Dear College of Science Faculty and Staff,
Honestly, collaboration is the rule in science, not the exception. Ants work together to move a piece of leaf, bacteria work together to form biofilms that can be useful or a problem, single cells stick together to build every part of your body. Your brain includes 1,000 trillion connections between neurons (nerve cells), that collaborate and somehow allow you to think. Myriad life forms and non-living entities - water, rocks, soil, air - collaborate to build ecosystems. Fundamental particles collaborate to build atoms which in turn collaborate to make molecules. Molecules love to collaborate through chemical reactions. The elusive qubits of quantum systems show deep collaboration called ‘entanglement’. And numbers collaborate with one another and with functions to build the great language of mathematics. When you’re lonely, there may be comfort in knowing that every second, there’s a huge amount of collaboration in each of your cells and in every organ, all together keeping your body working.
At Northeastern University, and in the College of Science we embrace collaboration. Indeed, our upcoming 2023-24 Annual Report (here’s the cover) has the theme ‘The Power of Collaboration’. Within and across departments, across colleges, across our Global University, all of our units are collaborative. Even when you think you’re working alone, the lights and air conditioning, Outlook, your financial reports, Workday and more are collaborating with you to facilitate your work. It’s hard not to collaborate!
Yesterday at our opening Community Meeting (slides here), we Looked Forward into AY24-25. Associate Deans gave a preview of the year in their portfolios, and I gave context by reminding our community that when we started working together in June 2020, we met troubles by being kind, calm, creative. That’s still a good way to meet our challenges. In our first Community Meeting (June 10, 2020) we discussed the Power of Science (not yet the Good Power), and six months later (slide shown) we’d laid out clear goals for the College of Science that included everyone. Today (slide shown), I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved, collaboratively making strong progress on every single goal! Congratulations!
We’re moving forward together (another slide shown), using our terrific strategic plan as a scaffold for your creative ideas. A public website will soon celebrate your implementations. Thank you! for such wonderful, productive, innovative collaboration.Congratulations!
Warm wishes to everyone.