Dean search begins with Marilyn Levine
Bob Bajek/Associate News Editor
Issue date: 12/1/09 Section: News
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The linguistic Levine was the first candidate for the dean of the College of Arts and Humanities to be interviewed by faculty Monday at the Dean's Conference Room in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.
Faculty questions
Levine, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Eastern Oregon University, was asked by Chris Hanlon, associate professor of English, how Levine would help the arts and humanities faculty to travel to help their research.
"You can't say that you want professional development and not support faculty travel to go to those opportunities," Levine said.
She said there are multiple routes in achieving a higher traveling stipend. At EOU, the faculty union could negotiate with the administration to try to get scholarship stipends in the summer.
She said the EOU administration already has to distribute $180,000 a year toward sabbaticals, scholarship stipends and in conjunction with three different areas she oversees.
Scholarship stipends, she said, can be centrally given, and then a faculty committee should be making the decisions and the criteria on who gets the money and the standard rules.
John Allison, professor of English and president of Eastern's chapter of University Professionals of Illinois, wanted to know Levine's experience in making serious personnel decisions and what her expectations are on teaching, research and community service.
"My standards are to look at the individual in their own light and their own creativity of professional development and one has to be guided by the criteria of the department," Levine said. "The key is, I do that at the start. When I recruit a faculty member, I am very clear with them about promotion, tenure and retention from the interview."
Levine also told Allison the third year review is crucial for a faculty member. She encourages a proper mentoring and guidance for the tenure track faculty.
History professor Newton Key questioned if Levine would have a common message on learning at the department, college or the university level. Levine replied Eastern has to start as a community with a goal, and then set up expectations at the program level.
"One of the things that is very strong here is you have clearly articulated goals, a very nice philosophy statement for your general education," Levine said.
Janet Marquardt, professor of art history and women's studies, said deans are the ones who are the intermediaries between the faculty and the administration. She wondered how Levine would represent the faculty.
"My nickname is 'The Closer,'" Levine said. "The dean has to look for the opportunity and advocate. I will advocate for my faculty for my programs and am ready to risk my job every week and it is been that way for five years. I don't know why I'm still standing."
Levine's goals
Levine expanded on how she could assist with the professional development issue.
"One has to explore the travel funds in the other funding and what the tradition is," Levine said. "Some places like my current institution is written into the contract the amount, then the faculty committee determines how the money is distributed.
"I could propose something like that to the current administration if that were the will of the faculty. It will require several conversations to formulate an idea."
Levine said if she were dean, she would also look into examining the other priority areas with the faculty, like better book allocations or equipment for artists.
Integrative learning
President Bill Perry's plan for integrative learning impressed Levine in her discusses with him.
"I think President Perry has a wonderful view; we spent quite awhile speaking about that," Levine said. "Some of that is programmatic. You want to have different courses and so on and so forth to work together. Some more team teaching in senior seminars would be great."
But, Levine said she would like to see integrative learning at an earlier level.
"Maybe Eastern would want to have more portfolios from students that would be more reflective than integrative," she said. "That would be one method."
Asian influence
Linguistics is Levine's forte. She can speak Chinese and French fluently, speaks Korean "passably" and is studying Japanese and Latin.
She is a history professor who has published works concerning China and was the first non-Chinese president of the Historical Society for 20th Century China.
To improve and expand Asian studies, she said the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia is a good resource to prepare professors on how to teach Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese issues.
"That is an initiative that I might be able to get started here," Levine said.
The second way to expand Asian studies, Levine said, is to gauge the student interest in study abroad and gauging relationships.
The third is to consider cross-pollination in terms of the strengths of the arts and humanities.
"Why not send the chamber choir there or other faculty and students to actually collaborate with Chinese young people?" Levine said. "Then maybe the students would gain the interest and the language and the history could be built up."
Leadership
Levine said the dean's role with regard to faculty is to advocate.
"I am a really strong advocate on understanding the common message," Levine said. "I had a wonderful conversion with President Perry, and he told me how important professional development was for him. I would approach him and say, 'If that is true, wouldn't you allocate $100,000 for professional faculty development?'"
Levine told the crowd that Perry said he allocated the money for professional development, but it is a question of where does the money go.
Levine has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. She received her master's degree in history from the University of Hawaii and her bachelor's degree from San Diego University.
Past positions have included chair of the division of social sciences at Lewis-Clark State College from 2001 to 2005 and professor at Lewis-Clark since 1989.
At EOU, she has expanded programs, lobbied the administration to have the arts and science department budgets to be cut to 90 percent instead of to 80 percent, and led interdisciplinary focus groups including rural health and Native American awareness.
Steven Brown, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kans. will be on-campus on Dec. 3 and 4.
Bob Bajek can be reached at 581-7942 or rtbajek@eiu.edu.
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