Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Annual Report 2003-2004
Dean's Letter
Camden College of Arts and Sciences
Research Centers and Initiatives
Academic Departments
Undergraduate Programs
The Graduate School
Student Services
Appendices
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Undergraduate Programs
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM
The African American Studies Program currently has four majors, one double major, and ten minors. One African American Studies major, Danielle Harrison, graduated in May. She is in the Teacher Preparation Program and will pursue a career in teaching. Sergeant Vincent Harris is a double major in history and African American studies. He is two courses shy of graduation, but has been deployed overseas. We pray for his safe return, and expect that he will complete his degree in the next year or two. Three students with a minor in African American studies, Harvey Crowley, Arnold Davis, and Kandace Diedrick, graduated in May. Two students received awards for academic excellence. The major award went to Danielle Harrison, the minor award went to Harvey Crowley. Mr. Crowley is a history major and African American studies minor. He is in the Teacher Prep Program, and in addition to pursuing a career in teaching he has been accepted at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary for a master of divinity degree. In the realm of curricular developments, in Fall 2003 Dr. Wayne Glasker, director of the African American Studies Program, taught a freshman seminar on the topic of Lincoln and Emancipation. In spring 2004 he taught The Era of the Harlem Renaissance as an interdisciplinary Honors seminar and for the first time taught Issues in American Education. This course is cross-listed as a history course and meets the state requirement for a course in the foundations of education. It meets the same need as Sociology of Education, serving as a requirement for students in the Teacher Preparation Program, and was taught in the evening, with an enrollment of sixty-two students. The two major co-curricular events during 2003-2004 were a commemoration of Paul Robeson, featuring a presentation by the United States Postal Service of an enlarged replica of the Paul Robeson stamp; and a series of poetry readings and guest lectures by Ewuare Osayande, the poet-in-residence for the African American Studies Program. The vast majority of courses taught under the rubric of African American studies are actually taught in other departments, and faculty members have their appointments in other departments. Dr. Wayne Glasker (director) served on a panel at the National Constitution Center discussing the topic of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, and gave a guest lecture at Camden County College (Blackwood) on the topic of African Americans in the Civil War. In April he also served on a panel discussing the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The panel discussion took place at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as part of the annual Law Day sponsored by the Burlington County Superior Court. Four students in African American Studies were enrolled in the Service Learning course and performed community service at Dooley House. They were Amir Ayres, Arnold Davis, Elizabeth Goodwin and Nikia Taylor. Quenise Beckford performed an internship with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJ-PIRG) and worked with the Hunger and Homelessness Project.
The outlook for the future is positive and optimistic, as the number of majors and minors continues to grow and enrollments in courses soar. The demand for the Era of the Harlem Renaissance is so great that it has become necessary to offer the course in summer or winter as well as during the regular year. The ability of the program to grow and attract even more students would be enhanced if it were possible to bring in a faculty person on a part-time basis to teach African history, especially if that person really was authentically African.
WALT WHITMAN PROGRAM in AMERICAN STUDIES The number of minors in the American Studies Program remains steady, at four to six per year. During Fall 2003, the Program held an honors lunch in conjunction with Professor Carol Singley's course on The American Child as a way of publicizing the program and attracting more participants. In 2002 the Program instituted a new course, Introduction to American Studies, which is cross-listed with a course from another department. In Fall 2003, the course--cross-listed with American Constitutional Development--attracted seven students, and in Spring 2004, it was cross-listed with Multicultural American Literature and attracted four students. The American Studies Program supplemented its course offerings by cosponsoring a symposium on “Missionary Work in the New American Century,” organized by Professor Kate Engel. The quality of teaching in the Program remains very high. In 2004 Tyler Hoffman, one of the Program's directors, received the Provost's Teaching Excellence Award. That means that all three directors of the Program have now received the award for teaching excellence. (For research by faculty associated with the Program, see departmental reports.)
Students in the Program continue to undertake interesting research projects, including theses in 2003-2004 on “Organized Crime in America” and “The American Experience of Recent South Asian Immigrants.”
In the coming year the American Studies Program will seek to expand its student base and create new opportunities for internships and student research.
FILM STUDIES
Two graduates of Rutgers-Camden continue their successful careers in film. After winning the 2003 Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival for his film, American Splendor, Robert Pulcini was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for the film. Meanwhile, Kevin Di Novis, whose film Surrender Dorothy, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Slamdance Film Festival, finished his film Death and Texas, starring Charles Durning, Steve Harris, Corbin Bersen, and Mary Kay Place. The film reviewer for Slate calls it “one magnificent piece of agiprop . . . a mockumentary about pro football and the death penalty.” The Film Studies Program continues to offer a number of courses drawn from a variety of departments. With digital film making erasing the boundaries between film, art, animation, and computer graphics, students from almost all disciplines are participating in film studies and film making. The Art Department continues to expand its offerings in film making, computer graphics, and animation. The English Department offers courses in screenwriting, the history of film, the depiction of minorities in popular film, and specific film genres. Other departments, such as Religion, Foreign Languages, and History, also continue to offer a variety of courses in specific aspects of the role of film in history and culture.
FRESHMAN SEMINAR PROGRAM In November 2003, following a three-year pilot program, the CCAS Faculty Senate approved a motion to make the Freshman Seminar Program into a permanent part of the curriculum for freshmen. The need for such a program has increased as the size of the freshman class has grown, and the value of such programs is recognized by universities across the country. Retention of each year's new class of freshmen and future recruitment of high-quality freshmen in a competitive educational market-place require serious attention to the first educational experiences a student will have at CCAS. Experts agree that small seminars for beginning students are one of the most promising educational opportunities that public universities can offer. In the Fall 2003 semester, nine discipline-based seminars were offered to introduce students to specific ideas and methods from a particular academic discipline. There were 174 freshmen enrolled in these seminars, representing 48% of the freshmen eligible to take freshman seminars. Assistant Dean of Students Nancy Gulick has worked hard on coordinating the process by which the advising staff place newly accepted students into freshmen seminars. The most promising enhancements in the freshmen seminar program have included the use of peer-teaching-assistants and linkages with English composition classes. The peer-teaching-assistants are advanced undergraduate students who assist the seminar instructor with small group discussions, troubleshooting student problems, helping with grading of papers and exams, and offering general support for students working on assignments. Three freshman seminars were linked with English composition classes in an effort to create what sometimes are called "learning communities," a model which has been very successful elsewhere and has many academic and social benefits for students. This is the newest innovation in the program, and we will monitor its value and success to determine the future use of this model.
THE HONORS COLLEGE The Honors College began its seventh year of operation with a class of sixty-eight new students who were recipients of Provost, Outstanding Scholar's Recruitment Program, Bloustein, and Carr Scholarships. Students came to Rutgers from South Jersey as well as from Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania. They joined a total of 300 students already enrolled in the Honors College. Honors seminars offered in Fall 2003 were “The World According to Television” (Lutz); “Gender in Music” (Baird); “Who Gets In? College Admissions in the United States” (Tucker); “Health and Society” (Golden); “The Child in American Literature and Culture” (Singley); and “Geometry and Numbers” (Toth). Spring 2004 seminars were “The Short Story” (Martin); “The Era of the Harlem Renaissance” (Glasker); “Contact Points: Missionaries and Missionized in American History, 1492 to 1992” (Engel); “Literary Responses to the Holocaust” (Avins); “Goddess and Temptress: Women in Religion” (Charme); “Ancient Egypt” (Toth); “Clash of Imperialisms” (Shienbaum); and “Art and Vision” (Bravo). To fulfill their requirements for junior-year and/or senior-year projects, Honors College students obtained internships with various institutions including Cooper Hospital, NFL Films, Commerce Bank, and the LEAP Academy Charter School. In November six students (Steven England, Craig Shellenberger, Christian Colalongo, Mae Joo, Heather Hilt, & Amy Sampson), as well as Allen Woll, and Dolores Pfeuffer-Scherer represented the Honors College at the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference in Chicago, Illinois. Dolores Pfeuffer-Scherer presented a paper entitled "Building Bridges: Ensuring Minority Participation, Satisfaction, and Success" at the annual diversity workshop.
The Honors College sponsored a variety of on and off-campus activities throughout the 2003 - 2004 academic year. These included workshops co-sponsored with the Career Center, the CEO lecture series co-sponsored with the Development Office, an International Studies luncheon, an advising luncheon in preparation for Spring Semester registration, a trip to the Arden Theater to see Rosencrantz and Gildensterm are Dead, and a year-end dinner for seniors and for underclassmen. In addition, the Honors College coordinated a variety of events in conjunction with Honors Seminars. These included trips to the Mutter Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a trip to see Il Trovatore at the Philadelphia Opera Company, and the showing of films and presentations by speakers.
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES This year the International Studies program continued to make an important contribution to the college curriculum and to campus life generally, though, partly because of my FASP leave in the Fall term, it did not move forward in areas where I had hoped to make improvements. In 2003-04 the program sponsored seven study tours: • Egypt (Mathematics, Liberal Studies), Gabor Toth • Venice (Fine Arts, Liberal Studies, Debra Miller • Northern Ireland (Urban Studies), Jon Van Til • South Africa and Namibia (Criminal Justice / Management and Marketing), Snehamay Banerjee, Chon Goh, Arun Kumaraswamy, Jona Meyer • Eastern Germany (Music, Photography, Liberal Studies), Ken Hohing, Joe Schiavo • Barcelona (Fine Arts), Juliette Cezzar, Allen Espiritu • Scandinavia (Nursing), Kathleen Ashton Of these courses, three failed to draw sufficient enrollment--Barcelona, Eastern Germany, and Scandinavia--and had to be cancelled. The last was especially regrettable, since Kathleen Ashton has attempted to run this course three years in a row, without success. (This year she was just one short of the ten-student minimum required by her travel agency.) Roughly seventy-five students were formally enrolled for credit in the remaining four study tours, and numerous friends, parents, significant others, and alumni joined these students for the actual travel experience. With the resources provided through the Honors College, the supplemental budget made available by the Office of the Dean, and contributions by alumni and those non-students who are invited to join our tours, eighteen students received financial aid totaling $5200. Just two faculty members received honoraria of $1000 for offering the study tour above their regular load: Jona Meyer (whose own expenses for the tour cost her far more than that) and Debra Miller, a PTL who was perhaps underpaid for her work. I wonder if, some semester, Fine Arts will have the resources to support a well-enrolled International Studies course with a regular PTL salary. This year, two FAS faculty members offered their study tour "in load" and thus did not receive honoraria: Jon Van Til and Gabor "Pied Piper" Toth. Toth's course, with cross-registrations, drew thirty-nine (!) students.
The program continues to depend on the same stalwart departments (this year, Fine Arts, Business, and Urban Studies) and faculty members (Van Til, Toth). We made some important improvements in record-keeping this year, asking our faculty members to fill out a report form and return it to our office upon completion of the course. And we've begun to receive formal responses to the Call for Proposals that we re-designed in 2002-03.
LIBERAL STUDIES The Undergraduate Liberal Studies Program continues to grow at a modest rate. The total number of students enrolled is twenty-eight, up by three from last year. Enrollment in the two required courses for the major, Mastering the Liberal Arts I and Mastering the Liberal Arts II, is healthy. This May the program graduated six students from the Camden program. Camden graduates were a distinguished group. SueAnn Jeral graduated with High Honors. Gina T. Amato and Ray Vagnoni graduated with Honors. Gina Amato and Andrea Pendleton were inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda, Gamma XI. Diana Romero, who participated in both New Brunswick and Camden commencement ceremonies, received the Arthur E. Armitage Award and was also inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda, Gamma Xi. The program continues to attract recent graduates from local county colleges and students with workplace experience. Returning students are consistently among those with high grade point averages. Graduates announce plans to pursue a range of activities, including careers and post-graduate education, most commonly law school. The program continues to benefit from the competence of award-winning Maryann Lovelace, who teaches the Mastering the Liberal Arts I and II courses. Her well-chosen curriculum, centered on the Holocaust, draws students into compelling interdisciplinary liberal arts debate. She has a terrific rapport with students, and her course gives them valuable introductions to each other and university-level work. I continue to emphasize recruiting through a variety of means: frequent mailings to county college A.A.S. program coordinators and transfer counselors; advertisements in local newspapers and newsletters of organizations that serve careers related to A.A.S. degree majors; and open houses on the RU-C campus. I again made periodic visits to county college campuses. The program also draws in new students through the website and, increasingly important, word of mouth. An annual fall gathering helps new and continuing students get acquainted. The Liberal Studies Supper Seminar series, in its second year, draws UGLS students as well as other campus students and faculty together to share dinner and hear about current research of an invited faculty member. This year, Liberal Studies teamed up with Dr. Gabor Toth, who crosslisted his “Ancient Egypt” course with Liberal Studies and who made presentation that encouraged Liberal Studies students not only to take the course, but also to participate in the spring international studies trip to Egypt. The success of the program relies to a great extent on the secretarial support of Sonia Krutzke; on advising coordination with Student Affairs, primarily Assistant Dean of Students Nancy Gulick; and on admissions coordination with Meghan Moore. In spring semester, with my leave, Dr. Rich Epstein generously took over academic advising and deserves thanks for this help. I look forward to continuing this successful program and to facilitating its growth.
TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAM
As of this date, there are 334 students actively enrolled in the program, including the Spring 2004 student teaching cohort. Of these, eighty-four are males and 250 are females. There are 166 students are seeking elementary certification, K-5, and 146 are seeking N-12 subject matter certification. Twenty-two students are seeking dual certification. The largest numbers of students are in the following majors: English – seventy-five; History – fifty-three; Psychology- seventy-nine; Sociology – forty-four, Mathematics- eighteen. There are sixty-five four-year Rutgers-Camden students, 188 undergraduate transfer students and eighty-one post-baccalaureate students in the program. The number of students involved with student teaching continues to increase. During the spring, 2004 semester there were forty-seven students in the cohort. For the fall, 2004 semester we will have sixty-three student teachers in the field. We have placed twenty-two students in various elementary schools in Camden under the auspices of the America Reads Practicum. One student teacher completed her student teaching in Camden's Yorkship School. A similar number of placements in Camden is anticipated for the Fall 2004 semester. Regarding curricular developments, three Saturday in-services were held to address the requirements of the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant which we have received. Faculty, PTLs, and Field Supervisors were involved in a detailed review of our professional courses to ascertain alignment with the New Jersey Professional Teaching Standards. Results of this work were reviewed in three reports with representatives of the DOE in Trenton. We have also declared to the DOE our selection of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) as the organization through which we plan to seek national accreditation. Ms. Michele Ratigan, (GPA 4.00, Mathematics), was nominated for the Nancy Higginson Door Award as the outstanding secondary certification student. Mr. Luke Hodges, (GPA 4.00), was nominated as the recipient of the "Distinguished Elementary School Candidate." The induction of seventy-seven new members of Kappa Delta Pi, National Honor Society in Education was held on March 3, 2004 under the guidance of Dr. Thomas J. Venables, the counselor of our local chapter. Dr. Mary Stanksy, Superintendent of Gloucester City Public Schools was the keynote speaker for the induction ceremony. Ms. Debra Park, Social Studies Methods PTL, was selected as the Public School Educator of the Year Award recipient. This award was presented to Ms. Park at public meeting of the West Deptford Board of Education on May 10, 2004. An additional staff member is planned to address our increasing responsibilities vis-à-vis the number of students whom we service as well as grant and accreditation issues.
WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAM To facilitate communication with Women's Studies faculty, Women's Studies sent out email messages on a regular basis (approximately every week) that solicited participation in various activities; notified Women's Studies faculty associates of grant, conference and publication opportunities; and kept Women's Studies faculty abreast of all campus activities of possible interest. The Women's Studies bulletin board and web pages were kept current. Five graduating minors completed senior theses for their Women's Studies minor during the academic year. During the fall, Martin Rosenberg and the Women's Studies program director met regularly with the one student who was completing her minor in time for December graduation. During the spring, four students met with the Women's Studies program director on a regular basis and periodically with their outside advisors (Michelle Meloy, Maryanne Giello, and Holly Blackford). All of the students who finished their senior theses presented the results of their work to faculty and students at special events at the end of each semester. Student theses included: • Sachina Evans completed a thesis examining African American women's experiences of intimate partner violence. • Roberta Herrmann wrote about the objectification of women in the media. • Bridget Urban's senior thesis examined representations of the female body in modern art. The program director submitted this thesis to the New Jersey Project's Achievement Awards for Excellence in Feminist/ Multicultural Scholarship, and it was chosen as one of the prize-winning submissions (including a cash award of $300.00). • Lakesha Walker wrote about male-male rape in the contexts of prison life and homosexual relationships. • Dayna Wikowski completed a thesis on the sexual double standard, with a focus on the role of masturbation in perpetuating this standard. At present, there are thirty-one faculty advisors for the Women's Studies program representing the following departments and programs: Art History and Fine Arts; Biology; Business; Chemistry; Economics; English; Foreign Language; History; Mathematics; Nursing; Philosophy and Religion; Political Science; Public Policy; Psychology; Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice. There are also advisers from the Law School and the Paul Robeson Library. A “Welcome Back” lunch was hosted by the Women's Studies program on Wednesday, September 24, 2003. This luncheon reacquainted faculty members involved in the Women's Studies program, and served to initiate planning for the year's activities. The Women's Studies program co-sponsored a presentation by Laura Kipnis, "What's Love Got to Do With It?: An Anti-Valentine's Day Special," on February 9, 2004. Women's History Month 2003 A committee formed early in the academic year, comprised of Nancy Rosoff and Charlotte Markey, planned this year's Women's History Month with the help of Allison Emery and Patrick Wallace (from the Campus Center). Two events were planned for each week of March (with the exception of the week of spring break). Events included “Placing the Miss America Contest: A Video Screening and Commentary” featuring Jeanne Houck, History Works; Professor Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania; Jill Horner, History graduate student, Rutgers, Miss New Jersey, 2000; “Low Carbohydrate Diets and Obesity Treatment: What's the Evidence?” presented by Dr. Gary Foster, University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine; and "Reproductive Rights, Reproductive Freedom: The Early Career of Margaret Sanger" presented by Dean Margaret Marsh, Rutgers University Faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Graduate School. A complete list of events is available from the program director. Most events were well attended, leaving “standing room only.” In addition to the many Women's Studies events that took place on campus this year, efforts were made to increase the visibility of the women's studies program by making students more aware of the minor and the courses being offered that would contribute to this minor. Brochures were distributed prior to enrollment for Spring 2004 and Fall 2004 regarding the women's studies courses that were being offered in the upcoming semester. There is some reason to believe that these efforts have been effective; the program director has already been approached by several students interested in completing a minor next year, and at least two students have began the process of designing a major in women's studies. In Fall 2003, Introduction to Women's Studies was taught by Diana Reinhard and the program director taught the Senior Seminar in Women's Studies. In addition, fourteen courses were offered that fulfilled requirements for the minor in Women's Studies. The following departments included courses for the minor: Fine Arts, Biology, Criminal Justice, English, Psychology, Social Work, and Sociology. In spring 2004, the program director again offered the Senior Seminar in Women's Studies, and thirteen courses fulfilled requirements for the minor. The following departments participated: -Biology, English, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Social Work, and Sociology. In spring 2004, the program director began to reevaluate the courses cross-listed as Women's Studies courses. Department chairs were contacted to help evaluate the relevance of the courses in their department to women's studies. Further, faculty members were contacted to confirm their interest in acting as an advisor to the program. This information will be used to design a new Women's Studies brochure, which should be available for interested students (and faculty members) during the summer of 2004. A Complete List of Events for Women's History Month 2004: March 1, 2004: “Real Women Have Curves: A Movie Presentation and Discussion”
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