February 24

Page 1

dn 10 5 the

dailynebraskan.com

Rolling along

Bringing home the bacon

Huskers continue winning ways against Purdue

BaconfEAST hogs event center with delicious treats

monday, february 24, 2014 volume 113, issue 103

‘all hands on deck’

Cory Galen, a freshman landscape architecture major, does a perspective drawing for her design drawing class in Architecture Hall.

Architecture, fine arts leaders expect partnership will enhance growth s t o r y

W

b y

G a b r i e l l e

hen Micah Davis heard that his college would merge with the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, he wasn’t surprised. In fact, Davis, a fourth-year architectural studies major, found out the news through word-of-mouth four days before it was officially announced on Feb. 11. “I’ve been on the advisory board for the past couple of years, and it had come up that the College of Architecture was the smallest college,” Davis said. “They were looking to either increase enrollment or join with another college, so that’s how I kind of knew it was coming up.” The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Architecture and the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts will join to create a new college in July 2015. The combination of art, architecture and design isn’t much of a rarity in colleges nationwide. The University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign has a College of Fine and Applied Arts, which includes dance, theater, urban and regional planning and architecture. DuPage and Boston University have similar programs as well. University officials say this isn’t a merger – it’s the creation of a brand new college that faculty and staff of both colleges will design, UNL news director Steve Smith said in an email. The process is still in the early planning stages, but those involved say the combination of UNL’s two smallest undergraduate colleges – architecture has 367 students and fine arts has 564 – will result in growth. Since 2008, full-time student enrollment in the architecture college fell by 27 percent from

L a z a r o

|

503 students six years ago to 367 this academic year. In that same period of time, only 42 fewer full-time students were enrolled in the College of Fine and Performing Arts. “The creation of the new college is motivated by a desire to create a larger, more diverse, more sustainable academic unit that creates more opportunities for students,” Smith said. Fine arts Dean Chuck O’Connor and architecture interim Dean Kim Wilson say the primary reason for the change was to create new opportunities for students and research. “Obviously we’re the two smallest colleges on campus,” O’Connor said. “And scale does matter when you’re seeking to align yourself with the priorities of the university – to grow enrollments and increase research, so I do think that the merger of the two colleges will make us both stronger.” Students will see new programs in the coming semesters. For instance, Wilson said, industrial design would be a good fit for the newly formed college. “Industrial design would be a collaborative program with probably business and engineering and even opportunities across these two colleges into a new college but also the ability to extend out into other colleges,” Wilson said. Also, new minors will be created, Wilson said. “They’ll enhance curriculum for all students, and they’ll be easier to administer because we’ll have a larger pool to select from,” she said. Students, such as second-year pre-architecture major Ethan Hale and fourth-year architectural studies major Connor Griess,

p h o t o

b y

S t a c i e

H e c k e r

FINE ARTS AND ARCHITECTURE ENROLLMENT Fine & Performing Arts Architecture

600 500 400 300 200 100 ‘08

‘09

‘10

‘11

‘12

‘13 Source: UNL Factbook

I do think that the merger of the two colleges will make us both stronger.” chuck o’connor

hixson-lied college of fine and performing arts dean

new college: see page 3

10 years later, deans say joining colleges was worth effort Enrollment, research funding have grown since 2 colleges’ combined efforts in 2003 Jacy marmaduke DN Don’t call it a merger. Marjorie Kostelnik, dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Education and Human Sciences, prefers to think of the more than 10-year-old partnership between the former Teachers College and the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences in a more positive light.

es and Family Sciences were two of two college‘s strengths were com“It wasn’t like one college got plementary and that each would absorbed by another,” she said in UNL’s smallest colleges. The idea to help the other. Also we would have join the two didn’t come from the her Mable Lee office Friday. “When a stronger college infrastructure.” administration but instead from a you think about a merger, you think They were right. Undergraduate conversation between Kostelnik, one identity is stronger than the othenrollment of the colwho had er. That wasn’t the case lege now sits at 2,950 – been dean with us. We thought we 14.4 percent more than of the Colwould do better to have a the fall 2003 enrollment lege of shared mission.” of 2,579. That’s a greater Human The College of Educaincrease than UNL’s Resources tion and Human Sciences overall undergraduate and Famihas been UNL’s newincrease of 8.5 percent ly Sciences est college since its birth during the same period. for just 18 in 2003. Faculty say the Also during the last months, blending of two colleges 10 years, scholarships and 21presented challenges, but awarded have nearly y e a r more than a decade later doubled and research Te a c h e r s they attest to the resultkostelnik o’hanlon funding has nearly College ing growth in enrollment, tripled, Kostelnik said. Dean Jim research funding, scholarAnd inter-disciplinary O’Hanlon. ships and opportunities partnerships resulted in new institu“We thought there were imporfor students. The partnership, they tions and programs such as the Kit tant intersections between programs say, is a success. and Dick Schmoker Reading Center, In 2003, the Teachers College in the two colleges,” O’Hanlon wrote in an email. “We believed the which assists children struggling and the College of Human Resourc-

@dailyneb | facebook.com/dailynebraskan

It caused us to challenge what we thought was the only right way to do things because it was how we had always done them.” richard bischoff

department of child, youth and family studies chairman

with reading comprehension, and the Department of Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Science, which is now the most popular major in the college. But combining two colleges, complete with their own sets of students, faculty and traditions, hasn’t always been easy. “Just as a blended family might struggle to come up with shared meaning around things of impor-

tance, common traditions and ways of doing things, and finding ways to feel safe with one another, we had to do the same,” wrote Richard Bischoff, chairman of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies, in an email. The issues ranged from those of space – the Teachers College was located on City Campus, and the

looking back: see page 2


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
February 24 by Daily Nebraskan - Issuu