Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

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.