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April 2000
Faculty 2000—the initiative designed to welcome new faculty to
IUB’s academic community—hosted six events this academic year, all
focused on introducing new faculty to programs, resources, and features unique to
IU Bloomington. Most recently, Associate Vice President for Information
Technology Christopher Peebles spoke on “Information Technology at
IU,” followed by a tour of IU’s CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual
Environment), and Professor of Physics Cathy Olmer led new faculty and their
children on a guided tour of Wonderlab, Bloomington’s Museum of Science,
Health and Technology.
Accounts from participants suggest that the initiative is succeeding in its
mission to ease new faculty members’ transitions to IU. Over the course of
this academic year, David Finkelstein—a junior faculty member in Philosophy
and member of the Faculty 2000 advisory committee—has “watched
F2K’s many regular participants easily form friendships across departments.
The program is working—better even than I hoped it would. It’s an
inexpensive way to substantially improve the lives of professors who are new to
Bloomington. I have talked about it with job candidates, and I can already see that it
will be a powerful recruitment tool.”
Claudio Milstein and Eva van Leer, who both joined Speech and Hearing
Sciences last fall, confirm Finkelstein’s assessment. “The ease of our
transition to Bloomington is at least in part due to the support we have received via
Faculty 2000,” says van Leer. “We have established both personal and
professional relationships with new faculty outside of our department, learned
about the university, and felt welcomed into this new environment and new stage
in our life and career. These are significant goals to achieve in one semester, in
particular given the fact that one has very little time to socialize when entering a
new faculty position.”
For further information on the Faculty 2000 initiative, contact Laura Plummer,
855-4928, fac2000 @indiana.edu. Or visit
http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/newfac/
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