Provost’s Forum (11/30/07)

Many issues remain on the provost’s plate, and thus, the college’s. Many events and accomplishments need to be recognized as well.

1) The provost recognized Friday, 11/30/07, as “AIDS Awareness Day” on campus, kicking off many special events around Columbia to raise recognition and prevention.

2) Task forces handling “Tenure Review,” “Rank and Promotion” and “Workload Adjustment” are all meeting and reviewing their program goals. The impact of all their efforts will impact issues associated with Columbia’s growth. In other words, “It’s not all about the numbers,” as in enrollment, enrollment increases, etc., he said. He stressed “qualitative growth” as being of paramount importance.

3) The college has landed hosting assignments for several upcoming, prestigious events which should raise our profile on many fronts. They include:

· The Southern Graphics Conference, in good part thanks to the hard work of David Jones of Anchor Graphics and our own Leonard Lehrer;

· ELIA, the European League of International Arts, whose conference will likely take place in 2010 and not before because of the scope of the logistics associated with it. The latter is expected to bring tremendous international recognition to the college.

· Columbia will also be co-sponsoring a conference of laureate scholars from Middle East nations, including Israel, Iran, Iraq and other countries, according to the Science Institute’s Zafra Lerman.

4) The college is looking to add as many online advanced placement workshops as is feasible and expects to see continual growth in this area as well.

In Q&A, the provost noted in response to questions that:

a) The college is not doing anything formally at the moment that he knows of to position itself to leverage the 2016 Olympics should they be awarded to Chicago, educationally or promotionally.

b) He is still seeking topics for future “Critical Encounters” issues.

c) For “J-Term,” between 45-50 classes are anticipated this year, broken down by about a dozen in LAS, 20 in FPA and the remainder in SMA. A unique co-curricular “J-Term” course between FPA and LAS, the “Art & Activism Cradle” project, will run this year. He continues to see “J-Term” as an opportunity to perform extra-curricular activity, international studies and partnerships and classes generally not in the mainstream of academic-year offerings.

Also, as opposed to offering classes for faculty during “J-Term,” he responded to a question that he prefer that faculty not teaching during “J-Term” use the time to perform Creative Endeavor & Professional Development work.

d) Asked if we were approaching or would ever approach online student class offerings to the level of a University of Phoenix, he noted that would likely be beyond our tech support capabilities at this time anyway. However, with an e-learning consultant now on board, the college is anticipating measured, appropriate growth in this area.

e) Director of Admissions Murphy Monroe noted, in responding to a question directed to the provost, that we are expanding our international outreach more than ever this year. Students from Columbia will also continue to study in Florence, Prague and at our partnering Dublin Institute of Technology.

In the Asian/Pacific Rim, Korea, Singapore and Kuala Lampur are among the targets for future recruitment efforts, he added. He also noted that we do have an “articulation agreement” with a Japanese institute and that foreign-language skills will subsequently become increasingly important for faculty.

He sees (no-cost) development of workshops in foreign languages for faculty to address this.

Also, the provost noted, the Admissions Office was the recent recipient of a professional association award for recruitment.

f) Asked about real estate and “space” in general, the provost noted we will take formal ownership of the 618 building (formerly Spertus) on Jan. 1 and we’re still leasing what is primarily office space at 218 S. Wabash. Anne Foley added that we expect to formally occupy the former Spertus property by January of ’09 and that Interactive Media Arts will be moving to the 916-1000 facility to accommodate its departmental growth.

Respectfully submitted,

Howard Schlossberg, Journalism Faculty

Treasurer/CCFO, x8904, hschlossberg@colum.edu