A Diverse and Stimulating Undergraduate Academic Environment
The College of Arts & Sciences will improve transformational opportunities for undergraduates by developing curricula that challenge and inspire students, expanding undergraduate research, service-learning, and study abroad opportunities, and further strengthening student support services. Curriculum (re)design must embrace exploration, creativity, critical thinking, diversity, and innovation. Interdisciplinary and cross-college collaborations in research, service learning, and international study will be fostered. Measurable goals will include increased undergraduate research and service-learning participation, expanded semester- and year-long study abroad offerings, and expansion of support programs such as NUCLEUS for under-represented students in all disciplines.
A Premier Research and Graduate University
The College of Arts & Sciences will strengthen and expand its faculty through strategic recruitment and retention initiatives. The College will recruit and retain faculty in interdisciplinary research areas while continuing to improve core disciplinary strengths. Measurable goals will include increased faculty size, increased diversity, and successful retention and recruitment of prominent faculty.
The College of Arts & Sciences will design graduate programs geared to research prominence and provide students with the resources necessary for success. The College seeks to establish named graduate fellowships with competitive stipends and to increase funds for graduate research and professional development. The College will strengthen graduate minority recruitment. Measurable goals will include enhanced recruitment, increased diversity, increased external grant funding, improved time-to-degree completion rates, and the quality of graduate student research and placement.
Progress update: a 2008 Unidel Foundation grant will support the Arts and Humanities Summer Institute to enhance graduate minority recruitment in the departments of Art Conservation, Art History, English, and History. Efforts are also underway to build inter-institutional partnerships, both with HBCUs and with other summer graduate minority “bridge” programs, to support this initiative.
Excellence in Professional Education
The College of Arts & Sciences will create new professional programs to serve the next generation of leaders in their fields. These will include certificate programs in specialized areas and Professional Science Master’s degrees. Performance measures will include the successful initiation of these programs and the number of students enrolled.
The Initiative for the Planet
The College of Arts & Scienceswill recruit new faculty to expand teaching and research capacity in energy and environmental studies. A broadly based initiative that spans the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities will support effective partnerships with the other Colleges. Performance measures will include the number of faculty teaching courses and doing research in areas related to this initiative, and the number of collaborative projects in these areas.
The Global Initiative
The College of Arts & Sciences will expand its commitment to the study of global issues in the areas of teaching, research, and public outreach. Building on the strengths of its Area Studies Programs in African, East Asian, European, Islamic, and Latin American Studies, the College will lead the effort to create a more globally-focused curriculum and new interdisciplinary academic programs that will engage undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and members of the broader community. It will also establish strategic international inter-institutional partnerships to support these initiatives. The College will create a Center for Political Communication to complement and strengthen the University’s on-going commitments in global studies, energy, the environment, and human health. Measurable goals will include: increased numbers of undergraduate and graduate courses with global content; increased numbers of faculty whose primary areas of research and instruction are global in focus; increased resources for those faculty.
Progress update: a Confucius Institute was established this year in collaboration with Xiamen University. Women’s Studies has hired a scholar whose research focuses on the relationship between women, sexual violence, and politics in Peru. A newly hired chaired professor in bioinformatics is the lead US investigator in a collaboration with Swiss and British researchers to develop a comprehensive database of information on proteins. Discussions are underway currently concerning inter-institutional agreements with universities in China and South Korea for collaborative programming involving six departments in the humanities and social sciences.
An Engaged University
The College of Arts & Sciences will strengthen its support for interdisciplinary research collaborations, curriculum innovations, and student and public engagement; this will be facilitated, in part, through the establishment of new administrative units. Support for preparing grant proposals to fund large-scale, multi-investigator research projects and centers will increase the number and success rate of such efforts. The College seeks endowment and external grant funding for the newly established Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is charged with enhancing public humanities and social sciences programming and supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary research and curriculum development initiatives. The College seeks to establish a School of Visual Arts and Design to build stronger alliances among our visual arts departments and strengthen partnerships with cultural institutions and museums in the region. A Design Institute will support faculty and student collaborations on real-world problems requiring creative design thinking. The College also seeks to establish a School of the Performing Arts, both to create a higher profile for our programming in dance, music and theatre to external audiences and to position the University to compete more effectively for high-ability undergraduates, who typically are keen to have opportunities to take courses in art, dance, music, and theatre even if their vocational interests lie elsewhere. Measurable goals will include increased external funding for research collaborations, increased audience attendance and media coverage, and curriculum development and assessment.
The College of Arts & Sciences will provide outstanding campus facilities to enable our strategic initiatives. Construction of an Undergraduate Science Building and renovation of existing space for new interdisciplinary research initiatives will drive prominence in the natural sciences. Construction of a building to house a School of Visual Arts and Design is another strategic priority.
Progress update: an Associate Dean of Research was appointed in 2008-09 to expand efforts to obtain external funding for research, support preparation of large-scale grant applications, and facilitate interdisciplinary research collaborations. A Faculty Fellow for the Arts was appointed in January 2009 to provide oversight for the arts, foster cross-disciplinary artistic programming, and support development efforts for the arts. The 2008 NEH Challenge Grant to support graduate student research and public engagement with American Material Culture studies is facilitating productive “cross-talk” among students in seven of our graduate humanities programs while also providing them with public performance and media training skills. Unidel Foundation grants have been secured to support both the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Design Institute.