Cornerstone: the newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 1996

              The  Newsletter of the  College of Arts and  Sciences
Volume 5, Number 1  ■ Fall  1996
A Note from the Dean
his is the fifth annual issue
of Cornerstone and the first
not to have Dean Ross C
Murfin pictured on page
one. After 14 years at the University of Miami, Ross moved on to become provost and
vice president for academic affairs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It is a
position of major responsibility at a fine
Cuniversity. Those of us who know Ross
.'now that SMU made a wise choice. We are
excited for him that his talents have been
recognized, but we will miss his leadership
and friendship.
So the picture you see is mine. I'm Paul
Blaney, and I am proud to serve the College
as interim dean. I've been on the faculty of
the University's Department of Psychology
since 1977, serving also as associate dean of
the College of Arts and Sciences since 1990.
As interim dean, my responsibility will be to
keep things running smoothly while a national search is conducted and to maintain
the College's commitment to excellence in
teaching and scholarship.
Let me share a few facts with you in
order to put the College of Arts and Sciences
into perspective. The College awards about
800 bachelor's, 70 master's, and 50 doctoral
degrees annually. It has more than 250 tenured and tenure-eligible faculty (plus another
50 or so full-time lecturers and research
Cacuity) distributed across 16 departments.
,ach year between 20 and 40 outstanding
young scholars are interviewed for the eight
to 12 tenure-eligible faculty positions open
that year in the College. It's a large and
complex operation.
When we interview these young scholars, our goal is to recruit the most promising
individuals who are
available nationally—even internationally—and often
we come away
from our searches
with the sense that
we have landed the
most outstanding
person available in
a given field. The
real proof comes in
the teaching they
do—and the scholarship they generate—in the years
that follow.
In this vein, a
further comment
about the photo on     |nterjm Dean Paul Blaney
this page: Though
the person has changed from prior years,
the backdrop is the same—the dean's office
in the Ashe Building. In fact, though you
can't really tell from the photo, even the
books—many of them—are the same. That's
because it is a tradition for faculty, upon
publishing a book, to present the dean with
a copy, which then becomes part of the
dean's library. For the first time, this issue of
Cornerstone has included a list of books our
faculty have published over the past few
years. The quality of these volumes is indicated by the presses that published them.
And the number of
books is impressive,
especially when you
realize that most
scholarship in the
natural and social
sciences is published
in journals rather than
in book form. A
glance at the list will
give you a sense of
what kind of work is
produced by our
carefully recruited
members of the fac-
g ulty. Enjoy this year's
| centerfold.
I The College
I faces a number of
challenges, and one I
hope to address this
year pertains to E-mail and Internet access.
The College has been generally cautious
about computer-related investments; while
others have regretted not "waiting till the
price came down," we've usually been
spared such regrets: we've waited. But it is
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