By Noell Saunders

Old Dominion University's seven academic deans recently delivered their annual State of the College addresses for the academic year. State of the College addresses highlight accomplishments, core initiatives and strategic plans for the success of each college as well as future goals to help continue propelling that success forward.

Here are some of the highlights from each college's State of the College address:

Strome College of Business

• The School of Public Service awarded degrees to 59 Master of Public Administration graduates in academic year 2016-17, the largest number in the school's history.
• The Master of Business Administration program's national rankings include No.7 for "best veteran graduate programs," No. 55 for U.S. News for "best MBA online programs" and No. 69 for Bloomberg Financial.
• The Monarch Way store, a new retail location on Monarch Way, is now open for student entrepreneurs to showcase and sell their merchandise to the public.

College of Sciences

• A new chemistry building is on track for completion in 2020 which will be located across from the Oceanography and Physical Sciences building on Elkhorn Avenue. The building will have a new digital theater which will be part of the new planetarium.
• New degrees and majors include big data analytics (part of the B.S. in Math) and a B.S. in interdisciplinary studies with cybersecurity.
• Monarch Teach, which trains high school STEM teachers, currently has 140 students in the program from biology; chemistry; math; physics; ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences; technology and; education departments.
• NASA designated ODU as an official viewing location for the recent solar eclipse.

Batten College of Engineering and Technology

• The Batten College of Engineering and Technology is launching a research incentive program to address ODU strategic focus areas such as: cybersecurity, sea-level rise, biomedical, big data and computational modeling in order to reach a grant submission of $1 million.
• 6,000 square feet of space in the old education building was given to the engineering college for a new maker space. The college will use the space to build a community of learning and making; encourage students to design, prototype, build and test; support design focused course work and; encourage entrepreneurship.
• ODU's Baja team recently earned the highest placement in University history at the SAE Illinois International Competition where they were up against 106 other universities. The team, which is part of ODU Motorsports, placed 21st as the best placing team in Virginia.

Darden College of Education

• The Darden College of Education recently unveiled a new state-of-the-art education building, located on the corner of Hampton Boulevard and 43rd Street. The building offers a new modern, immersive learning environment for students.

• The college ranks No.2 in grant expenditures university-wide.

• The Darden College of Education's Teacher-in-Residence program, which places teachers in full-time secondary math and science teaching roles, helped the City of Norfolk — for the first time — close the teaching gap in these subjects.

• Darden's enhanced community college agreements, in partnership with Tidewater Community College and Thomas Nelson Community College, will augment participation in several of the college's undergraduate offerings, including industrial technology.

Batten College of Arts and Letters

• Kent Sandstrom, a former dean at North Dakota State University, was selected to lead the College of Arts and Letters in March 2017.

• The college conferred 1,323 degrees in academic year 2015-16, which was 200 more degrees conferred than any other college on campus.
• Arts and Letters had an impressive year in the area of development, as reflected by the $35 million gift it received from Richard and Carolyn Barry for the construction of a new art museum that will house a rare collection of art artifacts documenting the history of glass in the United States.
• The college's faculty received several notable national awards during the past year, including the highly distinguished PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Best Biography, the National Council for Geographic Education's George J. Miller Award for Distinguished Service to Geographic Education, and the National ACTFL/Cengage Learning Faculty Development Programs Award for Excellence in Foreign Language Instruction Using Technology.
• The college's faculty also received a number of distinguished fellowships, including the Rubenstein Research Fellowship in Jewish Studies, the Jim and Diane Shneer Fellowship in Post-Holocaust American Judaism, two American Council of Learned Scholars fellowships, and a residential fellowship from the Frankel Center Fellowship for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
• Arts and Letters will be developing and implementing plans this year to address challenges it is facing in the areas of student recruitment, sponsored research and alumni tracking.

College of Continuing Education and Professional Development

• The College of Continuing Education and Professional Development (CoCEPD) with the office of Distance Learning is joining forces with IT leaders in providing educational opportunities in highly sought out IT certificates.
• CoCEPD is working with Tidewater Community College to launch the Weekend/Evening College that will feature the offering of the individualized studies degree with the leadership major on the TCC Norfolk campus. This degree completion program is using open educational resources which means the students do not need to buy books, thus driving down the cost.
• Distance Learning has expanded their efforts in building business-to-business relationships as well as leading a new effort call the Online Virginia Network (OVN). OVN serves as a partnership with George Mason University to provide undergraduate degree completion programs for those students with some education.

College of Health Sciences

• U.S. News ranked the College of Health Sciences' School of Nursing No. 61 for "best online programs in graduate nursing" and the School of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training was ranked No. 64 for "best graduate schools in physical therapy."
• Robert Bruno and Patrick Sachs, professors in the School of Medical Diagnostic and Translational Sciences, recently received a $100,000 grant from the Jeffress Research Grants Program to further their efforts using biofabrication in stem cell-related research. The grant is a first of its kind for Old Dominion University researchers in the College of Health Sciences.
• New programs include a B.S.H.S. in respiratory therapy, a B.S. in public health, and a Ph.D. in biomedical science.