Kandi Turley-Ames
Dean College of Arts & Letters
Dear Colleagues and Students:
A warm welcome to our extended Arts & Letters family! We are excited to start the year with new students and new faculty full of energy and anticipation for the coming year. We are also thrilled to have our continuing students and faculty back for another great year of collaboration!
To kick off the new academic year, we are happy to share with you some of the accomplishments, collaborations, and training opportunities created for, and by, the faculty and students in the College of Arts & Letters.
• The College of Arts & Letters has received approval by the State Board of Education for the creation of the Integrated Research Center (IRC) which provide space, technology, and equipment for scholarly interdisciplinary training, research, and creative activity. The IRC has for faculty and student use an eye-tracker, plotter/scanner, 3D printer, EEG equipment, statistical software packages, and visualization and other specialized software.
• The Department of Music, School of Performing Arts, has been busy showcasing high profile events for 2016, including hosting the International Choral Festival, the Idaho Music Educators Conference (IMEA), and the Metropolitan Opera Auditions; presenting high profile guest artists with the Idaho State Civic Symphony – including the premiere of an original concerto by the School Director, hosting the annual New Year›s Eve Fundraising Gala, and now preparing to open a $100,000 state-of-the-art recording studio facility in early 2017.
• The Department of History›s public internship programs continue to sustain and enhance ISU›s academic-public partnerships. In the past year History›s undergraduate and graduate student interns have developed programming, educational materials, or public outreach programs in cooperation with local, state, and national institutions, including the Bannock County Historical Museum, the Idaho Department of Transportation, Minidoka National Historic Site, and Grand Teton National Park.
• Our English Ph.D. program awarded the first Teaching Literature Book Award, a new international, juried prize for the best book on teaching literature at the college level. First recipient is Rabinowitz and McHardy’s From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom. Rabinowitz will lecture at ISU early this September.
• The Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminology is now offering an area of concentration in Criminology for both the BA and MA degree in Sociology. and the Department has added a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies. These new degree options enhance the marketability of our students.
• Faculty in the Department of Global Studies and Languages raked in millions of dollars in competitive national grants and hosted a historic Frank Church Symposium, with the Ambassador of India as the keynote speaker.
• The Department of Anthropology hosted a successful summer Archaeological Field School in the beautiful Sweet Ola Valley in Western Idaho, secured over $330,000 in external research grants, published the Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology, and continued our applied field research in traditional communities in Alaska, Bolivia, Peru, and Idaho.
• Our Philosophy program hosted events bringing philosophy, ethics, and religious studies to public audiences, including the Intermountain Philosophy Conference and Philosophy for the Public at Marshall Public Library; the Department also has created greater opportunity to interact with all members of our community through chess tournaments at local coffee shops.
• The Department of Theatre and Dance offered exceptional summer programming with Conservatory Theatre Camp (CTC) and the ISU Summer Musical, Oliver. The Department will be visited by a series of wonderful international guest artists, beginning with Tony Clements, guest director for «Next to Normal,» the Tony and Pulitzer award winning musical that opens our season.
• In the Department of Psychology, faculty have been awarded two new externally funded grants (NIH, NSF) and an ongoing NIH grant which provides research training to undergraduate and graduate students; faculty and students are participating also on four collaborative internally funded interdisciplinary research training grants. Two faculty were recognized nationally for their research programs and accomplishments, and two faculty members were recognized as Outstanding Teachers at ISU this past year.
• The Department of Communication, Media, and Persuasion has seen five straight semesters of growth in student credit hour production in the major courses, and won the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), Regional Champions, beating seven other northwest region universities. This fall the Department will host Sean Illing, politics writer for Salon Magazine, and the Rwandan National Debate Team, both in October.
• The Department of Art Digital Lab (DADL) was completed this summer, completely refurbished from a raw space, with new furnishings, HVAC, and IT support. The DADL boast 13 new desktops dedicated to art and design with new technologies in 3D imaging, scanning and printing, and with «out of the box» hardware, including Sprout GoPro, a 3D scanner, and a new resin printer – a Formlabs II high resolution machine.
• The Department of Political Science revealed talent this year with 12 undergraduate students and 10 graduate students presenting at national and international conferences. The presentations were at the Midwest Political Sciences Association conference, Gender and Sexuality in Everyday Life conference, Pacific Northwest Political Science conference, Western Social Science Association conference, and the Association for Borderlands Studies conference.
• The College of Arts & Letters has created 11 new endowed scholarships to support students in the fine arts and humanities, and social and behavioral sciences.
• This year Arts and Letters will continue our outreach to our surrounding communities through the successful Liberal Arts High program that provides opportunities for shared learning to occur between Arts & Letters faculty and high school students and teachers. Last year, this program reached over 800 high school students, and this year the College will add to this program an Arts & Letters Road Scholar program. Arts & Letter is very committed to serving the needs of our regional, national, and international student body.
College leadership continues to be proud of its Arts & Letters family, and we anticipate another great year of high quality instruction, innovative research and creative activities, and selfless service to our community.
Thank you for making the College of Arts & Letters and ISU your home!! Happy Start to the New School Year!
