All Emory faculty are invited to the first Deans’ Pop-Up of the 2019-2020 academic year, set for Wednesday, Oct. 16. The event will be from 3 until 5 p.m. in Phi Gamma Hall on the Oxford College campus. Shuttles will be available to transport faculty between the Atlanta and Oxford campuses.
The registration deadline is Monday, Oct. 7.
Provost Dwight A. McBride will welcome attendees of the pop-up, which will focus on the theme “Cross-School Collaborations to Enhance the Emory Undergraduate Experience.”
Panel members will include Dean Douglas A. Hicks of Oxford College; Dean Michael A. Elliott of Emory College of Arts and Sciences; Tasha Dobbin-Bennett, assistant professor of art history and studio art at Oxford College; and Peter Höyng, associate professor of German studies at Emory College.
“Provost McBride, Dean Elliott and I are excited to partner on this pop-up,” says Hicks. “We encourage colleagues from the Atlanta campus to visit Oxford and discuss the ways that Emory College, Oxford, Goizueta, and Nursing are collaborating on our undergraduate program.”
Dobbin-Bennett and Höyng are co-directors of the Mellon Humanities Pathways Project, which is supported through a grant Emory received from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in March 2019.
During the pop-up, Hicks and Elliott will explore the Mellon Pathways Project as one example of the power of collaboration across schools, including the success that Emory’s four undergraduate schools have had with enhancing the student experience from admission through coursework to personal and career reflection over four years.
The grant provides comprehensive support to humanities faculty for the development of new and enhanced curricula, classroom experiences and course innovation.
“This grant will impact students in powerful ways through the faculty’s development of curricula and changes to existing courses in ways that explicitly prepare students to translate what they are learning in their coursework to post-graduate pathways,” says Elliott. “This challenge requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. As deans, we trust the creativity of our faculty to push this initiative forward in ways that will shape undergraduate education in the humanities for many years to come.”
A growing body of data suggests that employers seek abilities that are developed through education in the humanities. According to employer surveys conducted by the Association for American Colleges and Universities, four out of five employers state that all college students should acquire broad learning in the liberal arts.
“We seek to equip our faculty to confidently articulate how what we teach in the humanities can transfer to the professional realm, from the ability to analyze complicated documents and data, to making nuanced arguments informed by historical and cultural context to communicating effectively,” Hicks says. “Ultimately, we seek to empower undergraduates in the humanities to plan for their futures with confidence. These initiatives are designed to pursue this goal through the focused enhancement of humanities education and courses.”
The “One Emory” strategic framework calls out the centrality of faculty excellence, innovative research and a thriving academic community to Emory’s ambitions of being recognized as an eminent research university.
Deans’ pop-ups were introduced earlier in 2019 as another channel to showcase the breadth of faculty work, much of it interdisciplinary in nature, taking place at Emory. Goizueta Business School introduced the series by hosting “The Business of Health Care,” which featured faculty speakers from both Goizueta and the School of Medicine, followed by the schools of public health and nursing hosting “Promising Strategies to Promote Faculty Excellence.”
“Coming together as a community doesn’t happen by accident,” McBride told attendees at the inaugural pop-up in February. “It doesn’t happen by fiat. You have to practice it. It is like muscle memory. At first, it may not be completely comfortable, but over time it becomes the norm, invigorating and exciting us intellectually.”