indiana University
14 June 2023