Feelings mixed over split

Melissa Christensen
Staff Reporter

Murmurs of concerns about future faculty-student ratios mixed with exclamations of praise for improved communication will accompany the applause at tonight’s inauguration of the Add Ran College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said Add Ran faculty members.

The fall 2000 semester marked the split of the former Add Ran College of Arts and Sciences into the Add Ran College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Science and Engineering. When the plan was announced, several humanities and social science faculty expressed concerns about limited funding and a loss of interdisciplinary emphasis.

Philosophy department chairman Gregg Franzwa said he is not optimistic that the funding concerns have been alleviated. He said a look at the tentative 2001-2002 budget shows only one incremental faculty position allotted to Add Ran. If the flat-rate tuition is implemented, faculty agree the number of students in the college will increase, placing a strain on faculty resources.

“If it turns out to be the case that those things are true, I don’t think Add Ran is doing very well,” he said. “We’re not making any real progress.”

Add Ran Dean Mary Volcansek said the college is not alone in its faculty budget crunch. She said only about 10 incremental faculty positions are available to the university next year.

“I don’t like it, but its hard to complain when we’re all punished equally,” she said.

Franzwa said the college is already strapped for classroom space and appropriate class sizes.

“It appears that everyone in Add Ran will just have bigger classes,” Franzwa said. “When that happens, the quality of instruction drops off.”

James Riddlesperger, political science department chairman, said he chooses to look at the possibility of one added position as better than none.

“The budget forecast suggested we do not have the funds,” he said. “That will be a challenge for next year.”

Volcansek said the forecast is not as harsh as it may seem because seven current vacancies in the college have been filled for the coming year. She also said more money will be available for part-time faculty, but that solution is only short term.

“Part-time faculty don’t provide students the same continuity (as full-time faculty),” she said. “I think the deans will continue to push for more real faculty across the university.”

Final budget decisions will be announced after the Board of Trustees meeting in March.

Despite funding concerns, several Add Ran faculty said the split has brought improved communication and intellectual cohesiveness to the college.

Peggy Watson, professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, said the first Add Ran faculty assembly in the fall was a testament to the success of the split.

“The dean shared what was going on in the university and listened carefully to what we had to say,” she said. “Everyone felt very comfortable.”

Volcansek was credited by several faculty members for the success.

“The college has been reinvigorated with the new dean,” Riddlesperger said. “The year so far has been one that has been well-received.”

English professor Richard Enos said the split has been beneficial to both colleges.

“Anytime you make a change, there will be natural concern and anxiety because it is the unknown,” he said. “One constant is that Add Ran is the heart and soul of liberal arts education.”

The inauguration will be celebrated with a lecture by Diedre McCloskey, a professor of human sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, titled “Bourgeois Virtue or How Capitalism and the Middle Class Lost their Standing but Won the World” at 6:30 p.m. today in Moudy Building North, Room 141. A reception will follow.

McCloskey, who often brings her dog, Jane Austen, to the lectern with her, was known as Donald McCloskey until 1995 when she began the gender transformation process. She publicly revealed her decision in an article, “Some News That At Least Won’t Bore You,” in a 1996 issue of Eastern Economic Journal.

McCloskey received her doctorate in economics from Harvard and holds a professorship at Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

Melissa Christensen
m.s.christense@student.tcu.edu