IRVINE: SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES OFFICE OF THE DEAN

Dear Humanities friends and colleagues, I look forward to this spring quarter as the quintessential time of renewal. I enjoyed teaching my first class here this week and the lively interaction of students from four different programs, an invigorating exercise in practicing our interdisciplinary aspirations on the ground. I've also been very impressed by the quantity and quality of the lectures, conferences and events many of you have worked hard, and continue to work hard, to organize for our mutual enrichment. I am excited to work with all of you more closely as we continue to strengthen the School of Humanities and build a bright future for the transformative scholarship and teaching for which we are known nationally and internationally. To help us move forward, I am formally announcing today a comprehensive planning initiative for the School, with the aim of developing a strategic vision and plan for the School by the end of this quarter that can then serve as the basis for concrete implementation and reconstitution in the next academic year. Building upon last quarter's external review (whose final report I anticipate receiving imminently), we will reconsider the entire organization of the School from top to bottom. Are we organized in the best possible ways to advance our larger research and teaching mission in the swiftly changing environment of contemporary higher education? Do we have the right mix of programs and coursework for today's students? Where do we need to stand firm and where do we need to innovate? These are hard but vital questions if we want not merely to survive as the liberal arts core of a major research university but to thrive as the leading edge of the campus in negotiating the future of education, in defining new directions in scholarship, and in creating new models to integrate teaching, research and service. I invite you all to participate in these discussions and be part of the School's future development. The urgency of these discussions takes place, to be sure, against the somber backdrop of the ongoing budget crisis of the university, but the reconstitution effort we are undertaking is not simply to be understood as a passive response to financial uncertainty. The current crisis is far too great for further trimming or for shrinking with or without dignity. Rather the challenge involved is how to think and organize ourselves differently in a rapidly changed world, how to reclaim the relevance of humanistic investigation in a society that all too often thinks only of the bottom line, and to reposition the School for maximum success down the line. To this end, I will be appointing an ad hoc advisory committee for the reconstitution of the School of Humanities. The committee will be charged with rethinking the basic

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parameters by which the School pursues its research, teaching and service missions and making concrete recommendations for further study and possible implementation. The committee will also be charged with addressing workload inequities in the School and finding inventive solutions for long-held School-wide aspirations. I am currently soliciting recommendations for membership on the committee, and would appreciate your candid suggestions no later than Monday, April 15. I will also shortly be issuing a prolegomenon to a strategic plan as a document to help spur broader, more out-of-the-box thinking and discussion. Through the Council of Chairs and Directors, individual units will be also asked to reconsider their own strategic plans in the context of the wider needs of the School, the campus, and the region. Finally, I will be announcing a series of open, public forums as well as targeted group discussions to engage all of you according to your collective expertise in the best interests of the School. Let me thank all of you in advance for your warm welcome to UCI and for your input into the strategic planning initiative. Yours,

Georges Van Den Abbeele Dean, School of Humanities Cc: Chancellor Michael Drake Sue V. Bryant, Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Clark, Vice Provost for Academic Planning Herbert P. Killackey, Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Meredith Michaels, Vice Chancellor for Planning and Budget Mary C. Gilly, Chair, Academic Senate