Faculty Notes

Book publications:

Mark Allister, English, ed., Eco-Man, with Jim Farrell, History, and Jim Heynen, English (Virginia).
John D. Barbour, Religion, The Value of Solitude: The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography (Virginia).
Gary De Krey, History , London and the Restoration 1659-1683 (Cambridge).
Jeanine Grenberg, Philosophy, Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption and Virtue (Cambridge).
Steven Hahn, History, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 (Indians of the Southwest) (Nebraska).
Joseph L. Mbele, English. Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences (africonexion).
Charles Taliaferro, Philosophy, Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and Religion since the Seventeen Century (Cambridge).

Scholarly publications and presentations too numerous to mention.

Promotions:

Karen Cherewatuk, English, promoted to Professor.
Karen Sawyer Marsalek, English, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
Anna G. Sabo, Norwegian, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.

Fellowships and Grants:

Jeanine Grenberg, Millicent McIntosh Flexible Fellowship for Recently Tenured Faculty (Woodrow Wilson Foundation), 2005-07.
Jamie Schillinger, Religion, NITLE fellowship on Islam and technology, Middlebury College, summer 2005.
Mary Trull, English, American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for 2005-06.
Colin Wells, English, NEH Summer Stipend, 2005.

Released Time and Summer Grants through the Faculty Development Committee:

Richard DuRocher, English (released time 2004-05).
Steven Reece, Classics (released time 2004-05).
Mary Trull, English (selected, release time 2005-06).
Steven Hahn, History (summer 2005).
Jan Allister, English (summer 2005).

Grant Applications:

Funding for a German House to Max Kada Foundation, August 2004 (declined).
Application to the “Difficult Dialogues” Program, Ford Foundation, to support EIN initiatives, April 2005 (preliminary application accepted).

Departments and Programs:

Dennis Hidalgo completed his year as St. Olaf’s Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence Scholar by teaching in the History Department and by work on his dissertation. The English Department hired St. Olaf’s second CSMP scholar, Carlos Reyes, from the UC Berkeley for 2005-06.
The Great Conversation program expanded to include two cycles of three sections, with six new faculty members and 114 incoming first-years from the class of 2009.
The History Department completed a tenure-track search in Modern Russian History and hired Anna Kuxhausen from the University of Michigan.
Two chairs and program directors completed their terms of leadership: LaVern Rippley in German and Eric Lund in the Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum program.
Mary Steen began a term as Chair of the English Department; Karen Achberger was appointed Chair of German and Irena Walter and Wendy Allen agreed to direct the FLAC program jointly in 2005-06.
L. DeAne Lagerquist (Religion), Gwendolyn Barnes-Karol (Romance Languages), and Edmund Santurri (Great Conversation) were reappointed to their leadership roles.
Mary Titus, English, was appointed Director of the CIS and Eric Lund, Religion, the Director of International and Off-Campus Studies.
The English Department and the Department of Romance Languages completed second year reviews.
The Dean’s Council approved tenure-track proposals for searches in 2005-06 from English and Religion.
The College nominated two junior and two senior faculty members for Summer Stipends from the National Endowment of the Humanities for the summers of 2005 and 2006.
The Dean’s Council selected Eric Lund, Religion (summer of 2004) and Mary Trull, English (summer of 2005) for residence at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
John D. Barbour delivered the lecture, “Tourist Traps and Guilt Trips,” to inaugurate the Martin Marty Regents Chair of Religion and the Academy, March 1, 2005.
Margaret Johnson retired as the Director of the World Languages Center after 30 years at the College; during the spring, an ad hoc committee formulated a vision for a job description for a new Director of the WLC. The use of the Video Studio of the WLC, including that of non-language areas, continued to grow.
The French Section of Romance Languages began a program review and will complete it during 2005-06.
Colin Wells, English, and Steven Hahn, History, designed linked courses for 2005-06 on the theme of vocation in early American history and literature.
Romance Languages completed work on a new Spanish major which was approved by the faculty; several new courses have been designed with more under development.
Jolene Barjasteh, Romance Languages, delivered one of the Mellby Lectures for 2004-05, February 24, 2005.
The Board approved the sabbatical proposals for 2005-06 of Mark Allister (English), David Booth (Religion), Michael Fitzgerald (History), James Hanson (Religion), Vicki Harper (Philosophy), Karen Marsalek (English), Dolores Peters (History), and Anne Sabo (Norwegian).
Eliot Wilson, English, received the Pushcart Prize for a poem.

Facilities:

After the go-ahead for the Science project, the Faculty Advisory Committee to the World Languages Center and the language chairs began planning for an intermediate life for the WLC: where would the WLC be, after the disappearance of the Annex, and can the Art Barn be saved and used for video work?
In the spring of 2005 a group of faculty and staff planned the physical and technological upgrading of Steensland to be a successful teaching space for the Great Conversation and other classes.

Students:

Several students devoted their summer of 2005 to three, pilot programs initiating undergraduate research in the humanities.
Karen Marsalek, English, organized the fourth Winter Will Power, a symposium on Shakespeare for undergraduates of area colleges.
Knut Christianson, a Norwegian major, and Rebecca Lofft, a Norwegian and English major, received Fulbright fellowships to study in Norway next year. Kathy Pospichal, a Spanish major, received a Fulbright to study in Chile.
Nancy Sampson and Mary Trull, English, received the Magnus the Good Award from the Center for Integrative Studies.

Remarks: For the Humanities Faculty 2004-05 began with the departure of Associate Dean Rick Fairbanks and the expansion of the Great Conversation program and ended with anxieties over the future of the World Languages Center. The entire faculty met once; the chairs and program directors met three times and the Faculty sponsored a book party to celebrate the appearance of six new books. During the summer of 2004, the Dean’s Council began planning for staffing for the 2005-06 school year. The Council revisited the chronic high enrollment numbers in the Humanities areas (as reported last year by Dean Fairbanks) by adjusting authorized numbers according to enrollment patterns within the faculty and by increasing the overall number of Humanities courses slightly. Then the Council accommodated the increase in Great Con sections and fixed on a plan for 2005-06 with far-reaching consequences for the Humanities: establishing the “rule of 19” which limits to 19 the number of students in key first-year courses (the Conversations, all FYWs, Religion 121s, and the History seminars). In addition, the Council set enrollment caps for EIN sections.

During this year I have learned to survive as an AD. Beyond the daily work I have devoted energies: to the issue of grade inflation in the Humanities, to the revamping of the stipend schedule for FLAC, to the academic review and enrollment management of off-campus Interims (as a participant on IDOCS), to the planning for new facilities and leadership for the World Languages Center, to the hiring of the CSMP scholar, to enrollment and staff planning for the “rule of 19,” and to the integration of all Humanities opportunities for course release and grants into the work of the Faculty Development Committee.

Concerning unresolved issues for the Humanities Faculty, I would name the uncertainty about space and location, as the College moves into the period of Science-Center disruption. The Humanities faculty, incorporating two previous divisions of the faculty and not all of the world languages of the College, sprawls over seven buildings: it is no easy task to bring cohesion among faculty and staff under such decentralized terms. But now as the Faculty faces the disappearance of a couple of its buildings and the prospect of temporary housing for several years, the issue of the identity of the Faculty is up for grabs: how are the world language departments related to the other departments of the humanities at St. Olaf, many of which are entrenched in enviable spaces? The question of a where for the WLC quickly becomes the where for the entire Humanities Faculty. Needless to say, there is a lot of anxiety about the next months and about the long range, physical location of the departments and programs within the Faculty. Finding a location for the WLC may be only the beginning of the trickier question whether one can construct an actual faculty without proximity.

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