Support for Intellectual Community and Creative Exchange

The community of scholars, scientists, and creative artists is undeniably a global one. Increasingly, intellectual and creative collaborations are taking shape among faculty located in disparate parts of the world. Electronic media and the more fluid exchange of information that they enable have contributed to this process, but direct personal interaction remains one of the keys to productive academic collaborations. To ensure that Arts & Sciences faculty can take part fully in the international exchange of ideas and pass its benefits along to our students, we must provide support for faculty travel, launch new exchange programs, and create more opportunities for faculty from other institutions to share their work with us.

• Create a New Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Fostering International Faculty Exchanges
• Expanding Guest Faculty, Guest Speaker, and Guest Performer Programs

Create a New Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences

We propose creating a new Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences to build on our longstanding tradition of excellence in these areas and strengthen the work of individual departments by creating a larger structure for intellectual exchange. The Center will promote individual and collaborative research within our own faculty; it will attract a steady stream of distinguished visitors; it will offer an inventive partnership between academic departments and the Library; and it will play a significant role in recruitment and retention. In collaboration with the Library, it will promote a series of regular events: working groups, lectures, symposia and lunch-time presentations. We envision a program of internal fellowships. These fellows will be expected to participate in ongoing activities and to present the progress of their work at some point during the year of the award. Undergraduate students will be brought into contact with the faculty and their research; there will be opportunities for undergraduate research fellowships and internships sponsored by the Center. Public outreach will be a foundational mission for the Center. Finally, eminent visitors invited to participate in the activities of the Center will give greater circulation to our research and establish new circuits of intellectual exchange.Goal: Create a new Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences with a rigorous program of research, teaching, and public outreach.

Fostering International Faculty Exchanges

Just as students benefit from opportunities to study abroad, faculty who work overseas can gain important perspectives on their work, build ties with new communities of researchers, and return with experiences that enhance their ability to engage students in the process of discovery. The College proposes to establish relationships with foreign institutions to create an international faculty exchange that would allow for one-to-one exchanges of faculty with a select group of international partners. Students at U.Va. will be exposed to a wide variety of international faculty, while our own faculty will be enriched by the chance to spend a semester or a year living and working abroad.Goal: Create an international faculty exchange program with at least 10 faculty participating annually by 2010.

Expanding Guest Faculty, Guest Speaker, and Guest Performer Programs

Many programs in Arts & Sciences, especially the smaller humanities departments and the arts departments, do not have the resources to invite faculty from other institutions to visit as guest lecturers or performers. The opportunity to bring in visitors for a few days, a week, or even a semester enhances intellectual community and can build interdisciplinarity. The College should provide a more substantial and predictable source of funding for visiting faculty programs targeted to the departments who need it most, and who can most benefit from it.Goal: Provide an additional $100,000 per year to support guest faculty and performers in targeted areas.

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