I hope you all had a great summer. Welcome back to the 2006 Academic year. This is going to be another great year for the College of Liberal Arts!

As many of you know, summer is the season in which we wrap up our College’s annual evaluation including the awards and superb accomplishments by Liberal Arts faculty.

Let me give you some highlights of those accomplishments.

Last year, Liberal Arts faculty received over 50 honors and awards for teaching and scholarship. Awards from organizations like Fulbright, the National Council for Geographic Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Piper Foundation, the Association of American Geographers, the National Institute of Justice, the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science, and the Texas Institute of Letters, to name just some of the organizations that recognized our faculty.

Last year, Liberal Arts faculty published 23 books; 249 book chapters, refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, essays, poems, and short stories. We delivered 313 scholarly papers/presentations and readings at international, national, and regional conferences. Fifty-three faculty served as editors of 84 scholarly journals, and Liberal Arts faculty worked on 48 grants and contracts—some new and others continuing—for a total of just over $7 million.

Very importantly, Liberal Arts faculty mentored 136 student-authored and/or delivered papers at national or regional meetings or mentored students who received prestigious awards.

What an impressive array of accomplishments! The complete bibliography of faculty accomplishment is on our web site.

The bibliography, however, is just the tip of the iceberg of all the work faculty accomplished during the year. I have the pleasure of reading each of your annual reviews, which went live this year in Liberal Arts. I thank Marc Turner in Psychology and many other faculty and chairs for making this first online initiative a real success.

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Gains in four critical areas

It was an important year for the College. We gained in four critical areas in our expansion and development: space, faculty, staff, and travel funding.

Space: While we wait on the tuition revenue bond approval for a new academic building, approved in the last Legislative Session, this year we will begin planning for the building. It will house several Liberal Arts departments and our Advising Center. Each department will be asked to participate in planning 10-20 years out for their space needs. That will help us decide who will go into the new building. Vicki Brittain, chair of Political Science, has agreed to lead the building planning committee for Liberal Arts, but we won’t wait for the new building for additional space: Sociology will be moving to expanded space in a somewhat refurbished Derrick Hall in December. Political Science and Anthropology will move into expanded and much needed space in Evans, and Anthropology has acquired curatorial space in Trinity—a building on the north side of campus.

Faculty: Last year, we expanded by seven new faculty positions to Liberal Arts, and this year, we will be searching for five more new positions in response to impressive growth in our majors.

Staff: We expanded our staff as well, last year, with a new development officer and a new budget analyst for the College, one new advisor and two more net new advisors this coming year. We’ll be adding the first new career advising center in Liberal Arts, and an Alumni Speaker Series so that our majors hear from successful alums.

The growth in advising staff is critical: the number of majors has grown by 45% since 2000. Yvette, Glenda, Roel, Roxanne, Brandi and Tina logged in 35,000 office appointments, just under 20,000 other advising contacts (from walk-ins, e-mails and phone calls). They ran almost 4,000 degree audits and updates related to group advising, Bobcat Days, certifying graduates, updating catalogs. It’s a huge job for our advisors and the faculty and staff advisors in departments, and I don’t think we thank them enough. Would the Advising Center staff and the staff and faculty who advise for departments/programs please stand to receive our thanks.

Travel: Last year, we received much needed additional faculty travel funds--$75,000 extra; this year we’ll be getting over $101,000 in additional funds.

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New Growth and Initiatives

Over the past five years, the number of majors in the College increased by more than 45%. That’s a remarkable statistic for a faculty that has also received recognition and success, honors and awards for your teaching and scholarly work.

Last year alone, we grew by almost 6% in graduate enrollment, and we grew almost 7% in our undergraduate program (45% in SCH the last five years). Last year,

• we saw record numbers of students graduate, including seven new PhDs since May.
• we added a new master’s degree in Rhetoric and Composition, a new certificate in Public History, put the graduate certificate in Professional Ethics online, and created new minors, among other program considerations.
• the Center for International Studies collaborated with the College of Business to create a program that allows our graduates to move seamlessly into an MBA program.
• we led 12 Study Abroad programs for 274 students and led a very enthusiastic Study Abroad Council to lobby for changes in the University’s Study Abroad program.
• we worked with a newly developed and very effective Faculty Advisory Council on curricular and fiscal issues of the College.
• we created a College Development Advisory Board, with the help of Elizabeth Denton, our new development officer. In our development efforts, last year we raised $170,000 in scholarship funding and $1.2 million in a deferred gift for a writer-in-residence program. To date this year we have raised $2.6 million in gifts, and the August report isn’t in yet.
• as you heard President Trauth say, the University is entering a new capital campaign. I will be asking our faculty to make the case for funding excellence in Liberal Arts programs and research. As the University works toward its goal of rising in the rankings of emerging research universities, the emphasis will be on obtaining grant funding and funding to enrich teaching.
  

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Strategic Goals

In May, the Provost asked me for my top strategic goals for the College. My requests included two goals related to facilities. In addition to planning for a new building, I asked for

• Funds to upgrade the room we’re in (Flowers Hall 345)
• An expedited plan for remodeling the Psychology Building
• Permission to plan new programs that will enhance our graduate enrollment:
  

            o Forensic Anthropology Research Center and Facility
            o Center for Social Research

In addition, we will begin a College-wide planning committee to begin feasibility studies for new doctoral programs in Liberal Arts, in

• Political Science: Public Administration
• Anthropology: Archaeology and Forensics
• English: Writing and Rhetoric
• Applied Sociology
• International Studies
  

In addition to these goals, I’ve made the case for

• additional faculty and M&O funding for the College and Departments
• additional support staff
  

All are critical needs of the College because of growth. I look forward to working with many of you in the coming months on these initiatives.

There are two very special initiatives this fall that the College is helping to sponsor—initiatives that celebrate diversity on our campus. The Latino Presence at Texas State, first 100 years, and an international conference on Race, Ethnicity, and Place, which will be held at Texas State this fall. Our CMGS and Department of Geography are lead organizations in both of those exciting initiatives.

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Presidential Awards and Dean’s Awards

This morning, the President recognized several outstanding Liberal Arts faculty with her honors and awards. (See Presidential Award recipients in Liberal Arts)

This is the ninth year that the College of Liberal Arts has presented the Dean’s Golden Apple Awards. Like the Presidential Awards, the Dean’s Awards are in three areas: Teaching, Scholarly and Creative Activity, and Service, and for each of these areas of accomplishment, we give two awards by rank: full and associate professor is one rank; assistant professor and lecturer is the other. ( See College of Liberal Arts Awards)

In past years, at this point in the program, I’ve introduced our NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities. Traditionally, this has been awarded to a faculty member in Liberal Arts; however, the grant allows for applications from art history.

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NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship in the Humanities

So, this year, it’s my pleasure to announce that the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities for 2006-2009 is Dr. James Housefield, art historian in the Department of Art and Design, who is also Adjunct Curator for the Austin Museum of Art and Arts Editor of the International Review of Modernism. Last year, he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching at Texas State. Beginning this semester, James’ project, the Texas State Arts & Culture Lecture Series, will bring invited artists and scholars to campus for free public lectures on the theme of “Art and Life.”

I’m looking forward to a wonderful year of accomplishment. Thank you for coming, and please stay a while to enjoy the reception.

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