The College of Arts and Sciences is Syracuse University’s diamond in the rough.

The oldest and largest college at SU, the one housed in the picturesque Hall of Languages, is sometimes overlooked. It’s something Chancellor Kent Syverud would like to change.

Syverud identified the College of Arts and Sciences as one of his primary areas for improvement in his inaugural address. In that speech, he said he hopes to create an “unrivaled” College of Arts and Sciences.

The College of Arts and Sciences hasn’t been the university’s focus in recent years. But with a new chancellor and a new dean — a search is currently underway and candidates will likely be on campus in December — the future of the school has the potential to be stronger.

“The College of Arts and Sciences is a gem but unfortunately underappreciated on campus,” George Langford, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and current distinguished professor of neuroscience and professor of biology, said in an email.

But there are certain programs within the college — like the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, the Master of Arts in Italian renaissance art history and the Ph.D. in high-energy physics — that are already “unrivaled,” Langford said.

The college has strengths in particular programs and dedicated faculty, but has been hampered by inadequate support, underdeveloped facilities and excessive enrollment, said Samuel Gorovitz, a philosophy professor and former dean of the college.

“The college functions within the context of a larger university that has, to its disadvantage, been dominated by preferential treatment of its professional schools, which both has harmed Arts and Sciences and diminished the luster of those very professional schools,” he said.

Karin Ruhlandt, interim dean of Arts and Sciences, said she sees Syverud’s call for an unrivaled college as an opportunity.

She said one way of improving the college is by creating a “unique sense of belongings” among its students. She hopes to see an identity created for the college, similar to that of S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications or Martin J. Whitman School of Management that makes students proud to be part of the largest college on campus.

The college is currently implementing several different initiatives that work toward the overarching goal of improving the undergraduate experience. Some of the initiatives Ruhlandt mentioned are the Career Conversations lecture series that will show students how to market themselves and their liberal arts education; immersion trips where students can make contact with potential employers; and a new website focusing on academic and career advising that will launch in December.

The level of investment in the college has “waxed and waned” over the years, said Cathryn Newton, professor of interdisciplinary sciences and dean emerita of the college. But she believes that with a commitment from the chancellor to invest in Arts and Sciences and provide a new direction, the college is at a critical turning point.

As that new direction is defined, Newton said, it’s important to remember that the plans for the college should not be set in stone. There is such a thing as a plan that is too specific, she said. Planning is crucial to the success of the college, but the plans should serve as a general “framework” for decision-making.

“You have to have something that’s more concrete than hope for the college,” Newton said. “It’s important to have a plan, but it’s equally fundamental to realize that a plan can also be something that guides decisions rather than mandates outcomes.”

Though creating a college for the future means investing in new areas, Newton stressed the importance of continuing to invest in the programs that are already strong and attracting many students.

Newton calls advising the “life’s blood of any arts and sciences college.” Advising, along with opportunities for research and creative work and space for students to share ideas — something she’s looking into with her committee on the Campus Master Plan — are areas she identified as needing further investment.

“I think that’s the measure of our success,” Newton said. “We’ll know we’re succeeding at Syracuse when increasingly, year by year, we hear people talking ideas in hallways.”

Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina said strengthening Arts and Sciences is key to improving the university as a whole. SU must have an increased focus on excellence in the college, he said.

The administration is working toward these goals through the Campus Master Plan and the search for a new dean for the college.

Though there’s not a specific part of the master plan dedicated to improving Arts and Sciences, Spina said there are many different work groups that will contribute to strengthening the college.

“Whether it’s undergraduate excellence or whether it’s student and faculty support services or whether it’s internationalization, the themes and the approaches and the investment plans in these areas will be designed in large part to make sure that the center of the university, Arts and Sciences, will get better through those investments,” Spina said.

Spina also said he hopes the new dean of the college will come in around the time that the strategic plan is unveiled, which is targeted for this May. The new dean will then prioritize and work toward the initiatives outlined in the strategic plan, he said.

Mary Lovely, chair of the Arts and Sciences dean search committee, said the committee is currently in the interview phase and that she hopes the candidates will be visiting campus in December.

Lovely said Syverud has made it clear he wants to support the college and when he met with the committee in its early stages, Lovely said he gave its members a pep talk of sorts.

Spina said the new dean must recognize that the administration wants to improve the undergraduate experience within the college. While there is also a commitment to research, the undergraduate experience is what comes first.

Each program within the college should be able to clearly articulate why a student should come to SU for that particular program, Spina said. Every potential student should be able to answer the question: Why SU?

“Building an unrivaled College of Arts and Sciences really means we know what makes each one of our programs great and we are investing in them to make sure each one of them is magnified,” Spina said.

Spina said the college needs to be an “integral part of the university” for every student at SU, students majoring in the College of Arts and Sciences, students in other colleges who take their core courses in Arts and Sciences and students who are looking for opportunities for dual degrees or concentrations.

“It needs to be strong by itself, but it also needs to be strong in terms of how it connects with other units,” he said.

A liberal arts education is, at its core, an education that prepares students for the future, particularly an unknown future, said Gorovitz, the philosophy professor. Many of the jobs that today’s students will one day hold do not yet exist, so they’ll have to be able to adapt. A liberal arts education teaches them how to learn, he said.

“Why does it matter that we have a really strong College of Arts and Sciences?” Gorovitz said. “It’s because part of what we owe our students is about who and what they can be 10 and 15 and 20 and 30 and 40 years in the future.”

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Published on November 20, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris