Dean S Office Response To

College of Arts & Sciences

Dean’s Response to Self Study Report of the

Department of African American Studies

December 20, 2004

The Department of African American Studies Self Study report provides an excellent beginning for the review of the department’s achievements and goals. We thank the Chair, Dr. Charles Jones, the Chair of the Self-Study Committee, Dr. Cora Pressley, and the department faculty for the time and energy this endeavor required.

The Dean’s Office notes with approval the impressive development of the department and its faculty since its initial inception a decade ago. The historical narrative detailing how the department developed from a vision to a functioning program with administrative structures, faculty, space, and a BA degree in African-American Studies is extremely helpful perspective as we undertake this first program review of the Department of African American Studies. We particularly appreciate the review of the laudable goals that were laid out at the department’s inception, and we applaud the departmental faculty, staff, and students in meeting many of these goals.

The upcoming visit by the external review team provides the department and the Dean’s Office with an excellent opportunity to review the progress of the Department and to sharpen our vision for its future. To this end, we will focus here on the goals and objectives put forward by the department in its self study and leave decisions about new resources until the action plan is formulated during later steps in the program review process. Overall, the Dean’s Office is pleased with the direction that is plotted in the department’s goals and objectives and agrees with many of the recommendations in the report. In particular, we strongly support the development of a master’s degree African American Studies. We encourage the department’s faculty to move forward towards its establishment. Targeting the research productivity of the faculty and increasing external funding for research and scholarship are also important targets in the context of the establishment of the graduate program. The Dean’s Office is also pleased that the Department will continue its emphasis on community outreach.

We focus below on several points where we believe that further information and analysis would be useful as we plan for the department’s future. We hope that the external review team will be able to help us gain greater clarity concerning these matters.

First, we would agree fully that the Department should develop a master’s degree in African American Studies. However, the self-study does not fully address how its proposed focus capitalizes on current faculty strengths. Within this context, it would be helpful to have more specificity in terms of direction of faculty needs. In particular, it would be useful to determine how the current core and associate faculties’ areas of expertise contribute to the particular areas of scholarship needed to grow the master’s program. The contributions of the associate faculty have been discussed with respect to their instructional roles but not to their roles in the development of the master’s program. The Dean’s Office encourages the department to consider how they might weave the expertise of the current faculty together as it moves the graduate plan forward. We believe the opinions of the external reviewers could be of significant help as we sharpen the conceptualization of the emphases in the new master’s program.

Second, as the MA program is developed, the Dean’s Office anticipates that new faculty hires may be warranted. We think, however, that the program needs to more fully implemented before it is clear how many and in what areas new faculty strength is needed. Given the current fiscal constraints, we will be faced with difficult decisions about the timing and areas of new faculty hiring. Therefore, a fuller discussion about what areas we might target hiring and how these hires might best be timed relative to specific achievements in program development is crucial.

Third, the Dean’s Office agrees that additional assistantships will be needed to recruit and retain its new graduate students. It would be helpful to consider how the graduate student assistantships would be structured in relation to faculty research projects as well as the specific instructional needs of the department.

Fourth, with respect to the expansion of external funding for research and scholarship, the Dean’s office would like to see this expansion placed in the overall context of the department’s current faculty as well as their future faculty. We would also like to encourage the department to consider how their community outreach initiative might be linked to the scholarly expertise of the current faculty.

The Dean’s Office again congratulates the Department of its impressive strides over the past decade, and we thank the Department of African American Studies for this report. Its progress bodes well for the future. The Dean’s Office looks forward to the external reviewers’ visit and to working with the Department on an action plan that will make their goals achievable in the next five years.

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MaryAnn Romski, Associate DeanDate

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Lauren B. Adamson, Dean Date