Humanities Express

From the Dean

A couple years ago, I spoke at an event in Cincinnati sponsored by an alumnus of the College of Humanities. During the reception that followed, I engaged in a conversation with a young woman who identified herself as a 2004 graduate of the Department of English. Early on in our conversation, she expressed her surprise at my having been introduced as the dean of the College of Humanities; she asked if it was a new college. I informed her that it was not and that, as an English major, she was a humanities graduate. At that point, she became visibly confused and stated that she was certain that she had gotten her degree from the College of Arts and Sciences. I quickly explained to her that she had received her degree in arts and sciences, but only added to her puzzlement when I went on to inform her that Ohio State did not have a College of Arts and Sciences. While I cannot be certain, I suspect that my further attempt to clarify this seeming organizational conundrum explains why her next act was to pull a tin of Excedrin from her purse.

My rehearsal of this incident is not designed to belittle the alumna for her lack of knowledge of the administrative structure of the university. In fact, I suspect that the administrative structure of the university beyond major departments remains pretty much invisible to most students. Although students may not always be consciously aware of administrative structures at the university, these structures are nevertheless important, especially those that delineate academic boundaries. In an important sense, they determine much about the kind of intellectual experience that students can have at the institution. This realization was in large part responsible for the provost's recent decision to reorganize arts and sciences at Ohio State by establishing a single College of Arts and Sciences with three divisions. The decision was supported by a comprehensive review of the current structure of five colleges of the arts and sciences which found that the current structure did not allow for the kind of quality liberal arts experience that our students deserve.

While the reorganization of the arts and sciences should not seriously disrupt life for faculty or students at the departmental level, it will lead to fundamental and profound changes in the kind of intellectual experiences that both can have at the university. It is anticipated that it will significantly enhance opportunities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching and research and maximize the strengths of all the academic units within the arts and sciences by allowing them to take full advantage of the natural synergies and connections that already exist between them. And for liberal arts graduates of Ohio State, they will finally have a degree in arts and sciences from a College of Arts and Sciences.

For those interested in the specifics of the reorganization, I invite you to visit onCampus where you will be able to find an informative interview with the provost on the reorganization of the arts and sciences.

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