News Briefs, February 1985

Faculty Salaries Up  7 Percent

Faculty salaries have risen an average of 7.3 percent this year, a new Chronicle of Higher Education survey has found.

And because the rate of inflation con­tinues to slow, college and university professors are making modest headway in regaining the purchasing power they lost during the 1970s, when inflation outpaced raises.

Money for those faculty raises is coming from tuition increases and state bud­ gets that generally are more robust than in recent years.

The survey results show that the aver­age salary of full professors is up 6.9 percent, while for associate and assistant professors, the increase is 7.6 percent. The increases for those at public and private institutions are similar.

College Enrollments Were Stable This Fall

College and university enroll­ ments are holding steady this fall, ac­cording to the Chronicle of Higher Educa­tion.

Observers expect the total enrollment to be close to last year’s record of 12.46 million. Preliminary results from a new survey sponsored by the Association Council for Policy Analysis and Re­search indicate that the figure is essen­tially unchanged from 1983.

Public institutions have a slight in­crease; enrollment at independent insti­tutions is stable; and degree-granting proprietary institutions are noting slight losses, the survey indicates.

Ellis Island Restoration

Work is un­derway to restore the main building at Ellis Island. The $40 million project is supported by donations to the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation and co­ ordinated by the National Park Service, which administers the island.

According to the architects, the tile-vaulted registry room and other public spaces in the building will be fully re­stored. The ground floor baggage area and railroad ticket office and the sec­ond-floor registry room will be restored to the way they were in 1918–1924 and used for exhibitions and interpretive tours.

Architectural details in the two wings of the building will be preserved among the modern facilities that will be con­structed for research and visitor serv­ices. The west wing will feature a com­puter genealogy center where visitors may trace the history of relatives who passed through Ellis Island as immi­grants. A center for oral history will enable people to study and contribute to the spoken record of American immi­grants preserved on tape. This wing will also contain a library and reading room, The east wing will have theaters, muse­ um space, food and sales service areas.

The initial phase of design and con­struction is scheduled for completion in 1986, the Statue of Liberty centennial year. Final restoration is hoped to be completed by 1992, Ellis Island’s cen­tennial year.

Encyclopedia of Cleveland His­tory

American Historical Association past Vice-President of the Teaching Di­vision, David D. VanTassel, has em­barked as editor of a very interesting local history project.

The Encyclof1edia of Cleveland History, a major project in urban history, is a group effort to publish a comprehensive history of Cleveland, Ohio. The Encyclopedia will include information about Cleveland’s industries, political evolu­tion, cultural life, ethnic groups, and transportation systems, as well as the groups and individuals involved in the city’s history.

The talents of dozens of scholars as well as interested amateurs, all specializ­ing in different areas of urban history, will contribute to the Encyclopedia. A general history of Cleveland, the Ency­clopedia should neglect none of the areas of interest to scholars, laymen, or teach­ers.

The Encyclopedia will be a 1 million-word work containing over 3,000 arti­cles. The articles will include both inter­pretive essays on major aspects of the city’s history as well as shorter, fact-filled sketches of institutions, individ­uals, and events. Indexes and cross­ referencing will add to the utility of the work. It is hoped the Encyclopedia will serve as a model for scholars examining urban development, as well as give Clevelanders an accurate source for lo­cal history, and be a valuable tool in the classroom. For further information, write Encyclopedia of Cleveland His­tory, Department of History, Case West­ern Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106.

NEH 1985 Summer Seminars for Col­lege Teachers

The National Endow­ment for the Humanities is pleased to announce that seventy-six seminars for college teachers will be offered during the summer of 1985. Each year, the Summer Seminars for College Teachers program provides teachers at under­graduate and two-year colleges a unique opportunity for advanced study or re­search in their own fields or in fields related to their interests. In 1985, places will be offered to 912 participants at forty-three different institutions across the United States and one institution in Paris, France.

Each of the twelve participants in a seminar will receive a stipend of $3,000 to cover travel to and from the seminar location, books, and research and living expenses. For eight weeks during the summer, participants will work under the direction of a distinguished scholar and with colleagues in an area of mutual interest. Participants will have access to the collections of a major library, will discuss a body of common readings with their colleagues in the seminar, and, outside the seminar, will pursue individ­ual research or study projects of their own choosing and design. Seminar topics are broad enough to encompass a wide range of interests while being cen­tral to the major ideas, texts, critical concerns, and approaches of the hu­manities.

Copies of the NEH brochure describ­ing the content of each seminar are available from the Public Affairs Office, Room 409, NEH, Washington, DC 20506. Deadline for applications is April 1, 1985. Detailed information about the subject matter and require­ments of individual seminars and about the availability of housing, and applica­tion instructions and forms, are avail­able directly from the seminar directors. The following is an abbreviated list of seminars, but please write the NEH for the complete list:

History

John H. Coatsworth, “Economic His­tory of Latin America, 1760-1960,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.

Albert Craig and Harold Bolitho, “Japan’s Nineteenth-Century Transfor­mation,” June 24-Aug. 16, c/o Harvard­ Yenching Institute, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Alexander Dallin, “Major Controver­sies in Twentieth-Century Soviet His­tory,” June 24-Aug. 16, Department of History, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.

Jack P. Greene, “Social History of Colonial British America, 1607-1763,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, The Johns Hopkins University, Balti­more, MD 21218.

Barbara Hanawalt and Lawrence M. Clopper, “Lay Life in the Late Middle Ages,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, Indiana University, Blooming­ton, IN 47405.

Michael H. Hunt, “The US-China Relationship in Historical and Global Perspective,” June 17-Aug. 9, Depart­ment of History, UNC c/o Summer Session Office, 418 Lewisohn Hall, Co­lumbia University, New York, NY 10027.

Kenneth T. Jackson, “American Ur­ban History: Cities and Neighbor­hoods,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, c/o Summer Session Office, 418 Lewisohn Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. (This seminar is open only to teachers in two-year col­leges.)

Morton Keller, “American Political History in Comparative Perspective,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254.

Wm. Roger Louis, “End of the British Empire,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712.

Edward E. Malefakis, “Comparative History of Southern Europe Since 1800,” Department of History, c/o Sum­mer Session Office, 418 Lewisohn Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.

Afaf Marsot, “Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World,” June 17-Aug 9, De­partment of History, Rm. 6265, Bunche Hall, University of California, Los An­geles, CA 90024.

August Meier, “The Black Protest Movement in Twentieth-Century America,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242.

Daniel S. Smith, “Family, Individual, and Society in American History,” June 24-Aug. 16, Department of History, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60680.

Leonard M. Thompson, “Race and Political Mythology,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, c/o Yale Sum­mer & Special Programs, 53 Wall St., New Haven, CT 06520.

Henry A. Turner, “Fascism as a Ge­neric Phenomenon,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, c/o Yale Sum­mer & Special Programs, 53 Wall St., New Haven, CT 06520.

History and Philosophy of Science

Asger Aaboe, “Exact Sciences in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” June  17- Aug. 9, Department of the History of Science, c/o Yale Summer & Special Programs, 53 Wall St., New Haven, CT 06520.

Everett Mendelsohn, “The Social His­ tory of Modern Science,” June 24-Aug. 16, Department of the History of Sci­ence, Science Center 235, Harvard Uni­versity, Cambridge, MA 02138. (This seminar is open only to teachers in two­ year colleges.)

Robert S. Westman, “Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution,” June 17-Aug. 9, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Gender Roles Program

The Rockefel­ler Foundation announces the second year of the Program to Explore Long­ Term Implications of Changing Gen­der Roles, a grant program for projects to improve understanding and recognition of gender role changes in work and family patterns.

The purpose of the program is to encourage attention to gender role changes through support of research projects that address the social, psychological, political and/or economic phe­nomena associated with the rapidly changing status of women. Projects may examine factors underlying such changes or analyze ways in which policy may respond to these changes. The Foundation seeks to support projects with small and moderate sized budgets. Most grants will be in the range of $15,000–$30,000.

The competition is open to women and men around the world who have completed their professional training. Scholars and practitioners from the so­cial sciences, humanities, law, journal­ism, health and natural sciences are en­couraged to apply. Awards cannot be made for the completion of degree training, for curricular projects, the writing of fiction or poetry, or for projects offering direct services to indi­viduals. Proposals involving more than one investigator or more than one institution are welcome.

There are two deadlines for submission of proposals, March 15, 1985, and September 15, 1985. The final decision on awards will be announced approxi­mately two months after each deadline. Please send inquiries to: Gender Roles Program, The Rockefeller Foundation, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036.

Preparing Humanists for Work: A Na­tional Study of Undergraduate Intern­ships in the Humanities

In October 1983, the Washington Center began work on a national survey and study of internships in the humanities, support­ed by a grant from the National Endow­ment for the Humanities. A report  on the study, released this past fall, was authorized by Carren O. Kaston, Director of the NEH Study of Internships in the Humanities; and James M. Heffer­nan, Executive Director of The Wash­ington Center.

The study is the first to focus specifi­cally on internships in the humanities. The humanities were defined as En­glish, American studies, history, art his­tory, philosophy, classics, and modern foreign languages, the humanities disci­plines most often offered as undergrad­uate majors. Nearly 9,000 departments and central offices at the nation’s 2,006 baccalaureate-granting institutions were surveyed regarding why they provide humanities students with access to internships—or why they do not. The audience for the report consists of edu­cators, administrators and professionals concerned with the future of postsecon­dary humanities education in the Unit­ed States, as well as faculty interested in implementing or improving undergrad­uate internships in the humanities.

Internships are structured, out-of­-class learning experiences that include a substantial work component, and they may be taken either full-time, or part­-time with concurrent course work. Work experience gained as part of a teacher education or certification pro­gram is not included in the definition of an internship. Neither is assistance with a course or research performed to assist a professor in a department.

Internships for undergraduates have been popular since the 1960s in certain fields with obvious connections to non­academic employment, for example, po­litical science and journalism, but have been less well accepted by faculty in traditional humanities disciplines. Ac­cording to returns from the sample, however, the 1970s and early 1980s saw explosive growth in internship activity in the humanities, despite a general return in the last few years to a more straightforward academic approach to education. Since 1975, the Washington Center, a nonprofit educational organi­zation, has provided an academic in­ternship program that places college juniors and seniors from around the country in government, business, cul­tural, and public interest organizations in the nation’s capital.

The increased interest among hu­manities faculty in work and learning experiences for their undergraduates has coincided with a severe decline in the employment opportunities formerly available to such students upon gradua­tion. Concerned for the precarious posi­tion of humanities studies at colleges and universities nationwide, the Wash­ington Center entered into discussions with the Office of Planning and Policy Assessment at the National Endowment for the Humanities about the kinds of access humanities majors have to intern­ships. It was felt that if humanities facul­ty could know what their peers else­where were offering undergraduates in the way of structured, supervised work experiences, they might possess an effective tool for strengthening the posi­tion of their own humanities programs. In providing additional funds to com­plete the project, the Rockefeller Foun­dation was moved by a similar concern for the position of the humanities in American life and higher education. One of the priorities of the report, therefore, is to highlight how partici­pants feel about the vocationalism implied by internships, given the tradition­ally more scholarly philosophy of the liberal arts education.

Many humanities faculty believe that it is appropriate for them to concern themselves with their students’ worries about what they will do with their edu­cation once they graduate. Yet they sel­dom meet with people in government or the private sector to discuss employ­ment opportunities for their students. They are uncomfortable with the con­cept of experiential education and un­certain about the application of the lib­eral arts outside of academe. Well de­signed internships can promote practical understanding and mutually beneficial relations between humanities faculty and the world off campus. It is hoped that the breadth and variety of internship activities emerging from this report will invite dialogue among facul­ty about ways in which internships can “fit into” and complement studies in the humanities.

After a brief discussion of the survey population and the representativeness of the sample, the report focuses on the questionnaire findings. Questionnaire A was returned by those who do not provide humanities students with access to internships. Questionnaire B was re­turned by those who do provide access to internships.

The second part of the report repre­sents a series of ten case studies illustrat­ing the ways in which humanities stu­dents most commonly secure access to internships. The case studies make more concrete and meaningful some of the data analyzed in the Questionnaire B narrative.

The third part of the report suggests some principles of good practice. It compares findings in the two preceding sections with recommendations for good practice advanced in material pre­pared for the major professional organizations in the field of experiential learning: the Council for the Advance­ment of Experiential Learning (CAEL) and the National Society for Internship and Experiential Education (NSIEE).

Available under separate cover is a Directory of the departments and cen­tral offices in the sample that provide humanities majors with access to intern­ships. Faculty interested in obtaining information about internships may use the Directory to contact other faculty in their geographic area or in their disci­pline who have had experience with internships. The Directory will also function as a reference source for edu­cators and employers seeking to initiate effective internship relationships.

For a copy of Preparing Humanists for Work: A National Study of Undergraduate Internships in the Humanities, write The National Society for Internships and Experiential Education (NSIEE), 122 St. Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605. For the companion Direct01y of Undergradu­ate Internships in the Humanities, write Modern Language Association of America (MLA), Customer Service, 62 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10011.