Faculty Announcements

Faculty Announcements

February 19, 2010

1. Updates on faculty and administrative searches: We have offers out to candidates for our positions in Economics and Business, and Theatre Arts. As of this afternoon, we have completed the three on-campus interviews for the Dean of Curriculum and Educational Effectiveness position. Please submit your evaluation forms to my office by Monday if you attended one or more of the colloquia. We have two additional candidates doing on-campus interviews for our position in English during the next two weeks.

2. Updates on task forces:

A) Post-tenure review – Andrew Mullen, Paul Willis, and Patti Hunter have agreed to serve as a data-gathering task force this spring to help us know what other schools have in place for post full-professor or post-tenure review of faculty. They will report their findings back to me and I will be asking next year’s faculty council to use that information to oversee the drafting of a plan for us next fall. My hope is that we will have a proposal to assess and vote on next spring, with implementation in the fall of 2011.

B) Biblical and Theological Foundations of Diversity – This group has met three times and will meet again in early March to review a first draft of a statement. After revisions, we will be sending a draft to the Diversity Committee of the Board of Trustees for their review of it at their May meeting. Based on their feedback, we will make further revisions between May and October when a final draft will be presented to the whole Board.

C) Global Initiatives Task Force – This group has also met three times this year and will meet again at the end of March. Its work has focused on developing a set of student learning outcomes for global education at Westmont, evaluating what priorities we have in choosing locations for future Westmont programs, and assessing the particular qualities of Cairo, Israel/Palestine, and Istanbul as sites for Westmont study abroad programs. The president and provost will be seeking to make a determination of where the first living/learning center will be situated in the next few weeks. Again, the target date for running our first program at that new site is spring 2012.

3. Update on enrollment: As you have heard, our enrollment this spring is remarkably high given where we thought we were going to be. The two explanations for that fact are a higher number of new students (mostly transfers) who began in January and a record setting retention rate of over 98% from fall to spring. It was our highest retention rate in the last 25 years. Even more astounding to me is the fact that that rate was 99.1% for our male students – 461 out of 465 male students returned! Thanks to all of you for helping to make that happen.

4. Update on construction and plans for vacated spaces: As you can see, good progress continues to be made on Phase One construction. We are planning to have dedication ceremonies for the new Observatory and the new Athletic fields in May when the Board is here. As for Winter and Adams, we anticipate that faculty will be able to move into their offices in those buildings during next fall, with classes beginning in the new buildings in January. January 2011 will also see the beginning of the removal of many of the temporary buildings from campus. It will also be when we begin to address the critical space needs of three academic departments: Music, Theatre Arts, and Biology. From January through August of 2011 we hope to do significant renovations of several existing spaces to meet the needs of these faculty and students. Specifically, plans approved by the President last week call for the Reynolds Gallery building to be converted into office and rehearsal spaces for the Music Department; the Music Department will be vacating its spaces in Porter Hall, allowing the Theatre Arts Department to have expanded office and storage spaces, as well as an opportunity to convert Porter 4 into a new rehearsal space and Porter 3 into a new seminar space. Music will also be vacating Hubbard Hall, allowing it to be renovated into a new faculty/student lab research space for Biology.

5. Speaking of Biology, I want to alert everyone to Jeff Schloss’s installation into the T. B. Walker Chair in the Natural Sciences next Friday, February 26. Faculty will march in regalia in the morning. Please be outside the gym by 10:15 that day to line up. Afternoon events will include a lecture by Jeff, followed by a panel discussion.