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Office of the Dean

August 2019

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to welcome you back to campus for what promises to be an eventful year in the College.

In fact, we are kicking the year off with a weeklong series of events as the College celebrates our month during Purdue’s Sesquicentennial. We will have a presence on Memorial Mall all week with activities including interactive opportunities that highlight the College’s place at Purdue and our connectivity across colleges. I invite you to see the full slate of events here.

As we begin the semester, we have had a number of leadership transitions since last fall. We welcome two new Heads to campus, Arne Flaten (Rueff School) and Cherie Maestas (Political Science). In addition, Fritz Davis assumed leadership of the History Department during spring semester.

Please join me in thanking Harry Bulow and Eric Waltenburg for their leadership and service as Department Heads.

Joining us as well is an exceptional group of new faculty who will play an important role in our ongoing success in education and scholarship. You can learn a bit more about each of them here and meet them at events like our CLA Percs coffee series. You always can learn about what’s happening in the College with our online events calendar.

This year, we take our next steps to advance two key initiatives from last year, implementation of the new CLA Core 21 and the work of the Strategic Vision and Planning Committee.

CLA Core 21 builds upon the University Core Curriculum (UCC) with requirements for disciplinary breadth across our disciplines while streamlining our core for the benefit of students. This year, we will create new plans of study for all of our majors to reflect CLA Core 21 for students who enroll in Fall 2020. We also will revisit the course arrangements for Degree in 3, and perhaps will find new opportunities to add majors to that program working with the new core. Under any circumstances, it would be a significant project. Given the recent and unexpected passing of Director of Advising Andrae Sailes, it may be even more complex. I thank you in advance for your efforts to bring the new core to fruition for students.

Like the core, the Strategic Plan will require important work to explore, prioritize, and operationalize its proposed initiatives. The first strategic plan for the College since 1992, it outlines a set of aspirations to move the College forward over the next seven years. We expect to convene a series of task forces to begin to explore in more detail some of the key strategic initiatives proposed by the committee. We will share additional information on those in early September.

The College remains committed to supporting faculty and graduate students in their scholarship to elevate our research profile. Empowering Excellence, a support fund for Liberal Arts scholarship, continues this academic year. We will circulate calls for proposals for this year’s Innovate, Aspire, PROMISE, Engage, Create, and 2Teach in the next few weeks.

I continue to take great pride in the ways in which we have advanced the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue and beyond our campus. We have made great progress on the goals laid out four years ago. Thank you for your support. It has positioned the College for success as an innovative leader in liberal arts education and scholarship.

Wishing you a pleasant and productive fall semester.

Sincerely,

David Reingold

David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean of Liberal Arts