The liberal arts are diverse in their disciplinary focus on the human experience worldwide. The traditional departments in the school reflect that role, as do the growing number of undergraduate and graduate programs and the institutes and centers that serve a wide variety of academic and civic communities. The multi-disciplinary nature of the IU School of Liberal Arts (SLA) provides an important basis for its faculty to work collaboratively in research, teaching, and service with colleagues in many other units across campus, nationally, and internationally and also with community partners locally and regionally to contribute significantly to the university-wide initiative of achieving excellence and prominence in the life and health sciences.

The most significant investment of the IU School of Liberal Arts is in its faculty.  The accomplishments of faculty members, with the critical support of the administration and staff, underscore their contribution to the mission of the campus. Outstanding achievements of the School of Liberal Arts are commonly presented in the areas of teaching and learning; research, scholarship, and creative activities; and civic engagement—areas of excellence identified in IUPUI’s Academic Plan and supported by the Enrollment Shaping and Signature Centers initiatives and Translating Research into Practice (TRIP).

In the past academic year (2007-2008), the CTE initiative in African American & African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) has developed in extraordinary and exemplary ways that demonstrate not only excellence in research, teaching, and service, but also positive influence across campus, in the greater Indianapolis community, and internationally. After successful searches for three AAADS public scholars, who started their appointments in 2007-2008, all faculty in the program proceeded with plans for expanding the AAADS minor into a major. Although the proposed new undergraduate degree is designed to serve students at IUPUI broadly, it will also enable the best and brightest among them to pursue their interests in the field with course work and research in the newly approved graduate program at IU Bloomington. In part due to the interdisciplinary nature of the program and in part because of the outstanding faculty engaged in it, AAADS has made significant impact on the campus and beyond.

• Under the leadership of Professor Ronda C. Henry, Public Scholar of African American Studies and Undergraduate Research, the newly-established Olaniyan scholarships offer eligible students tuition and stipends to pursue a highly structured course of study, focusing on the lives, history, traditions, interests, and communities of people of African descent. The first cohort of Olaniyan scholars has been selected and their academic progress will be closely monitored, especially in terms of how the innovative curriculum designed for them, emphasizing research and internship opportunities, affects their retention and graduation.
• Professor Bessie House-Soremekum, Public Scholar of African American Studies, Civic Engagement, and Entrepreneurship, is the founding president and CEO of The National Center for Entrepreneurship, Inc., an experience that is shaping her applied research agenda at IUPUI. She was honored with the first Marcus Garvey Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship, which puts a very positive spotlight on the campus’s public scholar initiative.
• The school’s Millenium Scholar, Edward E. Curtis, IV, distinguished himself as editor of The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States (New York, 2008) and by his selection as a Carnegie Scholar (2008-2009). He delivered a lecture to Jordan’s Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies and Royal Scientific Society in Amman and he is also the lead faculty member for the summer study-abroad program in Jordan (Introduction to the Contemporary Middle East), a role that underscores how deeply the school values an international experience as part of the liberal arts curriculum.
• Another manifestation of the commitment to the internationalization of the liberal arts curriculum is based on the special relationship between IUPUI and Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya. While political unrest in Kenya prevented scholars and students from the IU School of Liberal Arts from following through with plans for research and teaching at Moi University, one Kenyan colleague, Gilbert Nduru, joined the geography faculty as visiting professor last spring. Plans are in place to continue the success of this first academic exchange with the School of Liberal Arts by hosting other Moi University faculty as a way of fostering collaborative research projects and teaching partnerships.
• A different aspect of the study-abroad course offerings in the School of Liberal Arts is the Hermano a Hermano program that Professor Rosa Tezanos-Pinto, a 2008 Boyer Scholar and Outstanding Female Faculty Leader, piloted last summer and directed again this summer. The Cultural Relationships and Global Interaction. International Service Learning in the Dominican Republic course is especially designed to provide students of African-American background an experiential learning opportunity with a focus on race and class in the Caribbean world.  The course has had a transformative impact on many, if not all, of the program’s participants.
• Professor Didier Gondola, who has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Kinshassa, Congo, imbues his courses in the AAADS and History programs with uniquely African and African diasporic perspectives. 
• At the 2008 Joseph Taylor Symposium, Professor Monroe H. Little, Jr., director of the African American & African Diaspora Studies Program, received the campus’s Excellence in Diversity Award, a fitting tribute to a faculty member whose efforts in making diversity count have been tireless, whose scholarship includes editing Joseph Taylor’s war diaries, and who presented remarks outlining Dean Taylor’s role at IUPUI and in Indianapolis at the dedication ceremony that renamed University College as Joseph T. Taylor Hall.

In addition to AAADS, other program initiatives stand out because of their interdisciplinary focus and their emphasis on collaborative research and cooperative partnerships, locally and internationally.

• Philanthropic Studies, the first Ph.D. program in the School of Liberal Arts, graduated three of its degree candidates.
• The development of Native American studies is led by Professor Larry Zimmerman, professor of Anthropology and Public Scholar of Museum Studies in partnership with the Eiteljorg Museum, and by Professor Johnny Flynn in Religious Studies.  Professor Zimmerman was recently awarded the inaugural Peter J. Ucko Memorial Award  by the World Archaeological Congress.  Professor Flynn has drawn attention to IUPUI’s leadership in Native American language education.
• The opening of a Confucius Institute on the IUPUI campus has created incentives for developing programs in Chinese studies—in response to demands from students and the community that will have significant impact on the internationalization of the SLA curriculum. 
• Similarly, program development in Arabic and Islamic studies has occurred as a result of student demand, reflecting the need of several federal government agencies for specialists in the Middle East and the greater Arabic-speaking world.
• In close cooperation with the newly approved and already fully implemented B.S. in Motorsports Technology in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, the new director of the Motorsports Studies program in the School of Liberal Arts, Professor Robert W. White (Sociology), spearheads efforts that will enable liberal arts majors to pursue a unique course of study in this multi-disciplinary field, including opportunities for distinctively Indianapolis-500-centered internships and car-racing-related international experiences.
• The program of Medical Humanities and Health Studies received new funding from the IUPUI Research Venture Fund that will allow both the Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses to expand their History of Medicine programs. William H. Schneider, Professor of History and Director of the IUPUI Medical Humanities Program, and Bloomington Professor Domenico Bertoloni-Meli will co-direct the new program, with participation from the IUB and IUPUI Departments of History, IUB’s History and Philosophy of Science Program, and IUPUI’s School of Medicine.
•  A considerable number of SLA faculty excel in the TRIP initiative of the IUPUI campus. Professor Susan B. Hyatt  is an urban anthropologist and a member of the Research for Neighborhood Action (RNA) group, which embodies the principles of TRIP. In addition, together with Professor Roger Jarjoura (SPEA), she is also leading a new effort to translate research into the practice of effecting social change and social action through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program a national initiative for which IUPUI will host the first conference in 2009.
• Among the several SLA institutes and centers (Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture; Center on Philanthropy; the Institute for American Thought, the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication, the Polis Center), the newly-formed Institute for Research on Social Issues (IRSI), under the guidance of Professor David A. Ford (Sociology), applied successfully for Signature Center status.
• The Center for Health Geographics received funding as part of the Signature Center initiative.
• The NIH awarded David Bell of the Department of Sociology a major grant for the study of “Networks of Heterosexual Risk and HIV,” a research project for which Liberal Arts professors Sandra Petronio (Communication Studies) and Carrie Foote (Sociology) are collaborators.
• The Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) began work on a three-year health literacy project funded by the Eli Lilly Foundation.
• The European Union Erasmus Mundus program approved the school’s participation in the Euroculture faculty-student exchange program.  IUPUI’s participation was organized by a collaboration of faculty, led by Professor John McCormick of the Department of Political Science

Among the school’s efforts to improve recruitment and increase retention, several advising initiatives stand out, particularly the creation of three new positions: Liberal Arts Undergraduate Advisor; Director of Recruitment, Retention, and Student Services; and Director of Career Services. In addition, the school participated in numerous revisions of its Gateway courses in efforts to enhance and ensure students’ first-year success and it doubled the numbers of SLA Themed Learning Community course and summer “Bridge” programs. Most important may have been the financial assistance the school offered its students, through scholarships and awards (exceeding $200,000 in the past year) and through active encouragement for pursuing work on campus for the many students who finance their studies with little or no third-party help.

Liberal arts students excelled in many ways.  Nate Bullock (B.A., Communication Studies, 2008) was the inaugural winner of the Curtis Oratorical Tournament and a 2008 Bob Orr Indiana Entrepreneurial Fellow.  Bullock is completing his fellowship at an Indiana technology company, Brightpoint. Caridad Ax (Political Science), Vanessa Fry (English and Communication Studies), and Caroline Wade (Communication Studies) received William M. Plater Civic Engagement Medallions for the depth and diversity of their commitment to serving their communities.  Finally, Megan Bishop (M.A., History, 2007) won one of two Distinguished Thesis awards from the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools.

Among the traditional measures of outstanding achievements, it is worth noting that the SLA faculty published 21 scholarly books, 21 book chapters, 103 articles in refereed journals, and 41 journal issues; applied successfully for $8,361,227 in external and internal grants (this includes the Center on Philanthropy and Polis); and received over a dozen national and international awards and recognitions for extraordinary accomplishments.