Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Town hall meetings provide insights regarding new positions

Professors Stephen Watt, John Lucaites, and Deborah Cohn discuss the new positions of Associate Vice President for Research and IU Bloomington Vice Provost for Research at the Town Hall meeting on Monday at the Indiana Memorial Union.

Ten IU faculty members gathered in the Indiana Memorial Union Walnut Room on Monday morning to share their visions for the positions of associate vice president for research and vice provost for research.

The Monday morning meeting was the first in a series of four town hall meetings meant to provide IU faculty, staff and students an opportunity to voice opinions in the selection of associate vice president for research and vice provost for research, according to the executive vice president for university academic affairs website.

Reporting to the vice president for research and working closely with the IU-Bloomington provost, the associate vice president and vice provost for research is responsible for advancing the research and creative efforts of the Bloomington campus, according to the website.

The official will be responsible for overseeing current internal funding programs, developing new external funding sources, overseeing current research development services and fostering research.

Eighteen committee members, including committee chair Beth Plale, a School of Informatics and Computing professor, will recommend a candidate from the pool of applicants to Provost Lauren Robel and Vice President for Research Jorge José.

The Monday morning meeting welcomed suggestions from individuals with an interest in the arts and humanities while the Monday afternoon meeting welcomed suggestions from individuals with an interest in natural and mathematical sciences.

The meetings Tuesday morning and afternoon will field suggestions from those with an interest in professional schools and social and behavioral sciences respectively, according to the website.

Attendees with an interest in arts and humanities aired concerns regarding an excess of focus on natural and mathematical science research and a lack of focus on arts and humanities, as well as social and behavioral sciences research, expressing their wishes for a candidate interested in and knowledgeable of arts and humanities and social and behavioral ?sciences research.

Stephen Watt, provost professor of English and adjunct professor of theater and drama, has been at IU for 30 years.

“I feel that, in the past half dozen years or so, the interest in humanities research, as research, has not been recognized or identified very well,” he said. “I actually believe that the higher administration at IU does not fully understand what research in the humanities is, or could be, and why it’s important.”

Watt said he believes the lack of focus on humanities research stems from a lack of humanities representation in the Office of the Vice Provost of Research and that he desires representation in the Office of the Vice Provost of Research in the form of the new candidate.

P.Q. Phan, associate ?professor of music composition, said he had been at IU for 50 years and echoed Watt’s sentiments.

“I believe that because of a very broad excellency of our school, it’s important to find somebody who will embrace a larger definition of what is research,” he said. “And research is not necessarily science, but it could involve art, it could involve humanity.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe