Departments across campus welcome new faculty

UM bigwigs are making sure the presidential throne won't go cold, but the administerial spot isn't the only one going through changes. In his State of the University address last week, President Dennison welcomed 16 administrators to the university. Some are brand new, while others transitioned from interim to permanent positions. More than 20 new full-time professors, lab instructors and lecturers will teach courses this semester.

One shift occurred in the chair's office of the history department, and it could have a big impact, Department Chair John Eglin said. Earlier this month, former Chair Richard Drake stepped down after he was "content to serve one term," he said.

Although Drake did not resign earlier than he had planned, things are changing in the department, said Eglin, who has been a faculty member at UM for 14 years and was most recently a history professor.

"The department is at a point of real transition, so it was important for someone to take over, and it was important for it to be someone from a different generation of the department," Englin said. "If you look at the list of the department, we're undergoing kind of a generational shift."

Eglin said most faculty members in the department have been there for 30 years or more, or less than 20 years, leaving a gap between them, and a large group of the professors are set to retire in the next five years. Although the department has recently embraced "vacancy savings," in which they leave positions empty to save money on salaries and benefits, it will have to replace many faculty members in the next five years, Eglin said. As chair, Eglin will help fill the search committees that will find and hire new faculty.

The programs and curriculum of the department are also in a state of flux. Graduate and Ph.D. students in UM's history department generally focus on Western and environmental history, Eglin said, but could soon have more options. Faculty with expertise in American women's history, American urban and civic history and the early national period of American history are "emerging as important scholars in their fields who will attract graduate students and PhD students," Eglin said.

Although the focus of graduate programs will remain on Western and environmental history, expansions in other areas will help the department build better relations with other departments on campus, he said. Departments can benefit from working together and create what Eglin calls a "critical mass" in different subjects.

"We do tend to be very insular. In an institution like this one where resources are scant and scarce and we get involved in a death struggle for getting our piece of the pie, very often that can blind us to the fact that we have areas of common interest."

Eglin added that improvements in working with other departments are not due to previous administrations' mistakes, but because there is always room for some improvement.

"Every 10 or 15 years, every department has to take a good, long look at itself and ask if the curriculum is serving students," he said. "Are they getting out of our classes what they need to get out of them?"

Annie Belcourt, a new assistant professor in the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences, will bring one of those new experiences to students when she begins guest lecturing next semester. Belcourt, who recently worked at the University of Colorado-Denver and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center, will research trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder within American Indian communities. Since she finished graduate school at UM in 2006, the university has placed more focus on American Indian studies, she said.

"There's more interest and excitement about providing educational opportunities and research for American Indians. … I'm hoping the things I do will compliment what's been happening already, and I also hope there are new things I will bring to the table," she said.

Other researchers and professors at UM have looked at environmental or biomedical health disparities for American Indians, but Belcourt, who is American Indian, said she hopes to focus her work on mental health in the American Indian community.

"I think it's an exciting time and folks are really interested in providing new questions and answers," she said.

Outside the halls of each department, the influx of new faculty can be beneficial to the campus as a whole, said Libby Covelli, the only new professor in the College of Forestry and Conservation this semester. Covelli is finishing her Ph.D. at Penn State University, and much of her work focuses on minorities' access to outdoor recreation, including increasing women's access to hunting.

"I think it's great to have a lot of new faculty. A lot of us are coming from different universities where we're in programs and able to develop new ways of doing research," Covelli said. "I think that brings a whole new experience into the university that students can really benefit from."

heidi.groover@umontana.edu