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December 8, 2006 > News > Humanities seeks external review

Humanities seeks external review

Dean discusses proposal for language departments merger

By David Brown | Thresher Editorial Staff

No merger between Rice’s language departments will happen before an external review, and the Hispanic Studies Department may opt out of a merger if it so chooses, Dean of Humanities Gary Wihl said Monday.

Wihl said he has received nominees for an external review committee and that he will meet with the French Studies, German and Slavic Studies, Hispanic Studies and Classical Studies departments separately in the next two weeks to determine details of how to evaluate the merger. He said he hopes to bring the committee to campus sometime in the Spring semester.

News that Wihl was considering a merger broke when Classics Department Chair Harvey Yunis sent an e-mail to the faculty of the four departments stating Wihl had asked Yunis to chair a new department joining the departments.

Wihl said he never intended for a decision to be made without extensive discussion with faculty. He said while some may have concluded that his idea was conceived to save money or limit the language departments’ stature, his only aim in the proposal is to improve the language departments, particularly in the area of graduate education.

“The only reason for undertaking this discussion in the first place is to strengthen and improve the language departments,” Wihl said. “That is the sole and overriding purpose for this discussion, and anything short of that would not be in the interest of the School of Humanities or Rice University or in my interest.”

Currently, only one language department, French Studies, has a doctoral program, while 5 of the 10 non-language Humanities departments have one.

Wihl said this disparity between departments should be fixed by pooling language faculty into one department — and one comparative literature Ph. D. program.

“Faculty who teach foreign literature and cultures work on a different playing field,” Wihl said. “That means that there are implications for faculty recruitment and retention. When you hire faculty, it says one thing if you’re hiring them into a department that has a Ph. D. program. [A different] kind of faculty are attracted to that kind of department versus departments that don’t provide that kind of environment.”

Wihl said with foreign language faculty looking for more opportunities to teach graduate students and with the French Studies Ph. D. struggling — it had only 10 applications last year — a comparative tive literature Ph. D. program.

“Faculty who teach foreign literature and cultures work on a different playing field,” Wihl said. “That means that there are implications for faculty recruitment and retention.”

Wihl said that with foreign language faculty, a comparative literature Ph. D. makes sense.

“Looking at some of our peer institutions, like Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale or the University of Chicago, we see good possibilities in the areas of comparative literature,” Wihl said.

Wihl said some language faculty are wary of a merger because of the partial merger that has already taken place. In a transition completed in 2002, introductory to advanced language instruction was moved from the individual departments to a new Center for the Study of Languages, but the departments retained courses focusing on literature and culture.

The decision was controversial at the time, and some faculty still resent the change, Wihl said, but he believes the CSL has been successful.

Wihl points to increasing enrollments in language courses, new learning technology and freed-up resources for the language departments as benefits of the CSL.

“It didn’t turn into the ‘Center for the Study of Esperanto’ — it turned into a very robust language teaching center,” Wihl said.

However, Wihl said opposition to a merger from the Hispanic Studies Department was enough to convince him that the merger could go forward without Hispanic Studies. He said Hispanic Studies could participate in the university-wide Latin America Initiative, which is still being developed, rather than the comparative literature program.

Wihl said he is concerned the discussion about the potential merger has overshadowed recent positive news about the School of Humanities that is more relevant to undergraduates — the merger, he said, would have no bearing on undergraduate programs.

Wihl cited a $250,000 grant for undergraduates studying foreign languages, $1 million in other funds for undergraduate programs, new freshman seminars, the creation of the creative writing journal the Rice Review and a $300,000 grant for a pilot program in poverty and social justice as some of the school’s top additions for undergraduates in the last three years.

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