PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 20, May 4, 2006

Hearing encourages discussion of creation of school in LAS

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

A proposed School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences moved one step closer to realization after the Senate Committee on Educational Policy held a public hearing on May 1. About 25 people met in 196 Lincoln Hall to discuss the proposal, which was sponsored by Sarah Mangelsdorf, dean of the college. The proposed school would comprise the departments of classics; East Asian languages and cultures; French; Germanic languages and literatures; linguistics; Slavic languages and literatures; and Spanish, Italian and Portuguese as well as the programs in Comparative Literature, World Literature and the Study of Religion; the Division of English as an International Language, and cinema studies. All of the study abroad programs for those departments would be administered within the school as well.

Mangelsdorf emphasized that the reorganization was not a downsizing:  “We are not talking about getting rid of departments or getting rid of existing majors. We are talking about creating new areas of connection” in teaching, research and outreach among faculty members in the 11 units that would make up the school. Many of the programs are highly ranked and their faculty members already have many collaborative endeavors and appointments that span multiple units, such as five of the nine faculty members in comparative literature and five of the 10.5 full-time equivalent faculty positions in linguistics.

“So we already have a lot of these kinds of intellectual interconnections, as evidenced by joint appointments and joint hires….and the School would just give us opportunities to do a little more of this … and do a better job of integrating the programming and functioning across the units, like the Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education program,” which is a multidisciplinary initiative, Mangelsdorf said.

Doug Kibbee, executive coordinator of Foreign Languages Building units, said that the reorganization would affect 115 full-time faculty members, 30 nontenured faculty members, 17 support staff members and more than 200 graduate students.

The new structure would not only simplify administrative processes, it would give faculty members a stronger voice in presenting their common interests to LAS administration and other parts of the campus, Mangelsdorf said.

The decision was made to create a school – rather than merge the departments – to help maintain current disciplinary traditions within the units and to preserve their autonomy, Mangelsdorf said.

The savings achieved by sharing resources would benefit students because more graduate fellowships could be funded and new programs created, which might include programs in translation studies, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic. Kibbee said that while the “severe pruning” and “Draconian (budget) cuts of 2003” were a difficult period for many of the units, the financial savings reaped have allowed “an explosion of intellectual activity,” including hosting several symposia and several major national and international conferences, forming a teaching community and, this fall, the first Share Fair, at which faculty members will be able to convey pedagogical strategies.

Mangelsdorf said that her predecessor as dean of LAS, Jesse Delia, had been talking with faculty members in the units about the proposed school for some time before she succeeded Delia and became acting dean in September 2004. Kibbee said that several discussions had been held with faculty members, and during spring 2005 they had supported forming the school in a referendum.

LAS and the Senate Committee on Educational Policy sponsored the hearing. Abbas Aminmansour, chair of the committee, said the committee will begin an in-depth study of the proposal when it convenes in the fall and will make its recommendation to the senate thereafter. If approved by the committee and subsequently by the senate, the proposal would go to the University Senates Conference, the UI Board of Trustees and the Illinois Board of Higher Education for approval. The entire approval process could be accomplished during the 2006-2007 academic year if no problems arise, Aminmansour said.

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