Exceptional pedagogy is the foundation of a Willamette education. The University will build on that strength and reap many other benefits as the College of Liberal Arts adds 25 new faculty members over the next five years.

 

World Views Retires

For 19 years, Willamette introduced first-year students to the liberal arts experience through the World Views seminar. With a theme that changed every four years, the seminar focused on critical reading, writing and discussion. Topics have included Victorian England, modern Latin America, the contemporary Middle East and 5th century Athens. Most recently, students discussed War and Its Alternatives.

Faculty recently approved a new first-year seminar that retains the central goal of engaging students in the rigors of the liberal arts, but that replaces the collegewide theme with individually designed topical seminars. “The intensity of the seminar will be maintained,” says Carol Long, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, “but it was the faculty’s decision to broaden the choice of topics to give students more options.” The seminar will continue to be taught by tenure-track faculty, and class size will remain between 15 and 17 students.

A faculty task force will spend part of the 2005–06 academic year finalizing the details for the new seminar.

Alumni, we encourage you to share your memories of World Views and how it shaped your Willamette experience. Submit your comments to scene@willamette.edu.

With 39 departments and programs — including Asian Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies and American Ethnic Studies new this fall — CLA’s decisions about where to place new hires will be complicated. Some may consider the impending discussions so much “inside baseball,” but the outcome of those discussions has long-lasting implications for charting Willamette’s curricular future.

“Adding faculty is a rather complex equation,” says CLA Dean Carol Long. “It’s not about adding more sections of classes currently offered or about enlarging the student body. We will invite faculty who will enrich and diversify the curriculum and the intellectual life of the campus.”

The decision is about quality, not quantity — a key factor in Willamette’s growing national reputation. “Willamette has broken its own application record for three consecutive years,” says Long. “This represents a 71 percent increase in applications since 2002.” Each year the University receives more than 2,800 applications from first-year students alone, but is determined to hold the incoming freshman class to about 450 students. “We are enrolling better-prepared students, students who will do their part to challenge our current faculty and those who will join our community over the next five years.”

Willamette, like most universities across the country, faces the challenge of retiring senior faculty and recruiting, mentoring, and retaining the junior faculty who will one day replace them. The college currently has 127 tenure-track faculty members. By the year 2011, 15 or more will retire. Some departments are bracing for a more than 50 percent turnover in the next few years. In March 2004 the University was awarded an $800,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to help with “hiring ahead,” which will give senior faculty time to mentor junior faculty, thus ensuring the continuity of curricular planning and the outstanding pedagogy that is the hallmark of the Willamette experience. Hiring to fill these retirements will add to the influx of new faculty.

“Expanding the CLA faculty provides many benefits,” says Long. “These new faculty will allow us to change our normal teaching load from six courses a year to five. For the faculty, it means more time for pedagogy and more time to devote to research, scholarship and community service. The benefits to students are increased access to professors, a greater diversity of intellectual interests, 25 additional faculty advisors and a strong assurance that the current student-to-faculty ratio of 11:1 will be sustained or improved.”