Dear Colleagues,

Apologies for sending your Friday email so late in the day. We held this message until after completion of the first Board of Visitors meeting of the year to send a more complete update.

I shared Academic Affair’s priorities for the year, which are driven by our crucial role in implementing The Madison Promise, during our Academic Excellence Committee meeting on Thursday. Of the strategic plan’s fifteen priority initiatives, Academic Affairs serves as the owner of three and the co-owner of six, emphasizing the prominent role of academics in the university’s growth.

To acknowledge the deep integration of Academic Affairs’ work with that of Research, Economic Development and Innovation, Dr. Anthony Tongen, vice president for REDI, provided an overview of the division. He also spoke to REDI’s support of The Madison Promise through the three initiatives owned and the six initiatives co-owned by REDI.

The Center for Global Engagement’s executive director Dr. JY Zhou gave AEC members an update on JMU’s global engagement activities. The members were impressed by a panel of students and faculty who talked about their international learning experiences. My thanks go to students Josephine Maschio, a Nursing major; Emma Rossman, a Marketing major; and Ada Wright, a Business Management major, for sharing their stories and what they learned through their programs. I’d also like to thank their faculty mentors – Dr. David Owusu-Ansah, Professor of History; Dr. Mert Tokman, Professor of Marketing and International Business; and Dr. Bernie Kaussler, Professor of Political Science – for their interactions with our committee members.

The meeting ended with Dr. Elizabeth Oldmixon, vice provost for faculty affairs and curriculum, talking with board members about developing new academic programs. She reviewed the process, beginning with faculty’s primacy in originating ideas through the requirements for approval by the state.

Today, Academic Affairs featured prominently in the president’s report to the full board. The president provided updates on recent funding awards to expand Academic Affairs facilities and plans to seek additional support for academic programs. He also recognized the College of Education’s Department of Military Science for their consistent ranking in the top 5% of national universities and continued efforts to modernize ROTC training through state-of-the-art facilities.

I hope you also had a good week and wish you a relaxing weekend.

And now, let’s move on to your highlights.

• Dr.  John Peterson, professor of Music Theory, is part of a team of scholars who received the 2026 Virginia Open Educational Resource Impact Award for Open Music Theory, recognizing the textbook’s quality and role in reducing costs for Virginia students. The book is a free, fully online and interactive undergraduate music theory textbook that averages more than a million page views each year from readers across five continents. The authors estimate the aggregate textbook cost savings for Virginia students at about $250,000.00 per year across the Virginia universities known to have adopted it.
  
  
• Again, this year, JMU faculty are well represented on Virginia Humanities' With Good Reason podcast. Dr. Jennie Rosier, a professor in the School of Communication Studies, recently appeared on the show to talk about her research on Gen Z dating trends.
  
  
• Dr. Tobias Gerkin, an associate professor in the School of Integrated Sciences, is now the chief editor of the journal Earth Systems Science Data (ESSD). ESSD is an international, interdisciplinary and open-access journal that publishes articles on original research data (sets). It aims to promote the reuse of high-quality data of benefit to Earth system sciences; for example, the journal publishes the annual update to the Global Carbon Budget, which describes the methodology, main results, and datasets used to quantify the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land ecosystems, and the ocean over the historical period (1750–2025). This year, ESSD is on track to receive more than 2,000 article submissions.
  
  
• The College of Education has been accepted into the Center for Innovation, Design and Digital Learning (CIDDL) Tech Alliance 2.0. Members of the Tech Alliance collaborate to improve the integration of assistive technology, educational technology and AI into pre-service teacher preparation. College of Education instructor Dr. Katrina Maynard and associate professor Dr. Sara Snyder will collaborate with fellow COE Training & Technical Assistance Center education coordinators Dr. Hunter Matusevich and Mike Salomon and CIDDL to strengthen assistive technology instruction for JMU pre-service special education teachers.

Receiving highlights from faculty and staff has become the highlight of checking email, so please keep them coming! Please email provost@jmu.edu with accomplishments for you and your colleagues.

Sincerely,

Fletcher

Academic Affairs faculty and staff can email to contact the provost directly.

This is an open line of communication allowing faculty and staff to ask questions, but it is not a substitute from the crucial interactions they have with their academic unit head, department head and dean.

Students should contact AcademicQuestions@jmu.edu with questions.