College of Arts & Sciences
Fall 2005 Faculty Meeting

Remarks from Interim Dean Höft

September 6, 2005

I greet our special guests: President Fallon, Interim Provost & Vice President Loppnow, members of the Strategic Operations Council and members of all units of the Academic Division. I also want the extend my special thanks to the staff of the Dean's office and the several departments who have helped to organize today's event, provided the support and created the environment and ambiance for the event. It is my pleasure to continue the tradition of opening the academic year for the college at this gathering - we welcome our faculty colleagues who join us this year and have the opportunity to get acquainted with them. This gathering is also a showcase of the achievements and the diversity of the College. We meet in Strong Hall, representing the western or sciences side of campus. We have been entertained before the meeting by a trio of music majors and will again enjoy music entertainment together with food and good company after the meeting, representing the eastern or performing side of campus. The two sides of campus are bridged by Ford and Scherzer halls representing the fine arts and astronomy, one of the original "liberal arts". In the atrium outside this auditorium we have set up several posters of undergraduate student research presentations from Symposium XXV held last winter term, signaling some of the breadth and depth of the 19 departments and college-wide programs, with its many degree programs, faculty mentors and outstanding students. This is the time of the year when all of us are eager to meet a new cohort of students - as I did on Saturday and yesterday - and to welcome back our returning students in our classrooms, laboratories and studios. We are full of excitement, armed with new ideas about teaching, and anticipating a mountain of accomplishments for our students, our departments and ourselves. This academic year is very special for us all individually and for the university as a whole. We have a new President - a Michigander who started his career in the State, and has come back to the State to share his expertise, wisdom and leadership skills with us at EMU. http://www.emich.edu/president/   Please welcome President John Fallon!

Our next speaker is Interim Provost & Vice President Don Loppnow. All of us have met him and many of us have worked with him over the years in the increasingly important positions he has held on campus. He has had a long and outstanding career here at Eastern; indeed he started out as an Assistant Professor in Social Work when that program was still housed in the College of Arts & Sciences. His abode was a small, windowless faculty office in the upper reaches of Pray-Harrold. He understands and has not forgotten the problems of space, support and technology that he faced then and that many faculty still face today on our campus and in our college in particular. We have experienced and value his unfailing commitment to Eastern, to the people - students, faculty, staff and administrators - that make Eastern a success.   He is a master of the understatement so that you may not recognize his attention to detail and development of sound rationales to defend, support and advance the centrality of the academic division within the university.   It is unlikely that you will hear a rallying cry from him, but he has started and completed many initiatives without much fanfare in the past and has set in motion a number of vital initiatives for this academic year.   Please welcome Provost Loppnow!

Perspectives on the College of Arts & Sciences

I would like to share a few perspectives with you from the Dean's office about who we are, what we have accomplished and should be proud of, where we might be going and how we can set up effective processes to determine where we, as a college, desire to go. You will recognize immediately that this is a call for participation, your participation. You are the right people to set that path into the future, whether you have been here for 30 years with an established agenda of teaching and research or whether you are one of our 28 newest colleagues anxious about the step you took and standing at the cusp of establishing a research and teaching agenda. We need and value the considered ideas of our experienced colleagues, and, equally importantly we need and value the novel ideas and proposals of our colleagues at the start of their careers. We respect and want to draw on all sources of inspiration and experience in helping us to improve academics at Eastern and specifically the realm of disciplines in our college: the fine and performing arts, the humanities, the social sciences, the natural, applied and abstract sciences, and the teacher education programs across all our departments.

People in the College of Arts and Sciences

Consider that the college added 15 new faculty last fall, that it is adding 28 new faculty this fall out of a total of 34 searches, and that it is authorized to search for at least 17 new faculty for next fall. The college will have 364 tenure track and tenured faculty this fall and, I hope, will have at least 380 by next fall. I call on all of you to harness and to mentor the potential, the energy, the innovative minds, the interdisciplinary engagement and the promise of our new colleagues as they contribute to a vision and an action plan for the college.   Never has the college expanded to this extent in such a short time. Our opportunity for success is already in our midst. The Dean's office itself is a microcosm of the new and old, the experienced and the novice. Neither detracts from the other; I rather like to think that each reinforces the other and that the new inspirations of the experienced and the ambitions of those new to our intellectual community offer a rich crucible for creativity in all its forms. The two Associate Deans, Laura George (English Literature) and Wade Tornquist (Chemistry), and I (Mathematics and Computer Science) represent more than 60 years of combined experience in a variety of positions at Eastern. At the same time the three of us have a combined experience of about 20 months in the Dean’s office. What might this dichotomy tell you or tell us? Quite simply, we are open-minded and listen to every one and every idea, we question and evaluate established structures and boundaries, we explore every opportunity of collaboration that presents itself - within and outside the college.

The changes in the Dean’s office and other administrative re-assignments - all of which have occurred within a mere year - cascaded department head changes for several departments in the college - please stand up as I call your name.

African American Studies
 Ronald Woods
Biology
 Tamara Greco
Chemistry Maria Milletti
(she accepted 2 weeks ago)
Computer Science
Wlliam McMillan
Geology & Geography
 Yichun Xie
History & Philosophy
Philip Schmitz
Physics & Astronomy
 Alexandra Oakes
Political Sciences
Raymond Rosenfeld
Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology
Jay Weinstein

These nine join the nine department heads that already have been serving the college with distinction for many years.

Art
 Thomas Venner
Communication & theater Arts
 Dennis Beagan
Economics Raouf Hanna
English Language & Literature
Russ Larson
Foreign Languages & Bilingual Studies
Elizabeth Morgan
Mathematics
 Betty Warren
Music & Dance
David Woike
Psychology
 John Knapp
Women's & Gender Studies
Linda Schott

These 18 department heads and the three of us in the Dean’s office are working to support you in your professional endeavors.

Facilities in the College of Arts & Sciences

When we move from people to the physical environment of the College we see a similar dichotomy. The buildings of the College have changed very little for a very long time; for example since I joined EMU as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics in 1970 the Alexander building and the Sponberg Theater were added and Scherzer was reconstructed. Otherwise, the spaces that define our professional live on campus - buildings, offices and classrooms - have stayed essentially the same. Nevertheless, while technological upgrading is not yet where we all need and want it to be, today I can walk from the stage of lecture hall 201 in Pray-Harrold all the way up to the seventh floor with my powerbook and maintain a wireless connection. Unfortunately that world has not quite arrived in Strong Hall, but it is coming shortly. You might think "so what?", but I am suggesting to you a better question "what can I do with this infrastructure?". You can explore it, use it in your teaching and research, or add to it by creating content and tools. Let’s use the content and tools that EMU provides and get to know the physical layout of the college on our campus. With Steve Dotson’s help I want to take you on a virtual walking tour of the college on the main campus. There are nine buildings that I want to point out and I hope that regardless of where your office, lab or studio is located that you get to know colleagues in other buildings and may find interesting problems to collaborate on.

A Virtual Tour Through the College of Arts & Sciences

Here we go! The first image is just a screen image - something I call a dead image, you cannot do anything with it but look at it. Let’s get interactive in a browser. We will start on the east end of campus and work our way west to Strong Hall. We will pass by 9 college buildings on central campus and visit all of our 18 departments on the way. http://www.emich.edu/admissions/tour/locator.html

Alexander: (1) Music & Dance, (2) Foreign Languages & Bilingual Studies
Quirk: (3) Communications & Theater Arts
Pray-Harrold [4]: Dean’s Office
Pray-Harrold [5]: (4) Computer Science, (5) Mathematics
Pray-Harrold [6]: (6) African American Studies, (7) English Language & Literature, (8) Political Science
Pray-Harrold [7]: (9) Economics, (10) History & Philosophy, (11) Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology, (12) Women’s & Gender Studies
Pease Auditorium:
Psychology Clinic:
Ford: (13) Art
Scherzer Observatory:
Mark Jefferson [2]: (14) Chemistry
Mark Jefferson [3]: (15) Biology
Mark Jefferson [5]: (16) Psychology
Strong [2]: (17) Geology & Geography
Strong [3]: (18) Physics & Astronomy

Explore the campus on your own whether you have been on the faculty for 4 days or for 20 years. I challenge you to be aware of your colleagues in the college, the diversity they represent and the intellectual stimulus that is just down the hall for you to seize.

Tasks the University, the Academic Affairs Division and the College for 2005-06
GenEd: General Education Program http://www.emich.edu/gened_reform/

As many of you know, EMU’s Board of Regents passed a new General Education program at its January 18, 2005, meeting. The theme and underlying philosophy of the new program is "Education for Participation in the Global Community." The new curriculum is outcome-based and focuses on five areas:

(1) Effective Communications

(2) Quantitative Reasoning

(3) Perspectives on a Diverse World

(4) Knowledge of the Disciplines

(5) Learning Beyond the Classroom

Under the new program, the largest number of credits, 25 out of 40, must cover knowledge of the following disciplines: natural sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. Other credits are required to demonstrate effective communication, quantitative reasoning, and perspectives on a diverse world. Rather than pre-approve a discrete menu of courses, the general education reform committee, working with faculty experts in each required area, established general learning outcomes for each segment of the program. While the rather large General Education reform committee devoted considerable time and effort to discussing and debating learning outcomes in the disciplines, in communication, quantitative reasoning, US diversity and global knowledge, the larger community of faculty have not all had a chance to participate in these discussions. The General Education Reform Committee has developed an Implementation Kit that sets up a framework for faculty and departments across the university for intensive seminars devoted to each area, that enables faculty to meet across the boundaries of traditional disciplines to discuss shared goals and values and that facilitates the approval process of courses for the program. Ann Blakeslee and Margaret Crouch are spearheading the implementation and its workshops. You can find a schedule of these workshops on the table in the atrium. I encourage you not only to get assistance with developing and revising courses, but also to meet and work with colleagues from other departments on shared educational goals.

AQIP: Academic Quality Improvement Program http://www.emich.edu/strategicplanning/aqip.htm

A second university-wide initiative will address accreditation through AQIP: Academic Quality Improvement Program into which EMU was accepted in February 2004. EMU was fully accredited for 10 years in 2000 by the North Central Association. This alternative accreditation process is more intense and efficient, uses faster cycles of improvement, involves faculty more directly in all academic improvement processes, maintains an institution's status with the Department of Education, and emphasizes an institution’s distinctive needs and aspirations. The AQIP accreditation process revolves around Action Plans--efforts inspired, directed, and evaluated by employees at all levels of the university to improve systems and procedures large and small. With AQIP processes, such ideas for change can be proposed by anyone and developed and refined by teams drawn from different areas. The AQIP Strategy Forum will guide the activities during this year.

Provost Task Forces on Realignment, Retention and Scheduling

Provost Loppnow in cooperation with Faculty Council is in the process of forming a task force on Realignment of the Academic Affairs Division, a task force on Retention, and a task force on Centralized Class Scheduling. I expect that the Realignment task force will determine a frame in which the discussion of realignment will take place. It is imperative for all of us to posit ideas how the college can efficiently find a shared vision in this context. The college houses 17 departments and a program with anywhere from zero to more than 40 tenure-track faculty in addition to large numbers of lecturers, adjuncts, graduate assistants, student employees and, last but not least, office and technical support staff. We all need to engage in a serious and open discussion where we might find resources within the college that we can redirect and where we can generate resources outside the college and the university that we can apply towards activities that we would like to do, but cannot accomplish now.

The center of the university and the center of the college are our students - they are the reason why we are here, they are the reason why we wanted to be faculty in the first place. It is self-evident that our professional interactions with our students will affect their intellectual development and their view and expectations of the quality of teaching, learning, and campus life. We want to keep our first year students for the appropriate four years to instill ideas, knowledge and skills so they can cope with the challenges of the world. Thus we have an implicit commitment to properly advise and help the university to retain our students from year to year. The task force on Retention will formulate strategies and processes towards that end. The college has already started the process by reorganizing its advising center. Diane Winder from the music has accepted the position of faculty fellow; starting today she will provide advising support for the college.

Another critical aspect of how we actually are able to educate our students is the mechanism we use to determine the classroom spaces where we teach our students. The scheduling processes have grown over time with each college doing its own thing, with each classroom building in our college doing its own thing. Departments take ownership and the Dean's office mediates the sharing of available spaces. The problem appears simple, but anyone who has considered improving the efficiency of scheduling - faculty assignment as well as room assignments - will quickly get bogged down in the complexity of priorities and special interests. As any computer scientist knows scheduling is intrinsically difficult. This year the task force on Scheduling will help us determine potential solutions that are more optimal than the current procedures.

Building Program Statements for the College of Arts & Sciences

Over the spring and summer terms many department heads and faculty have worked hard to develop program statements for an upgrade of Pray-Harrold and for a new Science building to be integrated with Mark Jefferson and Strong halls. At this point in time preliminary plans exist and if you are curious, and I hope you all are, just come to the Dean’s office, 411 Pray-Harrold. The first draft of floor plans and site plans grace the walls of the conference room. As I remarked earlier, few construction projects were carried through during the last 35 years in the college. I am very excited that with recent budget action of the Board of Regents our current planning and the vision that is elaborated in these plans will indeed lead to actual construction, not just proposals doomed for some bookshelf or desk drawer. Make no mistake, our current vision of the future of science education and research to be put into concrete is likely to stick around the college for another generation just as the building boom of the late sixties did. We have many smart people in the college and when they put their heads together I am confident of the outcome.

Some Facts about the College of Arts & Sciences

Let us now look at a few numbers about our college. They will help us understand where we have been and set the floor for the challenges this year. As faculty we are driven to do better than the last time; for example improving the class notes from last semester or revising the latest draft of a paper we are going to publish. We never stand still, we always explore new avenues and your college will do likewise. The College of Arts and Sciences has more than:

6,000 undergraduate students and more than

1,100 graduate students who were pursuing one of the more than

100 majors in the college; more than

1,300 bachelor degrees and more than

200 master's degrees were awarded during 2004-05.

The college raised a record $1.2 million in cash contributions last year; a record that we hope to repeat and exceed this year. In addition, faculty of the college were awarded over $3,825,000 in external grants and contracts last year - this comes to more than $10,000 for every tenure track faculty in the college. Just last week I was informed that an interdisciplinary group based in the college has received a five-year, $1,500,000 grant from NSF "Creative Scientific Inquiry Experience: Developing an Integrated Science Curriculum to Increase STEM Graduates". For those of you not in the sciences, S T E M stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics". We hope that many more awards will follow this year.

A very special event for the college and the university as a whole is the Undergraduate Symposium, a pioneering event that is now being copied by universities around the country. The college celebrated the 25-th anniversary of the Symposium in style by fundraising more than $100,000 for the event and for student scholarships. We certainly have our hopes high for a repeat for Symposium XXVI on Friday, March 31, 2006 - mark your calendar.

Another outstanding event for the college this year is the McAndless endowed visiting professorship in arts and humanities. The 2005-06 McAndless scholar will be the cartoonist Scott McCloud. Here are two sequences from his book

Understanding Comics - The Invisible Art.http://www.scottmccloud.com/
Watch for further announcements later this year.

Our New Faculty Colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences

Finally, the main reason why we do hold the Faculty Fall Meeting is the success of the 34 searches for new faculty for this fall semester that resulted in 28 new faculty for 14 of the 17 departments. Please welcome our new colleagues. As I read the department and name of our new faculty colleagues, I ask our new colleagues to stand. Please hold your applause until the end - 28 is a large number.

Closing Comments
Before I close today I like you to reflect on some of the issues for the college that I raised earlier and to give you some homework for the year in four areas to emphasize their importance to the well being and future success of the college. After all, giving homework is what we all do at the end of every lecture - a habit that I find hard to break.

Instruction:
Engage in the implementation of the General Education program and participate with your colleagues in course development to realize the promise of the program. Be ready to advise your students.
Hint: Pick up the handouts on the table in the atrium.

Scholarship and Curriculum:
Engage colleagues with your creative ideas and collaborate across the programmatic and departmental boundaries as they are defined currently.
Hint: Visit the Dean's office to explore interdisciplinary initiative.

Resources:
Engage colleagues to secure external support through grants for your creative ideas and gifts for your department so that your dreams of today become reality tomorrow.
Hint: Visit the Research & Development Office in the Graduate School and the development officer in the college.

Service:
Engage in college-wide or university-wide committees or task forces to demonstrate your commitment to develop a vision for Eastern Michigan University.
Hint: Volunteer.

These areas define our professional role and priorities as faculty. We are proud of them, we guard them jealously, and we do our best to excel in them.

With these tasks in mind let us now begin a new academic year by joining our new and continuing colleagues in conversation over refreshments and music.