The summer in the School of Humanities is a quieter time than during the academic year. Though we have summer session classes and occasional summer gatherings, many of our students and faculty are away from campus. Summer is a key time for faculty to conduct their research, write, plan their classes — and of course, get some time to travel and refresh their energies for the busy year to come. Students are working summer jobs, doing research and writing, taking summer courses (often online from their homes) and spending time with their friends and families.
But beneath this quieter surface a lot is still going on in SOH. We close out our accounts for the previous year, plan for the coming year, repair and refurbish our facilities and other infrastructure, get our sizable transfer class oriented and registered for classes and make sure we are ready to launch the new academic year smoothly.
This summer in the dean’s office, I’ll also add, we had an exceptional task to accomplish. The School of Humanities is in mid-process of a ten-year review of the whole school and all its programs, mandated by UCI’s Academic Senate. In mid-August, after a full year of consultations and hard work by our departments and programs, we turned in a detailed, synthetic self-study for the review. In late October, a team of faculty from multiple institutions and from the spectrum of humanities disciplines will visit for three days, meet with a range of people in the school and on campus, and together compose a written report with observations and recommendations for our future consideration. It was a huge job to pull this all together, but it is in. With all the strengths of our departments, programs and research units laid out in black and white on the page, I am optimistic that we will have a productive and positive review this fall!
Tyrus Miller, Dean
UC Irvine School of Humanities