The Fall semester has been a productive one. In this interim report, I would like to give you a sense of academic activities that have been taking place on campus since my report at the end of last summer. We continue to discuss the College's strengths and weaknesses, and how to focus efforts and resources to advance our core mission and develop those areas in which we can truly be the best. This includes the difficult task of reducing or streamlining some existing programs or procedures to focus upon those things that best serve our mission. I continue to believe that we must foster that which distinguishes us: the close, apprenticeship relationship between our faculty and students as the foundation for learning; our strong commitment to faculty performance and development in teaching; and a strong emphasis and track record in international and science education. To be sure, these areas implicate others. For example, as a crucial component of academic excellence, we have spent a considerable amount of time on attracting and retaining a more diverse faculty (and student) body.

Searches
We are conducting nine regular tenure track searches this year. Thus far we have interviewed to fill five of them, and the following individuals have accepted our offers: Brian Borovsky, Physics (Ph.D. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis); David Ellison, Political Science (Ph.D. University of California - Los Angeles); J. Montgomery Roper, Anthropology (Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh); Ben Gum, Computer Science (Ph.D Princeton). We are in the midst of interviewing for positions in Chinese, English (2), Religious Studies and Spanish. We continue to be quite happy with the quality of faculty members that we are able to attract and recruit. We stepped up our recruiting efforts with advertisements and mailings to try to emphasize the strengths of the college and community. It is always hard to determine whether these efforts are successful, but we think that they will help both in the short term, in attracting more applicants to current openings, but also in the long term, in making potential applicants and other readers aware of the strengths of Grinnell College.

Diversity Initiative
This summer and fall, the Executive Council engaged in substantial discussions with respect to ways in which we might be able to bring more ethnic diversity to the membership of the faculty. The outcome of those discussions was a number of meetings and activities aimed at enriching the pools of applicants with more diverse candidates. The dean's office and departments took action on these ideas. A second outcome was that we created a set of searches to fill positions of high curricular need, but where a position has not been authorized. In these searches, departments were encouraged to look for applicants who would fulfill the goal of adding diversity to the faculty, and then we would consider creating a new faculty position. Ultimately, there were eleven such proposals and nine were approved for advertising. Over the next two months or so we will determine if we have candidates who warrant creating a new faculty position.

Grinnell College is the administrative center for the Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence. That group has existed for about a decade, and recruits minority graduate students to dissertation fellowship or postdoctoral positions at member institutions. This year we were more aggressive in advertising and improved our World Wide Web and other presence. As a result the number of applications nearly tripled. This program has gotten national attention, with several recent mentions in the Chronicle of Higher Education and an upcoming article in the Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education. It is wonderful to have Grinnell College's name associated with this initiative.

Reviews of Faculty
Last year we conducted an unusually large number of reviews, and this year we have an unusually small number. During the fall semester we completed the reviews of ten faculty. They included interim reviews of six faculty and complete reviews of four faculty. Contract renewals include:

Christopher Connelly, Theatre - Two-year renewal
David Harrison, French - One-year renewal
Peter Jacobson, Biology - Two-year renewal
Mark Levandoski, Chemistry - Two-year renewal
Leah Rosenberg, English - Two-year renewal
Pablo Silva, History - Two-year renewal
Kelly Herold, Russian - Three-year renewal
Jeanne Janson, Education - One-year renewal
Dan Reynolds, German - Three-year renewal

Last spring, we began work on revising the procedure that faculty members can follow when they wish to ask for a reconsideration of a recommendation of the Personnel Committee. The old procedure had a number of perceived flaws and did not follow the guidelines set out in the AAUP manual. This fall the Executive Council recommended (in the form of an amendment to the Faculty Handbook) a changed policy to the entire faculty; that recommendation was adopted by the faculty and ultimately by the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

American Studies
Last spring, the two tenured members of the American Studies department proposed elimination of the American Studies major and department and replacing it with an interdisciplinary concentration. They argued that their program could better thrive in this reduced and more interdepartmental structure. The Executive Council and Curriculum Committee endorsed that proposal, in principle. This fall, a somewhat more detailed proposal was put forth from the American Studies faculty and was approved by the Humanities and Social Studies divisions, the Curriculum Committee, and unanimously by the entire faculty. I have appointed a faculty committee to develop the concentration, and hope that it is able to bring forth a full-fledged curricular proposal in time for approval during the spring semester. There are currently two tenured faculty members with appointments in American Studies: George Barlow who also has an appointment in English, and Kesho Scott, who also has an appointment in Sociology. They will retain their current positions and continue to teach courses in American studies half of the time, and in their home departments the other half of the time. In the recent past there have been two similar joint appointments (currently vacant) in American Studies/Anthropology and American Studies/English. Those faculty positions will not be filled.

End of Course Evaluations
Two years ago, the faculty voted to abolish an unsatisfactory and very costly end-of-course evaluation system and to institute an experiment using a short, six-question numeric and short-text answer questionnaire to be used in all courses. After a fairly thorough analysis by our Institutional Research Office and consideration of the Executive Council, the Council recommended to the entire faculty that this system be regularized, and that the information from the evaluations be made available for use in the reviews of faculty members. After considerable discussion, the faculty voted to approve this system. I believe that this is a good step, and that end-of-course evaluation has a role in reviews. I also believe that there is no simple measure of excellent teaching, and that we need to gather data from multiple measures. We currently achieve that in our faculty reviews by gathering fairly substantial review data from peers, and four different types of data from students (end-of-course evaluations, a survey of students who have completed courses in the past three years, a survey of advisees, and a report prepared by the Student Educational Policy Committee). I know of no other institution that puts as much emphasis upon or does a more thorough job of reviewing teaching than does Grinnell College. It is very time consuming, but a critically important task if we want to maintain our excellent teaching standards.

Grants
We continue to pursue grants in support of our academic program. I will save a long, thorough report for my annual report, but wanted to comment on three particularly important grant awards.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute made an award in August in the amount of $900,000 under the direction of Professor Bruce Voyles over a four-year period in support of the development of the biological chemistry major, summer student-faculty research and development of broader access to science by non-science majors, faculty professional development activities, science outreach to Grinnell-Newburg School District students in grades 4-8, and program assessment. This is a highly competitive program; we were gratified to receive this award. It will be very important to us in moving ahead as leaders in science education.

The National Science Foundation made an award in August in the amount of $651,885 over a three-year period under the direction of Professor David Lopatto in support of research involving students and faculty at Grinnell, Wellesley, Harvey Mudd and Hope Colleges. The research is aimed at clarifying the nature of authentic undergraduate research in science and mathematics and the processes and conditions by which such experiences contribute to learning gains (cognitive, behavioral, affective, social, and professional) over time. This award includes a substantial sub-recipient agreement with the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has recently provided $102,000 in support of a collaborative planning effort between Grinnell and Oberlin Colleges aimed at preparing a proposal for a longer-term effort to enhance the careers of faculty at these two liberal arts colleges. We join six other pairs of national liberal arts colleges that have received such grants. As we think about the changing nature of the roles of faculty members, and the changing contexts in which we operate, it will be very helpful to explicitly identify and explore new ways to support faculty excellence.

International Studies
The new Center for International Studies, established with Fund for Excellence support, started in August after more than a year of planning and consultation by the International Studies Steering Committee, a broadly-based group of faculty and staff. The mission of the Center is to publicize, coordinate, enhance and expand our already substantial opportunities for gaining international understanding, knowledge, and experience in the college community. Rather than focus the program on a new major or concentration, the strategy of the Center is to enhance internationalism across the curriculum, following the motto "Come to Grinnell--Explore the World." As part of that effort, in October the Center sponsored a symposium on "The Role of Geography in International Studies," to explore the key role of Geography as an interdisciplinary field with a global perspective. The IS Steering Committee argued that course offerings in geography and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) could become important in further internationalizing the curriculum. The Executive Council approved advertisements for two positions, one in Human Geography and another in Physical Geography or Earth Sciences, as part of the Diversity Initiative. Consultants from the Geography Department and Global Studies Program at the University of Iowa helped to develop job descriptions for these positions.

Because science faculty have had fewer opportunities for international experience in the past, the Center, in cooperation with the Grinnell-in-London Program, is sponsoring a faculty seminar in London during spring break 2001 that especially targets some of the interests of science faculty. Twelve of the twenty faculty participants selected are from the Science Division. The seminar, "London: Window onto the World," emphasizes interdisciplinary lecture/discussions and field trips with local experts on European Community and currently important policy issues dealing with genetically-modified organisms, mad cow disease, and immigration and immigrant communities. Many of the science faculty participants will visit science internship sites and science classes at London universities in order to help design opportunities for science majors on the new second semester Grinnell-in-London program, which will be initiated in 2002. We anticipate that many of these science faculty members will develop proposals for teaching in either the fall or spring semester London programs. In the past, science majors have had fewer opportunities than others for study abroad.

Other activities of the Center for International Studies include funding of several international scholar/visitors to team-teach or participate in spring semester courses; development of a database on faculty research and teaching interests abroad; and funding of faculty evaluation trips to several off-campus programs. A website for International Studies, which will link to all of the relevant programs at the college, is under construction. The Center works closely with the Director of Off-Campus Studies, the Director of Special International Studies, and the Director of International Student Services. Todd Armstrong, Associate Professor of Russian, has been selected as the Director of International Studies for a three-year term to succeed Interim Director Doug Caulkins, Professor of Anthropology.

Capstone update
By now, most of the College's academic departments have offered one or more Mentored Advanced Projects, or MAPs, which is the new name for capstone projects voted on by the faculty last spring. The MAP program is now halfway through the second year of a five-year trial period supported by a Fund for Excellence award. Some of the MAPs are carried out in the format of a seminar, but most of them take the form of independent research or creative projects closely supervised by a faculty member, either in the summer or during the academic year. Even the MAPs that take place within an upper-level seminar must place emphasis on a major project, carried out from beginning to end by the individual student. These projects can be located in any academic discipline, but they all share the same basic features: The projects are highly advanced; they culminate a sequence of previous academic work; they are intensively mentored by one or more faculty members; and they result in a high-quality academic product that is designed to be shared with an audience beyond the campus. External recognition for some of our early MAPs has already included a First Prize for the Best Undergraduate Paper at the Iowa Sociological Society last March; a prominent feature story last month in the Des Moines Register on Grant McCall's discovery of early stone tools in Namibia; an upcoming performance of original musical compositions at the 2001 International Haiku Convention in Boston; and a number of professional publications and papers given by MAP students at regional and national academic conferences. Considering that the program has been up and running for less than eighteen months, these results are remarkable. Achievements like these provide a wonderful kind of publicity for the College, showing prospective students and others the high quality of academic work done by undergraduates at Grinnell. The upcoming (Winter 2001) issue of The Grinnell Magazine features an article on MAPs, including profiles of students and their projects.

Cowles Visiting Artists
In the first full year of this three-year program, which is made possible by a grant from the Gardner and Florence Call Cowles Foundation, we have hosted a variety of accomplished visual artists, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers, poets, and actors, and one practitioner of ancient Chinese calligraphy. Their residencies ranged from two to six weeks in length. Many of the visitors helped us to make the most of the magnificent new facilities of the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. These visits were closely connected with exhibits at Faulconer Gallery, concerts in Sebring-Lewis Hall, or theater productions in the performance spaces of the Bucksbaum Center. The artists participated and led activities within a number of courses, in fields both within and outside the fine arts, offered by regular faculty at the College. Additionally, most of the guest artists in residence taught their own "short course" on a special topic not usually offered. These special "short courses" are highly popular with students and form an attractive tie-in with the public presentations (such as readings, plays, concerts, and exhibits) that showcase the visitor's work for the campus and Grinnell community. Under the Cowles Program, we have also begun to bring faculty members from the Iowa Writers Workshop on a regular basis to offer six-week creative writing workshops. This program offers Grinnell's undergraduate poets and fiction writers the almost unimaginable opportunity to apprentice themselves to teachers from the world's most renowned and prestigious graduate program in creative writing.

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