Dear Colleagues:

       "It is not what you do that counts, it is what you help others to do that makes progress."

Herman B Wells

I feel very honored and privileged to now serve as Indiana University’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to my assuming this position, The College and I were in a state of transition. This transition period offered me a unique opportunity to reflect on what it means to be Dean.

During one of my recruiting visits to Bloomington, I was given the book by Herman Wells, "Being Lucky." As I began to read about Wells’ philosophy regarding leadership, I felt an immediate kinship with the views expressed by this former president of the Indiana University. The quote that appears at the beginning of this letter suggests that Wells was first and foremost a public servant whose job it was to recruit outstanding faculty and students and then surround them with the necessary resources to enable them to accomplish as much as possible through their research and scholarship. I espouse this view of an administrator, because my views were forged as a faculty member and not as an administrator. Like Wells I aspire to lead rather than to command – "one cannot command spirit, cannot command learning, cannot command an atmosphere."

Throughout our lifetime, we all experience pivotal events that serve to transform our future directions and goals. At a personal level, these events may include earning a college degree, getting married, starting a family. At a professional level, these events are often more idiosyncratic and may include experiences that cut to the very core of our value systems. This was true for me when I decided to accept the position as the Assistant Director for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. I learned from my experience at the NSF that interdisciplinary collaborations and the formation of large centers and initiatives are becoming increasingly necessary to address huge and urgent problems that face the world today.

As I’ve started to learn about the organization of The College, I’ve been extremely impressed by the emphasis on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs and infrastructure support. Although this is not necessarily the correct formula for all disciplines or all researchers, there is often an economy of scale and a marked increase in productivity that accompanies these programs. The new Life Sciences Initiative is a striking example of the importance of large-scale multidisciplinary projects for The College. It would be a mistake to suggest, however, that such large scale initiatives are the exclusive domain of any subset of disciplines. -- I anticipate that over time the success of the Life Sciences Initiative will be repeated by other initiatives involving a broad representation of departments and programs in The College. All of you, for example, are aware of the outstanding reputation of The College in area studies and international programs – a reputation that is well deserved given that there are courses in over 60 languages and faculty expertise in virtually every region of the world. An important goal for the future is to explore how to build on the success of these programs by integrating them into a larger-scale initiative. This model of scaling up interdisciplinary programs and creating initiatives is one that we must consider very seriously, because it is now advocated by federal agencies funding research and education; thus supporting these interdisciplinary programs will increase our competitiveness for federal funding.

I began this column by stating that becoming Dean is an honor and privilege, but it is also a very great responsibility. The academic and intellectual strengths of The College make it one of the premier institutions of higher learning in the U.S. As I continue to learn about The College, it becomes increasingly clear to me that it’s most outstanding resource is its extremely talented and resourceful faculty, and that the highest priority must be directed toward retaining faculty. The College is extremely fortunate to have had the visionary leadership of Kumble Subbaswamy for six years. During this period, new programs were initiated and research activities expanded at an unparalleled rate. My goal is to follow Swamy by continuing his bold and visionary leadership. This is clearly not a task that I can succeed at alone, which is why I very much look forward to working with faculty, students and alumni to continue to enhance the educational and research opportunities of The College.

I would also like to acknowledge the enormous service that Interim Dean David Zaret has provided to me and to The College during this transitional period. Without David’s wise advice and good counsel, I would not be nearly as well prepared for the enormous challenges now facing me. I am very grateful to David that he has agreed to continue as an advisor in the Dean’s Office through the end of the spring semester before he returns to his teaching and research.

Finally, I would like to recognize the accomplishments and awards received by faculty and students during the Fall Semester. I hope that you will continue to keep my office apprised of your accomplishments as well as those of your students, past and present.

Faculty Accomplishments

Scott Sanders (English) received one of five annual Indiana Humanities Awards issued by the Governor's Office and the Indiana Humanities Council. The award recognizes lifetime achievement in the humanities.

Lisa Lloyd (History & Philosophy of Science) has been awarded the Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Award by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for her book, The Case of the Female Orgasm. The award is given by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for the most distinguished book written for the professional sexological community and the purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize outstanding scholarship in the field of sexology.

Richard Bauman (Folklore and Ethnomusicology) has been awarded the 2006 Edward Sapir Book Prize for his co-authored work Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. The Sapir Prize is awarded in alternate years by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology to a recent book that makes the most significant contribution to scholarly understanding of language in society.

Emanuel Mickel (French & Italian) has been invited to Pembroke College, University of Cambridge as a Visiting Scholar for the Michaelmas Term for the fall semester.

Edward G. Carmines (Political Science) is a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University during the 2006/07 academic year.

Jacques Merceron (French & Italian) has just published, La Vieille Carcas de Carcassonne. Florilège de l’humour et del’imaginaire des noms de lieux en France (légendes, jeux et calembours toponymiques du Moyen Âge à nos jours) Paris, Editions du Seuil, 2006, 829 pp. [The Old Carcas of Carcassonne. An Essay and Anthology of Legends, Wit, and Linguistic Games about French Place Names from the Middle Ages to the Present] which will be reviewed in the next issue of La Quinzaine littéraire, one of the leading literary magazines in France and was reviewed in the French magazine Lire no. 99, December 2006.

Edward Ripley (Geological Sciences) has discovered properties of a meteorite that would challenge "how we think about colossal impact events on Earth" and is discussed in NASA’s Planetary Science Research Discoveries (PSRD - http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/June06/Morokweng.html).

Ruth Stone (Folklore & Ethnomusicology) received a significant grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue her work in the development and implementation of an archive of ethnomusicological moving image recordings.

Sumit Ganguly (India Studies; Political Science) was presented the Medal of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in October in Rimini, Italy. The award recognizes Ganguly's "remarkable work and contribution to promoting greater understanding of South Asian culture and history, and in particular its recent economic and political development."

Alyce Miller (English) won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, for her Water: Nine Stories by Alyce Miller given by Sarabande Books. Alyce Miller is a professor in the graduate writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington, and an attorney specializing in animal law. She has authored a collection of stories, The Nature of Longing (W.W. Norton), winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award, and a novel, Stopping for Green Lights (Anchor Doubleday). Her awards include the Lawrence Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review and The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction. Water: Nine Stories will be published in January 2008.

James Reilly (Chemistry) had an undergraduate Chemistry course of his identified as an example of best practices in a national study of Chemistry courses conducted by the Center for Educational Policy Research.

Al Ruesink (Biology) had an undergraduate Biology course of his identified as an example of best practices in a national study of Biology courses conducted by the Center for Educational Policy Research.

Lisa Pratt (Geological Sciences) had an undergraduate Geology course of hers identified as an example of best practices in a national study of Environmental Science courses conducted by the Center for Educational Policy Research.

Chen Zhu (Geological Sciences) put forth a successful proposal to acquire a Dual High Resolution and Cryo TEM for IU.

Bruce Solomon (Mathematics) was awarded the College 2006 James Holland Teaching Award. He also received a Lady Davis Fellowship for research he will carry out at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Roy Gardner (Economics; WEST) gave the keynote address “Budget Processes of International Financial/Development Organizations: Theory and Experimental Evidence” at the Sixth Meeting on Game Theory and Practice in Zaragoza, Spain over the summer. The Conference was devoted to applications of game theory to development, natural resources, and the environment, and brought scholars from every continent to present.

Sumit Ganguly (India Studies Program) was involved in two radio programs: he was a guest on Midmorning, a call-in program of Minnesota Public Radio. The program was titled "Pakistan's Dilemma," and the audio can be heard here (requires Real Audio Player). Earlier, he was interviewed on the Radio Singapore International program 25 Minutes; the program title was "Nuclear Energy" and can be heard here (requires Quicktime Player). Ganguly was quoted in an article in the August 23, 2006 edition of Outlook India. The article is titled "The Nuke Fall Out?" and can be found here.

Student Accomplishments

Irene Arango and Mirela Dumitrescu (Geological Sciences) are co-authors of an article in EOS. Mirela is a co-author of another paper with Dr. Simon Brassell and received the Best Paper Award from the Geochemical Society in August.

1516 undergraduate students were recognized as outstanding. To view the names of all those undergraduates in the College who were named to the Spring 2006 Dean’s List, please go to http://www.indiana.edu/~college/undergrad/.

Juergen Jung (PhD candidate, Economics) won a nomination of the National Science Foundation to participate at the 2nd Meeting of Nobel Prizewinners in Economic Sciences. The meeting was held in Lindau, Germany were 8 Laureates met with 300 young researchers from 40 different countries.

Hsiu-Wen Wang (MS/PhD candidate, Geological Sciences) is the recipient of one of two global awards from Bruker Analytical on the strength of her competitive paper "Dehydration/rehydration-induced structural phase transitions in natrolite."

Ioana Schiopu (PhD candidate, Economics) was one of the 41 US and international students and faculty selected to participate in a five-day Summer Workshop with the Institute of Computational Economics (ICE). ICE is jointly organized by the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago and it is held at Argonne. Ioana presented her research in a poster session.

Zach Overley (Senior, Anthropology, Spanish & Portuguese) is a Palmer-Brandon winner from Zionsville, Indiana.

Katrina Neff (Senior, Geological Sciences) has received a large undergraduate research grant from the Indiana Space Grant Consortium. Katrina is currently spending this semester at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a NASA intern. For more information, please contact Dr. David Bish.

With all best wishes for a great spring semester,

Bennett I. Bertenthal
Dean and Rudy Professor of
Psychological and Brain Sciences