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Advisory Committee on Student Admissions and Recruitment

September 8, 2020

To: The Campus Community
From: Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and Professor of Physics
Date: September 8, 2020
Re: Advisory Committee on Student Admissions and Recruitment

As a community, we have a timely opportunity to examine how we can amplify Caltech's efforts to identify and then attract the best and brightest candidates from every background and perspective. To that end, I have constituted an Advisory Committee on Student Admissions and Recruitment.

The focus of the committee will be on graduate admissions with its special challenges of decentralized processes across the options. We anticipate that lessons learned both can be drawn from and applied to undergraduate admissions and faculty recruitment. The committee is charged to identify best practices in student admissions both at Caltech and at other institutions, including technological innovations, and to examine approaches to leveraging Institute strengths to be more successful in recruitment, especially among racially minoritized populations.

The members of the Committee include faculty members representing each division: Profs. Michael Alvarez (HSS), William Clemons (CCE), Tim Colonius (EAS, Committee Chair), Bethany Ehlmann (GPS), Katalin Fejes Toth (BBE), Matilde Marcolli (PMA), and one at-large member, David Chan (BBE); Institute staff deeply involved in admissions and recruitment: Jennifer Blankenship (Options Manager, Applied Physics & Materials Science), Natalie Gilmore (Asst. Dean of Graduate Studies), and Jarrid Whitney (Asst. VP for Student Affairs, Enrollment & Career Services); graduate students Daniel Mukasa and Newton Nguyen; and undergraduate student Diego Olaya. Jennifer Torres (Office of Strategy Implementation) will be staffing the Committee.

I am grateful to the members of the Committee for agreeing to serve and look forward to working with the Division Chairs, the Deans of Graduate Studies and Undergraduate Students, and the Provost to implement the Committee's recommendations.