Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 21

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 21
Tuesday, November 22, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
BACK TO BACK
Mehta to start as Mountaintop director University
expansion plan
seen as road to
visibility
Vincent Liu/B&W Staff
Khanjan Mehta smiles after a meeting Oct. 31 in Coxe Hall. Mehta has been named vice provost
for creative inquiry and director of the Mountaintop Initiative at Lehigh.
By LAURYN RAGONE
Associate News Editor
Khanjan Mehta always knew his
calling was to become an engineer.
All of the members of his fam-ily
were professionals — doctors,
scientists or engineers. However,
he did not expect to fall into aca-demia
until after he received his
master’s in electrical engineering
from Penn State. He now comes to
Lehigh with expertise after serv-ing
as the founding director of
the humanitarian engineering and
social entrepreneurship program
at Penn State.
Mehta will assume his role
as Lehigh’s vice provost of cre-ative
inquiry and the director for
Lehigh’s Mountaintop Initiative on
Dec. 30.
His role at Lehigh is to inte-grate
creative inquiry into every
college. He will meet with deans,
department heads and students to
achieve this goal.
Mehta said he believes the first
step in achieving creative inquiry
throughout the campus is to under-stand
what is already happening.
“(Our purpose is) figuring out
what our strengths are and what
we can do to become a more prom-inent
school in preparing stu-dents
for a rapidly moving and
ever-changing world,” Mehta said.
“We have to start there.”
Mehta said a way to integrate
creative inquiry is to push for the
integration of learning, research
and engagement throughout the
university.
By JESSICA HICKS
Associate News Editor
Lehigh revealed its 10-year plan,
the “Path to Prominence,” to the
Lehigh community at the end of
October.
Patrick Farrell, the provost and
vice president for academic affairs,
said Lehigh’s 10-year expansion
plan will serve as an opportunity to
increase the university’s visibility,
both nationally and international-ly,
and play a key role in significant
areas of education.
Farrell said in some cases, there
are holes in areas of study and
potential majors at Lehigh.
“There are big areas (of study)
that students are interested in,
and we do a little, but we don’t do
as much as we might,” Farrell said.
“If we want to go into those, it’s a
mistake to go small. We want to go
in in a fairly big way.”
These big steps include bringing
in more students, more facilities
and more options when it comes to
majors and minors.
He said his position is a way
to rethink about how we educate
students.
“We want this to be the signa-ture
of the Lehigh experience,”
Mehta said. “We want all our stu-dents
to not only graduate with
degrees, but we want them to be
comfortable in working with cross
disciplines.”
Todd Watkins, a professor of eco-
See MEHTA Page 3 See EXPANSION Page 2
Roshan Giyanani/B&W Staff
Sophomore running back Dominick Bragalone rushes for a touchdown during the game against Lafayette on Saturday in Fisher Stadium. The Mountain Hawks beat the Leopards, 45-21. Lehigh’s
next game is away against the University of New Hampshire on Nov. 26 in the first round of the FCS playoffs.
Khanjan Mehta will
also assume the role of
vice provost of creative
inquiry on Dec. 30