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September 13, 2002
Arts and humanities initiatives to join forces
by Anne Krapfl
Planning will begin this month for a proposed ISU Center for Excellence in
the Arts and Humanities, intended to promote and support faculty development
in these areas.
The idea for the center comes from a humanities advisory board within the
office of the vice provost for research and advanced studies, and originally
was a proposal last winter for enhancement funding. However, the common
threads among proposals that received enhancement funding this year were
creating faculty positions and enhancing the undergraduate experience.
The vice provost's office; colleges of Design, Education and Liberal Arts
and Sciences (LAS); and the president and provost offices collectively will
provide $100,000 annually for three years to launch the collaboration. Funds
will pay for an approximately one-quarter-time faculty director, secretarial
support and assistance from grant consultants and editors.
"We hope this collaboration can contribute to the enhancement of the arts
and humanities on campus and the many opportunities for connections between
science and the humanities," said Wolfgang Kliemann, associate vice provost
for research and an author of the original proposal. He said the proposed
center probably would focus in three areas: increasing visibility for the
arts and humanities on campus and in central Iowa, bringing outside scholars
of the humanities to campus for public lectures, and coordinating faculty
efforts to compete for external research funding.
"The humanities present such an interesting landscape with respect to
funding," Kliemann said. "There's so much to know about the different
organizations and foundations."
Kliemann said he hopes the proposed center would work with several
collaborative efforts in the humanities already under way on campus,
including the Council on Scholarship in the Humanities. This internal
competitive grants program was started by former President Martin Jischke in
1998 to support faculty research in the humanities. The council is supported
administratively by the office of the vice provost for research and advanced
studies, with about a half dozen humanities faculty members serving terms as
council members. The program's annual budget for various kinds of faculty
support also is $100,000.
Kliemann said he also is hopeful that cooperative efforts will emerge
between the proposed arts/humanities center and one of the university's new
enhancement projects -- a collaborative effort among the Agriculture and LAS
colleges and Plant Sciences Institute to study how scientific advances
impact society and the welfare of people's lives.
"We need to get the communication, the information flow, going between the
sciences and humanities on campus, and to coordinate these various
humanities efforts," he said. "This thing will come and go if we don't have
those connections."
Next in the process, Kliemann said, is planning work by the humanities
advisory board to define the structure and mission of the proposed center,
followed by an internal search for a director. Kliemann said he is hopeful a
director will be named by the end of fall semester, with events beginning
spring semester.
Proposals for campus centers and institutes must be reviewed and approved by
the Board of Regents, State of Iowa.
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