Welcome Provost Alcock!

I was very excited to read the announcement of our new Provost, Professor Sue Alcock, who will begin her responsibilities on January 1. As Chancellor Grasso recently noted, “Sue has a long and distinguished career in the academy having held numerous administrative and academic roles. She is a world-acclaimed scholar and teacher who will bring great insight, perspective and industry to our senior leadership team,” Grasso said. “Sue has served at some of the best universities in the world. Her experiences at Brown University, and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor and Flint), have prepared her to immediately step into this position and make a significant impact on our campus.”

Equally as important, from the perspective of the college is Sue’s academic training and area of focus. Alcock is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor (https://www.provost.umich.edu/programs/thurnau/ )
and professor of classical archaeology and classics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, in Ann Arbor and she is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (often called a “genius grant” https://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/strategy/ ). The author of 13 books and more than 50 articles (she has been cited thousands of times), Alcock’s background will serve CASL well and will ensure that the liberal arts and humanities will be well represented in university-level discussions.

Sue follows in the footsteps of Kate Davy whose efforts profoundly transformed the campus in many positive ways. I am grateful to Kate for her bold and creative leadership and look forward to working with Provost Alcock in moving our campus forward!

Retaining and Sustaining our Students

With the chorus of “Welcome back to campus!” ringing in my ears I am sitting down to consider the current state of CASL. The beginning of the fall semester is always an exciting time here in the college; there are new classes to teach, new colleagues to meet, and new students to welcome into the CASL family. Sadly, however, over the past few years, the number of new students (both traditional and transfer) enrolling in the college has been declining, in some areas very significantly. While the CASL community takes some solace in knowing that this trend is evident in virtually every college of arts and humanities across the country, its impact on our college is significant. This decline poses major challenges for CASL…weak enrollments in many areas across the college, cancelled courses, and constrained finances which have impacted our ability to hire new faculty and staff and to invest in the college’s many strategic priorities.

Accordingly, last year, the college invited one of our faculty members, Ellen Judge-Gonzalez (the Director of our SOAR Program), to examine the college’s efforts around the retention of our students in the hope of generating ideas that will help us to keep the students that we do recruit, convince them to stay here in CASL, and to help move them toward graduation. The results of Ellen’s great work were recently shared with the college at large

CASL White Paper on Retention
https://umich.box.com/s/sb3ntqhs0ejopf2tb6p1q4pn2f7xmdza

CASL Former Student Experience Survey
https://umich.box.com/s/vwe1mvoc6jwup60fl4lvlok4m64xgbw6

and will serve as the basis for a CASL-wide conversation on retention. Holding onto just a small number of these students will have a very positive impact on the college’s bottom line and, even more importantly, on our students’ ability to fulfill their dream of a college degree.

The report is sparking a great deal of buzz in the college and faculty, staff, and CASL alums are all taking up the challenge of thinking about ways that they can (both individually and collectively) make the college a more welcoming and supportive environment for our students. Last evening, for instance, the CASL Alumni Affiliate set up a table in the CASL Building to hand out cookies and other snacks to students as they arrived back on campus. As we all know, even the smallest of actions can make a tremendous difference in making a student feel both welcome and supported and that such feelings go a long way toward encouraging a student to continue on with their studies here at the university.

Over the course of the 2019-2020 academic year I will be highlighting the importance of retention work to our faculty, staff, and alumni and the college will be launching new initiatives designed to enhance our retention and four-year graduation rates. I look forward to reporting out on our new initiatives and on the results of these efforts and invite you to share ideas that you might have!

Hands on Learning

Late last year I was invited to join our Geology Field Study students for their trip to Cyprus in the spring of 2019. Having just returned from that trip I have to say that it was an incredible experience for our students, and for myself. Beyond the geological sites that the students visited and interpreted (led by one of our amazing faculty, Dr. Jacob Napieralski), they were also exposed to Cyprus’s rich culture and history, including some time with the U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus and a trip through the UN Buffer zone that separates the Greek Cypriot side of the island from the Turkish Cypriot side of the island. As always, it was amazing to watch the growth in the sophistication and confidence of our students as they analyzed the sites they visited and as they navigated their way around a new cultural milieu. That the experience was transformational for the students is undeniable:

“As it was my first time traveling alone I was very nervous and unsure of how it’d end up. I’ve learned so much and I’m so grateful to you all for making it one of the most amazing and unforgettable experiences of my life.”

“I was so nervous but this was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had!”

Comments such as these are typical as our students reflect upon their study abroad experiences and they speak to the power of immersing our students in High Impact Learning Practices like Study Abroad. I am so proud that CASL is able to provide such experiences for our students and to assist them in making travel of this sort affordable. I am also reminded of the commitment of our talented faculty to work closely with our students and to push them to do things they never knew that they could do. As I’ve indicated in any number of different forums, I am committed to ensuring that the college expand these opportunities for our students and that we do all that we can to make such experiences accessible and affordable. I look forward to sharing more stories from the global education front with you in the future.

CASL Faculty Rock!

The College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters is abuzz these days. The most recent round of Fulbright Faculty Scholars was recently released and three college faculty were named as recipients (Daniel Davis—who will be working in the Philippines, Bill DeGenaro—who is off to Jordan, and Anna Muller—who is beginning a new project in Poland). This would be an amazing achievement for most universities collectively let alone for one college within a university. Just to provide some context, in 2017-2018 Faculty at Michigan State University (a university that far surpasses the University of Michigan-Dearborn both in size and in its research portfolio) were awarded six Fulbrights while our colleagues in Ann Arbor were awarded twelve.

The fact that three of CASL’s faculty were named Fulbright Scholars reminded me of just how accomplished our faculty are. Not only do our faculty excel in the classroom but they are exposing our students and the world to their leading-edge research and scholarly findings. This comes as no surprise to me or to anyone else who has had the privilege of sitting in one of the courses offered by CASL faculty members but it is always wonderful to have what you know to be true validated by outside sources.

Though the college’s enrollment decline continues to challenge our budget we have been consistent in ensuring that the resources that we do have are allocated in ways that promote both the success of our students and the success of our faculty. The recognition of these three scholars by this very prestigious body confirms that the college is making an excellent investment. Congratulations to our Fulbright recipients! We wish you much success in your work!We are all extremely proud of you!