These are times of great activity for the SSE, focused on a singular objective: to connect the implementation of the school to its vision. Previous newsletters have spent considerable ink on articulating a clear vision for the school and as we write this newsletter, the next step seems obvious: match the rhetoric and the ideal to reality. Quite evidently, it will take years to ascertain whether LUMS SSE is succeeding or failing. But continual information exchange with the stakeholders will be one vehicle through which we can determine if we are on the right track. This newsletter is part of that exchange. We attempt to communicate progress and plans for some foundational activities in which we are currently investing our energies. There is one goal in doing this: either reinforce that our efforts are indeed aligned with the SSE vision, or invite constructive criticism early on so that our efforts can be modified. By making our efforts more transparent, we hope to gain the advantage of more ideas and advice, since we cannot expect to have all the wisdom and initiative within the small SSE Project team and the Virtual Program Development Team (VPDT). We also hope that this piece provides the context within which later newsletters, which will move towards more operational updates, can be interpreted.

The SSE vision is to ultimately become a globally competitive research school - clearly a multi-decade agenda. The bulk of our efforts so far have been along three dimensions which are the most time-critical if the institution is to evolve towards its goal: faculty, funding and infrastructure. A significant amount of effort has also been spent on others areas such as curriculum and student admissions, but the deadlines for them are less strict than the other three given the school’s launch in Fall 2007, naturally affecting the allocation of resources in the short term.

Faculty
Faculty recruitment is one of our major concerns. Finding good faculty is a recognized first-order problem for administrators of higher education in Pakistan, and the SSE will require absolutely the best research and teaching faculty possible. The basic numbers are as follows: Phase I of the SSE plans to start new undergraduate programs in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Electrical Engineering and one other engineering discipline; with opportunistic initiation of graduate programs in these disciplines if we find good faculty and graduate students early. With the current launch date of Fall 2007, this requires approximately 7 faculty to be hired this year, and a total of 15 by summer 2007 (3 in each of the five new departments). By summer 2010, 45 additional faculty members will be needed, and by 2020, about 200 faculty members in around 10 departments. With 2000 students, this will bring our student faculty ratio to 10:1, comparable with the best schools in the US.

Faculty hiring has been deliberately slowed down until now because considerable time and energy has been invested in policy review at LUMS. A committee constituted in February 2005 is revising the process for faculty appointments and promotions in order to bring it in line with international norms. The committee will address issues of tenure-track, research startup grants, and legacy issues in detail. We want to ensure that the environment we create for our faculty allows them to achieve the standards of excellence comparable with the best research schools, and is at the same time compatible with the Pakistani environment and circumstance.

Currently 3 faculty members are committed to joining the school, in Physics, Electrical Engineering and Operations Research; so meeting the 7 faculty goal by the end of this year definitely seems achievable. Before the end of summer, a systematic faculty outreach exercise will be undertaken. To do this effectively, we must know the pool of quality candidates. However, good data for this pool is hard to find. Part of our effort will be to invest in building a good database of potential current and future faculty, in order to have a sustainable school in the long-run. The evolution of the faculty body itself is a complex and multi-faceted process. The people we wish to attract in the beginning are those with the potential to be strong custodians of institutional quality, who understand and believe in the SSE vision and mission.

Funding
Funding an enterprise of research and education requires significant resources. For the SSE’s setup costs, such as creation of new facilities, and operating costs, such as faculty salaries, research startup packages and student financial aid, we plan to initially raise $25 million. Of this amount, we estimate to spend $8 million on the building, $7 million on equipment, and $10 million on the operating deficit for 10 years. These are our current best estimates.  As the design of the laboratories gets more refined and we start to identify the actual equipment to be purchased we will have more precise estimates.  We will be incorporating our increasing understanding into the financial model of the SSE, so that the resources we raise remain commensurate with our vision. An outreach effort will begin in the US this summer to build a support community, tapping the expertise and network of the Pakistani diaspora. As a note, we do have $9.5 million in pledges already, all raised from private sources within Pakistan.

It is also important to communicate our understanding of the long-term sustainability of the school - beyond the first 10 years. Financing of private higher education, specially research schools, cannot be done on tuition alone.  Tuition in quality institutions is not even enough to cover the direct costs of a student’s education. At MIT for instance, tuition may cover only around 50% of the cost of educating a student, the rest of the cost is subsidized through other institute income. Once the initial fundraising target has been crossed, we will attempt to concentrate on building a significant endowment for the school, so it is sustainable and able to grow over the decades. This is important not only for our raw survival, but also if we want to get to the ideal of need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid, so we can attract the best and brightest students to the SSE irrespective of their families’ income.

Infrastructure
Adequate teaching and research infrastructure is essential for the school to realize its vision. A great deal of energy over the past year has been spent in gathering requirements and collecting data on infrastructure from the best universities. We are targeting for construction to begin this summer and are currently finalizing laboratory layouts and architectural details.

The facility program (type, number and size of spaces needed) for the SSE was developed in collaboration with the VPDT and the Boston based campus and facility planning firm of Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates. The program envisions the SSE expanding to 10 departments in the next 15 years, with a student body totaling 2000 (including 1200 undergraduate and 800 graduate students) and 200 faculty members. Further, it assumes an MIT-Stanford-Caltech style curriculum. The architectural schematics for the SSE complex have recently been drawn up by architects Habib Fida Ali and Faisal Haroon. The complex consists of three connected 6-storey buildings located on a field measuring 290-feet by 453-feet within the current LUMS campus.

The entire SSE complex will have a covered area of about 500,000 square feet, but will be developed in two phases. In the first phase a 240,000 square feet building will be constructed. This building will house teaching and research labs, faculty and graduate student offices, computer clusters, discussion chambers, conference rooms and student lounges. The building will have a simple grid structure and has been designed to allow flexibility in the internal layout, needed by an evolving SSE. The internal layout of the building has been checked for conformance with international safety standards by architect Arlen Li of Payette Associates, a Boston based firm. Work on the buildings structural design and its air-handing and plumbing requirements is under way.  Work on the working drawings will start later this month and construction of the building is expected to commence in summer 2005.

Curriculum
A significant curriculum development exercise has been undertaken for the SSE as a prerequisite to the facility program. While this curriculum will certainly go through an examination and modification by the faculty we hire, it does provide a good indication of the kind of rigor anticipated in the SSE programs. For instance, the school-wide core curriculum developed is very strong in fundamental sciences (including science labs), has a large humanities and social science component, and gives students exposure to advanced technology subjects at an introductory level. The SSE core is very similar to that of MIT, Stanford, Caltech and UC Berkeley.

Members of the VPDT have developed the program specific curricula for undergraduate and graduate programs in biology, chemistry, physics and electrical engineering. The undergraduate program-specific curriculum has been designed to provide the students a solid understanding of all the basic areas of their major, while at the same time allowing them to focus on one particular area. There is also flexibility in the curricula to allow the student to choose the subjects of his/her own interest. Industrial internships and research will be built into the SSE programs; for engineering majors a 5-year joint BS/MS program with a built-in one-year industrial internship is also a very likely possibility. To ensure that the SSE produces people with leadership and entrepreneurial qualities, physical education will likely be a graduation requirement; and a defined two-week activity in rural areas for building a sense of social responsibility, perhaps along the patterns of the US Peace Corps, is under consideration.

Going Forward
Organizationally, the SSE is still quite limited. A 4-person Project Team at LUMS is doing work with support from the LUMS faculty, staff and Management Committee; and a 23-person Virtual Program Development Team (VPDT) – a remote group of academics and professionals. During the coming months, we will likely continue with the activities needed to get construction on facilities started in the summer. For the second half of the year, we expect to be occupied with the faculty and funding tasks. Summer will in fact see the launch of an outreach effort on both fronts in the US. By the end of the year, we hope to have met our targets on both these fronts.

Project Team, LUMS School of Science and Engineering
Vice-Chancellor, LUMS
Management Committee, LUMS