I have some updated information on teaching loads and representation within the School that you’ll find of interest. Eckhard reviews academic year support once per year in May/June to determine teaching loads for the following academic year. He’ll also take into consideration proposal writing effort. The principle is that he wants to see research productivity, otherwise faculty need to contribute to the School with an increased teaching load. Thus, decisions on 2+1 academic year teaching loads for Associate and Full Professors will be made early this summer. Assistant professors will remain at 1+1 for the next academic year so they can continue to develop their research programs. For those faculty who will teach an extra course, the plan is to keep the Fa25 semester essentially as is and use the extra teaching load to reduce the dependence on limited term lecturers in Sp26. Eckhard is also supportive of using the increased teaching assignments to offer some ME graduate courses at the Indianapolis campus as long as there is sufficient enrollment (>=9 students for 5xx courses, >= 6 students for 6xx courses) and we can balance other teaching needs. I asked this morning about increasing the representation of University Tenure (UT) faculty with courtesy appointments on ME committees. Apparently UT courtesy faculty already have representation in the academic areas and the Graduate Committee. If you haven’t done so already, please inform Victoria Wunderlich (vwunder@purdue.edu<mailto:vwunder@purdue.edu>) in which academic area (e.g., Fluid Mechanics and Propulsion, Solid Mechanics, System Measurements and Controls, etc.) you’d like to have your primary appointment. You can also be in a secondary academic area, but should only vote in your primary area. Eckhard also included the caveat that you should only vote on curriculum-related matters if you are actively teaching in the Purdue ME curriculum. If you are teaching a continuing-student course, then you should wait to vote on curriculum matters until you are teaching a Purdue ME course. You can still contribute in meetings and vote on non-curriculum matters, however. As far as the Graduate Committee, Hamid Dalir is the UT courtesy faculty representative. As far as I know, he has voting rights in that committee. Eckhard has agreed that courtesy faculty can participate and vote in all ME committees except for the ME Primary Committee. Again, votes related to curriculum matters should wait until you’re teaching Purdue ME courses. I encourage you to actively participate so you can contribute to the School, particularly in shaping the ME-Indy experience, and develop relationships for research partnerships.