This is not unlike the question many of us are asking ourselves these days:  How can we do it all?  Economically, the university is looking into a bleaker funding future than we have enjoyed the past few years.  FY10 promises to be a lean year for state funding, and even this year state revenues are running behind projections.  Perhaps even more pressing is the feeling that our time and energy resources are insufficient for doing it all.  And what is "all," anyway?  Does "all" really have to be done?

The presidential candidates, of course, had different definitions for "all" as well as for how much of it had to be done.  But on many points the disagreement was not so much over what needed to be accomplished but over how best to go about it. Job creation, stabilization of financial markets, and a satisfactory outcome in Iraq are on everyone's list, we just disagree on whose strategies will be most effective. 

So what about here at MSU?  Of everything we are being asked to accomplish, what really has to be done, and why?  And what instrument should we use, a scalpel or a hatchet?

During the first three years of President Nietzel's administration we spent a lot of time on finances.  We switched to the cost center model and colleges had to learn to deal differently with salary savings, carry forward, and funding.  We overhauled the compensation system.  The Extended Campus was reorganized, affecting various funding models that had been in place for years.  These were dramatic changes, and we still are adjusting.  Although the system is not perfect, I believe academic units are better off under this model than we were before.

This year there are two phrases dominating campus activity: student success and public affairs.  The emphasis really began last year, but now many more of us are engaged in work related to these areas.  Student success and public affairs are not concerned directly with finances, yet both directly affect the financial health of the university.  They also give us some clues as to what "all" should include.

Student success encompasses several outcomes, including learning, retention, graduation rates, and student engagement.  Certainly our primary purpose is for students to learn.  But learning is not just our philosophical mission, it is the outcome upon which our institutional health depends.  Just as employee turnover and low productivity increase the cost of operating a business, poor student retention and academic failure increase the financial, as well as time and energy, costs for us in the university.  Earlier this semester Dr. Nietzel shared at a Town Hall meeting the financial implications of enrollments, and the best way to maintain enrollments is for students who choose Missouri State to be successful here and persist through to graduation.  Again, as in business, it is much less expensive to retain a good employee or customer than it is to replace one.

Similarly, public affairs is more than insider jargon.  We are branded by our statewide mission; it both appeals to people outside the university and sets up expectations for what students will experience when they choose Missouri State over other schools.  There was a time when we were on the cutting edge of movements like service learning and civic engagement, but no longer.  As we move forward, what will distinguish a Missouri State education from what students can find elsewhere? 

These two initiatives have resulted in a flurry of activity and administrative expectations.  I am so appreciative of the many Arts and Letters faculty and staff who have stepped up to take leadership roles, serve on committees, or just participate constructively in departmental discussions.  It is not as if you were not busy enough already.  I hope you can see student success and public affairs as overarching concerns that relate to everything else that we are working so hard to accomplish, even if things you have been asked to do seem to be stacked on top of an already tall pile of tasks.

So, how do we tackle doing it all?  I offer a few modest suggestions.

1. Use a scalpel.  Political affiliations aside, simply pulling financial support or withdrawing our energies from the great majority of what we do would cause more harm than good.  But we should be examining continually what we have "always done" to assure that priorities set a decade ago still should be priorities, and we must put resources where they can accomplish the most.
2. Stay centered.  The core of what we do always will be to educate and contribute to knowledge in our disciplines.  Focusing on public affairs elements or adopting new instructional approaches is part of accomplishing goals we already have set for ourselves. 
3. Seize opportunities.  We seldom change just because we want to.  Usually there must be some impetus or prompting, even a crisis, for us to question how we have been doing things. 
4. Follow your bliss.  Anything becomes tiresome when it ceases to provide intrinsic satisfaction.  There are some things that we will be required to do, but in most cases there is great latitude to accomplish them in ways that are most appealing and appropriate in our own areas.  What would be worth doing if it could be done?  What would become less important or necessary if you were focused on a greater goal?  Of course, sometimes the challenge is that your bliss conflicts with someone else's bliss.  What I am really getting at is discovering what you and others share that would excite you all.

On November 21 there will be a university-wide town hall meeting on the topic of student success at 2:00 p.m in Meyer Library 101.  I hope you will plan to attend so that you will become directly informed and involved.  If you have not met the new Associate Provost for Student Development and Public Affairs, Dr. Rachelle Darabi, this will be an excellent chance to become acquainted with her, as well. 

As usual, the fall semester has flown by in a blur.  Thank you for your efforts and your excellent work.  Before we know it December will be here, then finals, then the work of gearing up for a new semester.  But in between there sometime I hope you have time to rest, reflect, and take satisfaction in all that you have accomplished.  This is a great college, and you are the reason.

When President Nietzel announced a two-year hiatus for the public affairs capstone course (GEP 397) last spring rather than approving deletion of the course, he issued a charge for the university to demonstrate what we would do instead to distinguish a Missouri State education with respect to our public affairs mission.  No one believed that a required capstone course was accomplishing this; in fact, it probably cannot.  At the same time, saying, "public affairs is everywhere" won't make the grade, either.

Provost McCarthy then turned to the colleges and departments to ask, "What are we doing, and what might we want to do"?  The deans were asked to inventory the activities in their colleges, which we attempted to do with the department heads over the summer with some additional input from faculty early this fall.  Specifically, we were asked to look at the experiences of students in our major programs, as general education was to be examined by a Faculty  Senate committee beginning this fall.  Deans submitted drafts of our inventory reports this week and we will discuss them as a group with the Provost next week.  Following that discussion (October 8), the Provost plans to post our reports online for faculty to review in advance of a forum scheduled for Friday, November 7. 

These inventories are a starting point for faculty discussion as well as reflections of some discussions that already are occurring.  I have posted a copy of my draft report on the COALESCENCE site.  The report includes both what programs currently do and ideas for what could be done.  Since faculty have had relatively little time to seriously consider and discuss what might be done differently, this was the hardest part of the inventory for me to write.  The department heads did their best to report on what faculty have discussed so far, but I want everyone to understand that the discussions are continuing.  The forum on November 7 is part of that, and we need to continue talking within our departments and across the college about our plans.

One idea for a college-wide initiative did emerge in my discussions with the department heads, and this is included in the college report.  Very briefly, the idea was to create a college-wide entry course that would be required for all students majoring in an Arts and Letters department.  As the report summarizes, the purposes of this course could include:

• Provide a broad introduction to the disciplines in the college and their interrelationships
• Engage students in asking broad, “enduring” questions from arts and letters perspectives.
• Highlight excellence and generate student enthusiasm by putting our very best teachers in front of large numbers of students.
• Encourage and assist students to take advantage of intellectual and cultural opportunities within the college and across campus.
• Establish a frame of reference for students to view their disciplines as relevant to the public affairs mission.

As the report also states, this is a very general idea with many details not fleshed out, such as how many credit hours would be assigned, what format would be used to teach it, etc.  I hope you will kick around the idea in your departments, and we will be working on some opportunities for us to discuss this and other ideas as a college faculty.

With respect to infusing "public affairs" in our students' educational experiences, also in the report I try to ground our efforts in our longstanding commitment to liberal education.  As many of us have said over the years, public affairs is at the heart of what we do.  This is even more evident now that we are viewing public affairs in terms of three themes: community engagement, ethical leadership, and cultural competence.  This is not about changing ourselves or what we believe in.  I am convinced that it is about being even more deliberate -- and enthusiastic -- about the commitments we have had all along.

I hope you will share your thoughts with me and that you will engage your colleagues, as well.  And I look forward to seeing you at the November 7 forum.

"I decided, living in the Ozarks, if old things and old ways are meant to be discarded (which I don't doubt for a minute) the least we can do is remember what we put behind us and record its passing, sort of like stamping a coin.  That way we'll always be able to compare new values to old ones."

Mitch Jayne, Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies

When then-Southwest Missouri State University received its statewide mission in "public affairs" in 1995, the institution already was 90 years old.  It did not become a new institution on that occasion any more than Missouri State University sprung directly from the head of Governor Blunt when he signed our new name into law in 2005.  I have a sense that at each pivotal point of evolution -- most of them marked by a name change -- the institution experienced feelings of  both "we already are" and "we are striving to become."  Many of you will remember the "contents and the can" analogy that President John Keiser used during our campaign for the change to MSU.  The analogy was true to a point, but obviously we still are working to live up to it; and, in fact, we continue to have conversations about what the contents of the can are supposed to be.

This is going to be a year of intense conversation about the identity and character of the university.  Much of this will center around what we mean -- and would like to mean -- by "public affairs."  We also need to continue discussions of what it means to be a comprehensive university, and about what it means to fulfill our role as a public institution in Missouri.  This week in her Fall semester letter to the campus Provost McCarthy will speak to the issue of refining and reinvigorating the public affairs mission.  In three town hall meetings this fall President Nietzel will engage us in conversations about issues facing higher education, our mission, and student success.  Faculty Senate soon will appoint an ad hoc committee to review the general education curriculum with particular attention to how public affairs is or is not integrated there.  Deans and department heads are being asked to inventory, with their faculties, how public affairs is and can be integrated into the learning experiences of students in all of our majors.

In a recent discussion thread on the COALESCENCE site a few faculty have suggested holding a series of brown bag symposia in which colleagues could discuss "a text/author relevant to his/her research/teaching and its implications for our public affairs mission."  I am excited to see COAL faculty energized to initiate discussions like this, and I encourage all of you to join this online discussion.  However, I also urge all of us to make the subject of our mission and what makes MSU distinctive a topic for all sorts of discussions.  For example,

• At this time each year departments review their personnel and merit evaluation documents.  What do your department policies communicate about the impact of the university's mission on how faculty are hired, evaluated, and rewarded?
• This also is the season for curricular proposals.  Are our programs any different from those at other institutions because of our mission?
• Several of our departments are preparing to search for new faculty this year.  When candidates ask, "So, what's special about this public affairs mission?" do we have an answer for them?

These are important discussions, but I recognize that we can make "public affairs" nothing more than a catch phrase,  the campus equivalent of campaign-speak terms like "change" and "country first."  It might be more useful to begin with the notion of what makes our university distinctive.  The public affairs mission is one distinctive feature, but it is not the only one.  What makes us more than just the second-largest university in the state? 

These are important discussions, with important outcomes.  Higher education is an increasingly competitive environment, perhaps especially so for state-supported comprehensive universities like ours.  Even if we could depend on a steady stream of students simply because we are the second-largest university in the state, we will not be satisfied only with numbrers.  We want to recruit the best students.  In addition to the quality of our specific programs, what can we tell them is different about our university?

This is not a rhetorical question, nor is it a simply a discussion to mollify legislators or the Board of Governors.  This is fundamentally a question of who we are, and who we want to be.  I hope you will take every opportunity to raise these issues and push the conversation forward.

Last week a driving trip to visit an alumnus in Nashville, Tennessee afforded me the opportunity to make a side trip to one of my favorite places in the world -- the bustling hamlet of Princeton, Kentucky, population 6,500 or so.  Princeton sits just a few miles off Interstate 24, about 50 miles east of Paducah, and it was home to my mother's mom and dad for as long as I can remember until their deaths in 1997.  It had been years since I was last in Princeton, and I decided to take an hour or two to visit my grandparents'  grave site, drive by their old house, and treat myself to some country ham at Newsom's Old Mill Store on Main Street.

Ninety per cent of my Princeton memories are set in my grandparents' house, and the other ten per cent are bounded by the four-block walk "uptown" and Main Street.  For as small a town as it is and as fond as my memories of it are, I realize that I really know very little about it.  I had to ask directions to the city cemetery, which is all of six blocks from the town square; I even used Mapquest to remind myself of the highways to take in and out of town.  I don't know anyone there to speak to, though I'm sure there are people who still remember my grandparents.  Yet I continue to have a strong sense of attachment to this place.  I never lived there, yet it is part of where I am from.

Driving past my grandparents' old house I noticed it was for sale, and peeking in the windows I saw the current owners were making some major renovations.  I took pictures with my camera phone and the next day posted them to the web for my mom, siblings, and cousins to see, and we have had a great time reminiscing via email.  So much of our common histories are tied to this small town and the house on Jefferson Street.

Much of the heritage on both my parents' sides of the family is Scots-Irish, and as it happens this summer I've been reading Virginia Senator Jim Webb's book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.  This history, like a walk down Princeton's Main Street, gives me a sense of being "from" places that I don't really know but would like to claim, particularly since in making the Ozarks my home I have continued to shadow the continued Scots-Irish migration beyond my parents' roots in Western Kentucky.

I have similar feelings toward Missouri State University.  I feel like I am "from" here, yet sometimes I also feel like someone's middle-aged grandson walking around a town that I remember but do not really know, a place that I claim but where no one on the street would know who I am.

My mother's memories of Princeton are much more numerous and intimate than mine; in fact, I imagine the Princeton I conjure in my mind is quite different than what she would describe.  But she has told me more than once this past week how much it meant to her that I took the time to go back there and reconnect with places that still touch her deeply.  It is as if the desire to share the same history serves us as much if not more than any actual sharing.

Perhaps that also describes my feelings toward Missouri State University.  My ancestors did not settle Springfield; my parents did not attend college here; and it can be difficult to connect the dots joining a small normal school and an ambitious comprehensive university.  Nevertheless, this is my place, and the desire to feel a part of it tugs at me continuously.

I marvel at the number of colleagues who have been here 25, 30 years and longer.  I imagine they marvel at the magnitude of change and growth that has occurred in that time, and I would not blame them for occasionally becoming irritated with the impatience and ignorance of many of us newcomers.  (And although I have been here since 1991, I still feel like a newcomer in many ways.)

In a few short weeks our campus sidewalks -- not to mention the parking lots -- will be full again, and among the crowds will be around 4,000 new students and several dozen new faculty and staff.  How many of them will come to feel not just "at home" here, but that they are "from here"?  How will you and I help cultivate that sense of belonging?  And what if we're not quite sure we have experienced it ourselves?

We can't go back to times and places where we have never been, but we can appreciate that we have stepped into a flow of history where we have much to share with those who came before us and those who will succeed us.  Here are a few modest suggestions for connecting the present with our past.

• If you are a relative newcomer to campus, buy a senior colleague a cup of coffee in exchange for a few stories about what the place was like when he/she first came here.  If you've been around a while, offer to buy a rookie lunch if he/she will let you go on for a while about the history of the institution.
• Sift through the "Of Local Interest" sections of your favorite Springfield bookstores.
• Browse through Don Landon's book, Daring to Excel: The First 100 Years of Southwest Missouri State University or Roy Ellis' Shrine of the Ozarks: A History of Southwest Missouri State College 1905-1965, both available in Meyer Library.
• Visit the Wall of Fame on the third floor of Plaster Student Union.
• Check out the several digitized special collections focusing on historical aspects of the university and the region.
• Attend the annual Ozarks Celebration Festival, September 5-11, featuring traditional Ozarks music and other arts as well as presentations by authors and scholars about the region.
• Check out the Springfield-Greene County Library's online exhibit of historical postcards of Springfield.
• Pay a visit to the History Museum for Springfield-Greene County.
• Catch an episode (or two!) of Ozarks Watch Video Magazine on Ozarks Public Television.

We do not all share the same experiences of Missouri State University, but we can share the same desire to connect with the institution and with one another.  We may not have "grown up" here, but we can lay claim to being "from here."  We may have limited understanding of the entire university or its history, but we can be powerfully affected by those areas that we have touched.  Most of all, we can become part of a place to which people return to appreciate the formative experiences they had here.

Did I mention homecoming is October 10-11? :-)

Quick Hits & Short Bits -- college news and updates

The 4th of July is here, the traditional mid-point of American summers.  Perhaps you, like me,  feel like the summer is far past being half over by this time.  The 8-week summer session is about half finished.  Other college summer activities are completed already, while some are just getting started.  Here are a few of the exciting things that are part of COAL's summertime.

• Tent Theatre.  Cyrano and Charlie Brown have played to rave reviews in this first-ever Equity season for Tent, and Anything Goes! opens July 9.  In addition to great performances, sellout audiences have been graced with cooler-than-usual evening temperatures for most performances.
• Ozarks Writing Project Summer Invitational.  Sixteen Ozarks-area teachers, kindergarten through university, are participating in the OWP's intensive summer workshop.  These teachers will become Ozarks Writing Project Teacher Consultants, an expanding network of exemplary Ozarks educators.
• MSU Summer Debate Institute.  High school debate students from across the country are here attending the MSDI, led by MSU debate coaches and students.  Some of the nation's top debaters are drawn to this intensive summer workshop.
• Missouri Fine Arts Academy.  For three weeks in June nearly 200 of the brightest and most creatively talented high school juniors and seniors in Missouri attended the Missouri Fine Arts Academy here on our campus.  This year's theme was "Artist as World Citizen."
• Second Sundays @ 7.  The second Sunday of each month through October you can relax on the south lawn of Meyer Library and enjoy the Carillon Recital Series.  The series features guest performers from around the world in addition to our own Jeremy Chesman.  Concerts begin at 7 p.m. and are followed by a reception and opportunity to tour the carillon tower.
• Downtown Art & Design Gallery.  The gallery at Jefferson and Walnut features two exhibits this summer, the Rous African Art Collection and a New Faculty Exhibition.  Summer hours are 10 a.m. -- 5:00 p.m., Tuesday -- Saturday and 6:00 -- 9:00 p.m. for First Friday Art Walk (including July 4).
• Moving and Construction.  Maybe this falls in the category of will eventually be exciting, but much  is happening to college spaces this summer.  Siceluff Hall is empty and Craig Hall is a little fuller.  The Standard and the Growl have moved into the former Center for Assessment and Institutional Research building at 744 E. Cherry Street (now officially known as the Student Media Center).  And progress continues on Brick City in preparation for phase one of the Art & Design Department's move downtown this fall.

I could add to this list  String Fling, mediation training by the Center for Dispute Resolution, the Performing Arts Institute, study programs in several foreign countries, and media students blogging about their Los Angeles internship experiences.  What many of these activities share in common is their outreach to the local community and other constituencies.  In addition to providing great experiences for hundreds of people, they demonstrate that the university is a 12-month operation  offering year-round benefits  to Missouri citizens.

July also brings leadership changes in the college, as Dr. Roger Stoner becomes Associate Dean and Dr. Dianne Strickland steps in as Acting Head of the Music Department.  We all look forward to working with them in their new roles.

I hope you have plenty of fun an restoration left in your summer.  Next week I'm taking a week of vacation and then Roger and I will be attending a national workshop for deans and associate deans in Pittsburg, PA July 13-16.  I'll be looking forward to seeing all of you again in August.

Quick Hits & Short Bits -- college news and updates

My eight-year old son has learned How to Get Ahead in Life Lesson 37: Acquire a knowledge advantage over your opponent and exploit it.  His grandparents' Wii game system is living at our house while they're on vacation, and I have found that Evan rarely challenges me to a game that he has not already played.  Typically I am having to learn the mechanics of the game in the heat of battle, kept off-balance by his superior knowledge and skill.  In that mode, I am lucky to just ward off his attacks (who knew Olympic table tennis could be so brutal?); my play is more frantic reaction than skilled gamesmanship.

Reaction mode can be stimulating in an I-can-handle-anything-you-throw-at-me kind of way, but control and mastery are nice, too.  Lately I think many of us feel we spend more of our energies reacting than we do initiating and planning.  In the recent IDEA department heads evaluation survey the lowest-scoring item for every department head in our college was the comparative rating of "reacting" versus "initiating," and I suspect this was true also in the other colleges. I also believe that is more a reflection on our environment and how most people feel themselves than an indictment of heads' passivity.

So what are the prospects for moving out of reaction mode?  Can we hope to do more than just keep up with the latest changes imposed on us by administrators (yeah, I know I'm one of them) and our many constituencies?  Here are some insights I have gained from having my hat handed to me by an eight-year old.

1. I have to learn what he knows.  That means practicing by myself after Evan goes to bed! (A later bed-time being one of the advantages of old age.)  We must try to understand what is driving the changes that keep us on our heels.  Not all changes are good and it is our responsibility to question, but even ill-advised change is driven by some perceived need.  If we understand the broader issues, we have the opportunity to proactively address those issues in ways that most reflect our own values and priorities.
2. I have to take risks.  I have yet to beat Evan at table tennis, and the only way to find out if I can win is to keep playing him.  We have to establish what is important to us and entertain the idea that our comfort level is not the best criterion by which to judge the best ways of accomplishing our goals.
3. I have to care.  Frankly, I do not care very much whether I win at these games (although I am the best in our house on the trampoline event!).  I will not stay up late to practice on the Wii, and I won't lose any sleep if my Wii skills remain mediocre.  But I care very much that the College of Arts and Letters gets ahead of the curve of change and that we lead rather than follow.

The departments in our college have responded very well to the many changes that have occurred over the past few years.  I believe there are many instances where our people have set the example for the rest of the university.  As we look to the future, there are several opportunities for us to help set the agenda as well as set the example, including:

• Providing educational experiences that make "public affairs" more than just a label.
• Enriching general education such that prospective students would recognize the distinct advantages of taking all four years of courses here rather than beginning at a community college.
• Establishing each of our programs as the places in the region for excellent students in those fields to pursue their education.
• Seeking and capitalizing on interdisciplinary collaborations to provide unique educational experiences and career opportunities.
• Using student learning outcomes as the most relevant indicator of our productivity, and valuing all of our work in teaching, scholarship and service as ultimately benefiting students and the community.

If Evan were only interested in honing his video game skills, he could play all day against computerized opponents.  Playing with a human being, he is learning about relationships, cooperation, and people pressing one another to reach their potential.  I know that is what I am learning in working with all of you.

The higher one's position in academic administration, the more one's effectiveness depends on the leadership performed by others.  After nearly a year in the Dean's Office I have new appreciation for the importance of decisions and planning that happen at all levels across the college, and I want to say thank you to the many individuals who have taken on responsibilities of leadership.  Those include people with formal roles, such as department heads and committee chairs, but also many more whose wisdom and participation contribute immeasurably to the quality of decisions and implementations.

Collaborative leadership from the ground up is essential if the college itself is to lead.  We also rely on specific individuals with expertise and commitment to devote themselves to particular leadership and administrative responsibilities in service to our collective efforts.  The college now is experiencing some significant changes in leadership roles, and more than ever we are dependent on the contributions of individuals at every level as well as the willingness of talented people to step forward into positions of formal leadership.  Earlier this week we announced searches for an associate dean to succeed Carol Anne Costabile-Heming and for a Dean's Fellow for Research and Graduate Studies.  Communication has a new department head, and in the coming weeks I will be meeting with the Art & Design and Theatre & Dance departments to discuss plans for head searches in their units.  And, of course, I am still very new in my position and have much to learn about doing it well.  I hope you see this as a period of opportunity, even as I ask for your patience with the disruptions that accompany such transitions.

The associate dean and dean's fellow positions are critically important, and I hope that we will have several applicants for each position.  And I hope that you will encourage colleagues in whom you have confidence to apply.  Quite simply, the college cannot function without an effective individual in the associate dean's role.  We have been fortunate to have had excellent associate deans with relatively little turnover -- just three in the past 13 or so years.  I cannot say enough about the contributions Carol Anne has made during her three years.  It is a very student-centered role, with responsibilities for undergraduate student recruitment, retention, and advising.  The associate dean also works very closely with department heads in areas of staffing and budgeting.  With the recent of addition of our new budget officer, Darin Wallace, the associate dean will be able to spend less time juggling spreadsheets and more time planning to make the most effective use of college resources in service to departments and students. 

The dean's fellow position will be an experiment.  We need someone in the college to work with departments and individual faculty to explore and develop opportunities for external support and other ways of increasing capacity for scholarship.  I also want this individual to work with the departments and the Dean's Office in developing strategies for enhancing the visibility and effectiveness of graduate studies in the college.  The Dean's Office has not devoted significant resources to these areas in years past, but it is time that we do so.  This assignment will carry three hours of reassigned time per semester in addition to a modest stipend.

As critical as these positions are, they are no more important to our success than the assistant department heads, program directors, personnel committee chairs, college committee chairs, or university governance leaders that work among us and for us in the college.  Thank you to everyone who accepts the responsibilities of these and other important roles.  Thanks also to all of you who support them with your participation, hard work, and encouragement.

I want to say a special word of appreciation to everyone who worked with the merit evaluation and compensation processes this year.  Departmental faculty committees and department heads worked extremely hard, both to improve guidelines and procedures from last year and to make sound, equitable judgments in this year's cycle.  Members of a newly-formed Staff Compensation Advisory Committee worked with me to develop the compensation matrix for staff.  And what a benefit it was to have a budget officer to crunch the numbers. 

Don't forget to come out Friday, April 11, from noon-2:00 p.m. to the Craig Hall patio for the mini-carnival to support Relay For Life.  Rumor has it at least a couple of department heads have agreed to walk the plank in the dunk tank with me!

Quick Hits & Short Bits -- college news and updates

Tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for the first time in nearly two months.  If Providence is kind, my wife and I never again will have to sleep on a futon as we have had to do since the week before last Christmas.  That was when the sledgehammers began flying in the master bath and our remodeling saga began.

The master bath was one of those weak points Julie resolved to look past when she agreed to marry me, along with my snoring, my aversion to yard work, and my taste for Miracle Whip sandwiches.  The room was smallish, carpeted rather than tiled, had only a single vanity sink, and no tub.  No tub at all, just an oversized shower.  I fully admit the room was inadequate by even the most modest of master bath standards but, like my snoring, not likely to be improved without an invasive and potentially expensive procedure.

For the first several years the question of the master bath was easily settled.  The master bath was what it was.  There were minor improvements we could make: new paint and wallpaper, change the fixtures, buy new bath rugs.  But none of those things could change what was fundamentally inadequate; particularly the "no tub" part.

Why didn't we remodel sooner?  Oh, believe me, I had a long list of reasons.

• It wasn't really a priority for me, personally.  I take showers, and the shower was plenty big.
• I don't really have the skills or expertise to make any  major changes myself.  I can fix a leak, change out the faucet, but serious plumbing and electrical work are best left to people whose efforts won't permanently reduce the resale value of my home.
• A major project -- and we're talking major, as in knocking out a wall to make room for a bathtub -- simply wasn't in the household budget.
• Hey, the facility was good enough.  Well, for me, anyway.  It was functional.  It looked ok. 

So why did we finally sic the contractors on the ol' girl last December?  It all started with the leak.  Water was seeping up through the carpet around the base of the shower; the plumber said the ceramic tile around the interior of the shower enclosure had cracked and we likely had major damage to the flooring under the tile.  We were looking at least at removing the tiled shower enclosure, repairing the floor, and replacing all the tile.  At such a point one has to consider, "If we're going to have to do that much, maybe we should just as well ..."  My wife flatly denies she and the plumber were in collusion, but I'm not entirely convinced.

We were going to have to do something; the question was whether we were going to do something big, or something bigger.  We were at a point where we could build a project into our long-term budget (who knew home equity loan interest rates would go down even further?!).  It was a point at which some kind of change would have to happen.  What specific changes, and what opportunities we would see in the need for change, were what we needed to decide.

In the end we decided not to go halfway.  You need to knock out part of a wall to remove the shower?  Knock out enough wall to make room for a tub.  You're going to put in a tub?  Get a tub for the ages -- big, jacuzzi, heated recycling pump so the water never gets cold during your soak.  The flooring has to come up?  Replace it with the ceramic tile you've always wanted.  No room for the big shower you used to have?  Replace it with a tiny one to make room for the big tub and double vanity ... Ok, so there were some compromises.

I have to say there has been a real upside to our decision to gut the place and start over.

• Tearing everything out was incredibly liberating.  Suddenly so many options were open to us that previously just were impossible.  The sink didn't have to be over there.  The wall didn't have to go only so far.  Certainly there still were limits to what we could do, but the way it used to be was not in itself a limitation.
• Because we had so many options, we had the opportunity to change a whole variety of things in a comprehensive approach.  Before it had been, "Well, we could put in a second sink, but that would mean less room for the commode," or "Sure, we could put in a tub, but you'd have to climb over it to get out the door."  Once the room was completely empty, we could move everything around at once, trying different combinations until we came up with the best one.
• The threat of our 400-pound shower falling through the ceiling into our front foyer was a great incentive for change.  Knowing we had to make a change both forced and allowed us to set priorities.  Necessary repairs force themselves into one's household budget planning, for example.  But we also had the chance to ask ourselves whether enlarging the bathroom would be worth taking four feet out of our master bedroom.  Where did we need the space more?  Until we decided that knocking out walls was a possibility, this was an irrelevant question.

(Ok, here's the point where I take a seemingly innocuous personal anecdote and make it an object lesson for something of broader concern and importance.)

When I came here in 1991 as an assistant professor I heard from many people that the university was going through a time of great change.  Enrollments were up to 20,000; classrooms were overflowing with students; there was a new emphasis on graduate education and research.  Then Dr. Keiser became the new president, and there were more changes.  We earned a statewide mission; we had to figure out what "public affairs" meant; we were told online education was the wave of the future; and international collaborations were formed in India, China, and elsewhere.  Now we have a new president and a new provost and, guess what? Change.  My point is that, although perhaps the pace has stepped up a bit since Dr. Nietzel's arrival, I don't remember a time in the past 17 years that would not have been characterized as full of change.

Change can be demanding and exhausting in addition to unsettling.  I was not looking to overhaul my master suite when the shower started leaking and, much to my wife's dismay, I probably could have lived happily with my bathroom for another decade.  In addition to the cost of a contractor, we also have put in a fair amount of "sweat equity" by doing some work ourselves.  But both the outcome and the process of the change have been good.

We may not know for some time how good the changes now being made here will prove to be.  I do know that sometimes being jolted into change is precisely what a person or an organization needs, if simply to be reminded that change is possible.  And the changes are not wholesale.  My wife and I didn't turn the master suite into a home theatre (I'm planning that for one of the kids' bedrooms), but we did rethink how we were approaching the whole bedroom-and-bathroom thing.  Neither are the changes we're being asked to embrace at the university designed to fundamentally alter who we are and what we do.  We are, however, being asked to critically examine how we are doing what we do.

Stability is comfortable, but it isn't necessarily easier than changing.  I traded a fair amount of convenience and function for the luxury of not having to invest any energy in my bathroom.  Until we had the freedom to make changes I didn't realize just how much better the situation could have been.  What have you traded for the comfort of stability in your department and in your work?  Can you see the possibility for liberation in the realization that change is going to happen, and that you have choices about what shape that change will take?

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Like many of you I imagine, I am uneasy with lines of thought that force either/or bifurcations.  The world seems much too complex and poetic for the answers  to be neatly divided into mutually exclusive categories.  At minimum there usually is a third option -- my children always seemed to come up with at least one alternative to the forced choice  options I gave them.  Even more interesting are the many times when the answers are both/and. 

Openness to both/and answers does not mean refusing to make distinctions or value judgments.  (I came across one blogger who suggests adopting a perspective of both/but, which I find an interesting idea.)  Just because two seemingly contradictory ideas can be true doesn't mean they must be, and certainly they don't have to be equally so.  My sense is that a both/and orientation characterizes much of what we do and teach in our college.  Living with necessary contradictions is something we are used to, and it is a mindset that serves us well in this period of organizational change at the university.

Tradition and Innovation

Students must understand and master the knowledge and forms of creativity that have preceded them; yet we would consider their accomplishments incomplete if they stopped at mastering tradition and brought nothing new into the world.

Intellect and Spirit

Modernity often asked people to choose between reason and emotion, empiricism and intuition, logic and spirituality; but more than ever people are unwilling to accept the choice.  British theologian N.T. Wright uses the analogy of a government that paves over all of its country's natural springs so that it can control and make predictable the water supply, only to have the springs erupt and make a mess of the neatly engineered plans.  Our disciplines embrace the messy complexity of human nature and expression.

Expressiveness and Receptivity

Our purpose is to help students find their voices, to plumb their own depths and find the courage and tools to join in the human chorus.  But we also teach them to listen, with openness and discernment, to the many other voices that comprise that chorus.

Past and Future

The present is the piece of paper that holds the words of page 18 on one side and those of page 19 on the other.  The present is the page we turn to find out what happens next, and it lasts for us only as long as we pause in the turning.  Sometimes we pause long, lingering over what we have read, reflecting, analyzing, reviewing, so that our minds are clear and focused for the story's continuation.  Sometimes we pause, perhaps only briefly, simply to savor what we have just experienced.  But most often, life is a page-turner, and we can't wait to bring the future into the present, only to just as quickly turn the next page and send it into the past.

As a university we find the distance separating past and future equally paper thin.  We are participating in significant changes.  Our students are becoming more talented.  Our faculty is graying.  We continue the transition from regional institution to truly comprehensive university, including more ambitious expectations for scholarship and external support.  Yet there is much in our past to be celebrated and brought forward into our future.  As a department head and now as dean I frequently interact with alumni, and whether they graduated in 1955 or 2005 they all describe wonderful teachers and staff who had a singular impact on their lives.  Thousands of our students have been the first in their families to attend college.  Even today students describe Missouri State as a large university with a small campus feel.  These are elements that we must not abandon as we craft our future.

Perhaps this is where my page-turning analogy breaks down (as break down all analogies eventually do, I suppose).  Perhaps rather than turning the pages of a book we should think of our passing through time more as telling a story to an audience whose members continually ask us to repeat certain enthralling passages, and whose responses and expectations shape our invention of the story as we tell it.  And as our story progresses we employ recurring themes that surface over and again, making each new turn in the tale both familiar and strange at the same time.  Best of all, we tell not one story, but a whole library of stories.  Those who follow after us, some who have grown up with the stories and others who join them in progress, pick up the telling and retelling, the elaboration and the invention, like a grand oral history.

So it can't be past OR future; it must be past AND future, and the present is in the telling.

We are Missouri State University and Springfield Normal School; a community of teachers and a comprehensive university; a servant to our region and an emerging national university; an institution with a rich history and a university that is reinventing itself.  I invite you to join me in telling the complicated story of who we are and who we are becoming.

Be a Part of the "Freshman Experience"

Some significant changes are afoot for the university's efforts with first-year students.  Among these changes is a redesign of the freshman course, IDS 110/UHC 110.  While a comprehensive review of the course is underway right now, intermediate plans for 2008-09 are to loosen many of the restrictions on how the course is taught and give instructors more flexibility in tailoring the course to their own expertise and interests.  The approach for IDS 110 will be more like what we have seen in UHC 110, where teachers identify a topic/theme for their class and the class has more of an academic discussion atmosphere.

I will be teaching IDS 110 this fall, and I hope many of you will join me.  I very  much would like to involve as many COAL faculty and staff who are interested in discussions about how we might approach IDS 110 from the liberal arts perspective of our college.  Soon you will be seeing information about how to apply to teach IDS 110/UHC 110.  When you do I hope you will do two things: (1) give serious thought to signing up for the fall, and (2) drop me an email so that I can put you on my list of people to invite to our discussion.  Even if you don't want to teach IDS 110 this fall, but you are interested in how the college could shape a really fantastic freshman course, I would love to have your input.

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Congratulations to associate professor of violin David Hayes, whom the Missouri String Teacher Association has selected as its 2008 Collegiate Educator of the Year.  Congratulations also to Center for Dispute Resolution associate director Heather Blades, who received one of six Staff Excellence in University Service Awards presented at the staff luncheon earlier this month.  Please see the Updates Page for other kudos and important COAL information shared by email earlier this week.

Speaking to members of the Board of Governors and several other university administrators, I was trying to give a succinct description of what gives the many varied disciplines within our college a shared identity and purpose.  "If someone told us today," I said, "that we could no longer use the name College of Arts and Letters, I might suggest College of Human Expression as an alternative."  Since then a number of people have mentioned to me that they liked the phrase, and although I have no designs on changing the name of the college I am giving it a test-run of sorts as a descriptive phrase that we might use in college publications.  Some of you may have noticed that I have included it in my email signature, for example, and I am sharing it here in hopes of eliciting feedback from the college and the broader community of arts and letters alumni and friends.

Certainly all of our disciplines focus on acts of expression -- music, speech, writing, visual arts, and so on.  As importantly, however, we all also devote ourselves to understanding and interpreting human expression, from its origins to its consequences.  We acknowledge that the worlds we experience are products of our amazing capacities for expression, and that to understand our creative acts is to understand ourselves.  To study and practice the arts and letters is to wrestle with the fundamental human challenge to seek and create meaning.

The stir over holiday displays on campus this past week, for me, draws attention to the importance of human expression as a focal point of the university's educational mission.  If I were to clip a few articles from The Standard and News-Leader (or, unfortunately from several national news outlets that picked up the story) and use them to create an interdisciplinary assignment, I might pose some of the following questions:

• What is the importance of the Christmas tree as a cultural and/or religious symbol?  From your personal experience and perspective, do you agree with the United States Supreme Court that it is a secular display?  If it is a secular display, why does it seem so fraught with religious meaning?
• What is the meaning of Christmas?  Has it ever been just a religious celebration?
• What Christian symbols have been appropriated from pagan origins?  How do physical representations (evergreens, eggs) come to take on entirely new meanings?  Do the "old" meanings go away?  Why would religions borrow symbols from other cultures or belief systems?  What are the differences between creating new symbols and appropriating old ones?
• What roles do the arts play in creating and perpetuating cultural and religious symbols?  Are there distinctions between art, religious art, popular culture expressions of religion, and art about religious subjects?
• What should be the expressive rights of majorities and minorities in a democratic society?  Beyond rights, what are their responsibilities?
• How and why did controversy over a holiday display arise in this place, with these people, at this time?  How does the accessibility of media affect how such situations are played out?
• Where are the borderlines of taste when it comes to commercialization of religious symbols and displays?  Does a musical ceramic Elvis Christmas tree have the same meaning as a 20-foot tree in Strong Hall?  Would you use a menorah shaped like a moose, with candles placed in the rack of antlers?
• If I put up a Christmas tree in my office, but also displayed a Mickey and Minnie Mouse menorah that I purchased at a large Judaica retailer, would that be disrespectful?
• Regardless of their religious persuasion or passion, most people seem to enjoy the artistic and cultural elements of the holidays -- lights, decorations, music, performances.  Does this speak to a human need for beauty?  A desire to be entertained?  Decades of successful Madison Avenue strategy?

And these are just my questions for the freshmen! 

More than concern for a search for meaning, to borrow a phrase from Victor Frankl's famous book, we all are engaged in making meaning, all of the time.  (The very fact that we might describe our efforts as a search for meaning implies a whole set of meanings that would make such a quest, well, um, meaningful.)  Regardless of whether one has religious convictions or what those might be, the existence of others' convictions, the reasons for those beliefs, their consequences, and the practical issues of living in a pluralistic society are questions of import for us all.

Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Gregg Easterbrook, in his book Beside Still Waters: Searching For Meaning in an Age of Doubt, writes, "Trying to sift through the question of what aspects of spirituality are profound and which are traceable to error ought to be seen as a positive exercise, helping us to concentrate on that portion of spirituality that is truly worth believing."  I believe this is equally true for believers who might be afraid to critically examine their beliefs and for skeptics who are tempted to see all spirituality as mere fabrication or delusion.  As disciplines, the arts and letters certainly have represented the full spectrum through the centuries, from Handel's Messiah to Beckett's Waiting for Godot, from Byzantine icons to Robert Maplethorpe, to name just a few Western examples.

What ignited in me a passion for my own discipline of communication was the realization that communication was a creative force, that human expression was the stuff of which the world is made.  Although each of our disciplines approaches this realization in many different ways and often for different reasons, it is what now drives my commitment to all the dimensions of our college.  What we do is critically important because it is who we -- all people -- are.   

So, let me know what you think about this "college of human expression" phrase.  Does it describe our college as well for you as it does for me?  Does it give others a sense of what arts and letters are about?  I would love it if you would use the "reply to this post" option to offer your opinion.

Free Lunch

There may or may not be a Santa Claus, but there is a free lunch.  Starting in January I would like to host a table in the Union Club once a week for interested faculty and staff.  I'll pick up the tab, and you can pick the topics of conversation.  To keep things organized, I've set up a form on surveymonkey.com where you can view the scheduled dates and indicate up to three days that you're available.  As we receive your responses you'll be contacted with confirmation of a specific date.  Did I mention that I'm picking up the tab?

To make your reservation, go to Free Lunch With The Dean.

Thank You For a Great First Six Months

Becoming Dean of this college has been a terrific opportunity, and I hope you feel as positive about our momentum and direction as I do.  To all of you who have said "yes" to last-minute requests, patiently waited for work to be completed from my office, and reminded me of important tasks that needed doing, I owe you my thanks.  To everyone who goes about their daily work with enthusiasm and excellence, your efforts are what make my job both doable and rewarding.

Between now and the end of the year I hope to put together a summary of recent accomplishments from across the college.  I haven't taken as much time this semester to acknowledge and celebrate your successes as I would have liked.  If you have news you think I might be unaware of, please let me know so that I can make the summary as inclusive as possible.

I hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable holiday season.  We have plenty of work to look forward to in January.

Twice this past week I have donned a gorilla suit for the purpose of -- well, no purpose really, just the excuse of it being Halloween and people are less likely to think you're crazy for wearing a gorilla suit then than, say, on Easter or the Fourth of July.  I spent a couple of hours in costume at my church's fall festival last Saturday evening, but the real fun was showing up that way at work on Halloween.  As a young man on campus said to me as he admired my get-up, "Everyone should have their own gorilla suit."  He didn't say everyone should wear theirs to work, but I can recommend it based on my own experience.  So, besides the three pounds of water weight I lost sweating in my own personal rain forest, what's the upside of being "ape for a day"?

Everybody loves the guy in a gorilla suit.  Other than a couple of small children whom I had to charm out of being terrified, most people approached me like they would a cute stray dog -- a little wary but dying to scratch me behind the ears.  Perfect strangers stopped and asked to take my picture.  (I hope I can get a copy of the photo one parent took of me with her small child dressed in a banana costume.)  I brazenly walked up to any number of people and gave them big hugs.  While I did receive a few incredulous looks, I had the impression that many people wished they had had the nerve to dress up like a gorilla.

You can get away with a lot dressed as a gorilla.  I picked nits out of a university president's hair, for heaven's sake!  (Imaginary nits, of course; the president actually is quite well groomed.)  What's more, he knew it was me in the suit.  The only thing between me and a swift demotion was a thin layer of latex and synthetic fur.

You can be whoever you want to be when you're a gorilla.  At my church's fall festival one woman said to my teenage daughter, "We don't know your parents very well yet ... Is this normal for your dad?"  (Come to think of it, my daughter never told me how she answered that question.)  Most people, even in my own family, seemed surprised that I would dress as a gorilla.  Even I might say that this was a step outside my comfort zone.  But who knows, maybe this was stepping into my comfort zone.  Recently I heard someone point out that I was not an "acting" dean; I quipped that I tried not to act like a dean any more than necessary.

Gorillas have more fun.  I gave away bananas on which I had written slogans like, "In case of 800 lbs gorilla, break peel," and "Forbidden Zone or bust!"  I passed out a report of activities for the Provost's Fellow for Simian Success.  I visited each of the college's department offices and greeted all the folks there.  I even had my picture taken with Dr. Nietzel.  And what's more fun than scaring the pee-waddin¹ out of a few colleagues?

Obviously, dressing as a gorilla gave me permission to do things that ordinarily I would not dare to do.  That's really the point of dressing up for Halloween, isn't it?  When else can kids show up on your doorstep demanding candy without it being gauche? In that sense, we all need gorilla suits.  For some it's being on stage or writing or standing in front of a classroom.  It can be as simple as someone speaking encouragement when you take a risk, or not finding fault when you fail.  What creates the space for you to step outside the ordinary and expected, to be bold?  Just as important, how do you create that space for others?  That's something else I noticed about being a gorilla: being a gorilla requires more than just the guy in the suit.  Until someone interacts with you, you're just a sweaty guy in a furry coat.  The real fun is when people act as differently toward you as you are acting toward them.  The suit works both ways, it appears.

I don't know if I'll come to work dressed as a gorilla again; certainly it would not have the same shock value a second time.  But now people know that I am a person who would do something like wear an ape costume to the office, and that opens up new possibilities for all of us.

¹ For a precise definition of pee-waddin see http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/literary/arbonics.html.

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Please see the Updates Page for important information about facilities for Art & Design and college budget priorities.

In 1983 I had the singular pleasure of meeting Luciano Pavarotti backstage at a performance in Kansas City and getting his autograph.  The great tenor's recent passing prompted me to think again, as I have countless times over the past 20 years, "I really should pull that out of the old box in the basement and have it framed."  That decades-old, autographed recital program has become a metaphor for my involvement with the arts over the years; something which, not unexpectedly, has been on my mind since becoming Dean of this college.

Pavarotti was one of many performers and artists I was privileged to enjoy as an undergraduate at William Jewell College, whose nationally-acclaimed Fine Arts Series brought world-class performances to Kansas City at no cost to students other than the dollar they charged to take the chartered bus from Liberty into the city.  These and other forays into the arts and literature affected me as much, if not more in some ways, than the classes I took in my major fields of study.  I remember thinking after I decided to go to graduate school that one of the best things about working on a college campus would be all of the opportunities to see and hear live performances, visit exhibits, and continue to learn about the world through them.

However, like Pavarotti's autograph, my involvement with the arts has been more and less noticeable over the years, occasionally sharing it proudly with friends and reliving the experience and at others even forgetting I had it at all.  Job pressures, family responsibilities, kids' schedules, shrinking entertainment budgets, and a host of other influences have at times -- and sometimes for long periods of time -- detracted from my participation in and patronage of the arts.  And every now and then I am reminded of how much poorer my life becomes when I allow that to happen.

When I first accepted this position a number of people offered their sympathy for my having to attend "all those events."  Although the schedule can be grueling at times, my honest response was that I was looking forward to those events.  The expectations of the position prod me to make my involvement with the arts a priority, and the personal benefits to me far outweigh any good that my presence might bring to anyone else.  For a long time the arts had been "tacked on" to my routine, whereas now by necessity they are "built in."

The work by artists of all sorts in our college truly is one of the perks of working at this university, and we can so easily take it for granted.  I am fond of encouraging undergraduates to take advantages of opportunities like traveling abroad or exploring subjects for the sake of curiosity because they may never have the freedom and time to pursue those things once they leave college.  I need to take my own advice and open my eyes to the amazing, enriching experiences that are offered to me year after year, both on campus and in the larger community.

If you are not in the habit of attending student theatre productions, stopping in at the downtown Art Gallery or the Student Exhibition Center, or catching a free movie at the University Film Series, I invite you to put such things on your calendar.  This week alone there are at least six events going on, from films to art exhibits to live theatre and music performances.

According to my Internet research, autographed Pavarotti memorabilia can bring several hundred dollars.  But rather than sell it, I think I will at last have it framed, and hang it on my wall as a reminder not to keep such wonderful experiences in a box beneath the basement stairs.

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Please go to the Updates Page for information about college priorities, publicizing your events and accomplishments, and other news.

In addition to relief from August temperatures (we certainly hope), September brings many other welcome occasions to the College of Arts and Letters.  The tenth annual Ozarks Celebration Festival kicks off this Friday with a free concert by local favorite Big Smith and continues through September 14, extending the traditional weekend event to a full week for the first time.  (Festival coordinator Barb Jones can still use volunteers, if you're interested!) You can read all about the festival -- and much more about the Ozarks -- in the new edition of Ozarks Watch magazine, recently revived, revised, and redesigned by managing editor and English instructor John Turner.  Ozarks Watch is a publication of the Ozarks Studies Institute, directed by Kris Sutliff, Professor of English.  Read more about the festival, Ozarks Watch, and Ozarks studies below.

You should have several other dates on your September calendars, as well.  President Nietzel will present his third annual address to the campus on Wednesday, September 12 at noon in the PSU Theatre.  On Friday, September 21 the College of Arts and Letters will host a New Student Welcome on the patio north of Craig Hall from 3:00-5:00 p.m.  Be sure to invite your students to come by for a free ice cream treat.  The following Friday is the annual COAL Picnic at Phelps Grove Park, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Here, There, and Everywhere

"Here": The Ozarks.  This month's Ozarks Celebration Festival (OCF) is designed to showcase the rich heritage and cultural traditions of the region, from crafts to music and dancing to storytelling.  It is a visible and entertaining way to educate the community and the campus about the Ozarks.  More broadly and perhaps less visibly, the Ozarks Studies Institute "seeks to preserve the heritage of the Ozarks, its culture, environment and history by fostering a comprehensive knowledge of Ozarks' peoples, places, characteristics and dynamics."  The festival is one expression of that mission, as is Ozarks Watch.  This year, with resource support from the Provost and COAL, OSI Director Dr. Kris Sutliff hopes to expand participation in the institute and establish its profile as a leading regional studies center.

One first step is expansion of the OCF to include a week's worth of workshops and presentations by scholars and other experts in Ozarks studies.  I hope you will browse the schedule and find one or more sessions of interest to you.  For example, Dr. Brooks Blevins, Director of Regional Studies at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, will speak on "Beyond Hillbillies and Mountaineers: Ozarks Studies in the 21st Century; MSU Emeritus Professor Dr. Russ Gerlach will present on "Scotch-Irish and Germans in the Ozarks"; and one of Father Moses Berry's two presentations will focus on "Efforts to Preserve Local African-American History."  Media, Journalism and Film Associate Professor Mark Biggs will screen his 1999 documentary, The Ozarks: Just That Much Hillbilly in Me, which many of us have enjoyed before.

I encourage you to be watching this year for more information on Ozarks studies and to consider how your own discipline might contribute to "preserving the heritage" and "fostering comprehensive knowledge" of the peoples, places, culture, and history of the Ozarks. 

"There": Asia.  No one has to tell us any more how important Asia is in the world and even to us here in the Ozarks.  MSU has strong relationships with several universities in China and India; the university is a regional center of the Asian Studies Development Program, of the East-West Center, University of Hawaii; and in September MSU will be host to an international symposium on "Taiwan, China, and Democratization in East Asia."  As opportunities for involvement in Asian Studies continue to increase, the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and COAL have named an Asian Arts and Letters Coordinator to facilitate cooperation among various parties involved in Asian studies and to promote opportunities within the college and across the university.  Weirong Yan Schaeffer, Modern and Classical Languages instructor, will teach Chinese and Japanese in addition to serving as coordinator.  A three-year funding commitment from the Provost's Office is providing support for student travel and research, curriculum development, and guest speakers/artists.  One example coming up this month: On Monday, September 17 the Music Department presents performances by the Chinese He Nan Song and Dance Troupe. The performances will feature the traditional music and dance of China.

And "Everywhere": Faculty and staff recruitment.  Okay, I'm stretching here for parallelism, but the "everywhere" I am referring to is where we should be looking this year to find outstanding applicants for our open faculty and staff positions.  We are beginning searches for nearly 20 positions, each one critical to its respective program.  As I discussed at the all-college meeting, we have prioritized position requests and are not searching this year for every requested position; this makes the success of every search that much more important.  Recruitment is everyone's responsibility, whether or not you are on a search committee.  I would ask each of you to contribute to the recruitment (and subsequent retention) of excellent colleagues by doing the following:

• Email or phone colleagues at institutions granting terminal degrees and ask them to: (a) recommend their graduates, (b) recommend us to their graduates, (c) give you information about how to compete for their graduates, or (d) all of the above.
• Talk up openings at professional meetings and conferences.
• Network especially with people who can help you connect to potential minority candidates.
• Help the department put its best collective foot forward by participating in campus interview events like candidate presentations/performances, meals, and department meetings.
• After a promising candidate leaves campus, email them to thank them for coming and offer to answer any additional questions.
• Once an offer has been made, email the candidate to say you hope he/she will accept the position; after they've accepted, send a note of congratulations and welcome.

The college will be doing its part in recruiting by providing adequate recruitment budgets, offering competitive salaries and incentives, and communicating that the departments and the college are exciting, forward-looking places to work.

Also On Your Plates In September

In addition to the many events scheduled this month, departments are working on revising their merit compensation guidelines and other personnel documents, and probationary faculty are looking ahead to reappointment, tenure, and promotion applications.  The Dean's Office will host an informational meeting about promotion, tenure, and reappointm