Boston College plans to create approximately 20 new faculty positions as part of its search to fill as many as 44 faculty positions, announced Provost and Dean of Faculties Cutberto Garza recently.
The majority of the newly created positions will be classified as tenure or tenure track.
Along with the newly created positions come the appointments of history professor David Quigley as inaugural director of BC's Institute for Liberal Arts (ILA) and John Spinard, BC '84, MBA '98, as executive director for budget, policy, and planning in the Office of the Provost.
"The distribution of new positions among the University's academic departments and professional schools that are not subdivided into departments will be in direct response to the professional schools' and the College of Arts and Sciences' priorities; these, in turn, are based primarily on BC's strategic plan," Garza said.
The faculty search plans come as a part of the fulfillment of the seven directions of the Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan will act as the University's institutional and academic blueprint for the years to come.
One of these directions is committing Boston College to becoming the leader in liberal arts education among American universities.
"The hope with the ILA is that it will bring together folks working across the liberal arts to think of ways of developing undergraduate student programs and research opportunities to use the great strength we have in the disciplines across the liberal arts to bring those together in new interdisciplinary ways to create something more rewarding for undergraduates an elevate the place of liberal arts at BC," Quigley said.
For the '08-'09 academic year, the ILA will have an active presence through the Lowell Humanities series. The series will present 10 to 15 humanities lectures throughout the year, bringing in writers, intellectuals, and scholars to speak at BC. "We want to build on the great work the Lowell series has done over the years, but also think of ways to partner with classes, like undergraduate core classes, so these speakers will have a deeper connection to the undergraduate experience," Quigley said.
The ILA will also focus on research programs, research centers, and symposia on various projects, like having informal working groups for seniors working on their theses so they can find a community of interested faculty and undergraduates.
Quigley hopes that with the creation of the ILA, faculty will be encouraged to create new classes or new sequences of classes, and "add to the intellectual vitality of all of our lives at BC. The success of the ILA is going to depend on the imagination and the participation of a range of different BC voices," Quigley said.
One of the other seven directions, developing and implementing a student formation program that will be a contemporary model for colleges and universities committed to student formation, is highlighted with the debut of the new online advising system for undergraduates. Another, building on the strengths and reputations of BC professional schools to establish leadership in critical professional areas, is brought into focus as BC's graduate school rankings rise in the US News & World Report's '09 America's Best Graduate Schools rankings.
Garza said that other area schools' plans in terms of new searches for faculty members for the '08-'09 academic year are not yet available. The directions of the Strategic Plan seem to be less about reacting to changes in other universities and more about taking an internal look at BC and improving it from within.
"The hope is, based upon the language and vision of the Strategic Plan, to position BC as a national and international leader in liberal arts education," Quigley said. "We want to make it clear to other universities that while liberal arts education may be losing popularity and support in other settings, it remains at the heart of a Jesuit institution like Boston College. The ILA will help BC make it clear that BC values the humanities and the liberal arts and allow us to say something distinctive about a Boston College education."
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