April 15, 2003
Columbian College Plots New Course
Leadership Team Focuses on Building Community, Academic
Excellence
By Greg
Licamele
(This is the first in a series of articles about initiatives at the
Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.)
William Frawley believes that one of the most important forms of academic
currency is time. “When you look at what faculty really want —
beyond the basic support of the institution — it is unencumbered
time — time to think, write, prepare classes, and study. Time is
a very valuable commodity in academia.”
As dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS), GW’s
largest academic unit, Frawley has spent his time well over the last
nine months.
During this period, the CCAS leadership team has crafted unique plans
to position the college as a community focused on challenge, discovery,
and engagement of students, faculty, and staff. The resource of time
will be spent in focused, productive, and creative ways.
Initiatives have been developed to: highlight areas of academic excellence;
further support graduate assistants; encourage student connection to
the University, especially during the first year; focus on faculty members
and their research; and, as Frawley says, give some substance to terms
that have become fashionable in higher education.
“Frankly, fashionability can often lead to emptiness, so we’re
trying to have GW be the leading-edge University that puts teeth into
such ideas as ‘engagement,’ ‘inquiry-based education,’
‘competencies,’ and ‘research-teaching integration,’
” Frawley explains.
“We believe that the Columbian College is the ‘core academic
engine’ of the University,” Frawley says. “One thing
I have been trying to promote is a sense of academic community and to
take seriously the notion of full involvement.”
Since his arrival last year from the University of Delaware, Frawley
has examined all aspects of the Columbian College, looking for ways
to meet the demands of its students and faculty and building on such
successes as the Hewlett Foundation courses this year while continuing
and expanding a series of Dean’s Seminars offered on a limited
basis for the last few years. This comprehensive, community-sense of
planning begins at the top of CCAS.
“I’ve been trying to promote an environment where the administration
of the college involves a mutual, interactive, and integrated connection
to those whose lives we make decisions about,” Frawley says.
“Dean Frawley has given us a sense of a coherent vision,”
says Katherine Keller, assistant dean for undergraduate programs, and
one of two new assistant deans appointed by Frawley. (The other is Nina
Mikhalevsky, assistant dean for academic programs and planning.) “It’s
a sense of movement in a direction that many of us have talked about.
Now, it’s practical, substantive support.”
CCAS Selective Academic Excellence
One CCAS initiative established to provide meaningful support is selective
academic excellence, a process the larger University community recently
completed. The University selected seven areas of study that will receive
priority funding over the next three-to-five years. Among those selected
were four CCAS programs: history, human evolution, political science,
and public policy/public administration.
In addition to the seven proposals chosen, Executive Vice President
for Academic Affairs Donald R. Lehman encouraged all deans to commit
individual school funds to further advance many of those programs that
were not selected at the University level.
Frawley responded by reallocating resources toward a number of CCAS
initiatives, or, “Selective Excellence II.” Using CCAS existing
strategic plans and selective excellence proposals as a guide, Frawley
has allocated funds for a major international conference on museums,
cultural property, and the law (museum studies); a conference on health
psychology (psychology); a world writers’ residency program to
attract visiting international writers by working with cultural affairs
officers of embassies (English); a conference on urban sociology (sociology);
and a broad-based effort to advance and promote the sciences.
“When I came here, I realized that all departments had already
taken stock of who they were, where they were going, and what they wanted
to do,” Frawley says. “A lot of them had submitted academic
excellence proposals, so I asked myself, why waste that enormous effort?
I read all the proposals and tried to pull out things that would be
consequential and would also be doable.”
The Department of Museum Studies’ national conference will examine
the state of the law and professional policies of museums and archives
in the United States on ownership, access, and control to intangible
cultural property held in publicly available collections, says Ildiko
DeAngelis, associate professor of museum studies. An advisory committee
comprised of anthropologists, museum and archive professionals (including
representatives of the Smithsonian), legal scholars, and others has
been formed to set the conference agenda.
“The goal of the conference also would be to formulate principles
important to collecting organizations for use in current discussions
about the development of new international conventions on the protection
of the world’s intangible heritage of traditional cultural activities
and expressions,” DeAngelis says.
Another comprehensive way selective academic excellence is being addressed
is through graduate student support packages. After a thorough review,
CCAS redistributed approximately $175,000 in graduate teaching assistant
and graduate fellowship packages beginning this fall to the following
departments: history, hominid paleobiology, anthropology, museum studies,
political science, public policy, American studies, English, forensic
science, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies. These redistributions
were independent and in advance of the University’s selective excellence
effort, which also enhanced some of these programs.
“The faculty is strong, and research is active, but because of
the demand for graduate students, it’s very challenging to get
graduate students,” says Michael Moses, associate dean for graduate
studies. “I think departments see this reallocation as a positive.”
Frawley says planning at the graduate level complements the variety
of initiatives for undergraduates and faculty. “You really can’t
make reasonable decisions about the undergraduate experience without
considering the larger research and teaching environment that includes
graduate-level education.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
