Dean Barbara O. Korner's College of Arts and Architecture Fall College Meeting Presentation, Creative Synergy for Our Future, given on October 30, 2007
If each of us in this room would take a few minutes to reflect on why we have devoted our professional lives to higher education, I suspect that we would come up with similar reasons. Most of us are in higher education because we believe that increased knowledge allows us to rewrite our life script and thereby increase our choices. By empowering students to rewrite their scripts, we believe we can make a difference. As long as we focus on the goal of making a difference, we can set aside daily frustrations and accomplish more together than would be possible with only individual efforts.
For the next few minutes, I want to share with you why my first five months here have confirmed my sense during the interview process that this was the best dean’s job in the country and that working together with you, there is much we can accomplish together in the weeks, months, and years ahead. It is the synergy of the people here at Penn State University that called me from the Florida sunshine to return to a wintry climate. Since my arrival on June 1, that synergy shines forth in a variety of ways.
First, there is a synergy that comes from the support of the leadership of the University. We may not have all the resources flowing that you would like to have, and there may be particular instances of dissatisfaction with senior leadership, but having worked at other major research universities in Missouri and Florida, I can assure you that less of my time is spent laying the foundation for basic advocacy of the various disciplines represented in this College. “They” get it here, and by “they” I mean not only the president and the provost, but other deans and vice presidents. Other deans and directors are interested in partnering with A&A on new curricula and research. Just yesterday (on October 29) I had time on the University Park deans’ meeting to share a selection of our events and encourage other deans to go to our website calendar to find options that will enhance other curricula and provide opportunities for alumni and donor events outside of athletics. The offerings we have through the Center for Performing Arts and the Palmer, add greatly to those offered by our academic programs. President Spanier encouraged all present to follow-up and use arts and design programs as venues for building support and wider awareness of Penn State’s variety and excellence.
There will always be additional work to be done in terms of helping others understand the role that research in our disciplines can play alongside cutting-edge scientific research, but our college is gaining ground. We will have more and more opportunities to be at the table of research discussions in significant ways in the future. Please let Dean Nadarajan and your unit head know some of the ways in which you would like to interact with others across disciplines.
This central support for Arts & Architecture was evident at my first Academic Leadership Council meeting in June. This is the group of University Park deans and chancellors of other campuses that meet monthly. At that meeting, the Provost handed a chart tracking patterns in faculty positions for every campus and college over the last 8 years. A&A is at the top of the list for new tenured faculty positions at University Park. The only college that has more was IST—which wasn’t a college until after 1998.
Beyond the central support, there is a second type of synergy that comes from the leadership within the College—the associate deans, the directors and heads of academic units, and the leaders in key support areas. You are blessed with a team of leaders who understand the delicate balance between advocating for their individual programs and advocating for the good of the whole. They all respect that achieving this balance is not an easy task. You have a group of people working on your behalf who understand that we are all in the hot air balloon together; when the balloon rises, we all go up with it, but it only takes one well-aimed bullet to crash the balloon and keep us all stuck on the ground.
This leadership group works hard to wrestle with and find creative ways to maintain the balance in various areas of the College and you will find balance as a key theme in our upcoming strategic planning discussions. One area of balance we are working on is that between interdisciplinary areas and the core areas that represent traditional disciplinary strengths. As we work to make headway in research funding in interdisciplinary collaboration, we also want to enhance research in traditional fine arts, design and performing arts research. As of October 1, we have increased Dr. Randy Ploog’s position from ¾ to full time and added a component for grant research and facilitation for some of your individual research projects. With a Ph.D. in art history and considerable experience in grants with museums, Randy will bring much needed expertise in this area. You should be hearing from Randy soon as he sets up meetings to determine areas of interest and works to match some of you with opportunities.
We are in the process of searching for an Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Outreach and applications are being accepted. Dr. Sue Haug is heading that search committee. I want to say a special word of thanks to Dr. Craig Zabel, who has continued his service in that role as well as serving as department head for Art History. Dean Zabel has made things run much more smoothly and those of us in the college leadership team appreciate all he has done during a time of transition. Thank you, Craig.
Beside the synergy of the teams of leaders in the University and the College, there is the synergy of the friends and alumni who support our programs with their time and money. In the last few months, I have begun to build relationships with these people. It’s invigorating to see the commitment our alumni have to engage with our programs. Many of them give generously and we hope to encourage them to give even more generously in the future. And there is particularly good news on the giving front. Our College’s annual fund-raising goal for 2007-08 is $2,800,000. We have just finished one quarter of this year and the total raised to date is $2,300,000. Much of this is due to the continued generosity of our primary donor for the Stuckeman Family Building. Also encouraging about this news is that we have added 4 Trustees Scholarships in addition to other contributions to a variety of scholarship funds. One donor who has annually given $10,000 to a college wide scholarship decided to give $100,000 this year, which will significantly boost the spending power on that scholarship.
The fourth and most important synergy I wish to mention today is the synergy accomplished by the engagement of the faculty with each other and with the students. The energy one feels coming from the classrooms and studios in the visual, design and performing arts is contagious. This fall we welcomed 265 new freshmen, 83 new graduate students and 20 new faculty members, creating a total of more than 1700 students and more than 200 faculty in the college.
There is much to celebrate this new academic year:
Students in outreach all over the world—
- Architecture and Landscape Architecture students were part of the multi-year, multi-disciplinary team that earned 4th place in the Solar Decathlon competition held on the Mall in Washington, D.C.;
- In addition to the nine theatre students or alumni performing on Broadway this summer, alumni Allen Moyer was nominated for a Tony Award for his Scenic Design of Broadway's Grey Gardens. Ty Burrell is currently co-starring with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton on television's BACK TO YOU.
- This summer, as they have bi-annually since 2001, the Department of Landscape Architecture offered a course where advanced students provide pro bono landscape architectural services to agencies as a means of creating community with others in the Czech Republic. Through work carried out by the students, the program has facilitated eight projects in various locations. Penn State students gain a greater understanding of the Czech people as they learn how Czechs negotiate the daily challenges of democratization, development, and economic expansion. The Director of the Czech Protected Landscape Areas Administration offered a summary of the value of this program. “It was a fascinating and rare opportunity to learn from each other. Together we built a long, multi-lane highway bridge across the Atlantic.”
- This past year, music students traveled a great deal: The Concert Choir went to England, large ensembles to Pittsburgh for the President's Concert in Heinz Hall, Double Reed Ensemble to their national conference in NY state, the Trombone Choir and Glee Club to the state music educators conference and Double Bass studio to their national conference in Oklahoma. And for those of you who have never traveled with a double bass, it’s much worse than taking a set of golf clubs on a trip. As Director Sue Haug said when providing me this list: that's just the tip of the iceberg.
As a newcomer to the College of Arts and Architecture, it has been my great joy to experience the collaborative energy that crosses boundaries on so many fronts. Many of you are collaborating with the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in its multidisciplinary Moments of Change initiative, helping the Palmer Museum to celebrate the acquisition of “St. Sebastian Healed by an Angel,” generously donated by alumna Mary Jane Harris. If you haven’t been over to see it, I encourage you to do so. The events and campus wide seminars around both Moments of Change and theatre production of Pentecost represent remarkable cooperation and collaboration among the Palmer, the School of Music, the Center for the Performing Arts, the School of Theatre, the Department of Art History, not to mention the wide range of programs outside our college who will be participating in the various lectures.
Two new faculty members illustrate the way collaboration can lead to new directions in individual creative research. David Celento, architecture, and Del Harrow, ceramic art, met for the first time during the new faculty orientation in August. Both are interested in digital modeling and digital fabrication. By the end of their first week here, they were exploring their mutual interests. By the end of the second week, with the assistance of Associate Dean Guna Nadarajan, they had submitted a grant to work together at the prestigious European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands. I just learned earlier today that their project has been selected and they will be off to the Netherlands to complete a residency there.
I had an enjoyable time at the retreat with architecture faculty just before the semester started. One of them mentioned to me that he wished there were possibilities for interaction with the students and faculty in theatre around design projects. I logged that for future reference and sure enough—during one of my drop-in times with individual faculty, a theatre professor mentioned to me that she wished there were more opportunities to engage architecture students and faculty in theatre design projects. As I often say, a leader’s main job in facilitating interdisciplinary projects is to create safe places for people to play together and get out of the way and let the magic happen.
We can’t celebrate everyone’s work today, but I want to mention some individual faculty projects that are noteworthy, because synergy does come from celebrating our individual as well as our collective achievements:
- Brian Curran, from art history had a new book published by the University of Chicago Press this past spring. In "The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy", Prof. Curran uncovers the deep roots of ancient Egypt in the Italian Renaissance.
- Fang Chen, graphic design, recently had two of his entries selected as winners in the Good 50x70 Poster Competition, held in Milan, Italy. This international competition focuses on major social issues. Because of his outstanding work in poster design, Prof. Chen has also been selected as the honor laureate for the 15th biennial Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition this fall.
- Sculptor Cristin Millett, creates architectural installations that explore the spatial associations between the body and the cultural environment in which it is located. She is currently working on Teatro Virtuale in collaboration with the University of Padua in Italy, where the oldest anatomy theater is located. She is reconstructing the theater in 3D on the computer in order to allow people to virtually ‘walk’ through the space.
- Velvet Brown, associate professor of music in tuba and euphonium, is an administrative fellow this year in the CIC Academic Leadership Program. In addition to her active solo, chamber, and orchestral music performing career, she is becoming known as a jazz artist, including a recent performance on NPR's Prairie Home Companion. She oversees a jazz tuba combo, which is performing tonight on "Tubaween" in Esber.
- Stuart Echols, assistant professor of landscape architecture, had his students on crutches and in wheelchairs, struggling to find their way around campus this fall in order to build the empathy an artist and designer needs to create spaces and places that work for people who have physical challenges.
There are many other stories we could celebrate of the alumni, faculty, and students of the College of Arts and Architecture. This small sampling of recent work reminds us all of the incredible talent and energy that is present in this room and throughout the College. You are making a difference in the world because of your commitment to mentoring and nurturing one another and new generations of scholars, designers, and artists. My job is to tell our story as effectively as possible to as many groups of stakeholders as possible. I commit to you that I will work with all my might to tell the story, if you will commit to me and each other that you will keep the story exciting—building on a great tradition, while pressing the boundaries of creativity and knowledge by looking to the future. We can keep the synergy growing if we will consider the five “C’s” of synergy: creativity, competence, collaboration, and conflict conducted with civility. (Conflict is necessary and valuable in our work together, but we need to conduct it with civility in a climate of trust and respect.) Such synergy is our mutual challenge to each other as we move forward to create an even better future together.
Fall College Meeting and Service Recognition
October 30, 2007
Palmer Museum of Art
Lipcom Auditorium 4:00 pm