Under the leadership of Dean Robert Olin, the College of Arts and Sciences has established seven priority initiatives.
The Use of Technology to Advance Student Learning
The Internet, wireless technology, and software innovations provide many new and exciting ways to make a student’s learning experience richer, more productive, and, thus, more rewarding. Effective use of technology in the educational enterprise frees both student and teacher from task-heavy recordkeeping and delayed feedback enabling greater focus and time commitment to higher level, knowledge-based interactions in the learning partnership. A major goal of the College is to incorporate in-class and out-of-class uses of technologies in its curriculum in service to student learning. This initiative is supported by the etech division of the Office of the Dean.
Diversity in Our Academic Community
In the liberal arts, exploration and discovery is all. It is a point of pride and necessity with students and scholars of the liberal arts to approach the world around us with profound respect and appreciation for its marvelous diversity. This perspective informs our desire for diversity in our faculty and student population and in the perspectives that are part of our academic discourse. The College seeks to incorporate diversity into our daily activities as well as our long-range decision making. More about this important College commitment is available from the College’s Diversity Committee and Dean Olin’s liaison to this committee, the associate dean for multicultural affairs.
Faculty Support and Advancement
One of the greatest strengths of the College is its faculty. The College is committed to administratively nurture and support highly productive researchers, scholars, and artists; to provide opportunities for professional growth and development; and to reward and recognize excellence in research/scholarship, student learning, and outreach. The College also has a goal to increase faculty size by 50 tenure or tenure track members to bring the total to 410 by the year 2010.
Facilities
The physical facilities of the College of Arts and Sciences includes some 25 buildings at the heart of the University campus and elsewhere. These facilities span many periods of time from the recently constructed Shelby Hall, the state’s most modern science education and research facility, to beautiful historic structures rich with history and meaning. The College recognizes the great importance of having facilities that support state-of-the-art learning, research, scholarship, exhibitions and performances. A priority of the College is to enact measures to utilize each structure to its fullest and, particularly, to identify areas in need of long-range capital improvements and construction and to seek support for this.
Learner-Centered College
A Learner-Centered College focuses on the processes by which a student gains knowledge and understanding. These include active involvement in the learning experience, gathering and synthesizing information, using and developing critical thinking skills, and problem solving. Faculty seek not to passively instruct but to expand student understanding through an active learning partnership with the student. The emphasis is not on information delivery, but on facilitating understanding through dialog, frequent feedback, and direct involvement in the subject area. Regular, timely, and thorough assessment of student learning is a key component of the learner-centered college. A major goal of the College is to fully incorporate this paradigm into the college’s academic culture by addressing it in our curriculum, our assessments of student learning, and in faculty evaluations.
Student Learning Communities
Learning communities bring together individuals with common academic interests and learning objectives. These communities bring learning alive and extend learning beyond the classroom and friends and classmates debate, discuss, and explore topics together. Research shows that learning communities increase student success rates: the number of students who stay in school, grades, as well as satisfaction rates. Learning communities nurture intellectual and personal development and foster discovery and leadership. The College is committed to establishing a diversity of learning communities including participation in University Freshmen Learning Communities, a cluster of courses based on an area of interest; residential, “living-learning” communities; and professionally-based communities. The College’s student services website includes more information on learning communities.
The Cuba-Alabama Academic Initiative
The College of Arts and Sciences emphasizes the importance of global citizenship in all aspects of our enterprise. In addition to many other international activities, the College sees an important opportunity to practice this citizenship through the University of Alabama’s U.S. Treasury Department License for Cuba-related Travel Transaction, which permits travel to Cuba for the purpose of developing educational partnerships. The state of Alabama and the country of Cuba share much history as well as social and economic similarities. The College’s Cuba-Alabama Academic Initiative seeks to develop partnerships between University of Alabama and Cuban faculty and students in both education and research/scholarship.
Under the leadership of Dean Robert Olin, the College of Arts and Sciences has established seven priority initiatives.