May 2017 Provost Report, B5

B5, Advance Inquiry, Scholarship and Creative Activity:

College of Arts and Sciences

Expansion of the Hand Art Center

This year is the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Oscar Bluemner's birth, and we will have a major exhibition to mark the occasion in fall 2017, as the Homer and Dolly Hand Art Center houses the University's extensive collection of over 1,000 Bluemner paintings, drawings, sketches, and ephemera. The Hand Art Center will also host a major exhibition of paintings of the Highwaymen artists, guest curated by Gary Libby. Tonya Curran, Director of the Hand Art Center, was recently accepted to the 2017 Collections Assessment for Preservation program. We are also forming a "Friends of the Hand Art Center" group to support and grow our exhibition schedule, our fundraising opportunities, and our educational programs.

duPont-Ball Library

Services

The library received a grant from Northeast Florida Library Information Network to participate in a marketing project that is providing our librarians with guidance and free expert consulting services to improve marketing strategies. A marketing plan will be developed throughout the spring and summer semesters.

Learning Outcomes and Assessment

Librarians have been working productively with Megan O'Neill, Professor of English, and others on questions of General Education learning outcome statements on information literacy. Grace Kaletski, Learning and Information Literacy Librarian, surveyed Stetson faculty members on the topic and presented to them the results.

Archives and Special Collections

During a March campus visit, John B. Stetson IV and his wife Solveig donated a large collection of historically valuable Stetson family memorabilia to the University Archives. The gift resulted from the library's ongoing research into the Stetson family and Stetson company history that sparked a relationship with John IV and his family.

Writing Center

Megan O'Neill, PhD and Director of the Writing Program, and Leigh Ann Dunning, Assistant Director of the Writing Program and Director of the Writing Center, achieved the following:

  • A new instructional framework for writing and information literacy to establish baseline and projected achievements for students in FSEM and Junior Seminar (JSEM) courses and faculty excellence workshops to introduce and refine a scaffolded set of standards and consultation on proposals for writing-enhanced designation for mutual learning and outreach.