Letter from the Dean - January 2005

Letter from the Dean January 2005

Dear Colleagues -

Happy New Year! Indeed, we begin the new year with a some very good news for the College.

First, the Lilly Endowment Inc. has given IU Bloomington $53 million to broaden and intensify its life sciences research, retain its distinguished scientists, attract new world class scientists and contribute to the state's economic development by transferring technology to new and existing life science businesses. The grant is the largest IUB has ever received. For more information, go to http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/1770.html

Six proposals for Commitment to Excellence funds have been approved by the Board of Trustees in the second round, four of which are College-based: (1) Renewing Leadership in the Arts and Humanities ($2.2 million in base budget for hiring senior faculty in English, History, Philosophy, and Fine Arts); (2) Gaining Competitiveness in Graduate Recruitment and Improving Lower Division Instruction ($1.22 million in base for variously increasing stipends and reducing AI/student load in 9 programs receiving other CTE support); (3) New Focus in American Studies ($527,000 in base for hiring faculty and creating a B.A.); and (4) Establishing a Department of Statistics ($700,000 in base for hiring faculty and setting up department, including consulting services). The funds will come in 2-3 annual installments. More details will be coming your way shortly. These projects, along with the five previously funded projects (Human Biology, Interdisciplinary Science, Understanding the Two-Thirds World, New Frontiers in Cognitive Science, and New Initiatives in Ecology and Environment) constitute an extraordinary investment by the university that will benefit all parts of the College and the Campus into the future.

In December the Lilly Endowment also announced the award of $26 million to Indiana University for projects intended to build Indiana’s intellectual capital. The President announced that $10 million will support six Presidential Life Science Professorships (three in the School of Medicine and three in the College), and $5 million will go to sustain Arts and Humanities scholarship across IU (to be handled through a proposal process run out of the Office of the Vice President for Research).

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Bill Newman from History and Philosophy of Science and Jeff Wolin from Fine Arts-Studio as Ruth N. Halls Professors. These endowed professorships are awarded to faculty members in arts and humanities whose scholarly or creative work stands out in terms of sustained quality, quantity, and impact, and whose teaching and service activities make them particularly valuable faculty members in the College. Two other faculty members already hold Ruth N. Halls Professorships: Sarah Burns of Art History and Dyan Elliot of History. I am also pleased to announce the appointment of Ruth Stone (Ethnomusicology) as the first Laura Bolton Professor of Ethnomusicoloy. This endowed professorship, which rotates every five years, is awarded to a faculty member who has had a major impact on the field of ethnomusicology.

Two of the 18 awards announced by the Modern Language Association of America last year went to College of Arts & Sciences faculty members. The MLA announced it is awarding its thirty-fifth annual James Russell Lowell Prize to Giancarlo Maiorino (Comparative Literature) for his book At the Margins of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Art of Survival, published by Penn State University Press. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book—a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography—written by a member of the association. The MLA of America is awarding its second Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize for an outstanding scholarly work in English in the field of Yiddish to Dov-Ber Kerler (Jewish Studies) for The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish, published by Oxford University Press. The prize is awarded each even-numbered year and is awarded alternately to an outstanding translation of a Yiddish literary work or an outstanding scholarly work in English in the field of Yiddish.

"Backpack to Briefcase" Workshops

Associate Dean Catherine Larson has been working with the College of Arts and Sciences Career Services and others to begin implementation of the Senior Year Task Force recommendations for curricular and extra-curricular initiatives aimed at empowering our graduating seniors with skills that will help them succeed in the work force or in graduate or professional school. This academic year, several "Backpack to Briefcase" workshops geared for students with senior standing in the College are taking place, including topics such as financial life skills, preparation for graduate school, communication in the workplace, and business etiquette. Student interest in the workshops has been overwhelmingly positive; after this year’s pilot events, two one-credit-hour courses are planned to begin in the Fall 2005 semester: "Preparation for Graduate School" and "Backpack to Briefcase: Life Skills." In addition, the first of the senior luncheons took place in November.

Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) News

In order to simplify and clarify the process for students seeking second degrees in the College (e.g., both BA and BS), the Committee on Undergraduate Education affirmed the policy that such students would need a minimum of 22 hours that would be unique to each major concentration area. There can be substantial cross-listing of coursework between the two majors or the two different degrees, using courses from either of the majors to fulfill general education and other requirements, as long as there are also at least 22 credit hours which are not double-counted in both degrees (i.e., they are unique). This mirrors the long-standing policy governing double majors (within the same degree) in the College; moreover, it does not create additional problems for any combination of degrees offered by the College because of the inherent uniqueness of each degree program.

CASE Awards

The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) selected the Fine Arts Newsletter to win a gold medal while the promotional material for the Multidisciplinary Science Building (Simon Hall) won a silver medal.

Appointments in the Development Office

The College’s Office of Development welcomes two new Directors of Major Gifts: Travis Paulin comes to us from the Development Office at the School of Education and Lisa Hosey comes to us from the School of Law.

FACULTY ACHIEVEMENTS

David Bish (Geological Sciences) will design an X-ray Diffraction System to be on the martial surface lander (MSL) for definitive identification of minerals on martian surface. He will be part of a team led by David Blake of NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Juergen Schieber (Geological Sciences) will design a wide-angle microscopic camera to be on MSL to image rocks, soil, frost and ice at resolutions never achieved before. He is a co-investigator with Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems.

David Wise (Computer Science) has been selected a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, with the citation, “For leadership in the computer science community and contributions to functional programming languages."

Thom Kaufman (Biology) has been named the Genetics Society of America’s recipient of the 2005 George W. Beadle Award for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers.

John McCluskey (African-American & African Diaspora Studies) was a featured alumnus in the Harvard Alumni Magazine. To read the article, go to: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/110417.html

Rob Goldstone (Psychology) has been elected to membership in the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Christopher Beckwith (Central Eurasian Studies) has been granted a Fulbright-Hays award to conduct research in Japan.

Kenneth Johnston (English, Emeritus) has been granted a Fulbright Scholar award to visit the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Jack Bielasiak (Political Science) has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar award to lecture and conduct research at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

John Hanson (History; African Studies) has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays award to conduct research in Ghana.

William Newman (History & Philosophy of Science) gave the annual invited Olaf Pedersen lecture at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

The Dean of Faculties Office and the Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded four College professors Outstanding Junior Faculty awards: Aurelian Craiutu (Political Science); Daniel Mindiola (Chemistry); Massimo Scalabrini (French & Italian); and Liese van Zee (Astronomy).

Paul Newman's (Linguistics) latest book, "Klingenheben's Law in Hausa", was just published by Ruediger Koeppe Verlag, Europe's leading publisher of books on African linguistics. Closer to home, Newman was recently elected president of the Bloomington chapter of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Nance Bradley Warren (PhD, English, 1997) received the Gustave O. Arlt award from the Council of Graduate Schools. The award “is given each year to a young scholar teaching in the humanities in a North American university who has earned the doctorate within the past seven years and who has published a book deemed to be of outstanding scholarly significance.” Her book, published in 2001 from the U of Penn press is entitled Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England. She is a member of the faculty at Florida State and is working on her third book.

Mark Steyvers (PhD, Psychology; Cognitive Science, 2000) was selected to win the Society of Experimental Psychologists “Early Investigator Award.”

Cheers,

Swamy